Dr. AshR

The Missing Curriculum

Forty rooms in two volumes: how to learn, decide and think clearly — and how to work with AI without being fooled by it.

Get both volumes — £79 One payment. Instant download.

The habit that makes you harder to fool

Professional fact-checkers do something that feels almost lazy: they stop reading the page. Before reading further they open a new tab and look the source up from outside — who funded it, who criticises it, whether anyone else reports the same thing. In a well-known 2019 study, fact-checkers who read this way reached sounder judgments, faster, than historians and students who read carefully down the page. That one move is a single room (Room 13) of this course. The course is made of forty of them.

Who it is for

Adults who want to learn faster, decide better, and stay clear-headed in a world of hype and confident machines — and who prefer an honest “modest effect, here is the study” to a promise. It is not a get-rich or overnight-transformation course, and it does not pretend to be.

How it works

Each room teaches a small set of moves through a story, a worked example and an exercise you do yourself, then locks it in with spaced flashcards. Every room names its sources and states how big the effect honestly is. Each has a textbook, a workbook, an illustrated mind-map and flashcards.

What is inside

Volume I

How to learn, decide and think clearly

The Instrument

  • 1. Learn & Remember
  • 2. Attention & State
  • 3. Emotions
  • 4. Habits & Change

The Judgment

  • 5. Clear Thinking
  • 6. Decisions & Numbers
  • 7. Money
  • 8. The Body
  • 20. The Body's Budget

Out into the World

  • 9. People
  • 10. Hard Conversations
  • 11. How the World Works
  • 12. Meaning & Mortality
  • 19. Work & Livelihood

The Defenses

  • 13. Epistemic Self-Defense
  • 14. Manipulation & Persuasion Resistance
  • 15. AI-Trap Literacy
  • 16. Manufactured Consensus
  • 17. Earned Confidence
  • 18. Medical Self-Sovereignty

Volume II

Thinking With Machines

Thinking With Machines

  • 21. What The Machine Actually Is
  • 22. The First Real Prompt
  • 23. Thinking Out Loud With A Machine
  • 24. Make It Argue With Itself
  • 25. Verification Is The Skill
  • 26. From One Solution To Twenty
  • 27. Giving It Your World
  • 28. Building Small Machines
  • 29. Doing Real Work With It, End To End
  • 30. Working With It Honestly

The Machine's Shadow

  • 31. When It Lies To You Well
  • 32. The Synthetic Con
  • 33. Machines That Decide About You
  • 34. The Counterfeit Companion

Maturity At Speed

  • 35. Reading A Claim — The Evidence Ladder
  • 36. Who Profits From You Believing This?
  • 37. Money Without Magic
  • 38. Time, Actually
  • 39. People, Power And Consent
  • 40. The Long Game

Try a piece of it now

The five-step lateral-reading routine from Room 13: (1) open a new tab before you read further; (2) search the source’s name plus “funding” or “criticism”; (3) for a study, search its title plus “retraction” or “failed to replicate”; (4) search the claim in quotation marks and see who else reports it; (5) stop at two or three independent sources — or call it unverified, which is a complete answer.

What you get for £79

Get The Missing Curriculum — £79

Questions

What exactly do I get?

Both complete volumes as PDFs (Volume I, 270 pages; Volume II, 299 pages), forty room PDFs and forty workbooks, 338 flashcards as CSV files, and a 21-page printable Companion Toolkit. You receive everything as one download after payment.

Is this a subscription?

No. It is one payment of £79 for both volumes. Nothing renews.

Do I need to read it in order?

No. Every room stands on its own, and the Pocket Index in the Companion Toolkit lists every move so you can go straight to the one you need. Reading the rooms in order does build on itself.

Is it based on evidence?

Each room names its sources and says how big the effect honestly is, including when the answer is modest. These are research-informed practices, not guarantees, and the rooms say so.

Is this medical or mental-health advice?

No. It is educational material. One room in Volume II deals with AI companions and mental-health difficulty; it is educational, not therapy, and lists crisis lines. If you are in crisis, contact your local emergency number or a crisis line.

What format are the files?

PDF for the volumes, rooms and workbooks; CSV for the flashcards (import into any flashcard app); PDF for the toolkit. Print the worksheets if you like.

Educational content, not medical or mental-health advice. If you are in crisis, contact your local emergency number or a crisis line. By Dr. AshR. Independent & transparent: how we work.

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