This was once my passionate belief. I had an awful lot of pride to swallow when I changed my mind. Especially given all those bad jokes I had been making at my friend's expense. Until then it had served as the universally applicable comeback whenever she was being obnoxious - a personalised alternative to mom jokes.
Given a couple of weeks to recover from the ongoing chemical abuse I would expect someone who cleaned themselves daily (or twice daily) without soap to have less body odour than the soap junkie. Particularly at the end of a long hot day.
Extensive exfoliation is far more effective than a pH attack when it comes to allowing deodorant to function effectively and if there is excess oil that will be removed with the dead skin. Since you do not also dry out the skin that does remain your body will not feel the need to reproduce excessive amounts of oil to recover from the lack.
Robin Hanson touched on the subject recently on OvercomingBias. The article he cites perhaps goes even further than I have, being a little wary of excessive exfoliation too. But I enjoy efoliating so I'm keeping it up. :P
The exception I have for soap-like substances is the face. I use all sorts of fun stuff on the face so as to prevent any blackheads or other blemishes. My favourite is tretinoin, which is also brilliant for preventing (or reducing) wrinkles and generally slowing (skin) ageing.
The exception I have for soap-like substances is the face. I use all sorts of fun stuff on the face so as to prevent any blackheads or other blemishes. My favourite is tretinoin, which is also brilliant for preventing (or reducing) wrinkles and generally slowing (skin) ageing.
I sense a new post coming up: "The Rationalist's Guide to Baby-Soft, Age-Defying Skin."
Edit - many apologies to anyone that feels that this discussion was a waste of time.
I just ran across an article (http://techno-anthropology.blogspot.com/2011/04/rough-guide-to-social-skills-for.html) on Hacker News that gives the barest minimum of a guide for social interaction. Unfortunately this isn't the high-quality advice you need to really handle social situations, though it will help with a few of the worst problems.
A few other rules that will help:
On the physical side:
This is a long list, and it isn't even close to complete.
I'm linking to http://lesswrong.com/lw/372/defecting_by_accident_a_flaw_common_to_analytical/ at the suggestion of David Gerard. It has a lot of deeper discussion into why this is worth knowing.