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Qiaochu_Yuan comments on Rationalist Lent - Less Wrong Discussion
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I have generally low energy throughout most days (last Friday morning was a welcome exception that I haven't figured out) and am trying to fix this. I've been told that cutting out processed / refined carbs is an intervention that has fixed this problem in some people. And a hypothesis affords testing. My current estimate of the probability that this intervention will fix the problem (subjectively; I may also try dual N-back testing to quantify the effect but am open to other suggestions) is maybe 40%.
N.B. for self-experimenters: bullet chess and three minute blitz chess are very, very useful for quick, fun cognitive testing once you're beyond ~1400 Elo and aren't improving rapidly. If you're attentive not only will you notice overall performance changes, you'll notice changes in various subskills, some of which I strongly suspect have transfer with rationality subskills. (Not enough time to justify that claim here.) Whenever I try a new drug or am just feeling different for some unknown reason I'll play at least five games of blitz to figure out more precisely what's different about my mind.
(N-back works too of course but is relatively aversive and doesn't factorize into subskills as introspectively-obviously as chess does. But that could very well be because I never got beyond 4-back whereas I've played a lot of chess.)
Do you crave salty food, or salt food more than most other people?
I don't know. How would I test that?
I guess it's simpler to get at what I'm getting at more directly: Look into iodine deficiency, and see if that could be a cause. -Especially- if you have strong negative reactions to high-carbohydrate foods, as reactive hypoglycemia is one of the less common symptoms. (It's one I get, actually, which is why I'm aware of it; white rice knocks me out of commission when I haven't been taking regular iodine supplements.)
I don't have strong negative reactions to high-carbohydrate foods (they sometimes make me tired). The symptoms of iodine deficiency seem pretty severe and inconsistent with my experience.