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Lumifer comments on Rational approach to finding life partners - Less Wrong Discussion

1 Post author: c_edwards 16 August 2015 05:07PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 10 September 2015 03:25:30PM *  1 point [-]

The same principle ("reject the middle, explicitly look at the tail of the distribution") as The Verjus Manifesto:

(talking about how to make good-for-you metaphorical vegetables palatable)

Vegetables can be cooked poorly. But they can also be roasted to perfection with a drizzle of olive oil and hint of sea salt.

This is certainly one approach to the preparation of otherwise unpalatable but virtuous fact-nutrition. However, here’s an alternative:

  • Take the same original plate of metaphorical vegetables
  • Chuck all the popular and/or fashionable ones away, like parsnips and kale.
  • Replace them with more bitter chard, brussels sprouts and celeriac, and other stuff that people chuck out of their vegetable boxes
  • Add some kohl-rabi and other weird rubbish. Sprinkle it with habanero peppers
  • Don’t roast it at all. Lightly dress it with unsweetened verjus and Fernet-Branca.

I think we can agree two things about this hypothetical vegetable offering:

  1. Almost nobody would look twice at it on a menu

  2. But of the half dozen people who did order it, you would want all of them to be your mates.

:-)