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-1 morganism 08 October 2016 08:36PM

2016 LessWrong Diaspora Survey Analysis: Part Three (Mental Health, Basilisk, Blogs and Media)

15 ingres 25 June 2016 03:40AM

2016 LessWrong Diaspora Survey Analysis

Overview


Mental Health

We decided to move the Mental Health section up closer in the survey this year so that the data could inform accessibility decisions.

LessWrong Mental Health As Compared To Base Rates In The General Population
Condition Base Rate LessWrong Rate LessWrong Self dx Rate Combined LW Rate Base/LW Rate Spread Relative Risk
Depression 17% 25.37% 27.04% 52.41% +8.37 1.492
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder 2.3% 2.7% 5.6% 8.3% +0.4 1.173
Autism Spectrum Disorder 1.47% 8.2% 12.9% 21.1% +6.73 5.578
Attention Deficit Disorder 5% 13.6% 10.4% 24% +8.6 2.719
Bipolar Disorder 3% 2.2% 2.8% 5% -0.8 0.733
Anxiety Disorder(s) 29% 13.7% 17.4% 31.1% -15.3 0.472
Borderline Personality Disorder 5.9% 0.6% 1.2% 1.8% -5.3 0.101
Schizophrenia 1.1% 0.8% 0.4% 1.2% -0.3 0.727
Substance Use Disorder 10.6% 1.3% 3.6% 4.9% -9.3 0.122

Base rates are taken from Wikipedia, US rates were favored over global rates where immediately available.

Accessibility Suggestions

So of the conditions we asked about, LessWrongers are at significant extra risk for three of them: Autism, ADHD, Depression.

LessWrong probably doesn't need to concern itself with being more accessible to those with autism as it likely already is. Depression is a complicated disorder with no clear interventions that can be easily implemented as site or community policy. It might be helpful to encourage looking more at positive trends in addition to negative ones, but the community already seems to do a fairly good job of this. (We could definitely use some more of it though.)

Attention Deficit Disorder - Public Service Announcement

That leaves ADHD, which we might be able to do something about, starting with this:

A lot of LessWrong stuff ends up falling into the same genre as productivity advice or 'self help'. If you have trouble with getting yourself to work, find yourself reading these things and completely unable to implement them, it's entirely possible that you have a mental health condition which impacts your executive function.

The best overview I've been able to find on ADD is this talk from Russell Barkely.

30 Essential Ideas For Parents

Ironically enough, this is a long talk, over four hours in total. Barkely is an entertaining speaker and the talk is absolutely fascinating. If you're even mildly interested in the subject I wholeheartedly recommend it. Many people who have ADHD just assume that they're lazy, or not trying hard enough, or just haven't found the 'magic bullet' yet. It never even occurs to them that they might have it because they assume that adult ADHD looks like childhood ADHD, or that ADHD is a thing that psychiatrists made up so they can give children powerful stimulants.

ADD is real, if you're in the demographic that takes this survey there's a decent enough chance you have it.

Attention Deficit Disorder - Accessibility

So with that in mind, is there anything else we can do?

Yes, write better.

Scott Alexander has written a blog post with writing advice for non-fiction, and the interesting thing about it is just how much of the advice is what I would tell you to do if your audience has ADD.

  • Reward the reader quickly and often. If your prose isn't rewarding to read it won't be read.

  • Make sure the overall article has good sectioning and indexing, people might be only looking for a particular thing and they won't want to wade through everything else to get it. Sectioning also gives the impression of progress and reduces eye strain.

  • Use good data visualization to compress information, take away mental effort where possible. Take for example the condition table above. It saves space and provides additional context. Instead of a long vertical wall of text with sections for each condition, it removes:

    • The extraneous information of how many people said they did not have a condition.

    • The space that would be used by creating a section for each condition. In fact the specific improvement of the table is that it takes extra advantage of space in the horizontal plane as well as the vertical plane.

    And instead of just presenting the raw data, it also adds:

    • The normal rate of incidence for each condition, so that the reader understands the extent to which rates are abnormal or unexpected.

    • Easy comparison between the clinically diagnosed, self diagnosed, and combined rates of the condition in the LW demographic. This preserves the value of the original raw data presentation while also easing the mental arithmetic of how many people claim to have a condition.

    • Percentage spread between the clinically diagnosed and the base rate, which saves the effort of figuring out the difference between the two values.

    • Relative risk between the clinically diagnosed and the base rate, which saves the effort of figuring out how much more or less likely a LessWronger is to have a given condition.

    Add all that together and you've created a compelling presentation that significantly improves on the 'naive' raw data presentation.

  • Use visuals in general, they help draw and maintain interest.

None of these are solely for the benefit of people with ADD. ADD is an exaggerated profile of normal human behavior. Following this kind of advice makes your article more accessible to everybody, which should be more than enough incentive if you intend to have an audience.1

Roko's Basilisk

This year we finally added a Basilisk question! In fact, it kind of turned into a whole Basilisk section. A fairly common question about this years survey is why the Basilisk section is so large. The basic reason is that asking only one or two questions about it would leave the results open to rampant speculation in one direction or another. By making the section comprehensive and covering every base, we've pretty much gotten about as complete of data as we'd want on the Basilisk phenomena.

Basilisk Knowledge
Do you know what Roko's Basilisk thought experiment is?

Yes: 1521 73.2%
No but I've heard of it: 158 7.6%
No: 398 19.2%

Basilisk Etiology
Where did you read Roko's argument for the Basilisk?

Roko's post on LessWrong: 323 20.2%
Reddit: 171 10.7%
XKCD: 61 3.8%
LessWrong Wiki: 234 14.6%
A news article: 71 4.4%
Word of mouth: 222 13.9%
RationalWiki: 314 19.6%
Other: 194 12.1%

Basilisk Correctness
Do you think Roko's argument for the Basilisk is correct?

Yes: 75 5.1%
Yes but I don't think it's logical conclusions apply for other reasons: 339 23.1%
No: 1055 71.8%

Basilisks And Lizardmen

One of the biggest mistakes I made with this years survey was not including "Do you believe Barack Obama is a hippopotamus?" as a control question in this section.2 Five percent is just outside of the infamous lizardman constant. This was the biggest survey surprise for me. I thought there was no way that 'yes' could go above a couple of percentage points. As far as I can tell this result is not caused by brigading but I've by no means investigated the matter so thoroughly that I would rule it out.

Higher?

Of course, we also shouldn't forget to investigate the hypothesis that the number might be higher than 5%. After all, somebody who thinks the Basilisk is correct could skip the questions entirely so they don't face potential stigma. So how many people skipped the questions but filled out the rest of the survey?

Eight people refused to answer whether they'd heard of Roko's Basilisk but went on to answer the depression question immediately after the Basilisk section. This gives us a decent proxy for how many people skipped the section and took the rest of the survey. So if we're pessimistic the number is a little higher, but it pays to keep in mind that there are other reasons to want to skip this section. (It is also possible that people took the survey up until they got to the Basilisk section and then quit so they didn't have to answer it, but this seems unlikely.)

Of course this assumes people are being strictly truthful with their survey answers. It's also plausible that people who think the Basilisk is correct said they'd never heard of it and then went on with the rest of the survey. So the number could in theory be quite large. My hunch is that it's not. I personally know quite a few LessWrongers and I'm fairly sure none of them would tell me that the Basilisk is 'correct'. (In fact I'm fairly sure they'd all be offended at me even asking the question.) Since 5% is one in twenty I'd think I'd know at least one or two people who thought the Basilisk was correct by now.

Lower?

One partial explanation for the surprisingly high rate here is that ten percent of the people who said yes by their own admission didn't know what they were saying yes to. Eight people said they've heard of the Basilisk but don't know what it is, and that it's correct. The lizardman constant also plausibly explains a significant portion of the yes responses, but that explanation relies on you already having a prior belief that the rate should be low.


Basilisk-Like Danger
Do you think Basilisk-like thought experiments are dangerous?

Yes, I think they're dangerous for decision theory reasons: 63 4.2%
Yes I think they're dangerous for social reasons (eg. A cult might use them): 194 12.8%
Yes I think they're dangerous for decision theory and social reasons: 136 9%
Yes I think they're socially dangerous because they make everybody involved look foolish: 253 16.7%
Yes I think they're dangerous for other reasons: 54 3.6%
No: 809 53.4%

Most people don't think Basilisk-Like thought experiments are dangerous at all. Of those that think they are, most of them think they're socially dangerous as opposed to a raw decision theory threat. The 4.2% number for pure decision theory threat is interesting because it lines up with the 5% number in the previous question for Basilisk Correctness.

P(Decision Theory Danger | Basilisk Belief) = 26.6%
P(Decision Theory And Social Danger | Basilisk Belief) = 21.3%

So of the people who say the Basilisk is correct, only half of them believe it is a decision theory based danger at all. (In theory this could be because they believe the Basilisk is a good thing and therefore not dangerous, but I refuse to lose that much faith in humanity.3)

Basilisk Anxiety
Have you ever felt any sort of anxiety about the Basilisk?

Yes: 142 8.8%
Yes but only because I worry about everything: 189 11.8%
No: 1275 79.4%

20.6% of respondents have felt some kind of Basilisk Anxiety. It should be noted that the exact wording of the question permits any anxiety, even for a second. And as we'll see in the next question that nuance is very important.

Degree Of Basilisk Worry
What is the longest span of time you've spent worrying about the Basilisk?

I haven't: 714 47%
A few seconds: 237 15.6%
A minute: 298 19.6%
An hour: 176 11.6%
A day: 40 2.6%
Two days: 16 1.05%
Three days: 12 0.79%
A week: 12 0.79%
A month: 5 0.32%
One to three months: 2 0.13%
Three to six months: 0 0.0%
Six to nine months: 0 0.0%
Nine months to a year: 1 0.06%
Over a year: 1 0.06%
Years: 4 0.26%

These numbers provide some pretty sobering context for the previous ones. Of all the people who worried about the Basilisk, 93.8% didn't worry about it for more than an hour. The next 3.65% didn't worry about it for more than a day or two. The next 1.9% didn't worry about it for more than a month and the last .7% or so have worried about it for longer.

Current Basilisk Worry
Are you currently worrying about the Basilisk?

Yes: 29 1.8%
Yes but only because I worry about everything: 60 3.7%
No: 1522 94.5%

Also encouraging. We should expect a small number of people to be worried at this question just because the section is basically the word "Basilisk" and "worry" repeated over and over so it's probably a bit scary to some people. But these numbers are much lower than the "Have you ever worried" ones and back up the previous inference that Basilisk anxiety is mostly a transitory phenomena.

One article on the Basilisk asked the question of whether or not it was just a "referendum on autism". It's a good question and now I have an answer for you, as per the table below:

Mental Health Conditions Versus Basilisk Worry
Condition Worried Worried But They Worry About Everything Combined Worry
Baseline (in the respondent population) 8.8% 11.8% 20.6%
ASD 7.3% 17.3% 24.7%
OCD 10.0% 32.5% 42.5%
AnxietyDisorder 6.9% 20.3% 27.3%
Schizophrenia 0.0% 16.7% 16.7%

 

The short answer: Autism raises your chances of Basilisk anxiety, but anxiety disorders and OCD especially raise them much more. Interestingly enough, schizophrenia seems to bring the chances down. This might just be an effect of small sample size, but my expectation was the opposite. (People who are really obsessed with Roko's Basilisk seem to present with schizophrenic symptoms at any rate.)

Before we move on, there's one last elephant in the room to contend with. The philosophical theory underlying the Basilisk is the CEV conception of friendly AI primarily espoused by Eliezer Yudkowsky. Which has led many critics to speculate on all kinds of relationships between Eliezer Yudkowsky and the Basilisk. Which of course obviously would extend to Eliezer Yudkowsky's Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a project to develop 'Friendly Artificial Intelligence' which does not implement a naive goal function that eats everything else humans actually care about once it's given sufficient optimization power.

The general thrust of these accusations is that MIRI, intentionally or not, profits from belief in the Basilisk. I think MIRI gets picked on enough, so I'm not thrilled about adding another log to the hefty pile of criticism they deal with. However this is a serious accusation which is plausible enough to be in the public interest for me to look at.

 

Percentage Of People Who Donate To MIRI Versus Basilisk Belief
Belief Percentage
Believe It's Incorrect 5.2%
Believe It's Structurally Correct 5.6%
Believe It's Correct 12.0%

Basilisk belief does appear to make you twice as likely to donate to MIRI. It's important to note from the perspective of earlier investigation that thinking it is "structurally correct" appears to make you about as likely as if you don't think it's correct, implying that both of these options mean about the same thing.

 

Sum Money Donated To MIRI Versus Basilisk Belief
Belief Mean Median Mode Stdev Total Donated
Believe It's Incorrect 1365.590 100.0 100.0 4825.293 75107.5
Believe It's Structurally Correct 2644.736 110.0 20.0 9147.299 50250.0
Believe It's Correct 740.555 300.0 300.0 1152.541 6665.0

Take these numbers with a grain of salt, it only takes one troll to plausibly lie about their income to ruin it for everybody else.

Interestingly enough, if you sum all three total donated counts and divide by a hundred, you find that five percent of the sum is about what was donated by the Basilisk group. ($6601 to be exact) So even though the modal and median donations of Basilisk believers are higher, they donate about as much as would be naively expected by assuming donations among groups are equal.4

 

Percentage Of People Who Donate To MIRI Versus Basilisk Worry
Anxiety Percentage
Never Worried 4.3%
Worried But They Worry About Everything 11.1%
Worried 11.3%

In contrast to the correctness question, merely having worried about the Basilisk at any point in time doubles your chances of donating to MIRI. My suspicion is that these people are not, as a general rule, donating because of the Basilisk per se. If you're the sort of person who is even capable of worrying about the Basilisk in principle, you're probably the kind of person who is likely to worry about AI risk in general and donate to MIRI on that basis. This hypothesis is probably unfalsifiable with the survey information I have, because Basilisk-risk is a subset of AI risk. This means that anytime somebody indicates on the survey that they're worried about AI risk this could be because they're worried about the Basilisk or because they're worried about more general AI risk.

 

Sum Money Donated To MIRI Versus Basilisk Worry
Anxiety Mean Median Mode Stdev Total Donated
Never Worried 1033.936 100.0 100.0 3493.373 56866.5
Worried But They Worry About Everything 227.047 75.0 300.0 438.861 4768.0
Worried 4539.25 90.0 10.0 11442.675 72628.0
Combined Worry         77396.0

Take these numbers with a grain of salt, it only takes one troll to plausibly lie about their income to ruin it for everybody else.

This particular analysis is probably the strongest evidence in the set for the hypothesis that MIRI profits (though not necessarily through any involvement on their part) from the Basilisk. People who worried from an unendorsed perspective donate less on average than everybody else. The modal donation among people who've worried about the Basilisk is ten dollars, which seems like a surefire way to torture if we're going with the hypothesis that these are people who believe the Basilisk is a real thing and they're concerned about it. So this implies that they don't, which supports my earlier hypothesis that people who are capable of feeling anxiety about the Basilisk are the core demographic to donate to MIRI anyway.

Of course, donors don't need to believe in the Basilisk for MIRI to profit from it. If exposing people to the concept of the Basilisk makes them twice as likely to donate but they don't end up actually believing the argument that would arguably be the ideal outcome for MIRI from an Evil Plot perspective. (Since after all, pursuing a strategy which involves Basilisk belief would actually incentivize torture from the perspective of the acausal game theories MIRI bases its FAI on, which would be bad.)

But frankly this is veering into very speculative territory. I don't think there's an evil plot, nor am I convinced that MIRI is profiting from Basilisk belief in a way that outweighs the resulting lost donations and damage to their cause.5 If anybody would like to assert otherwise I invite them to 'put up or shut up' with hard evidence. The world has enough criticism based on idle speculation and you're peeing in the pool.

Blogs and Media

Since this was the LessWrong diaspora survey, I felt it would be in order to reach out a bit to ask not just where the community is at but what it's reading. I went around to various people I knew and asked them about blogs for this section. However the picks were largely based on my mental 'map' of the blogs that are commonly read/linked in the community with a handful of suggestions thrown in. The same method was used for stories.

Blogs Read

LessWrong
Regular Reader: 239 13.4%
Sometimes: 642 36.1%
Rarely: 537 30.2%
Almost Never: 272 15.3%
Never: 70 3.9%
Never Heard Of It: 14 0.7%

SlateStarCodex (Scott Alexander)
Regular Reader: 1137 63.7%
Sometimes: 264 14.7%
Rarely: 90 5%
Almost Never: 61 3.4%
Never: 51 2.8%
Never Heard Of It: 181 10.1%

[These two results together pretty much confirm the results I talked about in part two of the survey analysis. A supermajority of respondents are 'regular readers' of SlateStarCodex. By contrast LessWrong itself doesn't even have a quarter of SlateStarCodexes readership.]

Overcoming Bias (Robin Hanson)
Regular Reader: 206 11.751%
Sometimes: 365 20.821%
Rarely: 391 22.305%
Almost Never: 385 21.962%
Never: 239 13.634%
Never Heard Of It: 167 9.527%

Minding Our Way (Nate Soares)
Regular Reader: 151 8.718%
Sometimes: 134 7.737%
Rarely: 139 8.025%
Almost Never: 175 10.104%
Never: 214 12.356%
Never Heard Of It: 919 53.06%

Agenty Duck (Brienne Yudkowsky)
Regular Reader: 55 3.181%
Sometimes: 132 7.634%
Rarely: 144 8.329%
Almost Never: 213 12.319%
Never: 254 14.691%
Never Heard Of It: 931 53.846%

Eliezer Yudkowsky's Facebook Page
Regular Reader: 325 18.561%
Sometimes: 316 18.047%
Rarely: 231 13.192%
Almost Never: 267 15.248%
Never: 361 20.617%
Never Heard Of It: 251 14.335%

Luke Muehlhauser (Eponymous)
Regular Reader: 59 3.426%
Sometimes: 106 6.156%
Rarely: 179 10.395%
Almost Never: 231 13.415%
Never: 312 18.118%
Never Heard Of It: 835 48.49%

Gwern.net (Gwern Branwen)
Regular Reader: 118 6.782%
Sometimes: 281 16.149%
Rarely: 292 16.782%
Almost Never: 224 12.874%
Never: 230 13.218%
Never Heard Of It: 595 34.195%

Siderea (Sibylla Bostoniensis)
Regular Reader: 29 1.682%
Sometimes: 49 2.842%
Rarely: 59 3.422%
Almost Never: 104 6.032%
Never: 183 10.615%
Never Heard Of It: 1300 75.406%

Ribbon Farm (Venkatesh Rao)
Regular Reader: 64 3.734%
Sometimes: 123 7.176%
Rarely: 111 6.476%
Almost Never: 150 8.751%
Never: 150 8.751%
Never Heard Of It: 1116 65.111%

Bayesed And Confused (Michael Rupert)
Regular Reader: 2 0.117%
Sometimes: 10 0.587%
Rarely: 24 1.408%
Almost Never: 68 3.988%
Never: 167 9.795%
Never Heard Of It: 1434 84.106%

[This was the 'troll' answer to catch out people who claim to read everything.]

The Unit Of Caring (Anonymous)
Regular Reader: 281 16.452%
Sometimes: 132 7.728%
Rarely: 126 7.377%
Almost Never: 178 10.422%
Never: 216 12.646%
Never Heard Of It: 775 45.375%

GiveWell Blog (Multiple Authors)
Regular Reader: 75 4.438%
Sometimes: 197 11.657%
Rarely: 243 14.379%
Almost Never: 280 16.568%
Never: 412 24.379%
Never Heard Of It: 482 28.521%

Thing Of Things (Ozy Frantz)
Regular Reader: 363 21.166%
Sometimes: 201 11.72%
Rarely: 143 8.338%
Almost Never: 171 9.971%
Never: 176 10.262%
Never Heard Of It: 661 38.542%

The Last Psychiatrist (Anonymous)
Regular Reader: 103 6.023%
Sometimes: 94 5.497%
Rarely: 164 9.591%
Almost Never: 221 12.924%
Never: 302 17.661%
Never Heard Of It: 826 48.304%

Hotel Concierge (Anonymous)
Regular Reader: 29 1.711%
Sometimes: 35 2.065%
Rarely: 49 2.891%
Almost Never: 88 5.192%
Never: 179 10.56%
Never Heard Of It: 1315 77.581%

The View From Hell (Sister Y)
Regular Reader: 34 1.998%
Sometimes: 39 2.291%
Rarely: 75 4.407%
Almost Never: 137 8.049%
Never: 250 14.689%
Never Heard Of It: 1167 68.566%

Xenosystems (Nick Land)
Regular Reader: 51 3.012%
Sometimes: 32 1.89%
Rarely: 64 3.78%
Almost Never: 175 10.337%
Never: 364 21.5%
Never Heard Of It: 1007 59.48%

I tried my best to have representation from multiple sections of the diaspora, if you look at the different blogs you can probably guess which blogs represent which section.

Stories Read

Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality (Eliezer Yudkowsky)
Whole Thing: 1103 61.931%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 145 8.141%
Partially And Abandoned: 231 12.97%
Never: 221 12.409%
Never Heard Of It: 81 4.548%

Significant Digits (Alexander D)
Whole Thing: 123 7.114%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 105 6.073%
Partially And Abandoned: 91 5.263%
Never: 333 19.26%
Never Heard Of It: 1077 62.29%

Three Worlds Collide (Eliezer Yudkowsky)
Whole Thing: 889 51.239%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 35 2.017%
Partially And Abandoned: 36 2.075%
Never: 286 16.484%
Never Heard Of It: 489 28.184%

The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (Nick Bostrom)
Whole Thing: 728 41.935%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 31 1.786%
Partially And Abandoned: 15 0.864%
Never: 205 11.809%
Never Heard Of It: 757 43.606%

The World of Null-A (A. E. van Vogt)
Whole Thing: 92 5.34%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 18 1.045%
Partially And Abandoned: 25 1.451%
Never: 429 24.898%
Never Heard Of It: 1159 67.266%

[Wow, I never would have expected this many people to have read this. I mostly included it on a lark because of its historical significance.]

Synthesis (Sharon Mitchell)
Whole Thing: 6 0.353%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 2 0.118%
Partially And Abandoned: 8 0.47%
Never: 217 12.75%
Never Heard Of It: 1469 86.31%

[This was the 'troll' option to catch people who just say they've read everything.]

Worm (Wildbow)
Whole Thing: 501 28.843%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 168 9.672%
Partially And Abandoned: 184 10.593%
Never: 430 24.755%
Never Heard Of It: 454 26.137%

Pact (Wildbow)
Whole Thing: 138 7.991%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 59 3.416%
Partially And Abandoned: 148 8.57%
Never: 501 29.01%
Never Heard Of It: 881 51.013%

Twig (Wildbow)
Whole Thing: 55 3.192%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 132 7.661%
Partially And Abandoned: 65 3.772%
Never: 560 32.501%
Never Heard Of It: 911 52.873%

Ra (Sam Hughes)
Whole Thing: 269 15.558%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 80 4.627%
Partially And Abandoned: 95 5.495%
Never: 314 18.161%
Never Heard Of It: 971 56.16%

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Optimal (Iceman)
Whole Thing: 424 24.495%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 16 0.924%
Partially And Abandoned: 65 3.755%
Never: 559 32.293%
Never Heard Of It: 667 38.533%

Friendship Is Optimal: Caelum Est Conterrens (Chatoyance)
Whole Thing: 217 12.705%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 16 0.937%
Partially And Abandoned: 24 1.405%
Never: 411 24.063%
Never Heard Of It: 1040 60.89%

Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
Whole Thing: 1177 67.219%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 22 1.256%
Partially And Abandoned: 43 2.456%
Never: 395 22.559%
Never Heard Of It: 114 6.511%

[This is the most read story according to survey respondents, beating HPMOR by 5%.]

The Diamond Age (Neal Stephenson)
Whole Thing: 440 25.346%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 37 2.131%
Partially And Abandoned: 55 3.168%
Never: 577 33.237%
Never Heard Of It: 627 36.118%

Consider Phlebas (Iain Banks)
Whole Thing: 302 17.507%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 52 3.014%
Partially And Abandoned: 47 2.725%
Never: 439 25.449%
Never Heard Of It: 885 51.304%

The Metamorphosis Of Prime Intellect (Roger Williams)
Whole Thing: 226 13.232%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 10 0.585%
Partially And Abandoned: 24 1.405%
Never: 322 18.852%
Never Heard Of It: 1126 65.925%

Accelerando (Charles Stross)
Whole Thing: 293 17.045%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 46 2.676%
Partially And Abandoned: 66 3.839%
Never: 425 24.724%
Never Heard Of It: 889 51.716%

A Fire Upon The Deep (Vernor Vinge)
Whole Thing: 343 19.769%
Partially And Intend To Finish: 31 1.787%
Partially And Abandoned: 41 2.363%
Never: 508 29.28%
Never Heard Of It: 812 46.801%

I also did a k-means cluster analysis of the data to try and determine demographics and the ultimate conclusion I drew from it is that I need to do more analysis. Which I would do, except that the initial analysis was a whole bunch of work and jumping further down the rabbit hole in the hopes I reach an oasis probably isn't in the best interests of myself or my readers.

Footnotes


  1. This is a general trend I notice with accessibility. Not always, but very often measures taken to help a specific group end up having positive effects for others as well. Many of the accessibility suggestions of the W3C are things you wish every website did.

  2. I hadn't read this particular SSC post at the time I compiled the survey, but I was already familiar with the concept of a lizardman constant and should have accounted for it.

  3. I've been informed by a member of the freenode #lesswrong IRC channel that this is in fact Roko's opinion, because you can 'timelessly trade with the future superintelligence for rewards, not just punishment' according to a conversation they had with him last summer. Remember kids: Don't do drugs, including Max Tegmark.

  4. You might think that this conflicts with the hypothesis that the true rate of Basilisk belief is lower than 5%. It does a bit, but you also need to remember that these people are in the LessWrong demographic, which means regardless of what the Basilisk belief question means we should naively expect them to donate five percent of the MIRI donation pot.

  5. That is to say, it does seem plausible that MIRI 'profits' from Basilisk belief based on this data, but I'm fairly sure any profit is outweighed by the significant opportunity cost associated with it. I should also take this moment to remind the reader that the original Basilisk argument was supposed to prove that CEV is a flawed concept from the perspective of not having deleterious outcomes for people, so MIRI using it as a way to justify donating to them would be weird.

Anxiety and Rationality

32 helldalgo 19 January 2016 06:30PM

Recently, someone on the Facebook page asked if anyone had used rationality to target anxieties.  I have, so I thought I’d share my LessWrong-inspired strategies.  This is my first post, so feedback and formatting help are welcome.  

First things first: the techniques developed by this community are not a panacea for mental illness.  They are way more effective than chance and other tactics at reducing normal bias, and I think many mental illnesses are simply cognitive biases that are extreme enough to get noticed.  In other words, getting a probability question about cancer systematically wrong does not disrupt my life enough to make the error obvious.  When I believe (irrationally) that I will get fired because I asked for help at work, my life is disrupted.  I become non-functional, and the error is clear.

Second: the best way to attack anxiety is to do the things that make your anxieties go away.  That might seem too obvious to state, but I’ve definitely been caught in an “analysis loop,” where I stay up all night reading self-help guides only to find myself non-functional in the morning because I didn’t sleep.  If you find that attacking an anxiety with Bayesian updating is like chopping down the Washington monument with a spoon, but getting a full night’s sleep makes the monument disappear completely, consider the sleep.  Likewise for techniques that have little to no scientific evidence, but are a good placebo.  A placebo effect is still an effect.

Finally, like all advice, this comes with Implicit Step Zero:  “Have enough executive function to give this a try.”  If you find yourself in an analysis loop, you may not yet have enough executive function to try any of the advice you read.  The advice for functioning better is not always identical to the advice for functioning at all.  If there’s interest in an “improving your executive function” post, I’ll write one eventually.  It will be late, because my executive function is not impeccable.

Simple updating is my personal favorite for attacking specific anxieties.  A general sense of impending doom is a very tricky target and does not respond well to reality.  If you can narrow it down to a particular belief, however, you can amass evidence against it. 

Returning to my example about work: I alieved that I would get fired if I asked for help or missed a day due to illness.  The distinction between believe and alieve is an incredibly useful tool that I immediately integrated when I heard of it.  Learning to make beliefs pay rent is much easier than making harmful aliefs go away.  The tactics are similar: do experiments, make predictions, throw evidence at the situation until you get closer to reality.  Update accordingly.  

The first thing I do is identify the situation and why it’s dysfunctional.  The alief that I’ll get fired for asking for help is not actually articulated when it manifests as an anxiety.  Ask me in the middle of a panic attack, and I still won’t articulate that I am afraid of getting fired.  So I take the anxiety all the way through to its implication.  The algorithm is something like this:

  1.       Notice sense of doom
  2.       Notice my avoidance behaviors (not opening my email, walking away from my desk)
  3.       Ask “What am I afraid of?”
  4.       Answer (it's probably silly)
  5.       Ask “What do I think will happen?”
  6.       Make a prediction about what will happen (usually the prediction is implausible, which is why we want it to go away in the first place)

In the “asking for help” scenario, the answer to “what do I think will happen” is implausible.  It’s extremely unlikely that I’ll get fired for it!  This helps take the gravitas out of the anxiety, but it does not make it go away.*  After (6), it’s usually easy to do an experiment.  If I ask my coworkers for help, will I get fired?  The only way to know is to try. 

…That’s actually not true, of course.  A sense of my environment, my coworkers, and my general competence at work should be enough.  But if it was, we wouldn’t be here, would we?

So I perform the experiment.  And I wait.  When I receive a reply of any sort, even if it’s negative, I make a tick mark on a sheet of paper.  I label it “didn’t get fired.”  Because again, even if it’s negative, I didn’t get fired. 

This takes a lot of tick marks.  Cutting down the Washington monument with a spoon, remember?

The tick marks don’t have to be physical.  I prefer it, because it makes the “updating” process visual.  I’ve tried making a mental note and it’s not nearly as effective.  Play around with it, though.  If you’re anything like me, you have a lot of anxieties to experiment with. 

Usually, the anxiety starts to dissipate after obtaining several tick marks.  Ideally, one iteration of experiments should solve the problem.  But we aren’t ideal; we’re mentally ill.  Depending on the severity of the anxiety, you may need someone to remind you that doom will not occur.  I occasionally panic when I have to return to work after taking a sick day.  I ask my husband to remind me that I won’t get fired.  I ask him to remind me that he’ll still love me if I do get fired.  If this sounds childish, it’s because it is.  Again: we’re mentally ill.  Even if you aren’t, however, assigning value judgements to essentially harmless coping mechanisms does not make sense.  Childish-but-helpful is much better than mature-and-harmful, if you have to choose.

I still have tiny ugh fields around my anxiety triggers.  They don’t really go away.  It’s more like learning not to hit someone you’re angry at.  You notice the impulse, accept it, and move on.  Hopefully, your harmful alief starves to death.

If you perform your experiment and doom does occur, it might not be you.  If you can’t ask your boss for help, it might be your boss.  If you disagree with your spouse and they scream at you for an hour, it might be your spouse.  This isn’t an excuse to blame your problems on the world, but abusive situations can be sneaky.  Ask some trusted friends for a sanity check, if you’re performing experiments and getting doom as a result.  This is designed for situations where your alief is obviously silly.  Where you know it’s silly, and need to throw evidence at your brain to internalize it.  It’s fine to be afraid of genuinely scary things; if you really are in an abusive work environment, maybe you shouldn’t ask for help (and start looking for another job instead). 

 

 

*using this technique for several months occasionally stops the anxiety immediately after step 6.  

Gamified psychiatry

-1 Clarity 12 January 2016 12:16AM

I have been thinking about the gamification of psychiatry and the rise of mental health apps as a means to motivate behaviours that improve mental health and flourishing. I put together some indications and left a diagram here for my good friends Anne Osognosia and Alex Ithemyia who want to upgrade elements of their mental health based on my personal experience rather than population-based evidence.

Initially I wanted to create a skill tree of sorts and may return to it if some people with app-building experience and an interest in this raise their hands. That would be for evidence-based skills rather than this proof of concept.

GiveDirectly, SCI and health outcomes

-5 Clarity 20 September 2015 09:15AM

**What GiveDirectly says:**


>This study documented large, positive, and sustainable impacts across a wide range of outcomes including assets, earnings, food security, **    mental health**, and domestic violence. It found no evidence of impacts on alcohol or tobacco use, crime, or inflation. It also examined a number of design questions such as how to size transfers and whether to give them to men or women.

Source: [GiveDirectly](https://www.givedirectly.org/research-at-give-directly.html)

**What the evidence says:**

*GiveDirectly*


>Overall, GiveDirectly increased households’ assets, consumption, and food security. The program also improved psychological well-being, especially among households with female recipients and households that received the large transfer. GiveDirectly had no impact on health or education measures.


>Psychological impacts: GiveDirectly households reported a 0.2 standard deviation increase (0.35 sd for large transfer recipients) on an index measuring psychological well-being. This improvement was largely driven by increases in happiness and life satisfaction, and reductions in stress and depression. There were no differences in self-reported measures between monthly-transfer and lump-sum recipients, but cortisol levels were significantly higher for monthly-transfer recipients. A potential explanation being that the monthly-transfer recipients seemed to have difficulty saving or investing the transfer, which may have led to increased stress.


Source: [Innovations for Poverty Action](http://www.poverty-action.org/project/0522)

*SCI*



>There is a very strong case that mass deworming is effective in reducing infections. The evidence on the connection to positive quality-of-life impacts is less clear, but there is a fairly strong possibility that deworming is highly beneficial.


>There is strong evidence that administration of the drugs reduces worm loads, but weaker evidence on the causal relationship between reducing worm loads and improved life outcomes.


>Evidence for the impact of deworming on short-term general health is thin, especially for soil-transmitted helminth (STH)-only deworming. Most of the potential effects are relatively small, the evidence is mixed, and different approaches have varied effects. We would guess that deworming populations with schistosomiasis and STH (combination deworming) does have some small impacts on general health, but do not believe it has a large impact on health in most cases. We are uncertain that STH-only deworming affects general health.



>In our view, the most compelling case for deworming as a cost-effective intervention comes not from its subtle impacts on general health (which appear relatively minor and uncertain) nor from its potential reduction in severe symptoms of disease effects (which we believe to be rare), but from the possibility that deworming children has a subtle, lasting impact on their development, and thus on their ability to be productive and successful throughout life.



>Community deworming before a child’s first birthday brings about a 0.2-standard-deviation improvement in performance on Raven’s Matrices, a decade after the intervention. Estimated effects on vocabulary measures are similar in magnitude, but not always as significant; effects on memory are not statistically distinguishable from zero. A summary measure, the first principal component of all six cognitive measurements, also shows a roughly 0.2-standard-deviation effect. These effects are equivalent to between 0.5 and 0.8 additional grades in school … The effect of community deworming spillovers on height, height-for-age, and stunting all appear statistically


Source: [GiveWell](http://www.givewell.org/international/top-charities/schistosomiasis-control-initiative).



GiveWell goes on to argue that this leads to improvements in income. In turn, I would expect that this leads to increases in income, assets and consumption with consequences similar to direct cash transfers as in the case of GiveDirectly.

Whole genome sequencing vs SNP genotyping

5 harcisis 11 June 2015 10:09PM

Hi, I was considering possibility of undergoing some kind of genetic testing for a while now. But I hesitated because I have a quite limited financial resources available right now. Eventually I've figured that in the future I'd do it anyway, so why don't just do it right away. Especially taking into account that knowing some data available via such tests in an earlier stage of life and acting on it could be quite beneficial in a long run. 

So after that realization I've thought about going with 23andme and performing SNP genotyping. But in the process of browsing related information I've encountered article about rapid decreasing in price for Whole genome sequencing. After that I've found this listing: https://www.scienceexchange.com/services/whole-genome-seq?page=2 and the lowest price tag there is $795 (but it's not clear whether that particular option is applicable to human genomes).

And as a result the whole WGS thing seems quite appealing, but I have some concerns here. I still have quite limited finance and WGS seems to have at least 10x prize in relation to SNP. And the other concern is data applicability (more on this one further).

Information about what and how you can do with WGS data is somewhat scarce on the Internet. So I have some questions here:

  • What can I actually do with data from WGS?

I know that for SNP tests there are tools like Promethease (http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease) that allow you to analyze your data. But I was not able to find anything about tools for analyzing your WGS data.

So are there any good tools available for you to analyze your WGS data? And: Is it computationally feasible to get results in an adequate time, using a general pc for this purposes?

  • Do you know any end-customer oriented company that provides WGS for a good price?

And finally with all above said: should I go for whole genome sequencing/SNP/or my whole line of reasoning is invalid and I should wait for now and get WGS in a few years for a smaller price?

(My main concern here is positive influence on health in a long run.)

Thanks.

I'd like advice from LW regarding migraines

10 Algon 11 April 2015 05:52PM

So, I read a post a little while ago saying that asking the community for advice on personal problems was okay, and no one seemed to disagree strongly with this. Therefore, I'll just ask for some advice, and hope that I'm not accidentally going past some line. If I do, I apologise

 I have had migraines for quite a while now. They started when I was a child, but were infrequent in those days. They got progressively worse as time went on, and things started to get quite bad when I was about 12. A few years down the line, I would have headaches for months at a time, with migraines popping up for a few days a month. It got worse from there. Now, I have had migraine-like symptoms for 10 months now. I say migraine-like because part of the definition of a migraine is that it lasts from about 3 hours to a few days. According to a neurologist I recently went to, I have transformative migraines, or wording similar to that. So I have all the symptoms of migraines, except they last for inordinate amounts of time. I've had an MRI, and it showed nothing wrong with my brain. According to the World Health Organisation, this is more disabling than blindness, and as bad as acute psychosis: http://www.migrainetrust.org/chronic-migraine You can see why its rather important to me that I get rid of/deal with this.

Now, I've tried quite a lot of things over the years, especially in the last two or so. NSAIDs do very little, and thing like migraleve (paracetamol with codeine) are a little better. Sumatriptan provides some relief, but it doesn't get rid of the migraine. At best it will knock me down to a weak migraine. I've tried taking propanalol (160mg) for half a year, and it does little to help. I was prescribd Amitiptyline (10mg) a week ago, but it hasn't had much effect. I was told to increase by 10mg it every two weeks until I hit 30mg. I've also tried cutting things out like chocolates, and dairy for a month. It didn't have any effect. I also don't have any caffeine. So this eliminates some common causes of migraines. My migraines sometimes respond to heat/cold applied to my head, but this is only some of the time, due to my migraines shifting in nature. Further, it only takes the edge of them. I've also tried taking magnesium supplements, but they had a negative effect on me i.e. strange dreams and insomnia. That just made my problems worse. Also, I've ruled out medication overuse.

 So, does anyone have any recommendations? There should be a few people who have had experience with this level of migraines, and I expect they might be able to provide some advice. I'm not too optimistic, but I really need something that works.

Immortality: A Practical Guide

34 G0W51 26 January 2015 04:17PM

Immortality: A Practical Guide

Introduction

This article is about how to increase one’s own chances of living forever or, failing that, living for a long time. To be clear, this guide defines death as the long-term loss of one’s consciousness and defines immortality as never-ending life. For those who would like less lengthy information on decreasing one’s risk of death, I recommend reading the sections “Can we become immortal,” “Should we try to become immortal,” and “Cryonics,” in this guide, along with the article Lifestyle Interventions to Increase Longevity.

This article does not discuss how to treat specific disease you may have. It is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians. You should consult a physician with respect to any symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention.

When reading about the effect sizes in scientific studies, keep in mind that many scientific studies report false-positives and are biased,101 though I have tried to minimize this by maximizing the quality of the studies used. Meta-analyses and scientific reviews seem to typically be of higher quality than other study types, but are still subject to biases.114

Corrections, criticisms, and suggestions for new topics are greatly appreciated. I’ve tried to write this article tersely, so feedback on doing so would be especially appreciated. Apologies if the article’s font type, size and color isn’t standard on Less Wrong; I made it in google docs without being aware of Less Wrong’s standard and it would take too much work changing the style of the entire article.

 

Contents

  1. Can we become immortal?

  2. Should we try to become immortal?

  3. Relative importance of the different topics

  4. Food

    1. What to eat and drink

    2. When to eat and drink

    3. How much to eat

    4. How much to drink

  5. Exercise

  6. Carcinogens

    1. Chemicals

    2. Infections

    3. Radiation

  7. Emotions and feelings

    1. Positive emotions and feelings

    2. Psychological distress

    3. Stress

    4. Anger and hostility

  8. Social and personality factors

    1. Social status

    2. Giving to others

    3. Social relationships

    4. Conscientiousness

  9. Infectious diseases

    1. Dental health

  10. Sleep

  11. Drugs

  12. Blood donation

  13. Sitting

  14. Sleep apnea

  15. Snoring

  16. Exams

  17. Genomics

  18. Aging

  19. External causes of death

    1. Transport accidents

    2. Assault

    3. Intentional self harm

    4. Poisoning

    5. Accidental drowning

    6. Inanimate mechanical forces

    7. Falls

    8. Smoke, fire, and heat

    9. Other accidental threats to breathing

    10. Electric current

    11. Forces of nature

  20. Medical care

  21. Cryonics

  22. Money

  23. Future advancements

  24. References

 

Can we become immortal?

In order to potentially live forever, one never needs to make it impossible to die; one instead just needs to have one’s life expectancy increase faster than time passes, a concept known as the longevity escape velocity.61 For example, if one had a 10% chance of dying in their first century of life, but their chance of death decreased by 90% at the end of each century, then one’s chance of ever dying would be be 0.1 + 0.12 + 0.13… = 0.11… = 11.11...%. When applied to risk of death from aging, this akin to one’s remaining life expectancy after jumping off a cliff while being affected by gravity and jet propulsion, with gravity being akin to aging and jet propulsion being akin to anti-aging (rejuvenation) therapies, as shown below.

The numbers in the above figure denote plausible ages of individuals when the first rejuvenation therapies arrive. A 30% increase in healthy lifespan would give the users of first-generation rejuvenation therapies 20 years to benefit from second-generation rejuvenation therapies, which could give an additional 30% increase if life span, ad infinitum.61

As for causes of death, many deaths are strongly age-related. The proportion of deaths that are caused by aging in the industrial world approaches 90%.53 Thus, I suppose postponing aging would drastically increase life expectancy.

As for efforts against aging, the SENS Research foundation and Science for Life Extension are charitable foundations for trying to cure aging.54, 55 Additionally, Calico, a Google-backed company, and AbbVie, a large pharmaceutical company, have each committed fund $250 million to cure aging.56

I speculate that one could additionally decrease risk of death by becoming a cyborg, as mechanical bodies seem easier to maintain than biological ones, though I’ve found no articles discussing this.

Similar to becoming a cyborg, another potential method of decreasing one’s risk of death is mind uploading, which is, roughly speaking, the transfer of most or all of one’s mental contents into a computer.62 However, there are some concerns about the transfer creating a copy of one’s consciousness, rather than being the same consciousness. This issue is made very apparent if the mind-uploaded process leaves the original mind intact, making it seem unlikely that one’s consciousness was transferred to the new body.63 Eliezer Yudkowsky doesn’t seem to believe this is an issue, though I haven't found a citation for this.

With regard to consciousness, it seems that most individuals believe that the consciousness in one’s body is the “same” consciousness as the one that was in one’s body in the past and will be in it in the future. However, I know of no evidence for this. If one’s consciousness isn’t the same of the one in one’s body in the future, and one defined death as one’s consciousness permanently ending, then I suppose one can’t prevent death for any time at all. Surprisingly, I’ve found no articles discussing this possibility.

Although curing aging, becoming a cyborg, and mind uploading may prevent death from disease, they still seem to leave oneself vulnerable to accidents, murder, suicide, and existential catastrophes. I speculate that these problems could be solved by giving an artificial superintelligence the ability to take control of one’s body in order to prevent such deaths from occurring. Of course, this possibility is currently unavailable.

Another potential cause of death is the Sun expanding, which could render Earth uninhabitable in roughly one billion years. Death from this could be prevented by colonizing other planets in the solar system, although eventually the sun would render the rest of the solar system uninhabitable. After this, one could potentially inhabit other stars; it is expected that stars will remain for roughly 10 quintillion years, although some theories predict that the universe will be destroyed in a mere 20 billion years. To continue surviving, one could potentially go to other universes.64 Additionally, there are ideas for space-time crystals that could process information even after heat death (i.e. the “end of the universe”),65 so perhaps one could make oneself composed of the space-time crystals via mind uploading or another technique. There could also be other methods of surviving the conventional end of the universe, and life could potentially have 10 quintillion years to find them.

Yet another potential cause of death is living in a computer simulation that is ended. The probability of one living in a computer simulation actually seems to not be very improbable. Nick Bostrom argues that:

...at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage is very close to zero; (2) The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero; (3) The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one.

The argument for this is here.100

If one does die, one could potentially be revived. Cryonics, discussed later in this article, may help in this. Additionally, I suppose one could possibly be revived if future intelligences continually create new conscious individuals and eventually create one of them that have one’s “own” consciousness, though consciousness remains a mystery, so this may not be plausible, and I’ve found no articles discussing this possibility. If the probability of one’s consciousness being revived per unit time does not approach or equal zero as time approaches infinity, then I suppose one is bound to become conscious again, though this scenario may be unlikely. Again, I’ve found no articles discussing this possibility.

As already discussed, in order to be live forever, one must either be revived after dying or prevent death from the consciousness in one’s body not being the same as the one that will be in one’s body in the future, accidents, aging, the sun dying, the universe dying, being in a simulation and having it end, and other, unknown, causes. Keep in mind that adding extra details that aren’t guaranteed to be true can only make events less probable, and that people often don’t account for this.66 A spreadsheet for estimating one’s chance of living forever is here.

 

Should we try to become immortal?

Before deciding whether one should try to become immortal, I suggest learning about the cognitive biases scope insensitivity, hyperbolic discounting, and bias blind spot if you don’t know currently know about them. Also, keep in mind that one study found that simply informing people of a cognitive bias made them no less likely to fall prey to it. A study also found that people only partially adjusted for cognitive biases after being told that informing people of a cognitive bias made them no less likely to fall prey to it.67

Many articles arguing against immortality are found via a quick google search, including this, this, this, and this. This article along with its comments discusses counter-arguments to many of these arguments. The Fable of the Dragon Tyrant provides an argument for curing aging, which can be extended to be an argument against mortality as a whole. I suggest reading it.

One can also evaluate the utility of immortality via decision theory. Assuming individuals receive a finite amount of utility per unit time such that it is never less than some above-zero constant, living forever would give infinitely more utility than living for a finite amount of time. Using these assumptions, in order to maximize utility, one should be willing to accept any finite cost to become immortal. However, the situation is complicated when one considers the potential of becoming immortal and receiving an infinite positive utility unintentionally, in which case one would receive infinite expected utility regardless of if one tried to become immortal. Additionally, if one both has the chance of receiving infinitely high and infinitely low utility, one’s expected utility would be undefined. Infinite utilities are discussed in “Infinite Ethics” by Nick Bostrom.

For those interested in decreasing existential risk, living for a very long time, albeit not necessarily forever, may give one more opportunity to do so. This idea can be generalized to many goals one has in life.

On whether one can influence one’s chances of becoming immortal, studies have shown that only roughly 20-30% of longevity in humans is accounted for by genetic factors.68 There are multiple actions one can to increase one’s chances of living forever; these are what the rest of this article is about. Keep in mind that you should consider continuing reading this article even if you don’t want to try to become immortal, as the article provides information on living longer, even if not forever, as well.

 

Relative importance of the different topics

The figure below gives the relative frequencies of preventable causes of death.

1

Some causes of death are excluded from the graph, but are still large causes of death. Most notably, 440,000 deaths in the US, roughly one sixth of total deaths in the US are estimated to be from preventable medical errors in hospitals.2

Risk calculators for cardiovascular disease are here and here. Though they seem very simplistic, they may be worth looking at and can probably be completed quickly.

Here are the frequencies of causes of deaths in the US in year 2010 based off of another classification:

  • Heart disease: 596,577

  • Cancer: 576,691

  • Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 142,943

  • Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,932

  • Accidents (unintentional injuries): 126,438

  • Alzheimer's disease: 84,974

  • Diabetes: 73,831

  • Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,826

  • Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,591

  • Intentional self-harm (suicide): 39,518

113

 

Food

What to eat and drink

Keep in mind that the relationship between health and the consumption of types of substances aren’t necessarily linear. I.e. some substances are beneficial in small amounts but harmful in large amounts, while others are beneficial in both small and large amounts, but consuming large amounts is no more beneficial than consuming small amounts.

 

Recommendations from The Nutrition Source

The Nutrition Source is part of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Its recommendations:

  • Make ½ of your “plate” consist of a variety of fruits and a variety of vegetables, excluding potatoes, due to potatoes’ negative effect on blood sugar. The Harvard School of Public Health doesn’t seem to specify if this is based on calories or volume. It also doesn’t explain what it means by plate, but presumably ½ of one’s plate means ½ solid food consumed.

  • Make ¼ of your plate consist of whole grains.

  • Make ¼ of your plate consist of high-protein foods.

  • Limit red meat consumption.

  • Avoid processed meats.

  • Consume monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats in moderation; they are healthy.

  • Avoid partially hydrogenated oils, which contain trans fats, which are unhealthy.

  • Limit milk and dairy products to one to two servings per day.

  • Limit juice to one small glass per day.

  • It is important to eat seafood one or two times per week, particularly fatty (dark meat) fish that are richer in EPA and DHA.

  • Limit diet drink consumption or consume in moderation.

  • Avoid sugary drinks like soda, sports drinks, and energy drinks.3

 

Fat

The bottom line is that saturated fats and especially trans fats are unhealthy, while unsaturated fats are healthy and the types of unsaturated fats omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids fats are essential. The proportion of calories from fat in one’s diet isn’t really linked with disease.

Saturated fat is unhealthy. It’s generally a good idea to minimize saturated fat consumption. The latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends consuming no more than 10% of calories from saturated fat, but the American Heart Association recommends consuming no more than 7% of calories from saturated fat. However, don’t decrease nut, oil, and fish consumption to minimize saturated fat consumption. Foods that contain large amounts of saturated fat include red meat, butter, cheese, and ice cream.

Trans fats are especially unhealthy. For every 2% increase of calories from trans-fat, risk of coronary heart disease increases by 23%. The Federal Institute for Medicine states that there are no known requirements for trans fats for bodily functions, so their consumption should be minimized. Partially hydrogenated oils contain trans fats, and foods that contain trans fats are often processed foods. In the US, products can claim to have zero grams of trans fat if they have no more than 0.5 grams of trans fat. Products with no more than 0.5 grams of trans fat that still have non-negligible amounts of trans fat will probably have the ingredients “partially hydrogenated vegetable oils” or “vegetable shortening” in their ingredient list.

Unsaturated fats have beneficial effects, including improving cholesterol levels, easing inflammation, and stabilizing heart rhythms. The American Heart Association has set 8-10% of calories as a target for polyunsaturated fat consumption, though eating more polyunsaturated fat, around 15%of daily calories, in place of saturated fat may further lower heart disease risk. Consuming unsaturated fats instead of saturated fat also prevents insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes. Monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats are types of unsaturated fats.

Omega-3 fatty acids (omega-3 fats) are a type of unsaturated fat. There are two main types: Marine omega-3s and alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). Omega-3 fatty acids, especially marine omega-3s, are healthy. Though one can make most needed types of fats from other fats or substances consumed, omega-3 fat is an essential fat, meaning it is an important type of fat and cannot be made in the body, so they must come from food. Most americans don’t get enough omega-3 fats.

Marine omega-3s are primarily found in fish, especially fatty (dark mean) fish. A comprehensive review found that eating roughly two grams per week of omega-3s from fish, equal to about one or two servings of fatty fish per week, decreased risk of death from heart disease by more than one-third. Though fish contain mercury, this is insignificant the positive health effects of their consumption (for the consumer, not the fish). However, it does benefit one’s health to consult local advisories to determine how much local freshwater fish to consume.

ALA may be an essential nutrient, and increased ALA consumption may be beneficial. ALA is found in vegetable oils, nuts (especially walnuts), flax seeds, flaxseed oil, leafy vegetables, and some animal fat, especially those from grass-fed animals. ALA is primarily used as energy, but a very small amount of it is converted into marine omega-3s. ALA is the most common omega-3 in western diets.

Most Americans consume much more omega-6 fatty acids (omega-6 fats) than omega-3 fats. Omega-6 fat is an essential nutrient and its consumption is healthy. Some sources of it include corn and soybean oils. The Nutrition Sources stated that the theory that omega-3 fats are healthier than omega-6 fats isn’t supported by evidence. However, in an image from the Nutrition Source, seafood omega-6 fats were ranked as healthier than plant omega-6 fats, which were ranked as healthier than monounsaturated fats, although such a ranking was to the best of my knowledge never stated in the text.3

 

Carbohydrates

There seems to be two main determinants of carbohydrate sources’ effects on health: nutrition content and effect on blood sugar. The bottom line is that consuming whole grains and other less processed grains and decreasing refined grain consumption improves health. Additionally, moderately low carbohydrate diets can increase heart health as long as protein and fat comes from health sources, though the type of carbohydrate at least as important as the amount of carbohydrates in a diet.

Glycemic index and is a measure of how much food increases blood sugar levels. Consuming carbohydrates that cause blood-sugar spikes can increase risk of heart disease and diabetes at least as much as consuming too much saturated fat does. Some factors that increase the glycemic index of foods include:

  • Being a refined grain as opposed to a whole grain.

  • Being finely ground, which is why consuming whole grains in their whole form, such as rice, can be healthier than consuming them as bread.

  • Having less fiber.

  • Being more ripe, in the case of fruits and vegetables.

  • Having a lower fat content, as meals with fat are converted more slowly into sugar.

Vegetables (excluding potatoes), fruits, whole grains, and beans, are healthier than other carbohydrates. Potatoes have a negative effect on blood sugar, due to their high glycemic index. Information on glycemic index and the index of various foods is here.

Whole grains also contain essential minerals such as magnesium, selenium, and copper, which may protect against some cancers. Refining grains takes away 50% of the grains’ B vitamins, 90% of vitamin E, and virtually all fiber. Sugary drinks usually have little nutritional value.

Identifying whole grains as food that has at least one gram of fiber for every gram of carbohydrate is a more effective measure of healthfulness than identifying a whole grain as the first ingredient, any whole grain as the first ingredient without added sugars in the first 3 ingredients, the word “whole” before any grain ingredient, and the whole grain stamp.3

 

Protein

Proteins are broken down to form amino acids, which are needed for health. Though the body can make some amino acids by modifying others, some must come from food, which are called essential amino acids. The institute of medicine recommends that adults get a minimum of 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, and sets the range of acceptable protein intake to 10-35% of calories per day. The Institute of Medicine recommends getting 10-35% of calories from protein each day. The US recommended daily allowance for protein is 46 grams per day for women over 18 and 56 grams per day for men over 18.

Animal products tend to give all essential amino acids, but other sources lack some essential amino acids. Thus, vegetarians need to consume a variety of sources of amino acids each day to get all needed types. Fish, chicken, beans, and nuts are healthy protein sources.3

 

Fiber

There are two types of fiber: soluble fiber and insoluble fiber. Both have important health benefits, so one should eat a variety of foods to get both.94 The best sources of fiber are whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, legumes, and nuts.3

 

Micronutrients

There are many micronutrients in food; getting enough of them is important. Most healthy individuals can get sufficient micronutrients by consuming a wide variety of healthy foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and lean meats and fish. However, supplementation may be necessary for some. Information about supplements is here.110

Concerning supplementation, potassium, iodine, and lithium supplementation are recommended in the first-place entry in the Quantified Health Prize, a contest on determining good mineral intake levels. However, others suggest that potassium supplementation isn’t necessarily beneficial, as shown here. I’m somewhat skeptical that the supplements are beneficial, as I have not found other sources recommending their supplementation. The suggested supplementation levels are in the entry.

Note that food processing typically decreases micronutrient levels, as described here. In general, it seems cooking, draining and drying foods sizably, taking potentially half of nutrients away, while freezing and reheating take away relatively few nutrients.111

One micronutrient worth discussing is sodium. Some sodium is needed for health, but most Americans consume more sodium than needed. However, recommendations on ideal sodium levels vary. The US government recommends limiting sodium consumption to 2,300mg/day (one teaspoon). The American Heart Association recommends limiting sodium consumption to 1,500mg/day (⅔ of a teaspoon), especially for those who are over 50, have high or elevated blood pressure, have diabetes, or are African Americans3 However, As RomeoStevens pointed out, the Institute of Medicine found that there's inconclusive evidence that decreasing sodium consumption below 2,300mg/day effects mortality,115 and some meta-analyses have suggested that there is a U-shaped relationship between sodium and mortality.116, 117

Vitamin D is another micronutrient that’s important for health. It can be obtained from food or made in the body after sun exposure. Most people who live farther north than San Francisco or don’t go outside at least fifteen minutes when it’s sunny are vitamin D deficient. Vitamin D deficiency is increases the risk of many chronic diseases including heart disease, infectious diseases, and some cancers. However, there is controversy about optimal vitamin D intake. The Institute of medicine recommends getting 600 to 4000 IU/day, though it acknowledged that there was no good evidence of harm at 4000 IU/day. The Nutrition Sources states that these recommendations are too low and fail to account for new evidence. The nutrition source states that for most people, supplements are the best source of vitamin D, but most multivitamins have too little vitamin D in them. The Nutrition Source recommends considering and talking to a doctor about taking an additional multivitamin if the you take less than 1000 IU of vitamin D and especially if you have little sun exposure.3

 

Blood pressure

Information on blood pressure is here in the section titled “Blood Pressure.”

 

Cholesterol and triglycerides

Information on optimal amounts of cholesterol and triglycerides are here.

 

The biggest influences on cholesterol are fats and carbohydrates in one’s diet, and cholesterol consumption generally has a far weaker influence. However, some people’s cholesterol levels rise and fall very quickly with the amount of cholesterol consumed. For them, decreasing cholesterol consumption from food can have a considerable effect on cholesterol levels. Trial and error is currently the only way of determining if one’s cholesterol levels risk and fall very quickly with the amount of cholesterol consumed.

 

Antioxidants

Despite their initial hype, randomized controlled trials have offered little support for the benefit is single antioxidants, though studies are inconclusive.3

 

Dietary reference intakes

For the numerically inclined, the Dietary Reference Intake provides quantitative guidelines on good nutrient consumption amounts for many nutrients, though it may be harder to use for some, due to its quantitative nature.

 

Drinks

The Nutrition Source and SFGate state that water is the best drink,3, 112 though I don’t know why it’s considered healthier than drinks such as tea.

Unsweetened tea decreases the risk of many diseases, likely largely due to polyphenols, and antioxidant, in it. Despite antioxidants typically having little evidence of benefit, I suppose polyphenols are relatively beneficial. All teas have roughly the same levels of polyphenols except decaffeinated tea,3 which has fewer polyphenols.96 Research suggests that proteins and possibly fat in milk decrease the antioxidant capacity of tea.

It’s considered safe to drink up to six cups of coffee per day. Unsweetened coffee is healthy and may decrease some disease risks, though coffee may slightly increase blood pressure. Some people may want to consider avoiding coffee or switching to decaf, especially women who are pregnant or people who have a hard time controlling their blood pressure or blood sugar. The nutrition source states that it’s best to brew coffee with a paper filter to remove a substance that increases LDL cholesterol, despite consumed cholesterol typically having a very small effect on the body’s cholesterol level.

Alcohol increases risk of diseases for some people3 and decreases it for others.3, 119 Heavy alcohol consumption is a major cause of preventable death in most countries. For some groups of people, especially pregnant people, people recovering from alcohol addiction, and people with liver disease, alcohol causes greater health risks and should be avoided. The likelihood of becoming addicted to alcohol can be genetically determined. Moderate drinking, generally defined as no more than one or two drinks per day for men, can increase colon and breast cancer risk, but these effects are offset by decreased heart disease and diabetes risk, especially in middle age, where heart disease begins to account for an increasingly large proportion of deaths. However, alcohol consumption won’t decrease cardiovascular disease risk much for those who are thin, physically active, don’t smoke, eat a healthy diet, and have no family history of heart disease. Some research suggests that red wine, particularly when consumed after a meal, has more cardiovascular benefits than beers or spirits, but alcohol choice has still little effect on disease risk. In one study, moderate drinkers were 30-35% less likely to have heart attacks than non-drinkers and men who drank daily had lower heart attack risk than those who drank once or twice per week.

There’s no need to drink more than one or two glasses of milk per day. Less milk is fine if calcium is obtained from other sources.

The health effects of artificially sweetened drinks are largely unknown. Oddly, they may also cause weight gain. It’s best to limit consuming them if one drinks them at all.

Sugary drinks can cause weight gain, as they aren’t as filling as solid food and have high sugar. They also increase the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and other diseases. Fruit juice has more calories and less fiber than whole fruit and is reportedly no better than soft drinks.3

 

Solid food

Fruits and vegetables are an important part of a healthy diet. Eating a variety of them is as important as eating many of them.3 Fish and nut consumption is also very healthy.98

Processed meat, on the other hand, is shockingly bad.98 A meta-analysis found that processed meat consumption is associated with a 42% increased risk of coronary heart disease (relative risk per 50g serving per day; 95% confidence interval: 1.07 - 1.89) and 19% increased risk of diabetes.97 Despite this, a bit of red meat consumption has been found to be beneficial.98 Consumption of well-done, fried, or barbecued meat has been associated with certain cancers, presumably due to carcinogens made in the meat from being cooked, though this link isn’t definitive. The amount of carcinogens increases with increased cooking temperature (especially above 300ºF, increased cooking time, charring, or being exposed to smoke.99

Eating less than one egg per day doesn’t increase heart disease risk in healthy individuals and can be part of a healthy diet.3

Organic foods have lower levels of pesticides than inorganic foods, though the residues of most organic and inorganic products don’t exceed government safety threshold. Washing fresh fruits and vegetables in recommended, as it removes bacteria and some, though not all, pesticide residues. Organic foods probably aren’t more nutritious than non-organic foods.103

 

When to eat and drink

A randomized controlled trial found an increase in blood sugar variation for subjects who skipped breakfast.6 Increasing meal frequency and decreasing meal size appears to have some metabolic advantages, and doesn’t appear to have metabolic disadvantages.7 Note:  old source; made in 1994 However, Mayo Clinic states that fasting for 1-2 days per week may increase heart health.32 Perhaps it is optimal for health to fast, but to have high meal frequency when not fasting.

 

How much to eat

One’s weight gain is directly proportional to the number of calories consumed divided by the number of calories burnt. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has guidelines for healthy weights and information on how to lose weight.

Some advocate restricting weight to a greater extent, which is known as calorie restriction. It’s unknown whether calorie restriction increases lifespan in humans or not, but moderate calorie restriction with adequate nutrition decreases risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, inflammation, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic risk factors associated with cancer, and is the most effective way of consistently increasing lifespan in a variety of organisms. The CR Society has information on getting started on calorie restriction.4

 

How much to drink

Generally, drinking enough to rarely feel thirsty and to have colorless or light yellow urine is usually sufficient. It’s also possible to drink too much water. In general, drinking too much water is rare in healthy adults who eat an average American diet, although endurance athletes are at a higher risk.10

 

Exercise

A meta-analysis found the data in the following graphs for people aged over 40.

8

A weekly total of roughly five hours of vigorous exercise has been identified by several studies to be the safe upper limit for life expectancy. It may be beneficial to take one or two days off from vigorous exercise per week and to limit chronic vigorous exercise to <= 60 min/day.9 Based on the above, I my best guess for the optimal amount of exercise for longevity is roughly 30 MET-hr/wk. Calisthenics burn 6-10 METs/hr11, so an example exercise routine to get this amount of exercise is doing calisthenics 38 minutes per day and 6 days/wk. Guides on how to exercise are available, e.g. this one.

 

Carcinogens

Carcinogens are cancer-causing substances. Since cancer causes death, decreasing exposure to carcinogens presumably decreases one’s risk of death. Some foods are also carcinogenic, as discussed in the “Food” section.

 

Chemicals

Tobacco use is the greatest avoidable risk factor for cancer worldwide, causing roughly 22% of cancer deaths. Additionally, second hand smoke has been proven to cause lung cancer in nonsmoking adults.

Alcohol use is a risk factor for many types of cancer. The risk of cancer increases with the amount of alcohol consumed, and substantially increases if one is also a heavy smoker. The attributable fraction of cancer from alcohol use varies depending on gender, due to differences in consumption level. E.g. 22% of mouth and oropharynx cancer is attributable to cancer in men but only 9% is attributable to alcohol in women.

Environmental air pollution accounts for 1-4% of cancer.84 Diesel exhaust is one type of carcinogenic air pollution. Those with the highest exposure to diesel exhaust are exposed to it occupationally. As for residential exposure, diesel exhaust is highest in homes near roads where traffic is heaviest. Limiting time spent near large sources of diesel exhaust decreases exposure. Benzene, another carcinogen, is found in gasoline and vehicle exhaust but exposure to it can also be cause by being in areas with unventilated fumes from gasoline, glues, solvents, paints, and art supplies. It can cause exposure from inhalation or skin contact.86

Some occupations exposure workers to occupational carcinogens.84 A list of some of the occupations is here, all of which involve manual labor, except for hospital-related jobs.87

 

Infections

Infections are responsible for 6% of cancer deaths in developed nations.84 Many of the infections are spread via sexual contact and sharing needles and some can be vaccinated against.85

 

Radiation

Ionizing radiation is carcinogenic to humans. Residential exposure to radon gas is estimated to cause 3-14% of lung cancers, which is the largest source of radon exposure for most people 84 Being exposed to radon and cigarette smoke together increases one’s cancer risk much more than they do separately. There is much variation radon levels depending on where one lives and and radon is usually higher inside buildings, especially levels closer to the ground, such as basements. The EPA recommends taking action to reduce radon levels if they are greater than or equal to 4.0 pCi/L. Radon levels can be reduced by a qualified contractor. Reducing radon levels without proper training and equipment can increase instead of decrease them.88

Some medical tests can also increase exposure to radiation. The EPA estimates that exposure to 10 mSv from a medical imaging test increases risk of cancer by  roughly 0.05%. To decrease exposure to radiation from medical imaging tests, one can ask if there are ways to shield parts of one’s body from radiation that aren’t being tested and making sure  the doctor performing the test is qualified.89

 

Small doses of ionizing radiation increase risk by a very small amount. Most studies haven’t detected increased cancer risk in people exposed to low levels of ionizing radiation. For example, people living in higher altitudes don’t have noticeably higher cancer rates than other people. In general, cancer risk from radiation increases as the dose of radiation increases and there is thought to be no safe level of exposure. Ultraviolet radiation as a type of radiation that can be ionizing radiation. Sunlight is the main source of ultraviolet radiation.84

Factors that increase one’s exposure to ultraviolet radiation when outside include:

  • Time of day. Almost ⅓ of UV radiation hits the surface between 11AM and 1PM, and ¾ hit the surface between 9AM and 5PM.  

  • Time of year. UV radiation is greater during summer. This factor is less significant near the equator.

  • Altitude. High elevation causes more UV radiation to penetrate the atmosphere.

  • Clouds. Sometimes clouds decrease levels of UV radiation because they block UV radiation from the sun. Other times, they increase exposure because they reflect UV radiation.

  • Reflection off surfaces, such as water, sand, snow, and grass increases UV radiation.

  • Ozone density, because ozone stops some UV radiation from reaching the surface.

Some tips to decrease exposure to UV radiation:

  • Stay in the shade. This is one of the best ways to limit exposure to UV radiation in sunlight.

  • Cover yourself with clothing.

  • Wear sunglasses.

  • Use sunscreen on exposed skin.90

 

Tanning beds are also a source of ultraviolet radiation. Using tanning booths can increase one’s chance of getting skin melanoma by at least 75%.91

 

Vitamin D3 is also produced from ultraviolet radiation, although the American Society for Clinical Nutrition states that vitamin D is readily available from supplements and that the controversy about reducing ultraviolet radiation exposure was fueled by the tanning industry.92

 

There could be some risk of cell phone use being associated with cancer, but the evidence is not strong enough to be considered causal and needs to be investigated further.93, 118

 

Emotions and feelings

Positive emotions and feelings

A review suggested that positive emotions and feelings decreased mortality. Proposed mechanisms include positive emotions and feelings being associated with better health practices such as improved sleep quality, increased exercise, and increased dietary zinc consumption, as well as lower levels of some stress hormones. It has also been hypothesized to be associated with other health-relevant hormones, various aspects of immune function, and closer and more social contacts.33 Less Wrong has a good article on how to be happy.

 

Psychological distress

A meta-analysis was conducted on psychological stress. To measure psychological stress, it used the GHQ-12 score, which measured symptoms of anxiety, depression, social dysfunction, and loss of confidence. The scores range from 0 to 12, with 0 being asymptomatic, 1-3 being subclinically symptomatic, 4-6 being symptomatic, and 7-12 being highly symptomatic. It found the results shown in the following graphs.

http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/345/bmj.e4933/F3.large.jpg?width=800&height=600

This association was essentially unchanged after controlling for a range of covariates including occupational social class, alcohol intake, and smoking. However, reverse causality may still partly explain the association.30

 

Stress

A study found that individuals with moderate and high stress levels as opposed to low stress had hazard ratios (HRs) of mortality of 1.43 and 1.49, respectively.27 A meta-analysis found that high perceived stress as opposed to low perceived stress had a coronary heart disease relative risk (RR) of 1.27. The mean age of participants in the studies used in the meta-analysis varied from 44 to 72.5 years and was significantly and positively associated with effect size. It explained 46% of the variance in effect sizes between the studies used in the meta-analysis.28

A cross-sectional study (which is a relatively weak study design) not in the aforementioned meta-analysis used 28,753 subjects to study the effect on mortality from the amount of stress and the perception of whether stress is harmful or not. It found that neither of these factors predicted mortality independently, but but that taken together, they did have a statistically significant effect. Subjects who reported much stress and that stress has a large effect on health had a HR of 1.43 (95% CI: 1.2, 1.7). Reverse causality may partially explain this though, as those who have had negative health impacts from stress may have been more likely to report that stress influences health.83

 

Anger and hostility

A meta-analysis found that after fully controlling for behavior covariates such as smoking, physical activity or body mass index, and socioeconomic status, anger and hostility was not associated with coronary heart disease (CHD), though the results are inconclusive.34

 

Social and personality factors

Social status

A review suggested that social status is linked to health via gender, race, ethnicity, education levels, socioeconomic differences, family background, and old age.46

 

Giving to others

An observational study found that stressful life events was not a predictor for mortality for those who engaged in unpaid helping behavior directed towards friends, neighbors, or relatives who did not live with them. This association may be due to giving to others causing one to have a sense of mattering, opportunities for generativity, improved social well-being, the emotional state of compassion, and the physiology of the caregiving behavioral system.35

 

Social relationships

A large meta-analysis found that the odds ratio of mortality of having weak social relationships is 1.5 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.42 to 1.59). However, this effect may be a conservative estimate. Many of the studies used in the meta-analysis used single item measures of social relations, but the size of the association was greatest in studies that used more complex measurements. Additionally, some of the studies in the meta-analysis adjusted for risk factors that may be mediators of social relationships’ effect on mortality (e.g. behavior, diet, and exercise). Many of the studies in the meta-analysis also ignored the quality of social relationships, but research suggests that negative social relationships are linked to increased mortality. Thus, the effect of social relationships on mortality could be even greater than the study found.

Concerning causation, social relationships are linked to better health practices and psychological processes, such as stress and depression, which influence health outcomes on their own. However, the meta-analysis also states that social relationships exert an independent effect. Some studies show that social support is linked to better immune system functioning and to immune-mediated inflammatory processes.36

 

Conscientiousness

A cohort study with 468 deaths found that each 1 standard deviation decrease in conscientiousness was associated with HR being multiplied by 1.07 (95% CI: 0.98 – 1.17), though it gave no mechanism for the association.39 Although it adjusted for several variables, (e.g.  socioeconomic status, smoking, and drinking), it didn’t adjust for drug use, risky driving, risky sex, suicide, and violence, which were all found by a meta-analysis to have statistically significant associations with conscientiousness.40 Overall, it seems to me that conscientiousness doesn’t seem to have a significant effect on mortality.

 

Infectious diseases

Mayo clinic has a good article on preventing infectious disease.

 

Dental health

A cohort study of 5611 adults found that compared to men with 26-32 teeth, men with 16-25 teeth had an HR of 1.03 (95% CI: 0.91-1.17), men with 1-15 teeth had an HR of 1.21 (95% CI: 1.05-1.40) and men with 0 teeth had an HR of 1.18 (95% CI: 1.00-1.39).

In the study, men who never brushed their teeth at night had a HR of 1.34 (95% CI: 1.14-1.57) relative to those who did every night. Among subjects who brushed at night, HR was similar between those who did and didn’t brush daily in the morning or day. The HR for men who brushed in the morning every day but not at night every day was 1.19 (95% CI: 0.99-1.43).

In the study, men who never used dental floss had an HR of 1.27 (95% CI: 1.11-1.46) and those who sometimes used it had an HR or 1.14 (95% CI: 1.00-1.30) compared to men who used it every day. Among subjects who brushed their teeth at night daily, not flossing was associated with a significantly increased HR.

Use of toothpicks didn’t significantly decrease HR and mouthwash had no effect.

The study had a list of other studies on the effect of dental health on mortality. It seems to us that almost all of them found a negative correlation between dental health and risk of mortality, although the study didn’t say their methodology for selecting the studies to show. I did a crude review of other literature by only looking at their abstracts and found that five studies found that poor dental health increased risk of mortality and one found it didn’t.

Regarding possible mechanisms, the study says that toothpaste helps prevent dental caries and that dental floss is the most effective means of removing interdental plaque and decreasing interdental gingival inflammation.38

 

Sleep

It seems that getting too little or too much sleep likely increases one’s risk of mortality, but it’s hard to tell exactly how much is too much and how little is too little.

 

One review found that the association between amount of sleep and mortality is inconsistent in studies and that what association does exist may be due to reverse-causality.41 However, a meta-analysis found that the RR associated with short sleep duration (variously defined as sleeping from < 8 hrs/night to < 6 hrs/night) was 1.10 (95% CI: 1.06-1.15). It also found that the RR associated with long sleep duration (variously defined as sleeping for > 8 hrs/night to > 10 hrs per night) compared with medium sleep duration (variously defined as sleeping for 7-7.9 hrs/night to 9-9.9 hrs/night) was 1.23 (95% CI: 1.17 - 1.30).42

 

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Mayo Clinic recommend adults get 7-8 hours of sleep per night, although it also says sleep needs vary from person to person. It gives no method of determining optimal sleep for an individual. Additionally, it doesn’t say if its recommendations are for optimal longevity, optimal productivity, something else, or a combination of factors.43 The Harvard Medical School implies that one’s optimal amount of sleep is enough sleep to not need an alarm to wake up, though it didn’t specify the criteria for determining optimality either.45

 

Drugs

None of the drugs I’ve looked into have a beneficial effect for the people without a special disease or risk factor. Notes on them are here.

 

Blood donation

A quasi-randomized experiment with a validity near that of a randomized trial presumably suggested that blood donation didn’t significantly decrease risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). Observational studies have shown much lower CHD incidence among donors, although the authors of the former experiment suspect that bias and reverse causation played a role in this.29 That said, a review found that reverse causation accounted for only 30% of the effect of blood donation, though I haven't been able to find the review. RomeoStevens suggests that the potential benefits of blood donation are high enough and the costs are low enough that blood donation is worth doing.120

 

Sitting

After adjusting for amount of physical activity, a meta-analysis estimated that for every one hour increment of sitting in intervals 0-3, >3-7 and >7 h/day total sitting time, the hazard ratios of mortality were 1.00 (95% CI: 0.98-1.03), 1.02 (95% CI: 0.99-1.05) and 1.05 (95% CI: 1.02-1.08) respectively. It proposed no mechanism for sitting time having this effect,37 so it might have been due to confounding variables it didn’t control.

 

Sleep apnea

Sleep apnea is an independent risk factor for mortality and cardiovascular disease.26 Symptoms and other information on sleep apnea are here.

 

Snoring

A meta-analysis found that self-reported habitual snoring had a small but statistically significant association with stroke and coronary heart disease, but not with cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality [HR 0.98 (95% CI: 0.78-1.23)]. Whether the risk is due to obstructive sleep apnea is controversial. Only the abstract is able to be viewed for free, so I’m just basing this off the abstract.31

 

Exams

The organization Susan G. Komen, citing a meta-analysis that used randomized controlled trials, doesn’t recommend breast self exams as a screening tool for breast cancer, as it hasn’t been shown to decrease cancer death. However, it still stated that it is important to be familiar with one’s breasts’ appearance and how they normally feel.49 According to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, no study has been able to show a statistically significant decrease in breast cancer deaths from breast self-exams.50 The National Cancer Institute states that breast self-examinations haven’t been shown to decrease breast cancer mortality, but does increase biopsies of benign breast lesions.51

The American Cancer Society doesn’t recommend testicular self-exams for all men, as they haven’t been studied enough to determine if they decrease mortality. However, it states that men with risk factors of testicular cancer (e.g. an undescended testical, previous testicular cancer, of a family member who previously had testicular cancer) should consider self-exams and discuss them with a doctor. The American Cancer Society also recommends having testicular self-exams in routine cancer-related check-ups.52

 

Genomics

Genomics is the study of genes in one’s genome, and may help increase health by using knowledge of one’s genes to have personalized treatment. However, it hasn’t proved to be useful for most; recommendations rarely change after knowledge from genomic testing. Still, genomics has much future potential.102

 

Aging

Like I’ve said in the section “Can we become immortal,” the proportion of deaths that are caused by aging in the industrial world approaches 90%,53 but some organizations and companies are working on curing it.54, 55, 56

One could support these organizations in an effort to hasten the development of anti-aging therapies, although I doubt an individual would have a noticeable impact on one’s own chance of death unless one is very wealthy. That said, I have little knowledge in investments, but I suppose investing in companies working on curing aging may be beneficial, as if they succeed, they may offer an enormous return on investment, and if they fail, one would probably die, so losing one’s money may not be as bad. Calico currently isn’t a public stock, though.

 

External causes of death

Unless otherwise specified, graphs in this section are on data collected from American citizens ages 15-24, as based off the Less Wrong census results, this seems to be the most probable demographic that will read this. For this demographic, external causes cause 76% of deaths. Note that although this is true, one is much more likely to die when older than when aged 15-24, and older individuals are much more likely to die from disease than from external causes of death. Thus, I think it’s more important when young to decrease risk of disease than external causes of death. The graph below shows the percentage of total deaths from external causes caused by various causes.

21

 

Transport accidents

Below are the relative death rates of specified means of transportation for people in general:

71

Much information about preventing death from car crashes is here. Information on preventing death from car crashes is here, here, here, and here.

 

Assault

Lifehacker's “Basic Self-Defense Moves Anyone Can Do (and Everyone Should Know)” gives a basic introduction to self defence.

 

Intentional self harm

Intentional self harm such as suicide, presumably, increases one’s risk of death.47 Mayo Clinic has a guide on preventing suicide. I recommend looking at it if you are considering killing yourself. Additionally, if are are considering killing yourself, I suggest reviewing the potential rewards of achieving immortality from the section “Should we try to become immortal.”

 

Poisoning

What to do if a poisoning occurs

CDC recommends staying calm, dialing 1-800-222-1222, and having this information ready:

  • Your age and weight.

  • If available, the container of the poison.

  • The time of the poison exposure.

  • The address where the poisoning occurred.

It also recommends staying on the phone and following the instructions of the emergency operator or poison control center.18

 

Types of poisons

Below is a graph of the risk of death per type of poison.

21

Some types of poisons:

  • Medicine overdoses.

  • Some household chemicals.

  • Recreational drug overdoses.

  • Carbon monoxide.

  • Metals such as lead and mercury.

  • Plants12 and mushrooms.14

  • Presumably some animals.

  • Some fumes, gases, and vapors.15

 

Recreational drugs

Using recreational drugs increases risk of death.

 

Medicine overdoses and household chemicals

CDC has tips for these here.

 

Carbon monoxide

CDC and Mayo Clinic have tips for this here and here.

 

Lead

Lead poisoning causes 0.2% of deaths worldwide and 0.0% of deaths in developed countries.22 Children under the age of 6 are at higher risk of lead poisoning.24 Thus, for those who aren’t children, learning more about preventing lead poisoning seems like more effort than it’s worth. No completely safe blood lead level has been identified.23

 

Mercury

MedlinePlus has an article on mercury poisoning here.

 

Accidental drowning

Information on preventing accidental drowning from CDC is here and here.

 

Inanimate mechanical forces

Over half of deaths from inanimate mechanical forces for Americans aged 15-24 are from firearms. Many of the other deaths are from explosions, machinery, and getting hit by objects. I suppose using common sense, precaution, and standard safety procedures when dealing with such things is one’s best defense.

 

Falls

Again, I suppose common sense and precaution is one’s best defense. Additionally, alcohol and substance abuse is a risk factor of falling.72

 

Smoke, fire and heat

Owning smoke alarms halves one’s risk of dying in a home fire.73 Again, common sense when dealing with fires and items potentially causing fires (e.g. electrical wires and devices) seems effective.

 

Other accidental threats to breathing

Deaths from other accidental threats to breathing are largely caused by strangling or choking on food or gastric contents, and occasionally by being in a cave-in or trapped in a low-oxygen environment.21 Choking can be caused by eating quickly or laughing while eating.74 If you are choking:

  • Forcefully cough. Lean as far forwards as you can and hold onto something that is firmly anchored, if possible. Breathe out and then take a deep breath in and cough; this may eject the foreign object.

  • Attract someone’s attention for help.75

 

Additionally, choking can be caused by vomiting while unconscious, which can be caused by being very drunk.76 I suggest lying in the recovery position if you think you may vomit while unconscious, so as to to decrease the chance of choking on vomit.77 Don’t forget to use common sense.

 

Electric current

Electric shock is usually caused by contact with poorly insulated wires or ungrounded electrical equipment, using electrical devices while in water, or lightning.78 Roughly ⅓ of deaths from electricity are caused by exposure to electric transmission lines.21

 

Forces of nature

Deaths from forces of nature in (for Americans ages 15-24) in descending order of number of deaths caused are: exposure to cold, exposure to heat, lightning, avalanches or other earth movements, cataclysmic storms, and floods.21 Here are some tips to prevent these deaths:

  • When traveling in cold weather, carry emergency supplies in your car and tell someone where you’re heading.79

  • Stay hydrated during hot weather.80

  • Safe locations from lightning include substantial buildings and hard-topped vehicles. Safe locations don’t include small sheds, rain shelters, and open vehicles.

  • Wait until there are no thunderstorm clouds in the area before going to a location that isn’t lightning safe.81

 

Medical care

Since medical care is tasked with treating diseases, receiving medical care when one has illnesses presumably decreases risk of death. Though necessary medical care may be essential when one has illnesses, a review estimated that preventable medical errors contributed to roughly 440,000 deaths per year in the US, which is roughly one-sixth of total deaths in the US. It gave a lower limit of 210,000 deaths per year.

The frequency of deaths from preventable medical errors varied across studies used in the review, with a hospital that was shown the put much effort into improving patient safety having a lower proportion of deaths from preventable medical errors than that of others.57 Thus, I suppose that it would be beneficial to go to hospitals that are known for their dedication to patient safety. There are several rankings of hospital safety available on the internet, such as this one. Information on how to help prevent medical errors is found here and under the “What Consumers Can Do” section here. One rare medical error is having a surgery be done on the wrong body part. The New York Times gives tips for preventing this here.

Additionally, I suppose it may be good to live relatively close to a hospital so as to be able to quickly reach it in emergencies, though I’ve found no sources stating this.

A common form of medical care are general health checks. A comprehensive Cochrane review with 182,880 subjects concluded that general health checks are probably not beneficial.107 A meta-analysis found that general health checks are associated with small but statistically significant benefits in factoring related to mortality, such as blood pressure and body mass index. However, it found no significant association with mortality.109 The New York Times acknowledged that health checks are probably not beneficial and gave some explanation why general health checks are nonetheless still common.108 However, CDC and MedlinePlus recommend getting routine general health checks. The cited no studies to support their claims.104, 106 When I contacted CDC about it, it responded, “Regular health exams and tests can help find problems before they start. They also can help find problems early, when your chances for treatment and cure are better. By getting the right health services, screenings, and treatments, you are taking steps that help your chances for living a longer, healthier life,” a claim that doesn’t seem supported by evidence. It also stated, “Although CDC understands you are concerned, the agency does not comment on information from unofficial or non-CDC sources.” I never heard back from MedlinePlus.

 

Cryonics

Cryonics is the freezing of legally dead humans with the purpose preserving their bodies so they can be brought back to life in the future once technology makes it possible. Human tissue have been cryopreserved and then brought back to life, although this has never been done on full humans.59 The price of Cryonics at least ranges from $28,000 to $200,000.60 More information on cryonics is on LessWrong Wiki.

 

Money

Cryonics, medical care, safe housing, and basic needs all take money. Rejuvenation therapy may also be very expensive. It seems valuable to have a reasonable amount of money and income.

 

Future advancements

Keeping updated on further advancements in technology seems like a good idea, as not doing so would prevent one from making use of future technologies. Keeping updated on advancements on curing aging seems especially important, due to the massive number of casualties it inflicts and the current work being done to stop it. Updates on mind-uploading seem important as well. I don’t know of any very efficient method of keeping updated on new advancements, but periodically googling for articles about curing aging or Calico and searching for new scientific articles on topics in this guide seems reasonable. As knb suggested, it seems beneficial to periodically check on Fight Aging, a website advocating anti-aging therapies. I’ll try to do this and update this guide with any new relevant information I find.

There is much uncertainty ahead, but if we’re clever enough, we just might make it though alive.

 

References

 

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  6. The causal role of breakfast in energy balance and health: a randomized controlled trial in lean adults.
  7. Low Glycemic Index: Lente Carbohydrates and Physiological Effects of altered food frequency. Published in 1994. 
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  9. Exercising for Health and Longevity vs Peak Performance: Different Regimens for Different Goals.
  10. Water: How much should you drink every day? 
  11. MET-hour equivalents of various physical activities.
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  23. National Biomonitoring Program Factsheet. CDC
  24. Lead poisoning. Mayo Clinic.
  25. Mercury. Medline Plus.
  26. Snoring Is Not Associated With All-Cause Mortality, Incident Cardiovascular Disease, or Stroke in the Busselton Health Study.
  27. Do Stress Trajectories Predict Mortality in Older Men? Longitudinal Findings from the VA Normative Aging Study.
  28. Meta-analysis of Perceived Stress and its Association with Incident Coronary Heart Disease.
  29. Iron and cardiac ischemia: a natural, quasi-random experiment comparing eligible with disqualified blood donors.
  30. Association between psychological distress and mortality: individual participant pooled analysis of 10 prospective cohort studies.
  31. Self-reported habitual snoring and risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality.
  32. Is it true that occasionally following a fasting diet can reduce my risk of heart disease? 
  33. Positive Affect and Health.
  34. The Association of Anger and Hostility with Future Coronary Heart Disease: A Meta-Analytic Review of Prospective Evidence.
  35. Giving to Others and the Association Between Stress and Mortality.
  36. Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review.
  37. Daily Sitting Time and All-Cause Mortality: A Meta-Analysis.
  38. Dental Health Behaviors, Dentition, and Mortality in the Elderly: The Leisure World Cohort Study.
  39. Low Conscientiousness and Risk of All-Cause, Cardiovascular and Cancer Mortality over 17 Years: Whitehall II Cohort Study.
  40. Conscientiousness and Health-Related Behaviors: A Meta-Analysis of the Leading Behavioral Contributors to Mortality.
  41. Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a critical review of measurement and associations.
  42. Sleep duration and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
  43. How Much Sleep Is Enough? National Lung, Blood, and Heart Institute. 
  44. How many hours of sleep are enough for good health? Mayo Clinic.
  45. Assess Your Sleep Needs. Harvard Medical School.
  46. A Life-Span Developmental Perspective on Social Status and Health.
  47. Suicide. Merriam-Webster. 
  48. Can testosterone therapy promote youth and vitality? Mayo Clinic.
  49. Breast Self-Exam. Susan G. Komen.
  50. Screening Guidelines. The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
  51. Breast Cancer Screening Overview. The National Cancer Institute.
  52. Testicular self-exam. The American Cancer Society.
  53. Life Span Extension Research and Public Debate: Societal Considerations
  54. SENS Research Foundation: About.
  55. Science for Life Extension Homepage.
  56. Google's project to 'cure death,' Calico, announces $1.5 billion research center. The Verge.
  57. A New, Evidence-based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated with Hospital Care.
  58. When Surgeons Cut the Wrong Body Part. The New York Times.
  59. Cold facts about cryonics. The Guardian. 
  60. The cryonics organization founded by the "Father of Cryonics," Robert C.W. Ettinger. Cryonics Institute. 
  61. Escape Velocity: Why the Prospect of Extreme Human Life Extension Matters Now
  62. International Journal of Machine Consciousness Introduction.
  63. The Philosophy of ‘Her.’ The New York Times.
  64. How to Survive the End of the Universe. Discover Magazine.
  65. A Space-Time Crystal to Outlive the Universe. Universe Today.
  66. Conjunction Fallacy. Less Wrong.
  67. Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgment of Global Risks.
  68. Genetic influence on human lifespan and longevity.
  69. First Drug Shown to Extend Life Span in Mammals. MIT Technology Review.
  70. Sirolimus (Oral Route). Mayo Clinic.
  71. Micromorts. Understanding Uncertainty.
  72. Falls. WHO.
  73. Smoke alarm outreach materials.  US Fire Administration.
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  75. Choking. Better Health Channel.
  76. Aspiration pneumonia. HealthCentral.
  77. First aid - Recovery position. NHS Choices.
  78. Electric Shock. HowStuffWorks.
  79. Hypothermia prevention. Mayo Clinic.
  80. Extreme Heat: A Prevention Guide to Promote Your Personal Health and Safety. CDC.
  81. Understanding the Lightning Threat: Minimizing Your Risk. National weather service.
  82. The Case Against QuikClot. The survival mom.
  83. Does the Perception that Stress Affects Health Matter? The Association with Health and Mortality.
  84. Cancer Prevention. WHO.
  85. Infections That Can Lead to Cancer. American Cancer Society.
  86. Pollution. American Cancer Society.
  87. Occupations or Occupational Groups Associated with Carcinogen Exposures. Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety. 
  88. Radon. American Cancer Society.
  89. Medical radiation. American Cancer Society.
  90. Ultraviolet (UV) Radiation. American Cancer Society.
  91. An Unhealthy Glow. American Cancer Society.
  92. Sun exposure and vitamin D sufficiency.  
  93. Cell Phones and Cancer Risk. National Cancer Institute.
  94. Nutrition for Everyone. CDC.
  95. How Can I Tell If My Body is Missing Key Nutrients? Oprah.com.
  96. Decaffeination, Green Tea and Benefits. Teas etc.
  97. Red and Processed Meat Consumption and Risk of Incident Coronary Heart Disease, Stroke, and Diabetes Mellitus.
  98. Lifestyle interventions to increase longevity.
  99. Chemicals in Meat Cooked at High Temperatures and Cancer Risk. National Cancer Institute.
  100. Are You Living in a Simulation? 
  101. How reliable are scientific studies?
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  103. Organic foods: Are they safer? More nutritious? Mayo Clinic.
  104. Health screening - men - ages 18 to 39. MedlinePlus. 
  105. Why do I need medical checkups. Banner Health.
  106. Regular Check-Ups are Important. CDC.
  107. General health checks in adults for reducing morbidity and mortality for disease (Review)
  108. Let’s (Not) Get Physicals.
  109. Effectiveness of general practice-based health checks: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
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  114. Bias Detection in Meta-analysis. Statistical Help.
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  116. Compared With Usual Sodium Intake, Low and Excessive -Sodium Diets Are Associated With Increased Mortality: A Meta-analysis.
  117. The Cochrane Review of Sodium and Health.
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  119. A glass of red wine a day keeps the doctor away. Yale-New Haven Hospital.
  120. Comment on Lifestyle Interventions to Increase Longevity. Less Wrong.

Optimal eating (or rather, a step in the right direction)

5 c_edwards 19 January 2015 01:35AM

Over the past few months I've been working to optimize my life.  In this post I describe my attempt to optimize my day-to-day cooking and eating - my goal with this post is to get input and to offer a potential template for people who aren't happy with their current cooking/eating patterns.  I'm a) still pretty new to LW, and b) not a nutritionist; I am not claiming that this is optimal, only that it is a step in the right direction for me.  I'd love suggestions/advice/feedback.

Goal:

How do I quantify a successful cooking/eating plan?

Healthy

"Healthy" is a broad term.  I'm not interested in making food a complicated or stressful component of my life - quite the opposite.  Healthy means that I feel good, and that I'm providing my body with a good mix of building blocks (carbs, proteins, fats) and nutrients.  This means I want most/all meals to include some form of complex carbs, protein, and either fruits or veggies or both.  As I'm currently implementing an exercise plan based on the LW advice for optimal exercising, I'm aiming to get ~120 grams of protein per day (.64g/lb bodyweight/day).  There seems to be a general consensus that absorption of nutrients from whole foods is a) higher, and b) less dangerous, so when possible I'm trying to make foods from basic components instead of buying pre-processed stuff.

I have a health condition called hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) that makes me cranky/shaky/weak/impatient/foolish/tired when I am hungry, and can be triggered by eating simple sugars.  So, for me personally, a healthy diet includes rarely feeling hungry and rarely eating simple sugars (especially on their own - if eaten with other food the effect is much less severe).  This also means trying to focus on forms of fruit and complex carbs that have low glycemic indexes (yams are better than baked potatoes, for example).  I would guess that these attributes would be valuable for anyone, but for me they are a very high priority.

I'm taking some advice from the "Exos" (formerly Core Performance) fitness program, as described in the book Core performance essentials. One of the suggestions from this that I'm trying to use here (aside from the above complex carb+protein+fruit/veg meal structure) is to "eat the rainbow every day" - that is, mix up the fruits and veggies you eat, ideally getting as many colors per day as possible.  I'm also taking advice from the (awesome) LW article on increasing longevity: "eat fish, nuts, eggs, fruit, dark chocolate."

When possible I'm trying to focus on veggies that are particularly nutrient dense - spinach, bok choy, tomatoes, etc.  I am (for now) avoiding a few food products that I have heard (but have not yet confirmed!) are linked to potential health issues: tofu, whey proteins.  Note that I do not trust my information on the potential risks of these foods, but as neither of these are important to my diet anyways, I have put researching them as a low priority compared to everything else I want to learn.

So to recap: don't stress about it, but try to do complex carbs, proteins (120g/day for me), fruits, and veggies in every meal, avoid sugars where possible (although dark chocolate is good).  Fish, nuts and eggs are high priority proteins.

Cheap

I'm on a fairly limited budget.  This means trying to focus on the seasonal fruits and veggies (which are typically cheaper, and as an added bonus are likely healthier than the same fruit/veggie when out of season), aiming for less expensive meats, and not trying to eat organically (probably worth a separate discussion of organic vs not, meat vs not).  This also means making my own foods when the price benefit is high and the time cost is low.  I often make my own breads, for example (using a breadmaker) - it takes about 10 minutes of my time, directly saves me about 3+ dollars or so compared to an equivalent quality loaf of bread (many breads can be made for ~$.50-1$), plus saves me either the time of shopping multiple times per week to obtain fresh bread or the grossness of eating bread that I've frozen to keep it from molding.  Additionally, my budget means that I prefer that my weekly meal plan not depend on eating out or buying pre-made foods.

Quick

While I'm on a fairly limited monetary budget, I'm on a very limited time budget.  Cooking can be fun for me, but I prefer that my weekly schedule not REQUIRE much time - I can always replace a quick meal with a longer fun one if I feel like it.


The Plan

My general approach is split my meals between really quick-and-easy (like chickpeas, canned salmon, and olive oil over prewashed spinach with an apple or two on the side) and batch foods where a somewhat longer time investment is split over many nights (like lentil stew in a crockpot).

To keep myself reasonable full I need about 6-7 meals per day: breakfast, snack, lunch, (optional snack depending on schedule), post-workout snack, dinner, snack.  These don't all need to be large, but I'm unhappy/unproductive without something for each of those meals, so I might as well make it easy to eat them.

In general I've found the following system to fulfill my criteria of success (healthy, cheap, quick), and it's been much less stressful to have a general plan in place - I can more easily figure out my shopping list, and it's not hard to ensure I always have food ready when I need it.

Breakfasts

Quick and easy is the key here.  I typically have either

 

  1. Yogurt with sunflower seeds and/or nuts, a handful of rolled oats (yes, uncooked, but add a bit of water at the end to make them tolerable), and sometimes some fruit on top.  Add honey for sweetener as needed (I typically don't do to hypoglycemia).
  2. Bread (often homemade, but whatever floats your boat) with some peanut butter on top, a banana or other fruit item on the side.
  3. (if I have the time) Scrambled eggs mixed with chopped broccoli or bell peppers, bread, and a piece of fruit.
(also a big glass of water, which everyone seems to think is important)(also coffee, although I'm considering transitioning to a different caffeine source.

Lunch

 

I have three "batch" meals here (I make enough for 3+lunches, so I cook lunches ~twice a week):

 

  1. salmon mash plus "spinach salad" (spinach with olive oil and either lemon juice or balsamic vinegar), fruit item.  salmon mash is a mix of cooked rice, canned salmon, black olives (for flavor - not sure that they're useful nutritionally), canned black or garbanzo beans, pasta sauce.  It sounds disgusting, but I find it pretty decent, and it's very cheap and filling, and super balanced in terms of carbs and proteins.  I do proportions of 1 cup rice, 1 large can salmon, 1-2 cans beans, 1/2 can black olives, 1/2 can pasta sauce (typically I do a double batch, which lasts me about 4-5 lunches.  Your mileage may vary)
  2. Baked yams and boneless skinless chicken breasts plus spinach salad or other veggies, fruit item
  3. pasta salad: pasta, raw chopped broccoli, tomatoes (grape/cherry tomatoes are easiest), chopped bell peppers, sliced ham, olives (for flavor again - not important nutritionally, I think), and some olive oil (you could use Caesar salad dressing if you like more flavor).  
If I haven't prepped a batch lunch, I just put salmon and beans on top of spinach, add a little olive oil, and throw in a slice of bread and a fruit on the side. Alternately, PBJ plus veggie and fruit.

 

Dinner

I aim to make one batch dinner per week and have it last for 4-5 meals, and then have several quick-and-easy dinners to fill the gap (this also makes it easy to accommodate dinners out or food related social gatherings).

Some ideas for Batch Dinners (crock pots are your friends here):

 

  • Lentil stew, bread, sliced carrots or bell peppers, fruit item (apple, banana, grapefruit, whatever).  That lentil soup recipe is ridiculously cheap, healthy, and quite tasty.
  • The potato-and-cabbage based rumpledethumps recipe (which freezes very well - make a huge batch and throw half of it in the freezer), plus a meat of some sort, a fruit item and maybe a vegetable something 
  • Other crock pot soups: chicken tortilla soup, chili, stew.  Add a veggie on the side, a fruit item, and maybe a slice of bread.
  • Large stirfry (these often take a bit longer than crock pot meals), rice or noodles, fruit on the side.
Note that since I only make one batch dinner per week, those bullets are sufficient to cover a month (and depending on what your tolerance for repetition is, that might be enough for years).

Some ideas for quick-and-easy dinners:
  • Salad made from salad greens, some form of precooked meat (salmon is good), beans, maybe sliced avacado and tomato, maybe sunflower seeds.
  • Rice/pasta; scrambled/cooked eggs or baked chicken; munching veggie like carrots, raw broccoli, bell pepper; fruit item.  Note on chicken: while there is a reasonably large elapse time from start to finish, your involvement doesn't need to take long.  Typically I have a bunch of boneless skinless chicken breasts in the freezer - pull one out, throw it in a ziplock with soy sauce, garlic powder, ginger (or whatever other marinade you prefer), put the ziplock in a bowl of warm water, preheat oven to 370ish.  Once chicken is thawed, put in a pan and cook in the oven.  Ideally do enough rice/pasta and chicken for several nights.

 

Snacks

In general my snacks are super simple: just combine some kind of munching veggie (carrots, bell pepper, raw broccoli, snap peas, etc) with hummus, some fruit item, something protein-y (handful of nuts or sunflower seeds, usually) and (optionally) a slice of bread or other carb source.  For whatever snack I have after a workout, I want to make sure there is plenty of protein, so I include either hard boiled eggs, baked chicken, or salmon (on bread).


Implementation

So over the weekend, when I plan my week and go shopping, I choose the following:

 

  1. One batch dinner to cook (usually I need to buy the stuff for this)
  2. One type of quick-and-easy dinner to eat for 2-3 nights (often using staples/leftovers I already have)
  3. Two types of batch lunch to make from my list of three.
  4. 2-3 kinds of munching veggies - enough veggies total to include in ~3 meals per day (so like 6ish carrots per day, or 2 bell peppers, etc).  Think carrots, raw broccoli, bell peppers, green beans, sugar snap peas, cherry tomatoes, etc.
  5. 2-3 kinds of fruit items.  Think apples, bananas, grapefruit, grapes, oranges, etc.
  6. Two kinds of protein for post-workout snacks, chosen from: eggs, chicken, salmon
  7. Bread recipes to make 2-3 loaves (which might just be a single recipe repeated)
I also make sure I have enough yogurt and other breakfast supplies to get me through the week.  I drink milk with most of my meals at home, so I check my milk supply as well.

Boom!  Planning done, shopping list practically writes itself!  Once per week I make an small effort on cooking a batch dinner, two or three nights per week I put an extremely minimal effort into quick-and-easy dinners, two evenings per week I make a batch of lunch foods and maybe prep workout protein (hard boil eggs or bake chicken breasts), and otherwise my "cooking" consists of taking things from the fridge and putting them onto a dish (and possibly microwaving).

 


 

Conclusions

I'm still tweaking my system, but it has been a marked improvement from the last-minute scrabbling and suboptimal meals that tended to characterize my eating before this.  It's also a big step up in terms of utility from the more elaborate and time-consuming meals I sometimes cooked to compensate for feelings of inadequacy generated by aforementioned scrabbling/suboptimal meals.  I tend to feel fairly energetic and healthy, and it's a huge reassurance to me to know that I always have food planned out and typically it's available to me without needing to do any cooking.  It appears that it's considerably cheaper, too, although there are several confounding factors that would also drive my grocery bills down (transitioning to not-organic foods, trying to hit sales, etc).

Are there things I'm missing?  Suggestions for meals?  (note that I'm a bit wary of meal-replacement shakes) Alternative systems that people have found to hit that sweet spot of healthy, quick, and inexpensive? Is this something that might be useful for you?


EDIT:  Tuna is high in mercury, and shouldn't be eaten in nearly the quantities I had originally planned.  I've replaced canned tuna with canned salmon.

[Link] 3 Short Walking Breaks Can Reverse Harm From 3 Hours of Sitting

16 Gunnar_Zarncke 10 September 2014 10:26AM

I found the below link which is in the spirit of Lifestyle interventions to increase longevity:

3 Short Walking Breaks Can Reverse Harm From 3 Hours of Sitting"

The /.-summary:

Medical researchers have been steadily building evidence that prolonged sitting is awful for your health. One major problem is that blood can pool in the legs of a seated person, causing arteries to start losing their ability to control the rate of blood flow. A new experimental study (abstract) has discovered it's quite easy to negate these detrimental health effects: all you need to do is take a leisurely, 5-minute walk for every hour you sit. "The researchers were able to demonstrate that during a three-hour period, the flow-mediated dilation, or the expansion of the arteries as a result of increased blood flow, of the main artery in the legs was impaired by as much as 50 percent after just one hour. The study participants who walked for five minutes for each hour of sitting saw their arterial function stay the same — it did not drop throughout the three-hour period. Thosar says it is likely that the increase in muscle activity and blood flow accounts for this."

One way to incorporate this into ones habits is to use WorkRave.

 

 

 

[question] Recommendations for fasting

5 Gunnar_Zarncke 30 August 2014 12:36AM

I consider fasting for two weeks in October, but I'm unclear about it being beneficial in general or for what kind of fasting it might be beneficial and healthy. Thus this is a kind of request for rational discussion of this topic.

I looked for relevant LW posts but couldn't find clear evidence. I think this is an underrepresented and possibly underutilized lifestyle intervention.

continue reading »

[LINK] Will Eating Nuts Save Your Life?

7 Vaniver 30 November 2013 03:13AM

TLDR: Study on death avoidance, which interests a lot of people here, and commentary on what sort of informative priors we should have about health hypotheses.

From Steve Sailer, who is responding to Andrew Gelman, who got sent this study. An observational study showed that people who consumed nuts were less likely to die; Gelman points out that the study's statistics aren't obviously wrong. Sailer brings up an actual RCT of Lipitor from the 90s:

The most striking Lipitor study was one from Scandinavia that showed that among middle-aged men over a 5-year-period, the test group who took Lipitor had a 30% lower overall death rate than the control group. Unlike the nuts study, this was an actual experiment.

That seemed awfully convincing, but now it just seems too good to be true. A lot of those middle-aged deaths that didn't happen to the Lipitor takers didn't have much of anything to do with long-term blood chemistry, but were things like not driving your Saab into a fjord. How does Lipitor make you a safer driver? 

I sort of presumed at the time that if they had taken out the noisy random deaths, that would have made the Lipitor Effect even more noticeable. But, of course, that's naive. The good folks at Pfizer would have made sure that calculation was tried, so I'm guessing that it came out in the opposite direction of the one I had assumed. Guys who took Lipitor everyday for five years were also good about not driving into fjords and not playing golf during lighting storms and not getting shot by the rare jealous Nordic husband or whatever. Perhaps it was easier to stay in the control group than in the test group?

Here’s how I would approach claims of massive reductions in overall deaths from consuming some food or medicine:

Rank order the causes of death by how plausible it is that they are that they are linked to the food or medicine. For example:

1. Diabetes
2. Heart attacks
3. Strokes
4. Cancer
5. Genetic diseases
6. Car accidents
7. Drug overdoses
8. Homicides
9. Lightning strikes

If this nuts-save-your-life finding is valid, then the greater effects should be found in causes of death near the top of the list (e.g., diabetes). But if it turns out that eating nuts only slightly reduces your chances of death from diabetes but makes you vastly less likely to be struck by lighting, then we’ve probably gotten a selection effect in which nut eaters are more careful people in general and thus don’t play golf during thunderstorms, or whatever.

Table 3 of the paper breaks out the hazard ratios by cause of death. The most impressive effects (as measured by the right tail of the 95% CI for pooled men and women for any nut)1 are Heart Disease, All Causes, Other Causes, Cancer, Respiratory Disease, Stroke, Infection, Diabetes, Neurodegenerative Disease, and Kidney Disease.

Steve's categories and the paper's categories don't overlap very well. But it looks to me like if you follow Steve's logic, it's reasonable to believe that nuts have a protective effect against heart disease, and then most of the other effects or non-effects have a common cause with nut consumption, like healthiness / conscientiousness / whatever, rather than being caused by nut consumption. Note the strong negative relationships between nut consumption and BMI or smoking, and the strong positive relationships between nut consumption and physical activity or intake of fruits, vegetables, or alcohol. The hazard ratios are calculated controlling for those variables, but it's still reasonable to see there being a hidden 'health-consciousness' node which noisily affects all of those nodes.

It's also interesting to look at the negative results- the hazard ratio for neurodegenerative disease and stroke was roughly 1, implying that nut-eaters and non-nut eaters had comparable risks, despite 'other causes' having a hazard ratio of 0.87. That weakly implies to me that either health consciousness has no impact on neurodegenerative disease and stroke, or that nuts are harmful for those two categories.

Since heart disease is a huge killer (24% of all deaths in the study group), this study seems like moderate evidence in favor of eating nuts, but it's likely that the total study's effect is overstated. (The study also suggests that tree nuts are probably superior to peanuts; I know various QS people have raised concerns that the kind of nut matters significantly.)

1. This is a heuristic for impressiveness, not the point estimate. It looks like nuts have the strongest effect for kidney disease, with a mean hazard ratio estimate of 0.69- but the upper bound of the 95% CI is 1.26, because only a handful of people died due to kidney disease. The heart disease hazard ratio estimate is 0.74 (0.68-0.81), which is much more believable, even though the point estimate is slightly higher. The point estimate for diabetes is 0.80 (0.54-1.18), which has a mean estimate that's only slightly worse, but diabetes again killed far fewer than heart disease. If you order them by point estimates, the paper is stronger evidence for nuts being useful for dietary reasons, and which method you prefer depends on your priors for how representative this sample is.

Instrumental rationality/self help resources

35 gothgirl420666 18 July 2013 02:58AM

I took part in a recent discussion in the current Open Thread about how instrumental rationality is under-emphasized on this website. I've heard other people say similar things, and I am inclined to agree. Someone suggested that there should be a "Instrumental Rationality Books" thread, similar to the "best textbooks on every subject" thread. I thought this sounded like a good idea. 

The title is "resources" because in addition to books, you can post self-help websites, online videos, whatever. 

The decorum for this thread will be as follows:

  • One resource per comment
  • Place your comment in the appropriate category
  • Only post resources you've actually used. Write a short review of your resource and if possible, a short summary of the key points. Say whether or not you would recommend the resource. 
  • Mention approximately how long it's been since you first used the resource and whether or not you have made external improvements in the subject area. On the other hand, keep in mind that there are a myriad of confounding factors that can be present when applying self-help resources to your life, and therefore it is perfectly acceptable to say "I would recommend this resource, but I have not improved" or "I do not recommend this resource, but I have improved". 

I think depending on how this thread goes, in a few days I might make a meta post on this subject in an attempt to inspire discussion on how the LessWrong community can work together to attempt to reach some sort of a consensus on what the best instrumental rationality methods and resources might be. lukeprog has already done great work in his The Science of Winning at Life sequence, but his reviews are uber-conservative and only mention resources with lots of scientific and academic backing. I think this leaves out a lot of really good stuff, and I think that we should be able to draw distinctions between stuff that isn't necessarily drawing on science but is reasonable, rational, and helps a lot of people, and The Secret

But I thought we should get the ball rolling a little before we have that conversation. In the meantime, if you have a meta comment, you can just go ahead and post it as a reply to the top-level post. 

A Ketogenic Diet as an Effective Cancer Treatment?

5 notsonewuser 26 June 2013 10:40PM

Yesterday, my mother (not a rationalist) told me that she had recently heard somewhere (most likely on a popular television program) that, as simple as it sounds, an effective cancer treatment is cutting back on glucose intake. According to her story, cancer cells can only efficiently use glucose as fuel, and will be unable to multiply (or will starve, or something like that) if you don't consume any. Meanwhile, normal cells can convert other forms of energy into glucose inside their membranes, and then will continue functioning normally.

My first two thoughts:

Reality just can't be that nice.

Hey, wait a second, doesn't the body just convert everything into glucose before it's released into the bloodstream, anyways?

So I did some Googling and I found out that what my mother was referring to is called a ketogenic diet (from Wikipedia):

The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that in medicine is used primarily to treat difficult-to-control (refractory) epilepsy in children. The diet forces the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. Normally, the carbohydrates contained in food are converted into glucose, which is then transported around the body and is particularly important in fuelling brain function. However, if there is very little carbohydrate in the diet, the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies. The ketone bodies pass into the brain and replace glucose as an energy source. An elevated level of ketone bodies in the blood, a state known as ketosis, leads to a reduction in the frequency of epileptic seizures.

So, prima facie, my second objection was dealt with. More Googling led me to discover these two references to what my mother had mentioned:

According to the paper:

Abnormal energy metabolism is a consistent feature of most tumor cells across all tissue types [14]. In the 1930 s, Otto Warburg observed that all cancers expressed high rates of fermentation in the presence of oxygen [15]. This feature, known as The Warburg Effect, is linked to mitochondrial dysfunction and genetic mutations within the cancer cell [14], [16], [17]. These defects cause cancers to rely heavily on glucose for energy, a quality that underlies the use of fluorodeoxyglucose-PET scans as an important diagnostic tool for oncologists [18]. Ketogenic diets are high fat, low carbohydrate diets that have been used for decades to treat patients with refractory epilepsy [19]. Ketogenic diets also suppress appetite naturally thus producing some body weight loss [19], [20], [21], [22]. Dietary energy reduction (DER) lowers blood glucose levels, limiting the energy supply to cancer cells, while elevating circulating blood ketone levels [6]. Ketone bodies can serve as an alternative energy source for those cells with normal mitochondrial function [23], [24], but not for cancer cells [25]. DER has been shown to have anti-tumor effects in a variety of cancers, including brain, prostate, mammary, pancreas, lung, gastric, and colon [14], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34]. DER produces anti-cancer effects through several metabolic pathways, including inhibition of the IGF-1/PI3K/Akt/HIF-1α pathway which is used by cancer cells to promote proliferation and angiogenesis and inhibit apoptosis [35], [36], [37], [38], [39], [40], [41], [42]. Additionally, DER induces apoptosis in astrocytoma cells, while protecting normal brain cells from death through activation of adenosine monophosphate kinase (AMPK) [43].

Note what the sentence with ten citations says. Why have I never heard of this? If the basic claims being made are true, we seem to have an effective way of at least preventing cancer from progressing further (if not killing it off), and it's not even dangerous (at least compared to the alternatives, as far as I am aware of...however, I realize I know next to nothing in this field...that's the reason for this post)! Is there some reason this isn't being sung about on Reddit as a huge victory for science? What is the counterevidence? Or are we still waiting for more research to be done?

For genetic reasons and because humans often engage in motivated reasoning, I am skeptical. I am querying the Less Wrong community for more information...perhaps some of you have already heard of a ketogenic diet being used as a cancer treatment, or would like to do more research than I've done now that I've introduced you to it. The following books may also serve as helpful, albeit expensive, references:

Health/Longevity Link List

3 Dorikka 05 May 2013 03:17AM

Dying or becoming severely physically/mentally ill is very likely going to significantly lower the output of your utility function, so it would probably be a very bad idea to ignore the low-hanging resources which can significantly extend the time for which you are alive and well. I have attempted to search LessWrong for a list of such resources, and haven't been able to find one.

Are there any books, websites, or posts that contain significantly low-hanging fruit in this area? If so, please list them in the comments below.

Moderate alcohol consumption inversely correlated with all-cause mortality

0 michaelcurzi 11 July 2012 05:41PM

My roommate recently sent me a review article that LW might find interesting:

Conclusions:  Low levels of alcohol intake (1-2 drinks per day for women and 2-4 drinks per day for men) are inversely associated with total mortality in both men and women. Our findings, while confirming the hazards of excess drinking, indicate potential windows of alcohol intake that may confer a net beneficial effect of moderate drinking, at least in terms of survival.

Personal observation says that LWers tend not to drink very much or often. Perhaps that should change, to the degree suggested by the article?

Full article here.

Using People's Irrationality To Do Good by Leslie John

2 Utopiah 16 April 2012 06:10PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyRPL-QoZG8

Official description:

Identifying effective obesity treatment is both a clinical challenge and a public health priority. Can monetary incentives stimulate weight loss? Leslie John presents a study that examines different economic incentives for weight loss during a 16 week intervention.

Leslie John presented at the "The Science of Getting People to Do Good" research briefing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, co-sponsored by the Center for Social Innovation.

Related Links:
http://csi.gsb.stanford.edu/special-event-science-getting-people-do-good

http://drfd.hbs.edu/fit/public/facultyInfo.do?facInfo=ovr&facId=589473

Simply sharing this resource here as it could start interesting discussions on moral and rationality.

 

Longevity Insurance

20 canadaduane 20 February 2012 12:30AM

Let's say we (as a country) ban life insurance and health insurance as separate packages [1] and require them to be combined in something I'll call "Longevity Insurance".  The idea is that as a person/consumer, you can buy a "life expectancy" of 75 years, or 90 years, or whatever. In addition, you specify a maximum dollar amount that the longevity insurance will ever pay out--say, $2 million. If you have any medical issues throughout your life, up to the life expectancy threshold, the insurance plan will pay for your expenses. If it fails to keep you consciously alive for the duration of your "life expectancy", then upon your death, the policy guarantees that the company will pay the full remaining amount to your next of kin.

As an example, suppose you (let's say you're a woman) had purchased a 75-year policy, but you had a car accident.  The paramedics tried to save you, and the hospital bill came to $100k, but even after that noble effort, you still died. As a result, your husband and children get $1.9M. Alternatively, if in our hypothetical situation they succeed in resuscitating you, the company would keep the $1.9M for future medical bills, and, if they fulfill their promise of life expectancy, they pocket the remainder as profit on your 75th birthday.

It seems like this arrangement would put all of the right incentives [2] in place for both companies and individuals. Most individuals would want to avoid trivial medical expenses in order to maximize payout to family in case of accidental death. Companies would want to maximize health and longevity in order to profit from the end-of-life payout. And our society would have a way to rationally consider the value of life without resorting to arguments that essentially conclude "life is of infinite value," and in doing so, prevent sensible gerontological triage. To put it into perspective, it makes little sense that we spend $1M (as a society) trying to save a 92-year-old when that same amount could have saved 10 teenagers.

Longevity Insurance companies would be incentivized to become heavily involved in medical research that prevents disease, prolongs life, and keeps people healthy. I can imagine a whole array of things that make sense in this context. For example, it would be the right place to fund studies on genetics, it could be the right vehicle for getting 'free' immunizations, and it could even make public funding for "health insurance" easier to pass--simply set the bar low enough that everyone can agree on an age that society will extend a policy for. Do we all agree that everyone in our society should live to age 50? Super! The government will cover Longevity Insurance up to age 50.

[1] We could also just allow Longevity Insurance as a free-market alternative, but for the sake of argument, let's ban its competitors.

[2] The one incentive that Longevity Insurance does not seem to address well is the possibility of next-of-kin killing their loved one just prior to the end of an insurance policy. One option would be to require a one-year moratorium in the case where someone dies within a year of their policy ending. This would give time for an investigation before awarding large sums of money.

* crosspost from my blog, http://halfcupofsugar.com/longevity-insurance

 

RAND Health Insurance Experiment critiques

5 Dustin 18 February 2012 05:52PM

I have neither the qualifications nor the access to properly understand these two paywalled critiques of the RAND Health Insurance Experiment.

Health Plan Switching and Attrition Bias in the RAND Health Insurance Experiment

The Rand Health Insurance Study: A Summary Critique

Has there been any talk about either of these on OB/LW?  If not, why not and could anyone with access to the papers make any comments about how much weight they carry?

I post this here because the RAND results are brought up so often in discussions here, I hope others find it to be an appropriate venue.

Is latent Toxoplasmosis worth doing something about?

23 jsalvatier 17 November 2011 05:04PM

Toxoplasmodi gondii is a parasitic protozoa who's primary host is cats but also infects other mammals, primarily mice and rats but including humans, as part of its life cycle. Infection by Toxoplasmodi gondii is called Toxoplasmosis and may be acute (flu like symptoms) or latent. 

Toxoplasmosis is extremely common. Worldwide, about 30% (US 11%; France 88%!) of people about of people have Toxoplasmosis.

Toxoplasmosis is known to cause behavioral changes in rats:

It has been found that the parasite has the ability to change the behaviour of its host: infected rats and mice are less fearful of cats—in fact, some of the infected rats seek out cat-urine-marked areas. This effect is advantageous to the parasite, which is able proliferate if a cat eats the infected rat and thereby becomes a carrier.

Observational studies suggest that latent Toxoplasmosis may also cause behavioral changes in humans (source paper). The observed differences between infected people and non-infected people include:

  • Decreased novelty seeking behavior
  • Slower reactions
  • Lower rule-consciousness and greater jealousy (in men)
  • Greater warmth, conscientiousness and moralistic behavior (in women)
It's also suspected by some of being a cause of Schizophrenia.
Obviously some or all these may be due to unobserved 3rd causes.
There haven't been any randomized studies yet, as far as I know. It seems like such studies would be easy to conduct rigorously since a high fraction of the population is already infected. For example, by finding people who are already infected and randomly cure some of them. This kind of experiment is even pretty close to how you would expect the information to be used. 
I've been around cats a fair amount and the base rate is high in the US, so my chances of having latent Toxoplasmosis seem fairly high. Thus I am curious whether this is worth doing something about. Diagnosis sounds like it is fairly simple (PCR on blood samples). It's easy enough so that it can be done in large scale studies at least. Treatment is done with atovaquone and clindamycin, which appear to be relatively inexpensive.
I'd expect the effects to be net negatives (most random changes are detrimental) and even if the behavioral effects are smallish, the effects over a lifetime will add up. Has anyone else gotten tested and/or treated for latent Toxoplasmosis? Is it worth it?

 

Willpower and diet: advice?

2 Swimmer963 21 September 2011 05:54PM

Since the beginning of September, I have been attempting a gluten-free diet. (I was tested and I'm not celiac, but eating wheat, and especially highly refined-flour foods like cookies, tends to make me bloated and give me diarrhea.) I also wanted to lose 5 to 10 pounds. I'm not overweight per se, but I possess a roll of belly fat that I (and my boyfriend!) would prefer to say goodbye too.

The first little while went well, and almost effortlessly. I was at the cottage with my family, exercising moderately (about 2 kilometers of swimming daily) and eating my mom's excellent-tasting cooking. After about one and a half weeks, I had lost 5 pounds, although I suspect a lot of it was water retention/bloating, since I had been eating wheat and various junk foods all summer.

Then school started, and with it my 16-hour days away from home, including one marathon session where I leave my parents' house at 5:00 am on Monday morning, sleep at a friend's house, and don't come back again until 11 pm on Tuesday, only to work 5:30 am to 4 pm at the pool the next day.

In short: my diet is quickly deteriorating and I have regained those 5 pounds. I find it next to impossible to stay gluten-free, since I have to be incredibly organized and pack everything from home, and inevitably it isn't quite enough for 16 hours. (I eat 3000 calories a day or more when not dieting. According to a metabolism study I participated in last year, this is actually how much I burn per day with the amount of exercise I get. If I eat much less, say less than 2000 for one day or less than 2,500 for several consecutive days, I get dizzy and weak when I exercise, which is really irritating.) I would probably be able to lose weight more easily if I exercised LESS, but this would a) kind of defeat the point, and b) be difficult because exercise is my main stress control method.

Willpower is a big issue, which is weird and annoying because usually it's not a big issue for me. Especially when I'm sleep deprived (nearly all the time), stressed, or bored to tears in my classes, I tend to comfort or reward myself with food, and nearly all my 'comfort foods' have wheat in them. I can resist to a degree if I have access to other reward/comforts, like sleep, or lots and lots of tea.

I've never really had to learn any willpower tricks for dieting, since I usually let my weight sit at its natural set-point. Does anyone have suggestions?

Why epidemiology will not correct itself

38 gwern 11 August 2011 12:54AM

We're generally familiar here with the appalling state of medical and dietary research, where most correlations turn out to be bogus. (And if we're not, I have collected a number of links on the topic in my DNB FAQ that one can read, see http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ#flaws-in-mainstream-science-and-psychology - probably the best first link to read would be Ioannidis's “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”.)

I recently found a talk arguing that this problem was worse than one might assume, with false positives in the >80% range, and more interestingly, why the rate is so high and will remain high for the foreseeable future. Young asserts, pointing to papers and textbooks by epidemiologists, that they are perfectly aware of what the Bonferroni correction does (and why one would use it) and that they choose to not use it because they do not want to risk any false negatives. (Young also conducts some surveys showing less interest in public sharing of data and other good things like that, but that seems to me to be much less important than the statistical tradeoffs.)

There are three papers online that seem representative:

  1. Rothman (1990)
  2. Perneger (1998)
  3. Vandenbroucke, PLoS Med (2008)

Reading them is a little horrifying when one considers the costs of the false positives, all the people trying to stay healthy by following what is only random noise, and the general (and justified!) contempt for science by those aware of the false positive rate. (I enlarge on this vein of thought on Reddit. The recent kerfluffle about whether salt really is bad for you - medical advice that has stressed millions and will cost more millions due to New York City's war on salt - is a reminder of what is at stake.)

The take-away, I think, is to resolutely ignore anything to do with diet & exercise that is not a randomized trial. Correlations may be worth paying attention to in other areas but not in health.

Link: "Health Care Myth Busters: Is There a High Degree of Scientific Certainty in Modern Medicine?"

8 CronoDAS 01 April 2011 05:25AM

A feature in Scientific American magazine casts some light on the troubled state of modern medicine.

Health Care Myth Busters: Is There a High Degree of Scientific Certainty in Modern Medicine?

Short excerpt:

We could accurately say, "Half of what physicians do is wrong," or "Less than 20 percent of what physicians do has solid research to support it." Although these claims sound absurd, they are solidly supported by research that is largely agreed upon by experts.

Scientific American often gates its online articles after some time has passed, so I don't know how long it will be available.

Help Request: How to maintain focus when emotionally overwhelmed

5 throwaway 07 December 2010 11:29PM

So my personal life just got very interesting. In a net-positive way, certainly, but still, I am, as Calculon put it, "filled with a large number of powerful emotions!" -- some of which are anxious and/or panicky.

This is making it annoyingly difficult to focus at work. I am an absolutely textbook "Attention Deficit Oh-look-a-squirrel!" case at the best of times, and this seems to have made it much, much worse. I can handle small tasks, but anything where I'm going to have to spend an hour solving multiple problems before producing results, I can hardly make myself start.

Has anyone dealt with the problem of maintaining productive focus while emotionally overwhelmed/exhausted, and if so, do you have any pointers?