Extremely large payoff from life extension

We live in special period of time when radical life extension is not far. We just need to survive until the moment when all the necessary technologies will be created.

The positive scenario suggests it could happen by 2050 (plus or minus 20 years), when humanity will create an advanced and powerful AI, highly developed nanotechnologies and a cure for aging.

Many young people could reach the year 2050 without even doing anything special.  

But for many other people an opportunity to extend their life for just 10-20 years is the key to achieving radical life extension (at least for a thousand of years, perhaps even more), because they will be able to survive until the creation of strong life extension technologies.

That is why even a slight life extension today means a potentially eternal prize. This map of the currently available life extension methods could help in it. The map contains a description of the initial stage of plan A from the “Personal Immortality Roadmap” (where plan B is cryonics, plan C – digital immortality and plan D – quantum immortality).

Brain is most important for life extension

The main idea of this map is that all efforts towards life extension must start from our brain, and in fact, they must finish there too.

First of all, you must have the will to conquer aging and death, and do it using scientific methods.

This is probably the most difficult part of the life extension journey. The vast majority of people simply don't think about life extension, while those who do care about it (usually when it's too late) use weak and non-scientific ways and methods; they simply don't understand that the prize of this game is not ten of healthy latter years, but almost eternal life. 

Secondly, you need to develop or mobilize the qualities inside yourself which are necessary for simple, daily procedures, which can almost guarantee life extension by an average of 10-20 years. e.g. avoiding smoking and alcohol consumption, daily mobility, daily intake of medicines and dietary supplements.

Most people find it incredibly difficult to perform simple actions on a permanent basis, for example even taking one pill every day for a year would be too much for most people. Not to mention quitting smoking or regular health check-ups. 

A human who has the motivation to extend his life, a proper understanding of how to achieve it and the necessary skills to realize his plans, should be considered as almost a superman. 

On other hand, while all of our body systems are affected by aging, our brain damage during aging plays the biggest role in total productivity reduction. Even though our crystallized intelligence increases with age, our fluid intelligence, our memory, and the possibility of making radical changes and acquiring new skills all decrease significantly with aging.

And these abilities decrease at the very time when they are needed most – to fight the aging process! Young people usually don't care too much about the aging process, because it's beyond their planning horizon. These qualities are vital in order to build the motivation and skills required to maintain health. 

Thus, this leads to the idea of the map, which says that all main efforts to combat aging must be focused on brain aging. If you can keep your brain youthful, it will create and implement new skills to extend your life, helping you to find new information in a sea of new publications and technologies.

If Alzheimers is the first sign of aging to reach your body, you will have to crawl for a tablet of validol without even knowing that it is harmful. And even worse, you will crystallize some harmful beliefs. A person can think that he is a genius in some fields, receive approval from others, but continue his journey in the wrong direction – in the direction of death. (Of course early detection of cancer and a healthy heart are really important to extend your life, but it will be too difficult to deal with such problems if your brain is not working properly).

The second reason to invest in brain health and regeneration is a direct connection of its state with the state of many other systems in your body through nervous and hormonal connections. 

In order to preserve your brain health we have to use antidepressants, nootropics and substances which promote its regeneration.

The example of Rita Montalchni is incredibly interesting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Levi-Montalcini). She administered a nerve growth factor (NGF) as eye drops and lived for 101 years while her twin sister died when she was 91. (Bearing in mind the average life duration difference of twins is six years, we can conclude that she gained about four years.)

Thus, providing that we understand the priority of tasks, life extension now can be reached through three fine-spun blocks: a lifestyle, a medication and the prevention of aging itself.

Collective efforts in life extension

This map doesn't include one really important social aspect of aging prevention. If we could absorb all the money (through crowdfunding), which people use to buy supplements (around 300 billion per year), and use it to perform experiments in the field of life extension instead, we could invent new anti-aging medicine and other life extension tools. These methods and medicines could be used by those who initially donated money for such experiments; they could also benefit from sales of such products. Thus, such crowdfunding would include IPO too.

You won't find other social aspects in the map such as promotion of the idea of the fight against aging, political activism and art. All of these aspects are mentioned in the main Immortality Roadmap.

The map also doesn't include a temporal aspect. Our knowledge about the best methods of life extension changes almost daily. This map contains ideas which are valid in 2015, but it will require a significant update in just five years. If you aim to extend your life you must perform a constant analysis of scientific research in this area. Currently many new methods are appearing every day, e.g. ways of lengthening telomeres and gene therapy. Additionally, the older you are the riskier new methods you should try.

The map of ideas

In fact, the map contains a systemized analysis of ideas, which can lead to life extension, but not a bunch of well-proven tips. In an ideal situation such a map should contain links to research about all the listed items, as well as an evaluation of their real effects, so any help on improving the map will be welcomed.

This map (like all my other maps) is intended to help you navigate through the world of ideas. In this case it includes life extension ideas.

Moreover, one single idea may become a salvation for a person, e.g. eradicating a certain chronic disease. Of course, no single person can complete all of the ideas and suggestions in this map or indeed in any other list. I'm pretty sure that people will not be able to implement more than one advice per month – and I'm no exception.

My approach: I drink alcohol on really rare occasions, I don't smoke (but sometimes I use nicotine wrapping with nootropic objectives), I sleep a lot, I try to walk at least 4 km every day, I avoid risky activities and I always fasten my seatbelt.

I also invest a lot of effort in preventing my brain from aging and in combating depression. (I will provide you with a map about depression and nootropics later).

The pdf of the map is here, and jpg is below.

Previous posts with maps:

Simulation map

Digital Immortality Map

Doomsday Argument Map

AGI Safety Solutions Map

A map: AI failures modes and levels

A Roadmap: How to Survive the End of the Universe

A map: Typology of human extinction risks

Roadmap: Plan of Action to Prevent Human Extinction Risks

Immortality Roadmap

Future planned maps:

Brut force AIXI-style attack on Identity problem

Ways of mind-improvement

Fermi paradox map

Ways of depression prevention map

Quantum immortality map

Interpretations of quantum mechanics ma

Map of cognitive biases in global risks research

Map of double catastrophes scenarios in global risks

Probability of global catastrophe

Map of unknown unknowns as global risks

Map of reality theories, qualia and God

Map of death levels

Map of resurrections technologies

Map of aging theories

Flowchart «How to build a map»

Map of ideas about artificail explosions in space

Future as Markov chain

EDIT: due to temporary hosting error, check the map here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/286606304/Life-Extension-Map

We looked at the cloudy night sky and thought it would be interesting to share the ways in which, in the past, we made mistakes we would have been able to overcome, if only we had been stronger as rationalists. The experience felt valuable and humbling. So why not do some more of it on Lesswrong?

An antithesis to the Bragging Thread, this is a thread to share where we made mistakes. Where we knew we could, but didn't. Where we felt we were wrong, but carried on anyway.

As with the recent group bragging thread, anything you've done wrong since the comet killed the dinosaurs is fair game, and if it happens to be a systematic mistake that over long periods of time systematically curtailed your potential, that others can try to learn avoiding, better. 

This thread is an attempt to see if there are exceptions to the cached thought that life experience cannot be learned but has to be lived. Let's test this belief together!

Edit: Removed intro because it adds no value to the post. Left in for posterity. The vast majority of all ethical and logistical problems revolve around a single inconvenient fact: human beings die unwillingly. "Should we sacrifice one person to save ten?" or "Is it ethical to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?" become irrelevant questions if no one has to die unless they want to. Similarly, almost all altruistic goals have, at their core, the goal of stopping death in some way shape or form.

The question, "How can we permanently prevent death?" is of paramount importance, and not just to Rationalists. So, it should be a surprise to no one that mystics, crackpots, spiritualists and pseudo-scientists of all walks of life have co-opted this quest as their own. The loftiness of the goal, combined with the cosmic implications of its success, combined with the sheer number of irrational people also seeking to achieve the same goal may make it tempting to apply the non-central fallacy and say, "I'm not interested in stopping death; that's something crazy people do." 

But it's a fallacy for a reason: there is a rational way to approach the problem. Let's start with a pair of general statements:

• X is the cause of the perception of consciousness. (Current hypothesis: X="human brain").
• Recreation of X with >Y% fidelity results in a the perception of a consciousness functionally indistinguishable from the original to an outside observer. _{original text: "results in the continuation of the perception of consciousness".}   

The Collection Problem

This problem is most pressing, because once we solve it, it buys us time. Once that data is stored securely, you've dramatically extended your effective timeline. Even if you, personally, happen to die, you've still got a copy of yourself in backup that some future generation will hopefully be able to reconstruct. But, more importantly, this also applies to all of humanity. Once the Collection Problem is solved, everyone can be backed up. As long as you can stay alive until the problem is solved, (especially if you live in a first-world country), you have probably got a pretty good shot at living forever. 

The Collection Problem brings to mind a number of non-trivial sub-problems, but they are fairly trivial *in comparison* to the monumental task of scanning a brain (assuming the brain alone is the seat of consciousness) with sufficient fidelity. Such as logistics, data-storage and security, etc.. I don't mean to blithely dismiss the difficulties of these problems. But these are problems that humanity is already solving. Logistics, data-storage, and security are all billion dollar industries. 

The Creation Problem

Once the Collection Problem is solved, you have another problem which is how to take that data and do something useful with it. There's a pretty big gap between an architect drawing up a plan for a building and actually creating that building. But, once this problem is resolved, it's very likely that its solution will also make life itself much, much more convenient. Any method that can physically create something as complex as a human brain at-will can almost certainly be adopted to create other things. Food. Clean water. Shelter. etc.  Those likely benefits, of course, are orthogonal, but they are a nice cherry on top.

One of the potential solutions to the Creation Problem involves simulations. I won't go into a ton of detail there because that's a pretty significant discussion unto itself, whether life in a simulation is as valid or fulfilling as life in the "real world". For the purposes of this thought exercise though, it is fairly irrelevant. If you consider a simulation to be an acceptable solution, great. If you don't, that's fine too, it just means the Creation Problem will take longer to solve. Either way, it's likely you're going to be in cold storage for quite some time before the problem does get solved. 

What about the rest of us?

All this theory is fine and good. But what if you get hit by a bus tomorrow and don't live to see the resolution of the Collection Problem? What about all of us who have lost loved ones in the past? This is where this exercise dovetails with traditional ethics. Given this system, it's easy enough to argue that we have a responsibility to try to ensure that as many human beings as possible survive until the Collection Problem is resolved. 

However, for those of us unlucky enough to die before that, there's one final get-out-of-jail free card: The Recreation Problem. This problem may be thoroughly intractable. And to be sure, it is probably the most difficult problem of them all. In extremely simple (and emotionally charged) terms: "How can we bring back the dead?" Or, if you prefer to dress it up in the literary genre of science: "How can we recreate a system that occurred in the past with Y% fidelity using only knowledge of the present system?" 

This may be so improbable as to be effectively impossible. But it's not actually impossible. There's no need for perfect physical fidelity (which is all-but-proven to be impossible). We only need to achieve Y% fidelity, whatever Y% may be. Conceptually, we do this all the time. A ballistics expert can track the trajectory of a bullet with no prior knowledge of that trajectory. A two-way function can be iterated in reverse for as many steps as you have computing power. Etc. 

A complex system can be recreated. Is there an upper limit to how far in the past a system can be before it is infeasible to recreate it? Quite possibly. Let's say that upper limit is Z seconds (incidentally, the Collection Problem is actually just a special case of the Recreation Problem where Z is approximately equal to zero). The fact that Z is unknown means you can't simply abandon all your ethical pursuits and say, "It doesn't matter, we're all going to be resurrected anyway!"  Z may in fact be equal to approximately zero. 

The importance of others.

It is most likely that you, individually, will not be able to solve all three problems on your own. Which means that if you truly desire to live forever, you have to rely on other people to a certain extent. But, it does give one a certain amount of peace when contemplating the horror of death: if every human being commits themselves to solving these three problems, it does not matter if you, personally, fail. All of humanity would have to fail. 

Whether that thought actually gives any comfort depends largely on your estimation of humanity and the difficulty of these problems. But regardless of whether you derive any comfort from that, it doesn't diminish the importance of the contributions of others. 

The moral of this story...

As a rationalist, you should take a few things away from this.

1. You should try as hard as possible to stay alive until the Collection Problem is resolved. 
2. You should try as hard as possible to make sure everyone else stays alive until that point as well. 
3. When feasible, you should try to bring other people around to the ways of rationalism. 
4. Death is a tragedy, but it is conceptually reversible.
5. Don't despair if you don't make any progress towards resolving these problems in your lifetime.

Post Script:

Note: this was added on as an edit due to feedback in the comments. 

The original intent of this article was to explain that there's a rational, scientific way to approach the logistical problem of "living forever". 

• I removed the first introductory paragraph. It was inconsistent in both tone and scope with the rest of the post. 
• I've changed the title and removed references to "immortality" to try to eliminate some of the "science fiction" vibe.
• I've tried to update the language so as not to imply that it is universally agreed upon that backing up a brain is a valid method of generating consciousness. 

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.

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.

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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.
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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.
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57. A New, Evidence-based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated with Hospital Care.
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Like most futurist-oriented people, I am fascinated by the idea of long-term life extension -- the notion that eventually people will have life expectancies of hundreds of years; thousands of years; or even more.  Although medicine has a ways to go in this area, one obvious approach is to take low tech steps to increase one's lifespan in hopes of living long enough to take advantage of possible future advances.  i.e., to roll with +1 dice.  Besides the obvious steps like wearing seat belts; getting regular exercise; eating a lot of fruits and vegetables, calorie restriction presents itself as an intriguing possible method of life extension.

In this essay, I will attempt to briefly define calorie restriction; assess how useful it might be; speculate about how it might be useful; and use the foregoing to justify my own personal approach to calorie restriction, which I will describe presently.  Of course I welcome comments and criticisms, especially since I am messing around with my own health.

I should note at the outset that I have no formal training or credentials in medicine nutrition or anything like that.  I'm just an attorney.

I should also add that my approach to calorie restriction is not a diet in the sense of being a weight loss strategy for people who cannot control their eating.  This is not a weight loss post!  I do not describe in this essay how I control my eating; control is assumed.

Last, my general approach is one of no regret.  i.e. My main priority in calorie-restricting myself is to avoid doing anything too radical in terms of loss of quality of life or risk to my health.

I. What is Calorie Restriction?

Wikipedia defines "calorie restriction" as follows:

Caloric restriction (CR), or calorie restriction, is a dietary regiment that is based on low calorie intake. "Low" can be defined relative to the subject's previous intake before intentionally restricting calories, or relative to an average person of similar body type.

So immediately we see a problem -- the concept of calorie restriction is ambiguous.  How am I supposed to evaluate and possibly implement calorie restriction in my life if I am not even clear on what it means?  This is not just a problem for laymen like me.  Imagine you are a researcher who is studying the effects of calorie restrictions in lab chimps.  How do you feed your control group of lab chimps?  Do you let them eat donuts and potato chips ad libitum?  Do you limit them to chimp chow?  Without a clear definition, this is a bit of a conundrum.

In fact, one individual has argued that the difference in treatment of control animals may be part of the reason why two studies on calorie restriction in monkeys had different results:

Further, the NIA study control monkeys were not truly fed ad libitum, unlike the WNPRC study. The regulated portioning of food for the NIA control monkeys may be a slight restriction and, thus, largely prevented obesity. Studies of 10% CR have been reported to increase lifespan in rats compared to ad libitum controls – even more than 25% and 40% CR²⁰. The NIA control monkeys may experience survival benefits from this slight restriction.

http://www.crsociety.org/science/nia_monkey_study

Another individual states as follows:

"Both the NIA and U Wisc studies need to be considered together for proper interpretation. It is clear that the U Wisc "controls" differ from the U Wisc CR group and BOTH NIA groups, and are probably most like the general populations of developed countries.

Because we at NIA wanted to avoid the criticism leveled at many rodent CR studies that controls are overweight and sedentary, we specifically designed our dietary conditions to supply an adequate, but not OVERadequate, caloric intake.

The bottom line is that, for most people (who are more like the U Wisc controls), CR may indeed provide both health (BOTH studies agree on THIS) and longevity benefits.....and of course, most important.....more "healthy years."

https://www.crsociety.org/index.php?/topic/2939-dr-george-roth-comments-on-calorie-restriction-and-nia-monkey-study/

For purposes of this essay, I will offer the following definitions:

1.  "Mild calorie restriction" = restricting calories sufficiently so that you avoid gaining large amounts of weight.

2.  "Moderate calorie restriction" = restricting calories sufficiently so that most of the time you are towards the bottom of your metabolic range.

3.  "Severe calorie restriction" = restricting calories sufficiently so that you end up spending your time significantly below typically fit people in terms of muscle mass and/or body fat.

The first and third definitions are pretty straightforward, although it's worth noting that a lot of people engage in mild calorie restriction unintentionally, just through the operation of their natural system which regulates their appetite/urge to eat/urge to stop eating (John Walker calls this the "food clock.")

The second definition requires a little explanation.   From simple observation, it appears that small changes in one's energy intake result in corresponding changes in one's metabolic rate.  So that if your weight is stable but you eat a little more or less than usual, you might notice that you are a little warmer or cooler than usual.  Evidently the body can and does make small adjustments to its metabolic rate in response to changes in food intake.  This is also consistent with dieters' reports that they feel cold when dieting.

II.     Does Calorie Restriction Work in Humans?

It seems quite likely that mild calorie restriction works in humans based on the observation that fat people have significantly greater mortality than thin people.

For example, as illustrated by the charts here:

http://www.nejm.org/action/showImage?doi=10.1056%2FNEJMoa1000367&iid=f01&

Of course one cannot know this for sure since there is no ethical way to do a large controlled experiment, but still it's reasonable to infer cause and effect:  Common sense says that being fat puts a lot of abnormal extra strain on your system almost all the time.  In any event, there seems to be little downside to mild calorie restriction.

A more interesting question is whether moderate calorie restriction works in humans.  Common sense says that it ought to be beneficial based on the idea that slowing one's metabolism ought to slow the aging process, all things being equal.  One interesting area of research is studies which look at the effect of modest weight loss among obese people.  Is someone who goes from 250 pounds to 225 pounds and stays there more healthy than someone who goes from 210 pounds to 220 pounds and continues to gain weight?  If so, part of the difference might be that the second person is towards the top of his metabolic range while the first person is towards the middle or bottom.

The Calorie Restriction Society web site links to a couple presentations which argue that cancer is actually a metabolic disease related to having too much energy in play.  I'm a bit skeptical of this claim, but it does seem to me that you are inviting trouble by having extra energy floating around in your system.

As for severe calorie restriction, the jury is still out.  I don't put too much stock in the left side of the J-shaped curves comparing body weight to mortality.  Surely a lot of underweight people have serious latent health problems.  What's more interesting to me is that the curves flatten out between BMI of about 19 and 23.5.  This suggests to me that one can realize most of the benefits of reduced body mass by being normal weight and that after that, if there are any benefits, it's diminishing returns.

III.   My Approach to Calorie Restriction

I have decided to adopt an intermediate approach to calorie restriction, i.e. the aim is to stay thin and be towards the bottom of my metabolic range most of the time.  The health benefits to staying thin are pretty clear; there doesn't seem to be much downside; and frankly there are a lot of social benefits.  The benefits of staying towards the bottom of my metabolic range are more iffy, but again there doesn't seem to be much downside to it.  (Putting aside issues of health, the main downside is that it happens pretty frequently that I will have a meal and eat less food than I would have liked to eat.)

Severe calorie restriction seems too speculative to me to be worth the trouble.  Particularly given the social costs and the likely diminishing returns problem.  I like having a somewhat muscular appearance as opposed to a gaunt appearance.  Since my main priority is to avoid regrets, I am not willing to go this route without pretty solid evidence of benefit.

IIIa.  The Nuts and Bolts

What I do is this:  I have a basic daily diet which I believe is reasonably healthy and well-balanced.  Although it is somewhat flexible, it contains roughly the same proportions of macro-nutrients and is roughly the same amount of calories each day.  From careful observation, I have determined that my basic daily diet is about 500 to 600 calories short of my actual daily caloric needs.  i.e. if I stuck to my basic daily diet and ate nothing more, I would lose about a pound a week.  I add a small supplement of extra food to my basic daily diet if I work out at the gym in order to balance out the exercise.  (Interestingly, I once measured and it seems my basic daily diet, including the exercise supplement, is about 2800 calories.  This seems pretty high for a man who is thin, slightly below average height, and only slightly muscular in build.  I'm not sure what to make of it.)

I weigh myself every morning and calculate a 7-day moving average of my weight.  I then subtract this number from a pre-determined reference weight and multiply the result by 100.  This is the number of additional calories I consume that day in the form of reasonably healthy foods.  The idea is to eat close to the minimum to maintain weight, thus staying thin and towards the bottom of my metabolic range.

Now and then my weight spikes upward when I have an event which involves a lot of eating; after that it drifts back down again.  I've been calorie-restricted in this way for some time now.  I feel perfectly fine but after every meal I feel like I could easily eat more.  I pretty much never get heartburn anymore.  I usually wake up quite hungry.  These are about the only effects I have noticed.

IV.  Self-Criticisms of My Approach

In the interest of rationality, it probably makes sense to offer some self-criticism:

1. I found the above scientific references only after I had settled on my approach to calorie restriction.   So there is probably a certain backwardness about my reasoning.  My conclusion is based more on my own intuition, reasoning, observations and common sense than on scientific research.

2.  It never occurred to me to regularly measure my body temperature before and after starting this program.  Which is unfortunate because it may have given me some useful information about the effects of my diet on my metabolism.

3.  There's really no way to measure if any of this is having an effect on my rate of aging.  Without this sort of feedback, I'm pretty much shooting in the dark.

V.  Conclusion

So that's about the extent of my self-experiment.  It's a bit frightening that I'm putting my own health on the line in the face of so much uncertainty.  At same time, it seems like a reasonable, conservative approach which is unlikely to lead to regrets.  Of course there is an excellent chance I will never know how much of an impact my lifestyle had on my overall health.

Anyway, I welcome any intelligent thoughts, suggestions, constructive criticism, etc.

This is the earlier promised post about Dealing with a Major Personal Crisis. Please continue reading there but comment here.

The reasons for posting it this way are explained at the end of the link. I hope this approach does what I want it to.

The paper is called DNA methylation age and human tissues and cell types and it's from Genome Biology. Here is a Nature article based on the paper.

I have submitted this to LW because of its relevance to the measurement of aging and, hence, to life extension. Here is a bit from the Nature piece:

"Ageing is a major health problem, and interestingly there are really no objective measures of aging, other than a verified birth date," says Darryl Shibata, a pathologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "Studies like this one provide important new efforts to increase the rigour of human aging studies."

Note: The discrepancy in spelling ("ageing" vs. "aging") is in the original.

I came up with an idea today: I think it would be useful to have a list of everything that a typical person ought to do. After all, there is quite a lot of stuff that a typical person ought to do; how else is a person supposed to remember it all?

Here's what I've come up with so far:

Health

• Eating well.
• Exercising regularly.
• Mitigating common risks in everyday life (e.g. wearing a seat belt while driving).
• Other everyday health stuff (e.g. not sitting down eight hours a day).
• Visiting a doctor, a dentist, and (if necessary) an optometrist on a regular basis.
• Being familiar with common health problems and what to do about them.
• Being able to recognize medical emergencies and react appropriately.
• Maintaining mental health (see also: pretty much this entire list).

Money

• Educating oneself in career-related skills.
• Getting a job and/or becoming self-employed.
• Networking (see also: interpersonal interaction).
• Investing one's savings appropriately.

Altruism

• Donating to charity.
• Volunteering for charity.
• Doing favors for friends.

Interpersonal interaction

• Developing and maintaining relationships with other people: friendly, romantic, family, others?
• Discussion of useful topics.

Recreation

• Hobbies, finding ways to enjoy yourself. (I'm not sure how to expand on this one.)

Responsibilities

• Any responsibilities one has signed up for.

Productivity

• Developing and maintaining one's ability to get stuff done. (Kinda vague, this one.)
• Maintaining a list of what needs to be done.
• Making good decisions about what to do. In particular, which of the items on this list to focus on and how to accomplish them.

Skills

• Developing the skills one needs to carry out these tasks effectively, through education, experience, and discussion.

Anyone have any suggestions for additions or improvements?

edit 1: some suggestions by Rain and aelephant

I have a master's project I'm having trouble working on. It's something I've wanted to do, and I even started working on, long before I started my master's degree. If I can't even enjoy that, then I'm doomed to spend eight hours a day doing something I hate for the rest of my life. Even if I manage to improve my willpower, I doubt I'll be very productive doing something I don't want to do.

Does anyone have any idea how I can enjoy working more?

Why don't we have Life Hack thread like we do have Media Threads and Rationality Quote Threads?

Well, now we do.

I'm copying in the comments some hacks previously written about by others for your convenience, also check out the Munchkin post if you haven't, there are many interesting hacks there. Timewise, I've made it quarterly because it is harder to face a life hack than it is to face o quote, so less frequency may improve average quality. Below is a suggested description for them with structure taken from media threads. Any further ideas on how to improve the thread are welcome and should be made at the Metathread tree.

This is the quarterly thread for posting Life Hacks of various types that you've found that you enjoy. Four main thread-trees will be in the comment section.  

1) There is substantial evidence for it  (please post pointers to it)

2) I tried/ Friends tried/ There is some small evidence for it

3) Seems like a cool idea

4) Metathread

Rules:

• Please avoid downvoting recommendations just because you don't personally like the recommended material; remember that liking is a two-place word. If you can point out a specific flaw in a person's recommendation, consider posting a comment to that effect.
• If you want to post something that (you know) has been recommended before, but have another recommendation to add, please link to the original, so that the reader has both recommendations.
• Please use the comment trees for level of certainty regarding effectiveness.  There is a Metathread for comments about future threads.
• Please post all Hacks separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately.  (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments.  If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)

An interesting article on the Immortality Project at UC Riverside. This is the website.

This seems like something for LWers to look into - they're offering grants and essay prizes.

And I don't mean that they must concern themselves with death in the sense of ending death, or removing its sting through mental backups, or delaying it to the later ages of the universe; or in the sense of working to decrease the probability of extinction risks and other forms of megadeath; or even in the sense of saving as many lives as possible, as efficiently as possible. All of that is legitimate and interesting. But I mean something far more down to earth.

First, let me specify more precisely who I am talking about. I mean people who are trying to maximize the general welfare; who are trying to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number; who are trying to do the best thing possible with their lives. When someone like that makes decisions, they are implicitly choosing among possible futures in a very radical way. They may be making judgments about whether a future with millions or billions of extra lives is better than some alternative. Whether anyone is ever in a position to make that much of a difference is another matter; but we can think of it like voting. You are at least making a statement about which sort of future you think you prefer, and then you do what you can, and that either makes a difference or it doesn't.

It seems to me that the discussions about the value of life among utilitarians are rather superficial. The typical notion is that we should maximize net pleasure and minimize net pain. Already that poses the question of whether a life of dull persistent happiness is better or worse than a life of extreme highs and lows. A more sophisticated notion is that we should just aspire to maximize "utility", where perhaps we don't even know what utility is yet. Certainly the CEV philosophy is that we don't yet know what utility really is for human beings. It would be interesting to see people who took that agnosticism to heart, people whose life-strategy amounted to (1) discovering true utility as soon as possible (2) living according to interim heuristics whose uncertainty is recognized, but which are adopted out of the necessity of having some sort of personal decision procedure.

So what I'm going to say pertains to (2). You may, if you wish, hold to the idea that the nature of true utility, like true friendliness, won't be known until the true workings of the human mind are known. What follows is something you should think on in order to refine your interim heuristics.

The first thing is that to create a life is to create a death. A life ends. And while the end of a life may not be its most important moment, it reminds us that a life is a whole. Any accurate estimation of the utility of a life is going to be a judgment of that whole.

So a utilitarian ought to contemplate the deaths of the world, and the lives that reach their ends in those deaths. Because the possible futures, that you wish to choose between, are distinguished by the number and nature of the whole lives that they contain. And all these dozens of people, all around the world of the present, ceasing to exist in every minute that passes, are examples of completed lives. Those lives weren't necessarily complete, in the sense of all personal desires and projects having come to their conclusion; but they came to their physical completion.

To choose one future over another is to prefer one set of completed lives to another set. It would be a godlike decision to truly be solely responsible for such a choice. In the real world, people hardly choose their own futures, let alone the future of the world; choice is a lifelong engagement with an evolving and partially known situation, not a once-off choice between several completely known scenarios; and even when a single person does end up being massively influential, they generally don't know what sort of future they're bringing about. The actual limitations on the knowledge and power of any individual may make the whole quest of the "ambitious utilitarian" seem quixotic. But a new principle, a new heuristic, can propagate far beyond one individual, so thinking big can have big consequences.

The main principle that I derive, from contemplating the completed lives of the world, is cautionary antinatalism. The badness of what can happen in a life, and the disappointing character of what usually happens, are what do it for me. I am all for the transhumanist quest and the struggle for a friendly singularity, and I support the desire of people who are already alive to make the most of that life. But I would recommend against the creation of life, at least until the current historical drama has played itself out - until the singularity, if I must use that word. We are in the process of gaining new powers and learning new things, there are obvious unknowns in front of us that we are on the way to figuring out, so at least hold off until they have been figured out and we have a better idea of what reality is about, and what we can really hope for, from existence.

However, the object of this post is not to argue for my special flavor of antinatalism. It is to encourage realistic consideration of what lives and futures are like. In particular, I would encourage more "story thinking", which has been criticized in favor of "systems thinking". Every actual life is a "story", in the sense of being a sequence of events that happens to someone. If you were judging the merit of a whole possible world on the basis of the whole lives that it contained, then you would be making a decision about whether those stories ought to actually occur. The biographical life-story is the building block of such possible worlds.

So an ambitious utilitarian, who aspires to have a set of criteria for deciding among whole possible worlds, really needs to understand possible lives. They need to know what sort of lives are likely under various circumstances; they need to know the nature of the different possible lives - what it's like to be that person; they need to know what sort of bad is going to accompany the sort of good that they decide to champion. They need to have some estimation of the value of a whole life, up to and including its death.

As usual, we are talking about a depth of knowledge that may in practice be impossible to attain. But before we go calling something impossible, and settling for a lesser ambition, let's at least try to grasp what the greater ambition truly entails. To truly choose a whole world would be to make the decision of a god, about the lives and deaths that will occur in that world. The future of our world, for some time to come, will repeat the sorts of lives and deaths that have already occurred in it. So if, in your world-planning, you don't just count on completely abolishing the present world and/or replacing it with a new one that works in a completely different way, you owe it to your cause to form a judgement about the totality of what has already happened here on Earth, and you need to figure out what you approve of, what you disapprove of, whether you can have the good without the bad, and how much badness is too much.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/at-work/test-and-measurement/re-imagining-our-genes-encode-project-reveals-genome-as-an-information-processing-system/?utm_source=techalert&utm_medium=email&utm_camp

Just a few years ago, the prevailing wisdom said that the genome comprises 3 percent or so genes and 97 percent “junk” (with 2 or 3 percent of that junk consisting of the fossilized remains of retroviruses that infected our ancestors somewhere along the line). After a decade of painstaking analysis by more than 200 scientists, the new ENCODE data show that indeed 2.94 percent of the genome is protein-coding genes, while 80.4 percent of sequences regulate how those genes get turned on, turned off, expressed, processed, and modified.

This fundamentally changes how most biologists understand the master instruction set of life: we are, in short, 3 percent  input/output and 80 percent logic. (Though perhaps a surprise to biologists, the finding will hardly astound anyone who has designed a complex interactive system.)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a really big deal, right?

I just read this article (which is well worth reading for anyone interested in cryonics).  One of the important things that the article points out is that, while it takes some time for the memory structures of the brain to degrade due to ischemia, one of the more rapid effects is blood clotting in the fine capillaries of the brain after fairly brief ischemia.  This reduces the flow of cryoprotectant, and causes large swathes of neural tissue to be frozen, instead of vitrified, which would be catastrophic for personal identity.  While this is not a problem for best-case 'standby' cryonics, it is a problem for those who cannot afford a standby team, or are simply hit by cars.

Being an engineer, my first thought is that this is ridiculous, and there has to be a better solution to the problem.  It may be possible to build a device, maybe the size of a shoe box, which can be deployed in the field by a minimally-trained amateur (like a defibrillator), and perfuses the brain with cold saline and anti-coagulants -- or even a synthetic oxygen carrier).  I'm picturing a cylinder of fluid, large needles with sterilizing caps for tapping the jugular and carotid arteries, and a gas cylinder to provide pressure.  You'd simply break a chemical cold pack, put a plastic neck brace in place and insert the needles, and press a button.

Such a device could even be useful to non-cryonicists, as a way to prevent ischemic injury in people found medically dead at the scene of an accident, during transport to the hospital.  

Does anyone with more of a medical background know if such a machine would be at all feasible?  I can't imagine it would be expensive to construct.      

Kaj Sotala said:

[I]f you punish yourself for trying and failing, you stop wanting to try in the first place, as it becomes associated with the negative emotions. Also, accepting and being okay with the occasional failure makes you treat it as a genuine choice where you have agency, not something that you're forced to do against your will.

So maybe we should celebrate failed attempts more often ... I for one can't think of anything I've failed at recently, which is probably a sign that I'm not trying enough new things.

So, what specific things have you failed at recently?

In the very back of Kaj's excellent How to Run a Successful Less Wrong Meetup Group booklet, he has a recommended reading section, including the classic book How to Win Friends and Influence People.

It just so happens that not only have I read the book myself, but I have written up a concise summary of the core advice here. Kaj suggested that I post this on the discussion section because others might find it useful, so here you go!

I suspect that more people are willing to read a summary of a book from the 1930s than an actual book from the 1930s. What I will say about reading the long-form text is that it can be more useful for internalizing these concepts and giving examples of them. It is far too easy to abstractly know what you need to do, much harder to actually take action on those beliefs...

Aubrey de Grey, Chief Science Officer of the SENS Foundation, has posted a video with answers to some of the questions posed at him in a recent Reddit AMA.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eet44YacRg

As everyone here knows, it would be a stupid idea to switch from airplanes to cars out of safety/terrorism concerns: Cars are a much more risky means of transportation than airplanes. But what other major risks are there that many people systematically undervalue or are not even consciously aware of?

The same can be asked for chances.

Although there are no long-term scientific studies of calorie restriction in humans, there are religious groups, cults, and ascetics who voluntarily practice calorie restriction or intermittent fasting. Presumably there have been tens or hundreds of thousands of people who have practiced calorie restriction throughout most of their adult lives. There were/are probably also groups that involuntarily practice calorie restriction - servants, slaves, prisoners, or people who simply regularly don't have enough to eat.

If calorie restriction has a dramatic effect on life expectancy in humans, shouldn't we expect to observe extended life expectancy in at least some groups? Or would each of these groups likely have some mitigating circumstances that would shorten their lifespans, such as lack of medicine?

With an hour on Google, I found some references to Okinawa, to monks on Mount Athos, and to similar groups. In no case was there a reasonable claim of life expectancy over 90 (which would represent just a 10% improvement over life expectancy in Japan).

This paper reviews the evidence on calorie restriction in humans and other animals, including discussion of religious fasting, but there's no evidence there of fasting extending lifespan.

I found a few other sources where people asked this question (or made this point as an attack on CR), but I haven't yet found any good answers on the subject, and didn't find any discussion on LessWrong yet.

Hey all - I typed this out to help me understand, well... how to understand things:

Mental clarity is the ability to read reality accurately. 

I don't mean being able to look at the complete objective picture of an event, as you don't have any direct access to that. I'm talking about the ability to read the data presented by your subjective experience: thoughs, sights, sounds, etc. Once you get a clear picture of what that data is, you can then go on and use it to build or falsify your ideas about the world.

This post will focus on the "getting a clear picture" part.

I use the word "read" because it's no different than reading from a book, or from these words. When you read a book, you are actually curious as to what the words are saying. You wouldn't read anything into it that's not there, which would be counterproductive to your understanding.

You just look at the words plainly, and through this your mind automatically recognizes and presents the patterns: the meaning of the sentences, their relation to the topic, the visual imagery associated with them, all of that. If you want to know a truth about reality, just look at it and read what's there.

Want to know what the weather's like? Look outside - read what's going on.

Want to know if the Earth revolves around the Sun, or vice versa? Look at the movement of the planets, read what they're doing, see which theory fits better.

Want to check if your beliefs about the world are correct? Take one, read the reality that the belief tries to correspond to, and see how well they compare.

This is the root of all science and all epiphanies.

But if it's so simple and obvious, why am I talking about it?

It's not something that we as a species often do. For trivial matters, sure, for science too, but not for our strongly-held opinions. Not for the beliefs and positions that shape our self-image, make us feel good/comfortable, or get us approval. Not for our political opinions, religious ideas, moral judgements, and little white lies.

If you were utterly convinced that your wife was faithful, moreso, if you liked to think of her in that way, and your friend came along and said she was cheating on you, you'd be reluctant to read reality and check if that's true. Doing this would challenge your comfort and throw you into an unknown world with some potentially massive changes. It would be much more comforting to rationalize why she still might be faithful, than to take one easy look at the true information. It would also more damaging.

Delusion is reading into reality things which aren't there. Telling yourself that everything's fine when it obviously isn't, for example. It's the equivalent of looking at a book about vampires and jumping to the conclusion that it's about wizards.

Sounds insane. You do it all the time. You'll catch yourself if you're willing to read the book of your own thoughts: flowing through your head, in plain view, is a whole mess of opinions and ideas of people, places, and positions you've never even encountered. Crikey!

That mess is incredibly dangerous to have. Being a host to unchecked or false beliefs about the world is like having a faulty map of a terrain: you're bound to get lost or fall off a cliff. Reading the terrain and re-drawing the map accordingly is the only way to accurately know where you're going. Having an accurate map is the only way to achieve your goals.

So you want to develop mental clarity? Be less confused, or more successful? Have a better understanding of the world, the structure of reality, or the accuracy of your ideas? 

Just practice the accurate reading of what's going on. Surrender the content of your beliefs to the data gathered by your reading of reality. It's that simple.

It can also be scary, especially when it comes to challenging your "personal" beliefs. It's well worth the fear, however, as a life built on truth won't crumble like one built on fiction.

Truth doesn't crumble.

Stay true.

Further reading:

Stepvhen from Burning true on truth vs. fantasy.

Kevin from Truth Strike on why this skill is important to develop.

(This post is part of the attempt to do a write up after every Cambridge_UK meetup, of something raised at the meetup.)

What is life?

Eliezer, in "The First World Takeover", talks about the search for objects with increasing numbers of bits of functional complexity.  He framed the difference between life, and the previous non-living universe, as being the introduction of self-replicators who could search for self-replicators with an improved ability to search.

In terms of organisms that share genes among a population via sexual reproduction, we have to consider this search mechanism (evolution by natural selection) to be a property of a population rather than of a single individual.

And, indeed, when we take into account the speed limit and complexity bound for evolution, what we're looking for is a population who search faster than the natural decay rate imposed by copying fidelity, genome size and how many harmful mutations get dropped each generation by the fraction of the population that don't reproduce.

And that is relative to the environment the population happens to find themselves situated in.  Radiation affects mutation rate.  Harshness of the environment (including competitors) determines whether the population is viable (replacement rate at least equals the death rate) or whether they will spiral down into extinction.

So maybe, rather than asking whether an individual or system of individuals counts as a life form, perhaps a more well defined question would be to ask whether they count as a viable searcher relative to a specific environment.

Why does that distinction matter?

Are prions living?  How about viruses?   Crystals?

We know that a turing complete machine can be implemented in Conway's Game of Life and that, given a very specific environment, crystals can not only self-replicate, but also pass on information to their 'off-spring'.   So it would make sense to say that a system of crystals might be constructed that would be 'alive' relative to a specific environment that permitted the system to evolve - to 'search' not just for a variant replicator that might be improved in some limited way (such as replicating faster), but search unlimited bits of search space, including for an improved searcher.

Whereas a virus or prion would not count, unless in a particular environment the information they pass from generation to generation is able to alter the 'search' mechanism (the machinery that replicates them) in a way that can improve how it 'searches'.

The topic was raised at the meet-up, by the way, over the question of under what circumstances it would make sense to count as being alive, self-replicators made of synthetic RNA.  A definitive answer wasn't reached.   Any opinions?

(Please note, I'm not an expert in these areas, just writing up the report, so any mistakes are mine, not those of the meet-up participants who generated the specific ideas.)

Consider a scenario in which there are three rooms. In each room there is an independent 1/1000 chance of an agent being created. There is thus a 1/10⁹ probability of there being an agent in every room, a (3*999)/10⁹ probability of there being two agents, and a (3*999²)/10⁹ probability of there being one.

Given that you are one of these agents, the SIA and SSA probabilities of there being n agents are:

The expected numbers of agents is (1(3*999²) + 2(2*3*999) + 3(3*1))/(3*1+2*3*999+1*3*999²) = 1.002 for SIA, and (1(3*999²) + 2(3*999) + 3(1))/(1+3*999+3*999²) ≈ 1.001 for SSA. The high unlikelihood of life means that, given that we are alive, both SIA and SSA probabilities get dominated by worlds with very few agents.

This of course only applies to agents who existence is independent (for instance, separate galactic civilizations). If you're alive, chance are that your parents were also alive at some point too.

Briefly Start the week is a popular BBC radio 4 program discussing scientific and cultural events in the UK. This episode covers a lot of issues relevant to Less Wrong.

In their own words: 

"Andrew Marr explores the limits of science and art in this week's Start the Week. The philosopher and neuroscientist Raymond Tallis mounts an all-out assault on those who see neuroscience and evolutionary theory as holding the key to understanding human consciousness and society. While fellow scientist Barbara Sahakian explores the ethical dilemmas which arise when new drugs developed to treat certain conditions are used to enhance performance in the general population. And the gerontologist Aubrey de Grey looks to the future when regenerative medicine prevents the process of aging."

Available for listening here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0122szw

Podcast here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006r9xr

Admittedly this is a more populist approach to the issues then we're used to, and there are a few moments where the guests make statements we would find a bit silly. But it seems to provide a very good summary of the issues for a lay audience, and an excellent defense of the moral importance of life extension. 

Thoughts?

Abstract:    

This Article presents two new arguments against “discounting” future human lives during cost-benefit analysis, arguing that even absent ethical objections to the disparate treatment of present and future humanity, the economic calculations of cost-benefit analysis itself - if properly calculated - counsel against discounting lives at anything close to current rates. In other words, even if society sets aside all concerns with the discounting of future generations in principle, current discounting of future human lives cannot be justified even on the discounters’ own terms. First, because cost-benefit analysis has thus far ignored evidence of rising health care expenditures, it underestimates the “willingness to pay” for health and safety that future citizens will likely exhibit, thereby undervaluing their lives. Second, cost-benefit analysis ignores the trend of improved material conditions in developed countries. As time advances, residents of rich countries tend to live better and spend more, meaning that a strict economic monetization of future persons values the lives of our expected descendents above those of present citizens. These two factors justify “inflation” of future lives that would offset, perhaps completely, the discount rate used for human life. Until regulators correct their method of discounting the benefits of saving human lives in the future, the United States will continue to suffer the fatal costs of underregulation, and agencies will remain in violation of legal requirements to maximize net benefits.

Link: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1845504

Paper (PDF): SSRN-id1845504.pdf

Via: marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/06/dont-apply-positive-discount-rates-to-human-lives.html

http://blog.regehr.org/archives/546

John Regehr, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Utah, writes about two algorithmic optimizations for Conway's Game of Life, and speculates on the implications for self-aware entities in simulations.

Hashlife is a clever optimization that treats the Life grid as a hierarchy of quadtrees. By observing that the maximum speed of signal propagation in a Life configuration is one cell per step, it becomes possible to evolve squares of the Life grid multiple steps into the future using hash codes. Hashlife is amazing to watch: it starts out slow but as the hashtable fills up, it suddenly “explodes” into exponential progress. I recommend Golly. Hashlife is one of my ten all-time favorite algorithms.

Those who have read Greg Egan's Permutation City will find the concept of Hashlife familiar.

Another ingenious simulation speedup (developed, as it happens, around the same time as Hashlife) is Time Warp, which relaxes the synchronization requirements, permitting a processor to run well ahead of its neighbors. This opens up the possibility that a processor will at some point receive a message that violates causality: it needs to be executed in the past. Clearly this is a problem. The solution is to roll back the simulation state to the time of the message and resume execution from there. If rollbacks are infrequent, overall performance may increase due to improved asynchrony. This is a form of “optimistic concurrency” and it can be shown to preserve the meaning of a simulation in the sense that the Time Warp implementation must always return the same final answer as the non-optimistic implementation.

Hi, lesswrong.

I just finished my application for android devices, LifeTracking, which has been motivated by the discussions here; primarily discussions about akrasia and measuring/tracking your own actions. I don't want to make this sound like an advertisement (the application is completely free anyway), but I would really really like to get feedback from you and hear your comments, criticism, and suggestions. If there are enough LessWrong-specific feature requests, I will make a separate application just for that.

Here is a brief description of the app:

LifeTracking application allows you to track any value (like your weight or your lesswrong karma), as well as any time-consuming activities (like sleeping, working, reading Harry Potter fanfic, etc). You can see the data visually, edit it, and analyze it.

The goal of the application is to help you know yourself and your schedule better. Hopefully, when you graph various aspects of your life side-by-side you will come to a better understanding of yourself. Also, this way you will not have to rely on your faulty memory to remember all that data.

You can download the app from the Market (link only works from Android devices) or download .apk directly. Screenshots: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6].

Edit: LifeTracking website

And while we are on topic of mobile apps, what other applications would you like to see made? (For example, another useful application would be "your personal prediction tracker", where you enter various short-term predictions, your confidence interval, and then enter the actual result. You can classify each prediction and then see if you are over- or under-confident in certain areas. (I remember seeing a website that does something similar, but can't find it now.))

Most people in the US with internet connections who are reading this site will at some point in their lives graduate high school. I haven't yet, and it seems like what I do afterwards will have a pretty big effect on the rest of my life.* 

Given that, I think I should ask for some advice.

Generally,
Any advice? Anything you wish you knew? Disagreement with the premise? (If you disagree, please explain what to do anyway.)

More specific to the site,
Any advice for high schoolers with a rationalist and singularitarian bent? Who are probably looking at going to college?
Anything particularly effective for working against existential risk?
Any fields particularly useful for rationalists to know?
Any fields in which rationalists would be particularly helpful?

This is intended to be a pretty general reference for life advice for the young ones among us. With a college selection bent, probably. If you're in high school and have a specific situation that you want help with/advice for, please reply to this post with that. I think that a most people have specific skills/background they could leverage, so a one-size-fits all approach seems to be somewhat simplistic.

*I understand that I can always change plans later, but there are many many things that seem to require some level of commitment, like college.

Edit:
As Unnamed pointed out, also look at this article about undergraduate course selection.

There's a good song by Eminem - If I had a million dollars.  So, if I had a hypothetical task to give away $30 million to different foundations without having a right to influence the projects, I would distribute them as follows, $3 million for each organization:

1. Nanofactory collaboration, Robert Freitas, Ralph Merkle – developers of molecular nanotechnology and nanomedicine. Robert Freitas is the author of the monography Nanomedicine.
2. Singularity institute, Michael Vassar, Eliezer Yudkowsky – developers and ideologists of the friendly Artificial Intelligence
3. SENS Foundation, Aubrey de Grey – the most active engineering project in life extension, focused on the most promising underfunded areas
4. Cryonics Institute – one of the biggest cryonics firms in the US, they are able to use the additional funding more effectively as compared to Alcor
5. Advanced Neural Biosciences, Aschwin de Wolf – an independent cryonics research center created by ex-researchers from Suspended Animation
6. Brain observatory – brain scanning
7. University Hospital Careggi in Florence, Paolo Macchiarini – growing organs (not an American medical school, because this amount of money won’t make any difference to the leading American centers)
8. Immortality institute – advocating for immortalism, selected experiments
9. IEET – institute of ethics and emerging technologies – promotion of transhumanist ideas
10. Small research grants of $50-300 thousand

Now, if the task is to most effectively invest $30 million dollars, what projects would be chosen? (By effectiveness here I mean increasing the chances of radical life extension)

Well, off the top of my head:

1. The project: “Creation of technologies to grow a human liver” – $7 million. The project itself costs approximately $30-50 million, but $7 million is enough to achieve some significant intermediate results and will definitely attract more funds from potential investors.
2. Break the world record in sustaining viability of a mammalian head separate from the body - $0.7 million
3. Creation of an information system, which characterizes data on changes during aging in humans, integrates biomarkers of aging, and evaluates the role of pharmacological and other interventions in aging processes – $3 million
4. Research in increasing cryoprotectors efficacy - $3 million
5. Creation and realization of a program “Regulation of epigenome” - $5 million
6. Creation, promotion and lobbying of the program on research and fighting aging - $2 million
7. Educational programs in the fields of biogerontology, neuromodelling, regenerative medicine, engineered organs - $1.5 million
8. “Artificial blood” project - $2 million
9. Grants for authors, script writers, and art representatives for creation of pieces promoting transhumanism - $0.5 million
10. SENS Foundation project of removing senescent cells - $2 million
11. Creation of a US-based non-profit, which would protect and lobby the right to live and scientific research in life extension - $2 million
11. Participation of  “H+ managers” in conferences, forums  and social events - $1 million
12. Advocacy and creating content in social media - $0.3 million