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Enjoying food more: a case study in third options
This was originally going to be a comment on Zvi's excellent "How I Lost 100 Pounds Using TDT", but it ran rather long, so I expanded it to a top-level post. Hope no one minds.
The issue I took with Zvi's post was that there seemed to be a general assumption being made -- not just in the post, but in comments -- about improvements in health outcomes coming from sacrifices in food-related hedonic outcomes. This would make sense if we were all on some efficient frontier between nutrition and enjoyment of food. I think for most of us1 this is blatantly false.
So then, here are three steps aimed simply towards enjoying food more.2 Eat better food. Eat food you actually like. Pay attention when you eat. These steps may themselves mildly improve your health outcomes, but they are intended primarily to help you enjoy food. You can of course combine them with efficient trades between hedons and nutrition, and wind up doing drastically better for both.
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Saturation, Distillation, Improvisation: A Story About Procedural Knowledge And Cookies
Most propositional knowledge (knowledge of facts) is pretty easy to come by (at least in principle). There is only one capital of Venezuela, and if you wish to learn the capital of Venezuela, Wikipedia will cooperatively inform you that it is Caracas. For propositional knowledge that Wikipedia knoweth not, there is the scientific method. Procedural knowledge - the knowledge of how to do something - is a different animal entirely. This is true not only with regard to the question of whether Wikipedia will be helpful, but also in the brain architecture at work: anterograde amnesiacs can often pick up new procedural skills while remaining unable to learn new propositional information.
One complication in learning new procedures is that there are usually dozens, if not hundreds, of ways to do something. Little details - the sorts of things that sink into the subconscious with practice but are crucial to know for a beginner - are frequently omitted in casual descriptions. Often, it can be very difficult to break into a new procedurally-oriented field of knowledge because so much background information is required. While there may be acknowledged masters of the procedure, it is rarely the case that their methods are ideal for every situation and potential user, because the success of a procedure depends on a vast array of circumstantial factors.
I propose below a general strategy for acquiring new procedural knowledge. First, saturate by getting a diverse set of instructions from different sources. Then, distill by identifying what all or most of them have in common. Finally, improvise within the remaining search space to find something that works reliably for you and your circumstances.
The strategy is not fully general: I expect it would only work properly for procedures that are widely attempted and shared; that you can afford to try multiple times; that have at least partially independent steps so you can mix and match; and that are in fields you have at least a passing familiarity with. The sort of procedural knowledge that I seek with the most regularity is how to make new kinds of food, so I will illustrate my strategy with a description of how I used it to learn to make meringues. If you find cookies a dreadfully boring subject of discourse, you may not wish to read the rest of this post.
Essay-Question Poll: Dietary Choices
I have noticed that among philosophers, vegetarianism of one form or another is quite common. In fact, I became a vegetarian (technically a pescetarian) myself partly out of respect for an undergraduate philosophy professor. I am interested in finding out if there is a similar disproportion in the Less Wrong community.
I didn't request that this go into Yvain's survey because I want more information than just what animal products you do or don't eat; I'd also like to see nuances of the reasons behind your diet. There are a lot more shades than carnivore/vegetarian/vegan - if you want to be a vegetarian but are allergic to soy and gluten, that's a compelling reason to diversify protein sources, for instance. I'd also like to hear about if you avoid any plant foods (if you think they're farmed in a way that's environmentally destructive or that hurts people or if you have warm fuzzy feelings for plants, maybe). Here are some questions that come to mind:
- What foods, if any, do you normally avoid for reasons other than pure culinary taste, cost, individual health concerns (allergies, diabetes, etc.) or ease of preparation? (Avoiding foods that are considered revolting or just non-food in your culture of origin, like balut or fried locusts, counts as "culinary taste".)
- What are your reasons for avoiding those foods?
- How strictly do you avoid them? For instance, will you eat them if you are served them while a guest at a meal, or if you are hungry and there is nothing else available? Do you check to see if they're in potentially questionable dishes at restaurants (and if so, do you trust what the server says?)
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