Yes, that is normal in healthy relationships. You should gain emotional energy and emotional stability from them. My girlfriend and I are both introverts, but we can spend hours together with no problem, while if we spend the same amount of time with other people we are very drained. We still do need alone time, but it's not the same as spending the time with other people, even close friends.

Theoretically, the market portfolio, which is the efficient portfolio according to Modern Portfolio Theory should replicate the world's assets weighted by value. For America, household (and non-profit) net worth is ~$85T and the value of real estate holdings is ~$14T (value less mortgages) (source), so about 16% is pretty justifiable. This is all pretty back of the envelope though.

It's not that unusual. I think it's rare that someone would specifically wear 2 t-shirts, but it's extremely common for people to wear a t-shirt over a long-sleeved shirt, or for women to wear a long tank top underneath a shorter tank top (or variations on this theme) for a layering effect, at least in America.

Not being an expert on Swedish culture, I am interested to hear this obvious explanation. Could you be more explicit?

I think it would be better posted to the open thread.

Given people's limited range, this seems like it would be hard to learn. The first time you travel to the Middle East it would seem very alien, but you wouldn't be able to locate yourself on a map.

I think on Less Wrong of all places people should be able to say things like that if they think they are true. Gandhi and Martin Luther King aren't really known for their internal experience of universal love and compassion, they are known for the remarkable works they accomplished. The magnitude of their compassion as far as we know is a reflection of the mythology surrounding them. There is absolutely no reason to believe that having the same internal experience as them will lead to accomplishments so grand, and in fact it seems very unlikely to me given the large number of extremely accomplished meditators who claim to have the internal experience of universal loving-kindness. Though they are large in number, very few (potentially = 0) are as well known as Gandhi. Not being able to point to works as remarkable as some of the most remarkable historical figures in our current cultural awareness is very scant evidence that someone does not experience universal love and compassion of the same sort.

There are already dispensing machines that dispense doses on a timer. They are mostly targeted at people who need reminding (e.g. Alzheimers), though, rather than people who may want to take too much. I don't think the cryptographic security would be the problem in that scenario, but the physical security of the device. You would need some trusted way to reload it and it would have to be very difficult to open even though it would presumably just be sitting on your table at home, which is a very high bar. It could possibly be combined with always-on tampering reporting and legal threats to make the idea of tampering with it less appealing though.

One of those HN comments made me realize that you'd perfectly described a business situation that I'd just been in (a B2B integration, where the counterparty defected scuttling the deal), so they were interesting to me. Maybe this argues that you should have included more examples, but it's unlikely that it would have sparked that thought except that it was the perfect example.

I worded that poorly. I wasn't referring to the flavor of the ethanol, I was referring to the flavor of the alcoholic beverage. And by flavor I was really referring to the sensory experience of consuming the beverage, including taste, smell and touch sensations, not specifically the way it binds to receptors in your taste buds. So I don't think that's a big problem, more like a nitpick. I encourage you to be more charitable in your future readings of my comments, to say "what here might be true, or pointing to a true effect" and then engaging with that, rather than searching for things to be dismissive about.

From the inside, it genuinely feels like I enjoy the sensation of drinking whiskey. I am the sort of person that will look for tasting notes in spirits. But I don't drink non psychoactive drinks that way, and no one else does either, which you would expect they would if the flavor's subtle complexity on its own were enough to explain the fact that it tastes good. If everyone were going around drinking something that tasted just like 30 year-old scotch, but without alcohol, and they all talked about how interesting, subtle and complex its flavor profile it, I'm pretty sure I would have tried it once and said, "This tastes gross" and never tried it again. So I don't think a purely social explanation is sufficient.