I think people here underestimate how many times you have to drink in order to enjoy it.

Given how seemingly objectively unfavorable the flavor of alcohol is, it's likely that the only reason people find beer, wine or liquor enjoyable is because they are conditioned to associate that flavor with the positive effects it has on their mood.

Would you mind explaining this a bit more? I'm confused. Why/when exactly do you think that drinking -> enjoying drinking more? Also, you say that people associate it with positive effects on their mood, but what originally produces those positive effects?

People on Less Wrong are, in my limited experience, much less interested in drinking than average for their demographic.

When I was in high school, I never drank with my friends, really, and I didn't see the appeal of it. When I went to college I joined a social group that enjoyed drinking and, though I didn't really enjoy it that much in the beginning, eventually I did come to enjoy it. Now I still enjoy drinking a reasonable amount, and even getting very drunk on rare occasions where it seems like it would be fun. I think people here underestimate how many times you have to drink in order to enjoy it. My brother decided that it would be beneficial to try enjoying alcohol while he was in his late 30s, and he really had to put in some effort, but eventually, after perhaps dozens of parties where he forced himself to drink, he started to enjoy it.

Given how seemingly objectively unfavorable the flavor of alcohol is, it's likely that the only reason people find beer, wine or liquor enjoyable is because they are conditioned to associate that flavor with the positive effects it has on their mood. Heroin addicts find the idea of injecting needles into their arms to be enjoyable, even thrilling, so the power of association is almost arbitrarily powerful if you have something satisfying enough to associate it with.

I think the answer is mostly two, with a little side of four. Nutrition science is very difficult to perform correctly, because of the difficulty and cost of randomized controlled trials of diets. In particular, the China study was not controlled, and it was performed via surveys (which have a reputation for being inaccurate in diet studies). Added to that is the fact that food isn't really about food. It's deeply intertwined with our sense of personal identity and culture, and that leaves you with many researchers stretching their relatively weak evidence a little bit further than is warranted. Once you get as far removed from the actual science as recommendations from the FDA or Harvard School of Public Health, there is virtually no room left for nuance, and they are already making recommendations from a public health perspective, which is not the perspective you seek.

With respect to confirmation bias, I suspect there is some of that going on. Specifically, you say, "There are lots of people who are PhDs of exercise, anthropology, or economics who criticize his recommendations, but I have a hard time finding a mass gathering of nutrition scientists coming out of the woodwork to shoot down his recommendations." There are probably not "mass gatherings of nutrition scientists" who disagree with the China Study, but there are mass gatherings of experts in medicine and various biological fields (and maybe the odd nutrition scientist) who would probably disagree with the China Study. Googling "paleo conference" I could easily find several such mass gatherings. So you aren't wrong, but you are implying more with your selection of outsider expertises than is warranted (exercise, anthropology or economics, rather than doctors, biologists, etc.).

With respect to the object-level consideration, I recommend you read Stephan Guyenet's recent series of articles on meat Is Meat Unhealthy?, which considers both positive and negative factors of eating meat. He is not a nutritional scientist (he is a neurobiologist), but he is by all appearances a careful scholar. You can read the summary first if you want to see his ultimate conclusions, which don't strongly support either the "vegan" or the carnivorous sides of the debate.

However, with respect to the China Study itself, he only touches on it in this series thusly:

The China Study

The China Study was a massive ecological study relating diet and lifestyle to chronic disease risk in China. It has been invoked by researcher and vegan diet advocate Colin Campbell to support the idea that animal foods promote cardiovascular disease and cancer, even in the small quantities that were typical of the regions studied. After having reviewed the study data, the publications based on it, and the various commentaries on it, it appears relatively clear that the China Study does not support the conclusion that meat consumption is associated with cardiovascular disease or cancer risk (17, 18, 19, 20, 21). Everyone seems to agree on that, except Campbell and certain other vegan diet advocates. I won't discuss the China Study further.

And elsewhere has criticized it on methodological grounds (e.g. here)

I've had the idea before that a group of LWers keen to start an inflammatory political argument could help keep LW cool by having the argument on an unrelated, pre-existing, general politics forum. They could link the argument on the Open Thread so the rest of us know it's happening.

Possible advantages & disadvantages:

• fewer political flame-outs on LW...
• ...more political flame-outs on Unnamed Other Forum
• other forum posters would likely have worse argumentative norms...
• ...but you could look for a forum with relatively good norms to minimize this (a pre-existing LW-affiliated blog/network, or a traditional rationalist/sceptic forum with a politics subforum?)
• LWers modelling good argumentative norms to strangers might get the strangers to up their own game...
• ...or social contagion might happen in the other direction, with LWers regressing towards the mean for online political arguments
• has the trivial inconvenience of requiring LWers to register on another forum and post there, even as they continue to post other stuff here...
• ...but maybe a trivial inconvenience is what you want if you think the marginal LW political argument has net negative value
• could be interpreted as a forum invasion...
• ...but it's not like LWers are trolls, and only a few LWers would likely bother with this anyway, so they'd probably blend into a bigger on-topic forum without much fuss
• might entrench misinterpretations of "Politics is the Mindkiller"
• in the unlikely event this became a firmly established norm, LWers might start demanding threads be taken elsewhere at the least scent of politics

Notice that adding IAIs to the FFAIs does nothing more (according to many ways of resolving disagreements) than reducing the share of resources humanity gets.

But counting on a parliament of FFAIs to be finely balanced to get FAI out of it, without solving FAI along the way... seems a tad optimistic. You're thinking of "this FFAI values human safety, this one values human freedom, they will compromise on safety AND freedom". I'm thinking they will compromise on some lobotomy-bunker version of safety while running some tiny part of the brains to make certain repeated choices that technically count as "freedom" according to the freedom-FFAI's utility.

Alternatively, suppose that there is a parliament of all IAIs vs. a parliament of all FFAIs. It could be that the false-friendly AIs, who are each protecting some aspect of humanity, end up doing an ok job. Not optimal, but the AI who wants humans to be safe and the AI that wants humans to have fun, and the AI that wants humans to spread across the galaxy all together could lead to something not awful. The IAI parliament on the other hand just leads to the humans getting turned into resources for whichever of them can most convenient make use of our matter.

This is interesting. They have been operating iPredict since 2008, but apparently got a "no action" letter from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the US to allow US participants in the market (as long as they limited the markets in the same way Iowa University does for the IEM) 4 months ago.

The market isn't particularly efficient. For example, if you bought "No" on all the presidential candidates to win, it would cost $16.16, but would be worth at least $17 for a 5% gain. Of course, after paying the 10% fee on profits and 5% withdrawal fee you would be left with a loss, which is why this opportunity still exists.

Where do these people get that sort of confidence from? I mean okay you have a good idea and know how to put it into practice, but it is like 10% of it.

Let's discuss MealSquares, since it is a startup made by LW members. OK they figured out the ingredients, the recipe and a method to make it on a home stove. That is what a smart "geek" can confidently done. But it is not business. The business is the rest. A good product is not business. A shrewd businessman can sell used shoes as gourmet food, so the business is 100% in everything else.

So where did the confidence to do the actual business from? Did they build an industrial kitchen, a food factory? Rent one? There are companies in the US willing to subcontract and make any ready meal and package it if you supply them with the recipe? Did they have contacts to buy ingredients cheaper than the market price? How did they figure they are able to figure it out when it is not traditional "geek" stuff but something people with actual food industry experience know? Is the answer in the US / Valley / Bay Area circumstances somewhere, there is a shorter path from a recipe, a product design to a business than elsewhere?

Guys everyone on reddit/Hpmor seems to be talking about a spreadsheet with all solutions listed. Could anyone please post the link as a reply to this comment. Pretty please with sugar on top :)