This is a bit rough, but I think that it is an interesting and potentially compelling idea. To keep this short, and accordingly increase the number of eyes over it, I have only sketched the bare bones of the idea. 

     1)      Empirically, people have varying intuitions and beliefs about causality, particularly in Newcomb-like problems (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Newcomb's_problem, http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irresistible_grace).

     2)      Also, as an empirical matter, some people believe in taking actions after the fact, such as one-boxing, or Calvinist “irresistible grace”, to try to ensure or conform with a seemingly already determined outcome. This might be out of a sense of retrocausality, performance, moral honesty, etc. What matters is that we know that they will act it out, despite it violating common sense causality. There has been some great work on decision theory on LW about trying to thread this needle well.

     3)      The second disjunct of the simulation argument (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Simulation_argument) shows that the decision making of humanity is evidentially relevant in what our subjective credence should be that we are in a simulation. That is to say, if we are actively headed toward making simulations, we should increase our credence of being in a simulation, if we are actively headed away from making simulations, through either existential risk or law/policy against it, we should decrease our credence.

      4)      Many, if not most, people would like for there to be a pleasant afterlife after death, especially if we could be reunited with loved ones.

     5)      There is no reason to believe that simulations which are otherwise nearly identical copies of our world, could not contain, after the simulated bodily death of the participants, an extremely long-duration, though finite, "heaven"-like afterlife shared by simulation participants.

     6)      Our heading towards creating such simulations, especially if they were capable of nesting simulations, should increase credence that we exist in such a simulation and should perhaps expect a heaven-like afterlife of long, though finite, duration.

     7)      Those who believe in alternative causality, or retrocausality, in Newcomb-like situations should be especially excited about the opportunity to push the world towards surviving, allowing these types of simulations, and creating them, as it would potentially suggest, analogously, that if they work towards creating simulations with heaven-like afterlives, that they might in some sense be “causing” such a heaven to exist for themselves, and even for friends and family who have already died. Such an idea of life-after-death, and especially for being reunited with loved ones, can be extremely compelling.

     8)      I believe that people matching the above description, that is, holding both an intuition in alternative causality, and finding such a heaven-like-afterlife compelling, exist. Further, the existence of such people, and their associated motivation to try to create such simulations, should increase the credence even of two-boxing types, that we already live in such a world with a heaven-like afterlife. This is because knowledge of a motivated minority desiring simulations should increase credence in the likely success of simulations. This is essentially showing that “this probably happened before, one level up” from the two-box perspective.

     9)      As an empirical matter, I also think that there are people who would find the idea of creating simulations with heaven-like afterlives compelling, even if they are not one-boxers, from a simply altruistic perspective, both since it is a nice thing to do for the future sim people, who can, for example, probabilistically have a much better existence than biological children on earth can, and as it is a nice thing to do to increase the credence (and emotional comfort) of both one-boxers and two-boxers in our world thinking that there might be a life after death.

     10)   This creates the opportunity for a secular movement in which people work towards creating these simulations, and use this work and potential success in order to derive comfort and meaning from their life. For example, making donations to a simulation-creating or promoting, or existential threat avoiding, think-tank after a loved one’s death, partially symbolically, partially hopefully.

     11)   There is at least some room for Pascalian considerations even for two-boxers who allow for some humility in their beliefs. Nozick believed one-boxers will become two boxers if Box A is raised to 900,000, and two-boxers will become one-boxers if Box A is lowered to $1. Similarly, trying to work towards these simulations, even if you do not find it altruistically compelling, and even if you think that the odds of alternative or retrocausality is infinitesimally small, might make sense in that the reward could be extremely large, including potentially trillions of lifetimes worth of time spent in an afterlife “heaven” with friends and family.

Finally, this idea might be one worth filling in (I have been, in my private notes for over a year, but am a bit shy to debut that all just yet, even working up the courage to post this was difficult) if only because it is interesting, and could be used as a hook to get more people interested in existential risk, including the AI control problem. This is because existential catastrophe is probably the best enemy of credence in the future of such simulations, and accordingly in our reasonable credence in thinking that we have such a heaven awaiting us after death now. A short hook headline like “avoiding existential risk is key to afterlife” can get a conversation going. I can imagine Salon, etc. taking another swipe at it, and in doing so, creating publicity which would help in finding more similar minded folks to get involved in the work of MIRI, FHI, CEA etc. There are also some really interesting ideas about acausal trade, and game theory between higher and lower worlds, as a form of “compulsion” in which they punish worlds for not creating heaven containing simulations (therefore effecting their credence as observers of the simulation), in order to reach an equilibrium in which simulations with heaven-like afterlives are universal, or nearly universal. More on that later if this is received well.

Also, if anyone would like to join with me in researching, bull sessioning, or writing about this stuff, please feel free to IM me. Also, if anyone has a really good, non-obvious pin with which to pop my balloon, preferably in a gentle way, it would be really appreciated. I am spending a lot of energy and time on this if it is fundamentally flawed in some way.

Thank you.

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November 11 Updates and Edits for Clarification

     1)      There seems to be confusion about what I mean by self-location and credence. A good way to think of this is the Sleeping Beauty Problem (https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty_problem)

If I imagine myself as Sleeping Beauty (and who doesn’t?), and I am asked on Sunday what my credence is that the coin will be tails, I will say 1/2. If I am awakened during the experiment without being told which day it is and am asked what my credence is that the coin was tails, I will say 2/3. If I am then told it is Monday, I will update my credence to ½. If I am told it is Tuesday I update my credence to 1. If someone asks me two days after the experiment about my credence of it being tails, if I somehow do not know the days of the week still, I will say ½. Credence changes with where you are, and with what information you have. As we might be in a simulation, we are somewhere in the “experiment days” and information can help orient our credence. As humanity potentially has some say in whether or not we are in a simulation, information about how humans make decisions about these types of things can and should effect our credence.

Imagine Sleeping Beauty is a lesswrong reader. If Sleeping Beauty is unfamiliar with the simulation argument, and someone asks her about her credence of being in a simulation, she probably answers something like 0.0000000001% (all numbers for illustrative purposes only). If someone shows her the simulation argument, she increases to 1%. If she stumbles across this blog entry, she increases her credence to 2%, and adds some credence to the additional hypothesis that it may be a simulation with an afterlife. If she sees that a ton of people get really interested in this idea, and start raising funds to build simulations in the future and to lobby governments both for great AI safeguards and for regulation of future simulations, she raises her credence to 4%. If she lives through the AI superintelligence explosion and simulations are being built, but not yet turned on, her credence increases to 20%. If humanity turns them on, it increases to 50%. If there are trillions of them, she increases her credence to 60%. If 99% of simulations survive their own run-ins with artificial superintelligence and produce their own simulations, she increases her credence to 95%. 

2)  This set of simulations does not need to recreate the current world or any specific people in it. That is a different idea that is not necessary to this argument. As written the argument is premised on the idea of creating fully unique people. The point would be to increase our credence that we are functionally identical in type to the unique individuals in the simulation. This is done by creating ignorance or uncertainty in simulations, so that the majority of people similarly situated, in a world which may or may not be in a simulation, are in fact in a simulation. This should, in our ignorance, increase our credence that we are in a simulation. The point is about how we self-locate, as discussed in the original article by Bostrom. It is a short 12-page read, and if you have not read it yet, I would encourage it:  http://simulation-argument.com/simulation.html. The point about past loved ones I was making was to bring up the possibility that the simulations could be designed to transfer people to a separate after-life simulation where they could be reunited after dying in the first part of the simulation. This was not about trying to create something for us to upload ourselves into, along with attempted replicas of dead loved ones. This staying-in-one simulation through two phases, a short life, and relatively long afterlife, also has the advantage of circumventing the teletransportation paradox as “all of the person" can be moved into the afterlife part of the simulation.  

 

"Earth is one of the first habitable planets to form - and we're probably too early to the party to get a chance to meet future alien civilisations."

 

http://www.sciencealert.com/earth-was-one-of-the-first-habitable-planets-in-the-universe-and-most-are-yet-to-be-born-study-finds

tl;dr A median maximiser will expect to win. A mean maximiser will win in expectation. As we face repeated problems of similar magnitude, both types take on the advantage of the other. However, the median maximiser will turn down Pascal's muggings, and can say sensible things about distributions without means.

Prompted by some questions from Kaj Sotala, I've been thinking about whether we should use the median rather than the mean when comparing the utility of actions and policies. To justify this, see the next two sections: why the median is like the mean, and why the median is not like the mean.

 

Why the median is like the mean

The main theoretic justifications for the use of expected utility - hence of means - are the von Neumann Morgenstern axioms. Using the median obeys the completeness and transitivity axioms, but not the continuity and independence ones.

It does obey weaker forms of continuity; but in a sense, this doesn't matter. You can avoid all these issues by making a single 'ultra-choice'. Simply list all the possible policies you could follow, compute their median return, and choose the one with the best median return. Since you're making a single choice, independence doesn't apply.

So you've picked the policy π_m with the highest median value - note that to do this, you need only know an ordinal ranking of worlds, not their cardinal values. In what way is this like maximising expected utility? Essentially, the more options and choices you have - or could hypothetically have - the closer this policy must be to expected utility maximalisation.

Assume u is a utility function compatible with your ordinal ranking of the worlds. Then π_u = 'maximise the expectation of u' is also a policy choice. If we choose π_m, we get a distribution d_mu of possible values of u. Then E(u|π_m) is within the absolute deviation (using d_mu) of the median value of d_mu. This absolute deviation always exists for any distribution with an expectation, and is itself bounded by the standard deviation, if it exists.

Thus maximising the median is like maximising the mean, with an error depending on the standard deviation. You can see it as a risk averse utility maximising policy (I know, I know - risk aversion is supposed to go in defining the utility, not in maximising it. Read on!). And as we face more and more choices, the standard deviation will tend to fall relative to the mean, and the median will cluster closer and closer to the mean.

For instance, suppose we consider the choice of whether to buckle our seatbelt or not. Assume we don't want to die in a car accident that a seatbelt could prevent; assume further that the cost of buckling a seatbelt is trivial but real. To simplify, suppose we have an independent 1/Ω chance of death every time we're in a car, and that a seatbelt could prevent this, for some large Ω. Furthermore, we will be in a car a total of ρΩ, for ρ < 0.5. Now, it seems, the median recommends a ridiculous policy: never wear seatbelts. Then you pay no cost ever, and your chance of dying is less than 50%, so this has the top median.

And that is indeed a ridiculous result. But it's only possible because we look at seatbelts in isolation. Every day, we face choices that have small chances of killing us. We could look when crossing the street; smoke or not smoke cigarettes; choose not to walk close to the edge of tall buildings; choose not to provoke co-workers to fights; not run around blindfolded. I'm deliberately including 'stupid things no-one sensible would ever do', because they are choices, even if they are obvious ones. Let's gratuitously assume that all these choices also have a 1/Ω chance of killing you. When you collect together all the possible choices (obvious or not) that you make in your life, this will be ρ'Ω choice, for ρ' likely quite a lot bigger than 1.

Assume that avoiding these choices has a trivial cost, incommensurable with dying (ie no matter how many times you have to buckle your seatbelt, it still better than a fatal accident). Now median-maximisation will recommend taking safety precautions for roughly (ρ'-0.5)Ω of these choices. This means that the decision of a median maximiser will be close to those of a utility maximiser - they take almost the same precautions - though the outcomes are still pretty far apart: the median maximiser accepts a 49.99999...% chance of death.

But now add serious injury to the mix (still assume the costs are incommensurable). This has a rather larger probability, and the median maximiser will now only accept a 49.99999...% chance of serious injury. Or add light injury - now they only accept a 49.99999...% chance of light injury. If light injuries are additive - two injuries are worse than one - then the median maximiser becomes even more reluctant to take risks. We can now relax the assumption of incommensurablility as well; the set of policies and assessments becomes even more complicated, and the median maximiser moves closer to the mean maximiser.

The same phenomena tends to happen when we add lotteries of decisions, chained decisions (decisions that depend on other decisions), and so on. Existential risks are interesting examples: from the selfish point of view, existential risks are just other things that can kills us - and not the most unlikely ones, either. So the median maximiser will be willing to pay a trivial cost to avoid an xrisk. Will a large group of median maximisers be willing to collectively pay a large cost to avoid an xrisk? That gets into superrationality, which I haven't considered yet in this context.

But let's turn back to the mystical utility function that we are trying to maximise. It's obvious that humans don't actually maximise a utility function; but according to the axioms, we should do so. Since we should, people on this list tend to often assume that we actually have one, skipping over the process of constructing it. But how would that process go? Let's assume we've managed to make our preferences transitive, already a major good achievement. How should we go about making them independent as well? We can do so as we go along. But if we do it ahead of time, chances are that we will be comparing hypothetical situations ("Do I like chocolate twice as much as sex? What would I think of a 50% chance of chocolate vs guaranteed sex? Well, it depends on the situation...") and thus construct a utility function. This is where we have to make decisions about very obscure and unintuitive hypothetical tradeoffs, and find a way to fold all our risk aversion/risk love into the utility.

When median maximising, we do exactly the same thing, except we constrain ourselves to choices that are actually likely to happen to us. We don't need a full ranking of all possible lotteries and choices; we just need enough to decide in the situations we are likely to face. You could consider this a form of moral learning (or preference learning). From our choices in different situations (real or possible), we decide what our preferences are in these situations, and this determines our preferences overall.

 

Why the median is not like the mean

Ok, so the previous paragraph argues that median maximising, if you have enough choices, functions like a clunky version of expected utility maximising. So what's the point?

The point is those situations that are not faced sufficiently often, or that have extreme characteristics. A median maximiser will reject Pascal's mugging, for instance, without any need for extra machinery (though they will accept Pascal's muggings if they face enough independent muggings, which is what we want - for stupidly large values of "enough"). They cope fine with distributions that have no means - such as the Cauchy distribution or a utility version of the St Petersburg paradox. They don't fall into paradox when facing choices with infinite (but ordered) rewards.

In a sense, median maximalisation is like expected utility maximalisation for common choices, but is different for exceptionally unlikely or high impact choices. Or, from the opposite perspective, expected utility maximising gives high probability of good outcomes for common choices, but not for exceptionally unlikely or high impact choices.

Another feature of the general idea (which might be seen as either a plus or a minus) is that it can get around some issues with total utilitarianism and similar ethical systems (such as the repugnant conclusion). What do I mean by this? Well, because the idea is that only choices that we actually expect to make matter, we can say, for instance, that we'd prefer a small ultra happy population to a huge barely-happy one. And if this is the only choice we make, we need not fear any paradoxes: we might get hypothetical paradoxes, just not actual ones. I won't put too much insistence on this point, I just thought it was an interesting observation.

 

For lack of a Cardinal...

Now, the main issue is that we might feel that there are certain rare choices that are just really bad or really good. And we might come to this conclusion by rational reasoning, rather than by experience, so this will not show up in the median. In these cases, it feels like we might want to force some kind of artificial cardinal order on the worlds, to make the median maximiser realise that certain rare events must be considered beyond their simple ordinal ranking.

In this case, maybe we could artificially add some hypothetical choices to our system, making us address these questions more than we actually would, and thus drawing them closer to the mean maximising situation. But there may be other, better ways of doing this.

 

Anyway, that's my first pass at constructing a median maximising system. Comments and critics welcome!

 

EDIT: We can use the absolute deviation (technically, the mean absolute deviation around the mean) to bound the distance between median and mean. This itself is bounded by the standard deviation, if it exists.

I'm posting this because LessWrong was very influential on how I viewed parenting, particularly the emphasis on helping one's brain work better. In this context, creating and influencing another person's brain is an awesome responsibility.

It turned out to be a lot more anxiety-provoking than I expected. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, as the possibility of screwing up someone's brain should make a parent anxious, but it's something to be aware of. I've heard some blithe "Rational parenting could be a very high-impact activity!" statements from childless LWers who may be interested to hear some experiences in actually applying that.

One thing that really scared me about trying to raise a child with the healthiest-possible brain and body was the possibility that I might not love her if she turned out to not be smart. 15 months in, I'm no longer worried. Evolution has been very successful at producing parents and children that love each other despite their flaws, and our family is no exception. Our daughter Lily seems to be doing fine, but if she turns out to have disabilities or other problems, I'm confident that we'll roll with the punches.

 

Cross-posted from The Whole Sky.

 

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Before I got pregnant, I read Scott Alexander's (Yvain's) excellent Biodeterminist's Guide to Parenting and was so excited to have this knowledge. I thought how lucky my child would be to have parents who knew and cared about how to protect her from things that would damage her brain.

Real life, of course, got more complicated. It's one thing to intend to avoid neurotoxins, but another to arrive at the grandparents' house and find they've just had ant poison sprayed. What do you do then?

Here are some tradeoffs Jeff and I have made between things that are good for children in one way but bad in another, or things that are good for children but really difficult or expensive.

Germs and parasites

The hygiene hypothesis states that lack of exposure to germs and parasites increases risk of auto-immune disease. Our pediatrician recommended letting Lily playing in the dirt for this reason.

While exposure to animal dander and pollution increase asthma later in life, it seems that being exposed to these in the first year of life actually protects against asthma. Apparently if you're going to live in a house with roaches, you should do it in the first year or not at all.

Except some stuff in dirt is actually bad for you.

Scott writes:

Parasite-infestedness of an area correlates with national IQ at about r = -0.82. The same is true of US states, with a slightly reduced correlation coefficient of -0.67 (p<0.0001). . . . When an area eliminates parasites (like the US did for malaria and hookworm in the early 1900s) the IQ for the area goes up at about the right time.

Living with cats as a child seems to increase risk of schizophrenia, apparently via toxoplasmosis. But in order to catch toxoplasmosis from a cat, you have to eat its feces during the two weeks after it first becomes infected (which it’s most likely to do by eating birds or rodents carrying the disease). This makes me guess that most kids get it through tasting a handful of cat litter, dirt from the yard, or sand from the sandbox rather than simply through cat ownership. We live with indoor cats who don’t seem to be mousers, so I’m not concerned about them giving anyone toxoplasmosis. If we build Lily a sandbox, we’ll keep it covered when not in use.

The evidence is mixed about whether infections like colds during the first year of life increase or decrease your risk of asthma later. After the newborn period, we defaulted to being pretty casual about germ exposure.

Toxins in buildings

Our experiences with lead. Our experiences with mercury.

In some areas, it’s not that feasible to live in a house with zero lead. We live in Boston, where 87% of the housing was built before lead paint was banned. Even in a new building, we’d need to go far out of town before reaching soil that wasn’t near where a lead-painted building had been.

It is possible to do some renovations without exposing kids to lead. Jeff recently did some demolition of walls with lead paint, very carefully sealed off and cleaned up, while Lily and I spent the day elsewhere. Afterwards her lead level was no higher than it had been.

But Jeff got serious lead poisoning as a toddler while his parents did major renovations on their old house. If I didn’t think I could keep the child away from the dust, I wouldn’t renovate.

Recently a house across the street from us was gutted, with workers throwing debris out the windows and creating big plumes of dust (presumable lead-laden) that blew all down the street. Later I realized I should have called city building inspection services, which would have at least made them carry the debris into the dumpster instead of throwing it from the second story.

Floor varnish releases formaldehyde and other nasties as it cures. We kept Lily out of the house for a few weeks after Jeff redid the floors. We found it worthwhile to pay rent at our previous house in order to not have to live in the new house while this kind of work was happening.

 

Pressure-treated wood was treated with arsenic and chromium until around 2004 in the US. It has a greenish tint, though this may have faded with time. Playing on playsets or decks made of such wood increases children's cancer risk. It should not be used for furniture (I thought this would be obvious, but apparently it wasn't to some of my handyman relatives).

I found it difficult to know how to deal with fresh paint and other fumes in my building at work while I was pregnant. Women of reproductive age have a heightened sense of smell, and many pregnant women have heightened aversion to smells, so you can literally smell things some of your coworkers can’t (or don’t mind). The most critical period of development is during the first trimester, when most women aren’t telling the world they’re pregnant (because it’s also the time when a miscarriage is most likely, and if you do lose the pregnancy you might not want to have to tell the world). During that period, I found it difficult to explain why I was concerned about the fumes from the roofing adhesive being used in our building. I didn’t want to seem like a princess who thought she was too good to work in conditions that everybody else found acceptable. (After I told them I was pregnant, my coworkers were very understanding about such things.)

Food

Recommendations usually focus on what you should eat during pregnancy, but obviously children’s brain development doesn’t stop there. I’ve opted to take precautions with the food Lily and I eat for as long as I’m nursing her.

Claims that pesticide residues are poisoning children scare me, although most scientists seem to think the paper cited is overblown. Other sources say the levels of pesticides in conventionally grown produce are fine. We buy organic produce at home but eat whatever we’re served elsewhere.

I would love to see a study with families randomly selected to receive organic produce for the first 8 years of the kids’ lives, then looking at IQ and hyperactivity. But no one’s going to do that study because of how expensive 8 years of organic produce would be.
The Biodeterminist’s Guide doesn’t mention PCBs in the section on fish, but fish (particularly farmed salmon) are a major source of these pollutants. They don’t seem to be as bad as mercury, but are neurotoxic. Unfortunately their half-life in the body is around 14 years, so if you have even a vague idea of getting pregnant ever in your life you shouldn’t be eating farmed salmon (or Atlantic/farmed salmon, bluefish, wild striped bass, white and Atlantic croaker, blackback or winter flounder, summer flounder, or blue crab).

I had the best intentions of eating lots of the right kind of high-omega-3, low-pollutant fish during and after pregnancy. Unfortunately, fish was the only food I developed an aversion to. Now that Lily is eating food on her own, we tried several sources of omega-3 and found that kippered herring was the only success. Lesson: it’s hard to predict what foods kids will eat, so keep trying.

In terms of hassle, I underestimated how long I would be “eating for two” in the sense that anything I put in my body ends up in my child’s body. Counting pre-pregnancy (because mercury has a half-life of around 50 days in the body, so sushi you eat before getting pregnant could still affect your child), pregnancy, breastfeeding, and presuming a second pregnancy, I’ll probably spend about 5 solid years feeding another person via my body, sometimes two children at once. That’s a long time in which you have to consider the effect of every medication, every cup of coffee, every glass of wine on your child. There are hardly any medications considered completely safe during pregnancy and lactation—most things are in Category C, meaning there’s some evidence from animal trials that they may be bad for human children.

Fluoride

Too much fluoride is bad for children’s brains. The CDC recently recommended lowering fluoride levels in municipal water (though apparently because of concerns about tooth discoloration more than neurotoxicity). Around the same time, the American Dental Association began recommending the use of fluoride toothpaste as soon as babies have teeth, rather than waiting until they can rinse and spit.

Cavities are actually a serious problem even in baby teeth, because of the pain and possible infection they cause children. Pulling them messes up the alignment of adult teeth. Drilling on children too young to hold still requires full anesthesia, which is dangerous itself.

But Lily isn’t particularly at risk for cavities. 20% of children get a cavity by age six, and they are disproportionately poor, African-American, and particularly Mexican-American children (presumably because of different diet and less ability to afford dentists). 75% of cavities in children under 5 occur in 8% of the population.

We decided to have Lily brush without toothpaste, avoid juice and other sugary drinks, and see the dentist regularly.

Home pesticides

One of the most commonly applied insecticides makes kids less smart. This isn’t too surprising, given that it kills insects by disabling their nervous system. But it’s not something you can observe on a small scale, so it’s not surprising that the exterminator I talked to brushed off my questions with “I’ve never heard of a problem!”

If you get carpenter ants in your house, you basically have to choose between poisoning them or letting them structurally damage the house. We’ve only seen a few so far, but if the problem progresses, we plan to:

1) remove any rotting wood in the yard where they could be nesting

2) have the perimeter of the building sprayed

3) place gel bait in areas kids can’t access

4) only then spray poison inside the house.

If we have mice we’ll plan to use mechanical traps rather than poison.

Flame retardants

Since the 1970s, California required a high degree of flame-resistance from furniture. This basically meant that US manufacturers sprayed flame retardant chemicals on anything made of polyurethane foam, such as sofas, rug pads, nursing pillows, and baby mattresses.

The law recently changed, due to growing acknowledgement that the carcinogenic and neurotoxic chemicals were more dangerous than the fires they were supposed to be preventing. Even firefighters opposed the use of the flame retardants, because when people die in fires it’s usually from smoke inhalation rather than burns, and firefighters don’t want to breathe the smoke from your toxic sofa (which will eventually catch fire even with the flame retardants).

We’ve opted to use furniture from companies that have stopped using flame retardants (like Ikea and others listed here). Apparently futons are okay if they’re stuffed with cotton rather than foam. We also have some pre-1970s furniture that tested clean for flame retardants. You can get foam samples tested for free.

The main vehicle for children ingesting the flame retardants is that it settles into dust on the floor, and children crawl around in the dust. If you don’t want to get rid of your furniture, frequent damp-mopping would probably help.

The standards for mattresses are so stringent that the chemical sprays aren’t generally used, and instead most mattresses are wrapped in a flame-resistant barrier which apparently isn’t toxic. I contacted the companies that made our mattresses and they’re fine.

Ratings for chemical safety of children’s car seats here.

Thoughts on IQ

A lot of people, when I start talking like this, say things like “Well, I lived in a house with lead paint/played with mercury/etc. and I’m still alive.” And yes, I played with mercury as a child, and Jeff is still one of the smartest people I know even after getting acute lead poisoning as a child.

But I do wonder if my mind would work a little better without the mercury exposure, and if Jeff would have had an easier time in school without the hyperactivity (a symptom of lead exposure). Given the choice between a brain that works a little better and one that works a little worse, who wouldn’t choose the one that works better?

We’ll never know how an individual’s nervous system might have been different with a different childhood. But we can see population-level effects. The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, is fine with calculating the expected benefit of making coal plants stop releasing mercury by looking at the expected gains in terms of children’s IQ and increased earnings.

Scott writes:

A 15 to 20 point rise in IQ, which is a little more than you get from supplementing iodine in an iodine-deficient region, is associated with half the chance of living in poverty, going to prison, or being on welfare, and with only one-fifth the chance of dropping out of high-school (“associated with” does not mean “causes”).

Salkever concludes that for each lost IQ point, males experience a 1.93% decrease in lifetime earnings and females experience a 3.23% decrease. If Lily would earn about what I do, saving her one IQ point would save her $1600 a year or $64000 over her career. (And that’s not counting the other benefits she and others will reap from her having a better-functioning mind!) I use that for perspective when making decisions. $64000 would buy a lot of the posh prenatal vitamins that actually contain iodine, or organic food, or alternate housing while we’re fixing up the new house.

Conclusion

There are times when Jeff and I prioritize social relationships over protecting Lily from everything that might harm her physical development. It’s awkward to refuse to go to someone’s house because of the chemicals they use, or to refuse to eat food we’re offered. Social interactions are good for children’s development, and we value those as well as physical safety. And there are times when I’ve had to stop being so careful because I was getting paralyzed by anxiety (literally perched in the rocker with the baby trying not to touch anything after my in-laws scraped lead paint off the outside of the house).

But we also prioritize neurological development more than most parents, and we hope that will have good outcomes for Lily.

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.

 

References

 

1. Actual Causes of Death in the United States, 2000.
2. A New, Evidence-based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated with Hospital Care.
3. All pages in The Nutrition Source, a part of the Harvard School of Public Health.
4. Will calorie restriction work on humans? 
5. The pages Getting Started, Tests and Biomarkers, and Risks from The CR Society.
6. The causal role of breakfast in energy balance and health: a randomized controlled trial in lean adults.
7. Low Glycemic Index: Lente Carbohydrates and Physiological Effects of altered food frequency. Published in 1994. 
8. Leisure Time Physical Activity of Moderate to Vigorous Intensity and Mortality: A Large Pooled Cohort Analysis.
9. Exercising for Health and Longevity vs Peak Performance: Different Regimens for Different Goals.
10. Water: How much should you drink every day? 
11. MET-hour equivalents of various physical activities.
12. Poisoning. NLM
13. Carcinogen. Dictionary.com
14. Types of Poisons. New York Poison Center
15. The Most Common Poisons for Children and Adults. National Capital Poison Center.
16. Known and Probable Human Carcinogens. American cancer society.
17. Nutritional Effects of Food Processing. Nutritiondata.com.
18. Tips to Prevent Poisonings. CDC.
19. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Mayo Clinic.
20. Carbon Monoxide Poisoning. CDC. 
21. CDCWONDER. Query Criteria taken from all genders, all states, all races, all levels of urbanization, all weekdays, dates 1999 – 2010, ages 15 – 24. 
22. Global health risks: mortality and burden of disease attributable to selected major risks.
23. National Biomonitoring Program Factsheet. CDC
24. Lead poisoning. Mayo Clinic.
25. Mercury. Medline Plus.
26. Snoring Is Not Associated With All-Cause Mortality, Incident Cardiovascular Disease, or Stroke in the Busselton Health Study.
27. Do Stress Trajectories Predict Mortality in Older Men? Longitudinal Findings from the VA Normative Aging Study.
28. Meta-analysis of Perceived Stress and its Association with Incident Coronary Heart Disease.
29. Iron and cardiac ischemia: a natural, quasi-random experiment comparing eligible with disqualified blood donors.
30. Association between psychological distress and mortality: individual participant pooled analysis of 10 prospective cohort studies.
31. Self-reported habitual snoring and risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality.
32. Is it true that occasionally following a fasting diet can reduce my risk of heart disease? 
33. Positive Affect and Health.
34. The Association of Anger and Hostility with Future Coronary Heart Disease: A Meta-Analytic Review of Prospective Evidence.
35. Giving to Others and the Association Between Stress and Mortality.
36. Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review.
37. Daily Sitting Time and All-Cause Mortality: A Meta-Analysis.
38. Dental Health Behaviors, Dentition, and Mortality in the Elderly: The Leisure World Cohort Study.
39. Low Conscientiousness and Risk of All-Cause, Cardiovascular and Cancer Mortality over 17 Years: Whitehall II Cohort Study.
40. Conscientiousness and Health-Related Behaviors: A Meta-Analysis of the Leading Behavioral Contributors to Mortality.
41. Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a critical review of measurement and associations.
42. Sleep duration and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
43. How Much Sleep Is Enough? National Lung, Blood, and Heart Institute. 
44. How many hours of sleep are enough for good health? Mayo Clinic.
45. Assess Your Sleep Needs. Harvard Medical School.
46. A Life-Span Developmental Perspective on Social Status and Health.
47. Suicide. Merriam-Webster. 
48. Can testosterone therapy promote youth and vitality? Mayo Clinic.
49. Breast Self-Exam. Susan G. Komen.
50. Screening Guidelines. The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
51. Breast Cancer Screening Overview. The National Cancer Institute.
52. Testicular self-exam. The American Cancer Society.
53. Life Span Extension Research and Public Debate: Societal Considerations. 
54. SENS Research Foundation: About.
55. Science for Life Extension Homepage.
56. Google's project to 'cure death,' Calico, announces $1.5 billion research center. The Verge.
57. A New, Evidence-based Estimate of Patient Harms Associated with Hospital Care.
58. When Surgeons Cut the Wrong Body Part. The New York Times.
59. Cold facts about cryonics. The Guardian. 
60. The cryonics organization founded by the "Father of Cryonics," Robert C.W. Ettinger. Cryonics Institute. 
61. Escape Velocity: Why the Prospect of Extreme Human Life Extension Matters Now. 
62. International Journal of Machine Consciousness Introduction.
63. The Philosophy of ‘Her.’ The New York Times.
64. How to Survive the End of the Universe. Discover Magazine.
65. A Space-Time Crystal to Outlive the Universe. Universe Today.
66. Conjunction Fallacy. Less Wrong.
67. Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgment of Global Risks.
68. Genetic influence on human lifespan and longevity.
69. First Drug Shown to Extend Life Span in Mammals. MIT Technology Review.
70. Sirolimus (Oral Route). Mayo Clinic.
71. Micromorts. Understanding Uncertainty.
72. Falls. WHO.
73. Smoke alarm outreach materials.  US Fire Administration.
74. What causes choking? 17 possible conditions. Healthline.
75. Choking. Better Health Channel.
76. Aspiration pneumonia. HealthCentral.
77. First aid - Recovery position. NHS Choices.
78. Electric Shock. HowStuffWorks.
79. Hypothermia prevention. Mayo Clinic.
80. Extreme Heat: A Prevention Guide to Promote Your Personal Health and Safety. CDC.
81. Understanding the Lightning Threat: Minimizing Your Risk. National weather service.
82. The Case Against QuikClot. The survival mom.
83. Does the Perception that Stress Affects Health Matter? The Association with Health and Mortality.
84. Cancer Prevention. WHO.
85. Infections That Can Lead to Cancer. American Cancer Society.
86. Pollution. American Cancer Society.
87. Occupations or Occupational Groups Associated with Carcinogen Exposures. Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety. 
88. Radon. American Cancer Society.
89. Medical radiation. American Cancer Society.
90. Ultraviolet (UV) Radiation. American Cancer Society.
91. An Unhealthy Glow. American Cancer Society.
92. Sun exposure and vitamin D sufficiency.  
93. Cell Phones and Cancer Risk. National Cancer Institute.
94. Nutrition for Everyone. CDC.
95. How Can I Tell If My Body is Missing Key Nutrients? Oprah.com.
96. Decaffeination, Green Tea and Benefits. Teas etc.
97. Red and Processed Meat Consumption and Risk of Incident Coronary Heart Disease, Stroke, and Diabetes Mellitus.
98. Lifestyle interventions to increase longevity.
99. Chemicals in Meat Cooked at High Temperatures and Cancer Risk. National Cancer Institute.
100. Are You Living in a Simulation? 
101. How reliable are scientific studies?
102. Genomics: What You Should Know. Forbes.
103. Organic foods: Are they safer? More nutritious? Mayo Clinic.
104. Health screening - men - ages 18 to 39. MedlinePlus. 
105. Why do I need medical checkups. Banner Health.
106. Regular Check-Ups are Important. CDC.
107. General health checks in adults for reducing morbidity and mortality for disease (Review). 
108. Let’s (Not) Get Physicals.
109. Effectiveness of general practice-based health checks: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
110. Supplements: Nutrition in a Pill? Mayo Clinic.
111. Nutritional Effects of Food Processing. SelfNutritionData.
112. What Is the Healthiest Drink? SFGate.
113. Leading Causes of Death. CDC.
114. Bias Detection in Meta-analysis. Statistical Help.
115. The summary of Sodium Intake in Populations: Assessment of Evidence. Institute of Medicine.
116. Compared With Usual Sodium Intake, Low and Excessive -Sodium Diets Are Associated With Increased Mortality: A Meta-analysis.
117. The Cochrane Review of Sodium and Health.
118. Is there any link between cellphones and cancer? Mayo Clinic.
119. A glass of red wine a day keeps the doctor away. Yale-New Haven Hospital.
120. Comment on Lifestyle Interventions to Increase Longevity. Less Wrong.

Viliam Bur made the announcement in Main, but not everyone checks main, so I'm repeating it here.

During the following months my time and attention will be heavily occupied by some personal stuff, so I will be unable to function as a LW moderator. The new LW moderator is... NancyLebovitz!

From today, please direct all your complaints and investigation requests to Nancy. Please not everyone during the first week. That can be a bit frightening for a new moderator.

There are a few old requests I haven't completed yet. I will try to close everything during the following days, but if I don't do it till the end of January, then I will forward the unfinished cases to Nancy, too.

Long live the new moderator!

(Crossposted from ordinary ideas). 

I’ve recently been thinking about AI safety, and some of the writeups might be interesting to some LWers:

1. Ideas for building useful agents without goals: approval-directed agents, approval-directed bootstrapping, and optimization and goals. I think this line of reasoning is very promising.
2. A formalization of one piece of the AI safety challenge: the steering problem. I am eager to see more precise, high-level discussion of AI safety, and I think this article is a helpful step in that direction. Since articulating the steering problem I have become much more optimistic about versions of it being solved in the near term. This mostly means that the steering problem fails to capture the hardest parts of AI safety. But it’s still good news, and I think it may eventually cause some people to revise their understanding of AI safety.
3. Some ideas for getting useful work out of self-interested agents, based on arguments: of arguments and wagers, adversarial collaboration [older], and delegating to a mixed crowd. I think these are interesting ideas in an interesting area, but they have a ways to go until they could be useful.

I’m excited about a few possible next steps:

1. Under the (highly improbable) assumption that various deep learning architectures could yield human-level performance, could they also predictably yield safe AI? I think we have a good chance of finding a solution---i.e. a design of plausibly safe AI, under roughly the same assumptions needed to get human-level AI---for some possible architectures. This would feel like a big step forward.
2. For what capabilities can we solve the steering problem? I had originally assumed none, but I am now interested in trying to apply the ideas from the approval-directed agents post. From easiest to hardest, I think there are natural lines of attack using any of: natural language question answering, precise question answering, sequence prediction. It might even be possible using reinforcement learners (though this would involve different techniques).
3. I am very interested in implementing effective debates, and am keen to test some unusual proposals. The connection to AI safety is more impressionistic, but in my mind these techniques are closely linked with approval-directed behavior.
4. I’m currently writing up a concrete architecture for approval-directed agents, in order to facilitate clearer discussion about the idea. This kind of work that seems harder to do in advance, but at this point I think it’s mostly an exposition problem.

Update 2015-03-21: I would now strongly recommend reading Rationality: From AI to Zombies over this. Though the blog posts I collected here are the starting point for that book, considerable work has gone into selecting and arranging the essays as well as adding thoughtful new material and useful material not in this collection. Only if you've already read that should you consider starting on this; you can always skip the essays you've already read.

This is all Eliezer's posts to Less Wrong up to the end of 2010 as an EPub. Can be read with Aldiko and other eBook readers, though you might have to jump through some hoops on the Kindle (haven't tried it). I shared it privately with a few friends in the past, but I thought it might be more generally useful.  Highlights include that all the screwed-up Unicode is fixed AFAIK.

Source code.

Update: have now made a MOBI for the Kindle too.

Updated 2011-08-13 17:20 BST: Now with images!

I'm pleased to announce a new paper from MIRI: Toward Idealized Decision Theory.

Abstract:

This paper motivates the study of decision theory as necessary for aligning smarter-than-human artificial systems with human interests. We discuss the shortcomings of two standard formulations of decision theory, and demonstrate that they cannot be used to describe an idealized decision procedure suitable for approximation by artificial systems. We then explore the notions of strategy selection and logical counterfactuals, two recent insights into decision theory that point the way toward promising paths for future research.

Following the Corrigibility paper, this is the second in a series of six papers motivating MIRI's active research areas. Also included in the series will be a technical agenda, which motivates all six research areas and describes the reasons why we have selected these topics in particular, and an annotated bibliography, which compiles a fair bit of related work. I plan to post one paper every week or two for the next few months.

I've decided to start with the decision theory paper, as it's one of the meatiest. This paper compiles and summarizes quite a bit of work on decision theory that was done right here on LessWrong. There is a lot more to be said on the subject of decision theory than can fit into a single paper, but I think this one does a fairly good job of describing why we're interested in the field and summarizing some recent work in the area. The introduction is copied below. Enjoy!