Comment author: WhySpace 03 October 2016 03:42:46PM *  3 points [-]

persufflation

That was a mild pain to google, so I'm leaving what I dug up here so others don't have to duplicate the effort.

Persufflation is perfusion with gaseous oxygen. Perfusion is when fluid going to an organ passes through the lymphatic system or blood vessels to get there.

If I'm reading this correctly, there's no thermodynamic reason to pump the organ full of oxygen gas, but only a biological one. Cells need less oxygen when they're on ice for an organ transplant, but they still consume O2. If this isn't being delivered via blood flow, another source is needed.

I take it that the persufflation is to help with recovering kidneys from liquid nitrogen temperatures, and not in getting there without damage?

Comment author: Fluttershy 04 October 2016 01:43:49AM *  2 points [-]

I'm sorry! Um, it probably doesn't help that much of the relevant info hasn't been published yet; this patent is the best description that will be publicly available until the inventors get more funding. From the patent:

By replacing the volume of the vasculature (from 5 to 10 percent of the volume of tissues, organs, or whole organisms) with a gas, the vasculature itself becomes a “crush space” that allows stresses to be relieved by plastic deformation at a very small scale. This reduces the domain size of fracturing...

So, pumping the organ full of cool gas (not necessarily oxygen) is done for reasons of cooling the entire tissue at the same time, as well as to prevent fracturing, rather than for biological reasons.

ETA: To answer your last question, persufflation would be done on both cooling and rewarming.

Comment author: Fluttershy 02 October 2016 12:40:42AM 4 points [-]

The most striking problem with this paper is how easy all of the tests of viability they used are to game. There are a bunch of simple tests you can do to check for viability, and it's fairly common for non-viable tissue to produce decent-looking results on at least a couple, if you do enough. (A couple of weeks ago, I was reading a paper by Fahy which described the presence of this effect in tissue slices.)

It may be worth pointing out that they only cooled the hearts to -3 C, as well.

Comment author: Fluttershy 02 October 2016 01:09:38AM 3 points [-]

OTOH it's plausible they don't have much compelling evidence mainly because they were resource-constrained. I'm still not expecting this to go anywhere, though.

Whole kidneys can already be stored and brought back up from liquid nitrogen temps via persufflation well enough to properly filter waste and produce urine, and possibly well enough to be transplanted (research pending), though this may or may not go anywhere, depending on the funding environment.

Comment author: Fluttershy 02 October 2016 12:40:42AM 4 points [-]

The most striking problem with this paper is how easy all of the tests of viability they used are to game. There are a bunch of simple tests you can do to check for viability, and it's fairly common for non-viable tissue to produce decent-looking results on at least a couple, if you do enough. (A couple of weeks ago, I was reading a paper by Fahy which described the presence of this effect in tissue slices.)

It may be worth pointing out that they only cooled the hearts to -3 C, as well.

Comment author: Fluttershy 05 September 2016 09:11:51AM 2 points [-]

Has anyone else tried the new Soylent bars? Does anyone who has also tried MealSquares/Ensure/Joylent/etc. have an opinion on how they compare with other products?

My first impression is that they're comparable to MealSquares in tastiness. Since they're a bit smaller and more homogeneous than MealSquares (they don't have sunflower seeds or bits of chocolate sticking out of them), it's much easier to finish a whole one in one sitting, but more boring to make a large meal out of them.

Admittedly, eating MealSquares may have a bit more signalling value among rationalists, and MealSquares cost around a dollar less per 2000 kcal than the Soylent bars do. I'll probably stick with the Soylent bars, though; they're vegan, and I care about animals enough for that to be the deciding factor for me.

In response to Hedging
Comment author: Fluttershy 26 August 2016 01:27:36PM 3 points [-]

Which is to say - be confident of weak effects, rather than unconfident of strong effects.

This suggestion feels incredibly icky to me, and I think I know why.

Claims hedged with "some/most/many" tend to be both higher status and meaner than claims hedged with "I think" when "some/most/many" and "I think" are fully interchangeable. Not hedging claims at all is even meaner and even higher status than hedging with "some/most/many". This is especially true with claims that are likely to be disputed, claims that are likely to trigger someone, etc.

Making sufficiently bold statements without hedging appropriately (and many similar behaviors) can result in tragedy of the commons-like scenarios in which people grab status in ways that make others feel uncomfortable. Most of the social groups I've been involved in allow some zero-sum status seeking, but punish these sorts of negative-sum status grabs via e.g. weak forms of ostracization.

Of course, if the number of people in a group who play negative-sum social games passes a certain point, this can de facto force more cooperative members out of the group via e.g. unpleasantness. Note that this can happen in the absence of ill will, especially if group members aren't socially aware that most people view certain behaviors as being negative sum.

In response to comment by Fluttershy on Hedging
Comment author: Fluttershy 26 August 2016 01:45:18PM 1 point [-]

For groups that care much more about efficient communication than pleasantness, and groups made up of people who don't view behaviors like not hedging bold statements as being hurtful, the sort of policy I'm weakly hinting at adopting above would be suboptimal, and a potential waste of everyone's time and energy.

In response to Hedging
Comment author: Fluttershy 26 August 2016 01:27:36PM 3 points [-]

Which is to say - be confident of weak effects, rather than unconfident of strong effects.

This suggestion feels incredibly icky to me, and I think I know why.

Claims hedged with "some/most/many" tend to be both higher status and meaner than claims hedged with "I think" when "some/most/many" and "I think" are fully interchangeable. Not hedging claims at all is even meaner and even higher status than hedging with "some/most/many". This is especially true with claims that are likely to be disputed, claims that are likely to trigger someone, etc.

Making sufficiently bold statements without hedging appropriately (and many similar behaviors) can result in tragedy of the commons-like scenarios in which people grab status in ways that make others feel uncomfortable. Most of the social groups I've been involved in allow some zero-sum status seeking, but punish these sorts of negative-sum status grabs via e.g. weak forms of ostracization.

Of course, if the number of people in a group who play negative-sum social games passes a certain point, this can de facto force more cooperative members out of the group via e.g. unpleasantness. Note that this can happen in the absence of ill will, especially if group members aren't socially aware that most people view certain behaviors as being negative sum.

Comment author: Fluttershy 23 August 2016 08:09:20AM *  6 points [-]

Several months ago, Ozy wrote a wonderful post on weaponized kindness over at Thing of Things. The principal benefit of weaponized kindness is that you can have more pleasant and useful conversations with would-be adversaries by acknowledging correct points they make, and actively listening to them. The technique sounds like exactly the sort of thing I'd expect Dale Carnegie to write about in How to Win Friends and Influence People.

I think, though, that there's another benefit to both weaponized kindness, and more general extreme kindness. To generalize from my own experience, it seems that people's responses to even single episodes of extreme kindness can tell you a lot about how you'll get along with them, if you're the type of person who enjoys being extremely kind. Specifically, people who reciprocate extreme kindness tend to get along well with people who give extreme kindness, as do people who socially or emotionally acknowledge that an act of kindness has been done, even without reciprocating. On the other hoof, the sort of people who have a habit of using extreme kindness don't tend to get along with the (say) half of the population consisting of people who are most likely to ignore or discredit extreme kindness.

In some sense, this is fairly obvious. The most surprising-for-me thing about using the reaction-to-extreme-kindness heuristic for predicting who I'll be good friends with, though, is how incredibly strong and accurate the heuristic is for me. It seems like 5 of the 6 individuals I feel closest to are all in the top ~1 % of people I've met at being good at giving and receiving extreme kindness.

(Partial caveat: this heuristic doesn't work as well when another party strongly wants something from you, e.g. in some types of unhealthy dating contexts).

Willpower Thermodynamics

5 Fluttershy 16 August 2016 03:00AM
Content warning: a couple LWers apparently think that the concept of ego depletionalso known as willpower depletionis a memetic hazard, though I find it helpful. Also, the material presented here won't fit everyone's experiences.

What happens if we assume that the idea of ego depletion is basically correct, and try to draw an analogy between thermodynamics and willpower?

Figure 1. Thermodynamics Picture

You probably remember seeing something like the above diagram in a chemistry class. The diagram shows how unstable, or how high in energy, the states that a material can pass through in a chemical reaction are. Here's what the abbreviations mean:

  • SM is the starting material.
  • TS1 and TS2 are the two transition states, which must be passed through to go from SM to EM1 or EM2.
  • EM1 and EM2 are the two possible end materials.

The valleys of both curves represent configurations a material may occupy at the start or end of a chemical reaction. Lower energy valleys are more stable. However, higher peaks can only be reliably crossed if energy is available from e.g. the temperature being sufficiently high.

The main takeaway from Figure 1 is that reactions which produce the most stable end materials, like ending material 2, from a given set of starting materials aren't always the reactions which are easiest to make happen.

Figure 2. Willpower Picture

We can draw a similar diagram to illustrate how much stress we lose while completing a relaxing activity. Here's what the abbreviations used in Figure 2 mean:

  • SM is your starting mood.
  • TS is your state of topmost stress, which depends on which activity you choose.
  • EM1 and EM2 are your two possible ending moods.

Above, the valley on the left represents how stressed you are before starting one of two possible relaxing activities. The peak in the middle represents how stressed you'll be when attempting to get the activity underway, and the valley on the right represents how stressed you'll be once you're done.

For the sake of simplification, let's say that stress is the opposite of willpower, such that losing stress means you gain willpower, and vice versa. For many people, there's a point at which it's very hard to take on additional stress or use more willpower, such that getting started on an activity that would normally get you to ending mood 2 from an already stressed starting mood is very hard. 

In this figure, both activities restore some willpower. Activity 2 restores much more willpower, but is harder to get started on. As with chemical reactions, the most (emotionally or chemically) stable end state is not always the one that will be reached if the "easiest" activity or reaction that one can get started on is undertaken. 


 

In chemistry, if you want to make end material 2 instead of end material 1, you have to make sure that you have some way of getting over the big peak at transition state 2such as by making sure the temperature is high enough. In real life, it's also good to have a plan for getting over the big peak at the point of topmost stress. Spending time or attention figuring what your ending mood 2-producing activities are may also be worthwhile.

Some leisure activities, like browsing the front page of reddit, are ending mood 1-producing activities; they're easy to start, but not very rewarding. Examples of what qualifies as an ending mood 2-producing activity vary between peoplebut reading books, writing, hiking, meditating, or making games or art qualify as ending mood 2-producing activities for some.

At a minimum, making sure that you end up in a high willpower, low stress ending mood requires paying attention to your ability to handle stress and conserve willpower. Sometimes this implies that taking a break before you really need to means that you'll get more out of your break. Sometimes it means that you should monitor how many spoons and forks you have. In general, though, preferring ending mood 2-producing activities over ending mood 1-producing activities will give you the best results in the long run.

The best-case scenario is that you find a way to automatically turn impulses to do ending mood 1-producing activities into impulses to do ending mood 2-producing activities, such as with the trigger action plan [open Reddit -> move hands into position to do a 5-minute meditation].

Comment author: turchin 08 August 2016 12:46:59PM 2 points [-]

Willing to cooperate seems to be low status signaling. E.g., a low status author of an article may try to get higher status person as a coauthor of his article. But higher status author would not try to get low status author as a coauthor. Higher status people could defect with lower punishment, like not return calls or not keep promises. It results in open willingness to cooperate may be regarded as a signal of low status and some people may deliberately not cooperate to demonstrate their higher status. Any thoughts?

Comment author: Fluttershy 09 August 2016 03:04:22AM *  1 point [-]

I've noticed that old money types will tend to cooperate in this sort of publication-based dilemma more frequently for cultural reasons: to them, not cooperating would be a failure to show off their generosity.

To give a real life example, I've often seen my parent's friends "fighting over the check" when they all eat together, while I've never seen new-money-types of similar net worth do this outside of romantic contexts.

Comment author: Ixiel 13 June 2016 10:28:26AM *  3 points [-]

Overcoming Eager Evidence

Does anyone know any good way to make a point that one believes is true on its own merits but clearly benefits the speaker or is easier for the speaker?

Suppose a poor person is saying we should all give more money to poor people, are there ways to mitigate the effect of “You're only saying that to benefit yourself” beyond either finding someone else without that perceived (and likely actual, but maybe less than perceived) bias or just taking the hit and having a strong enough case to overwhelm that factor?

Comment author: Fluttershy 13 June 2016 08:35:53PM 2 points [-]

I've noticed that my System 1 automatically discounts arguments made for points that benefit the speaker even more when the speaker sounds either prideful, or like they're trying to grab status that isn't due to them, than when the speaker sounds humble.

I've also noticed that my System 1 has stopped liking the idea of donating to certain areas of EA quite as much after people who exclusively champion those causes have somehow been abrasive during a conversation I've listened to.

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