From what I gather, most people don't respond to rational ideas and actions, just ideas and actions they believe will benefit themselves or their group. This is how bad ideas continue to flourish (Bigger Church = Pleasing the Lord = Better chance of an afterlife). In addition, people do respond to ideas they believe are moral, but what most people define as "good" or "bad" actions, moral or immoral, tend to be what people believe will benefit them or the group they relate to (family, community, country, etc.) As a rule of thumb, to most people, actions that benefit society = moral, actions that hurt society = immoral.

Even morals that everyone can agree on, such as killing, are thrown out the window when it comes to those outside the group. Historically, people have been quite cruel to out-groups (war) and those within the group they feel aren't benefiting their "team"(poor treatment of homeless, civil wars, etc.), whether real or imagined. Notice the difference between what people believe vs. what may actually help the them.

Knowing this about human nature, the question is do most people want the world to be saved? If the answer is yes, and the above behaviors are the result of primitive fear mechanism towards outsiders, then in order for ideas to gain traction, you have to convince people to realize the potential benefit, and believe that the world can change. If the answer is no, then it is best to attach yourself to like-minded people.

I'm surprised by the lack of research on organic foods and health, and it seems like it wouldn't be too hard for a talented researcher to compare the health and mortality of people who consume organic vs. inorganic diets, after controlling for differences between the two groups, such total nutrient consumption, exercise, premorbid conditions prior to organic consumption, etc. Modified food may or may not have adverse effects beyond different nutrient contents (which so far is debatable), but I'm surprised at the amount of people who have jumped on this bandwagon with scant supporting evidence.

There is also the possibility that people will eat worse when consuming organic. I suspect that an inorganic diet composed of fish, fruits and vegetables, legumes, lean dairy, and nuts will be far healthier than an organic diet composed of fried chips, fatty artisan cheeses, chocolate bars, and low fiber carbs. Go to Trader Joe's or Whole Foods and watch how many carts are filled with the things you shouldn't eat. In fact, it seems the all-natural industry follows #1 (as far as they can) and #2 quite well, and if organic retailers are a proxy, they are about as good at ignoring #3 as the rest of the industry.

As you have already pointed out, people who eat nuts also engage in other healthy activities. It sort of reminds me of the studies on moderate drinkers and death. Perhaps people who are able to control their drinking after having one or two beers, have more self-control in other areas of their life, compared to those who are heavy drinkers or teetotalers who avoid it like the plague.

Even after controlling for all of this, I wonder if their is an optimal nut intake.

Oddly enough, I find that the best way to get something done is to read a schedule that I made the day before. I somehow feel more obligated to stick to it than if I written it the day of. I can't fully explain why this is the case, perhaps due to the fact that I'm more fatigued by the time I've written one, but it seems to be the best way I found to hack my own procrastination. Tim Ferriss also advocates making a plan for the day or week ahead, although his reasons might be different than mine.

train everyone to recognize and counter the strategies that psychopaths use

I like this way of thinking. By the way, there is some research about the weaknesses of psychopaths. From this article:

In this task, the participant has to decide whether to play a card. Initially, the participant’s choice to play is always reinforcing; if the participant plays the card he or she will win points or money. However, as the participant progresses through the pack of cards, the probability of reward decreases. Thus, initially ten out of ten cards are rewarded, then nine out of ten, then eight out of ten continuing on until zero out of ten cards are rewarded. The participant should stop playing the cards when playing means that more cards are associated with punishment rather than reward. That is, they should stop playing the cards when only four out of ten cards are associated with reward. Children with psychopathic tendencies and adult individuals with psychopathy have considerable difficulty with this task; they continue to play the cards even when they are being repeatedly punished and may end up losing all the points that they had gained.

Just making these weaknesses widely known, together with some simple strategies for exploiting them (something like "The Game", just about playing your boss), could change the balance on the playing field...

It might be useful to think about the simple fact that if you're a hunter of small game, you're probably going to spend an awful lot of time sitting around staring at things, and that maybe evolution has a good reason for wanting it to feel good... not to mention developing your ability to concentrate, if your hunting pattern requires such concentration. What's more, it's a kind of exercise that humans haven't gotten much of since we switched to agriculture.

Note, too, that it's only since we've had agriculture that we started having religions offering salvation and release from suffering... maybe there's a connection there.

This is taking the unfortunate/entitled/nice/beta/shibboleth-of-your-choice males' complaint too far at face value - i.e., that they are sexually unsuccessful on account of being kind and prosocial.

I used to believe this, but after doing some research, and further experience, I changed my mind.

First, the available research doesn't show a disadvantage of altruism, agreeableness, and prosocial tendencies for men.

I used to experience agreeableness and altruism as disadvantages. Now I experience agreeableness as sometimes a big advantage, and sometimes a moderate disadvantage. Altruism is neutral, as long as I can suppress it to normal population levels (I have excessive altruistic tendencies).

Hypotheses that reconcile this data and anecdata:

• Prosocial tendencies are orthogonal to attractiveness
• Prosocial tendencies have a non-linear relationships to attractiveness (e.g. it's good to be average, or maybe even a bit above average, but any higher or lower is a disadvantage
• The relationship between prosocial tendencies and attractiveness is moderated by another variable. For instance, perhaps prosocial tendencies are an advantage for extraverted men, but a disadvantage for introverts

What's creepy about this group is precisely the entitled attitude on display - that they deserve to enjoy sexual relations with those on whom they crush merely for being around them and not actively offending, or indeed in some cases for doing what in other contexts would be rightly considered kind and prosocial.

While some people who believe they are sexually unsuccessful on account of being kind and prosocial have this attitude of entitlement, ascribing an entitlement mentality to that entire class of people is a hasty generalization. It is likely that people who believe they are sexually unsuccessful on account of being kind and prosocial with a genuine entitlement attitude are very visible (far more visible than people in that class without that attitude), and this visibility may distort estimates of their prevalence due to the availability heuristic.

Furthermore, in this context perhaps you would agree that "entitlement" is political buzzword that has not been appropriately operationalized. In some hands, it is used as expansively and unrigorously as "nice" and "jerk."

I disagree that the reason why many upper-middle class whites lean left is entirely philanthropic signalling. Some of it may be envy and power grabbing. A person making 120k a year may be living comfortably, but still not as comfortable as a person making 30 million a year. Let's not forget that many advocate raising the taxes of the top 1% of earners. This form of redistribution to the poor, if implemented, puts a burden on the extremely wealthy, which lowers the wealth and power of the elites, and thus puts the upper-middle class in closer position to vying for elite status. If anyone has data, I suspect the voting habits of the extremely wealthy are more Republican, with the 2nd tier yet still affluent being more Democrat.

It is interesting to note that many scholars disagree that many of the peasant revolts of the 14th-16th centuries were entirely motivated by famine. Typically they were spearheaded by a person or group of individuals who were well off but not quite elite, usually well-to-do merchants or a knights of lesser nobility, garnering the support of the extremely poor. The similarity between this and left-leaning ideologies throughout history is an affluent class supporting the promise to improve the standard of living of the poor. While never successful during that time period, we can use the French Revolution and later revolutions in other countries as a model of what happens if they were successful. The elites (nobility) became overthrown, and the doctors and lawyers that led the revolution become the new elite. (it is also interesting to note that the poor are in the end no better off and an authoritarian rule is created or maintained)

While modern civilization is less bloody, you can achieve the same goals by creating tax burdens on the extremely wealthy (like what is happening now in France) and reducing income disparity, putting oneself closer to elite status.

One of the weirder citations I've picked up over the years is "Rapid antidepressant effects of sleep deprivation therapy correlates with serum BDNF changes in major depression". Apparently sleep deprivation is a known treatment for depression?

Game of Thrones and the new Battlestar Galactica appear to me to have characters that are either shallow and/or conflicted by evil versus evil. Yet they are very popular and as far as I can tell, character driven. I was wondering what it means. One thought I had was that many people are interested in relationship conflicts and that the characters don't need to be deep, they just need to reflect, between the main character cast, the personalities of the audience (as messed up as the audience might be).