https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5UAOK1bk74 - shoot, Vassar does really wear slightly-too-large suits. I'll assume that he's A/B tested this to give best results?

The "slightly alien" thing and this:

he kept grimacing as if not quite in control of his face

Hi everyone. Author here. I'll maybe reply in a more granular way later, but to quickly clear up a few things:

-I didn't write the headlines. But of course they're the first thing readers encounter, so I won't expect you to assess my intentions without reference to them. That said, I especially wanted to get readers up to half-speed on a lot of complicated issues, so that we can have a more sophisticated discussion going forward.

-A lot fell out during editing. An outtake that will be posted online Monday concerns "normal startup culture"--in which I went to TechCrunch Disrupt. I don't take LW/MIRI/CFAR to be typical of Silicon Valley culture; rather, a part of Bay Area memespace that is poorly understood or ignored but still important. Of course some readers will be put off. Others will explore more deeply, and things that seemed weird at first will come to seem more normal. That's what happened with me, but it took months of exposure. And I still struggle with the coexistence of universalism and elitism in the community, but it's not like I have a wholly satisfying solution; maybe by this time next year I'll be a neoreactionary, who knows!!

-Regarding the statistics and summary of the LW survey. That section was much longer initially, and we kept cutting. I think the last thing to go was a sentence about the liberal/libertarian/socialist/conservative breakdown. We figured that that various "suggestive statistical irrelevancies" would imply the diversity of political opinion. Maybe we were overconfident. Anyway, after the few paragraphs about Thiel, I tried not to treat libertarianism until the final sections, and even there with some sympathy.

-"Overhygienic," I can see how that might be confusing. I meant epistemic hygiene.

-letters@harpers.org for clarifying letters, please! And I'm sam@canopycanopycanopy.com.

-

Yes, that's suspicious. Good instinct. I'm sure there's some bias against publishing a marginally-significant result that's got a low (outside the framework of the paper's statistical model) prior. I'd bet some of the unlucky ones got file-drawered, and others (dishonestly or not) kept on collecting more data until the noise (I presume) was averaged down.

However, you might be missing that on an iso-P contour, false positives have diminishing effect size as sample size increases.

The 'towards' scopes over browsing LW, not the rest of the itemized list: '1. developing an ugh-fiend (towards browsing LW); 2. incorporating (and building a business with your new spare time); 3. getting paid (truckloads).'

So why do you talk about it at all when it just makes you seem crazy to most of us?

When it comes to epistemic praxis I am not a friend of the mob. I want to minimize my credibility with most of LessWrong and semi-maximize my credibility with the people I consider elite. I'm very satisfied with how successful my strategy has been.

Or perhaps you suspect your kind of experiences are more common than openly expressed?

Indeed.

I assume I'd take seriously your crazy experiences if they were mine. Is there anything at all you can say that's of value to someone like me who just hears crazy?

I am somewhat proud of the care I've taken in interpreting my experiences. I think that even if people don't think there's anything substantial in my experiences, they might still appreciate and perhaps learn from my prudence. Interpreting the supernatural is extremely difficult and basically everyone quickly goes off the rails. Insofar as there is a rational way to really engage with the contents of the subject I think my approach is, if not rational, at least rational enough to avoid many of the failure modes. But perhaps I am overly proud.

This is good stuff!

One addition I would make to your "sleep" section: between 5% and 10% of Americans have moderate or severe sleep apnea, mostly undiagnosed. Untreated sleep apnea more than doubles mortality through a combination of cardiac problems, stroke, and maybe a cancer-promoting effect as well. There are well-known effective treatments for sleep apnea and it is kind of dumb not to get them.

The main symptoms of sleep apnea are excessive snoring, and feeling very tired during the day even if you slept a normal amount the night before. It is most common in obese and older people but sometimes happens in normal-weight and younger people as well. If you think you might have this condition, probably your highest-priority longevity intervention (after quitting smoking, if you do that) is to go to your doctor and get it checked out.

This is a useful post. Thank you for writing it.

You claim that "Eggs and whole milk are very nutrient dense." I think that's quite a controversial statement. Here are the nutrition facts for 100 Calories of whole milk and spinach:

I don't know anything about testicular cancer, but are self-exams useful for breast cancer? I know that the data argues against mammogram-everyone-annually + the ensuing unnecessary surgeries caused by not-harmful tumors or other false positives - no increase at all in life expectancy and presumably there's a significant psychological (and $) cost.

I lost around 40 pounds using low carb methods. Should this make me less confident in anything you say when you promote other ways to lose weight?