[Survey Taken Thread]
By ancient tradition, if you take the survey you may comment saying you have done so here, and people will upvote you and you will get karma.
Let's make these comments a reply to this post. That way we continue the tradition, but keep the discussion a bit cleaner.
I have taken the survey.
The only option i think was missing was in the final questions about quantities donated to charities, an option such as "I intend to donate more before the end of the financial year" or similar. (and while likely not feasible, following up on those people in the next survey to see if they actually donated would be interesting)
What makes a good primary care physician and how do I go about finding one?
Off the top of my head, the most reliable way would be to ask another senior medical professional - senior as they would tend to have been in the same geographic area for a while and know their colleagues, plus have more direct contact with primary care physicians. Also, rather than asking "who should i see as my primary care physician", you could ask "who would you send your family to see?". This might help prevent them from just recommending a friend/someone with whom they have a financial relationship. I note that this would be relatively hard to do unless you already know a senior medical professional.
Another option would be to ask a medical student (if you happen to know any in your area) which primary care physicians teach at their university and they would recommend. Through my medical training I have found that teaching at a medical school to be weak-to-moderate evidence of being above average. Asking a medical student would help add a filter for avoiding some of the less competent ones, strengthening this evidence
I think lay-people's opinions correlate much more strongly with how approachable and nice their doctor is, as opposed to competence. Doctor rating sites could be used just to select for pleasant ones, if you care about that aspect.
(caveats: opinion based; my experience is limited to the country i trained in; I am junior in experience)
Cold/flu, I hate having to spend a week in bed every 8 weeks or so. Any less-known tips?
For example I thought that dealing with ear pain with a cup of pan heated salt poured into a sock and held against it (increases blood circulation and somehow that helps) is pretty universal, but just yesterday it turned out an Austrian pharmacist never heard about it. It may be new to you as well. As a traditional folk remedy, it provides very quick symptomatic belief, works in about 10 mins, but if the pain returns the next day, doctor.
For the record, the known tips are: paracetamol (tylenol) but with muchas caution as it is a liver killer, or ibuprofen (I would say if you have kids, don't even keep paracetamol/tylenol in the house, ibuprofen works just as well and is safer) vit C, hot tea preferably with honey, bed, various kinds of throat lozenges.
paracetamol (tylenol) but with muchas caution as it is a liver killer, or ibuprofen (I would say if you have kids, don't even keep paracetamol/tylenol in the house, ibuprofen works just as well and is safer)
This is incorrect. Normal paracetamol dosing is less than half the toxic dose of paracetamol, and it is an incredibly safe drug at these levels. Ibuprofen however has rare but well know side effects of gastric irritation, ulceration and life-threatening haemorrhage
I will write no sequel myself; I have said what I set out to say, and it is done.
I assume that, as Rowling did, you'll drop us a few paragraphs of writing in five/ten years, which naturally you couldn't keep to yourself. I would bet money, but will not remember (or care) for that long.
If there's a nit to pick, it's that the mockery of canon-Potter was way too blatant to be amusing. Otherwise, almost perfect work.
Why does it being blatant mean it is no longer humorous? Sure, a subtle joke can be more humorous for its subtlety, but not being subtle doesn't necessarily preclude a joke's enjoyment.
There are many forms, and EY is probably trying catering to a range of people's sense of humour.
Why I think he's doing this :
so Draco doesn't know that Harry probably killed his father ; Harry values his friendship with Draco and doesn't want to lose it ;
so Harry doesn't have to tell everyone about his secrets (like partial transfiguration) ;
so they don't search for Harry for the transfigured Voldemort ;
so Harry doesn't have too many legal/political problems for actually killing dozens of people, including some very powerful ones ;
to give some credit and status to Hermione, which at this point Harry trusts more than himself to take the ethical decision (and not destroy the world) ;
to save the image of Quirrel, I think Harry still has emotional commitment to the character of Quirrel, even if it was just a mask, and doesn't want that image to be destroyed.
Preserving the image of Quirrell also helps in continuing to restore Slytherin, whereas outing him could damn the house to be forever ignoble or be removed completely
As my email is on my phone, I almost never proactively check my mail - instead I check it in a reactive manner. All my email addresses forward to a central email which is synced to my phone. Once email arrives, I check its contents and either:
Additionally, I have a pebble smartwatch which notifies me when mail arrives so I can keep my phone on silent, and I use the awear pebble app so I can star, mark read and archive emails without looking at my phone.
I also use a custom email domain with google business apps (basically gmail but with a custom email address). I have set it up so that I can put anything before the @ in the email address, and it will still reach my inbox. That way, everything I sign up to can have a personalised email address e.g facebook@mydomain.com or massdrop@mydomain.com. If I start getting spam from somewhere, I can often figure out where my email address leaked from, and forward everything to spam from that address.
On dealing with a cold:
Instead of using a nasal decongestant pill such as Sudafed, try using a decongestant nasal spray like Afrin or Anefrin.
It is worth noting that nasal sprays containing oxymetazoline (the active ingredient in Afrin and Anefrin) should not be used for extended period as they cause rebound congestion ie if you use it for more than 3-5 days, when you cease using it you may become congested for a number of days.
I agree that sinus rinses are good. I tend to mix salt with lukewarm water, as it is the least irritating. I have read you are not meant to use tap water as it is not sterile and can put you at risk of infections of the central nervous system, but afaik data related to this is pretty limited. Due to the insufficient amount of evidence and the potentially severe consequences, it is likely safer to buy over the counter saline preparations or boil your water first.
I am considering deleting all of my comments on Less Wrong (or, for comments I can't delete because they've been replied to, editing them to replace their text with a full stop and retracting them) and then deleting my account. Is there an easier way of doing that than by hand?
(In case you're wondering, that's because thanks to Randall Munroe the probability that any given person I know in meatspace will read my comments on Less Wrong just jumped up by orders of magnitude.)
You could try changing your username. I am not sure whether it would change the username that appears on all your past comments, but I suspect it would. You could email and ask.
TLDR: Requesting articles/papers/books that feature detailed/explicit "how-to" sections for bio-feedback/visualization/mental training for improving performance (mostly mental, but perhaps cognitive as well)
Years ago I saw an interview with Michael Phelps' (Olympic swimmer) coach in which he claims that most Olympic-finalist caliber swimmers have nearly indistinguishable physical capabilities, Phelps' ability to focus and visualize success is what set him apart.
I also saw a program about free divers (staying underwater for minutes) who slow their heart-rates through meditation.
I also read that elite military units visualize to remain calm and carry out complex tasks despite incredible stress (for instance, bomb squad members with heart rates lower in the presence of a bomb than on an average afternoon at the base). Unfortunately I didn't record the sources of these various pieces, so I can't link to them
Has anyone read any specific how-to books on the topic, i.e., here are step-by-step instructions for visualizations, lowering heart rate, mental clarity, etc?
The book On Combat by Dave Grossman discusses some of these things. I haven't read it yet, but have read reviews and listened to a podcast by two people I consider highly evidence-based and reputable (here). In particular, the book discusses a method of physiologically lowering your heart rate he calls "Combat Breathing". This entails 4 phases, each for the durations of a count of 4 (no unit specified, I do approx 4 seconds):
Breathe in
Hold in
Breathe out
Hold out
It sounds very simple, but I have heard multiple recommendations of it from both the armed-forces and medical worlds. I can also add a data point confirming it works well for me (mostly only for reducing heart rate to below 100, not all the way down to resting rate).
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Does anyone here have an experience with video recording, and could recommend a quick and cheap (I imagine under $50 and within a week) solution that would make the sound quality better by an order of magnitude (not necessarily perfect)? Or is the problem other than hardware? For example the distance of the microphone, noisy room, bad audio card, bad settings... I don't have experience with sound recording and processing.
Here is a review of a microphone that costs about $30, and the quality of the sound feels good enough.
You could record the audio on a separate device at the same time placed much closer. I'd suggest recording the audio in a lossless format (I used wavpack but only because it was convenient), then converting to WAV format (lossless but no compression so large filesize). In WAV format the audio can be processed by CN Levelator to improve the quality. Then convert to whatever format you want (eg for podcast) or directly replace the video's audio with your improved recording using any video editing software. It's a annoying series of steps but may get you much better audio quality and is free.
Alternative is buying a better microphone. Probably almost any external microphone will get you much better quality, just consider whether you need a directional or omnidirectional microphone (one person talking vs multiple people plus background noise).