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Sorry, I didn't make the intent clear. I do want to do more experiments on myself, and I need to work on figuring out a non-annoying way to collect data so I can do that. But I'm also really curious how common this sort of thing is in other people. So the library research is for testing your alternate hypothesis, and my hypothesis that some people are strongly influenced by food but mistake it for a chronic problem.
You can also try using Eureqa; it's good for finding potential correlations and relationships. It also tries to suggest possible experiments.
In response to
Saving the World - Progress Report
I save the world each day at work in obvious (and not so obvious) ways. For the sake of space & time, I'll elaborate on the "obvious" bit. I work for a company that provides near-real time (updated with new data every 5-15 minutes) information of how well paramedics, call takers, and dispatchers do their job compared to medically sound protocols. By "protocols", I'm referring to things like the Medical Priority Dispatch System (which has peer-reviewed articles backing it up), those created by the medical director for a given ambulance system/911 call center (unfortunately, not everyone's custom protocols are that great), and comparisons against basic expected requirements for doing a task (e.g. after sticking in a breathing tube, did the paramedics check to make sure the patient started getting oxygen?).
In addition to providing a constantly updated view, we also send e-mail/text message alerts when things look weird (e.g. lots of respiratory related problems all of a sudden) or when things aren't doing so well (e.g. an ambulance took longer than 15 minutes to arrive).
Finally, we even deal with the allocation of dollars (or, as LW would put it, "utilions"). Bluntly put, ambulances and doctors require money and less money = less/worse services. So, when we help people get paid, we increase the number of utilions floating around for providing patient care.
I have built at least 50+ such things and am working on improving the map that is used to display the information (which affects all our triggers and alerts). Unfortunately, I don't know of a neat easy formula for converting that to lives saved.
Since my company has customers in nearly every state in the USA (including Alaska and Hawaii) + several provinces in Canada, I guess that's the geographic scope of my work too.
In response to
Bragging Thread, June 2014
Finally dedicated several back-to-back evenings to set up tools and other preliminaries that were keeping me from getting started on a project. (Sorry, no details on the project yet...)
Also spent significant chunks of time on trying to solve some repeatedly-pushed-back problems (e.g. an intermittently failing hard drive).
Result: Lots of progress and a much better sense of what to do next (aka, what to do this week)
In response to
LessWrong as social catalyst
No, it hasn't at this time.
(I fear that your post will generate a lot of positive bias.)
In response to
The Universal Medical Journal Article Error
It would've been very helpful if some sort of glossary or even a Wikipedia link was provided before diving into the use of the notational characters such as those used in "∀x !P(x)".
Although this post covers an important topic, the first few sentences almost lost me completely, even though I learned what all those characters meant at one time.
And, as LessWrong is rather enamored with statistics, consider that by writing P(x,y), the readers have an exactly 50% chance of getting the opposite meaning unless they have very good recall. :)
In response to
Mistakes repository
- Not realizing that I was in pain (physical/mental/etc.) on a regular basis and dropping everything (or at least, as much as possible) and tackling them.
2, Thinking to myself that I would be able to do better/etc. on situation X in the future despite not changing anything or thinking hard about why situation X went badly in the past.
In response to
Open Thread for January 8 - 16 2014
Has there been any update on the Less Wrong survey/census? The original post mentioned something about a "MONETARY REWARD" but it didn't say when to check back for results/etc.
CFAR is a 501c(3) tax-exempt organization. The current team has indeed been running things from the beginning; it is simply that, prior to the beginning (prior to any paid staff; prior to me meeting Julia or Val or anyone; prior to deciding that there would be a CFAR), some folk filed for a non-profit "just in case" a CFAR ended up being launched, since the processing time required for getting 501c(3) status is large. We have not lost key staff.
Wow, speaking as someone who tried to start the papers for a non profit org, you really have dedicated people!
I'm going to take it on faith then that CFAR is more or less a legit non profit/etc. so I have 2 questions:
I read above about someone doing a monthly recurring thing and the entire amount being matched. What if I do $X (say, X = 100) now (where now = this week) and $Y (say, $200) at a later time for a total of $Z? I ask because my next paycheck (and possibly the one after that) are already accounted for but I want to make sure you get the most matching out of things possible. If necessary, I can put this in writing/sign/etc. I'd even be happy to provide some sort of small $Y that simply recurs monthly but I suspect that CFAR would be happier getting $Z by say, March instead of December 2014. :)
When will the next Form 990 be filed? I'd like to lose my faith as quickly as possible. :)
In response to
Why CFAR?
It was a bit troublesome to figure out if the donation would be tax deductible because the word "deductible" isn't used anywhere at the page you linked to (http://rationality.org/fundraiser2013/). In fact, I almost gave up.
Fortunately, if you go to http://rationality.org/donate/, CFAR says they're a 501(c)(3) organization although I'm not sure how I'd verify that... And since the IRS has very big teeth, maybe I should figure that out first.
In addition, for this sort of minor question, doing a full blown Skype conversation probably isn't appropriate but I don't see any alternate ways to get in touch with CFAR on either http://rationality.org/fundraiser2013/ or http://rationality.org/donate/ (except for sending a letter).
Update:
I found the form 990 at http://990finder.foundationcenter.org/990results.aspx?990_type=&fn=&st=&zp=&ei=453100226&fy=&action=Find but now I'm really worried because it looks like CFAR lost all its key staff. I don't see the secretary, treasurer, or president from the 2012 filing listed at http://rationality.org/about/.
I would like to think that CFAR will do a terrific job but confirmation bias is already tilting my opinion so it seems that donating money without seriously thinking about the perils of an organization that can't retain key staff is unwise.
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In light of how long it usually takes for statistical models and discoveries to crawl out of academic articles -> practice, the LessWrong community will probably appreciate the efforts by the Consortium of Food Allergy Research (established w/ money from the US National Institutes of Health) to provide online probabilistic calculators for people's long-term prognoses: