Comment author: AnnaSalamon 10 September 2010 09:09:37PM 20 points [-]

If that's true, we absolutely need to lower the bar for such posts. Three good sorts of posts that are not terribly difficult are: (1) a review of a good self-help book and what you personally took from it; (2) a few-sentence summary of an academic study on an income-boosting technique, a method for improving your driving safety, or other useful content, with a link to the same; or (3) a description of self-intervention you tried and tracked impacts from, quantified self style.

Comment author: jtolds 30 July 2014 04:24:50PM 1 point [-]

When someone says they have anecdotes but want data, I hear an opportunity for crowdsourcing.

Perhaps a community blog is the wrong tool for this? What if we had a tool that supported tracking rationalist intervention efficacy? People could post specific interventions and others could report their personal results. Then the tool would allow for sorting interventions by reported aggregate efficacy. Maybe even just a simple voting system?

That seems like it could be a killer app for lowering the bar toward encouraging newcomers and data-poor interventions from getting posted and evaluated.

In response to Ketogenic Soylent
Comment author: jtolds 01 January 2014 10:32:21PM 3 points [-]

So what happened?

Comment author: jtolds 22 May 2013 04:13:33PM *  2 points [-]

It's clear that there's enough interest in this and enough people think this is a good idea that there will at least be some small market of products like this long term. I think that's not really a debate.

However, what I am incredibly interested in is why this is so polarizing? It seems like people either go "hmm, yeah, okay, yes" or "OMG NO". Why?

Comment author: moridinamael 11 May 2013 07:26:10PM 7 points [-]

Get moderately good at painting. Post your work online under a pseudonym. Fake your own death, or rather the death of your pseudonymous self, in a tragic and dramatic fashion. Sell your work at an elevated price.

Comment author: jtolds 11 May 2013 08:29:16PM 0 points [-]

Reminds me of _why

Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 11 May 2013 07:00:12PM 0 points [-]

Yes! There will be a Kickstarter soon and I can't wait.

Comment author: jtolds 11 May 2013 08:28:27PM 7 points [-]

Kickstarter actually rejected them. :(

More here

Comment author: Jonathan_Graehl 11 May 2013 05:10:41PM 4 points [-]

When I looked at his blog last, he was eating out socially (understandable). So we onlookers won't get to enjoy his discovery of any new micro-nutrient deficiency syndromes.

I wasn't especially impressed by his approach. Maybe he'll get some good advice from others, but I didn't think he was anyone to listen to.

Comment author: jtolds 11 May 2013 08:27:08PM 6 points [-]

He actually spent the first two months on a Soylent-only diet, and only recently added social eating. I think he said something in his three month blog post about a week he spent eating normal food, and he ended up feeling way crappier.

Comment author: jtolds 11 May 2013 06:59:07AM *  45 points [-]

There's kind of a growing movement around Rob Rhinehart's Soylent thing, dunno if you folks have heard of this.

Basically, he got tired of making food all the time and tried to figure out the absolute minimum required chemical compounds required for a healthy diet, and then posted the overall list, and has now been roughly food free for three months, along with a bunch of other people.

It seems awesome to me and I'm hoping this sort of idea becomes more prevalent. My favorite quote from him I can't now find, but it's something along the lines of "I enjoy going to the movie theater, but I don't particularly feel the need to go three times a day."

There's small reddit community/discourse groups around getting your own mixture.

In response to comment by chesh on Where are we?
Comment author: hamnox 20 January 2011 10:07:39PM *  0 points [-]

I don't think words can convey just how happy seeing this post has made me.

I am also from Salt Lake City :)

In response to comment by hamnox on Where are we?
Comment author: jtolds 27 April 2011 06:31:58AM 0 points [-]

hey me too!

Comment author: jtolds 05 August 2010 03:49:57PM 4 points [-]

I am against cryonics, and here's why (though I would love to hear a rebuttal):

Cryonics seems inherently, and destructively, to the human race, grossly selfish. Not only is cryonics a huge cost that could be spent elsewhere helping others, nature and evolution thrive on the necessity of refreshing the population of each species. Though it's speculation, I would assign the probability of evolution continuing to work (and improve) on the human race as pretty high - what gain does the human species have in preserving humans from the 21st century indefinitely, when 23rd century or later humans are better?

Overall, in no way can I think of cryonics benefiting anyone other than the individual's (I think simply genetic) desire to avoid death (maybe it benefits future anthropologists I guess), and the cost of cryonics, given that, is what turns me off so much. I can understand people indulging themselves every once in a while, but since I tend to think gratuitous selfishness is a bad thing for the human race, I find myself understanding cryonic-phobic people more than cryonics-supporters.

Is this an invalid view?

Comment author: jtolds 06 August 2010 06:08:40AM *  7 points [-]

Thank you for all your replies! I guess I should figure out how to turn on email notifications or something.

A few thoughts.

1) Yes, if cost goes down, then this becomes much more palatable, I agree. However, I didn't mean to strictly imply monetary cost. But yes, overall, a great point. Driving costs down sounds like a reasonable goal.

2) As a few of you pointed out, you're absolutely right that I should be consistent in my claims about selfishness - if the cost of cryonics is equal to that of buying a house, then either I should not buy a house or my objection is elsewhere. I think this comes back to the problem of not considering monetary cost solely. I don't object to buying a house as much, even for the same monetary cost, because presumably I am alive and am productively helping society (at least, I would hope so). As far as vacations to the Bahamas go, yeah, I'm not sure I would choose to take said vacation for similar reasons (seems real selfish to me). So perhaps I'm somewhat consistent (ha).

3) True, evolution does not have a human-style "goal" in mind, and perhaps we have beaten evolution in the sense that it no longer will continue to produce productive results, or at least as productive as our technological advancements can achieve. So, that's definitely a fair point.

4) My feeling on death is that your time is your time, but I guess in retrospect I have no more reason to feel that way than anyone has to feel that they should avoid death. Certainly the point that there is no real reason the current life expectancy is what it is is a good one.

So, all, excellent points, well taken. I think I am to the point where my objection to cryonics is only a little above my objection to vacations in the Bahamas. :) Which is to say, still strong - I can understand that others are likely to want to do so, but I doubt I will be encouraging anyone, much less planning trips of my own.

Comment author: jtolds 05 August 2010 03:49:57PM 4 points [-]

I am against cryonics, and here's why (though I would love to hear a rebuttal):

Cryonics seems inherently, and destructively, to the human race, grossly selfish. Not only is cryonics a huge cost that could be spent elsewhere helping others, nature and evolution thrive on the necessity of refreshing the population of each species. Though it's speculation, I would assign the probability of evolution continuing to work (and improve) on the human race as pretty high - what gain does the human species have in preserving humans from the 21st century indefinitely, when 23rd century or later humans are better?

Overall, in no way can I think of cryonics benefiting anyone other than the individual's (I think simply genetic) desire to avoid death (maybe it benefits future anthropologists I guess), and the cost of cryonics, given that, is what turns me off so much. I can understand people indulging themselves every once in a while, but since I tend to think gratuitous selfishness is a bad thing for the human race, I find myself understanding cryonic-phobic people more than cryonics-supporters.

Is this an invalid view?

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