taw11 March 2010 10:44:12AM0 points [-]

Caffeine might increase energy levels, and do other things, but it is ridiculously inaccurate to say "caffeine makes you less sleepy" as its main effect. Try modafinil/caffeine double blind test - modafinil is not "stronger caffeine", it's completely different, by actually reducing sleepiness without any energy boost. Amphetamines are even more complicates.

taw10 March 2010 10:49:22AM0 points [-]

Do you also distrust neurochemistry? [...]

Basically yes. Brain are evolved complex homeostatic systems, not engineered systems with neat subsystems in which chemicals are control knobs; randomly changing various things in brains will not get you clean results. Findings that something interacts with some enzyme has almost no relevance to question of influence over real world effects.

By the way caffeine doesn't even make you not sleepy. Modafinil and amphetamines do, in different ways.

taw10 March 2010 08:12:22AM1 point [-]

I don't trust a single one of these findings, as I don't trust their proxies to be of any real use, I don't trust their methodology to be representative of the real world, and frankly I'm extremely skeptical that any result I see is not classical statistics shenanigans before I at least see it confirmed by a meta-analysis based on large number of trials.

taw04 March 2010 02:25:31PM-2 points [-]

Making drivers not responsible for damages they cause is a massive subsidy, and without it we'd have far more investment in car safety (and I mean genuine kind like replacing human drivers with robots, black boxes, and compulsory alcohol testers before it lets you drive, not current air bag waste of time), and far fewer deaths and injuries.

taw04 March 2010 02:20:33PM-2 points [-]

You are not allowed to do this kind of cherry picking. No country is fully Communist/Capitalist/Socialist/Whateverist so every time you dislike some results you recategorize a country. Criteria must be clear, automatic, and up-front.

Also, half of the world is ruled by member parties of Socialist International. Socialist International = Social-Democrats = Capitalists.

taw02 March 2010 10:07:25AM* 0 points [-]

I won't bother looking up figures as I'm not terribly interested in long term nuclear waste, but you're wrong about insurance (at least your argument is wrong, not necessarily the conclusion).

Implicit or explicit guarantee for extreme cases are worth trillions. There were some papers measuring how much even implicit guarantee was worth for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mae, and this was enormous amounts by letting them raise money far cheaper than would be otherwise possible (and taxpayers eventually paid, but it was beneficial to Fannie/Freddie long before that).

taw02 March 2010 03:56:41AM4 points [-]

You can make the calculation return any result you want, for example by including cost of millennia of nuclear waste storage in price of nuclear power; another thing - nuclear power gets massive federal insurance subsidies (but then coal gets free license to kill people by pollution etc., so it's not exclusively nuclear problem).

If you know what result you want, you will be able to come up with it.

taw27 February 2010 01:41:20AM2 points [-]

This seems to be (trivially?) true, but your post appears to be about obesity and your graph doesn't necessarily show anything about that. The increased food energy consumption could be due to reduced malnutrition / starvation or changed age structure (adolescents and working adults eating more than children and seniors).

Graph only illustrates it, it's not a definite proof, but the thesis is correct. Issues like malnutrition, age structure etc. are secondary at best - massive over-eating is a well established fact.

Recommended daily calorie intake is 2000 for women and 2500 for men - which also happens to be the level world average had in 1960; and as some people were malnourished, other must have been overeating already.

Consumption kept growing in all countries including those far past this level - for example FAO says average for Americans increased 1961-2005 from 2884 to 3855 kcal/day (and is world's highest).

Superstimuli, setpoints, and obesity

-1taw26 February 2010 11:59PM

Related to: Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych, Superstimuli and the Collapse of Western Civilization.

The main proximate cause of increase in human weight over the last few decades is over-eating - other factors like decreased energy need due to less active lifestyle seem at best secondary if relevant at all. The big question is what misregulates homeostatic system controlling food intake towards higher calorie consumption?

The most common accepted answer is some sort of superstimulus theory - modern food is so tasty people find it irresistible. This seems backwards to me in its basic assumption - almost any "traditional" food seems to taste better than almost any "modern" food.

It is as easy to construct the opposite theory of tastiness set point - tastiness is some estimate of nutritional value of food - more nutritious food should taste better than less nutritious food. So according to the theory - if you eat very tasty food, your appetite thinks it's highly nutritious, and demands less of it; and if you eat bland tasteless food - your appetite underestimates its nutritious content and demands too much of it.

continue reading »
taw24 February 2010 10:47:07PM-4 points [-]

You are using inside view arguments to argue against outside view.

I think the only thing that could convince me that outside view of predictions of the future works worse than inside view, is big database of such predictions showing how outside view did worse - that is outside view arguments against outside view.

Outside view arguments against inside view - countless failed expert predictions - is easy to find.

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