Open Thread, November 8 - 14, 2013
Open Thread, November 1 - 7, 2013
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Bookmarklet to Hide Nested Comments
When reading comments on Less Wrong, I sometimes find myself reading reply after reply deep into a discussion when I really shouldn't be. If I had stopped and thought, I would have said, let's move on to the next thread. Similarly, I've seen comments that pose an interesting question or raise an interesting point get derailed because the first response to that post nitpicks on some issue and reply after reply delve into that. By the time I get to another child of the original comment that addresses its main point, I've exhausted myself.
This is nobody's fault but my own: the nesting mechanism is sound, the default behavior is reasonable, and the show/hide features are right there, but I don't find myself using them as much as I should.
As an experiment to see if I can improve my behavior I created this bookmarklet: Hide Nested Comments
EDIT: The link isn't working right now. It should link to: javascript:var%20cl=$$('div.comment');for(var%20i=0;i<cl.length;i++){a=cl[i];if(a.parentNode.parentNode.id!='comments')hidecomment(a.id.replace(/^[^_]*_/,''),a)};void(0);
but it doesn't. Sorry. Presumably I'm in violation of some security policy by attempting to make a bookmarklet in a post. If you trust me, you can create a bookmark with that as the destination yourself, but the directions below about dragging won't work.
What it does is pretty simple: it hides all comments on a post that aren't top level comments. This way, the default is that I don't see all the followups unless I decide that the subject matter is important enough that I want to wade into it. It makes it more effort to dig into subjects that interest me, but (hopefully, at least) I'll get less distracted where I shouldn't and a few more clicks won't kill me.
The biggest drawback I'm aware of right now is that it means that I'll start missing interesting content that's buried under uninteresting content (arguably I'm missing most of those anyway). A fancier version might, for example, label the hidden posts with the maximum buried karma.
Anyway, it's an experiment. Feel free to try it yourself and report back, or tell me why you think it's a terrible idea.
How do I try it?
One way is to turn on your browser's bookmark toolbar and drag the above link onto that toolbar. Click on it on the toolbar to use it. If you don't like the results, just refresh. Another way, in Firefox, is to right-click (control-click on Mac) on the link and choose bookmark this link.
What's the code?
The javascript that makes the bookmarklet work is:
var cl=$$('div.comment'); // a list of all the comment divs on the page
for (var i=0; i<cl.length; i++) {
a=cl[i]; // take each in turn (forgot "var", sigh)
if (a.parentNode.parentNode.id!='comments') hidecomment(a.id.replace(/^[^_]*_/,''),a); // unless it's top-level, hide it
};
void(0);
// (yeah, I could use .each(...), but I didn't; it's just a hack at the moment anyway)Proposal: Show up and down votes separately
One of the most interesting things about this site is the karma scoring, and that it reflects (to a greater degree than you see elsewhere) an objective assessment of the merits of an argument.
[Edit^6: the proposal in this post is related to the Kibitzer system, but this post discusses adding information, while that system concentrates on taking information away. Special thanks for matt's comment and to Vincentyu for being the first to point to prior discussion. A related issue is discussed here (2009) with reference to a wikipedia, and on which Eliezer said "I may end up linking this from the About page when it comes time to explain suggested voting policies"). Data: It took me ~2 days of effort to obtain get linked to this information (09 June 2012 11:29PM -> 11 June 2012 10:28:26PM).]
Suppose a controversial post/comment has six up votes and three down votes. Right now we only see the net result: 3 points, but when the voting is mixed we're losing important information. If it's reasonably easy to implement, could we please show up and down tallies separately? E.g show "3 points (+6,-3)", at least when the voting is mixed? I think the negative votes are the single most important thing. In particular, I want to know about negative votes I receive and where I receive them, because those are the posts where I need to think carefully.
Example: here's a welcome post by syzygy, which relates to Eliezer's post about Politics as the Mind Killer. I know that it's controversial, because I can sort by controversial and it shows up high on the welcome post thread (neat feature!), but I can't tell how many down votes it has. Does syzygy commit a fallacy? (I don't mean to pick on you, sorry about that; I liked your post.)
Of course this change wouldn't fix everything. If a post has "-1 points (+0,-1)", that doesn't mean only one person read it and disapproved; maybe 100s read it and thought it was bad, but saw that it already had -1 net and considered that sufficiently punitive. This is pretty good; we don't want to spend all our time fiddling with scores.
I mean if we wanted to get fancy and use Bayesian inspired scoring, we could let everyone who wishes assign a score (say from -5 to 5) and report posterior summaries of the scores. Or, more importantly if we value objective scoring, we could identify posts that are controversial and we could have the system randomly select users with respectable karma, and assign them to give their score on the post. Such a score would be valid in a way that the current "convenience" scores are not. Additionally, posts could be scored on multiple axes: soundness of argument, potential impact, innovation, whether we agree with the normative basis of a judgement, etc....
But I'm not arguing for a complicated change, just a simple less wrong one.
Other than feasibility concerns, or maybe aesthetics, the strongest argument I can see against this proposal is that we might embarrass or shame users. Can any one give an example where that might be a concern? I figure that since we already show negative scores, users have gotten over most of that inhibition, but I'm new here.
Another possible criticism is that it's a non-issue: almost all posts are all plus or all minus, so it's not worth the effort. I disagree with this one because I think the posts where we have mixed judgements are the most important ones to get right.
EDIT: Wouldn't it be nice to know how many down votes this post has?
Are the bacteria/parasites in your gut affecting your thinking?
There is a variety of science going on, mostly in mice, about how intestinal microbiota (bacteria/parasites/fungi?) can affect behavior, emotion, and mental development (Review paper: The micro-biome gut-brain axis, 2011. Review paper 2009). Does any of it have relevance to those of us who'd like to be better rationalists? I'm just beginning to look into this and I'm not a biologist, so I could use help. I'll reference some interesting papers here and give interesting excerpts.
To start off with something easy to read, here is an excerpt from a press release for this 2011 paper about effects on mice:
Working with healthy adult mice, the researchers showed that disrupting the normal bacterial content of the gut with antibiotics produced changes in behaviour; the mice became less cautious or anxious. This change was accompanied by an increase in brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which has been linked, to depression and anxiety.
When oral antibiotics were discontinued, bacteria in the gut returned to normal.
"This was accompanied by restoration of normal behaviour and brain chemistry," Collins said.
To confirm that bacteria can influence behaviour, the researchers colonized germ-free mice with bacteria taken from mice with a different behavioural pattern. They found that when germ-free mice with a genetic background associated with passive behaviour were colonized with bacteria from mice with higher exploratory behaviour, they became more active and daring. Similarly, normally active mice became more passive after receiving bacteria from mice whose genetic background is associated with passive behaviour.
While previous research has focused on the role bacteria play in brain development early in life, Collins said this latest research indicates that while many factors determine behaviour, the nature and stability of bacteria in the gut appear to influence behaviour and any disruption, from antibiotics or infection, might produce changes in behaviour.
The writing in the abstract is a lot more abstruse, but perhaps substantially more accurate too. I'd be happy to know if anyone can translate it more accurately than this press release. (E.g. they didn't just transfer bacteria)
Naturally, the experimenters are doing things to the mice they'd never get away with on people, and so less is known about the relevance to humans. For example, normal humans may already have reasonably healthy bacteria. College students, for example, did not have a significant reduction in exam-related anxiety by consuming yogurt rather than placebo [citation]. Nor did healthy 1 to 3 year olds miss less school because by consuming a Gerber product with yogurt [citation].
However, humans with chronic fatigue syndrome who consumed a potent pro-biotic had reduced anxiety (but not reduced depression): [citation]
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is complex illness of unknown etiology. Among the broad range of symptoms, many patients report disturbances in the emotional realm, the most frequent of which is anxiety. Research shows that patients with CFS and other so-called functional somatic disorders have alterations in the intestinal microbial flora. Emerging studies have suggested that pathogenic and non-pathogenic gut bacteria might influence mood-related symptoms and even behavior in animals and humans. In this pilot study, 39 CFS patients were randomized to receive either 24 billion colony forming units of Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota (LcS) or a placebo daily for two months. Patients provided stool samples and completed the Beck Depression and Beck Anxiety Inventories before and after the intervention. We found a significant rise in both Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria in those taking the LcS, and there was also a` significant decrease in anxiety symptoms among those taking the probiotic vs controls (p = 0.01). These results lend further support to the presence of a gut-brain interface, one that may be mediated by microbes that reside or pass through the intestinal tract.
Interestingly, the ongoing clinical trials don't seem to be following up on this line of treatment, instead focusing mainly on drugs or alternative therapy. The jury seems to still be out in inflammatory bowel disease.
Late-onset autism, is associated with bacterial irregularities [citation] and can respond to oral vancomycin (an antibiotic) [citation].
Going back to mice, these findings indicate that the bacteria that are present during development have a lasting effect:
Hejitz et.al.: Normal gut microbiota modulates brain development and behavior, 2011.
Here, we report that colonization by gut microbiota impacts mammalian brain development and subsequent adult behavior. Using measures of motor activity and anxiety-like behavior, we demonstrate that germ free (GF) mice display increased motor activity and reduced anxiety, compared with specific pathogen free (SPF) mice with a normal gut microbiota. ... Hence, our results suggest that the microbial colonization process initiates signaling mechanisms that affect neuronal circuits involved in motor control and anxiety behavior.
They found that if they "conventionalized" the germ free mice early enough (i.e. if they infected them with the usual bacteria) that they'd be pretty much normal. However, if they tried to do this on adults, it was too late, so the absence of the bacteria during development had an enduring effect on behavior.
Encouraged by the observation that early colonization of GF mice could normalize several behavioral patterns of GF mice, we explored whether there is a sensitive/critical period for the effects of the normal gut microbiota on behavior. We therefore conventionalized adult GF mice and studied their behavior in open field test as described above. Notably, conventionalization of adult mice failed to normalize the behavior of GF mice (Fig. 1F and Fig. S4).
Conversely, if the animal is subjected to stress, this can change the composition of microbiota. [citation]
Although many people are aware of the communication that occurs between the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and the central nervous system, fewer know about the ability of the central nervous system to influence the microbiota or of the microbiota's influence on the brain and behavior. Within the GI tract, the microbiota have a mutually beneficial relationship with their host that maintains normal mucosal immune function, epithelial barrier integrity, motility, and nutrient absorption. Disruption of this relationship alters GI function and disease susceptibility. Animal studies suggest that perturbations of behavior, such as stress, can change the composition of the microbiota; these changes are associated with increased vulnerability to inflammatory stimuli in the GI tract. The mechanisms that underlie these alterations are likely to involve stress-induced changes in GI physiology that alter the habitat of enteric bacteria. Furthermore, experimental perturbation of the microbiota can alter behavior, and the behavior of germ-free mice differs from that of colonized mice. Gaining a better understanding of the relationship between behavior and the microbiota could provide insight into the pathogenesis of functional and inflammatory bowel disorders.
Whew. That's a lot of material. And there's still so much more to find out. Let me know what you find, or what you think the next experiment should be.
DISCLAIMER: I am not an expert in medicine. Nothing here should be construed as medical advice. See your doctor.
View more: Next
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)