If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.
Notes for future OT posters:
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2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)
3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.
4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.
Most people do not consume enough potassium. The RDA for potassium is high, and potassium deficiency seems to cause bad things like strokes. You'd need to eat ~8 bananas a day to satisfy your RDA (which isn't that surprising - the dastardly banana lobby has tried to cast bananas as high-potassium, but e.g. tomatoes have more). And excess potassium probably isn't very dangerous. Also, someone on LW (Kevin?) reported a nootropic effect from supplementing potassium.
Most people consume too much sodium. (There's been some uncertainty around whether excess sodium is actually bad, but it still seems clear that we consume more sodium than we need.)
Potassium and sodium can both be eaten in salts, which will taste pretty similar. Therefore, perhaps we could make health gains by replacing much of our table salt with potassium! Indeed, some people have to do this for health reasons, so the great machinery of capitalism has already done lots of work for us here. For instance, here you can buy 12x3oz of potassium salt (enough to last more than a year) in shakers for $15. I've been trying this out for a while and it tastes almost like normal salt.
I don't know much detail about nutrition, though, so this may be stupid for reasons I haven't thought of. Could someone who knows more about the relevant science please weigh in?
Most people do not consume enough potassium.
I find this claim a bit weird considering that only a very small minority of my patients (geriatric, often poor nutrition) are hypokalemic while not receiving any supplements.
Who's RDA is that and how was it determined? How strong is the evidence for it?
Has anyone posted about Seth Dickinson yet? I don't keep up on the open threads as much as I'd like, but my google-fu says no.
Last year I was blown away by a short story by Seth Dickinson called A Plant (Whose Name is Destroyed). Recently I went and checked out Seth Dickinson's other works. I've read over half of them now, and I gotta say - I STRONGLY recommend this author. Many of his works have a very strong transhumanist message, and some could be called rationalist. I'm kinda surprised I haven't already heard his name brought up on LessWrong, or SlateStarCodex, or /r/rational. I'm fixing that this week.
A few of my favorite stories:
Economies of Force - A post-GAI story where humanity made AI that almost captures our values, but not quite, and it results in the sort of utopia you might expect from that sort of failure. Shades of Amputation of Destiny and Bostrom's Empty Disneyland. If anyone can figure out the significance of the name "Loom", please let me know. It must have been chosen for a reason, but I'm not making the connection.
Sekhmet Hunts the Dying Gnosis: A Computation - A rather literal take on Meditations on Moloch, and/or An Alien God
I play Destiny, which is a popular mainstream game. At one point in the story a pair of researchers, investigating a captured mechanical enemy, discover to their horror that it is flawlessly simulating the entire lab, down to the conversation that they are having. They proceed to hash out the whole "torturing simulated versions of self as hostages" concept. It was pretty cool to see a concept I've always thought was pretty rationalist out in the wild, as it were.
Full story here: http://destinygrimoire.com/grimoire-cards.html
Scroll down till you find: Ghost Fragment: Vex
It occurs to me that a large part of my rejecting theism (Christianity) had nothing to do with the claims of religion itself, but rather was based on a study of human psychology and cognition. That is, while my study of the historical evidence for Christianity did help assign low probabilities to traditional biblical accounts like Noah's Ark, the Exodus from Egypt, Jesus' resurrection, etc., the nail in the coffin seems to be my observation of the tendency humans possess to believe in some sort of religion, regardless of the particular details.
I've noticed this in the area of conspiracy theorists as well. The biggest reason I tend not to accept traditional conspiracy theories (9/11 was planned by insiders, multiple shooters in Dealey Plaza, etc.) is unrelated to the details of the particular theory. My biggest reason for rejecting conspiracies is my observation that humans are prone to believing them.
I'm wondering how Bayesian probability treats this sort of 'evidence'—evidence that is unrelated to the objective details of the question at hand.
Anyone wanna explain?
I don't know if the moderator would consider this spamming, but my gang has a cryonics and life extension conference in the works at Don Laughlin's Riverside Resort in Laughlin, Nevada, on November 7-9. I invite LessWrongers to attend, You can get to Laughlin easily enough from anywhere on the West Coast. If you have to fly in, you need to get a flight to McCarran airport in Las Vegas, and rent a car or use an airport shuttle which runs between McCarran and Laughlin. Mr. Laughlin has worked with us to make the convention very affordable, and definitely more affordable than Alcor's comparable events in Scottsdale.
Mr. Laughlin built an airport across the Colorado River in Bullhead City, but only chartered commercial flights operate out of it, probably for high rollers, entertainers and their crews and such.
You can contact me for more information: mark.plus@rocketmail.com
Is there any research into the optimal ratio of simulation (such as a soccer scrimage) to drills/single skill practice (such as dribbling practice) for best performance?
An idea that I'm kicking about: intuitive organisational schemas for knowledge.
I've previously observed that it's easier to process and retain facts about places if you know where those places are on a map. Knowing the map gives you an intuitive schema to hang the information on. I am never going to have to navigate to Kiribati or the Pitcairn Islands, but I suspect some part of my brain which handles spatial orientation and navigation is putting in some overtime and helping me remember things about them.
I'm considering making an anki deck of people. Historical scientists, mathematicians and philosophers, and contemporary academic and industrial figures. It could include photos/portraits, their field, their active period, maybe their nationality, and specific theories, ideas or publications they're known for. Much like knowing where Kiribati is on the map gives me a mental "space" to put facts about Kiribati, perhaps having a personal sense of Tooby and Cosmides and Trivers and Dunbar are will give me a similar "space" to put facts about ev-psych.
In principle, this shouldn't be too hard. Without any assistance, most people remember details on hundreds of real-wo...
Can anyone recommend a good place to learn introductory human anatomy? I'm looking for a highish level overview of what organs make up different systems, how the different systems relate to each other? I know that I can hit wikipedia, but am looking for a packaged deal that will do a good enough job.
EDIT: Thanks for all the suggestions. I decided to pick up used, older editions of The Human Body Book for a good overview and Textbook of Medical Physiology for anywhere I want to delve into more detail.
So ... I suspect someone might be doing that mass-downvote thing again. (To me, at least.)
Where do I go to inform a moderator so they can check?
Is it worthwhile to teach about "Logical Fallacies?"
When in high school, one of my English classes had a unit on logical fallacies. Everyone was given a list of "logical fallacies" like "appeal to authority" and "slippery slope." We had to do things like match examples with the names of the fallacies (which would almost always have multiple reasonable answers), and come up with examples of various fallacies.
At the time, I thought that this was a huge waste of time. My reasoning was that there were many more ways t...
Does muflax still have a blog or write somewhere? I remember reading some interesting things, but I can't find them now. My memory may be faulty.
Is there a listing of Yvain/slatestarcodex's fiction? I just finished reading The Study of Anglophysics, and I want more.
Can someone find these full texts?
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10202-010-0081-7 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10202-010-0078-2 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11569-012-0155-1
I've been trying to understand more about the Collingridge dilemma and it would help. Thanks.
Rank the Greg Egan books from best to worst. I have read Permutation City, Quarantine, and Diaspora, loved them all, and am trying to decide which to read next.
If you want a logical reason for the complete disinterest in longevity research shown by the powers that be, the most obvious, if you’re even a little paranoid, is that they already have the secret, and aren’t interested in distributing it to the hoi polloi. If so, members of the inner circle would obviously have to fake their own deaths every so often – otherwise they might face mobs of angry peasants bearing torches.
From Greg Cochran
He is joking or crazy, right?
Biological immortality is cancer-cure-complete. And cancer is very tough, it's a breakdown of multicellularity coordination. Conspiracy theory bug in brain seeing agency everywhere is much more likely.
Why do plants not get cancer btw?
They do, but to paraphrase Spock, "its cancer but not as we know it".
http://www.quora.com/Can-plants-get-cancer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oak_burl_wheelbarrow.jpg
It's virally or bacterially or fungally induced much more of the time than in animals, and metastasis is basically a no-go in an organism that has zero internal cellular mobility due to cell walls, but it does happen.
I would also not be surprised if the fact that a lot of plant cells that are not at the growing tips of shoots are massively massively polyploid (we're talking 128n in a lot of mature leaf cells) and thus difficult to divide successfully makes it harder for issues to originate in mature plant tissue. Also in most plants there are pretty much only the equivalent of 'stem cells' at said growing tips while we tend to have them all over. The growing tips can get screwed up too, and when that happens you get fasciation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasciation) [EDIT: or witche's brooms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch%27s_broom)]
Amusingly, plant cancer can be quite valuable. The unusual grain patterns in large burls make them sought-after for specialty woodwork, and they're hard to grow deliberately, which has led to problems with poaching from protected forests.
I don't know how many people here have medical or nutritional expertise, but for those who do, I have a question.
The benefits and risks of multivitamins have been discussed a little in the media, but as a layperson I find it difficult to look at the conflicting studies online and come to any particular conclusion as to what I should do.
Specifically, I am looking at this as a person with a chronic illness who finds it difficult to feed myself a diet as healthy as I would like due to money and time/energy constraints. I am therefore looking at supplementing ...
I want to build a facebook app but I know very little about where to start (and the fb developer page FAQ is pitched to a way higher level than I am -- I need to know where I edit code, tutorials on using the API, etc). Any links to helpful resources/walkthroughs for a beginner?
Is there any way to promote open thread comments and the comments in answer to them to Discussion? If there isn't any way, should there be?
Question: Is there such a thing as mathematical ethics? I mean rigorous modelling of moral choices based on mathematical objects (lets call them virtue functions) and derivation of qualitative and/or quantitative properties of these objects based on standard math tools like derivates, order theory, statistics or whatever.
I'm asking because yesterday I had an interesting discussion about ethics which involed modelling subjective value judgements as a function. I'd like to relate this to possible existing work.
I did found these links:
...A couple of my friends mentioned it, without being able to pinpoint what it was, so I wasn't asking about it too much. However, it's denial cannot be existed if it's on the map of the rationalist community. What the heck is 'post-rationality'?
Where Emigrate?
I'm looking at places to relocate to from the United States south. My plan is to search for job opportunities in ideal locations until I find one that I can obtain, then obtain it. At the moment, I'm composing a list of candidate locations (both in and out of the U.S.) that meet my criteria, but I'd also like an outside opinion as well.
What are some ideal locations to move to for permanent residency?
I was pondering the whole mass-downvote kerfuffle a while back, and even though I generally agree with the end result from gut instinct reasoning, I'm struck by the following:
The downvoter had an objective, and rationally used the tool of downvoting to achieve it rather than constraining himself arbitrarily. If HPJEV were a forum-dweller instead of a wizard, he would do the very same.
I also have an objective. My objective is this: At least somewhere on the internet, there should exist a community where people can have real discussion, ie, a dispassionate exchange of priors, likelihood ratios and arguments. It will not be possible for me to achieve my objective if participants turn discussions into wars. It will also not work if people with certain views feel unwelcome, or scared to vocalize their views.
Yes, he may have been acting rationally, in the same way that somebody who defects in Prisoner's Dilemma acts rationally. In fact, it would be rational for anyone to use unacceptable tactics in order for their side to "win" the discussion. However, the continued existence of Less Wrong as a rationalist community depends on people cooperating in this game. Moloch will certainly kill the rationalist spirit if we don't punish defectors.
Sometimes it is rational to punish defectors even if the defectors themselves are acting rationally. I do however understand that this is a difficult trade-off, as we have seen strong evidence that there are people who are willing to participate and have high-quality insights that are not easily obtained elsewhere, but who refuse to play by the rules.
It is not at all clear that Eugine achieved his objective. One thing he certainly achieved was to get kicked ignominiously out of the Less Wrong community, which I'm guessing wasn't an objective. (though I have seen speculation that he has returned under a different name).
Rationality is about going down winning road and accurately predicting the consequences of your actions. Punishment creates deterrence for rational actors.
Eugine very likely made wrong predictions over the results of his actions.
The thing is, it's not like you need to learn a programming language better, what you need to learn is Facebook's API and the libraries involved. That's a separate narrow domain of knowledge -- improving your Python skills will not advance you here.
Maybe start with a "Hello, world!" program inside Facebook, then incrementally add things to it? I am sure there is example code available -- take the simplest/smallest program, understand how and why it works, try modifying it...
I just had a glance at their API docs.
At a first glance, it seems reasonably well-factored, and I have little doubt that I could learn to use it in a matter of days, with "hello, world" in hours. There isn't anything terribly unusual there.
That's the starting point from which I'd give good odds at writing a facebook app. Unfortunately, it isn't palladias' starting point; unless I'm completely mistaken, he's several levels of inference away from understanding their API docs.
Attempting to spike, by learning just what is needed to understand Faceboo... (read more)