Ah, I think I see where you're pointing at. You're afraid we might be falling prey to the streetlamp effect, thinking that some quality specifically about Western diets is causing obesity, and restricting our thoughts if we accept that as true. I agree, and it's pretty terrifying how little we know and how much conflicting data there is out there about the causes of obesity.

It might very well be that the true cause is outside of the Western diet and has little to do with it, and I could definitely see that being true given how much we've spent and how little we've gotten for research taking the Western diet connection for granted.

Sure, I broadly agree, and I do prefer that people are living longer, even obese, than they would be with severe and long-term malnutrition. I think what you're saying here is "the modern Western diet provides a benefit in that it turns what would have been fatalities by malnutrition into survival with obesity", but please correct me if I'm wrong.

Basically, it is good - very good, one of the greatest human accomplishments - that we have been able to roll back so much suffering from starvation and malnutrition. I think, though, that we can address obesity while also avoiding a return to the days of malnutrition.

Or, in other words, there are three tiers, each better than the last:

• Planes get shot down and pilots die
• Planes get riddled with bullets but return safely
• Planes don't get damaged and pilots can complete mission

We would still have to explain the downsides of obesity, and not just in the long-term health effects like heart disease or diabetes risks, but in the everyday life of having to carry around so much extra weight.

Despite that, I'd still agree that being overweight is better than being underweight.

The visual techniques of TV—cuts, zooms, pans, and sudden noises—all activate the orient response.

Anecdote, but this form of rapid cutting is most assuredly alive and well. I saw a promotional ad for an upcoming MLB baseball game on TBS. In a mere 25 seconds, I counted over 35 different cuts, cuts between players, cuts between people in the studio, cut after cut after cut. It was strangely exhausting.

The thing about Newcomb's problem for me was always the distribution between the two boxes, one being $1,000,000 and the other being $1,000. I'd rather not risk losing $999,000 for a chance at an extra $1,000! I could just one-box for real, take the million, then put it in an index fund and wait for it to go up by 0.1%.

I do understand that the question really comes into play when the amounts vary and Omega's success rate is lower - if I could one-box for $500 and two-box for $1,500 total and Omega is wrong 25% of the time observed, that would be a different play.

I don’t want to spend ten years figuring this out.

A driving factor in my own philosophy around figuring out what to do with my life. Some people spend decades doing something or living with something they don't like, or even something more trivially correctable, like spending one weekend to clean up the basement vs. living with a cluttered mess for years on end.

Hmm. My family and I always let the ice cream sit for about 10 to 15 minutes to let it soften first. Interesting to see the wide range of opinions, wasn't even aware that wasn't a thing.

My thinking is that the more discussed threads would have more value to the user. Small threads with 1 or 2 replies are more likely to be people pointing out typos or just saying +1 to a particular passage.

Of course, there is a spectrum - deeply discussed threads are more likely to be angry back-and-forths that aren't very valuable.

Ooh, nice. I've been wanting this kind of discussion software for awhile. I do have a suggestion: maybe, when hovering over a highlighted passage, you could get some kind of indicator of how many child comments are under that section, and/or change the highlight contrast for threads that have more children, so we can tell which branches of the discussion got the most attention

Noted, thank you. This does raise my confidence in Alcor.