> waist went down
OK good - all we need now is your height
The standard method to measure waist is with lungs neutral (neither full nor empty) and measure at the point of the belly button. E,g, not necessarily where your belt goes. I assmume you did this.
> I'm in my forties
OK that makes it more impressive.
>Cacao (chocolate) not the precursor to cocaine
That is also a stimulant but not so much as coca.
> weight scale
Waist circumference is a pretty good proxy or you can work out Body Shape Index which is far better than the very broken BMI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_shape_index
> potatoes tasty
They can me made tasty indeed. Though the fact you have to do things to make them tasty suggests they are not inherently that tasty. Monotony can also be a factor in how motivating-to-eat a diet is.
Two pieces of information that would really help me to unterpret this post
1. How old are you? Weight loss seems to get exponentially harder with age (up to about 70 years old)
2. Were you able to assess how much fat was lost as opposed to how much weight was lost? No-one cares about losing weight, the goal - which is what should be measured - is fat loss.
Comments:
Potato only diet sounds a lot like Shangri-La diet - nothing tasty. I did lose weight on the SL diet but it takes away much of the pleasure of consuming food.
A lot of the other things you mentioned seeme to be stimulants (e.g. LSD, Cocoa). These do help weight loss but at a cost.
My only update was the thought that maybe more people will see the problem. The whole debate in the world at large has been a cluster***k.
* Linear extrapolation - exponentials apparently do not exist
* Simplistic analogies e.g. the tractor only caused 10 years of misery and unemloyment so any further technology will do no worse.
* Conflicts of interest and motivated reasoning
* The usual dismissal of geeks and their ideas
* Don't worry leave it to the experts. We can all find plenty of examples where this did not work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lab...
In line with the maxim "read the textbook first" I offer metaethics:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaethics/
https://iep.utm.edu/metaethi/
Nietzsche claimed that "there are no moral facts at all". It does seem that any moral system requires some axiom that cannot be derived from facts about the world, or logic.
Famously Kant's Categorical Imperative is one such axiom.
Your AB should ideally be:
I would add
d) A person who does not have RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria). This is a pretty common condition. A lot of people are just very averse to any feedback and such people do not make good accoutability partners. Such people may to be looking for cheerleaders not accountability partners.
Related ideas around immunity to change in this book https://www.amazon.com.au/Immunity-Change-Overcome-Potential-Organization/dp/1422117367
"Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization" by Robert Kegan
> Our youngest (15m) has recently started sleeping through the night
Initially I was going to point out that letting them cry themselves out sets the scene for neediness and insecurity down the track. But at 15 months it is a different story and what you are doing is fine. You must be at your wits' ends. Ours slept through at 6 weeks which was bad enough.
>Function of REM sleep
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement_sleep#Deprivation_effects
I had a Zeo sleep monitor and I noticed that I had more REM sleep when doing hard intellectual work or deliberate practice, or after emotionally intense experiences. I had more deep sleep when exercising hard e.g. sprints or resistance training. This suggests to me that these forms of sleep are respectively associated with learning and body repair.
I also notice that I can learn a lot faster when I have naps and/or ample sleep. And that I recover from hard exe...
For any of those who are not big fans of CBT, ACT is very different
My gripe with CBT is that it tends to resolve to telling yourself that your feelings are irrational, make no sense etc. This is OK if your problem is primarily due to thoughts that are just merely cognitively wrong but I find this is rarely true. The problem is usually at the emotional level and in that situation CBT basically only papers over the problem.
One extreme case of this was a relative of mine who was given CBT for an anxiety condition, which turned out to be due to a cortiso...
You are right that other therapies do recognize multiple parts in various ways.
From studying and using all of the above my conclusion is that IFS offers the most tractable approach to this issue of competing 'parts'. And in many ways the most powerful.
When you read about modern therapies, they all borrow from one another in a way that did not occur say 50 years ago where there were very entrenched schools of thought.
General comment:
There was a post in this thread claiming therapies are useless. This seems ironic as IMHO there are now available ...
After reading the whole thing I don't think he disposed of the hyperpalatability hypothesis. That was the weakest part of the series.
One other thing that was missing related to sugars and seed oils. I have not been able to find any 'native' poulation with access to large quantities of both. You do have some with access to large amounts of fruit or honey, as mentioned. And also some (Kalahari desert dwellers eat large amounts of Omega 6 rich mongongo nuts "why farm when the world has mongongo nuts") with access to large quantities of Omega 6 oils, one...
fruits, which are obviously 'natural'
Given the massive changes in fruits from selective breeding, I disagree. I would classify most fruits in the hyperpalatable category.
How many of the bananas in the article below are you going to eat?
https://www.sciencealert.com/fruits-vegetables-before-domestication-photos-genetically-modified-food-natural
And then there is the issue of availability in nature. Most fruits are only available seasonally in nature but we have fixed that. This temporary availability in quantity may be IMHO what drives binge eatin...
Notice that jefftk is responding to the child from the child's perspective.
Later on yes - perhaps - but not in real time. The question in my mind is why is the child so anxious about people taking their food and having enough food? Is this a thing that happens often? Is there a lack of security about getting enough food? Do adults behave in capricious ways that violate the child's rights?
Explaining that there is actually enough food may actually miss the point. The point is that in the moment the child did not, for whatever reason, trust that they wo...
> You have to realize that as a parent
I have been a parent for several decades.
> You can't do a psychological deep dive everytime.
True - but would be looking out for other signs that the child is anxious about getting enough food to see if this is a one-off or not. I am still interested in the question of why the child is so anxious about getting enough food that they created this scene. Something here does not add up.
> she probably calmed you down a thousand other times without leaving any psychological scars
Actually denying the existence o...
There is a book "Daily Rituals" by Mason Currey which looks at the practices of various high achievers. Few were able to achieve much more than 4 hours a day of sustained high calibre intellectual work*. This suggests to me that going much past this is difficult as you would think others who could work harder would do so and win.
A typical day would look like this
1. Hard work in the morning for 4-5 hours with coffee or breakfast.
2. Lunch then take care of business.
3. Relax in the evening.
A nap at lunchtime can help you to eke out another h...
I remember a slightly similar incident from my own childhood. I was very upset and expressed my concerns, and it was explained to me why my concerns were wrong, and that the winning move was not to be upset any more. As far as the parents were concerned, problem solved. In fact I recall hearing my mother telling someone, many years later, about this as an example of her excellent parenting.
As far as I was concerned the problem was not solved and the message I received was that my concerns about [issue] were to be kept to myself in future and I was on...
Keep your speech short. Briefly praise people who are there. Other than that, no-one cares.
An excessive pre-occupation with the wedding is a huge risk factor for a short marriage.
I ran into a similar problem. I was doing estimates of time and costs for projects which then went into the business case. As with OP my estimates were calibrated and usually fairly accurate.
Others' estimates were massively biased to low $ and time and often wildly wrong - in one case too low by a factor of 12.5. This is not rare of course - Microsoft Word for Windows V1.0 took over 5 years but never had an "end date" more than 1 year out.
The problem is that the business units wanted lowball estimates so they could get their projects started. It was ...
I think if a person cannot point to several opinions they currently have that are regarded as abhorrent or stupid by most people, then it is unlikely that they would actually have held "correct"* opinions on the matters mentioned above, and other similar matters.
*i.e. opinions regarded as correct in <current year>.
Intelligence is no antitode. The philosopher Heidegger was closely allied with the Nazis. The most famous economist J M Keynes was Director of the British Eugenics Society (1937-1944).
I do hold several such opinions but there is no wa...
Actually non-autistic people are quite extreme in many ways when you look at it closely.
Here is my spoof DSM6 entry as illustration
From DSM-VI: Hyper-Social (Allistic) Spectrum Disorder
HSSD is a syndrome in which there is an over-focus on social phenomena at the expense of other aspects of the world. Contrast with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, which is in many ways the opposite.
Diagnosis: Any 5 of the following are present:
Inability to express self clearly; use of ambiguous and vague language; discomfort with clear language
Obsessive interest in k...
It's not often we get good opportunities to make long-range falsifiable bets against mainstream beliefs about important issues.
Financial markets are full of such opportunities.
It is really hard, especially as these highly emotive situations tend to result in the frontal cortex shutting down due to blood supply being diverted. Thus you see otherwise smart people saying unbelievably stupid things.
My heuristics.:
1. Are they actually experts? Look at their track record. Have they been able to anticipate future events?
Did they say that a Russian invasion was likely? Did they predict the fall of communism in Eastern Europe? Were they sceptical about past hoaxes like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Iraq WMD hoax, the "Itaq...
Partly the problems described here are a function of scale and time, I think. They occur when it is hard to link a person's actions to real world results, as in very large organizations and those that have grown more complex over time. This may explain people's experiences that it is not like this <where I work>.
In the early days (1970s) in IT it was not really like this even in large corporations. And in small organizations it is usually not so much like this either, except to the extent that they are dependent on maze-type organizations.
Large slabs...
I am coming around to the view that any study whose methods are not prepublished should be assumed to be p-hacked.
I looked at the chapter on bullying and I found the methodology weak, given the huge inherent issues with passive observation.
It is really really hard to "control" for other factors and their efforts were quite lame. Several particular problems appear. First they correct for other factors one factor at a time. This is a failure mode when multiple factors are relevent at the same time e.g. IQ and poor parenting. Second they make no allowance for errors in measurement of factors. As one example they correct for childhood IQ to exclude IQ as a factor that may...
are the "adjusted earnings over the last 10 years" adjusted for inflation?
Generally CAPE past earnings are adjusted to inflation.
Historically the stock market has responded badly over time to a rapid change upwards in inflation particularly if interest rates rise correspondingly, due to valuation effects ("net present value") . Subsequently once the market has fallen it tends to act as a reasonable inflation hedge. Typically this occurs around the point when Time Magazine has a front cover saying something like "The Death of Equities".
Different stocks respond differently to inflation. Consider the analogy of the Nifty Fifty of the late 1960s and the high flying tech stocks of today.
TINA. There is no alternative.
When required to be fully invested this is trueish.
However you can sit in cash while no appealing investments exist. And buy in size when prices become more appealing.
inb4 market timing is not possible
Have a look at Warren Buffett's track record and the amount of cash he held in early 2000 and now.
There is virtually no information here that would allow us to infer how useful your posts might be. So I have no idea.
If you do post, I would suggest limiting posts that mostly talk about yourself and contain little information that is of general interest. I suggest focusing on the question "how can I add value to others".
Consider link posting a choice few of your existing material to see what the reaction is.
If you do post, I would suggest limiting posts that mostly talk about yourself and contain little information that is of general interest. I suggest focusing on the question "how can I add value to others".
I actually disagree with this, and so does the LW team. From the FAQ:
...What can I post on LessWrong?
Posts on practically any topic are welcomed on LessWrong. I (and others on the team) feel it is important that members are able to “bring their entire selves” to LessWrong and are able to share all their thoughts, ideas, and experiences without fearing
First you would get a breakup of the particular strengths and weaknesses that you have (similar to getting an IQ test it is not just a number but the breakup into areas of strengths and weaknesses can be quite useful).
Second they would be able to help with strategies to deal with the ADHD.
Third it gives you optionality about taking meds i.e. it gives you the option to try them lateron.
Great article. Thank you!
I also highly commend reading the original paper referenced in the article. (full text available here https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/neuro.01.1.1.006.2007/full) Reading the original paper was quite a revelation to me. How many things are parsimoniously explained by this hypothesis.... how many things suddenly make sense. As opposed to the jumble of unrelated facts seen in most academic summaries of Autism.
There is of course opposition to the hypothesis but there has also been considerable confirmation as a look at google scholar will easily show.
Indeed at a first approximation technology is about finding cool ways to use cheap energy.
Solar power in particular has plummeted in cost by many orders of magnitude
You need to take into account the base here. Same with batteries. If something goes from ludicrously expensive to just plain very expensive, it is not so impressive.
I spent 3 months trying to put together a picture of what a 100% renewable energy economy would look like. When you take into account a) the need to build and maintain the RE infrastructure using RE (currently it is almost all done with fossil fuels for cost reasons) b) the vast infrastructure needed per Gw generat...
Limitations of the study of sunscreen which make it inconclusive -
1. They only measured blood levels during summer. They would have declined in winter, and were not actually that terrific in either group even at the end of summer, though not at the levels of frank deficiency. Differences would have widened over winter and with ongoing use/non-use of sunscreen over time, as vitamin D is stored in body fat.
2. The study was small and short term and thus major effects could show up as N.S. E.g the 50% greater increase in the placebo group of over 70s was not f...
Also endorphins (opiate type things).
This is why a friend described taking heroin as like being "bathed in golden sunlight".
I find this post naive, like much writing on weight management.
I have struggled with my weight for 40 years (BMI currently 26, slightly overweight but strangely enough the level at which death rates are lowest). And I have read just about every book on the subject and cubic meters of academic papers. Perhaps I have learned something.
> things that will help
I tried all, yes all, those things over the years. Some worked, a bit, temporarily and none worked permanently. I agree that they are plausible stories but they are nothing more.
What ...
This matches my experience very closely as well, though I'm only about halfway to my goal (dropped from 238 to 215, want to get down to the low 190s) after 4 years of trying a bunch of different things.
What the OP is suggesting doesn't work in practice for rats and mice, let alone humans who have many more levers with which to confound simple interventions through behavior, conscious or not.
It took me eight years to gain 40 pounds. That's a difference of about 50-200 calories per day (increasing as base weight rises and it takes more food to generate a sus...
"Here’s what that looks like in the context of exponential growth:"
True but actually it is worse than this. As places like Australia are finding, it is not just a matter of a different growth rate. Measures that stopped the pandemic in its tracks before fail completely in the face of delta.
I would also point out that this is looking a bit like the Spanish Flu (which apparently actually started in the US midwest). Later variants were more infectious and attacked younger people more severely.
I can attest from personal experience that you do not want to...
"I worry that recently I’ve lacked sufficient skin in the game. Everyone I personally care about is vaccinated or young enough that they don’t need vaccination, so the real sense of danger is largely gone."
[Quotes because editing after using ">" for quotes is totally broken here.]
The strategies being employed at the moment in countries partially but not sufficiently vaccinated are to a close approximation the optimum for evolving viruses that are more transmissible to vaccinated people. We have a huge number of infected and a huge number vaccinated in t...
This was, I think, a reasonable characterisation of wikipedia in the early days. Things are very different now.
You have to navigate a gauntlet of deletionistas, poorly defined rules, gatekeepers, and political biases. I gave up a couple of years ago. The most difficult aspect is the arbitrary rules about what sources are authoritative and what are not.
One small example: You are (or were when I looked) required to refer to male genital mutilation as "circumcision" and are not allowed to refer to it as "male genital mutilation". The female versio...
Wikipedia’s articles on circumcision and FGM include coverage of the ethical controversy both around the practice (in the case of male circumcision) and the colonialism inherent in the name (in the case of FGM).
Their page on source selection states:
“ Many Wikipedia articles rely on scholarly material. When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources. However, some scholarly material may be outdated, in competition with alternative theories, or controversial within the relevan...
You are not allowed to refer to primary sources such as journal articles but must only refer to secondary sources such as textbooks or newspapers
This is not true. I could drone on about the Official Policy but maybe the better rule-of-thumb is:
(1) Don't edit articles to push one side of an existing hot-button political issue, it's hopeless unless you have a ton of wikipedia experience and a ton of free time,
(2) If you write things that are correct and widely-accepted, they're pretty unlikely to be deleted, regardless of what source you cite, or even if you...
Well worth reading the linked material - quite damning.
I read the negative paper (I had already read the positive one).
The positive one concludes, rightly I think, that there is evidence falling short of proof that IM is likely to be useful.
I am not at all happy with the negative paper.
1. Lots of highly emotive language against IM suggesting a lack of objectivity. Another thing suggesting lack of objectivity is that they put <did not find IM useful> in their list of strengths. I wonder who would find this a strength and why? Also sneering about studies done in low income countries did n...
Is there any kind of resource that reliably turns up high-quality papers?
No you just have to filter. In any particular field you get to know the agendas and limitations of many of the researchers. X is a shill for company Y, A pushes the limits for p hacking, B has a fixed mindset about low fat diets. etc. Some researchers also tend to produce me-too and derivative papers, others are more innovative.
Also you do get quicker at spotting the fatal flaw.
In finance there are blogs that pick out recent good papers; these are a huge time saver (e.g. Alpha Architect which I have mentioned before).
Some general comments about medical research. Source: I have studied the statistics books in detail, and have read several cubic meters of medical papers and learned most of the lessons the hard way.
When reading medical papers look for
1. Funding sources for the study or for the authors of the study (e.g. "speaking fees" and "consulting fees"). He who pays the piper calls the tune.
2. Statistical incompetence, which is rife in medical research. For example, you routinely see "lack of statistical significance" interpreted as "proo...
and other says "is not proven"
In the abstract they make a definitive statement that IM is not useful. This goes well past any rational or reasonable interpretation of the evidence. This raises the question of bias / motivated reasoning. I will read the paper in full today and may comment further.
I read the negative paper (I had already read the positive one).
The positive one concludes, rightly I think, that there is evidence falling short of proof that IM is likely to be useful.
I am not at all happy with the negative paper.
1. Lots of highly emotive language against IM suggesting a lack of objectivity. Another thing suggesting lack of objectivity is that they put <did not find IM useful> in their list of strengths. I wonder who would find this a strength and why? Also sneering about studies done in low income countries did n...
Bear in mind a lot of studies are for me-too drugs i.e. slight variants of existing drugs that have the tremendous advantage of being patentable, even if they are no better. Such trials provide little benefit to humanity.
As a fellow member of the reluctant brotherhood I have seen many friends enter trials only to suffer greatly with no, or even a negative, effect on survival. (Sometimes, I suspect, people will have treatment because it allows them to avoid facing The Horrible Truth*).
*That they are indeed mortal.
heart disease deaths are a third of what they were in 1950, (thanks to innovations like statins, stents, and bypass surgery.)
I had a look into this a while back. My conclusion was that two big factors in the reduction in heart attack death rates (not numbers) was in large part due to the reduction in smoking rates particularly in older people and the dramatic reduction in the use of toxic trans fats in processed foods and butter substitutes.
The evidence for the life-saving qualities of the 3 items listed was not very strong in the studies I ciy...
You don't mention which libertarian works you consulted in forming your views on the topic. A very accessible introduction is "What it means to be a libertarian" by Charles Murray.
This point of view is very old e.g. the early Daoist works have libertarian threads. So you don't have to imagine what libertarians think, and they have been thinking hard about the issues for a long time.
One thing that surprises many people is the enthusiastic support among many libertarians for collective action and for cooperative organisations. The caveat being that the...
Some examples of possible misinterpretations would add value to your post.
With the climate emails part of the problem was the use of language in a different sense from its normal meaning. In scientific fields, trick is often used in the sense of a nifty hack, with nothing sinister implied. Just as in common parlance "theory" means something far less definite than it does in scientific discourse, more like what scientists would call a hypothesis.
I would add two other comments:
1. As pointed out in the article, the fact that the lan leak was artificiall...
There is a whole hierarchy of incentives to medical people at different levels in the system.
At the bottom
1. Free samples
2. Free education.
3. Cute/good looking drug reps...
The free education comes with a nice meal and convivial company. You just need to sit through the drug company propaganda, which is duly accredited as good for mandatory training hours. What happens if your prescribing fails to conform to the desired profile? You don't get invited to the next "free" training.
At the top (influential professors):
1. Funding for studies&nbs...
I have begun to think that the biggest factor in a drug being approved is drug company sponsorship, and thus the potential for drug company profits. Patentability appears to be a big factor.
See "regulatory capture".
> Every case I get requires me to deploy a microscope and retrace the cops’ steps to see if they fucked up somehow (spoiler: they haven’t).
At the risk of stating the obvious, even according to the link provided, not all defendants are guilty.
And there is indeed tremendous pressure to plead guilty given the draconian penalties that some with a guilty verdict after a not guilty plea, versus a plea deal.
The book "Evil Angels" about the Lindy Chamberlain case in Australia illustrates some of the things that can go wrong and lead to innocent peop... (read more)