Surveyed. Thank you.
hyporational
The controls in that study were general population, not transgenders who haven’t been reassigned, so it doesn’t answer the question whether transgenders would be happier after reassignment surgery. Trangenders have high psychiatric comorbidity and suicide rates in general, the question is can they be diminished.
- 20 Dec 2013 5:31 UTC; 7 points) 's comment on Rationality Quotes December 2013 by (
- 23 Dec 2013 2:45 UTC; -9 points) 's comment on Rationality Quotes December 2013 by (
If it’s bad, it’s bad, and you might not know it. Why not ignore feedback in general?
Karma might be a relatively unreliable proxy, but it certainly isn’t just noise.
I concur with your criticism.
I wish people went to greater lengths in explaining themselves whenever they give contrarian advice here, maybe write a post of their own if the issue is important enough. That would make these kinds of posts obsolete.
Often I see some superficially weird off topic statement with upvotes indicating many people agree, although no actual discussion has taken place here regarding the issue, and I have no idea why I should believe it. Engaging those comments is rarely fruitful, but that could be my bad, and of course I probably make weird statements too, since I have little in common with a typical lesswrongian.
I’m a fifth year med student from Finland, a long time lurker, and you provoked me to post the first time. Thank you for that, I’m a terrible procrastinator. I’m a also big fan of many of your submissions. The alcohol fact seems right and the other two I can’t comment on, so I’ll focus on cholesterol. In this case I’m surprised of seeing no criticism.
If the information you present about cholesterol is true, I am highly surprised too, and I hope you’re right because otherwise the information is potentially very deadly. The effect, whatever the direction, is amplified by you being a high status member of this community. If there were no other comments on this, I wouldn’t bother either.
I would like to see the sources that REALLY changed your mind, and the link you provide doesn’t seem to contain any good sources at a glance. The post that Kresser links to has sources that are ancient. I looked up on Chris Kresser, and he is a licenced acupuncturist trained in some version of chinese medicine. This doesn’t exactly make me trust him as a source of medical information.
From what I’ve read, in big-name medical journals you can find that the case about cholesterol is hardly settled for good, but the mainstream medical opinion still is that LDL is very bad for you. Pretty much all mainstream arterial disease risk calculators implement this fact. If I have a patient who has high cholesterol and I don’t react, I’m considered a bad doctor by at least 99 % of my colleagues and every single one of my professors. Every textbook I know of can tell you that LDL is bad for you. The only doctor in my country that I know of who recommends raising your LDL is a quack selling overpriced supplements. This is the level of consensus at least in Finland.
How am I supposed to update? Edit: see in the following comments how difficult this is Distrusting my entire field in my country in any circumstance doesn’t seem feasible. Understand that I’m not a scientist, and not trained in statistics. I’m a doctor and trained to implement science. I think this is the most feasible division of work given the volume of current knowledge. Currently my time is spent at lectures, at the clinic and reading textbooks, and reading journals doesn’t seem like a low hanging fruit most of the time.
Please provide proper sources before you spread any medical information. If your provide the goodies, I’m ready to read. Otherwise as an extortion I will treat my future patients with statins like the rest of the medical community :P
This is an important topic to me, and as I said misinformation is deadly. I hope you can forgive whatever indignation I couldn’t eliminate.
A couple of sources that medical people consider reliable: www.cochrane.org, heart disease The Framingham Heart Study
Or limit the number of votes one person can give to another within a time period. I think most vendetta voting happens in the heat of the moment. I don’t like not being able to vote old comments, or skewing the voting on either side.
How do you gain knowledge of other people’s terminal values, or even your own?
I don’t believe status is my terminal value. I don’t think it’s a value at all. I think it’s a useful umbrella term for all the lower level optimization processes that the blind idiot god decided to throw in.
Do you not value praise or criticism? Do you not care if you’re useful to others? Do you not care if you get to delegate instead of DIY? Do you not care if you get to choose your sexual partners? Etc...
I cautiously suggest some of these hint at the actual terminal values under the umbrella.
Sleep enough.
Ah, it’s funny how easily I forget food isn’t just about fueling your cells.
I was expecting some sort of a nutrition based argument.
Defecting by accident seems to fit too. It’s more about how to tell people they’re wrong.
I agree, mind-killer is too much of an applause light is an applause light these days.
I don’t think movies are good for much else than entertainment, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Some are good for inspiring certain attitudes and motivations, but the effect isn’t specific for rationality and tends to fade rather quickly. ETA: This has potential to be really bad for rationality, as Trevor correctly suspects.
I think any argument for a movie being better for teaching rationality than actually studying for the two hours is rationalization.
Gattaca inspires me to be the determinator for a while.
The whole idea of having a belief as a litmus test for rationality seems totally backward. The whole point is how you change your beliefs in response to new evidence.
I think this is a very uncharitable interpretation of what the post in question is trying to say. First, the post isn’t proposing a litmus test, but a test that is better than theism in identifying irrationality. Second, how would you know if someone changes their beliefs in response to new evidence without assessing their beliefs in relation to shared evidence? There’s no way Stuart was stupid enough to think evidence shouldn’t be shared for this to work.
ETA: I’m not a native speaker, and I’m not sure how people use the word litmus test anymore.
Obviously, sheer disgust made it hard for doctors to embrace this treatment.
This is a blatant failure at imagining what a doctor’s work day looks like. Doctors who would treat resistant cases of diarrhea would be gastroenterologists, that is people who pretty much specialize in dealing with poop.
I agree with the general argument, though.
ETA: Did I misunderstand this article? I thought the whole feces with chocolate thing was there just to spice up the story. They don’t make people eat feces and I’m not sure they ever have. it’s done through a tube and I think these things have been around for several decades.
A word of caution though: you could easily get too much vitamin A from eating liver. This might lead to permanent liver damage among other problems.
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?
Also, people are free to interpret blog comments as it suits their goals.
If they do stop citing Taubes, I predict they start recommending the Perfect Health Diet. I think the correct response would be to suggest they write a summary, not write a series of articles rebuking the diet, so that we can question them and not the other way around. Make the people with novel advice do most of the work.
If you’re generally tired, you should see a doctor so that common physical causes can be ruled out.
No matter what, I try to get quality sleep. If I’m sleep deprived, I’m absolutely useless. This is easily the number one thing far above others.
The other lowest hanging fruit for me roughly in order are: avoiding alcohol and recreational drugs, work and other kinds of mental exercise, social interaction, SSRIs, basic breath meditation, physical exercise, eating healthy, some caffeine and low dose nicotine. Improving your life situation in various mundane ways should work too, like gjm pointed out.
I try to avoid free thinking and interaction when I’m tired, which is usually in the evening. That’s when I’m the most vulnerable to being moody and confrontational and making the kinds of mistakes that haunt me afterwards, or getting racing thoughts on stupid shit that doesn’t really matter. I probably have other useful habits I’m not even aware of that I’ve developed over the years.
I recommend you study and experiment with yourself and try to make a habit of the things that work and ditch the stuff that doesn’t. Reaping the rewards can take some time, so try to be patient. You can’t improve everything at once, but every good decision makes the next good decision easier.
- 16 Dec 2013 6:30 UTC; 5 points) 's comment on Luck II: Expecting White Swans by (
- 18 Dec 2013 6:30 UTC; 4 points) 's comment on Luck II: Expecting White Swans by (
I think you need a longer time span to see this is quite often false. What has happened many times is I argue with my friend or my parent and “win” while they’re defending their position to the teeth. Months later, they present my argument to me as their own as if the previous discussion never happened. Some people’s forgetfulness amazes me, but I suspect I’ve changed my mind this way without noticing too.
Admitting you’re wrong is quite different from changing your mind. Even so, I hopefully don’t argue to win these days anymore.