I thought the fatty-acid article was excellent. (The ethics article was fine but didn’t have much that was new to me; that’s probably because I’ve spent a lot more time thinking about ethics than about fatty acids; I suspect the same is true for most LW readers.)
I should add that I am not any kind of chemist and am simply assuming that the fatty-acid article is accurate. (There was one thing I was skeptical about. You kinda imply that fatty acids with any trans double bonds tend to be rigid and pack well, hence waxy rather than oily—but from the geometrical intuitions in the article it seems like “no cis double bonds” is the relevant condition rather than “at least one trans double bond”.)
Thank you! Yeah, the morality one was meant to be what I wish I could tell my teenage self. Also, I wanted to keep it generic and uncontroversial because I think the people who could benefit most from it are more likely to be scared off by anything too unusual.
Well, arbitrary trans fats would be about as oily as arbitrary polyunsaturated fats, but most of the ones that occur are more stiff because this is the reason they exist—trans fats are usually byproducts of hydrogenation, which is where hydrogen is reacted with polyunsaturated fats to fill in the double bonds and make it more solid. So in practice, trans fats are more solid than unsaturated fats. The most common one, elaidic acid is otherwise completely saturated.
Also, I’m working on a follow up to the fatty acid article which goes into how the body uses fatty acids.
I learned some Ruby on Rails, enough to create a website for me and my family. This gave me a good excuse to finally start writing a blog.
On the blog, I’ve written up some research I’ve done recently on fatty acids, and also some thoughts on morality. Let me know what you think!
I thought the fatty-acid article was excellent. (The ethics article was fine but didn’t have much that was new to me; that’s probably because I’ve spent a lot more time thinking about ethics than about fatty acids; I suspect the same is true for most LW readers.)
I should add that I am not any kind of chemist and am simply assuming that the fatty-acid article is accurate. (There was one thing I was skeptical about. You kinda imply that fatty acids with any trans double bonds tend to be rigid and pack well, hence waxy rather than oily—but from the geometrical intuitions in the article it seems like “no cis double bonds” is the relevant condition rather than “at least one trans double bond”.)
Thank you! Yeah, the morality one was meant to be what I wish I could tell my teenage self. Also, I wanted to keep it generic and uncontroversial because I think the people who could benefit most from it are more likely to be scared off by anything too unusual.
Well, arbitrary trans fats would be about as oily as arbitrary polyunsaturated fats, but most of the ones that occur are more stiff because this is the reason they exist—trans fats are usually byproducts of hydrogenation, which is where hydrogen is reacted with polyunsaturated fats to fill in the double bonds and make it more solid. So in practice, trans fats are more solid than unsaturated fats. The most common one, elaidic acid is otherwise completely saturated.
Also, I’m working on a follow up to the fatty acid article which goes into how the body uses fatty acids.