Great post. A useful followup might be “Just try what?”, which would address how to generate and weigh ideas to be tested. Like you mention, scientifically established (or at least supported) ideas are usually the best starting point, but how do we fill in the gaps in this knowledge that you alluded to?
I mention this because there’s no way “drink spoonfuls of vegetable oil” would have even occurred to me as a hypothesis, and if it had I would surely have laughed it away.
Roberts’ hypothesis is not about the drinking vegetable oil particularly, it’s about the link between flavour intensity, calories and weight gain/loss. He was looking for a way to ingest a sudden high calorie, no taste thing. Flavourless vegetable oil is no-flavour/high-calorie—and so is his previous idea of fructose disolved in water.
A useful followup might be “Just try what?”
Suggestions:
A) Whatever it is you want to try, but are putting off
B) Whatever it is you don’t want to do and can’t do, but feel like you should be able to in order to be a “proper” adult, or a “real” {your job title}, or an ideal human, or whatever.
I would love to see this post! Although I suspect it might end up being highly individual, since the dilemna of which hypotheses to test is closely related to which questions you want to answer.
my answer to this question has become:
1) Research the topic
2) gather many ancedotes and strategies
3) try them
4) as my pool of suggested actions runs low, either brainstorm or go and gather more.
Great post. A useful followup might be “Just try what?”, which would address how to generate and weigh ideas to be tested. Like you mention, scientifically established (or at least supported) ideas are usually the best starting point, but how do we fill in the gaps in this knowledge that you alluded to?
I mention this because there’s no way “drink spoonfuls of vegetable oil” would have even occurred to me as a hypothesis, and if it had I would surely have laughed it away.
Roberts’ hypothesis is not about the drinking vegetable oil particularly, it’s about the link between flavour intensity, calories and weight gain/loss. He was looking for a way to ingest a sudden high calorie, no taste thing. Flavourless vegetable oil is no-flavour/high-calorie—and so is his previous idea of fructose disolved in water.
Suggestions:
A) Whatever it is you want to try, but are putting off
B) Whatever it is you don’t want to do and can’t do, but feel like you should be able to in order to be a “proper” adult, or a “real” {your job title}, or an ideal human, or whatever.
I would love to see this post! Although I suspect it might end up being highly individual, since the dilemna of which hypotheses to test is closely related to which questions you want to answer.
my answer to this question has become: 1) Research the topic 2) gather many ancedotes and strategies 3) try them 4) as my pool of suggested actions runs low, either brainstorm or go and gather more.