“Everyone” is tricky, since the main causes of mortality vary with your age. Anyway, I’d say, not smoking, exercising, not being obese (nor emaciated, but in the parts of the world where most Internet users are, short of anorexia nervosa this isn’t likely to be a problem), driving less and in a less aggressive way, not committing suicide… Don’t they teach this stuff in high school?
Yes, they do teach this stuff in high school (and middle school and elementary school for that matter), but they generally had an agenda significantly different from “give students the most accurate possible information about how to be healthy.” Based on my admittedly anecdotal recollections, the main goals were to scare us as much as possible about sex and drugs and avoid having to explain anything complicated. As such, I would trust the LW community far more than what I was taught in school.
Of course, if you want to get your health advice from DARE and the Food Pyramid, I guess that’s your right.
To the extent that a given fact about life extension can be sneered at like that I would assume that the question was intended to encompass facts of at least one degree less obvious. ie. “What practical things should everyone be doing to extend their lifetimes apart from, you know, breathing, eating, sleeping, drinking?” is implicit.
Given the huge number of smokers and obese people, I daresay the things I said in the grandparent are not that obvious (or most people aren’t interested in living longer).
“Obvious to the population as a whole” and “obvious to a LessWrong reader” probably differ dramatically. I don’t think repeating the advice is necessarily bad, since those are common points of failure, but the value of the advice is probably fairly minimal.
“Everyone” is tricky, since the main causes of mortality vary with your age. Anyway, I’d say, not smoking, exercising, not being obese (nor emaciated, but in the parts of the world where most Internet users are, short of anorexia nervosa this isn’t likely to be a problem), driving less and in a less aggressive way, not committing suicide… Don’t they teach this stuff in high school?
The last sentence is patronizing, and especially inappropriate in a thread about asking stupid questions.
Yes, they do teach this stuff in high school (and middle school and elementary school for that matter), but they generally had an agenda significantly different from “give students the most accurate possible information about how to be healthy.” Based on my admittedly anecdotal recollections, the main goals were to scare us as much as possible about sex and drugs and avoid having to explain anything complicated. As such, I would trust the LW community far more than what I was taught in school.
Of course, if you want to get your health advice from DARE and the Food Pyramid, I guess that’s your right.
To the extent that a given fact about life extension can be sneered at like that I would assume that the question was intended to encompass facts of at least one degree less obvious. ie. “What practical things should everyone be doing to extend their lifetimes apart from, you know, breathing, eating, sleeping, drinking?” is implicit.
Given the huge number of smokers and obese people, I daresay the things I said in the grandparent are not that obvious (or most people aren’t interested in living longer).
“Obvious to the population as a whole” and “obvious to a LessWrong reader” probably differ dramatically. I don’t think repeating the advice is necessarily bad, since those are common points of failure, but the value of the advice is probably fairly minimal.