I agree with you that UBI is the solution to 98% of labor condition issues, and that’s a major reason I support it. But some fields pay primarily in some other currency (impact, social status, connections), so you’d also need UBsocialsupport, UBfeelingImattertotheworld, etc.
Elizabeth
An incomplete and poorly vetted list:
calorie counting[1] or restrictive diets:
harder to get a full swath of micronutrients
osteoporosis
fatigue
worse brain function
muscle loss
durable reduction[2] in resting metabolic rate
weakened immune system
generally lower energy
electrolyte imbalance. I believe you have to really screw up to get this, but it can give you a heart attack.
stimulants
too many are definitely bad for your heart
excess exercise
injuries
joint problems- especially likely at a high weight
ozembic
We don’t know what they are yet but I’ll be surprised if there are literally zero
Problems you can get even if you do everything right
something something gallbladder
screws with your metabolism in ways similar to eating excess calories or fat
increase in cholesterol
chatGPT says it increases type 2 diabetes. That’s surprising to me and if it happens it’s through complicated hormonal stuff.
Regain: everything bad about high weight, but worse.
- ^
People will probably bring up the claim that low calories extend lifespan. In the only primate study I’m aware of, low-cal diets indeed reduced deaths from old age, but increased deaths from disease and anesthesia.
- ^
I think some of the reduction just comes from being lighter, which is inconvenient but not a problem. But it does seem like people who lose and regain weight have a lower BMR than people who stayed at the same weight.
Weight science is awful, so grain of salt here, but: losing weight and gaining it back is thought to be more harmful than maintaining a constant weight, especially if either of those was fast. It’s probably still good if you get to a new lower trajectory, even if that trajectory eventually takes you to your old weight, but usually when I hear about this it’s dramatic gains over a fairly short period.
Jobs, Relationships, and Other Cults
Over on EAF Caleb said tentative no to releasing the emails, and wants more time to think
It’s not just cars- helmets protect you if you tip over or crash into something. That happens at much higher speeds on bikes and scooters than while walking.
yeah, top 10 or even just top 5.
I wonder if dramatically shrinking the review’s winners’ circle would help? Right now it feels huge to me.
As someone who runs a lot of self-experiments and occasionally helps others, I’m disappointed in but sympathetic to this approach. People are complicated: the right thing to do probably is try a bunch of stuff and see what sticks. But people really, really want the answer to be simple, and will round down complicated answers until they are simple enough, then declare the original protocol a failure when their simplification doesn’t work.
I think it would be valuable for George to write up the list of interventions they considered, and a case report on how he fine tuned the procedure for himself. Possibly valuable enough to pay for it. But I think he’s doing the right thing by refusing to write out a formal protocol at this stage.
You would carry batteries to recharge your phone.
Anker makes dual wall chargers/batteries that I found extremely convenient while traveling.
You would have multiple copies of any object that would make you sad if you didn’t have it
especially a second pair of sheets, so you can wash them at your leisure.
new solution: BestWrong
I’m not sure if this is a disagreement or supporting evidence, but: I remember you saying you didn’t want to teach SPARC kids too much [word similar to agency but not quite that. Maybe good at executing plans?], because they’d just use it to [coerce] themselves more. This was definitely before covid, maybe as far back as 2015 or 2016. I’m almost certain it was before QC even joined CFAR. It was a helpful moment for me.
“have one acceptable path and immediately reject anyone who goes off it” cuts you off from a lot of good things, but also a lot of bad things. If you want to remove that constraint to get at the good weirdness, you need to either tank a lot of harm, or come up with more detailed heuristics to prevent it
If you’ve already played Baba Is You and are looking for other options: Humble Bundle has a puzzle bundle going for the next 5 days. It’s $10 for 7 games, of which The Witness is the lowest rated at 85% positive, and the rest range from 93-99%
Lord grant me the strength to persevere when things are hard the courage to quit when things are impossible and the wisdom to know the difference.
But it’s somewhat broader. I think “could I 10x my plans?” can be useful frame even if you feel averse to “what’s literally the most important problem I could focus on?”.
Even more baby-step version: come up with two plans instead of one and choose between them. The second plan probably won’t be 10x better, but count of two (2) is easier than 10x, and builds the necessary muscles of looking for alternatives and choosing.
I think that explains some but not all of the sorting (e.g. the niacin post was partially about long covid, and similar posts about the flu should be and previously have been approved).
I think this is probably not worth the effort to fix, which is why I didn’t push back. But I do think it’s worth making common knowledge of the inconsistency of the sorting process.
LessWrong has been very inconsistent about covid in particular. Just of my own posts:
Nitric oxide for covid and other viral infections (frontpage)
Long Covid Risks: 2023 Update (frontpage)
Home Antigen Tests Aren’t Useful For Covid Screening (personal)
I Caught Covid And All I Got Was This Lousy Ambiguous Data (personal)
Bazant: An alternate covid calculator (personal)
What would you like from Microcovid.org? How valuable would it be to you? (frontpage)
Long Covid Informal Study Results (frontpage)
Niacin as a treatment for covid? (Probably no, but I’m glad we’re checking) (personal)
The remaining two may be from the period where even highly topical covid posts were frontpaged, due to importance, I forget when that kicked in.
Long Covid Is Not Necessarily Your Biggest Problem (frontpage)
Exercise Trade Offs [with covid risk] (front page)
I can come up with justifications for any one of these, but I’ve found no way to make them consistent. The Informal Study post (frontpage) directly fed into the Niacin post (personal), so they either should rise and fall as a unit, or the Informal Study post should be penalized for lack of importance and be the one to stay in personal. Long Covid Risks (frontpage) expires far faster than the Niacin or Bazant Calculator posts (personal)). Bazant Calculator (personal) was strictly more useful and timeless than the request for input on microcovid (frontpage). I Caught Covid… staying on personal is a 100% reasonable call, but other case studies of mine have been frontpaged.
I think inconsistency around covid posts is a mix of changing policy (because covid had an exception to timeless requirements for a while, and importance became a factor for all frontpaging when it hadn’t been before), and variation between team members. I find it frustrating, but AFAICT it’s not sinister. I’m technically a mod. I do almost no modding but am in the slack and can be sure my complaints will be heard, and they can’t even stay consistent with my posts.
They are probably too long but at one point I ran this exercise with Master of Orion and Stardew Valley