I saw this interview some months ago, the author indeed claims this “technique” helps you breath through your nose.
mikbp
I just want to emphasize that “Making your own path can be exhausting and stressful”. And I’d add overwhelming. I have the strong tendency to make my own path rather than following the default one —for me this does not have to do with having agency but lacking it; I’m actually learning to use my agency to not deviate too much— and I am the opposite of effective. I learned a lot and I’m able to do and understand mostly anything by myself, without any help, but this came at the cost of wasting lots of time, and spending long periods confused about my next (career) steps and struggling to show the relevant actors that I’m perfectly able to take them —if you don’t take the usual path, make sure you are good at selling yourself!—. My point is that you should be very aware of this and account for your capabilities so you do not over-deviate too fast. Go one step at a time :-)
One thing I don’t get about this debate is how “~conservatism” is never mentioned. If we manage not to die, the resulting society will be extremely conservative in the sense that things will be much more likely to be done in the same way that they “always” have been done. The saying that science advances one death at a time is not 100% true, sure, but it holds a lot of truth. Similarly, on average, the older we get, the more conservative we are. Are we okay with a severe decrease in technical advancements and cultural evolution? Normally, there is a lot of overlap between advocates of technological and cultural advancement and advocates of eliminating dead; yet, this disjunction —at least as far as I have seen— is very rarely spoken about.
2. The disadvantage for a virus in causing humans to have symptomatic illnesses in is in tension with the fact that to succeed, viruses need to make human cells stop doing what they’re supposed to do, and start reproducing the virus, which is by definition going to mean our bodies working less well.
I’m ignorant on the topic, but I don’t fully understand this point. I mean, it makes total sense but isn’t covid infectious several days before symptoms appear? This seems to contradict the point. So, is it impossible / or very hard for a virus to reproduce a lot without causing symptoms to its host? Or what is impossible / very hard is “only” to keep the host symptom-free for a prolonged period of time?
And one more, probably stupid, question: could the main symptom of an infection be a general (false) feeling of well-being? For example, by making the hosts segregate specific hormones. That would hide from the hosts the fact that their bodies have troubles, no?
Plus there are ethical banks which do not invest in weapons, addictive substances/activities and the like—which are typically very profitable—and, therefore, are very justified in charging some money for an account.
(sorry for the late reply)
Ok, but this only works with “posthuman uploads” not with bodily humans. A large portion of the current work for eliminating dead is focussed on keeping our bodies healthy. And, as far as I have seen, many people seem to support eliminating dead by keeping our bodies healthy.
So, it may not be strange that the disjunction is not spoken about when the debate is explicitly about eliminating dead by uploading human brains or the like, but not in a general setting, right?
In any case, thanks for engaging.
(sorry for the late reply)
Wow, many assumptions about me here. And what a tone. I didn’t expect this in LW. And that such a response gets so many votes and no pushback. It really looks like Valentine is spot on in her or his comments.
To start, note that I never say or imply that anybody should use “~conservatism” to argue against the badness of dead, nor do I do it myself. Yet, your answer focusses on that.
Then, I’m not speaking about the political ideology. For example, although they may prefer most things to be done as they have always been done, many conservatives advocate for fast scientific advancement. That’s why I wrote “~conservatism”. Probably I should have been clearer. I’m bad at finding the right words. But I think that typing “~X” is a clear signal that I don’t mean X. If the meaning is not clear one can ask.
That a humanity without (human) dead would be much more “~conservative” seems a zero controversial statement to me. I don’t care if being older does or does not guarantee unproductivity. The point is that being older, on average, guarantees a much lower inclination to change one own’s mind and a huge tendency of doing things as previously done*.
In addition, science does not only advance one paper or one citation at a time; it advances when the scientific community adopts the better-than-previous ideas in those papers. I would be very surprised if you’d argue that a much older scientific community won’t have a much tougher time adopting the new better ideas, particularly the game-changing ones. And probably not in the short-run, but in the long-rung this would surely slow technological development.
I point out that there is a huge overlap between advocates of technological and cultural advancement and advocates of eliminating dead and, as for me it is plainly obvious that a society without dead would be much more “~conservative”, I find it strange that this is never mentioned in that debate.
I —and I think most people around here— try to be consistent with my believes and values. That’s why when some of them are in conflict, I try to acknowledge it. In part I do it for myself, probably to help me process the tension, and in part to make my ideas less confusing. I assume others would do this as well, at least some. Maybe this is the error. But I find the absolute lack of discussion about this —again, as far as I have seen, but nobody seems to contradict this observation— very strange.
And to finish: “what [I] regard as bad about the elderly”? That’s a good one. Where did I wrote about something bad about the elderly? I did zero value judgements in my comment. Please, assume less and engage more.
*[Probably there are many different causes for this and I’m not an expert, but I have some hypotheses. For example, for learning something new in many cases one has to unlearn something old, changing/breaking routines and habits requires effort, our remembered experience of time accelerates as we age… Actually, I also find it strange that this last point is barely mentioned in the debate.]
“Cooking pollutes the air” means exactly what it says. Enjoy cooking, sure. And open the window to renew the air in the room.
I haven’t gone through the literature you mention, so I may be off, but I am puzzled by your comment. It seems obvious to me that the effect of parents on very important factors is clear.
Just, for example, in what kind of job or studies the children choose. On average, children are much more likely to have jobs similar to those of the people they know well, just because they have much more inside knowledge. Children of parents with PhD are much more likely to get a PhD, etc. If parents influence this, why would they not have influence in other factors?
Maybe the studies only account for cognitive factors such as IQ and not in shaping the children decisions?
Still, it seems also clear that parents can actively worsen those (induce anxiety, fear, traumatise...), which would already be a strong incentive to learn and try to educate children as well as possible. Are such effects not long-term? Anecdotal evidence suggests me the contrary: one has to actively work to heal from it, meaning that the effect is long-lasting. And if having a bad influence on one’s children is possible, why should it not be possible to have a good one? Again, anecdotal evidence seems to show that some families are actually better than others helping their children develop (of course, this could be entirely a genetic thing).
Other ideas that come to mind are income and orphanages. Income seems to have a large influence in IQ, why should then parenting not have it? And people who used to live in orphanages are said to often have cognitive problems (I have no idea, just repeating “commou knowledge” for this one).
Am I writing about effects not accounted for in those studies?
I like this a lot!
A couple of questions/suggestions from my absolute ignorance, as I have never used dictation:
I’m a pretty slow reader and I really get frustrated and distracted with not-correctly written text, so I see the subsequent editing of the text as something really threatening and time-consuming for me. Is there any way to bold-font parts of what you dictate while you are dictating (it in case you happen to think that it is more useful/better than what you previously said)? Or would you find it useful to every now and then dictate a summary of what you just said to have a piece of (a bit) curated text to start with? Or a would you find it useful to have some kind of code-word to say right after you said an idea that you found particularly insightful?
And more practically (I will also do my research and tests, of course): I’m not native, do you know if dictation can work well as well? And do you happen to know if there are dictation apps that work in languages other than English?
Thanks you very much! That’s a great answer!
To be fair, it had never occurred to me that completing a PhD could be genetically driven… It seems quite plausible, actually (however, not completing one seems much less correlated to me).
Yes, I’m more skeptical now! Still, I’m also skeptical of these studies, though (maybe because I have not reviewed them myself—nothing persona!--, which I actually doubt I will do...).
AFAIK, there were very well know studies strongly relating IQ to genes (which implied that e.g. black people have lower IQ) that are now being refuted and the new ones link it much more to the socio-economic status of the family. I guess the difference is only the degree of correlation (you say it yourself that socio-economic status has an impact), but what I heard/read is that difference is quite large.
In addition, I can not square these studies you mention with other good research. E.g. gratitude journaling seem to have a huge effect improving mental health, and this is something that can be easily taught at home.
My guess to put everything together is now that the world is very messy, such effects very difficult to measure, and that most education is good enough to avoid trauma but still very sub-optimal (difficult to find the signal within lots of noise). In addition, probably, educating techniques work differently for different children (which would not be surprising and would largely explain that education is sub-optimal).
I’m interested in your thoughts :-)
I would have wished for some reply. I’d be interested to know 1) whether you think that a much older scientific community would or would not have a much tougher time adopting the new better ideas, 2) whether or not you think that being older, on average, guarantees a much lower inclination to change one own’s mind and a huge tendency of doing things as previously done, and 3) if you maybe think that these factors would be out-compensated by other factors.
What do you think results from brain ageing? I don’t think what I mention results (mainly) from brain ageing (I’m not disputing it also affects it).
For example, when you learn something, you can learn the newest theory or an older one with more or less the same ease. Once you have learned it, updating it is hard. So people who have learned older/worse stuff, have to spend energy to update. That’s not related to brain ageing. Really engaging to a deep level with a new idea/theory when you already have one that is valid/working is something we are not inclined to do and usually we need to spend a lot of mental energy for that. Changing a routine is similarly difficult, one has to actively work on that. Our ability to do such things is limited. Almost nobody outside this community is constantly pushing to find out “the truth”. And, in addition, one must realise that a particular routine/habit/tradition/theory is outdated before trying to update it. Unless the rate of change is severely decreased (a much more “~conservative” society), this is very much a red queen race. Trying to keep the pace of change would be overwhelming.
Most people will have a hard time to learn a language at native-speaker level if they start to learn it after ~10; to fully learn the grammar it becomes harder after ~18. I don’t think that’s curable ([edit] in the context of brain ageing, increasing brain capacity would be something separate); I don’t think a society with teenager or pre-teenager brains would be successful. Our brains cannot be arbitrarily malleable and this implies some resistance to change once a valuable neuronal connection is made.
In addition, our brains are finite. So, one advantage of infinitely long lives, which could counter those effects, is finite. It could be argued that the limit is typically far away; I could not argue neither for or against it right now, I don’t have a sense of where this limit would be if we manage to keep our brains healthy. Is there any sound theory about this?
Thanks, I’ll take a look.
I’d be interested on your thoughts on baby blues. That women tend to get depressed in the most sleep-deprived time of their lives does seem very contradictory with what you expose. (I know, hormones; but still, strange timing). I guess one could argue that without the effects mentioned in the post, it would be all the women that would suffer baby blues. Is there any research on this?
One point that I would like to see discussed is the relation between lack of sleep and allergies. In general, I have some minor dust allergy. However, when I’m sleep deprived and something triggers my allergy, the symptoms (sneezing, nose running, red eyes...) are several orders of magnitude stronger and really impede normal life. The effect is cumulative, I mean that this happens only when I haven’t slept enough for several days. I take it as something valuable, as it is a reliable sign for me that I need to rest.
I have once quickly searched a bit the scientific literature for this effect and seemed scarce. Some research mentioned it, but it really seemed something very under-studied.
Beyond this comment, my personal experience with productivity vs. sleep is that when I don’t sleep enough, I am really much less productive. The periods when I have slept the fewest, I have gotten up at very consistent times, so this does really not seem the cause. When I’m sleep deprived, I don’t have problems doing physical stuff but I’m much less able to concentrate, so the effect depends a lot on the nature of the work. Probably I also don’t have any major issue doing fun stuff even if it needs concentration. Sadly we mostly cannot only do fun stuff… But, for example, in the Uni I started to get much better grades when I decided to never sign up for lectures starting before 10h, because I was (partly for external factors, partly for lack of will power) unable to go to sleep early enough to get enough sleep time otherwise.
Thank you very much :-)
70% of 84 hunter-gatherers studied in 2013 slept less than 7 hours per day, with 46% sleeping less than 6 hours.
Does this really count all sleep time (including naps) or only night sleep? It sounds strange if it counts all sleep time. At least in conjunction with the claim that hunter-gatherers “worked” fewer hours than modern humans (I, of course, assume that modern hunter-gatherers have a life similar to ancient ones). In addition, there doesn’t seem to be much to do when it is dark -even when you have fire-; it is very unlikely not to fall asleep if you are in any way not well rested, no?
If the studies include naps, it points to me to something I have thought a bit about: sleep and idle-resting/some-kind-of-meditation may have non-trivial overlap. If hunter-gatherers can spend enough idle time during the day, this effectively would decrease their need for sleep. So, even if they had the opportunity to easily sleep longer, they wouldn’t. Modern life effectively brings idle time close to zero, so it would be no wonder why we need more sleep. Is there any data on sleep time for different kind of meditators?
Another explanation could be that modern life implies a much intensive use of our brain, we’d need to think much more than hunter-gatherers. In my experience, when I don’t think much I really don’t have a problem sleeping less than usual (although I cannot recall if I feel sleepy anyway or not). And when I need to really think hard I do need more sleep than usual (actually, when I started to study in the uni I was not able to go to bed early -external forces + lack of willpower- and it went pretty bad until I decided not to take any class before 10h). Does that sound plausible?
Sleep is not required for memory consolidation.
That’s very puzzling to me. Why do babies need so much sleep then? I assume memory consolidation is a central part of the learning process, is it not? Or do babies need to sleep a lot for other reasons than learning stuff? Of course what a baby’s brain goes through is pretty massive, but is it not the same (at least partly) as what an adult’s brain goes through when learning something, just at a different scale?
I generally agree with the post but I miss a paragraph pointing at that precise language can be (and it is extensively used to) bullshit. It is hinted in “How many shares of a company you own is vaguer than what percentage you own”. And also, as others say, vague language does not imply attempting to obscure reality.
I find also that nuanced language is much more precise and less bullshit than very direct language.