Starting the challenge today, making this comment for accountability. I have 48 bugs in my spreadsheet, with rows for the date added and date solved. I know I’m eight months late to the party, but I’ll post updates and take part in the challenges as I go. Thanks for putting together a great sequence!
Richard Meadows
Karma: 593
In fact, betting in prediction markets and stock markets provides an external criteria for measuring epistemic rationality [...]
So why haven’t we been dominating prediction and stock markets? Why aren’t we dominating them right now?
Trying to ‘dominate’ the stock market is a very bad idea, roughly analogous to your AI baseball example. The generally accepted best approach is to passively accumulate index funds, which I imagine is exactly what many people here are already doing. For individuals, winning is mostly about not-losing, which tends to be invisible; if you succeed, nothing happens.
Progress report at the end of cycle one: So far I’ve taken three days on average to think or act on each post. I don’t think this was a bad thing, and was probably better than attempting a frenetic daily pace.
I’ve resolved 10 of ~50 bugs, with progress underway towards another 10. That’s roughly an even split between TAPs, Yoda timers, and bugs that resolved themselves with no action required. I’m most pleased with dramatically cutting down on smoking—it wasn’t actually difficult; I just needed the impetus of a lovely spreadsheet with conditional formatting. Looking forward to cycle two.
Forcing a smile or laugh can be an instant circuit-breaker for me. I first heard about it in the context of the facial feedback hypothesis, but I’m pretty that didn’t survive the replication crisis, so go figure.
A related mental contortion: Minor misfortunes often make for amusing stories in the fullness of time, so you might as well skip ahead to finding it funny right now.
In the post editor, is there any way to use markdown or HTML instead of rich text? (For example, to superscript footnotes, or centre-align text.)
Thanks. You’re right—I haven’t used markdown much, didn’t realise those features weren’t available. Will have a look at GreaterWrong for composing future posts.
One of the points I was trying to make here is the underappreciated importance of path dependence and homeostasis (so a person who has always been thin will have a much easier time than someone who had to get thin).
From the post:
Something like 95 per cent of people who lose weight put it all back on. Almost every attempt is doomed to fail.
Fat people who are trying to lose weight are heroes, engaged in a struggle worthy of Sisyphus. Every conceivable force is levelled against them.
Not sure what gave you the impression I’m underestimating the odds, or the difficulty of the endeavour? That was literally the whole point of the post. If it wasn’t communicated clearly enough, my apologies- I’d be interested in any feedback on which bits were confusing.
Neat, thanks! No worries about centering text. Footnotes would be much more valuable; especially the ability to automatically insert jump links (or display on mouse hover) rather than having to scroll up and down/open the document in two tabs.
Sure.
Reading the original study, it seems like one problem is that even though leptin returned to normal, it was out of sync with resting metabolic rate, which meant appetite was no longer linked to energy requirements. There is some suggestion that a slower rate of weight loss might have more success in changing the set point, but that’s also contentious.
Can’t find good sources, it mostly seems to be anecdotal based on the ranges that strength athletes choose to stay in. My guess is that if you went too low, you’d know about it (stage-ready bodybuilders are in a world of pain). Also, kudos for maintaining a single digit body fat percentage—impressive!
There are no guidelines on this that I’m aware of, but it seems unlikely that the RDI scales linearly with lean body mass. Some proportion of micronutrient intake goes towards the likes of bones and organs and the brain, which is unchanged by having more muscle mass.
I’m less confident of this than I am of the opposite framing: people with a low caloric intake have to be more careful about eating nutrient-dense food.
There are no negative consequences, because nothing happens in isolation. Obviously there’d be negative consequences if the average person did this, or if Berkhan ate an entire cheesecake every day. I’m not really sure what point you’re making here.
Meditations on Momentum
Absolutely. Another way of thinking about it is a punctuated equilibrium: in some domains it feels like nothing is happening for the longest time, then you suddenly experience ‘overnight’ success. I have noticed that I find projects with delayed or noisy feedback loops super stressful, even if I know there’s a solid expected payoff waiting in the wings.
I am a fan of Marie Kondo and Peterson for the exact reason you describe, and enough people have mentioned IFS now that I’ll have to check it out. What’s the ‘spoon’ thing in reference to? This seems to be one of those LW-isms that I’ve missed somehow.
As far as I can tell:
1. Be born to the right parents, in the right circumstances (not helpful, but important to acknowledge).
2. Apply yourself strategically in areas that compound (e.g. knowledge and skills, saving and investing, resistance training, networking).
3. Apply your effort wherever the yield is highest. All of these domains follow an S-shaped curve, with early exponential growth running into an upper ceiling of diminishing returns. At any given point in time, it might make sense to focus primarily on accumulating money, at another, skills and knowledge, at another, health and fitness, etc.
4. Choose goals that are complementary, so that each ‘bucket’ also helps to fill the others, and there’s no single point of failure (or at the very least, avoid goals which conflict with one another).
5. Keep doing 2-4 forever. Even if you never hit that knee-shaped curve, a consistent and cumulative effort over time is pretty powerful in and of itself.
Thanks for the feedback—much appreciated! I agree that the end isn’t well supported (at least, in the post). I write for a general audience who want clear, actionable takeaways. If I cross-post something in the future, I’ll think about editing it more heavily to fit the LW norms (i.e. explain rather than persuade).
Strong upvoted. This is a great overview, thanks for putting it together! I’m going to be coming back to this again for sure.
Note that Effectuation and Antifragility explicitly trade off against each other. Antifragility trades away certainty for flexibility while Effectuation does the opposite.
Can you say more about this? You mention that effectuation involves “shift[ing] the rules such that the risks were no longer downsides”, but that looks a lot like hormesis/antifragility to me. The lemonade principle in particular feels like straight-up antifragility (unexpected events/stressors are actually opportunities for growth).
I think I get you now, thanks. Not sure if this is exactly right, but one is proactive (preparing for known stressors) and one is reactive (response to unexpected stressors).
Hi Sarah, does FMD have any benefits over water fasting, other than the obvious comfort/personal preference? (By water fasting, I mean periodic fasts of 72+ hours, rather than ongoing caloric restriction.)
I don’t like counting calories or complicated nutrition packages either. Water fasting appeals to me because it’s such a clear bright line, although I’m guessing FMD might be a better fit for most people’s preferences—just wondering if there’s anything more to it than that? Thanks!