Thanks for the paper (that’s a lot of authors!). The complexity you mention makes it difficult to determine whether substance X (caffeine, alcohol, eggs, etc.) has a net positive or negative for any given person when it comes to health benefits. Coffee has been linked to some positive health effects, but maybe only for those people who don’t get the jitters....that’s the sort of thing that would be cool to know. Until then, I’m just going to listen to my body and minimize consumption.
shullak7
Karma: 38
Is there any research on why caffeine seems to affect some people more/differently than others? Anecdotally, I’ve noticed over the years that I get the “jitters” after two cups and have to stop because I can’t stand the feeling, whereas others can drink half a pot and barely notice the effects.
I initially thought that these others had just ‘pushed through the jitters’ and built up a tolerance, but some of them have told me they’ve never experienced the jittery feeling I’m talking about. Or maybe it just didn’t make them as uncomfortable as it makes me?
The people I know who retired or are scheduled to retire the quickest
Cops.Also military. Defined pension benefits and health care (such as it is) for the rest of your life. Of course, you must be in the military for 20+ years, which I’m guessing is not what the OP is looking for based on his/her other comments. :-)
Oh, and a practical question (for the US people) -- once you retire at, say, 40, what are you going to use for health insurance and does your retirement planning cover the medical costs?
I experienced this to some extent (a long story I won’t go into here). For a while, we paid for a high-deductible plan on the state exchange since we were both relatively healthy and mainly looking to not be bankrupted should we experience a medical emergency or suddenly fall ill. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), our other income was just high enough that we didn’t qualify for federal subsidies so we were paying over $400 per month for a bare-bones plan for my husband and me. Doable, but not ideal....definitely something people need to plan and budget for when considering early retirement.
Thanks Vaniver. I am going to take this to mean that I’m young at heart.
It looks like the median age is 27.67, but I’m curious to see the age-range breakdown as I’ve frequently assumed I’m “old” for the group (over 40). Oh....never mind.....just saw the link to the Excel spreadsheet and will sort it myself.
I truly wish that I was in a position to help make rationality training part of the public school curriculum because I think that would be of tremendous value to our society. I do work at a library and people hold workshops there...libraries could be a good place to “spread the word” to people who might be interested in rationality education, but may not have heard about it. The workshop would have to be free of charge, though, and CFAR isn’t there yet.
I think that is one of my questions; i.e., is some form of natural language required? Or maybe what I’m wondering is what intelligence would look like if it weren’t constrained by language—if that’s even possible. I need to read/learn more on this topic. I find it really interesting.
I think that “the role of language in human thought” is one of the ways that AI could be very different from us. There is research into the way that different languages affect cognitive abilities (e.g. -- https://psych.stanford.edu/~lera/papers/sci-am-2011.pdf). One of the examples given is that, as a native English-speaker, I may have more difficulty learning the base-10 structure in numbers than a Mandarin speaker because of the difference in the number words used in these languages. Language can also affect memory, emotion, etc.
I’m guessing that an AI’s cognitive ability wouldn’t change no matter what human language it’s using, but I’d be interested to know what people doing AI research think about this.
This correlates with my experience in the military. I had a job for a while that did not allow time for thoughtful analysis before each decision. In order to become competent, I had to do simulation after simulation after simulation, then live exercise after live exercise after live exercise...to the point where I could just react (hopefully competently).
Although I was well-trained in that role, it didn’t automatically make me good at “Being Responsible For This Shit”. Being Responsible (well, being good at Being Responsible) requires consideration of additional factors above and beyond your own skill-set when making decisions. I couldn’t have been In Charge without having first acquired my automatic skills, but Being Responsible required the ability to think strategically.
Thank you for this. As a younger woman, I became reluctant to join conversations at conferences or other professional meetings because I had noticed that the dynamic of the group sometimes changed for the worse when I entered the discussion. As I get older, I’m no longer as much of a “prize”, so it doesn’t happen to me as often (which is honestly a relief), but I see it happen with other women. You’ve put nicely into words why it sucks so much—for everyone, not just women. I have to belief that it also sucks for the men who are just trying to have a good discussion, but are suddenly thrust into the middle of a sexual competition.