Genes take charge and diets fall by the wayside.
You need a New York Times account to read it, but setting one up only takes a couple of minutes. Here are some exerpts in any case.
Obese people almost always regain weight after weight loss:
...So Dr. Hirsch and his colleagues, including Dr. Rudolph L. Leibel, who is now at Columbia University, repeated the experiment and repeated it again. Every time the result was the same. The weight, so painstakingly lost, came right back. But since this was a research study, the investigators were also measuring metabolic changes, psychiatric conditions, body temperature and pulse. And that led them to a surprising conclusion: fat people who lost large amounts of weight might look like someone who was never fat, but they were very different. In fact, by every metabolic measurement, they seemed like people who were starving.
Before the diet began, the fat subjects’ metabolism was normal — the number of calories burned per square meter of body surface was no different from that of people who had never been fat. But when they lost weight, they were burning as much as 24 percent fewer calories per square meter of their surface area than the calories con
On the other hand, here's a study that shows a very strong link between impulse control and weight. I'm not really sure what to believe anymore.
Moderately surprising corollary: so society IS treating fat people in a horribly unjust manner after all. Those boring SJW types who have been going on and on about "fat-shaming" and "thin privilege"... are yet again more morally correct on average than the general public.
Am now mildly ashamed of some previous thoughts and/or attitudes.
What are we to make of the supposedly increasing obesity rate across Western nations? Is this a failure of measurement (e.g. standards for what count as "obesity" are dropping), has the Western diet changed our genetics, or something else altogether?
If it was mainly genetics, then I would think that the obesity rate would remain constant throughout time.
What are we to make of the supposedly increasing obesity rate across Western nations? [...]
If it was mainly genetics, then I would think that the obesity rate would remain constant throughout time.
Environmental changes over time may have shifted the entire distribution of people's weights upwards without affecting the distribution's variance. This would reconcile an environmentally-driven obesity rate increase with the NYT's report that 70% of the variance is genetic.
I see. Personally, I'm struggling with the proper application of the Tone Argument. In archetypal form:
A: I don't like social expression X (e.g. scorn at transgendered).
B: You might have a point, but I'm turn off by your tone.
A: I don't think my tone is your true rejection.
But in practice, this can devolve into:
B: Social expression X isn't so bad / might be justified.
A: B deserves to be fired / assaulted / murdered. (e.g. a mindkilled response)
B: Overreacting much?
which is clearly problematic on A's part. Separating the not-true-rejection error by B from the mindkilled problem of A is very important. But the worry is that focusing our attention on that question diverts from the substantive issue of describing what social expressions are problematic and identifying them when they occur (to try to reduce their frequency in the future).
The fact that second wave feminists exercised cisgender privilege to be hurtful to the transgendered seems totally distinction from "Tone Argument" dynamic.
There's been more recent work suggesting that planets are extremely common. Most recently, evidence for planets in unexpected orbits around red dwarfs have been found. See e.g. here. This is in addition to other work suggesting that even when restricted to sun-like stars, planets are not just common, but planets are frequently in the habitable zone. Source(pdf). It seems at this point that any aspect of the Great Filter that is from planet formation must be declared to be completely negligible. Is this analysis accurate?
To whoever fixed it so that we can see the parents of comments when looking at a user's comments, major props to you for being awesome.
I dislike the change, as it's harder to get an impression about a new user based on their user page now, the comments by other users are getting in the way, and it's not possible to tune them out. Also, the change has broken user RSS feeds.
I'm a little torn on that one-- on one hand it adds convenience most of the time, but it makes it less convenient to check on recent karma. The latter is something I feel like doing now and then, but it's possible I'm saner if it isn't convenient.
I just found out that there exists an earlier term for semantic stopsigns: a thought-terminating cliché.
A thought-terminating cliché is a commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to quell cognitive dissonance. Though the phrase in and of itself may be valid in certain contexts, its application as a means of dismissing dissent or justifying fallacious logic is what makes it thought-terminating.
The term was popularized by Robert Jay Lifton in his 1956 book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. Lifton said, “The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”
Has anyone written a worthwhile utilitarian argument against transhumanism? I'm interested in criticism, but most of it is infested with metaphysical and metaethical claims I can't countenance.
I was an intern at MIRI recently and I would like to start a new LW meetup in my city but as I am still new on LW, I do not have enough karma points. Could you please upvote this comment so that I can get enough karma to post about a meetup? lukeprog suggested I do this. I only need 2 points to post in the discussion part. Thanks to you all
Thanks for bringing back the bright-colored edges for new comments.
The additional thing I'd like to see along those lines is bright color for "continue this thread" and "expand comments" if they include new comments. I'd also like to see it for "comment score below threshold", but I can understand if that isn't included for social engineering reasons.
Risks of vegetarianism and veganism
Personal account of physical and emotional problems encountered by the author which were reversed when he went back to eating animal products. Much discussion of vitamins and dietary fats, not to mention genetic variation. Leaves the possibility open that some people thrive on a vegetarian diet, and possibly on a vegan diet.
I just realized that willingness to update seems very cultish from outside. Literally.
I mean -- if someone joins a cult, what is the most obvious thing that happens to them? They update heavily; towards the group teachings. This is how you can tell that something wrong is happening.
We try to update on reasonable evidence. For example we would update on a scientific article more than on a random website. However, from outside is seems similar to willingness to update on your favorite (in-group) sources, and unwillingness to update on other (out-group) sources. Just like a Jehovah Witness would update on the Watch Tower, but would remain skeptical towards Mormon literature. As if the science itself is your cult... except that it's not really the science as we know it, because most scientist behave outside the laboratory just like everyone else; and you are trying to do something else.
Okay, I guess this is nothing new for a LW reader. I just realized now, on the emotional level, how willingness to update, considered a virtue on LW, may look horrifying to an average person. And how willingness to update on trustworthy evidence more than on untrustworthy evidence, probably seems like hypocrisy, like a rationalization for preferring your in-group ideas to out-group ideas.
How do other people use their whiteboards?
After having my old 90 x 60 whiteboard stashed down the side of my bed since I moved in, nearly two years ago, I finally got around to mounting it a couple of weeks ago. I am amazed at how well it compliments the various productivity infrastructure I've built up in the interim, to the point where I'm considering getting a second 120 x 90 whiteboard and mounting them next to each other to form an enormous FrankenBoard.
A couple of whiteboard practices I've taken to:
Repeated derivation of maths content I'm having trouble remembering. If there's a proof or process I'm having trouble getting to stick, I'll go through it on the board at spaced intervals. There seems to be a kinaesthetic aspect to using the whiteboard that I don't have with pen and paper, so even if my brain is struggling to to remember what comes next, my fingers will probably have a good idea.
Unlike my other to-do list mechanisms, if I have a list item with a check box on the whiteboard, and I complete the item, I can immediately draw in a "stretch goal" check box on the same line. This turns into an enormous array of multicoloured check-boxes over time, which is both gratifying to look at and helpful when deciding what to work on next.
Firstly, a hypothesis: I am highly visual and like working with my hands. This may contribute considerably to any unusual benefit I get out of whiteboards.
So, advantages:
A whiteboard is mounted on the wall, and visible all of the time. I'm going to be reminded of what's written on it more frequently than if it's on a piece of paper or in a notebook. This is advantageous both for reminder/to-do items and for material I'm trying to learn or think about.
Instant erasure of errors. Smoosh and it's gone. I find pencil erasers cumbersome and slow, and generally dislike pencil as a writing medium, so on paper my corrected errors become a mess of scribbled obliteration.
Being able to work with it like an artistic medium. If I'm working with graphs (either in the sense of plotted functions or the edge-and-node variety), I can edit it on the fly without having to resort to messy scribbles or obliterating it and starting again.
Not accumulating large piles of paper workings of varying (mostly very low) importance. I already have an unavoidably large amount of paper in my life, and reducing the overhead of processing it all is valuable.
The running themes here seem to be "I generate a lot of noisy clutter when I work, both physically and abstractly, and a whiteboard means I generate less".
So I'm interested in taking up meditation, but I don't know how/where to start. Is there a practical guide for beginners somewhere that you would recommend?
From Meditation, insight, and rationality (Part 2 of 3):
...Basic method: Sit down in a place where there are few distractions, and pick an object to focus one's attention on. The most popular objects are the feeling of breath at the tip of the nostrils / upper lip, and the motion of the abdomen as one breathes in and out. (In this description I'll assume you're using the latter.) Begin by trying to clearly perceive the feeling of the abdomen expanding and contracting; when it expands and you perceive it clearly, attach the label 'in' to that perception, and when it contracts and you perceive that clearly, attach the label 'out' to that perception. As your attention becomes more stable and precise, you can divide the experience up into as many parts as you can discern: for example, 'in'->'holding'->'out'->'holding', or further, 'in-beginning'->'in-slowing'->'holding'->'out-beginning'->'out-slowing'->'holding'. The label you use is not important so long as it's simple and makes sense to you. What is important is attending to the perception, and the best way to do this is by attaching a label to the perception every time you notice it clearly. Focus on perceivin
More grist for the hypothetical Journal of Negative Results
Scientist wants to publish replication failure. Nature won't accept the article (even as a letter). So scientist retracts previous letter written in support of the non-replicated study.
While researching a forthcoming MIRI blog post, I came across the University of York's Safety Critical Mailing List, which hosted an interesting discussion on the use of AI in safety-critical applications in 2000. The first post in the thread, from Ken Firth, reads:
......several of [Vega's] clients seek to use varying degrees of machine intelligence - from KBS to neural nets - and have come for advice on how to implement them in safety related systems... So far we have usually resorted to the stock answer "you don't — at least not for safety critical f
[I made a request for job finding suggestions. I didn't really want to leave details lying around indefinitely, to be honest, so, after a week, I edited it to this.]
I would like to get better at telling stories in conversations. Usually when I tell a story, it's very fact-based and I can tell that it's pretty boring, even if it wasn't for me. Are there any tips/tricks/heuristics I can implement that can transform a plain fact-based story into something more exciting?
It's okay to lie a little bit. If you're telling the story primarily to entertain, people won't mind if you rearrange the order of events or leave out the boring bits.
Open with a hook. My style is to open with a deadpan delivery of the "punchline" without any context, e.g. "Quit my job today." This cultivates curiosity.
Keep the end in mind. I find that this avoids wandering. It helps if you've anchored the story by "spoiling" the punch line. We all have that friend who tells rambling stories that don't seem to have a point. That said -
Don't bogart the conversation. If you're interrupted, indulge the interruption, and bring the conversation back to your story if you can do so gracefully. It's easy to get fixated on your story, and to become irritated because everybody won't shut up. People detect this and it makes you look like an ass. Sometimes it works to get mock-irritated - "I was telling a story, dammit!" - if doing so feels right. Don't force it.
Don't get bogged down in quoting interactions verbatim. Nobody really cares what she said or what you said in what order.
Since I'm used to hearing Dutch Book arguments as the primary way of defending expected utility maximization, I was intrigued to read this passage (from here):
...The Dutch book argument concerns the long-term consistency of accepting bets. If probabilities are assigned to bets in a way that goes against the principles of CP [Classical Probability] theory, then this guarantees a net loss (or gain) across time. In other words, probabilistic assignment inconsistent with CP theory leads to unfair bets (de Finetti et al. 1993). [...]
These justifications are not
All students including liberal arts students at Singapore's new Yale-NUS College will take a new course in Quantitative Reasoning which John Baez had a hand in designing.
Baez writes that it will cover topics like this:
http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/4435.html
...Just after the PRISM scandal broke, Tyler Cowen offered a wonderful, wonderful tweet:
I’d heard about this for years, from “nuts,” and always assumed it was true.
There is a model of social knowledge embedded in this tweet. It implies a set of things that one believes to be true, a set of things one can admit to believing without being a “nut”, and an inconsistency between the two. Why the divergence? Oughtn’t it be true that people of integrity should simply own up to what they believe? Can a “marketplace of id
I'm running an Ideological Turing Test at my blog, and I'm looking for players. This year's theme is sex and death, so the questions are about polyamory and euthanasia.
You can read the rules and sign up at the link, but, essentially, you answer the questions twice: once honestly, and the second time as you think an atheist or Christian (whichever you're not) plausibly would. Then we read through the true and faux atheist answers and try to spot the fakes and see what assumptions players and judges made.
Anybody with tips for beginning an evaluation for the purpose of choosing between future career and academic choices? As far as I can tell, my values are as commonly held as the next fellow:
Felt Purpose - A frequent occur
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.