Most of the studies I am familiar with are from cardiology and describe "moderate" and "light" categories. Where light is walking, and moderate is 30+ minutes three to five times a week, of gym or calisthenics.

From personal experience as a competitive track runner in youth, and trying to lose weight as an adult, I have never experienced anything but loathing for exercise at any level of intensity. I do it anyway. Daily, for my whole life. 

I hear the same thing about cold immersion, which a lot of people swear by, but also doesn't induce any dopamine reaction in me. 

What I want to see is someone do the research but break out groups by body type (endomorph, ectomorph, mesomorph) and see if that's part of it.

I drowned and in the process lost a lot of brain function, including significant IQ loss. Would be great to get that memory, executive functioning, and problem solving capacity back. But it appears that brain implants are more focused on physical control over mental capabilities; and the longevity field has more progress in prevention of loss over restoration. Adult brains are not totally locked down, but major improvement doesn't appear to be on the field of possibilities. I would be happy to learn I am wrong.

I have to be careful what I say on this one, so these are only the examples that are in the news. Know that it is worse behind the scenes. I work in Hawaii State Government. Technology implementations are grossly incompetent. See the Hawaii Health Connector news articles for a great example (https://www.hawaiifreepress.com/Articles-Main/ID/11216/Hawaii-Health-Connector-director-steps-down-after-health-exchangersquos-failure). Our rail project resulted in 9 federal investigations for corruption, and two separate Governors requesting the whole management board resign over their incompetence (https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2025/06/24/governor-calls-hta-board-resignations-while-lawmakers-grill-its-leaders/). When our first state chief technology officer tried to get agencies to modernize their accounting software (which included asking some entities to use software instead of paper ledgers) he was fired for the audacity. My agency still uses typewriters. After 20 years of trying to implement digital, we still use paper records and ink signatures. It should fall into the very hard category, but actual proven performance appears to be in the impossible side due to the perversity of incentives.

People say that often enough that I believe it is true for them. Yet the relapse rate within groups after experiments suggests that you and those like you are in the minority.

Very few people keep exercising, meditating, etc after year long interventions. They keep it up for a while, but it definitely doesn't stay a permanent part of their life. And the desistance rates during experiments are not small either.

There is something internal that remains to be identified about who falls on which side of the line.

This is why the drugs for weight loss have been so transformative. If people could actually come to enjoy exercise in a reliable way, there would never have been a market for the drugs.

Well, at least it is something. Thank you! I have been told about an AI homeschooling tool, but don't have the link yet, so haven't had a chance to explore it.

Very sad how little work on this area is happening.

" Wait, 44% of the GSS answers are Independent? I think this is mostly down to having less formal party affiliations. If not, I'm confused. "

Yes, do a search on "Nones" meaning no political party. They have been the largest bloc since the 2010s and larger than both Democrats and Republicans combined since 2022-ish. Another term is politically homeless, but I think I see Nones more often. Depending on the poll and methodology it is breaking 50% of the whole USA, but have been over 40% in pretty much every poll since 2016. Still growing too. 

But some polls lump Nones with Libertarians and Greens, Etc. so it is not always clean in the data unless you look into the questions. And some polls talk about religious Nones instead of Atheist and Agnostic. 

This seems more like "who on reddit uses AI erotica" than "who uses AI erotica". The demographics, especially by nation, are very similar to reddit's overall numbers. For example, America and England represent more than twice all other nations combined on Reddit. Still, you got some interesting data.

I think looking at other sites as much as possible might be rather helpful. For example, when Pornhub was still releasing stats, their user base was far more diverse. The online erotica websites are many, and while reddit is big, I am not sure it is representative of the whole. Though I don't know how easy it might be to get the data from other sites.

The differences from your writeup on AI companions were quite interesting. 

" How do you teach normies to use AI five years from now, for their own job? Altman says basically people learn on their own.

1. It’s great that they can learn on their own, but this definitely is not optimal.
2. As in, you should be able to do a lot better by teaching people?
3. There’s definitely a common theme of lack of curiosity, where people need pushes in the right directions. Perhaps AI itself can help more with this. "

This hits at a particularly relevant point to me. There is a difference between teaching to fish and giving a fish. Helping to do something and doing it for the person. There is a huge financial opportunity right here in this question and I do not understand the incentives at play that have been preventing everyone from jumping on it. Please help me see what I am missing.

Take dating apps. They make the match for the user. Ok, why doesn't at least one make AI personalities and train you to interact in the real world? Help you find your own weaknesses and overcome them. If I have an AI that can match two people, and it knows what the most common desires and red flags are, then it can generate a profile of a user, here are your strengths and weaknesses against the market, here is a training plan to minimize your weaknesses and maximize your strengths. Here is information about your local environment and what your chosen partners are interested in, and then create a series of simulated experiences of approaching and interacting. Rinse repeat then go out in the real world and do it. 

Same with any topic or skill. Instead of doing it, the AI can teach me to do it. Can give me simulated practice. Can take on multiple personas and let me interact with them so I learn to handle multiple types of challenges.

I have seen a very small number of people who have made debate bots for this purpose. But that's it. It seems like easy, obvious money and no one is doing it and I don't see why. It seems to be within cur ent capabilities. What is the disincentive that I am missing?

" The fourth color opsin for these animals lies in the ultraviolet. For humans such a protein must be carefully picked among existing ones (or else designed anew) since the human eye naturally blocks UV light. UV-A (320-400 nm) is likely the best candidate as a large part of it reaches the retina and there are animal uv opsins with mean responsivity at around 370 nm.  " 

How does this compare to those humans who are naturally tetrachromate? Do they see ultraviolet as well, or something else? And why select something other than what they have which clearly works with human brains and eyes? 

How it started: pics or it didn't happen.

How it's going: IRL or it didn't happen.

I think there is a window of opportunity for humans to create a reputation for legitimacy and a venue for official information. Consider Neil Degrassi Tyson and the recent flat earth fake. People know where to check to see if he really changed his mind. He has a valid place for things to appear, and a reputation.

Then consider a purported leaked recording of a politician. There's no way to validate or invalidate it. It is a leak, so you expect the politician to deny it whether or not it is true. The tendency is to just reinforce ones pre-existing priors rather than re-evaluation. Some people will be able to upgrade to two possible worlds based on true or not true, and some won't. And then the next time there are four possibilities, then it gets out of hand. No one can keep it straight.

Whatever else happens, there will be a rebirth in the value of in person contact to validate information. Until holograms, avatars and perfect disguises. I don't see any of them as coming soon.

So I see three things at once: some people are fortunate enough to have trust, and get it established before the fakes dominate, so can maintain trust. They can anchor other people the way Google's old search algorithm used to. Some people are screwed and there will always be doubt, trust will be impossible. Flesh connections will make a comeback for purposes of trust. We will muddle through as societies.

" If people nod to this, as humans often do, these people will be affirmed in believing that a deity is micromanaging their parking experience. I imagine this leads to quite warped perspectives on the world. "

I think there is validity in this, but with a caveat, and there is a much stronger downside that exists alongside this one.

The caveat is that people in general need more gratitude and humility in their lives. I agree that imagining God consciously deciding to give you a parking place is going to lead to warped perspectives. But I also believe that we ought not overlook little positives in life. The human mind evolved to weigh negatives much more than positives and this has consequences for happiness. It keeps us alive in dangerous situations, but it holds us back in safety. Consciously and deliberately fostering gratitude and humility counteracts this force.

It is way too easy to drown in negativity. Rates of depression and drug addiction are very high. There are 55+ violent conflicts and wars going on right now per the UN. Gratitude counteracts despair. It is a strong force against hopelessness. So even if the thank you is offered for a silly thing, there is a way to hold the gratitude to God for making a world where the good things happen, rather than consciously deciding at every moment to give some good to this person and something bad to that one. Like the divine clockmaker theory. A good clockmaker makes a clock that works. A terrible clock maker makes a clock that requires constant tweaking. Gratitude for living in a well made, but largely random, world is much healthier than God decided He had inflicted enough frustration on me so I was finally given a park ng space, and I am thankful for that mercy.

There was a rabbi who wrote articles for Newsweek (I think) and one was about how to pray. I could not find it when I went to look, just articles about that one. The short version is that every prayer any human has ever spoken is one of four: gimme, thank you, oops, or wow. In general people have too many gimme prayers, and not enough thank you and wows. In Catholicism, this appears even in the gimme prayers, with the focus on the Lord's Prayer which is a humble gimme, because you aren't putting your gimmie into it, just "Thy will be done".  And I repeat, we need more thank you and wows in our lives.

This leads into the second downfall I see: external locus of control. 

***

There is a joke about a man praying as a storm bears down on his town. The mayor orders an evacuation, and the man's neighbors offer to help him pack and drive him to safety. No, thank you, says the man, I have been praying and God will take care of me,

The storm comes and brings flooding, the man prays as waters fill the first floor of his home. An emergency boat sees him on the roof praying, and offers to take him to a shelter, but he again says, no thank you, I am a good man, and God will answer my prayers.

The waters keep rising, nearly to the roof and a helicopter comes, they actually try to take the man against his will, but he fights back saying what good is my faith if I forsake God after being true for so long, He will answer my prayers.

The water rises and the man drowns. As he stands before God in judgement he asks, what did I do wrong Lord that you forsake me?

And God said, I sent you a car, a boat and a helicopter, what more did you want from me? In the end, David still had to pick up his weapons and fight Goliath.

***

This is a Christian joke, but I have seen the.depicted attitude in my Hindu and Buddhist friends too. When faced with a difficult task, they will often say "next life". There's no point in trying, maybe next life. Some of my Muslim friends also, just take the tenet pray five times a day and if God wills it will happen, as an instruction not to try hard on tasks. One actually tries to convince her sister, stop working so hard, just pray more. I have not known any of my Igbo friends who hold traditional animist beliefs to have this external locus of control, But I have seen it in every other religion. And I certainly am not an expert on all traditions. It definitely extends past Christianity though. There is a risk with prayer that it develops into a belief in the powerlessness of the self and therefore becomes a barrier to action. Even a reason to stop trying to understand or learn. "I don't need to understand, I know what I want and I pray for it, God will handle the details". This is not healthy.

Prayer has value, internally at minimum. But don't use it as an excuse to do nothing, or to believe that you have no power.