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3Sherrinford's Shortform
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CFAR update, and New CFAR workshops
Sherrinford17d91

I really welcome the announcement that CFAR is restarting. When I attended a workshop, I liked the participants, the lecturers, the atmosphere, and the impact of committing time to work on problems that participants had previously procrastinated. That said, a bunch of thoughts and questions:

  • I am not sure whether there is really some specific "rationality magic" about these workshops. The CFAR technique collection contains cool techniques, but it does not really feel that different from what you might do in time-management/micro-habits/GTD/whatever workshop combined with some things that seem like group coaching, psychological process consulting or things that at least feel a little woo.
  • There might be a specific group dynamic going on in these workshops that has to do with the commitment atmosphere, self-expectations, selection effects, the payment of $ 5000. This may get some people to become productive or whatever, but I assume it can also be unhealthy to others (note that not all unhealthy developments are on the level of psychosis or mania or whatever).
  • I attended a free workshop in Prague in 2022. So maybe some of the effects were different there. Nonetheless, I would like to know what insights you generated with those workshops (assuming that that was evaluated systematically). I think they were held for generating data.
  • It seems positive that "circling" is not mentioned as a “CFAR classic”.
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CFAR update, and New CFAR workshops
Sherrinford17d*40

I think even that signature tagline version does not work so well, as people who do not know it would possibly not understand that you are referring to a specific organization. It would at least need to be 

"Anna from 

CFAR - a center for ..."

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Why you should eat meat - even if you hate factory farming
Sherrinford20d40

Sorry if I was not clear enough but what you write is what I meant as well.

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Why you should eat meat - even if you hate factory farming
Sherrinford20d40

I agree that our metabolism is adapted to eating a mixed diet, but that mostly means that you should not blindly delete animal products from your diet. It is theoretically possible that you can replace animal products with other things, given that we live in a technologically different society. Of course you can say "we do not know what to replace on the micro level", or make Chesterton's Fence arguments, but then it is a bit unclear to what kind of diet we should "return". You can make the adapted-metabolism argument about any selective diet. Maybe we have to eat Offal because our ancestors did, or eat chicken soup because my aunt did that, because these things contain very important things we do not fully understand. Or maybe our ancestors had to eat these things because they were efficient ways to get protein and fat into their bodies, and we consume enough of that already and too much of the bad things we do not fully understand that they also contain. So the adaptation argument alone is not enough.

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Why you should eat meat - even if you hate factory farming
Sherrinford20d81

Not to mention that of all of the hunter gatherer tribes ever studied, there has never been a single vegetarian group discovered. Not. A. Single. One. 

 

I think this does not prove as much as the "Not. A. Single. One." part seems to try to hammer home to the reader. It merely shows that people that evolve under conditions of scarcity and extremely low technology do not get a strong evolutionary benefit from excluding animals from their diet. But do vegans in general assume the opposite? Additionally, India might be a relevant case study here, because vegetarianism seems to have been common there for a long time.

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Why you should eat meat - even if you hate factory farming
Sherrinford20d30

There’s the sniff test. A large percentage male vegan influencers look pale and sickly. (I’m not going to name names, but if you follow the space at all, you’ll know who I’m talking about, because it could refer to so very many of them.) Of course, you can build muscle and be fit as a vegan, but it is much harder, and we know that muscle mass is a significant predictor of all sorts of positive health outcomes. 

 

I do not "follow the space" of male vegan influencers, so I cannot judge it. However, I would like to ask for a comment on what vegan strongman Patrik Baboumian, "face of a campaign by the animal rights organization PETA", said in an interview (Google translation):

He had long since become a figurehead of the vegetarian movement. He felt the pressure: "I was afraid of failure if I also eliminated dairy products. They were the most important source of protein for me as a vegetarian strength athlete."

But things turned out differently. As a vegan, Baboumian suddenly had to eat even less, he says, "because my metabolism became more efficient." Animal protein acidifies the metabolism because it is rich in sulfur-containing amino acids, "and when these are metabolized, a lot of acid is produced."

With plant proteins, things were different: "My acid-base balance was suddenly balanced, and that had a very positive effect. For example, all the inflammatory processes that automatically arise during strenuous exercise healed much better. So I was able to train more effectively with less protein and fewer calories."

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Book Review: If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies
Sherrinford25d20

this regime seems less effectively restrictive of practical freedoms than, for example, the current regime in the United Kingdom under the Online Safety Act. They literally want you see ID before you can access the settings on your home computer Nvidia GPU. Or Wikipedia.

 

This seems to be a strong claim considering that it is not supported by sources or explanations. ChatGPT says that the claim as stated is not true "as far as what the law actually requires. But there are partial truths and concerning ambiguities which make it reasonable people are worrying." (Long ChatGPT version here. I'd be grateful for corrections.)

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Sherrinford's Shortform
[+]Sherrinford1mo-90
Banning Said Achmiz (and broader thoughts on moderation)
Sherrinford2mo6-4

I do not think that such a theoretically possible effort is comparable to site moderators summarizing and publishing the information in an argument.

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Banning Said Achmiz (and broader thoughts on moderation)
Sherrinford2mo50

This is another comment where I do not understand the downvoting.

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