Angela Pretorius

Karma: 183

Angela Pretorius Oct 1, 2022, 1:25 PM
3 points
0
on: Prioritizing Parental Sleep
Here is the secret to successful co-sleeping: Get a large playpen that can fit a double mattress. Then once the baby is asleep you can slip out and go to the loo/have sex/get a glass of water.

More tips:

If the baby needs changing after a night feed then first roll him onto his tummy, then change him, then roll him back onto his back. My boy would usually sleep through nappy changes so long as he was changed on his tummy.

Put the baby to bed in leggings rather than sleepsuits, so that nappy leaks can be dealt with without waking the baby.

Angela Pretorius Sep 25, 2022, 7:19 PM
4 points
0
on: Orexin and the quest for more waking hours
There are two plausible ways to cut sleep duration without harming cognition: increasing the proportion of slow wave sleep that is spent in deep sleep and reducing REM sleep.

Slow wave sleep is needed for synaptic homeostasis (e.g. see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1087079205000420). There are evolutionary trade-offs between time spent awake, time spent in light sleep, and time spent in deep sleep. Deep sleep is more restorative than light sleep but an animal is more likely to be awakened from predators in deep sleep. Humans sleep less than other primates but spend more time in deep sleep than other primates—maybe because our ancestors took turns to stay awake and watch for predators at night?

I’m not so sure what the function of REM sleep is. Maybe something something emotion learning something something? There are cases of people on antidepressants going months with no REM sleep. There are also cases of people on antidepressants who say they have no emotions so I doubt that it’s possible to cut REM sleep without side effects.

Angela Pretorius Sep 15, 2022, 10:41 AM
1 point
0
on: Put Dirty Dishes in the Dishwasher
I used to think that my Dad was a bit bizarre because he washed everything before he put it in the dishwasher. Now I know that he’s not alone.

I hand wash everything but for me it would be
1. Lick the dishes clean before putting them in the dishwasher.

Angela Pretorius Sep 9, 2022, 12:11 PM
3 points
in reply to: Gunnar_Zarncke’s comment on: Differential reproduction for men and women.
Do you have a reference for the claim that Y-chromosomal Adam and mitochondrial Eve lived around the same time? The only information that I could find online was a bunch of studies that found various estimated ages for mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam that all disagree wildly with each other. Most of them have error bars of at least 50,000 years.

Angela Pretorius Aug 12, 2022, 11:28 AM
7 points
0
on: Unifying Bargaining Notions (1/2)
I wonder how often the CoCo point is attained in real life transferable utility bargaining games.

Eg. Do most houses sell for half way between the seller’s walk away price and the buyer’s walk away price? Do most employees earn a wage that is half way between the employee’s walk away wage and the employer’s walk away wage (at least when the employee’s walk away wage is above the legal minimum wage)?

Angela Pretorius Jun 8, 2022, 8:39 PM
1 point
0
in reply to: Angela Pretorius’s comment on: AGI Safety FAQ / all-dumb-questions-allowed thread
On second thoughts...

If someone asks this AI to translate natural language into code, who is to say that the resulting code won’t contain viruses?

Angela Pretorius Jun 8, 2022, 7:39 PM
6 points
0
on: AGI Safety FAQ / all-dumb-questions-allowed thread
Suppose that an AI does not output anything during it’s training phase. Once it has been trained it is given various prompts. Each time it is given a prompt, it outputs a text or image response. Then it forgets both the prompt it was given and the response it outputted.

How might this AI get out of the box?

Angela Pretorius Mar 26, 2022, 4:59 PM
58 points
0
on: Counter-theses on Sleep

70% of 84 hunter-gatherers studied in 2013 slept less than 7 hours per day, with 46% sleeping less than 6 hours.

The study in question also found that the hunter gatherers spent 8-9 hours in bed each night. Sleep duration was measured using those Fitbit trackers that always tell you that you only slept four hours when you’re sure you slept about eight hours. If you move around in your sleep then the tracker assumes that you are awake.

Angela Pretorius Jan 1, 2022, 10:11 PM
12 points
on: What are the pros and cons of seeking a formal diagnosis of autism?
I was diagnosed with autism when I was about four years old. About a year later the diagnosis was changed to Asperger’s Syndrome.

Pros of having a formal diagnosis:

N/A

Cons of having a formal diagnosis:

If you want to have children one day then you will face scrutiny from social services. Do not under any circumstances pursue a formal diagnosis if you are female, intend to have children and live in the UK.

If you are still in school then you might get SEN support. This means that you will receive BS therapy once in a while. It also means that your school might get extra funding if they exaggerate your deficits enough and keep you out of any gifted programs that might make you look too high functioning. If you decide not to take notes because your lessons entirely consist of the teacher reading out the contents of the textbook and you have a copy of the textbook then you may get a taxpayer-funded scribe to take notes for you. There will also be extra legal complications if your parents want to homeschool you.

You are legally protected from discrimination at work due to your autism. This is a con rather than a pro because in the Nash equilibrium nobody wants to hire you. If you end up unemployed then when you apply for universal credit you will be told that you have to apply for disability benefits instead because you have autism. Of course you are not disabled enough to qualify for disability benefits so you end up with nothing.

Once you have a formal diagnosis your qualifications have less signalling value because potential employers assume that you had extra time for your exams.

Your parents can obtain legal guardianship over you. So for example if you donate money to a charity and your parents believe that the charity is run by scammers and that all the money goes to corrupt African dictators then your parents can declare you to be incapable of managing your own finances and gain control over your bank accounts.

Angela Pretorius Dec 15, 2021, 1:55 PM
1 point
on: Snoo App Thoughts
I wouldn’t attempt to work out whether a baby needs to sleep from how long they’ve been awake. A baby’s sleep needs actually vary a lot from day to day. I have always just fed my son to sleep whenever he was yawning or rubbing his eyes. When he was a newborn he would get anywhere from 8 to 16 hours sleep over a 24 hour period and his wake windows could be anything from 30 minutes to 12 hours. He tends to sleep a lot during developmental leaps, then at the end of the leap he’ll hit a bunch of milestones and go back to his usual pattern of going the whole day on a couple of power naps.

I’ve never used a Snoo myself but here is an occupational therapist’s view of the Snoo https://www.otdude.com/editorial-opinion/an-occupational-therapists-honest-opinion-on-the-snoo-bassinet-with-some-research/.

Angela Pretorius Nov 17, 2021, 4:37 PM
28 points
on: Worst Commonsense Concepts?
‘Justice’ has got to be one of the worst commonsense concepts.

It is used to ‘prove’ the existence of free will and it is the basis of a lot of suboptimal political and economic decision making.

Taboo ‘justice’ and talk about incentive alignment instead.

Angela Pretorius Nov 17, 2021, 11:13 AM
1 point
on: The Greedy Doctor Problem
This is my proposed solution:

I set aside a fixed amount of money per year that I am prepared to spend on healthcare. At the end of every year I rate my quality of life for that year on a scale of −10 to 10.

If my rating is 10 I give all the money to the doctor. If my rating is 2 I give ²⁄₁₀ of the money to the doctor and burn ⁸⁄₁₀ of the money. If my rating is −3 then I burn all the money and the doctor has to pay me ³⁄₁₀ of my budget, which I then burn.

If I score 4 or less on the GPCOG (which is NOT to be administered by the doctor) then my quality of life rating is automatically set to −10. For context, the GPCOG is widely used to screen for dementia.

Angela Pretorius Oct 24, 2021, 5:22 AM
1 point
in reply to: Adam Zerner’s comment on: What health-related tips do you have for buying meat?
You might be right. I forgot that the OP is in the US, where healthcare is absurdly expensive.

Angela Pretorius Oct 23, 2021, 4:04 PM
2 points
on: What health-related tips do you have for buying meat?
If you are on an extremely high income then the health benefits might be worth it.

Otherwise go to Lidl or Aldi on a Saturday night when a lot of the meat has 30% off stickers. Buy whatever cuts are cheapest. Freeze the meat as soon as you get home. Then buy kale, broccoli and frozen mixed veg to eat with the meat and splash out on swimming pool fees or a day out hiking or trail running or mountain biking or wild swimming.

Angela Pretorius Oct 22, 2021, 8:10 AM
14 points
on: Successful Mentoring on Parenting, Arranged Through LessWrong
Don’t make the mistake that I made when I was pregnant. I spent too much time planning parenting strategies years down the line and not enough time researching breastfeeding, and I ended up struggling with a tongue tied baby who would not latch.

Before the baby arrives make sure that, as a minimum, you know the following:
- The side-lying, laid-back, koala hold, cradle hold, cross cradle hold, dangle and clutch hold nursing positions.
- the flipple technique
- how to cup feed a baby
- how to use nipple shields
- how to use a breast pump
- how to do breast compressions
- how many wet nappies a baby should have per day
- how wet a nappy has to be to qualify as wet
- that you should never hold the back of a baby’s head while nursing even if the midwife tells you to.
The best online resources are La Leche League, Kellymom and Analytical Armadillo.

Angela Pretorius Sep 26, 2021, 7:27 PM
1 point
on: Autism And Intelligence: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
Imagine that the graph of IQ as a function of parameter p is left-skewed.

Then natural selection is going to produce a population in which values of p are clustered around the optimum with more values slightly below the optimum than slightly above the optimum. In such a population, genes which increase p would paradoxically appear to be associated with both high iq and extremely low iq.

Angela Pretorius Mar 1, 2021, 8:12 PM
1 point
in reply to: Vokasak’s comment on: Lifestyle interventions to increase longevity
You appear to be very knowledgeable about vaping. Can I ask you for some personal advice?

My husband tried to switch to e-cigs on several occasions. Every time he was back to smoking within a couple of days. He has been using cheap clearomiser e-cigs, and he says the vape liquid leaks into his mouth and leaves a nasty taste, and I suspect that the nicotine content of his vape liquid is too low.

I have been trying to persuade him to try buproprion or more expensive e-cigs or vape liquid with a higher nicotine content.

These are the replies that I usually get: ‘I can quit without bupropion. I am smoking at the moment because of stressful event X, and I will quit on date Y when my life will be less stressful’ ‘I will have the same problems with the expensive e-cigs’ ‘I’m not really addicted to nicotine. I am just a puffer and I don’t draw the smoke deep into my lungs. I only smoke to keep my hands busy/deal with stress/keep me awake at work.’

Angela Pretorius Feb 18, 2021, 6:07 PM
2 points
on: The Case Against Education
I won’t deny that homework should be banned, school uniforms should be eliminated and school should be optional, but it must be remembered being in school has a few advantages.
1. In school there are usually explicit rules and predictable punishments, whereas at home there are usually unwritten rules and unpredictable punishments.
2. Most countries ban corporal punishment at school but allow corporal punishment at home.
3. Schools provide a daycare service, although their inflexible start and finish times make them poorly optimised for this purpose.

Angela Pretorius Feb 7, 2021, 5:10 PM
1 point
on: Catching the Spark
By the way, if you want to really understand Pythagoras’s theorem, Cut The Knot has a collection of 118 proofs.

As for the ‘tricky seedlings’ example, another question would be:

I would expect plants whose seeds are dispersed by animals to be more k-selected and have less ‘tricky’ seedlings compared with plants whose seeds are dispersed by the wind. Can I think of any counterexamples?

For the question about mould and seedlings, there are some interesting spin-off questions that you could come up with e.g.

I heard speculation somewhere that endothermy may have evolved to protect against fungal infections. If heat is good at killing off fungi, why do compost heaps work better when they are insulated so that they get hot on the inside?

[Question] Did convalescent plasma therapy drive the evolution of more infectious covid strains?

Angela PretoriusJan 27, 2021, 6:16 AM

10 points

1 comment1 min readLW link

Angela Pretorius

[Question] Did con­va­les­cent plasma ther­apy drive the evolu­tion of more in­fec­tious covid strains?

[Question] Did convalescent plasma therapy drive the evolution of more infectious covid strains?