Thanks, did not see nor thought to explore, as websites aren’t normally so sophisticated and feature-rich.
David Gretzschel
Karma: 51
AI content is boring, if you’re not in that field. I’d like a button to quickly filter out all AI-tagged posts.
Of course. Till they become too easy, then you’d need something harder.
Or you practice speed, I suppose.
There is not. That’s why I was asking him if he knows. I was not interested in the effect of exercise. Exercise means, you do some activity a couple times per week.
I’m interested whether the obesety epidemic only affects the sedentary populatrion.
And if being or becoming non-sedentary is protective or curative.
25k steps for me means, that my treadmill is running constantly when I’m on my computer.
This is not really exercise. Movement is just my default state.
In that way, I have become closer to what an EAA-hunter-gatherer, than to a sedentary office worker does with his body.
[or I would, if this had been my lifetime norm instead of something I still get used to]
If the human body was sold as a machine, the sedentary lifestyle probably would void your warranty, because it’s rather extreme (dis)usage. Sedentary people being unhealthy is not surprising.
It’s surprising that some sedentary people aren’t.
Anyway, “being in near-constant motion” is too specific/complicated a metric.
So I’d just look for a step count high enough, that’s only feasibly doable by a non-sedentary person like me. Though, I guess any daily jogger can probably match or exceed 25k steps per day.
The group of people whose 80th quantile waking hour still has >1k steps.
That’s probably the better proxy, come to think of it.
“Finally, the obvious question: what extra information do you mentally track, which is crucial to performing some task well?”
When I try to cook something complicated by recipe, I go over each line of the recipe and previsualize all the corresponding physical actions.
I previsualize the state, amount, location and the transitions for each object. Objects = {pots, pans, ingredients, oil, condiments, package, piece of trash, volume of water, stove, task-completion times, hands, free seconds/minutes for cleaning during the cook, towel, tissue paper...}.
This tells me where the recipe is underspecified or needs to be adapted to my kitchen and allows me to fix the uncertainty beforehand, instead of giving me a puzzle in the moment where a bunch of parralelized tasks severely limit the estimated available interruption-free cognitive capacity. I try to go for a high-fidelity visual simulation and run it multiple times (obviously I speed it up).
If the recipe is already chunked into stages, I mentally review them seperately. I also think of the “why” of the steps within the recipe. It’s far easier to memorize a complex structure, if I can logically appreciate why it looks like that. Also I mentally set markers for expected free minutes, where I have time to re-review the next stage.
If I do all of that, cooking something complex becomes quite joyful and easy, instead of stressful.
I am not really a visual thinker. Visual thinking is aversive to me.
Or perhaps… it’s more anti-mimetic, as it’s just not a cognitive option that naturally occurs to me. Because I’m just far more performant in thinking by combining verbal abstractions. Path dependency and all that.
However, intellectually I know, that if I could sharpen and practice my visual thinking subskill, I can in time dramatically increase my cognitive capabilities.
For example, I recently found the recursive formula for cubes, just by visualizing it whilst drinking coffee in my gym. (no written notes)
m:= n+1
m^3= n^3 + 3n^2 + 3n + 1
[normally, you’d only use n instead of defining m as the successor, but I find this to be needlessly difficult, because it causes a ton of interference for me]
It was a bit challenging, but also something that I just started spontaneously doing for fun. And I’m pretty sure I could find the general formula for n^m (m being a natural number) too, next time I have a liminal context, that usually ends up seeing me preoccupied with fantasies and mentally rehearsing arguments.
For a true visual thinker, this probably is “just obvious” but this is me shrinking the gap. So… baby steps.
But during my day-to-day cognitive operations the hyerbolic utility functions (fancy way of saying “impatience”) means, I don’t want to use those underdeveloped skills.
Practicing unusual thought patterns with no clear momentary payoff is frustrating and cognitively exhausting. And if I’m drained like that, I’m at very high risk for the YouTube/book/daydreaming/websurfing-etc. -cognitohazards.
But for cooking something difficult, visualization has proven so extremely useful, that I’ll always do it there now. Because when I am lazy and just read and execute the recipe as I go along (my prior default), the whole process is far more cumbersome, frustrating and the outcome is unsatisfying. And I don’t actually get much better or more comfortable at cooking itself. Because visualization has such incredibly high applicability in this domain, I actually have far less internal resistance when using it. Therefore can visualize far better in this context, than normally. And by updating what I’m actually already capable of, I’m slowly making it more salient/less anti-mimietic/less aversive as an option.
I was not responding to your pregnancy-argument, but to your post higher up in this subthread from 3 days ago. The threading makes this a bit confusing.
Also should have specified what I was responding to the last paragraph:
”Both are ruled out by experiments showing that (in metabolically healthy individuals before the obesity epidemic) a randomized experimental intervention to add overeating does not produce obesity any more than it produces tumors.”
Is there actually an obesity epidemic among people who walk more than 25k steps per day? (or is something like that currently known).
EDIT:
I suppose my hypothesis is:
Living a non-sedentary lifestyle meaning less than 20 minutes of sitting per day, 25k-ish steps per day somewhat equally spread out over all waking hours makes the “weight-gain -=> obesity”-phenomenon impossible, because it’s a sufficient requirement for robust metabological health.
If that was true, it might not answer what is behind the obesity epidemic.
But that’s what I would study, to check if it’s a cure or reliable prevention.
I’d say 90% chance of this being true, but mostly on intuition and with high model uncertainty.
And I don’t know, if we know enough to answer this question, because non-sedentary lifestyles like that are fairly niche in all Western societies. But I recently figured out, that they’re not all that hard to adopt.
EDID2: Actually, I’d say the 90% applies to it being “reliable prevention”. No clue, how curative that would be.
I never had to really lose more than a couple kg of fat. [and “had to” is really exaggerating a lot]
From what I observe, it seems somehow impossible for really fat people to become not fat, despite heroic struggles which have always been strange to observe from the outside.
Do you know, if we also observe an obesity-epidemic in the subgroup of people who average 25k+ in daily steps? That step-requirement is a good, high standard of “metabolically healthy” to isolate.
I belong in that group these days and it feels natural, relaxed and I feel far more energetic than when I was averaging 7k daily steps and was the sedentary nerd cliché, about a year ago. Now I am a nerd, who takes two walks per day, almost never sits and either stands or uses his office treadmill when on the computer.
Even before, I never really got fat. But I feel, that I might not have been “metabolically healthy”, because now I feel better. So I strongly suspect that a far higher than average step-count is a hard requirement for being “metabolically healthy”.
People at the LW-meetup have been despairing a bit explaining AI-risk to me in person.
I kept making various objections and the evenings were never long enough to get thru it all.
So I never managed to really grok the perspective before. Still don’t after one read-through. But I’m a lot closer and with enough rereads, I think I’ll get the full argument.
Thanks for writing this!
Replace “content” with “process” and this makes sense to me.
”content” and “topic” are not synonymous, for me of course.
But “topic” is like the headline and “content” is the text below it.
So both deal very much with the subject matter.
But also you use “content” synonymously with “topic” informally.
In a pars-pro-toto/totum pro tarte-way.
So this whole article feels super-confusing.
My only experience with metta was in a 1-dollar store.
Looking around at all the different useful things I could buy having to spend very little, the thoughtfulness with which it was all laid, organic but not messy, everything easily discoverable out for scatterbrained people like me.
The gentleness of the implied “here’s the thing you need, and also two other little things that you didn’t know about, but make life a little easier in those hard times”.
I was thinking about the global supply chains, the factories, the stores, the organization of it, the people that make it all possible.
And I was overcome with love for the great venture of capitalism, our shared, collective undertaking to overcome scarcity and suffering and make this world nice!
Actually just remembering it, brings tears to my eyes.
Yeah, that used to bother me too, when I learned about multi agent theory and pondering it, I of course pointed my attention inwardly, trying to observe it.
Then agents arose and started talking with each other, arguing about the fact that they can’t tell if they’re actually representatives of underlying structures and coalitions of the neural substrate or just one fanciful part, that’s engaged in puppet phantasy play. Or what the boundaries between those two even are.
Or if their apparent existence is valid evidence for multi-agent theories being any good. Well, I suppose I wasn’t bothered, they were bothered :) I/They just really badly wanted a real-time brain scan to get context for my perceptions.
Eventually, I embraced the triplethink of operational certainty [minimizes internal conflict, preserves scarce neurotransmitters], meta doubt, and meta-meta awareness, that propositions that can be expressed in conscious language can’t capture the complexity of the neural substrate, anyway.
All models are wrong, yet modeling is essential.
Well ADHD is comorbid/associated with stuff like that. Makes sense, ADHD is a specific kind of brain damage in five specific regions. Effects of brain damage can be diverse and random. [in addition to the more common predictable ADHD effects]
As to why? Nature is lazy and your brain is “good enough” to exist as is, even if the internal wiring is a mess.
[there is probably a better answer in the linked wiki article though]Very rarely I feel what you feel, and what I believe to some kind of underlying sensory processing disorder.
When I didn’t get enough sleep, noises can become overwhelming and music at the gym is so distressing all of a sudden, that I leave immediately. Normally I just avoid loud environments and can’t concentrate with laptop fan noise (if the frequency is too high or it’s too loud).
And I just dislike music (but can tolerate) music from Bluetooth speakers.
Probably being semi-deaf whilst a toddler made something not calibrate right.
But instead, I just live with constant songs stuck in my head, constant running mental dialog or daydreams.
With the inability to really filter, parts of my brain adapted by trying to be louder than the noise. [these days much it’s less bad, with stimulants for the ADHD and loads of meditation over the years]
But I would like to add, that criticism can be constructive and affirming.
”Yes and” is also criticism, but it extends. “Yes but” affirms some of it. “Actually yes, but it’s more subtle than that.....” is also constructive, if the subtlety is explained.
Affirmation of “this is great!” isn’t actually all that rewarding.
After all, you as the author already knew that.
Also beware of wrong assuming as negativity what is actually blablabla nurture culture vs combat culture and so forth.…
Let’s talk about enthusiasm, though:
Enthusiasm for any idea is fleeting.
You might be enthusiastic about an idea when it just occurs to you and maybe you can tell the person who’s next to you at that moment and infect them with your enthusiasm, too.
But thru the process of writing an idea down, you must put it into words.
By creating an external representation, you get a clearer picture of it.
Perhaps now you can see hidden flaws and subtleties.Even if all that reflection doesn’t change your understanding, you habituated yourself to the idea, so it will lose its grip over your dopamine system. Or from a different perspective, you lose the ability to find it beautiful.
Do you really own your idea, when you’re still enthusiastic about it, or does it own you?
Wrong question, because you’re in playful exploration mode, where this is not a useful frame.
But writing things down when you’re still exploring it, is premature.
Writing is best for when you’re sure about an idea and know its nuances, strengths, and weaknesses very well.
An idea matures if you sleep over it. Ponder it. Reflect on it.
Only then you can skillfully shape its presentation.
This is a problem of course. When you are most enthusiastic about something, you want to share it.But..… I have written things, that I was enthusiastic about writing, but then later they weren’t well-written or well-argued. Sometimes you come back to your writing and it’s simply too verbose and in that spir
“It’s easy to push the harm we do, or that we risk, outside of our zone of awareness; to live with, or to strive for, a false sense of purity, propped up by attention only to what can be readily seen, or to what registers, by the standards of everyday conscientiousness and social reproach, as “intentional.” ”
Small-animal deaths matter as much to me as whether I have an odd or uneven number of hairs on my head.
Certainly, something I could pay attention to as an intellectual exercise, but it’s not something that naturally registers as being related to right or wrong action.You should not claim that people are this way because they strive for a sense of “false purity”, though.
This “sense of purity” (or a feeling desire for it, or feeling a lack of it) is simply not a universal human experience.
If people who don’t understand the value of money (!!!), the role of plastics and of oil..… in other words, foolish, ignorant people who don’t understand much of how our world works, believe a thing to be “A Very Important Thing”, this is direct evidence that this belief is also wrong.
You are correct that competence and gaining knowledge is different from getting social status or power in such circles.
You are incorrect, that such activism can be a force for good, rather than a purely destructive force.
A good heuristic that such policies, that have (wannabe) mass movements behind them, consisting of passionate, morally righteous, and fact-ignorant True Believers are evil.
A good take on this here:
https://samzdat.com/2017/06/28/without-belief-in-a-god-but-never-without-belief-in-a-devil/
The Stoic case is in contradiction of the idea of Aristotle’s idea of the “golden mean”.
The passions are in contradiction to virtue, because in order to act reasonably, your judgement must not be clouded by emotion. Virtuous anger is thus a contradiction.
Their advice would be to excise it immediately as it impairs the soundness of mind required for rational action.
Seneca’s “On Anger” makes this case citing examples from his times, nuances of anger, possible counterarguments and why they’re wrong, why Aristotle is wrong.....[tried to write the same argument using Friston’s free energy principle, and mood as computational context supplying priors, but I got bored with it....]
Robinson’s example is off:
Ok, a tenant lives in a unit.
City A demolishes the old 30-unit building, builds a high-rise 100-unit building instead.
30 old unit tenants get evicted, since their original 30 units need to get demolished.
20 new rich families move from their old units to new units from within the city.
Their 20 former units in the city will then be on the market again, available for someone else.
So far, the new building has caused −10 new available units to city-dwellers so far.
30 more people move into the city, but wouldn’t have moved there, if this new building did not exist.
So we might say: they are not adding more unit-space for the poor local residents.
And in our little model it does not.
We are still at −10 units supply impact of this new development.
However, those 30 other tenants must have come from somewhere, let’s call it city B.
City B will now have 30 more units on the market.
So the problem is now a prisoner’s dilemma.
If city A does not impose any restrictions on doing the 30->100 switch and city B does not do it,
then it’ll all average out to +20 new units on the market, for each city.Now for those remaining 50 units owned by people, who don’t live in them.....
uhm..… yeah I dunno.
The issue is framed as rich people creating an externality for financial gain.
But how could owning a unit, that is not lived in and not rented out to other tenants be profitable,
if building supply in general is not restricted?
This sounds like the issue is only caused by restrictions like this in the first place.
Even if not, those same 50 rich people would presumably have a need for fifty units in city A.
So unless there is a law that prevents them from buying in units in city A, not building the 100 unit high-rise would still be worse, since they’d presumably just buy 50 already existing units instead which would be empty.
Yeah, fair enough. Probably was typical-minding.
I just want my actions to result in excellent things quickly.
And the frustration and demotivation when that is not working out, is something I can relate to.
But that’s not perfectionism?I personally don’t experience all those things you mentioned, though.
Sounds downright alien, this guilt thing and all this obsession with shoulds and musts.
Or worrying about meeting expectations from boss/God/parents/whatever.
It sounds rather exhausting.
Btw, that penultimate line: “Use @byronkaties The Work to explore.” seems out of place.
Is that a Twitter-thing?
“Perfectionism as a stubborn, sentimental and arrogant attachment to ones own high standards” is not my explanation for when I get stuck with spending excessive amounts of time trying to force marginal returns.
But a simple reframe is not a solution, because high standards are not the problem.
I think marginal returns being sub-optimal is obvious enough when it happens and “opportunity cost” is a cool word that humans probably understand instinctually, so I don’t know if this is a plausible explanation of the root cause.Marginal returns for effort become quickly obvious to me, yet I cannot stop myself from expending it, anyway, which adds to the frustration!
I think this issue has nothing to do with something abstract like guilt or values, but from logistical issues at a lower level of the stack.
I flinch away from updating my plans when hitting marginal returns, because I am instinctively afraid of the sheer complexity of the inherent uncertainties of planning.
Broadening the scope of my awareness again, reincluding original assumptions, actions and schedules decided on, comparing it with what just happened and how it is evidence for/against for modified or entirely new relevant assumptions and having to define new actions and schedules..… going back to that level of uncertainty, that’s extremely difficult, when you are semi-comfortable with the certainty of executing one thing after another and doing only minimal, adaptive course changes.
I do not think that you are really attached to the planned outcomes, in as much you are attached to the flow of “knowing what to do”.
And mode switches like that are cognitively expensive.
Worse yet, the actual cost is mostly opaque to you, since you can’t see dopamine concentration and other neurotransmitter levels in real time [even if you could perfectly interpret them], and under uncertainty you’re more risk-avoidant.
The risk being, that you get derailed entirely and neither plan for nor act on and in fact, completely forget your original intention.
[my argument makes too many inferential leaps, I noticed, this is a summary of something that I would need more time to write; though I’m happy to elaborate on specific points]
tl;dr: Words are hard and people are horrible at being precise with them, even when doing or talking about math.
[epistemic status: maybe I’d want an actual textbook here but good enough]
Looking into this, I have been grilling ChatGPT about what exactly a “belief” is in Bayesian Probability. According to it (from what I could gather), belief is a specific kind of probability. So a belief is just a number between 0 and 1 representing a probablity, but we use the label “belief” in specific contexts only. A prediction specifically is the pair of (statement about the future, belief). So a belief is not a prediction. Except when it is. I ask for examples and ChatGPT also loves going pars pro toto and belief is used synonymously with prediction a lot. And I’ve picked up the habit myself from reading here, before I ever learnt about the math at calculation level.
Personally, I dislike pars pro toto as I find that it makes things very confusing. So I will stop using the term “belief” to be synonymous with “prediction” from now on. Except when I won’t, because I suspect that it’s kind of convenient and sounds kind of neat.
source: https://chat.openai.com/share/03a62839-3efc-483d-bebd-4cefa9064dfd