wilkox

Karma: 348

wilkox Jun 9, 2023, 11:20 AM
4 points
0
in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Change my mind: Veganism entails trade-offs, and health is one of the axes
Thanks, this and your comment here helped a lot to clarify your position and intentions. My initial impression was similar to Natália’s, i.e. that you believed something more like point 3.
Re. point 2, by “widely recognised” (and similarly for “widespread” in point 3) I meant something like “widely recognised in relevant academic literature/textbooks/among experts” rather than “among people who have ever tried a vegan diet”. My impression is that on this definition you wouldn’t endorse point 2 either.
We may still disagree on the “importance” of point 1, although to be clear I completely support any effort to inform vegans or potential vegans about the risk of nutrient deficiencies. It’s probably not possible or worth the effort to resolve this disagreement, but it does make me wonder about:
I’ve seen effective altruist vegan advocates deny outright that trade-offs exist, or more often imply it while making technically true statements.
and:
People did not necessarily outright say “everyone can switch to veganism naively and suffer no trade-offs”, but the things they did say only made sense if that were true [...] anything less blunt or less focused got rebuffed in obfuscated ways
Could at least some of these encounters be explained by a similar “disagreement about importance”, as opposed to disagreement about the basic facts? That might explain why these exchanges seemed obfuscated or un-cooperative; you thought they were evading obvious facts, while they thought you were making mountains out of (what they saw as) molehills.

wilkox Jun 5, 2023, 11:35 PM
17 points
10
in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Change my mind: Veganism entails trade-offs, and health is one of the axes
I don’t doubt the Faunalytics data. If anything the number seems surprisingly low, considering it comes from self-reporting among people who went on to quit veganism.
I’m not sure how to weigh ‘importance’ other than subjectively, but I’ll attempt to at least put bounds on it. As a floor, some number of people experience health issues that are important enough to them that they are motivated to quit veganism. As a ceiling, the health risks of veganism are less important than those of other harms related to diet – for example, dyslipidaemia or diabetes – that increase mortality, given that veganism doesn’t seem to increase mortality and may reduce it.
My stance at the moment is still more ‘generally confused about what you’re trying to communicate/achieve’ than ‘disagreeing with a particular claim you’re making’. I’d like to close the inferential distance if possible, but feel free to ignore this comment if you don’t think it’s leading anywhere useful.
I still don’t understand which of the following (if any) you would endorse:
- Many vegans don’t know about the risk of nutrient deficiencies and would benefit from this knowledge (in which case I’m still confused why you wrote this post instead of just presenting this information)
- The health harms of nutrient deficiencies in veganism are more serious than is widely recognised
- There are serious health harms of veganism other than the risk of nutrient deficiencies that are known but this knowledge is not widespread, or that we don’t know about yet but have good reason to suspect exist
What links here?
- Elizabeth's comment on EA Vegan Advocacy is not truthseeking, and it’s everyone’s problem by Elizabeth (Oct 3, 2023, 1:56 AM; 4 points)

wilkox Jun 4, 2023, 12:48 AM
7 points
1
in reply to: Lukas Finnveden’s comment on: Change my mind: Veganism entails trade-offs, and health is one of the axes
I agree with this, though I would expand
there are plenty of points on this axis where people will seek help for heart-attacks but will be pessimistic about getting help with “vaguely feeling tired lately”
to note that heart attacks are on average a much more serious problem then vague fatigue, so the fact that people are more likely to see a doctor about the former is a good thing. People will generally self-select whether to seek medical help by the severity of the problem, and to the extent that they don’t veganism is probably the least of their worries.

wilkox Jun 4, 2023, 12:41 AM
10 points
0
in reply to: Elizabeth’s comment on: Change my mind: Veganism entails trade-offs, and health is one of the axes
I’m confused- the issues you mention seem both important and, in most cases, extremely easy to fix. If there’s a large population that is going vegan without the steps you mention (and my informal survey says there is), it seems high value to alert them to the necessity.

I suspect we have different intuitions as a matter of degree for ‘important’, ‘high value’, and ‘necessity’ here. Despite that, I think we would probably agree on a statement like ‘vegans who are not aware that their diet increases the risk of nutrient deficiencies would benefit from learning about this’.
If you had posted something like ‘PSA: if you are vegan, you might not know you are at increased risk of certain nutrient deficiencies; read (this link) to find out more and see your doctor if you have (list of symptoms) or want to get tested’, I would have thought this was a good idea. What confuses me is why you wrote the post you did instead, which seems to be gesturing at a larger problem. As a specific example, in ‘Evidence I’m looking for’, you wrote:
The ideal study is a longitudinal RCT […] I’ve spent several hours looking for good studies on vegan nutrition.
While more high-quality evidence on veganism would be valuable in general, I’m confused by what you expect to learn from such an RCT or study. Do you think there is reason to believe there are significant health harms of veganism that we don’t know about yet? If so, why?
What links here?
- Natália's comment on Change my mind: Veganism entails trade-offs, and health is one of the axes by Elizabeth (Jun 5, 2023, 11:48 PM; 11 points)
- wilkox's comment on Change my mind: Veganism entails trade-offs, and health is one of the axes by Elizabeth (Sep 17, 2023, 3:13 AM; 2 points)

wilkox Jun 3, 2023, 2:52 AM
33 points
18
on: Change my mind: Veganism entails trade-offs, and health is one of the axes
I’ve been trying to figure out why I feel like I disagree with this post, despite broadly agreeing with your cruxes. I think it’s because it in the act of writing and posting this there is an implicit claim along the lines of:
Subtle nutritional issues that are specific to veganism can cause significant health harms, to a degree that it is worth spending time and energy thinking about this as ‘a problem’.
For context, I am both vegan and a doctor. Nutrient deficiencies are common and can cause anything ranging from no symptoms to vague symptoms to life-threatening diseases. (For simplicity, I’m going to focus on deficiencies only, although of course there are other ways diet can affect health.) They are generally well-understood, can be detected with cheap laboratory tests, and have cheap and effective treatments.
Veganism is a known risk factor for some nutrient deficiencies, particularly B12 and iron. Many vegans, including myself, will routinely get blood tests to monitor for these deficiencies. If detected, they can be treated with diet changes, fortified foods, oral supplementation, or intramuscular/intravenous supplementation.
Some vegans don’t know about this, and they might end up with a nutrient deficiency. They might be asymptomatic, or they might develop symptoms, and if they go to a doctor with those symptoms the doctor will (hopefully) figure out the problem and recommend a solution. If they don’t go to a doctor, it could be either because the problem is minor enough that they can’t be bothered, or because they generally don’t seek medical help when they are seriously unwell, in which case the risk from something like B12 deficiency is negligible compared to e.g. the risk of an untreated heart attack. Many people don’t have good access to medical care, but this is a problem orthogonal to veganism, and for these people veganism is unlikely to be their most important health concern.
Beyond these well-known issues, is there any reason to expect veganism in particular to cause any health harms worth spending time worrying about? People have vague symptoms all the time, and perhaps some of these are related to veganism. They might also be related to microplastics, or pathogens, or antibiotics in the meat supply, or who knows what. As far as I’m aware, there is no mysterious syndrome or increased mortality rate among vegans that is currently going unexplained.
Let’s suppose that people do the exact opposite of what you recommend: proselytise for veganism without mentioning the risk of nutrient deficiencies; fail to suggest dietary issues when discussing health problems; make false claims about vegan nutrition. If you take out the references to veganism, this is just the current state of the world. People advertise their fast food restaurants and feed their children sugary breakfast cereals without caveats about the risk of heart disease or diabetes. People give each other folk medical advice and swap half-baked ideas about supplements and fad diets. Much of the work of public health and medicine is preventing, screening for, and fixing the problems caused by this. ‘People should have better health knowledge’ is broadly laudable and agreeable, but it’s not a claim about veganism.
In summary:
- The potential health harms associated with veganism are well understood, easily detected, and easily treated
- To the extent that vegans don’t know about them, this is not a problem specific to veganism nor is it one where veganism in particular is likely to be causing significant health harms
- There is no reason to suspect veganism in particular is causing as yet undiscovered harms
What links here?

wilkox Jun 5, 2012, 9:52 AM
3 points
in reply to: cata’s comment on: Group rationality diary, 6/4/12
Have you considered melatonin? Quoting gwern:

Melatonin allows us a different way of raising the cost, a physiological & self-enforcing way. Half an hour before we plan to go to sleep, we take a pill. The procrastinating effect will not work—half an hour is so far away that our decision-making process & willpower are undistorted and can make the right decision (viz. following the schedule). When the half-hour is up, the melatonin has begun to make us sleepy. Staying awake ceases to be free, to be the default option; now it is costly to fight the melatonin and remain awake.

I use it for exactly this reason and it works brilliantly.
What links here?
- gwern's comment on Case study: Melatonin by gwern (Apr 12, 2010, 3:12 PM; 7 points)

wilkox May 10, 2012, 7:51 AM
16 points
in reply to: Ghatanathoah’s comment on: If epistemic and instrumental rationality strongly conflict
This is like saying “if evolution wants a frog to appear poisonous, the most efficient way to accomplish that is to actually make it poisonous”. Evolution has a long history of faking signals when it can get away with it. If evolution “wants” you to signal that you care about the truth, it will do so by causing you to actually care about the truth if and only if causing you to actually care about the truth has a lower fitness cost than the array of other potential dishonest signals on offer.

wilkox Apr 26, 2012, 4:25 AM
14 points
in reply to: jumandtonic’s comment on: A Kick in the Rationals: What hurts you in your LessWrong Parts?
I’ve noticed many people who practise meditation have a strong belief in meditation and the more ‘rational’ core of Buddhist practices, but only belief in belief about the new age-y aspects. My meditation teacher, for example, consistently prefaces the new age stuff with “in Buddhist teachings” or “Buddhists believe” (“Buddhists believe we will be reincarnated”) while making other claims as simple statements of fact (“mindfulness meditation is a useful relaxation technique”).

wilkox Sep 13, 2011, 10:56 PM
2 points
in reply to: pedanterrific’s comment on: 9/11 as mindkiller
I appreciate this. I genuinely didn’t (still don’t ) understand what lessdazed was trying to say, and it would be a really bad thing if downvoting ignorance became common practice.

wilkox Sep 13, 2011, 12:04 AM
3 points
in reply to: lessdazed’s comment on: 9/11 as mindkiller

It’s important to avoid the if-not-for-the-worst-waste-of-money-in-the-budget-the-most-worthy-unfunded-program-would-have-been-funded argument.

Can you explain why? This seems like a perfectly normal and reasonable sort of argument about dividing a limited pool of resources wisely.

wilkox Aug 21, 2011, 11:09 PM
3 points
in reply to: [deleted]’s comment on: Please do not downvote every comment or post someone has ever made as a retaliation tactic.
Perhaps sparklines would work for this. They compress the recent history of a measurement in a space-efficient way which can fit inline with text.

wilkox Aug 9, 2011, 11:09 PM
11 points
on: Leveling IRL—level 1
This sounds a lot like the Scouting merit system, in a good way. I learned more life skills from Scouts then I ever did from public education.

wilkox Jul 7, 2011, 11:44 PM
5 points
in reply to: CharlesR’s comment on: Distracting wolves and real estate agents
This doesn’t seem to be an answer to Wei Dai’s question.

wilkox Jul 6, 2011, 4:19 AM
5 points
in reply to: JoshuaZ’s comment on: Best articles to link to when introducing someone to Less Wrong?
I recently introduced a friend to HPMR and she went on to discover Less Wrong entirely of her own accord. She has explicitly cited it as sparking her interest in things like Bayesian inference, which she would never have considered learning about before.

wilkox May 27, 2011, 8:42 AM
0 points
on: The 48 Rules of Power; Viable?
The link “summary” and the link “Here is a little more expanded text” seem to point to the same place, in my browser at least.

wilkox May 15, 2011, 11:45 PM
9 points
in reply to: gwern’s comment on: You’ll die if you do that
From the linked McDonald’s coffee case article:

In addition, they awarded her $2.7 million in punitive damages. The jurors apparently arrived at this figure from [the burn victim’s lawyer’s] suggestion to penalize McDonald’s for one or two days’ worth of coffee revenues, which were about $1.35 million per day.

Talk about a brilliant use of anchoring...

wilkox 15 May 2011 23:37 UTC
3 points
in reply to: wedrifid’s comment on: You’ll die if you do that

I may also explain to them that if defending oneself receives the exact same penalty that attacking someone gets it will usually be best to initiate the combat yourself.

This is excellent advice, with the caveat that the school’s disciplinary penalty is probably not the only cost. Being known as “the kid who walks expressionlessly up to other kids and punches them in the testicles without warning” may be a significant penalty too. (This doesn’t mean striking first is always a bad strategy, just that it needs to be done carefully).

wilkox 11 May 2011 23:00 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Gray’s comment on: Holy Books (Or Rationalist Sequences) Don’t Implement Themselves

In any case, it is pretty clear that it is possible to hold rationality and religion in your head at the same time. This is basically how most people operate.

More generally, “In any case, it is pretty clear that it is possible to hold rationality and irrationality in your head at the same time. This is basically how most people operate.” I’m no more surprised to hear about a religious rationalist than I am when I notice yet another of my own irrational beliefs or practices.

wilkox 11 May 2011 1:55 UTC
3 points
in reply to: HughRistik’s comment on: Scholarship: How to Do It Efficiently
Mendeley is good for this, and specifically designed for managing a library of academic papers. It supports tagging and full text searches, as well as some half-baked “social” features which can be safely ignored. The most useful feature for me is that it can watch a directory for new papers, and add them to its library as well as my directory tree (author/year/paper). It can also maintain a bibtex file for the entire library which is handy for citations.

wilkox 10 May 2011 23:28 UTC
2 points
in reply to: loqi’s comment on: The 5-Second Level
Good point. Reading my comment again, it seems obvious that I committed the typical mind fallacy in assuming that it really is a choice for most people.