A lot of libertarians on my feed post objecting to laws barring private businesses from discriminating against some customers; gays for example. And I'm sympathetic to the free market legal arguments for that position, which match my intuition. However, I think there is a free market argument within the civilization/barbarism axis to be made against this position. Not necessarily that it should be illegal, but that it is actually anti-market.
The argument is exactly the same as the one I came to from my outrage about Moldbug being disinvited from a non-political tech conference due to his politics, namely that boycotting people or businesses for non-business reasons is bad. Not that it should be illegal; but that it is bad and a form of expression that is anti-market. Why?
Well, if you look at a variety of societies across the last millennia, you will see that those clannish societies organized around tribal affiliation tend to be and stay poor, unindustrialized, with poor governance and unfree. Because that is the kind of society that you get by making decisions (who to do business with; who gets government contracts; who wins lawsuits; who even gets arrested) based on nepotism & affiliation, rather than merit. Wealth, technological progress, and freedom arose in those few countries in Europe which made decisions more often based on merit - of an individual, their legal case, their product, or their technology - than on relationship. This was done partly by expanding the sense of tribe to the entire society, since having everyone "in the same tribe" allows us to set aside our natural human inclination to nepotism and make more objective decisions.
In the three axis model of politics, libertarians tend to focus on the freedom/coercion axis, and of course laws against private businesses discriminating are coercive. But functioning markets take more than simply the lack of coercion - they require a social infrastructure of shared trust and a pro-market culture, which I think relates to a position on the civilization/barbarism axis. It is naive to think that one single quality - lack of coercion - is the sole facilitator or requirement for a market economy.
After all, "The business of business is business", and while pro-market groups such as libertarians love to swing this slogan when left-wing corporate social responsibility is preached; they (quite humanly) seem to forget it when faced with the right-wing equivalent. For what is "refusing service to gays" but a right-wing attempt at social responsibility within one's business? A choice to ignore market forces and choose customers based on political affiliation - just as the Strange Loop conference did by unchoosing Moldbug; or a business which chooses to only buy from "Fair Trade" suppliers; or a government contractor who gets big-money no-work contracts from their political allies still in office?
I will cede some important differences here - public contracts are with the public's money and should clearly be merit-based; public corporations have a fiduciary duty to their numerous shareholders, who likely have widely varying political beliefs with the only commonality being the desire to earn a profit from their shares. A sole proprietor has no such fiduciary duty coming into play, and so again I think it is probably better that they be allowed to cause private harm to their business and its potential customers. Making bad business decisions should not be illegal. Buying supplies from your cousin, even if his price is not the lowest, or selling your last air conditioner to your sister's best friend, even if her bid is not the highest, should probably not be illegal.
But, legal or not, we should view these behaviors as holdovers from the pre-market economy, from a world where "who you knew" was more important than "what you made", and where economic and technological growth was slowed as a result. We should realize that in the Paper Belt vs. Silicon Valley dichotomy; the DC world where political connections get you government contracts vs. the Silicon Valley world where merit and potential and customer traction get you venture capital to succeed in the market, these discriminating business owners are firmly on the paper belt side, opposing the market economy by making business decisions based on religious affiliation.
Fortunately since these small businesses don't have the coercive power of government on their side; their effect on the market is tiny, and the vast majority of the negative impact is on the proprietor themselves. In that context, I definitely value freedom enough to oppose these discrimination laws. But I do so based on weighing the relative values of better markets vs. more freedom in this particular case; while I think most libertarians naively think they are supporting both at once. As a result, I don't think that we should be celebrating these anti-market bigots as anti-coercion / pro-freedom heroes, just as we should not celebrate the abusive, insulting, misanthropic assholes who create important free speech cases. In other words, "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, but that doesn't mean you aren't a total asshole who should be shunned from all civilized social functions."
I find the libertarian blind spot for this position rather odd when my most popular Facebook share of the year was on the closet Republicans of Silicon Valley and my most popular post was a follow-up on the decline of political tolerance, likening politics-based professional discrimination to gang violence. Libertarians naturally find it creepy when potential employers, vendors, and customers publicly endorse left-wing political positions, because we worry that we will be discriminated against in our professional lives for non-market reasons. Our pro-market, pro-meritocratic spirits rebel against this as an injustice. But if we also value consistency, and I hope we do, we must similarly rebel against private businesses which discriminate based on right-wing political beliefs. I don't know enough history to judge if this is truly a trend, but I see both as manifestations of anti-market barbarism; and if trending as signs that our society is becoming less civilized.
As a final analogy, consider anarchism as an extreme of market-based interaction. A world where laws are so neutral and objective that a policeman's actions are held to the same standard as any citizen; where markets - colorblind, politics-blind institutions that maximize net benefit through catering to rational self-interest - are considered so effective that they even provide security and law itself. The idea of judges or protection agencies making decisions based on personal affiliation or politics in such a society is deeply distateful; antithetical to the entire premise. Should protection agencies sort themselves by geographic region, political affiliation, or ethnic group, such that in some contexts one agency is more powerful than all the others combined, it seems very likely that the society would degenerate into monopoly governance and tribal warfare. Taking customers based on their personal characteristics or tribal affiliation seems like the first step towards that degeneration.
That's my counter-point; counter-counter points are, as always, welcomed.</div>
The argument is exactly the same as the one I came to from my outrage about Moldbug being disinvited from a non-political tech conference due to his politics, namely that boycotting people or businesses for non-business reasons is bad. Not that it should be illegal; but that it is bad and a form of expression that is anti-market. Why?
Well, if you look at a variety of societies across the last millennia, you will see that those clannish societies organized around tribal affiliation tend to be and stay poor, unindustrialized, with poor governance and unfree. Because that is the kind of society that you get by making decisions (who to do business with; who gets government contracts; who wins lawsuits; who even gets arrested) based on nepotism & affiliation, rather than merit. Wealth, technological progress, and freedom arose in those few countries in Europe which made decisions more often based on merit - of an individual, their legal case, their product, or their technology - than on relationship. This was done partly by expanding the sense of tribe to the entire society, since having everyone "in the same tribe" allows us to set aside our natural human inclination to nepotism and make more objective decisions.
In the three axis model of politics, libertarians tend to focus on the freedom/coercion axis, and of course laws against private businesses discriminating are coercive. But functioning markets take more than simply the lack of coercion - they require a social infrastructure of shared trust and a pro-market culture, which I think relates to a position on the civilization/barbarism axis. It is naive to think that one single quality - lack of coercion - is the sole facilitator or requirement for a market economy.
After all, "The business of business is business", and while pro-market groups such as libertarians love to swing this slogan when left-wing corporate social responsibility is preached; they (quite humanly) seem to forget it when faced with the right-wing equivalent. For what is "refusing service to gays" but a right-wing attempt at social responsibility within one's business? A choice to ignore market forces and choose customers based on political affiliation - just as the Strange Loop conference did by unchoosing Moldbug; or a business which chooses to only buy from "Fair Trade" suppliers; or a government contractor who gets big-money no-work contracts from their political allies still in office?
I will cede some important differences here - public contracts are with the public's money and should clearly be merit-based; public corporations have a fiduciary duty to their numerous shareholders, who likely have widely varying political beliefs with the only commonality being the desire to earn a profit from their shares. A sole proprietor has no such fiduciary duty coming into play, and so again I think it is probably better that they be allowed to cause private harm to their business and its potential customers. Making bad business decisions should not be illegal. Buying supplies from your cousin, even if his price is not the lowest, or selling your last air conditioner to your sister's best friend, even if her bid is not the highest, should probably not be illegal.
But, legal or not, we should view these behaviors as holdovers from the pre-market economy, from a world where "who you knew" was more important than "what you made", and where economic and technological growth was slowed as a result. We should realize that in the Paper Belt vs. Silicon Valley dichotomy; the DC world where political connections get you government contracts vs. the Silicon Valley world where merit and potential and customer traction get you venture capital to succeed in the market, these discriminating business owners are firmly on the paper belt side, opposing the market economy by making business decisions based on religious affiliation.
Fortunately since these small businesses don't have the coercive power of government on their side; their effect on the market is tiny, and the vast majority of the negative impact is on the proprietor themselves. In that context, I definitely value freedom enough to oppose these discrimination laws. But I do so based on weighing the relative values of better markets vs. more freedom in this particular case; while I think most libertarians naively think they are supporting both at once. As a result, I don't think that we should be celebrating these anti-market bigots as anti-coercion / pro-freedom heroes, just as we should not celebrate the abusive, insulting, misanthropic assholes who create important free speech cases. In other words, "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, but that doesn't mean you aren't a total asshole who should be shunned from all civilized social functions."
I find the libertarian blind spot for this position rather odd when my most popular Facebook share of the year was on the closet Republicans of Silicon Valley and my most popular post was a follow-up on the decline of political tolerance, likening politics-based professional discrimination to gang violence. Libertarians naturally find it creepy when potential employers, vendors, and customers publicly endorse left-wing political positions, because we worry that we will be discriminated against in our professional lives for non-market reasons. Our pro-market, pro-meritocratic spirits rebel against this as an injustice. But if we also value consistency, and I hope we do, we must similarly rebel against private businesses which discriminate based on right-wing political beliefs. I don't know enough history to judge if this is truly a trend, but I see both as manifestations of anti-market barbarism; and if trending as signs that our society is becoming less civilized.
As a final analogy, consider anarchism as an extreme of market-based interaction. A world where laws are so neutral and objective that a policeman's actions are held to the same standard as any citizen; where markets - colorblind, politics-blind institutions that maximize net benefit through catering to rational self-interest - are considered so effective that they even provide security and law itself. The idea of judges or protection agencies making decisions based on personal affiliation or politics in such a society is deeply distateful; antithetical to the entire premise. Should protection agencies sort themselves by geographic region, political affiliation, or ethnic group, such that in some contexts one agency is more powerful than all the others combined, it seems very likely that the society would degenerate into monopoly governance and tribal warfare. Taking customers based on their personal characteristics or tribal affiliation seems like the first step towards that degeneration.
That's my counter-point; counter-counter points are, as always, welcomed.</div>
Several people have asked me about the Inspire upper airway stimulation device for sleep apnea as well as the Airing Indiegogo campaign for an ultra-micro-mini CPAP that fits on your nose.
The short answer on the Airing is that it would be awesome if it worked, but it will be too heavy. W/o a humidifier, CPAP draws roughly 10-50W; for 8 hours that is 80-400Wh, which is about 1-5 lbs from a very good Lithium ion battery. Too heavy, and I really doubt this random guy has achieved a breakthrough in either fan or battery technology sufficient to make this work.
Short answer on Inspire: it is promising, it works some for some people, it's not vaporware (unlike most media stories about new apnea treatments), and it's a cool tool to have in the toolbox. But it is nowhere near as "strong" as CPAP and not close to a replacement.
There's a very intuitive way to think about this, which is to imagine that your airway is a straw (strairway?). You try to get air by sucking at the bottom end, but if the straw is too weak, narrow (or with a narrow spot), or bendy, it can collapse. This is a feedback process, because as resistance increases, you have to suck harder, and that pulls even harder on the straw to collapse. Try to visualize this in your mind - or go get a bendy straw and try it. Now, let's think about some strategies to get air through:
The short answer on the Airing is that it would be awesome if it worked, but it will be too heavy. W/o a humidifier, CPAP draws roughly 10-50W; for 8 hours that is 80-400Wh, which is about 1-5 lbs from a very good Lithium ion battery. Too heavy, and I really doubt this random guy has achieved a breakthrough in either fan or battery technology sufficient to make this work.
Short answer on Inspire: it is promising, it works some for some people, it's not vaporware (unlike most media stories about new apnea treatments), and it's a cool tool to have in the toolbox. But it is nowhere near as "strong" as CPAP and not close to a replacement.
There's a very intuitive way to think about this, which is to imagine that your airway is a straw (strairway?). You try to get air by sucking at the bottom end, but if the straw is too weak, narrow (or with a narrow spot), or bendy, it can collapse. This is a feedback process, because as resistance increases, you have to suck harder, and that pulls even harder on the straw to collapse. Try to visualize this in your mind - or go get a bendy straw and try it. Now, let's think about some strategies to get air through:
- Sucking harder doesn't help - it just increases the collapsing pressure on the straw, which is why lung strengthening is not the answer (ie PowerLung).
- Strengthening the straw walls, as Inspire does by increasing muscle tone with neurostimulation, does help. If it is strong enough to stop the initial collapse, you don't get the feedback cycle. But increased muscle tone only makes your straw a little stronger, so it only helps a little.
- If there is one very narrow spot (tonsils, back of tongue, palate), widening it works great. A wide, even straw is a strong straw. Unfortunately apnea sufferers usually have a generally narrow airway (thinner straw), not a single bad spot. SImilarly, if there is a flap at the top of the straw getting sucked down to close the straw, removing it will have a huge impact. (This is usually the tongue, can be other soft tissue). But again this doesn't help a thin straw with multiple chokepoints.
- Now imagine that instead of getting air in by sucking at the bottom, a fan blows air in at the top. This is incredibly effective, because when you blow into the top of a straw, instead of sucking at the bottom, the incoming pressure pushes the sides of the airway out instead of pulling them in. Try to actually visualize or try this - blowing in the top of a narrow straw vs. sucking at the bottom. You can see how much stronger and more direct this is - the incoming pressure actually directly fights against collapse. Even a narrow straw can be kept open by blowing air in hard enough. And that's what CPAP is.
I hope this helps people's intuition on why CPAP is such an effective apnea treatment. It's a pain, it takes a lot of tweaking to get it to work, but in the end it is just a much "stronger" and more direct way to fight airway collapse than anything except resculpting the entire airway (not possible right now), or adding an intake below the choke points (ie cutting a hole in the straw, ie a tracheotomy, which has tons of side effects). That's why other treatments (many of which I tried) have all struggled to have anywhere near the benefit of CPAP.
That said, in the straw analogy you can imagine how multiple techniques would reinforce each other. Removing chokepoints, strengthening the walls, and adding pressure at the top all work together to keep the things open. Especially because of the negative feedback effects of collapse.
That said, in the straw analogy you can imagine how multiple techniques would reinforce each other. Removing chokepoints, strengthening the walls, and adding pressure at the top all work together to keep the things open. Especially because of the negative feedback effects of collapse.
So, there is some kerfluffle about Tor books, because one of their employees (Irene Gallo) said on her personal Facebook page that the sad puppies (conservatives fighting a culture war to make SF less SJW-influenced) were racist, homophobic, neo-nazis. Sad puppy supporters like SF author Peter Grant, who has literally exchanged gunfire with neo-nazis in South Africa were understandably outraged at this characterization. And (not so understandably, to me) calling for firing/resignation/public abasement of these employees. Which is where I have a problem. This sounds a lot like:
"Your business must publicly apologize for the hateful speech of your employee which has offended a small minority of listeners by publicly abasing yourselves, and promising not to do it again. This will show the world that hate cannot be tolerated; the strong cannot abuse the weak; and (incidentally) that our tribe is powerful and can grind your tribe under our boot if you dare offend us."
Which is what anti-SJWers complain about the left doing. Sorry guys, but it's bad when SJWs do it; and it's bad when anti-SJWs do it, because, well, it's bad. As I've previously posted, ideological diversity is important, and ideological intolerance is the enemy of ideological diversity and the progress that comes from having many opinions and beliefs working in parallel. Making people suffer professionally for their personal political opinions is stellar example of harmful ideological intolerance.
For example, I have a half-written post about Moldbug being disinvited from a tech conference for his political beliefs, which I am unlikely to finish, but which includes the sentence:
For example, I have a half-written post about Moldbug being disinvited from a tech conference for his political beliefs, which I am unlikely to finish, but which includes the sentence:
"Denying professional opportunities to people for daring to think different is primitive behavior which should be disciplined out of civilized people and societies, in much the same way as using your rivers as toilets or obtaining brides by kidnapping."
I want to be clear that I also feel the same way when the personal opinions are attacking groups with which I have sympathy. Not saying the cases are exactly identical; or that arguments can't be made that there are meaningful differences in context that should result in different actions, but...I'm not seeing anyone on the anti-Tor side making those arguments. The only person who is actually self-reflectively considering the parallels is Scott Alexander (no surprise - and a fabulous post).
The bar for attacking a company over the beliefs of 1, 2, or even 5 of its employees should be very high. If 5 employees of a medium-sized company happen to be conservatives, and to say things critical of the left, I don't think that company should be tarred as "conservative", boycotted, and encouraged to crack down on their employees daring to have and express personal opinions. It should be OK to have political opinions that some people consider to be stupid, wrong, hateful, and inaccurate. It should not get you fired.
It should even be OK if these opinions might influence the company's performance in a way which makes the product worse for you and your friends, like not producing conservative-friendly SF. We have a mechanism to discipline such decisions; it's called the market; and when conservative businesses want to opt-out of producing gay marriages, you laud that mechanism, this situation is no different.
This is a little tricky because one can argue that calling for a boycott is a market mechanism. However, I disagree. The true market mechanism is "if the beliefs of their employees leads them to make a worse product, you won't buy as much of it, and their profits will suffer." That mechanism has feedback based on the actual harmful effect. The mechanism of "I feel attacked by the personal beliefs of their employees, so I want to attack back by boycotting them even when they make products I want to buy" has feedback based on a percieved vague future effect that is almost inevitably going to be grossly exaggerated by the fear state of feeling persecuted.
Think about a dance club owner who believes that the Swiss are too peaceful to make good bouncers. He can either a) create a hiring process to identify good bouncers, which will tend to filter out Swiss applicants only if he is correct, or b) refuse to interview Swiss applicants, thus making his prejudice real and denying reality the chance to prove his fears are misplaced. Boycotting are doing the latter at best, if the motivation is "I want to read conservative SF so I will boycott Tor to make them not have such anti-conservative employees". At worst it is simply beating up a member of the out-group who says they don't like your in-group, in plain site of the entire tribe, to protect your out-group and show your power to punish enemies.
Complain about Irene Gallo's inaccurate and hateful statements; refute them; heck, you can even cast aspersions upon her sanity, sexuality, attractiveness, parentage, and consign her to perdition.That is how you personally respond to a personal insult. But turning it into an anti-Tor boycott is not moving towards a better society, it is deepening the war instead of working for peace.
Related to the Secret Republican article, I think it's a real problem that people have become so politically intolerant and so personal about it (though this is likely a symptom, not a cause). Just a few generations ago, everyone knew that there were two subjects not broached in polite company: religion & politics. I conjecture that these subjects had strong feeling, little agreement, little objective truth on which to base agreement, and it was clear that discussing them frequently was destructive to social cohesion and economic co-existence.
Now we've reached a point where Brendan Eich can't be a CEO because he once donated to a ballot initiative (Prop 8) unpopular with the majority of the tech world. Where, instead of everyone being silent about politics at the office, the affiliates of the locally dominant gang feel free to talk loudly and brashly, while the opposing affiliates know they had better keep their mouths shut. I remember what it was like for conservative Christians in my California college 20 years ago (and offer very belated apologies for being part of the problem), and I imagine that colleges & jobs have only become more politically polarized since.
Gay marriage seems like the perfect example. Personally, I'm strongly in favor of it, not only in spite of my growing-with-age social conservatism, but because of it. I think marriage and the nuclear family are vital to society; therefore I wish to strengthen society by admitting all committed couples into this critical institution. To me there is nothing in the nature of marriage that has anything to do with gender; it is about committing to become an economic, social, and possibly reproductive unit.
But the idea that diverse opinions on this topic would be professionally suicidal (which side depends on your local political context) is abhorrent to me. This is not like the political belief "I wish to kill members of minority X", which merits sanction, expulsion, and retaliation as a personal threat to physical safety. Outside that type of extreme threat (or sedition; which is a threat to the physical safety of the state), I think the range of expressible political beliefs should be very wide in a healthy society.
Locally disliked politics may lose you friends - friendship is by choice - but it should not lose you a job. That's a sub-zero chilling effect on the kind of debate the US was founded to embrace. Yes, as tribal apes, hearing other apes signaling their affiliation with other sub-tribes feels kind of like they are getting ready to physically attack you, and provokes a similar visceral response. Maybe it literally indicated that hundreds of thousands of years ago.
But now we are civilized humans who are able to settle most of our debates, slowly, poorly, but without violence. We could definitely use much better mechanisms to explore, test, and resolve our political differences, but suppressing their expression and treating them like acts of gang violence is going backwards.
Which brings us full circle - I said at the beginning this is likely a symptom, not a cause, and perhaps now we can glimpse more of its co-phenomena. If democratic politics is generally becoming more polarized, it is likely also becoming more like gang violence. As humans, the acceptability of gang violence is strongly related to the other-ness of the victim; political polarization of course means other-izing one's political opponents. This may simply be one manifestation of that reprehensible trend.
Now we've reached a point where Brendan Eich can't be a CEO because he once donated to a ballot initiative (Prop 8) unpopular with the majority of the tech world. Where, instead of everyone being silent about politics at the office, the affiliates of the locally dominant gang feel free to talk loudly and brashly, while the opposing affiliates know they had better keep their mouths shut. I remember what it was like for conservative Christians in my California college 20 years ago (and offer very belated apologies for being part of the problem), and I imagine that colleges & jobs have only become more politically polarized since.
Gay marriage seems like the perfect example. Personally, I'm strongly in favor of it, not only in spite of my growing-with-age social conservatism, but because of it. I think marriage and the nuclear family are vital to society; therefore I wish to strengthen society by admitting all committed couples into this critical institution. To me there is nothing in the nature of marriage that has anything to do with gender; it is about committing to become an economic, social, and possibly reproductive unit.
But the idea that diverse opinions on this topic would be professionally suicidal (which side depends on your local political context) is abhorrent to me. This is not like the political belief "I wish to kill members of minority X", which merits sanction, expulsion, and retaliation as a personal threat to physical safety. Outside that type of extreme threat (or sedition; which is a threat to the physical safety of the state), I think the range of expressible political beliefs should be very wide in a healthy society.
Locally disliked politics may lose you friends - friendship is by choice - but it should not lose you a job. That's a sub-zero chilling effect on the kind of debate the US was founded to embrace. Yes, as tribal apes, hearing other apes signaling their affiliation with other sub-tribes feels kind of like they are getting ready to physically attack you, and provokes a similar visceral response. Maybe it literally indicated that hundreds of thousands of years ago.
But now we are civilized humans who are able to settle most of our debates, slowly, poorly, but without violence. We could definitely use much better mechanisms to explore, test, and resolve our political differences, but suppressing their expression and treating them like acts of gang violence is going backwards.
Which brings us full circle - I said at the beginning this is likely a symptom, not a cause, and perhaps now we can glimpse more of its co-phenomena. If democratic politics is generally becoming more polarized, it is likely also becoming more like gang violence. As humans, the acceptability of gang violence is strongly related to the other-ness of the victim; political polarization of course means other-izing one's political opponents. This may simply be one manifestation of that reprehensible trend.
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Brit, on the other hand, is so fond of cats that I suspect her of being partially of feline descent, likely due to an ancient race of cat-creatures that once visited Earth, saw the synergy between the human and feline sentiences and sought to combine them with their advanced genetic engineering.
To resolve our conflicting preferences, I proceeded naturally through Patri's 5 Stages of Disagreement: stubborn resistance, grudging experimentation, whining acceptance, enthusiastic endorsement, and finally the claim that it was my idea all along.
Having reached that wonderful end-stage, I can now say that after 1.5 years of living with our beautiful Abyssinian cat Coconut, I have trouble imagining a catless household. Why would I want to live without a sweet, loyal, fierce, cuddly, independent cat companion who loves me? Coco greets me when I wake up, watches me leave, is excited when I get home, and curls up next to me when I go to sleep. He adds softness and love to my life, and has become a part of the family.
One thing that has helped is that I grew up reading SF, which is chock-full of pro-cat propaganda, so the idea of cats as an essential family ingredient has been easy to accept. Heinlein, for example, wrote "If you would know a man, observe how he treats a cat", and “How you behave toward cats here below determines your status in Heaven.”
As for the allergies, with the right conditions they can be sufficiently ameliorated. Coconut has short hair, doesn't shed much, and in our hard-floored house, using a special cat-wash and special laundry detergent, it's been fine. I'm definitely allergic to cats, I still react strongly when I go into carpeted, long-hair cat environments, and for those occasions I have to take decongestants and antihistamines. I wouldn't do that every day even for a cat (I hate how allergy medicines make me feel), but since the allergens build up slowly over time, even one de-allergenizing rubdown a week makes a huge difference.
The rubdowns are pretty easy, I put the magic denaturing enzymes on a washcloth, and then I use a trick I learned from watching Brit: I talk in a super-excited voice about how it's time for his special wash, and it's going to be so wonderful, and then I pet him when I do it and he feels like he's getting special attention and he purrs instead of running away. (Pro tip: making chores sound like treats works for kids too, as I also learned from Brit).
Too bad Google is a dog company, not a cat company, I wish I could bring Coco to work. Hmm, there's a WikiHow for that....
I've always been a "best of the old, best of the new" kinda guy, and I have two videos along those lines to show.
First comes a french film, "The Oppressed Majority", which shows a parallel world where men experience the catcalls and sexism that women do in our world:
Next comes a muslim film, "Who is Oppressed: Muslim women with hijab or Western society women?", which contrasts the explicit limitation on freedom and expression of the head-scarf with the implicit limitations on freedom and expression of performing daily to society's beauty standards:
Discuss.
First comes a french film, "The Oppressed Majority", which shows a parallel world where men experience the catcalls and sexism that women do in our world:
Next comes a muslim film, "Who is Oppressed: Muslim women with hijab or Western society women?", which contrasts the explicit limitation on freedom and expression of the head-scarf with the implicit limitations on freedom and expression of performing daily to society's beauty standards:
Discuss.
My beliefs about polyamory have changed a lot over the past couple years. I haven't written a lot about those changes yet, as I have been too busy "catching up on life", and I've wanted to simmer my thoughts, as it's a subject I know people have strong feelings about. But I've been reminded several times recently that there are people who heard about polyamory from me and are now experimenting with it themselves, and I feel a responsibility to speak up, so here goes.
I think that polyamory - multiple consenting partners - is a relationship style that can work well for some people in some life situations. If you want to prioritize freedom (keep your contracts minimal and short), variety (of personalities you interplay with), or exploration of types of partnerships, it might make sense.
However, if you wish to prioritize true love (depth of intimacy with a hopefully forever partner) or a stable family, I think polyamory is a style which is at best deeply challenging and at worst fundamentally opposed to those goals. So I want couples with these priorities who are considering polyamory to make sure they aren't ignoring the tradeoffs in a setting where the cost of failure is significantly more than a broken heart.
I'm going to be minimal(ish) here as far as explanations, I don't have time to write a Moldbug-length essay on this now (although I hope to explore my new perspectives in a series of blog posts over the coming months and years). You'll simply have to trust (or not) that there are a variety of other reasons and narratives, and that even if you don't find this one compelling, I may still have a point. So, briefly (relative to my internal body of musings on the subject):
If you have kids, and you wish to parent them in a long-term partnership with another adult, then relationship stability needs to be a huge priority for you. If you want to create a happily-ever-after, Milton & Rose marriage, then relationship stability needs to be a huge priority for you. And having a stable relationship, given human nature and nurture in the 21st century, is hard. A forever relationship doesn't just build itself. It requires investment. Lots of it.
And despite the perpetual motion machine promise of polyamory - that nothing about relationships is zero-sum - it is a fact of the world that we only have so much to invest. Time that Yolanda spends learning how to get along slightly better with her boyfriend Zion is time that she doesn't spend learning about her husband Xerxes. Hobbies she uses to intertwine her life with Zion are hobbies she doesn't use to do the same with Xerxes. She may learn new things from Zion (she almost certainly will) - but she does so at the cost of the monomaniacal focus which it takes to succeed in any great enterprise. And make no mistake, true love and a stable family are great enterprises.
Yolanda may find, at points in her life, that she gets declining marginal utility from her time with Xerxes. If her focus is short-term enjoyment, naturally it makes sense to spend some of her love budget on consuming units of Zion. All I'm saying is that she should be aware of the long-term costs. If she wants Xerxes to continue supplying units of his love for decades to come - if she wants him to not only fertilize her zygotes now but cackle with her over their grandchildren in a half-century - then she should consider a long-term, exclusive contract. And she should remember that in the startup world, a co-founder who is "committed" to multiple ventures is not really committed to any. (Yes, Elon Musk, but you aren't Elon Musk. You aren't even the Elon Musk of love. Also, Elon Musk is now a double-divorcée).
Of couse all of this is contingent on your priorities, and I'm not judging those (at least, not now). If you aren't "getting all your needs met" by your partner, and you want to try building a diversified partner portfolio, then go right ahead. Unless, that is, you claim that you are deeply devoted to your children & family life, or that you want an incredibly deep relationship where you and your twin flame have plumbed the icy depths of each other's souls to reach the hot burning magma of true love beneath.
In that case, I have to say - WTF? SRSLY? RLY? So your children are the most important thing in the world to you...and you've decided to press your wife's primal "GET RID OF THIS MAN" button because you want to cavort with a woman whose energetic temperature is a little different? So you want to build a love that will echo through the ages but you can't be bothered to learn to give and get the things that are hard for you, but important for your partner?
Sorry, but preferences are revealed through action, talk is cheap, and tradeoffs are part of life. If a stable family or true love are your goals, and your relationship is unsatisfying, then either fix it or GTFO. You aren't going to meet those goals by investing in instability. If your heart, head, or hoo-ha are pulling you away from your partner, then please consider the interrelated possibilities that a) he/she/ze/zir/it isn't your forever love / the right person to have children with, and/or b) you aren't truly ready, committed, and trying. Either way (likely both), the path forward is to think about (a) and (b), not to try to escape problems of partner fit and internal issues by distracting yourself with external experiences.
Anyway, as always, filter this through your experience and customize it for your personal situation.
p.s. I'm back! This is an omen of things to come: I hope to start blogging occasionally again, but with a somewhat different spin in topic and viewpoint.
This post is dedicated to my marvelous partner Brit Benjamin, who has inspired me with infinite appreciation for the joys of a monogamous family system. Today's song dedicated to her is "As Long As You Love Me" by the Bieb.
Awesome article on chronotypes based on a new book that hits a lot of sleep themes I like: night owls are not lazy or long sleepers, they just have a different (less agriculture-appropriate) internal clock (chronotype). Lots of people have night owl chronotypes - in Central Europe, 60% of people have a chronotype of wanting to start sleep between 11:30pm - 1:30am, 10% earlier than 11:30pm, and 30% later than 1:30am(!)
(the X-axis here is halfway through your nightly sleep)
People whose chronotypes differ significantly from societal expectations lose sleep on work days & have to try to make it up on weekends:
They also experience "social jet lag" - a sort of continuous jet lag that never ends, because societal expectations don't match their body clock.
Puberty shift chronotypes later for teenagers (it starts moving back around age 20), which means that most teenagers get screwed by huge "social jet lag", causing them to perform worse in school, start accumulating a lifelong sleep debt, and be much more likely to start smoking (smoking is surprisingly correlated w/ social jet lag).
Shift work messes up our bodies, DST messes up everyone and is a horrible monstrosity, internal lighting at night & lack of sunlight during the day messes up everyone, and the idea that body clock synchronization is simply an issue of "willpower" or "discipline" is a hoax perpetrated by the minority of early risers. Sure, willpower can get you to follow a schedule that isn't right for your body clock, but doing so still has costs.
The book is Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're So Tired by Till Roenneberg. For those whose attention span is too short for a book, here's a 5-min video version:
(the X-axis here is halfway through your nightly sleep)
People whose chronotypes differ significantly from societal expectations lose sleep on work days & have to try to make it up on weekends:
They also experience "social jet lag" - a sort of continuous jet lag that never ends, because societal expectations don't match their body clock.
Puberty shift chronotypes later for teenagers (it starts moving back around age 20), which means that most teenagers get screwed by huge "social jet lag", causing them to perform worse in school, start accumulating a lifelong sleep debt, and be much more likely to start smoking (smoking is surprisingly correlated w/ social jet lag).
Shift work messes up our bodies, DST messes up everyone and is a horrible monstrosity, internal lighting at night & lack of sunlight during the day messes up everyone, and the idea that body clock synchronization is simply an issue of "willpower" or "discipline" is a hoax perpetrated by the minority of early risers. Sure, willpower can get you to follow a schedule that isn't right for your body clock, but doing so still has costs.
The book is Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You're So Tired by Till Roenneberg. For those whose attention span is too short for a book, here's a 5-min video version:
- Ephemerisle Hurricane! http://bit.ly/15vETGD #ephemerisle #bubbles #panorama #enjoy
- A procession of houseboats streaming homeward, infinitely noble, interwoven by smaller speedier strands. #ephemerisle vous avez terminƩ
- a 48' boat prepares to dock at Island 9 3/4. Amusing juxtaposition. #ephemerisle pic.twitter.com/DDpqreQqSx
- In the foreground is Island 9 3/4, the newest, floatiest, most inflatable part of #ephemerisle. Anchored, of course. pic.twitter.com/NAIeWgwkos
- Picture of Titan Island from Dromhaven at #ephemerisle. Other islands forming as well. #CompetitiveIslands pic.twitter.com/qmacBExjI3
- How come no one is tweeting #ephemerisle? What, is everyone like enjoying the festival or something? #GrumpyOldTweeter
- Arrived at #ephemerisle w/ @seasteading houseboat, and set Dromhaven's largest anchor, 80 lbs w/ our little fishing boat. Good to be here!
- Packing for #ephemerisle tonight like me? Here's a nice wiki on Ephemerisle houseboat packing: http://bit.ly/1dlpMT5
Congrats to island admirals Chris Rasch (Dromhaven), Scott Norman (Titan), and Erin Rapacki (Ithaka), as well as the numerous other contributors. I particularly noticed Mike Wright & Paul Grasshoff on Dromhaven, where I was moored, ferrymen Jason Dorsett & Gerry Deckert, and Simone Syed, Jim O' Neill, and Jonathan Cain on Titan, but I know there were tons of other people doing awesome stuff, like scratch-built Shantytown island.
Longer writings more laterer. I done got real tired 'n sunburned.
I've been experimenting for years with how to let Tovar enjoy video games (which he loves) in ways that aren't harmful to his growth as a creative & social person. This is challenging, as video games are enormously enthralling to him. When we experiment with letting him play, he plays them for hours, not noticing hunger or the need to use the bathroom until they become overwhelming, sometimes melting down in frustration if he is told to stop, though sometimes able to stop playing when asked.
There are some creative benefits to gaming - the latest Penny Arcade comic series, "Emulator", about a kid designing an RPG, totally reminds me of Tovar, for example. But it also displaces the creative time he uses to build things, read books, and practice his growing artistic talent. When I took away his iPad a year ago because it seemed harmful to him, after some withdrawal pangs he hardly seemed to miss it, and happily occupied himself drawing and building things. He also seemed to be calmer.
After some time off handheld devices (with us at least, he reports playing frequently on visitation), Brit & I got him a Nintendo 3DS, hoping that the smaller & lower-resolution device (like the handhelds of our childhood) would be a good compromise - fun to play sometimes, good for long drives & plane flights, but not addicting. Unfortunately, that has turned out not to be the case. After some months of ramping up, he's wanted to play any time he is allowed to, and he wants to be allowed to as much as possible. Video games have come to dominate his conversation, not only at home, but his teacher eventually said at school that at school he rants about them endlessly.
One thing Brit pointed out to me is how the networked nature of current handhelds makes them more addictive. When we had Game Boys, all games were on expensive cartridges, so you would only have a few games, which resulted in natural limitations on screen time. If you were stuck, bored with, or had won all your cartridges, you would go do something else - either in the real world, or in a book. But now there is the Nintendo eShop, full of downloadable demos. The moment Tovar gets bored with or stuck on a game, he just downloads a new demo, or switches to one of the dozens he's already downloaded. Not only does this make it harder to get tired of playing games, but it also encourages breadth over depth, replacement over perseverance. Call me a cranky old coot, but surely this is a bad thing for character development.
Anyway, we're experimenting with how to limit his behavior & help him to self-limit, so he can enjoy video games as an occasional hobby. But as with other addictions it seems quite possible that cold turkey is the only option. We'll see.
There are some creative benefits to gaming - the latest Penny Arcade comic series, "Emulator", about a kid designing an RPG, totally reminds me of Tovar, for example. But it also displaces the creative time he uses to build things, read books, and practice his growing artistic talent. When I took away his iPad a year ago because it seemed harmful to him, after some withdrawal pangs he hardly seemed to miss it, and happily occupied himself drawing and building things. He also seemed to be calmer.
After some time off handheld devices (with us at least, he reports playing frequently on visitation), Brit & I got him a Nintendo 3DS, hoping that the smaller & lower-resolution device (like the handhelds of our childhood) would be a good compromise - fun to play sometimes, good for long drives & plane flights, but not addicting. Unfortunately, that has turned out not to be the case. After some months of ramping up, he's wanted to play any time he is allowed to, and he wants to be allowed to as much as possible. Video games have come to dominate his conversation, not only at home, but his teacher eventually said at school that at school he rants about them endlessly.
One thing Brit pointed out to me is how the networked nature of current handhelds makes them more addictive. When we had Game Boys, all games were on expensive cartridges, so you would only have a few games, which resulted in natural limitations on screen time. If you were stuck, bored with, or had won all your cartridges, you would go do something else - either in the real world, or in a book. But now there is the Nintendo eShop, full of downloadable demos. The moment Tovar gets bored with or stuck on a game, he just downloads a new demo, or switches to one of the dozens he's already downloaded. Not only does this make it harder to get tired of playing games, but it also encourages breadth over depth, replacement over perseverance. Call me a cranky old coot, but surely this is a bad thing for character development.
Anyway, we're experimenting with how to limit his behavior & help him to self-limit, so he can enjoy video games as an occasional hobby. But as with other addictions it seems quite possible that cold turkey is the only option. We'll see.
With an unusual name like "Patri", I'm often asked what it's origin is. I was named after Patri J. Pugliese, a close friend of my parents from the SCA, who has a wikipedia page about his work on historical dancing and fencing.
Responding privately to a suggestion that cultural memes like "House of Cards" will help reform governance, Mencius Moldbug writes:
My response:
Hence why I want to introduce people to the radical, heretical idea that those who are programmers should consider writing their own OS's and their own applications.
Unfortunately, you can't install a new OS on a Windows machine, and there are no machines that don't have Windows (or Windows Tablet, or Windows Mobile), which is why no one is doing this. You have to start by building your own computer out of parts, so that you can write an OS for it, so that you can write apps for it.
It's not easy, but it is doable if you're enough of a badass hacker. Sure it's unthinkable to kids now who grew up with nothing but Windows Mobile, or their parents who grew up with nothing but Windows. But those who read history know that in their grandparents age, Wozniak actually did it. He was a genius, but he was also a human.
But, like Mencius says, you aren't going to get very far typing in Word macros. Best to roll up your sleeves and learn how to solder, or find a partner who knows. Once you have your very own machine, however slow, however little RAM, and however boring the screen, you can write a kernel, and your kernel is going to outperform the holy living fuck out of poor old Windows. It'll be a long time before you can write games, but surely you can find some use case where Linux's features (speed, reliability, and security) are the important ones, and that's enough to get started.
Repeat "it's just for servers, not desktops, don't worry Microsoft" until there are millions of servers running your OS, then watch Apple and Google build OS X and Android on your kernel and the world be forever changed.
Here, let me explain it in terms of your OS metaphor.
You're trying to replace Windows with Linux. Great.
Your way of replacing Windows with Linux: install Linux as a set of Word macros, one macro at a time. (You'd need something like Emscripten for Word macro.) Oh, also - Linux doesn't exist. So you're actually building Linux as a set of Word macros, one macro at a time. Oh, and you have no distribution mechanism. Your users need to type in the macros themselves.
Are the Word users fed up with Word? Oh, man. They've had it up to here with Word. So what?
My response:
Hence why I want to introduce people to the radical, heretical idea that those who are programmers should consider writing their own OS's and their own applications.
Unfortunately, you can't install a new OS on a Windows machine, and there are no machines that don't have Windows (or Windows Tablet, or Windows Mobile), which is why no one is doing this. You have to start by building your own computer out of parts, so that you can write an OS for it, so that you can write apps for it.
It's not easy, but it is doable if you're enough of a badass hacker. Sure it's unthinkable to kids now who grew up with nothing but Windows Mobile, or their parents who grew up with nothing but Windows. But those who read history know that in their grandparents age, Wozniak actually did it. He was a genius, but he was also a human.
But, like Mencius says, you aren't going to get very far typing in Word macros. Best to roll up your sleeves and learn how to solder, or find a partner who knows. Once you have your very own machine, however slow, however little RAM, and however boring the screen, you can write a kernel, and your kernel is going to outperform the holy living fuck out of poor old Windows. It'll be a long time before you can write games, but surely you can find some use case where Linux's features (speed, reliability, and security) are the important ones, and that's enough to get started.
Repeat "it's just for servers, not desktops, don't worry Microsoft" until there are millions of servers running your OS, then watch Apple and Google build OS X and Android on your kernel and the world be forever changed.
Dave Jackson asks on FB about studies on alternate-day fasting in humans. I reviewed all the human studies on ADF for my talk at the Personalized Life Extension conference a few years ago: my slides and notes are linked at the top of my health page, a fair bit of evidence for various benefits.
On the other hand, I did it for years and ended up with something like adrenal fatigue (although with many other stressors involved as well), and there are several other anecdotal experiences of people who believe they seriously damaged their metabolism or adrenals with chronic fasting.
So nowadays I temper my recommendations for fasting by adding that it works by hormesis (a positive response to a small stressor), our modern lifestyles often have more stressors than our body can handle (gluten, evening light, caffeine, traffic, etc), and so adding stressors should be done with caution. That said, intermittent fasting is a stressor with many positive health benefits, so once you've established a low-stress lifestyle, it's likely a beneficial practice.
On the other hand, I did it for years and ended up with something like adrenal fatigue (although with many other stressors involved as well), and there are several other anecdotal experiences of people who believe they seriously damaged their metabolism or adrenals with chronic fasting.
So nowadays I temper my recommendations for fasting by adding that it works by hormesis (a positive response to a small stressor), our modern lifestyles often have more stressors than our body can handle (gluten, evening light, caffeine, traffic, etc), and so adding stressors should be done with caution. That said, intermittent fasting is a stressor with many positive health benefits, so once you've established a low-stress lifestyle, it's likely a beneficial practice.
As I see it, Sleep Disordered Breathing fits into the paradigm of low-grade chronic health issues, which modern mainstream & alternative medical science is getting better at understanding. These issues are tough, because they don't present with the jagged-edged clarity of a broken bone, but (some of them) are nonetheless real and cause significant lifetime problems.
In the nutritional realm, metabolic syndrome, systemic inflammation, all the imbalances caused by bad Omega 6: 3 ratios, and the long-term effect of grains, glutens, and fructose are in this category. Drinking a 2L of Coke every day won't kill you…at least not quickly. Instead, the overload of fructose gradually produces metabolic derangement over years and decades, which makes it much harder to recognize. Yet growing evidence is showing the long-term effects. Heck, you might count smoking as a decades-old version of the same type of phenomenon.
So if you're a believer in these types of health issues, consider adding sleep disordered breathing to the list.
One of the most fascinating parts of the book, at the beginning, was about why humans have this problem. You'd think we wouldn't evolve a major health issue. And animals don't have these breathing problems - they can breathe & swallow at the same time, which makes choking extremely rare.
Well, it turns out that we've evolved 3 features, each of which offers substantial benefits, but as a side-effect makes our airway more vulnerable. One paper describes these changes as: "The Great Leap Forward: the anatomic basis for the acquisition of speech and obstructive sleep apnea".
1) Klinorynchy, where the facial skeleton, instead of sticking out front (like a dog, or a chimpanzee), has flattened and rotated under the brain. This may be part of our brains taking up more space, to improve language abilities, or for other reasons, but the result is a narrower area, and narrower sinus passages (hence humans being particularly prone to sinus infections).
2) Laryngeal descent - our voice box is much lower than in animals, which gives us the sound control to enable language. But it also impairs airway anatomy - a small price to pay for language, but a price nonetheless.
3) Our spinal cord is more forward, which presumably has some brain benefits, but compresses the airway by leaving less room front-to-back.
But it gets even worse - and now for anti-evolutionary reasons. One of the effects of modern diets, as dentist Weston A. Price discovered, is narrowing of the jaw - which again, compresses the airway. There is debate as to whether this is primarily caused by grains, or refined foods, or (the latest theory) that our diets are softer, and as kids we don't get the vigorous chewing that exercises and expands the jaw. But there does seem to be a strong connection between diet and jaw size, with westernized diets cause not only the candy cavities our mother warned us about, but also narrow arches and dental crowding due to underdeveloped jaws.
So there you have the evolutionary epidemiology of sleep disordered breathing: a variety of anatomical changes to support intelligence & language all weakened our airways, modern diet shrunk our jaws to aggravate the problem further, and so we have an epidemic of sleep apnea and other problems. (Sleep apnea incidence is estimated at 3% - 7%, UARS has not been well-studied but tentative guesses are 10% - 15% for "Snoring + Excessive Daytime Sleepiness").
In the nutritional realm, metabolic syndrome, systemic inflammation, all the imbalances caused by bad Omega 6: 3 ratios, and the long-term effect of grains, glutens, and fructose are in this category. Drinking a 2L of Coke every day won't kill you…at least not quickly. Instead, the overload of fructose gradually produces metabolic derangement over years and decades, which makes it much harder to recognize. Yet growing evidence is showing the long-term effects. Heck, you might count smoking as a decades-old version of the same type of phenomenon.
So if you're a believer in these types of health issues, consider adding sleep disordered breathing to the list.
One of the most fascinating parts of the book, at the beginning, was about why humans have this problem. You'd think we wouldn't evolve a major health issue. And animals don't have these breathing problems - they can breathe & swallow at the same time, which makes choking extremely rare.
Well, it turns out that we've evolved 3 features, each of which offers substantial benefits, but as a side-effect makes our airway more vulnerable. One paper describes these changes as: "The Great Leap Forward: the anatomic basis for the acquisition of speech and obstructive sleep apnea".
1) Klinorynchy, where the facial skeleton, instead of sticking out front (like a dog, or a chimpanzee), has flattened and rotated under the brain. This may be part of our brains taking up more space, to improve language abilities, or for other reasons, but the result is a narrower area, and narrower sinus passages (hence humans being particularly prone to sinus infections).
2) Laryngeal descent - our voice box is much lower than in animals, which gives us the sound control to enable language. But it also impairs airway anatomy - a small price to pay for language, but a price nonetheless.
3) Our spinal cord is more forward, which presumably has some brain benefits, but compresses the airway by leaving less room front-to-back.
But it gets even worse - and now for anti-evolutionary reasons. One of the effects of modern diets, as dentist Weston A. Price discovered, is narrowing of the jaw - which again, compresses the airway. There is debate as to whether this is primarily caused by grains, or refined foods, or (the latest theory) that our diets are softer, and as kids we don't get the vigorous chewing that exercises and expands the jaw. But there does seem to be a strong connection between diet and jaw size, with westernized diets cause not only the candy cavities our mother warned us about, but also narrow arches and dental crowding due to underdeveloped jaws.
So there you have the evolutionary epidemiology of sleep disordered breathing: a variety of anatomical changes to support intelligence & language all weakened our airways, modern diet shrunk our jaws to aggravate the problem further, and so we have an epidemic of sleep apnea and other problems. (Sleep apnea incidence is estimated at 3% - 7%, UARS has not been well-studied but tentative guesses are 10% - 15% for "Snoring + Excessive Daytime Sleepiness").
I sent a friend an intro to market monetarism (a modern, blogosphere-inspired adjustment to the traditional monetarism my grandfather helped create). He was surprised I believed that printing money could be good, rather than agreeing with the Austrians.
The thing is, I do agree with much of the Austrian view, and I don't see an incompatibility. I'd like my readers with familiarity to let me know if I'm wrong. What I agree with in the Austrian view is that printing money and putting it into the economy in certain places, like mortgages (or government spending), causes distortions in the market and wasted spending.
Yet there also seems to be a lot of evidence for wages & prices being sticky downwards, and hence for deflation to cause unemployment. Otherwise, why don't prices just adjust & labor markets clear? Hence expanding the money supply, decreasing the value of money, and letting nominal prices rise is a workaround for this bit of psychology.
I don't see why, with digital cash, we can't have our cake & eat it too. Suppose that we all have digital cash, tagged with its year of issue. At midnight on Dec 31, 2012, our banks convert each of our 2012 dollars into 1.05 2013 dollars. We've just inflated the money supply by 5% with the perfect "helicopter drop".
Now, market monetarism would predict that doing this every year will create greater economic growth (real growth, not nominal growth), by predictable & regular inflation which allows people to get pay cuts (in real terms) without getting pay cuts in nominal terms. If you get a 2% raise, you've actually gotten a 3% pay cut. Thus, markets will clear better, in a recession people will work for less instead of not working at all, etc.
Since the money is introduced with perfect breadth in a non-distortionary fashion, this doesn't cause any problems in the Austrian models, right? So they should at least see it as neutral. And if the monetarists are right, it should actually be positive.
Do people see a problem with this from the Austrian viewpoint? Or the monetarist viewpoint?
The thing is, I do agree with much of the Austrian view, and I don't see an incompatibility. I'd like my readers with familiarity to let me know if I'm wrong. What I agree with in the Austrian view is that printing money and putting it into the economy in certain places, like mortgages (or government spending), causes distortions in the market and wasted spending.
Yet there also seems to be a lot of evidence for wages & prices being sticky downwards, and hence for deflation to cause unemployment. Otherwise, why don't prices just adjust & labor markets clear? Hence expanding the money supply, decreasing the value of money, and letting nominal prices rise is a workaround for this bit of psychology.
I don't see why, with digital cash, we can't have our cake & eat it too. Suppose that we all have digital cash, tagged with its year of issue. At midnight on Dec 31, 2012, our banks convert each of our 2012 dollars into 1.05 2013 dollars. We've just inflated the money supply by 5% with the perfect "helicopter drop".
Now, market monetarism would predict that doing this every year will create greater economic growth (real growth, not nominal growth), by predictable & regular inflation which allows people to get pay cuts (in real terms) without getting pay cuts in nominal terms. If you get a 2% raise, you've actually gotten a 3% pay cut. Thus, markets will clear better, in a recession people will work for less instead of not working at all, etc.
Since the money is introduced with perfect breadth in a non-distortionary fashion, this doesn't cause any problems in the Austrian models, right? So they should at least see it as neutral. And if the monetarists are right, it should actually be positive.
Do people see a problem with this from the Austrian viewpoint? Or the monetarist viewpoint?
Tovar was ring bearer, Izzy was flower girl, I bought Brit a dress, and we had a wonderful time. And Alton's photos are amazing! Here's the ceremony, which included a truly splendid and moving speech by Eliezer that was beautifully written based on Will & Divia's specific values and relationship. (A video will reputedly come out at some point).
And here are some (very biased) highlights from the many wonderful photos:
And here are some (very biased) highlights from the many wonderful photos:
Summer camps are so exciting! I had an awesome time picking one for Tovar, we ended up at Trackers Bay, who's page on Is Trackers A Good Fit For Your Family? starts & ends thusly:
Hmm, sounds kind of exactly like our family spirit & philosophy! Tovar's amazing classes include:
Wow, being a kid nowadays is fun! I had Pennsic when I was growing up, which was an amazing growthful experience every year. Brit & the kids & I aren't going to make it to Pennsic or BMan this year, but I'm psyched to be able to offer Tovar something awesome.
We believe that the "rugged" was taken out of camp far too long ago. We think kids today should get to be like our grandparents, the Goonies who wandered country backyards 50 years ago: Tired, sometimes cold, muddy, wet, and ecstatic from the woods and wild
…
Trackers is filled with people that march to the beat of a different drummer. We quest to rekindle that wild spirit; a return to common sense that is no longer common. A passion for life that is NOT always shiny, easy, TV perfect, newest age, or even pretty. Instead it is heartfelt, sad, challenging, awesome, arduous, fantastical, and on rare occasion, intelligently "dangerous and edgy". But then, isn't that why you chose Trackers?
We have forged ahead with an Art of Camp few have found. We are always trekking further to discover new frontiers. To Remember a culture that needs to exist. To Remember what it is like to be human and truly part of the wild, epic, and gorgeous world in which we live.
Hmm, sounds kind of exactly like our family spirit & philosophy! Tovar's amazing classes include:
Rangers, Elves & Orcs, Oh My!: Trackers Earth presents an epic adventure and homage to the worlds of Gnomes, Faeries, Hairy Giants & Elves. For one week the the Oakland and Berkeley hills become Middle Bayeria, a land of myth and mystery. We find and build Faerie homes, follow tracks of giants and stave off bands of unfriendly trolls with the help of gallant warriors who roam the greenspaces of the realm.
This week the hills become a long forgotten world. All the campers become characters from different fantastical fiction: Hobbits, Rogues, Elves, Healers, Paladins, Gnomes, Rangers, and more.
Trackers Earth instructors are your guides in this giant week-long live action role playing game as we discover, pay homage to and explore the fantastical worlds of literature: from J.R.R. Tolkien's epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, modern roleplaying games to traditional folktales and songs. There will be wizards, fantastic journeys, fellowships and an immersion into the greatest wonders of nature.
Homesteading for Kids: The world is changing and learning local arts and crafts can also lead to new and old ways for the home and family.
During this week we explore different pioneer and homesteading skills: wild plants, gardening, candle or soap making, whittling (for older kids), teas and tinctures, and much more.
At the end of the week we make our own ice cream and have a down home fiddle party.
Wow, being a kid nowadays is fun! I had Pennsic when I was growing up, which was an amazing growthful experience every year. Brit & the kids & I aren't going to make it to Pennsic or BMan this year, but I'm psyched to be able to offer Tovar something awesome.
We started out on the kids houseboat ("Family Planning"), but the nap needs of 21-month old Iselle didn't really work there. She hasn't learned to fall asleep with noise around - she's social and would much rather talk than sleep, even though she falls asleep quickly and easily when left alone in a quiet room. So she needed a large cordoned off area for each nap & bedtime, which was hard to arrange and difficult on the houseboat as more residents showed up.
So on Friday, Brit & I went off and got a rental fishing boat & supplies from target to make Shipstead 1.0 Here's a video panorama of it & various @ephem12 islands, taken during tranquil Friday eve. We learned a lot about how much we like living on a small boat, and what pieces of infrastructure the houseboat offered & the fishing boat didn't that were important.
There are lots of cute pictures of Brit & I & the kids on Facebook, so friend Tovar & Izzy there if you haven't yet :).
So on Friday, Brit & I went off and got a rental fishing boat & supplies from target to make Shipstead 1.0 Here's a video panorama of it & various @ephem12 islands, taken during tranquil Friday eve. We learned a lot about how much we like living on a small boat, and what pieces of infrastructure the houseboat offered & the fishing boat didn't that were important.
There are lots of cute pictures of Brit & I & the kids on Facebook, so friend Tovar & Izzy there if you haven't yet :).
In the discussion on my adrenal fatigue post, 
steuard gave what I'll arrogantly call the naive view on alternative medicine:
But mainstream medicine at least tries to be driven by science, despite all the legitimate weaknesses that you point out. Homeopathic "doctors" have absolutely no interest in it, or else they wouldn't tell people to treat fevers by diluting mushrooms in water until there's no mushroom left and then drink the water. I have no idea what else they might do, but their medical credibility is pretty much shot in my eyes based on the nuttiness of beliefs that they do indisputably hold.
The same goes for almost every form of alternative medicine that I've seen (though few are as obvious as homeopathy). Snake oil peddling has a very long history, after all (and I wouldn't be surprised if some actual literal snake oil salesmen truly believed that their useless elixirs were effective). Yes, there are sometimes good scientific studies that show evidence for them working, but even perfect studies will find an incorrect result at the 95% level one time in twenty. If careful meta-analysis of independent high-quality studies gives a clear answer either way, that's what science is all about (and useful results will get taught in medical schools eventually). And there are plenty of scientists who specialize in studying traditional herbal remedies to identify compounds that are actually effective medicines (I think there's one in this building with me right now, in fact).
You know what they call alternative medicine that has been scientifically shown to be effective? Medicine.
He's missing something big, which is the way patents & intellectual property play into this. You can patent a drug or new procedure or medical device, you can't patent a vitamin or a centuries-old technique. That means that spending tens of millions of dollars to prove to the FDA that something works can only be done for drugs. A supplement company can't make back that money in sales, because every other company can cite the FDA approval.
Hence, there is a public good problem, hence "alternative medicine" (herbs, vitamins, and non-novel techniques like meditation, neti pots, etc) is under-researched. The fact that there is less evidence of efficacy stems directly from there being less incentive - it is *not* evidence that they are less efficacious.
This is not to say that alt med isn't full of snake oil. Of course it is - when there is less evidence, there will be more charlatans. But it is wrong to judge a vitamin by the same standards as a drug, because there will always be less money put into studying it, hence modest positive results (along with a plausible model of effect) are a good indication. Fortunately there is academic interest in alt med, and some private (and public) funding which addresses this public good problem - that's why we have data on many alternative treatments.
Also note that while the "private good" aspect of researching a patentable treatment means that more money goes into studying it, that money is also more tainted - the research is done by the treatment developer, who has a direct incentive to show that it works.
So the world does not consist of carefully proven scientific medicine and bogus alternative medicine. It consists of biased, large-scale trial evidence for patentable treatments, and less biased, smaller scale evidence for non-patentable treatments. That's a much more accurate view.
steuard gave what I'll arrogantly call the naive view on alternative medicine:But mainstream medicine at least tries to be driven by science, despite all the legitimate weaknesses that you point out. Homeopathic "doctors" have absolutely no interest in it, or else they wouldn't tell people to treat fevers by diluting mushrooms in water until there's no mushroom left and then drink the water. I have no idea what else they might do, but their medical credibility is pretty much shot in my eyes based on the nuttiness of beliefs that they do indisputably hold.
The same goes for almost every form of alternative medicine that I've seen (though few are as obvious as homeopathy). Snake oil peddling has a very long history, after all (and I wouldn't be surprised if some actual literal snake oil salesmen truly believed that their useless elixirs were effective). Yes, there are sometimes good scientific studies that show evidence for them working, but even perfect studies will find an incorrect result at the 95% level one time in twenty. If careful meta-analysis of independent high-quality studies gives a clear answer either way, that's what science is all about (and useful results will get taught in medical schools eventually). And there are plenty of scientists who specialize in studying traditional herbal remedies to identify compounds that are actually effective medicines (I think there's one in this building with me right now, in fact).
You know what they call alternative medicine that has been scientifically shown to be effective? Medicine.
He's missing something big, which is the way patents & intellectual property play into this. You can patent a drug or new procedure or medical device, you can't patent a vitamin or a centuries-old technique. That means that spending tens of millions of dollars to prove to the FDA that something works can only be done for drugs. A supplement company can't make back that money in sales, because every other company can cite the FDA approval.
Hence, there is a public good problem, hence "alternative medicine" (herbs, vitamins, and non-novel techniques like meditation, neti pots, etc) is under-researched. The fact that there is less evidence of efficacy stems directly from there being less incentive - it is *not* evidence that they are less efficacious.
This is not to say that alt med isn't full of snake oil. Of course it is - when there is less evidence, there will be more charlatans. But it is wrong to judge a vitamin by the same standards as a drug, because there will always be less money put into studying it, hence modest positive results (along with a plausible model of effect) are a good indication. Fortunately there is academic interest in alt med, and some private (and public) funding which addresses this public good problem - that's why we have data on many alternative treatments.
Also note that while the "private good" aspect of researching a patentable treatment means that more money goes into studying it, that money is also more tainted - the research is done by the treatment developer, who has a direct incentive to show that it works.
So the world does not consist of carefully proven scientific medicine and bogus alternative medicine. It consists of biased, large-scale trial evidence for patentable treatments, and less biased, smaller scale evidence for non-patentable treatments. That's a much more accurate view.
I think this is a somewhat weak & incomplete critique of PUA (there are plenty of good critiques to be made, but this only covers a few of them). But I think the money panel (bottom middle) is a pretty accurate and incisive critique of a common approach to personal growth.
Although a bit too pessimistic for reality - it's more like "Nothing will ever change unless you change yourself or your perspectives in a far deeper way than any single tip or trick or technique or realization. It's not a missing tip or epiphany standing in the way of your dreams, it's who you are right now and how you approach them."
Update: Here's a response to the depiction/critique of PUA.
- Current Music:Dead To The World - Nightwish
From the new Carb Back-Loading Ebook that my friend Nthmost helped produce:
Chapter 14 - Best Breakfast Ever - None
It then continues to a technical discussion on the endocrinology of why the morning is the best time for fat burning, and how breakfast interrupts it. Something new to me was that even protein can contribute to this, and recommends that if you eat anything, you eat pure fat. Sounds like Bulletproof Coffee is the perfect way to start your day!
Also validation for Warrior Diet-style eating:
Here's the study.
Chapter 14 - Best Breakfast Ever - None
Inviting a bout of vitriol is as easy as standing in front of a fitness guru or strength coach and mentioning that there might be benefits to everyone if they skip breakfast. Why the anger? I have to be honest, I really don't know because my reason for suggesting a start to the day that does not include an immediate calorie load stems from how the body works and the resulting research to prove the effectiveness.
If you’re like me, you’ve skimmed ahead and noticed something peculiar: I spend more time on breakfast than other topics—this chapter is two to three times as long as other chapters. Eating (or not eating) early in the day dictates the metabolic status of the body for the rest of the day. Breakfast is simply that important.
By skipping breakfast, it’s easy to change several aspects of the metabolism, like whether the body burns fat for energy or carbs. I do realize that the gurus across all folds, from medical doctors to bodybuilding coaches believe that breakfast is essential, preaching it with zeal. Sometimes, it sounds as though death may occur from skipping breakfast after some of the harangues I’ve heard, but the facts don’t agree and don’t lie.
It then continues to a technical discussion on the endocrinology of why the morning is the best time for fat burning, and how breakfast interrupts it. Something new to me was that even protein can contribute to this, and recommends that if you eat anything, you eat pure fat. Sounds like Bulletproof Coffee is the perfect way to start your day!
Also validation for Warrior Diet-style eating:
From the massive number of trainers and doctors teaching to eat breakfast and not eat before bed, I’d expect them to base such advice on scientific research. The research does exist to answer the question, Should we eat more in the morning or in the afternoon? There is, however one problem: the research says don’t eat the majority of calories early in the day, eat them at night.
The current advice is a remnant of a reasonable assumption based on reasonable logic that no one ever checked. The logic: when first waking, the body is starving from the overnight fast; feed it and it’ll start burning all those calories right away. But before bed, the body’s going into torpor for hours and won’t burn any calories, so don’t give it any food and it can’t store it.
Research shows something very different. As far as body weight is concerned there’s no real difference between eating calories early in the morning and few at night or vice versa. But checking the difference in body composition tells a very different story. People who eat a big breakfast and start fasting at 7pm lose mostly muscle tissue. People who skip breakfast and eat after 7pm lose body fat and may actually gain muscle.
Here's the study.
I'm mentoring 20 under 20 fellow Jeffrey Lim, here's his bio:
Essentially, he's interested in replacing centralized / 3rd-party systems with more collaborative, peer-to-peer, decentralized systems that reduce the value sucked away by middleman, and are enabled by new technology. We spoke specifically about applying this to monetary exchange and credit - the space that Bitcoin, Ripple, Berkshares, and the Liberty Dollar are all somewhat part of.
The tricky thing, if you are practical, is to find ways to apply new technology to these old problems and serve markets that aren't being served right now. For example, I don't want p2p credit, I get wonderful credit service from my Chase Amazon Visa, and my American Express card, where I pay for everything with credit & pay it off once a month. I have no need for a credit network with my friends, and no desire to extend them credit. If I need big amounts of money (like startup funding) there are decent current mechanisms for doing that.
On the other hand, Hawala is a huge decentralized value transfer system, which is clearly serving a market that existing banks don't, and perhaps isn't taking advantage of new tech yet. Like, why not do remittances via SMS? There is surely some great opportunity in this space.
I'm looking for your ideas on background reading for Jeffrey to explore this space. Books, website, articles, projects, market studies - whatever will help him identify the right first opportunity to develop. Free banking as decentralized currency? Cryptoanarchy? Past attempts at p2p currency? Hard currencies as p2p? Overview of how technology impacts money? Comment away!
 |
Jeffrey Lim wants to increase the amount of voluntary exchange and cooperation in the world by revamping some of our core economic and social institutions. He believes it’s time the means of exchange caught up with the Information Age. Once he stops out of MIT, Jeffrey plans on using his fellowship to create technologies that will help people self-organize to solve social problems. He’s particularly interested in helping people protect the wealth they create from the harmful effects of inflation. |
Essentially, he's interested in replacing centralized / 3rd-party systems with more collaborative, peer-to-peer, decentralized systems that reduce the value sucked away by middleman, and are enabled by new technology. We spoke specifically about applying this to monetary exchange and credit - the space that Bitcoin, Ripple, Berkshares, and the Liberty Dollar are all somewhat part of.
The tricky thing, if you are practical, is to find ways to apply new technology to these old problems and serve markets that aren't being served right now. For example, I don't want p2p credit, I get wonderful credit service from my Chase Amazon Visa, and my American Express card, where I pay for everything with credit & pay it off once a month. I have no need for a credit network with my friends, and no desire to extend them credit. If I need big amounts of money (like startup funding) there are decent current mechanisms for doing that.
On the other hand, Hawala is a huge decentralized value transfer system, which is clearly serving a market that existing banks don't, and perhaps isn't taking advantage of new tech yet. Like, why not do remittances via SMS? There is surely some great opportunity in this space.
I'm looking for your ideas on background reading for Jeffrey to explore this space. Books, website, articles, projects, market studies - whatever will help him identify the right first opportunity to develop. Free banking as decentralized currency? Cryptoanarchy? Past attempts at p2p currency? Hard currencies as p2p? Overview of how technology impacts money? Comment away!
As I posted, I've been eating a moderately different and much stricter Paleo 2.0 diet lately (perhaps "health-conscious" is a better term, since it's self-imposed strictness for a well-chosen reason?). I've also been proselytizing / getting asked about it more than usual, and a couple points have come up that I want to briefly rant about.
We'll start by defining the diet: Paleo 2.0 starts with the hypothesis that our bodies do best eating what we've eaten for the longest time period ("Paleo", so forager food >> farmer food >> 20th century frankenfoods), and modifies this ancestral diet based on the latest nutritional research (whether about ancestral foods that are unhealthy, modern foods that are healthy, or modern foods that turn out not to resemble ancestral foods as much as we thought), hence the "2.0".
Now, there's plenty of room for debate about what dietary conclusions follow from this approach, and I don't by any means wish to imply that I think I'm right about all my specific food evaluations - I keep learning, and they keep changing. But I do think this general approach is deeply sensible and defensible, and I'm frustrated by two objections I frequently hear, the first of which misses the point of "Paleo", and the second of "2.0"
1) "Sounds like a fad diet"
I'm sympathetic to people who pattern-match to fad diets, which are always coming and going and almost never last. And I'm even sympathetic those who pattern-match to my own faddish diets - previous versions of paleo, Atkins, Shangri-La, or the olive oil diet experiment, which lasted a mere 24 hours. But I don't think it's a fair evaluation of paleo - in fact, it's the opposite of the truth.
After all, what is a fad? It is something brief, temporary, that won't last. Well, if there is one diet in the entire universe of diets that isn't just a flash-in-the-pan, surely it's the diet that we've been eating for tens to hundreds of thousands of years - Paleo! Farmer food is more faddish than forager food, and 20th century food is the faddiest of all.
Again, there's lots of room to disagree about what foragers ate (Paleo), what farmers ate that is good for us to eat (Paleo 1.5?), and which 20th century food innovations or new discoveries are relevant to optimal diet (Paleo 2.0!). But to call Paleo a fad diet, once you've stopped and thought about it, is completely ridiculous. It's anti-truth.
2) "No fruit/legumes/artificial sweeteners/chicken - but that's different from my diet / what I thought paleo was / what I thought you ate"
There are more subtle issues with this objection, and it really depends on the context. If someone is saying "You believe fruit is bad, I've read evidence that it's good, what is your evidence?", that's great. But other variants of this objection sometimes land for me as: (A) "You've changed your mind, why should I believe you?", (B) "What you have to say contradicts what I know, why should I listen to you?", or (C) "You said you ate Paleo, that isn't paleo, this diet is obviously contradictory!". The problems with these are obvious, but I'll list them anyway, for fun:
A) Judging people based on their consistency will select for people who are accurate...and those who fail to update. If someone changes their mind frequently and dramatically, then it's reasonable to be suspicious of their latest (fad :) ) opinion. But if someone updates from Paleo 1.5 (classic paleo + tolerated neolithic foods like dairy) to Paleo 2.0, like in my case, isn't this a signal that the new diet is more likely to be accurate than the old? I'm very biased on this of course, but what I've seen is that common wisdom in the paleo blogosphere has changed significantly over the past ~5 years, with the old Atkins & Paleo 1.0 viewpoints supplanted among the most cutting-edge, research-based bloggers by this new viewpoint.
B) This approach will prevent the listener from updating. I do it often myself (please call me on it when you see it - seriously, I'll probably like it!), and anytime you're dealing with reasonably sensible, knowledgeable people, it's a foolish approach.
C) This ignores the whole "2.0" paradigm, probably (now that I think about it) because of the apparent paradox in how I usually explain the diet (now I have to decide if triggering the silly objection is fun or not...hmm...). Essentially, the listener hears that the base of the diet is paleo, and finds it contradictory to hear that butter and cheese are big parts of it. The explanation is simple: paleo is the first approximation, and then we modify it based on what newer foods seem to work best nutritionally in our mostly-forager/partly-farmer bodies. Most of the issues with dairy for example, are a) individual based on tolerance, and b) found less in raw and higher-fat dairy (ie less casein in raw, no lactose in cheese/butter).
p.s. As a small piece of evidence that Paleo 2.0 is updating based on evidence, there is a new faddish diet called Body Ecology based on the importance of probiotics and fermented food. It's designed as a moneymaker which sells products, but check out the food recommendations - there's HUGE overlap with Paleo 2.0 on a wide variety of non-mainstream beliefs like: eat coconut oil & butter, limit grains and soak them first, fruits are too sugary, eat grass-fed meats and organ meat, and leave your egg yolk runny. Surely some of this will change as we learn more, but for now, it's the cutting-edge consensus.
We'll start by defining the diet: Paleo 2.0 starts with the hypothesis that our bodies do best eating what we've eaten for the longest time period ("Paleo", so forager food >> farmer food >> 20th century frankenfoods), and modifies this ancestral diet based on the latest nutritional research (whether about ancestral foods that are unhealthy, modern foods that are healthy, or modern foods that turn out not to resemble ancestral foods as much as we thought), hence the "2.0".
Now, there's plenty of room for debate about what dietary conclusions follow from this approach, and I don't by any means wish to imply that I think I'm right about all my specific food evaluations - I keep learning, and they keep changing. But I do think this general approach is deeply sensible and defensible, and I'm frustrated by two objections I frequently hear, the first of which misses the point of "Paleo", and the second of "2.0"
1) "Sounds like a fad diet"
I'm sympathetic to people who pattern-match to fad diets, which are always coming and going and almost never last. And I'm even sympathetic those who pattern-match to my own faddish diets - previous versions of paleo, Atkins, Shangri-La, or the olive oil diet experiment, which lasted a mere 24 hours. But I don't think it's a fair evaluation of paleo - in fact, it's the opposite of the truth.
After all, what is a fad? It is something brief, temporary, that won't last. Well, if there is one diet in the entire universe of diets that isn't just a flash-in-the-pan, surely it's the diet that we've been eating for tens to hundreds of thousands of years - Paleo! Farmer food is more faddish than forager food, and 20th century food is the faddiest of all.
Again, there's lots of room to disagree about what foragers ate (Paleo), what farmers ate that is good for us to eat (Paleo 1.5?), and which 20th century food innovations or new discoveries are relevant to optimal diet (Paleo 2.0!). But to call Paleo a fad diet, once you've stopped and thought about it, is completely ridiculous. It's anti-truth.
2) "No fruit/legumes/artificial sweeteners/chicken - but that's different from my diet / what I thought paleo was / what I thought you ate"
There are more subtle issues with this objection, and it really depends on the context. If someone is saying "You believe fruit is bad, I've read evidence that it's good, what is your evidence?", that's great. But other variants of this objection sometimes land for me as: (A) "You've changed your mind, why should I believe you?", (B) "What you have to say contradicts what I know, why should I listen to you?", or (C) "You said you ate Paleo, that isn't paleo, this diet is obviously contradictory!". The problems with these are obvious, but I'll list them anyway, for fun:
A) Judging people based on their consistency will select for people who are accurate...and those who fail to update. If someone changes their mind frequently and dramatically, then it's reasonable to be suspicious of their latest (fad :) ) opinion. But if someone updates from Paleo 1.5 (classic paleo + tolerated neolithic foods like dairy) to Paleo 2.0, like in my case, isn't this a signal that the new diet is more likely to be accurate than the old? I'm very biased on this of course, but what I've seen is that common wisdom in the paleo blogosphere has changed significantly over the past ~5 years, with the old Atkins & Paleo 1.0 viewpoints supplanted among the most cutting-edge, research-based bloggers by this new viewpoint.
B) This approach will prevent the listener from updating. I do it often myself (please call me on it when you see it - seriously, I'll probably like it!), and anytime you're dealing with reasonably sensible, knowledgeable people, it's a foolish approach.
C) This ignores the whole "2.0" paradigm, probably (now that I think about it) because of the apparent paradox in how I usually explain the diet (now I have to decide if triggering the silly objection is fun or not...hmm...). Essentially, the listener hears that the base of the diet is paleo, and finds it contradictory to hear that butter and cheese are big parts of it. The explanation is simple: paleo is the first approximation, and then we modify it based on what newer foods seem to work best nutritionally in our mostly-forager/partly-farmer bodies. Most of the issues with dairy for example, are a) individual based on tolerance, and b) found less in raw and higher-fat dairy (ie less casein in raw, no lactose in cheese/butter).
p.s. As a small piece of evidence that Paleo 2.0 is updating based on evidence, there is a new faddish diet called Body Ecology based on the importance of probiotics and fermented food. It's designed as a moneymaker which sells products, but check out the food recommendations - there's HUGE overlap with Paleo 2.0 on a wide variety of non-mainstream beliefs like: eat coconut oil & butter, limit grains and soak them first, fruits are too sugary, eat grass-fed meats and organ meat, and leave your egg yolk runny. Surely some of this will change as we learn more, but for now, it's the cutting-edge consensus.
- Current Music:Happy 2B Hardcore Chapter 6 (Mixed by Anabolic Frolic) - Various Artists
There is no way I can objectively assess a claim like this because I'd like to believe it so much (since I'm an E4), so I'll just toss it out for fun, and use it to inspire myself to stick to a primal diet. Basically, apoE4 is an older allele which is much more sensitive to a modern diet.
Ancestral Allele ApoE4: Super Brain Power, Fertility, Lipophilic Immunity
Wonder if this means I should get chelation done occasionally? Does intermittent fasting clear metal contamination? Ah, the author suggests some form of chelation in the comments. Wonder how to test for metal accumulation, would prefer to test before & after rather than to just blindly treat.
Here are the author's other posts on apoE4.
Ancestral Allele ApoE4: Super Brain Power, Fertility, Lipophilic Immunity
apoE4 -- Infiniti of cars (same Nissan engine), running on super premium fuel (ancestral allele)
apoE3 -- Nissan Maxima (wild type allele), runs both regular and premium fuels
apoE2 -- Nissan Sentra, on regular unleaded (agarian allele??)
apoE combos -- Prius hybrids (phenotype varying by degrees)
...
Though in the medical literature is rife with negative associations between apoE4 and a variety of conditions, my observations are that in those who exhibit high LDLs appear to display the most supreme levels of super-healing and extraordinary intelligence.
...
The density of the LDL determines its function. Small dense is damaging. For E4, dietary carbohydrates and dietary deficiencies of saturated fat dramatically shape and create small, dense, harmful LDL particles...E4 appear exquisitely more sensitive to diet, exercise, fats/carbs and environmental toxicants.
Mondadori et al used new technology fMRIs to brain scan young chess-playing individuals and compared their the apoE status. The apoE4 showed increased memory, retrieval, neuropsychology and apparently neural efficiency. E4 indeed appear to run their brains on better fuel, e.g. fatty acids, the currency of nervous system cells.
Why is this not observed in E4 carriers in older age in the industrial populations? In the prior post, researchers discussed how the cysteine amino acid is lacking in E4, at the 112 site. E2 has 2 cysteine's per allele; E3, 1 cysteine; E4, N-O-N-E. This protein conformation apparently stupendously reduces the capacity for apoE to shuttle trace metals out of nervous system tissues. Many enzymes regulate and control metals in the brain however having the E4 allele is like a neuronal death sentence in a world that is contaminated by metals, not excluding one's own oral cavity.
Wonder if this means I should get chelation done occasionally? Does intermittent fasting clear metal contamination? Ah, the author suggests some form of chelation in the comments. Wonder how to test for metal accumulation, would prefer to test before & after rather than to just blindly treat.
Here are the author's other posts on apoE4.
After a fairly long, crowded, back-aching 22 hours of travel, SFO->FRA, FRA->OSL, OSL->FDE, I arrived in beautiful western Norway, near Dall's Fjord.
Some funny stories. I was fasting Saturday until dinner, so on the plane I declined lunch, drank only zero-calories beverages, and then after 6 hours, I pulled out my back of food: cheese & 90% dark chocolate. My seatmate looked at me like I was insane, and said "that looks unhealthy!". So, definitely got my shock value out of it :).
Funniest story: a friend hung out while I was packing, and saw me pack a swimsuit
Patri: "It's Norway, so I need a swimsuit, they'll probably want me to go jump in some icy lake or something"
Friend: "Wait, what? No...."
Patri: "Seriously! If I know Norwegians, it could totally happen."
Friend: "Huh".
Then, here was my first few hours in remote Norway:
Hour 1: Driving from airport to summer house on twisty mountain roads, passing ancient Viking halls and a couple lovely waterfalls flowing into the Fjord (here's a video I took of the calmer one). The beautiful summer house has the fjord in it's backyard, has geothermal heat and fresh mountain spring water on tap.
Hour 2: Deliciously healthy dinner consisting of shrimp & giant jumbo shrimp caught fresh in the local fjord (it's the seafood equivalent of getting local organic grass-fed meat), creamy avocado, butter, and small pieces of bread made from heirloom wheat. No wonder they have 80 year life expectancy!
Hour 3: Stoking up the wood fired sauna. Hosts: "So, what we do here every night is go into the sauna, then jump into the fjord, then sit in the hot tub. You in?"
I crack up and explain how I told a friend there might be cold water plunging and they didn't believe me, they promise the fjord won't kill me (it's a balmy 10 centigrade), and we proceed as planned.
It's just wonderful here...quiet, calm, beautiful (trees & boulders and the fjord). Now off in a boat to Maaloy to talk about local shipbuilding & high-tech industry.
Some funny stories. I was fasting Saturday until dinner, so on the plane I declined lunch, drank only zero-calories beverages, and then after 6 hours, I pulled out my back of food: cheese & 90% dark chocolate. My seatmate looked at me like I was insane, and said "that looks unhealthy!". So, definitely got my shock value out of it :).
Funniest story: a friend hung out while I was packing, and saw me pack a swimsuit
Patri: "It's Norway, so I need a swimsuit, they'll probably want me to go jump in some icy lake or something"
Friend: "Wait, what? No...."
Patri: "Seriously! If I know Norwegians, it could totally happen."
Friend: "Huh".
Then, here was my first few hours in remote Norway:
Hour 1: Driving from airport to summer house on twisty mountain roads, passing ancient Viking halls and a couple lovely waterfalls flowing into the Fjord (here's a video I took of the calmer one). The beautiful summer house has the fjord in it's backyard, has geothermal heat and fresh mountain spring water on tap.
Hour 2: Deliciously healthy dinner consisting of shrimp & giant jumbo shrimp caught fresh in the local fjord (it's the seafood equivalent of getting local organic grass-fed meat), creamy avocado, butter, and small pieces of bread made from heirloom wheat. No wonder they have 80 year life expectancy!
Hour 3: Stoking up the wood fired sauna. Hosts: "So, what we do here every night is go into the sauna, then jump into the fjord, then sit in the hot tub. You in?"
I crack up and explain how I told a friend there might be cold water plunging and they didn't believe me, they promise the fjord won't kill me (it's a balmy 10 centigrade), and we proceed as planned.
It's just wonderful here...quiet, calm, beautiful (trees & boulders and the fjord). Now off in a boat to Maaloy to talk about local shipbuilding & high-tech industry.
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