LessWrong 2.0 Reader

Anthropology for Dummies is fine. It's a bit progressive in that he even directly states that he refuses to talk about any sex differences because it's too controversial a topic for him. So I cannot fully recommend it. But there are some good stuff in it even though it avoids like 50% of anthropology science because the author feels it's too controversial.

Personality Psychology: Domains of Knowledge about Human Nature by Randy J. Larsen, David M. Buss

I have looked into maybe 40 general psychology textbooks. Not read them all though, but read quite a few. This one is still by far the best intro to general psychology. But you may put it under personality psychology even though that's basically all of psychology minus the philosophical and political part. I try to read many more textbooks to review them. I'll inform people if I find something on this level again. The problem is that it very fast gets into pseudoscience/guesswork territory with psychology so there are a ton of really bad textbooks out there.

Thanks for your recommendation! I have corrected the problem with the asymmetric distribution (now computing the whole distribution) and added a second graph showing exactly what you suggest and it looks good.

Unfortunately for the first approach that I implemented, the MAP is not always within a 90% confidence interval (It is outside of it when the MAP is 1 or 0). I agree that it is confusing and seems undesirable.

(You might need to hard-refresh the page if you want to see the update CTRL+SHIFT+R)

People keep telling me that my criticisms of utilitarianism are criticisms of classical utilitarianism, not the improved version they believe in. But they keep failing to provide clear explanations of new improved utilitarianism. Which is a problem because if improved utilitarianism has aspects of subjectivism or social construction, or whatever, then it is no longer a purely mathematical and objective theory, as advertised.

We put people in jail or execute them for doing bad things. That's kind of a binary. If utilitarianism can only justify a spectrum of praiseworthiness-blameworthiness, then it is, insufficient to justify the social practices surrounding ethics. If it can't justify blameworthiness, then things are even worse.

Yeah, need to replace dying with losing a lot of utility. I've updated the post.

But coin needs to depend on your prediction instead of being always biased a particular way.

I'm wondering if anyone can recommend some recordings that they like on YouTube or Spotify of this sort of music? I don't know if I've heard it before.

A couple years back I looked into one of those "designed from the ground up to be decentralized" facebook alternatives... and it was god-awful. And it wouldn't have been all that hard for it to be at least "reasonable." 

I do think it's legitimately hard to keep up with Facebook because it keeps improving, and then it's legitimately hard to solve the coordination problem to switch. But it seems like at least one eccentric billionaire should be funding this sort of thing. (I guess they 

But this seems like something you should be able to get an eccentric billionaire to fund to the point that it's at least, like, Google Plus levels of good. (Okay, I guess we have one now maybe?)

Perhaps worth noting: a few years back, the hip intellectuals I know "knew" that blue screens were bad for you and invented/downloaded Flux, and it was discouraging that that was a weird hack you had to get for yourself. But, a few years later, that's been rolled into official Apple Products, and iPhones now have some built in screen-time managing tools. 

So I'm actually fairly optimistic about this working out, just... slowly enough that you'll continuously be somewhat frustrated that the "obvious" things haven't been implemented yet.

I'm with you on the satiety thing. The chewing bit is the one I'm skeptical of. I don't currently chew this way. If I did, what life outcomes would be better for me? (you say "better digestion = better", but why? and why do you believe it?)

Chewing is the first step in the digestive process, prepping food before it enters the stomach but it is a step that is easily skipped.

Thorough chewing means your food is physically broken down - decreasing size of bits and increasing surface area so maximising exposure to its contents/nutrients.

Chewing also means the food is mixed with a lot of saliva which contains digestive enzymes to start the processing of food pre-stomach.

Catch yourself when you go to swallow a mouthful of food - how liquefied is it?

Better chewing = better digestion = better.

Satiety ~ the stomach telling the brain it's full - 20 min is the touted time for that process. Chewing properly slows eating speed so satiety is reached with less food consumed. Stopping eating when your body signals 'that's enough' will prevent excess consumption.