What information has surprised you most recently?

Yes, I understand your indignation and I should not have been as quick to spurt that out without more information. I've tried to justify everything I've said above with data from Framingham and the Cochrane Collaboration, but I hope you'll forgive me if I have to lapse into a few sources from less hallowed publications once in a while.

"Eating cholesterol doesn't cause high blood cholesterol."

Since only citing things from Framingham or Cochrane is a hard constraint to keep I am forced to commit the minor sin of citing a work not published in a peer-reviewed journal and refer you to the Framingham Diet Study, a subpart of the Framingham Heart Study whose methodology was published appropriately but whose results for some reason weren't. A guy who tracked down the results reports on them here and finds that

"With one exception there was no discernible association between reported diet intake and serum cholesterol level in the Framingham Diet Study Group. The one exception was a weak negative association between caloric intake and serum cholesterol level in men. [As to] coronary heart disease–was it related prospectively to diet. No relationship was found."

If you'll allow me to step out of Framingham and Cochrane for a moment I can also link to a review on egg consumption and LDL which found that in most of the population there's no relationship.

"Eating saturated fat probably doesn't cause higher blood cholesterol."

This claim can also be supported by the Framingham data above finding no link between diet and serum cholesterol.

You may also be interested in a Cochrane review that finds no effect reducing dietary fat consumption on cardiovascular events, cardiovascular mortality or total mortality, and finds that changing the type of fat slightly decreases cardiovascular events (look how close that confidence interval gets to 1!), but not cardiovascular mortality or total mortality. And here's a non-Cochrane meta-analysis saying pretty much the same thing.

If those are true, either the fat -> blood cholesterol or the blood cholesterol -> CVD connections have to be flawed; I'd say at this point it's more likely the former.

"High blood LDL probably doesn't cause heart disease."

That was irresponsibly speculative as written; I have now edited it out of the original post lest it cause exactly the confusion you worry about. I am impressed by arguments suggesting that the association between cholesterol and heart disease may be more correlational than causal, or at least super-complicated and modulated by weird factors we don't understand like subtype of LDL, but at this point I can't support that with Framingham or Cochrane and it would be irresponsible to say so too loudly.

But I think it's weird how randomized trials keep finding that a lot of drugs that change cholesterol don't change disease risk. The ENHANCE trial of ezetimibe finds it successfully reduced LDL cholesterol but didn't decrease (and may increase) cardiovascular events. The AIM-HIGH trial of niacin finds it successfully raises HDL cholesterol and lowers LDL cholesterol but didn't decrease cardiovascular events. Fibrates may prevent CVD but have no effect on all-cause mortality. The only lipid-lowering drugs that seem to be consistently awesome are, of course, the statins, but they seem to work equally well in high and low cholesterol populations leading some to think they also have non-cholesterol-related effects.

I also just think LDL is a lousy biomarker. A majority of heart attack patients have LDL levels considered normal; this is especially impressive considering the high results of high cholesterol even in the general population.

But in general you're right and I apologize for asserting this one until I can back it up better.

"High blood cholesterol levels are protective against cancer and the mortality gain here probably outweighs any mortality loss from cardiovascular disease."

Framingham found that mortality increased with increasing cholesterol in people younger than 50. In people older than 50 (ie 90% of heart attack victims) it found no relationship (other sources say low cholesterol led to higher mortality in these age groups, but I can't access the paper to check.)

In other studies, the relationship between cholesterol and noncardiovascular mortality has indeed been clearly protective.The article I linked to tries to explain this as people with hidden catabolic diseases (eg cancer) having decreased cholesterol levels. This has become less plausible as longitudinal studies show low cholesterol long precedes disease; see for example Schatz 2001.

Overall I am not as confident in my claim above as I was when I wrote it. I wrote it right after reading Good Calories, Bad Calories, but before double-checking everything in it to avoid effects of confirmation bias. I continue to think the statements above are mostly true, in the vague and weasel-ish way that medical statements are true (true in most subgroups, if you hold risk factors constant, so on). But I suggest reading Good Calories, Bad Calories and doing some more research and checking for yourself: I would be really interested to know what another rationalist who's interested in medicine thinks of it.

I would suggest (not "recommend", I'm nowhere near high-status or high-information enough to "recommend") that you use a better source of monitoring cardiovascular risk than LDL (ApoA/ApoB ratios seem to work), that you suggest an Obvious Healthy Diet Without Twinkies Or Coca-Cola and leave it at that unless you want to wade into the monster-infested radioactive swamp that is nutrition science, and that you continue prescribing statins where indicated.

I'd note that even if alcohol consumption is beneficial for humans, most nonhuman mammals have considerably less efficient livers than we do, so the levels of alcohol by bodyweight that are good for humans might be a health risk for most other animals we could test it on.

These facts, except for the one about alcohol, can be summarized as "We can't control our environment as much as we thought." Being able to strongly control our environment using methods that seem obvious and reasonable would be nice, so it would be nice if these facts were false.

While my grocery shopping is strongly determined by nutritional label content, my behavior at restaurants only weakly is, and I think this is related to the fact that so few restaurants offer that service in the first place. If I'm going to a restaurant at all, I'm in the habit of taking for granted that I will only be able to guess at the nutritional content of the meal I'm ordering, and will therefore be taking a break from deciding on the basis of labeling (as an aside, I have an enormous appetite, and can eat a meal meant for three and have room for dessert afterwards despite weighing under 75 kg. I'm used to eating until I'm only fractionally full, but will sometimes have "break" meals at restaurants or on holidays, so my restaurant eating isn't that indicative of my usual diet.)

If restaurants routinely listed caloric content of their menu items, instead of the places that do so mostly being fast food chains which I tend to avoid in the first place due to their reputations for low quality and unhealthy food, it might be a significantly stronger determining factor in what I order.

ETA: When I was mostly reliant on a college cafeteria for food (which is in many ways more similar to a restaurant than a grocery,) I was strictly dependent on nutrition labels to choose what I ate, and if anything was unlabeled, or I suspected it was mislabeled, I wouldn't eat it.

ETA Does the calorie observation hold true in non-restaurant settings? (E.g. grocery shopping?). Possibly the social elements of restaurant purchasing override calorie concerns, but they're more prevalent in other places.

Probably. IME, when people eat in restaurants, usually it's not exactly because they want to eat lightly.

I'm underweight. If there are a bunch of people like me

There are not nearly as many people like you compared to those who are overweight, or even those who are overweight and on a diet.

None of the named facts make bread or sugar less tasty, you know.

I do in part because of this. I've cut out wheat and lots of sugar and replaced them in part with saturated fats from grass-fed butter, MCT oil, and coconut milk.

The positive effect doesn't rely on drinking the level of alcohol that would normal cause someone to be considered "inebriated".

Good news: If you don't enjoy getting drunk you are not predisposed to become an alcoholic. That means that you likely can drink one glass of wine each afternoon (getting most of the benefits Yvain talks about) and not begin to get drunk.

People eating fewer calories.

Well...it can't be sunk costs. If the point of a marriage is to make you happy, and it is making you happy, then it isn't a sunk cost.

It can't be post-purchase rationalization. Arranged vs love marriages don't differ significantly in terms of resources invested in the spouse. And I think those two biases - post purchase and sunk cost - essentially amount to the same thing.

It's been shown that too many choices make people ultimately less satisfied in what they get. The rationalization is not post-purchase.... it's that there are no other options, so you might as well not trouble yourself with what could have been. I don't remember the name of this bias, but it exists in its own right.

It could also be something about the type of people who agree to enter arranged marriages (traditional, family oriented, etc) being more likely to self report happiness with a spouse (actual happiness, duty, family-pride, whatever)

Alternatively you know....we need to at least consider the idea that arranged marriages rely on the choices of older and wiser individuals who know more about social dynamics than youngsters and ultimately are better equipped at making choices. (I doubt it, but still...)

Mmh, my bet is on the second. I findi it a very powerful motivator even in non-arranged marriages.

http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1988-35550-001

It's been replicated a few times in other places. Here is another, in case you don't have journal access

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=arranged-marriages-can-be-real-love-10-03-11

On the plus side a very kind email and invitations to get coffee, on the negative side something I would rather not get into but it wasn't subtle and provides evidence for this.

wait it blew a hole in the floor?!

the hell? I thought we were talking about tiny amounts of energy in the systems that were experimenting with.

I feel like there's an Edgar Allen Poe parody just waiting to happen here.

"Dis i' real bad, mistah. He bin bitten ba de moole-bug."

Unless they mean the memeplex is the idea that "epistemic rationality is a solved problem""?

First there is some contention in this and I'm basically reflecting Toobys opinion here. He says that there was no selection pressure to develop general intelligence and instead we have specialized subsystems that help us navigate our world.

IIRC the video was the following:John Tooby: Can discovering the design principles governing natural intelligence unleash breakthroughs in AI?

As evidence consider the Wason selection task, although a very simple logic puzzle most people fail at it, but can do it when the same problem is presented in a social context instead.

Well, that's interesting...unless you are bisexual, you don't and won't ever have such bad experiences with men.

That's correct (I'm not bisexual).

So from a rationalist perspective, does it make sense to use this evidence to update your beliefs about the trustworthiness of women, but not your beliefs about the trustworthiness of men?

Positing that I cared about the trustworthiness of men in relationships (which I don't), I think it stil makes sense, as long as there isn't a uniformity between male and female behaviour which, in my experience, is not warranted at all.

Do you think it's a good idea to update based on that understanding of the situation?

Well, I've asked myself this for a long time. Sure I was deeply in love, but for what I could see all my behaviours were reciprocated. Also other people (besides her friends, apparently) were surprised (ranging from very surprised to downright furious) for her 'change'. I still don't know how much I could have foreseen this in advance, but this doesn't change the fact that I must be a lot more aware the next time.

I've found that paying attention to how much "signs of love" and "access to me for resources" correlate is useful in my relationships.

Yeah...

But I'm also polyamorous so distance tends not to be nearly as big an obstacle as it seems to be for monogamy

How do you implement that? You just simply tell a girl you like that you have multiple relationships?

I don't think your update follows from the information you provided. I think someonewrongonthenet asks a legit question.

Ehm... ok! Nobody said s/he didn't...?

I think observing how fast the "signs of love" develop is a useful heuristic in determining how fast they could dump you

In my case the 'courtship' phase, let's call it this way, lasted about two months. In your experience this is too fast or the correct time for assessing correctly someone's interest?

Some people are just addicted to falling in love, and when it starts to fade, will look for their next rush.

That's a new perspective... In my case I liked everything about her (at least, about what she was displaying), and I still think we had compatible lifestyles. I don't know if this is a good heuristic for being together, but from my point of view it doesn't get better than this. For her I cannot say, of course, but I don't think it was the 'falling in love' addiction: I was her second partner at all, but mainly it's at least suspicious that her 'rush' for me ended just about when a competitor showed up...

I agree with gwern. Perhaps a more credible source of scepticism about the poll's results is that they have been biased by self-sampling. Vegetarians care more about vegetarianism than meat-eaters care about meat-eating, so it's plausible to suppose that vegetarians are overrepresented in the sample.

Many non-philosophers read Leiter, yes; but it's worth remembering that his blog is possibly the most popular academic philosophy blog out there, I have seen it said.

(Plus, non-philosophers responding can be expected to dilute the vegetarian philosophers since vegetarian is so rare unless you have some good reason to expect the non-philosophers to be even more skewed vegetarian.)