Solved Problems Repository

Yeah, it's a tricky thing. I've actually been involved in translation projects for global software, and the closest I can come to an answer is that they don't really think anything at all... there's several different divisions involved, and each one has bits of the picture, and it all just chunks along without anyone thinking it through end-to-end.

Really, a lot of software development, and of organizational activity more generally, is like that.

All of that said... yeah, the "user googles the error message for instructions" use case is not one that gets taken nearly seriously enough. This is also why you get error messages in dialog boxes that don't support copy-and-paste. If it were, every error message would have a unique copy-able ID code .

I initially tried giving my mother the "you're unlikely to break anything" advice as well, then reconsidered after she'd followed that advice and gotten malware on the computer.

I learned most of what I learned -by- breaking things.

For example, I learned how page files worked because American Online and Dungeon Keeper both tried to seize them for themselves, and if Dungeon Keeper was run, AOL wouldn't run subsequently without a reboot. Research on the issue turned up that disabling page filing would fix it, which led me to research page filing to see what disabling it would do.

I claim that you have a lot of background knowledge which gives your experimental actions a probability distribution much more like “unlikely to break anything” than hers.

Can relate, the weirdest habit of non-computer-literate people is 1) not reading what is on the screen 2) not trying to interpret even really simple instructions on the screen. Is there any sort of a cognitive explanation why do we have to have conversations like this?

"The computer froze."

"Do you see a pop-up window with a message?"

"Yes."

"Is there anything written into it?"

"Yes."

"What?"

(squint, lean closer) "Posting Date must not be empty in..."

"What do you think it means?"

"Ugh, fill out the Posting Date?"

"Exactly."

Can you provide an unfolded argument as to why index funds are the right investment vehicles for everyone on this planet?

I never dared trying it so yes, haven't used it "enough". Are they under no obligation to entertain the host, engaging in chat, small talk, not be morose and sullen, not be a killjoy? That alone would be quite a pressure. As it means they owe it to the host to be enjoyable.

A padded envelope containing a dozen 16GB SD cards, sent by Express Mail (next-day delivery) has a bandwidth of about one megabit-per-second.

Networks have actually gotten fast.

Sure. I feel pretty comfortable with squats and benching already. I'm just a bit concerned about learning, say, powercleans without guidance, and going up on weight on them without assurance that I am, in fact, throwing the huge metal object into the air correctly.

You will not be looking good in the 4 months SS takes. Body composition is a long term project. SS and similar programs are to strengthen the substrate so you have something to build on.

If you want to look good, do starting strength for several months to build a base of strength, then switch to something geared more towards body-building (warning: I haven't tried this myself yet; also, depends somewhat on how much more muscular you want to look).

Another point is that body fat percent matters a decent amount for how "buff" you look as well, although there's a tradeoff where you won't build muscle as quickly if you're starving yourself.

Also, what you wear has a reasonably large impact on how muscular you look, at least when you're wearing clothes.

Aretae swears by it, which is the reason I decided to pick it up.

I'm considering putting data together. I haven't collected data on any of my projects since my experiment to see if calories were a reasonable approximation for weight-loss purposes. (And contrary to my original expectations, they are. But my diet was fairly well balanced, and I expect the data wouldn't hold for wildly unbalanced diets.)

The argument boils down to "you can use more weight" and "it involves the posterior chain more." Neither of these supposed benefits are worth the greater chance of injury. Low bar squats place significantly greater loads on the spinal erectors, which is fine if you're an experienced weightlifter and know how to maintain good form. A newbie who lacks proprioception is the worst person to have doing this. I see and speak with many people doing SS at my university gym and most of the ones doing lowbar do it with poor form and rounded backs. In contrast it is much easier to do highbar squats with correct form as they are much more intuitive. Low bar squats took me months and months to learn proper form with and I strained a spinal erector during this learning process. High bar squats took me a few lifting sessions to learn.

All that said, low-bar will work better for some people due to anatomy, but most have an easier time with high bar. You do need weightlifting shoes to do proper high bar squats. And you also need to throw in a few sets of RDL's to hit the hamstrings.

Because just inflated muscles don't do these? The gap between the two is not that big, the body-builders just go a bit less intense on the heavy lifts in order to have some energy left for the isolation ones, and the rep range being higher makes the weights 20-40% smaller. The difference between 5x5 150kg bench presses vs. 5x8 110 kg ones + doing pec-decs is nowhere nearly as big as the difference between these two and just about anything else. The primary difference is joints and ability to move heavy objects. Doing more in the sense of being more a of human forklift somehow does not look that glorious. The feeling better may as well attach better to the more spectacular looks, and as for longer lasting, probably near draw.

For me strength always meant punching strength and this guy convinced me it is mainly technique.

Caveat: I know grappling sports are getting more popular, such as BJJ / part of MMA. I think this probably does not apply there. I think grappling could be more brute-forced.

I think one reason modern culture may be hooked on strength is that when we were children a lot of fighting / domination / bullying / rough play relied more on intuitive grappling than on punching (or kicking). This made us all respect The Strong Guy Who Can Whip Everybody. And of course movies like the 300 etc. reinforce it. This goes back to very old cultural origins, wrestling is one thing many cultures paralelly evolved because this is how people can physically dominate each other and establish a pecking order without actually hurting each other.

Here is why I like to argue it: weight lifting techniques are used in many sports for a long time. Still, most guys were scrawny, and not due to lack of nutrition, since even today some lifters use really easy nutrition like eating lots of cottage cheese. Or drinking lots of milk if they are tolerant. Body building got popular in the West roughly after 1977 (Pumping Iron) and elsewhere later, I would say, buff guys on bar dancefloors became a common sight 1990-ish, roughly? What do you think body building brought to the table that former lifting couldn't? I think it brought ease through isolation. That while doing the triceps cables is straining for that muscle, it is not straining for the rest of the body, nor the mind. You can almost not pay attention, and not even feel tired, just stop it when the muscle itself burns but you can almost even avoid getting sweaty. This ease brought a strong motivating factor. When I was 17 it felt like a cheat code: I was sitting in the 45 degree leg press, and wondering how amazing it is that I am sitting on my ass, laid back, relaxed, yet got better looking legs that classmates who played soccer all the time.

The current SS / SL 5x5 trend is bringing back the former, pre-body-building era, where your energy is wasted on making sure your posture is right, all the secondary muscles are flexed all right and so on. While with a 45 degree leg press basically the only tiring, attention-grabbing, willpower-sapping activitiy is just pressing the legs up, with a squat you must pay attention to getting the whole body right, which is much more tiresome hence demotivating, because most of that does not apply to good looks, just a rather useless forklift-ability.

I know the answer.

You can start whatever threads you want! You have the power! (What question should you have replaced that question with, I wonder...)

Just doing intermittent fasting by itself didn't do much for me, but doing intermittent fasting where I also measured and reduced calorie intake allowed me to lose 15 pounds (from 185 to 170). The LeanGains website was really helpful. It's also worth noting that prior to starting this, I already had a relatively healthy diet and exercised regularly.

That being said, even the guy who made LeanGains doesn't claim it will work for everyone. But for the first month I did it I screwed it up (by not also restricting calorie intake) and saw no change, then after fixing that I lost about a pound a week.

Ketosis sticks did not show my entering ketosis even with as close to zero carbs as I could get (admittedly counting things like 3g carbs in a serving of protein powder). I don't recall how long I tried. Probably between 1 week and 2 weeks before giving up on almost-zero carb, then a month of very low carb before giving up entirely. Memory is fuzzy.

[300-500 kcal's generally touted for muscle preservation for those not on steroids by the internet, but that's still pretty slow and not obvious weightloss against a backdrop of fluctuating water weight]

It is obvious if you weigh yourself every day for a couple months or longer and you know how to do stats.

(FWIW, my weight since 12 February fits to a straight line a + bx where a = (93.74 ± 0.19) kg, b = (−0.018 ± 0.007) kg/day, and x is the time elapsed since 12 February; the RMS of residuals is 0.68 kg. Approximating the posterior pdf of b as a Gaussian, which ought to be close enough given 46 degrees of freedom, I'm 99.42% sure that b < 0.)

Do you get keto flu type hangovers after your cheat days?

Thank you for sharing. Are you willing to follow up in a year or two to let me know where you are?

I haven't been keeping the closest track, so this isn't even a good anecdote. I was a 165 lb and 5'10 man going out of high school seven years ago, and went up to 220 as of a year ago. It wasn't all fat (I'm significantly stronger now than I was then), but I did go from wearing 34 waist jeans to a 38.

So I started at 220 and a 38 waist, and I've gone down to 180 and I think size 34 jeans (I haven't gotten around yet to buying more jeans, but my size 36's need a belt now). Exercise involved hasn't been too extensive - mostly just walking and housework. I'm still work-in-progress, but I haven't had a history of my weight yo-yoing on diets, and I intend to stay on keto for the foreseeable future.

Thank you for your response. Will you agree to update this response in a year or two?

I'm heartened that your comment is so well-liked. I made the same point a year or two ago and got back a bunch of nonsense about how the second law of thermodynamics cannot be violated.

1,000 calorie diets ... third group gained 0.24 lbs / day

I noticed I was confused. This doesn't seem consistent with the results of the Minnesota Starvation/Semistarvation Study. I went to Wikipedia.

Kekwick and Pawan, 1956 conducted a study of subjects consuming 1000-calorie diets, some 90% protein, some 90% fat, and some 90% carbohydrates. Those on the high fat diet lost the most, the high protein dieters lost somewhat less, and the high carbohydrate dieters actually gained weight on average. Kekwick and Pawan noted irregularities in their study (patients not fully complying with the parameters of the study). The validity of their conclusions has been questioned, and follow-up studies over a longer duration concluded that these temporary differences were due chiefly to changes in water balance (citation)

My prior consider it quite ludicrous that you can gain weight eating at a 50% deficit, no matter what your macros. The criticisms seem reasonable enough to explain the effect.

Note that the link in the citation claimed that when told to cut out carbs and eat as much protein and fat as they liked, "In all subjects, there was a reduction in calories ranging from 13% to 55% during the time they were consuming the low-carbohydrate diet."

90% fat resp. 90% protein resp. 90% carbs

So long as your diet isn't nearly that lopsided, IME (YMMV) the calories-in calories-out is a more decent first-order approximation than many people realize. See also The Hacker's Diet. Second-order effects exist, but they're second-order effects.

Plus you also have to deal with massive willpower problems.

Explicitly asking about social hierarchies/status positional moves.

"Do you want to have sex with me?"

Sometimes, just the act of asking changes the answer...