The best talk on PUA has nothing to do with PUA, directly.

Anti-natalism on a personal level

Let us suppose a set of conditions designed such that people with characteristic X of a certain value can live happily.  Suppose that X has some variance, but the conditions work reasonably well for people within about 2 standard deviations of the average X value.  Suppose also that X is heritable and that your particular X value is 3 standard deviations outside the normal range.

You expect regression to the mean in your children, but even if they wind up within 2 standard deviations of the norm they won't be as happy as someone with an average value of X.  Furthermore, you expect unhappiness to result from significant differences between yourself and your children, especially if characteristic X happens to be something you value highly.   But wait, how can X be something you highly value if it is maladaptive?  This isn't so surprising, it means that given the choice between altering yourself (X's value) or altering the world such that it is no longer maladaptive, you choose the latter.

If X is something negative you have further motivation not to inflict a negative condition on your children.

Someone with several such characteristics might consider it not worth while to have children.

Utilitarianism

I vaguely remember a quote along the lines of "humans do not prove anything, we merely decide which side of an argument we will hold to a higher standard of proof."   This comment by Vladimir_M on utilitarianism reminds me of it.  Let me unpack a bit.

Morality seems to be a way of signalling what sort of ally you would be in the absence of strong/feasible enforcement of social rules.  Moral arguments fall along the lines of "I will do things that are in the group's interest even when they harm me."  This is a very useful thing to convince a group of.  But smart monkeys know that they do this to improve their lot, so you must be doing the same.  Your argument must be subtle enough to convince the smartest monkey in the group.  Utilitarianism is very good at doing this, but is ultimately just another example of a smart monkey trying to convince another smart monkey that no, they really will help the group.

Exercise myths

I wanted these all in one place.

fat makes you fat
carbs make you fat
women need to use light weights to avoid getting bulky
the smith machine makes exercises safer
too much protein is bad for your kidneys
muscles need to be hit from multiple angles
squatting below parallel is bad for your knees
bodyparts should only be worked once a week
carbs after 7 are bad
you must eat 6 meals a day
meals should not contain more than 30g protein
pure whey in water is a better recovery drink than whole milk
you need carbs before a workout for energy
spot reduction
endless cardio for fat loss
"toning" via high reps and low weight
soreness is an indicator of a good workout
the "anabolic window"
ab work helps you get a 6 pack
going more than a few hours without protein will cause you to burn muscle
"shaping" muscles
supplements in general (there are only a few with any real scientific support)
superdosing certain vitamins or minerals
going to failure is what builds muscle
diets that claim to circumvent calories in calories out
claims that a specific macronutrient split will change body composition
most claims about "core stability" exercises
crossfit (the founder is a classic broscience nitwit)
"pump" or "burn" are essential
isolation exercises have the same effects as compound exercises
deadlifting is bad for your back
bench pressing/overhead pressing is bad for your shoulders
one specific routine is what is necessary to gain strength or size

Of course I love this quote, it affirms everything I believe

I'm still going to enjoy it though.

"That’s quite true. And all societies use institutions to enforce delayed gratification. Well, that is, all societies that are culturally homogenous enough that status signals are agreed upon. And our society has intentionally dismantled the institutions that enforce delayed gratification over the past century – and it has done so in order to rewrite signaling rules under the pretext that signaling rules are arbitrary – but they’re not. They’re Hayekian – they matter." -Curt Doolittle

Towards a healthy diet

I've been intensely studying nutrition for the last several months and one thing I am sick and god damn tired of is the ambiguity. Every other article suggests way too many alternatives and the combinations quickly get out of hand. Cross referencing foods against their micronutrient content, price, ease of preparation, etc. is exhausting. I guess min-maxing multiple criteria is never really fun.

Based on the huge variance I see in successful macro splits from people on everything from high carb diets (bulking/bodybuilding) to keto (as close to zero carb as possible) I think micros should be dialed in first. If you are eating nutrient dense foods you will reach all your micro goals and still have 50% of total calories left to fill. This leaves plenty of room to hit whatever macros you want with WAY less worry.

Nutrient dense foods you need to eat everyday, are cheap, and easy to prep/eat:

Broccoli

Lettuce/Spinach: I find it very easy to just eat a head of lettuce a day with homemade vinaigrette. Store bought dressings almost universally contain nasty Omega 6 rich soybean oil.

Sardines/herring: better O3 content than most fish oil caps + a mega dose of calcium if you eat the bones. Smoked herring fillets are quite palatable very cheap.

Prunes: very high in antioxidants and much easier/cheaper to buy and eat in bulk vs things like blueberries.

Eggs: egg yolk is basically a multivitamin, I eat 4 a day.

Pumpkin seeds/almonds: for the magnesium which is also a common deficiency, can sub other nuts but they are inferior.

Dairy: Milk is highly controversial with studies pointing to increased cancer risk and cancer reduction with a slight edge to the former in terms of power. This effect disappears at doses of 1 cup a day or less. A cup of milk a day along with a serving or two of cottage cheese (CC and ricotta cheeses are correlated with reduced cancers) is the best middle ground as far as I can tell at this time.
Coconut Milk: this is a cheap source of extremely high quality fat, pure coconut oil has had all the micronutrients stripped out and is more expensive anyway. Coconut, Avocado, and Olive are the best plant sources of fats, but you want to be getting a lot from meats and eggs too.

I would be willing to bet money that someone eating at least a couple servings of each of the above and being fairly loose with the rest of their diet would have superior outcomes to someone strictly meeting macros but not necessarily hitting micros. Why do i say this when so many health researchers talk about macros all day? Because macros are important for *unhealthy people*. When you have someone eating 500+g of processed carbs and 200 grams of processed fats rich in O6 a day then fixing that is going to dominate health outcomes. In large scale studies of nutrient content of foods it was found that seasonal swings in mortality and sickness were strongly correlated with seasonal swings in the nutrient content of foods.

Supplements that everyone should take:

Vitamin D3: Very few supplements have strong evidence of better health outcomes with the notable exception of D.

Magnesium: most people are deficient due to the lack of magnesium in natural foods from soil depletion.

Any other supplement you think you need you are almost certainly meeting/exceeding RDA's with the above food list. I've revised my opinion on fiber. Fiber supplements show no health benefits, it's fiber intake associated with higher fruit and vegetable intake that correlates with better health outcomes.

This post to be updated if I find anything useful.

Edit: whole grain high protein pancakes recipe reproduced here.

Cottage Cheese pancakes

1 cup rolled oats

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

4 eggs

1 cup cottage cheese

2 tablespoons butter or olive oil

Vanilla extract, Cinnamon, and nutmeg to taste

you can mess with ratios to your hearts content. It's really hard to screw these up and I just eyeball everything.

For syrup a good alternative is blackstrap molasses (you can mix with a bit of butter and milk to make it more syrup like) It is very rich in magnesium, containing the same magnesium/ounce as peanuts.

Supposedly healthy foods that should be avoided:

whole grains. Aren't really much better for you than white flour, mostly empty carbs. The primary claims for health are fiber and lowering of cholesterol. But cholesterol has poor correlation with CVD, it's HDL:Triglyceride ratio that strongly predicts CVD events, and carbs of all forms make this ratio worse.

skim or low fat milk. Skim milks often have oxidized cholesterol and nitrates as a result of the processing. Reduced fat milk is made by adding skim back to regular milk. Stick with full fat milk.

Get off your ass and experiment

When researchers are trying to build a model of rat behavior they might observe rats in the wild, but this isn't all they do. The vast majority of research involves stimulating rats under controlled conditions. It would be highly inefficient to stand around watching rats in the wild and hoping a situation analogous to some test you're interested in will happen eventually. Similarly you aren't going to build a very accurate model of humans standing around watching them. Go provide some stimulus.