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

Sardines: better O3 content than most fish oil caps + a mega dose of calcium.

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.

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 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.

Fiber: Unless you really are chowing down on tons of veggies almost no one gets as much fiber as is suggested by health studies. Fiber supplements are one of the few supplements where you don't have to worry about their absorption vs whole foods as humans don't absorb fiber. I take psyllium caps with every meal.

Any other supplement you think you need you are almost certainly meeting/exceeding RDA's with the above food list.

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:

beetroot, radishes, turnip greens, lettuce, spinach (avoid eating leaves in general). Nitrite content isn't worth it given that you can eat much healthier vegetables like broccoli and asparagus.

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.

Rejection therapy

I was unsatisfied with both the "official" deck of cards and ideas I found around the web so I created my own list. I will add to this if I can find any more.

* Ask a random person for their phone number without introducing yourself, explaining why, or anything.

* Ask people for money.

* Ask some store employee if it's alright for you to explore some employee-only area of the store, e.g. their back room, or behind a door marked "authorized personnel only".

* In general, go somewhere you're not supposed to be where someone is likely to discover you and kick you out.

* When you're leaving Point A for Point B, ask a stranger at Point A out of the blue if they'd like to travel to Point B with you.

*”Do you have a minute to talk about [insert issue]?" Save some time by inventing your own issue.

* Ask someone on the street if you can have your picture taken with them.

* Ask for hugs/neck massages.

* Come to some sort of event. Ask if you can give a quick presentation on something before the main event.

* Ask someone to tie your shoes.

* Ask to trade clothes.

* Ask people to give you a ride to wherever you’re going.

* Ask for a bite/sip of someones’ food/drink.

* Ask someone to sing or dance right there in the street with you.

* Try to buy people’s personal effects, i.e. watches, glasses, phone, for a dollar

*Try to sell your own personal effects.

* Ask someone to rate your theatrical death.

* Ask to cut in line (start at the back and see how far forward you can get!)

* Ask to have a staring contest or thumb wrestling match.

* Ask for a discount on a purchase, or a free sample.

* Ask where people are going, then ask if you can come.

*Ask if you can pick someone up (if they are smaller) or if they can pick you up (if they are bigger).

What do the causal nets we build actually look like?

...

Pavlov-ing Yourself

We do not have direct access to the part of our brain that rewards certain sensory inputs. However we can indirectly influence it because it is somewhat simple. For example, if we want to desire something that we currently don't (exercise) we can pair the sensory input of exercise with some other rewarding experience. Over time our brain will build up this correlation. We can pavlov dog ourselves.

Attempting to reason *carefully* about decision theory

I have been failing to notice my confusion about several aspects of decision theory. I am going to attempt to rectify this.

I am something that can perceive sensory data.

I notice that various sensory experiences are highly correlated.

I construct a large causal network from these correlations. This is a model of the world.

I notice that I have certain types of sensory experience that I can cause directly.

I notice that my sensory inputs are correlated with my caused outputs.

I add myself to the world model as a causal node.

I desire some sorts of sensory data over others.

I look for the sensory data I desire in my world model and work backwards, creating a plausible causal chain from the sensory input I desire to my current sensory input.

This screens off large portions of the space of all possible actions I have available to me.

Distinctions between "myself" and "the world" are a convenience for keeping track of things I can cause directly and things I can not.

This at least seems how the part of our mind we have access to reasons, what about the part we don't have access to? If it works forwards instead of backwards then presumably it screens off the action space and prunes the decision tree based on past correlations.

Hitting wall, must find sledgehammer, will email some people.