Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wccrawford | Hacker News Reader

Had me at "procrastination, in my experience, is not a character flaw, but instead evidence that you don’t have a believable plan for succeeding at what you’re trying to do" but lost me again at "ancient brain" and not putting out unnecessary energy.

While I've experienced procrastination that had nothing to do with not having a good plan, I've also had the kind that does. And it's far worse.

Some procrastination occurs because we know we have time, and other things seem more important or fun.

Lack-of-plan procrastination is worse, though. You delay until you have a plan, but without a plan, you can't know if you have time to finish. That -should- push you into making a plan immediately, but the whole enormity of the situation causes a panic reaction that prevents you from thinking rationally about the plan to start with. In the end, you put it aside until you can deal with it. It doesn't matter what reason (tired, no time, need something/someone, etc) you give, it all ends up the same.

The only way out of that kind (that I've found) is to seek help. Complain to random people about it, ask people with specific knowledge, etc etc. Just find help somewhere. Sometimes you just need a direction to start heading in.

>lost me again at "ancient brain" and not putting out unnecessary energy.

A lot of evolutionary science talks about energy expenditure. For an animal to survive it needs to take in at least as many calories as it expends, so evolutionary scientists often explain behavior in terms of expending calories and preserving calories. E.g, Predators tend to sleep a lot because hunting takes up a lot of calories. It's better to preserve the calories they gained hunting by sleeping a lot, rather then spend them on another hunt that may or may not be successful. As opposed to large herbivores that don't gain that many calories from grass, but don't spend so many eating it, either. They sleep very little because foraging those extra hours turns out to be a caloric win.

Our "ancient" brain (which is a crappy term, I know) refers to the set of behaviors we evolved to survive in a society pre civilization. In that environment, effort == calories spent. What the author is saying is that for evolutionary reasons, we evolved to not want to waste calories (put forth effort) if there isn't a good chance of getting them back. But, because our food sources no longer in jeopardy, that evolutionary urge which led to our survival in the wild now leads to the vice known as procrastination.

> But, because our food sources no longer in jeopardy, that evolutionary urge which led to our survival in the wild now leads to the vice known as procrastination.

and to obesity.

There's a growing argument that caloric intake has less to do with obesity than the intake of natural sugar/HFCS does.

I doubt there is anything but a corollary connection.

Where do the non-sugar/HFCS calories go? Do we secrete them? Is our body temperature lower when eating sugar? Do we become more active if we eat non-sugar calories, but not when eating sugar calories?

There's an ongoing and never-ending discussion on the topic all over the Internet.

Basically, the idea of those who oppose the "calorie in - calorie out" theory is that eating simple carbs quickly raises the blood sugar level. Body responds to that by secreting insulin. One of the tasks of insulin is to keep blood sugar within certain levels, so it "commands" to the cells to uptake sugar from blood, and one of the ways to do it is to convert it to fat. Eating food that does not has simple sugars in it, on the other hand, does not raise blood sugar that much so does not trigger insulin response.

To that the "calorie in - calorie out" guys respond that this does not take into account the 24-hour cycle, because even if some fat will be stored after a high-carb meal, it will still be used later if the overall calorie intake is low enough.

It seems that clinical studies, where it is possible to exactly know how much calories the subjects consumed, support the calories in - calories out. Studies where caloric intake is not precisely calculated may support the opposite theory.

No references to studies as I'm not sure if that's going to be read by anyone, it's been two days since ...

Well, energy is conserved so in one form or other calories in = calories out. The question is do they go out in a different way when you eat different stuff, and if so, how?

I don't understand the logic behind this line of reasoning for predators sleeping a lot.

Predators hunt to obtain food which provides them with calories. More calories must be gained than spent from hunting, otherwise it would be pointless as they would make a net loss and, ultimately, starve.

It is more likely that they hunt less, and sleep more, because hunting has large payoffs, and therefore they don't need to continue hunting for a while.

Also because they're full.

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