Advice gathered from people smarter than me
sashachapin.substack.com
sashachapin.substack.com
1. It's better to target an interesting constellation than one specific star. If you're pushing yourself reasonably hard, you're working close to the limits of your ability, and so there's some chance you will fail. If you go all out to hit an ambitious goal and don't succeed, you're likely to feel burnout [1]. This is much less likely if you make moves in the direction of an interesting area using a cluster of subgoals instead. This diversifies your risk, plus it's easier to adjust as you move in that direction and learn more. (For people in ML there's some clear parallels with the gradient descent process)
2. A twenty minute walk in the park with no music or media makes all kinds of useful stuff naturally fall out of your brain, and you get some light exercise and sunlight / vitamin D at the same time - which also helps improve your mood and flush out anxiety etc.
But the rest is on point :-) I almost never have a good idea while at my computer.
We have a chemical coating on the skin called the “acid mantle”. One of the substances the body makes for this acid mantle is urocanic acid – the trans isomer. It’s known to serve as a sort of sunscreen. Trans-urocanic acid captures ultraviolet light into a molecular reaction – it’s transformed into the isomer cis-urocanic acid.
And cis-urocanic acid fits the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor which is an unusual one – its effects are rather potent immunomodulation. Downregulation. Beneficial.
There are plenty of papers related to this. Before and after that one. The term for this paper might be that it’s a mechanistic study, idk!, but it’s one that establishes a, well, mechanical premise for effects which are known to occur.
Regarding the relationship between sunlight and immunomodulation via cis-urocanic acid activation of serotonin receptor 5-HT2A, what parts of that relationship would you like to see more papers on?
—
Note also that UV immunosuppression is standard clinical practice in psoriasis treatment. Both with artifical UV light and simple sunbathing.
—
Exercise is mostly orthogonal to this effect.
So I guess what I'm asking is: is there evidence that the mechanism described in the paper results in "mental clarity", and further is there evidence that a walk in the park actually encourages this interaction (it sounds like it will as long as you get some sunlight).
I’ll find papers even though it might be a little late given the thread’s momentum. I wish I’d drawn up the connection first time around!
Off the cuff, I’ve seen results that inflammatory downregulation is associated with alleviation of depression – with both SSRI use… and psychedelic mushrooms! (which directly activate the same 5-HT2A receptor). A sense of a clear head is a common description in both instances. Both types of drug are known to alleviate depression, and are known to reduce inflammatory markers – the same as cis-urocanic acid is known to do. Lower those same markers, that is. The “pretty likely” part is my sense that there’s something there that’s causative for the feeling of clarity – yes. (Part of it. Maybe!)
There are also papers on cis-urocanic acid and… glutathione metabolism? or was it glutamine? in the brain.
I’ll dig up something concrete.
(I was very, very surprised to learn about these mechanisms. I’m not at all speaking as someone who’s into psychedelics. Just someone who marvels at what seems to be the molecular biology.)
I actually disagree. At the extremes, sure. The top athlete is unlikely to be the top scholar or conversationalist. But I believe health, beauty, EQ and IQ are all correlated. These traits all likely have some shared genetic components. And a great, healthy childhood will augment all these traits to some extent.
Also, beautiful people are less likely to experience social isolation or estrangement, which would otherwise hurt EQ and health in general.
From another angle, experiences that leave emotional scars will often have physical manifestations, and vice versa.
That said, we may subconsciously assume a higher correlation than exists between these traits, so directionally the author may be correct.
None of this is fair or desirable, by the way.
To complicate things more, you can become great at math and programming by having e.g. a visually oriented mind. My friend didn't seem to have much of that though, which suggests you can excel in a domain using different underlying skills or traits. Totally armchairing of course.
The in-spirit premise of the proposal (fundamental traits are mostly roll-of-the-dice) is still compatible with your response.
Like the author, I've been burnt by assuming that traits overlap way more than the opposite - eg if someone is good at X intellectual thing they're good at Y too. So many times I've gone "how can such a smart person not get this simple thing?".
Surely you do not mean that a single gene influences all of this?
1. almost all mutations are bad
2. mutations come together (like if you’re born near chernobyl you’ll have a ton of mutations all over the place, also maybe if your parents are older or if they’re smokers and things like that)
Mutations that make you less attractive could be completely different from mutations that make you less intelligent, but if mutations tend to come in packs then having a lot of mutations in sections of the genome related to attractiveness probably means you have lots of mutations in the sections related to intelligence.
I expect there are plenty more mutations that have a mild negative effect in all areas, but are sufficiently mild that they haven't been identified as "disorders".
To be clear, I have no special knowledge or expertise in genetics or biology. This is all speculation on my part.
don't forget Epigenetics! The whole dogmatic way of genotype influencing phenotype view really need to readdressed. There are many other factors influencing what our trait.
My guess is that healthy people have a greater probability to also be considered attractive. On the flip side, there is likely a much smaller probability of 'attractive' people being objectively healthy, with the numbers changing from place to place and time period.
I've never met one in real life. Anyway you want to look at it, such levels of muscle development is highly unusual. I doubt it's healthy either.
> I would suggest that while the lens of evaluating physical attractiveness in most of the western world currently largely aligns with physical fitness, this is a relatively recent development and far from universal.
I don't believe that. I don't really have a choice as to what I find attractive. I don't believe you do, either.
For example, I am never going to find "heroin chic" attractive, no matter how much the fashion industry pushes it. Some women like bald men, some don't, and there's nothing anyone can do to change that.
I think that holds true for almost all female athletes, does it not? Every female Summer Olympic level athlete I can think of has very visible musculature far in excess of what you might see in otherwise 'attractive' women. In terms of ultimate health outcomes, I am not sure. I doubt any top level athlete fares well health wise long term.
> I don't really have a choice as to what I find attractive. I don't believe you do, either.
I think we're coming at this differently - you're referring to what you might find attractive, and I'm trying to consider an attractiveness grading scale. For example, as a gay man, I find both male shotput athletes as well as male gymnasts very attractive, but can at the same time appreciate that on my attempt at an objective attractiveness scale I might grade them differently - and other gay men might grade them very differently. Similarly, I feel absolutely no attraction to female athletes and can still consider them objectively attractive.
Though I wouldn't call a mean IQ of 104.23 a genius I guess your hunch seems to have some evidence (sort of surprising to me).
I think I had read about this or similar research long ago, but that's a bigger effect size than I would've guessed. I wonder if the results could be replicated.
I don't know how IQ is tested these days, but I think historically it was a 1:1 or teacher:classroom sort of assessment.
Many do not consider "Evolutionary Psychology" as a proper Science (i subscribe to this camp) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psyc...
Critics argue that many hypotheses put forward to explain the adaptive nature of human behavioural traits are "just-so stories"; neat adaptive explanations for the evolution of given traits that do not rest on any evidence beyond their own internal logic. They allege that evolutionary psychology can predict many, or even all, behaviours for a given situation, including contradictory ones. Therefore, many human behaviours will always fit some hypotheses. Noam Chomsky argued:
"You find that people cooperate, you say, 'Yeah, that contributes to their genes' perpetuating.' You find that they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that's obvious, because it means that their genes perpetuate and not somebody else's. In fact, just about anything you find, you can make up some story for it."
As an example the same author has an article on the "Truthiness" of "Stereotypes" : https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-scientific-funda.... Applying it to "Blonde Bimbos", the Stereotype says "Blond Bimbos are dumb", while the other explanation says "Beautiful people (Blonde Bimbos are a subset) are more Intelligent" which is a direct contradiction!
Physical attractiveness fades and people who used it as a tool or built egos around it often become miserable.
Also, I don't think beautiful people are particularly likely to be narcicists or sociopaths or otherwise consciously rely on their beauty as a tool. I think most beautiful people are oblivious to the advantages they enjoy. Things are just a bit easier for them. Steve Yegge tells how he was catapulted into leadership at Amazon shortly after losing over 50 pounds.
I believe white privilege works in much the same way. It's difficult to see that you're playing on easy mode when you've never played on hard mode.
There is no doubt about the advantages. Beyond the already present research, I have my own little anecdote of a friend, who was not great with computers and yet is now IT manager at a major corporation.
As for the white privilege, I can only say that I don't know. I come from a very white country. As you can guess, given the invariable laws of human nature, since nearly everyone was white, another other had to be found. I don't know what it is about humans that forces us to immediately label everything and self-segregate.
The same is true for athletic ability / fitness in the sense that people like to say "it will fade", but the reality is that it provides a ton of benefits well into the 60s barring catastrophic injury.
Are you basing this on the fact that beautiful people are all so normal and well-balanced?
I mean, cry me a river if you're a Playboy model who can't get a date, but it is plausible.
No guarantees of course, and caveats about exceptions to the rule, yes no doubt. But those positive traits shouldn't be dismissed as entirely unrelated to one another!
It is worse than useless as a way of estimating the height of someone you just met. The actual experience should completely invalidate any priors, which are trivially insignificant at the individual level.
(probably true)
> "... which would otherwise hurt EQ"
I draw the opposite conclusion; suffering is one of the surest paths to empathy and compassion for others.
> a great, healthy childhood will augment all these
I would put it that poor developmental conditions (from gestation on) prevent realization of genetic potential, rather than great ones "augment", because it just has to be adequate. A so-called "hygiene factor". Nutrition, stability - that sort of thing.
> Listening Is in Your Interest, Even If You’re Totally Selfish
Decades of touchy-feely woo woo about the power of empathy has convinced people that empathy is a magic hack that makes you feel totally fine about people no matter what heinous things they do. If you empathize with someone, if you "understand," then you'll realize why they behave the way they do, and you'll realize it's all okay.
Naturally that makes people wary of empathizing with people they believe are behaving in a destructive way, such as their political enemies, sexual predators, etc. If you empathize with someone too effectively, you might lose your motivation to oppose them.
That's flat-out wrong, and it makes people less effective at promoting their own values in the world.
Sure, you might learn to feel sorry for a sexual predator or realize that an opposing political view has some internal logic or even a kernel of truth, but that isn't going to turn you into a defender of predatory or destructive behavior. Empathy for a flat-earther isn't going to convince that the earth is flat, either.
Know yourself. Know your enemy. Know everybody in between. It makes you safer and more powerful in the world, and it's only dangerous in a good way.
Its good to see the world from the eyes of others, but that doesn't make their actions OK somehow.
I never heard anyone say that (as in a mainstream idea)
...I feel more connected and learn something.
This reminds me of Torvald's talk at Google about git, where he emphasizes how important it is to be able to change branches fast, reasoning that it will determine how git will be used in the future. There is a tremendous difference between five seconds and `instant` in our decision making. Since then I observed this behaviour in myself in countless daily routines.
To me this seems an obvious and important but surprisingly uncommon idea. I can't stop trying to explain this to others: if you don't really do your best to understand the other person you are wasting your own time. And you don't have to agree to them, just understand. Even if the other person is your enemy (especially if they are!), precise understanding of what and why do they think and feel is in your best interest.
'Don't be an idiot; changed my life'
It sounds like surface level humor, but it is a surprisingly good advice.
Listening enables you to "win" a negotiation, by discovering what the other party values, that you might be able to give them. It's predicated on the reality of negotiation, that it's with another person with free-will and autonomy, who will only give you what you want if it makes sense from their perspective. So helps to know what theirs is.
Communication cannot occur without listening. And not just by the "recipient": you need to determine if communication has been successful, or if error correction is required. Words mean different things to different people, in different contexts. The better you understand the other party, the better chance you have of communication. A preliminaries can be helpful to align contexts (get "on the same page"), and then have purpose/concerns understood.
Remember, one works to get the resources to do what you want to do. It has to be useful for this, and ideally interesting enough to go back to tomorrow.
Don’t be an asshole.
Never let people discourage you from thinking, because ignorance spreads like a disease.
The saying, that one should not mistake stupidity for malignity, matters only little to the stupid, but a lot to the malign.
All stupid people at the top are either not actually stupid, or string puppets.
Political correctness is, by definition, not correct.
Participating in collective behaviour, without hesitation, is frivolous. Absolutely most things most people do have some sort of hidden catch. Just because everyone does it, doesn't mean it's smart to join them.
Never let fear, or those who spread it, guide your decisions.
resonate with me.
Author is clearly a genius because he can imagine in advance "all the contexts" a particular lifepath will put him in.