MollieTheMare
No bio...
User ID: 875
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
Your own post contradicts your claims.
I was more or less going to post this. "Not actually that hard" is incompatible with obsessively tracking micro-nutrients. That is way beyond what an average person is willing to do. Eating without any nutritional deficiencies as a vegan requires a wall of text to keep track possible sources of nutrients you actively have to seek out. Eating without any nutritional deficiencies as an omnivore requires have a palate more refined than a five year old.
It also seems like claims of being "successful athletically" on a vegan diet are primary made by participants in endurance sports. While I can appreciate those sports, this is somewhat outside of the average mental picture for athleticism. Outside of the niche of endurance sports most people think of power, muscularity, or strength when they think of athleticism. A vegan diet is also pretty clearly not optimal, even for endurance sports. I don't follow marathon closely enough to know if this has changed since
But you know, there’s a also a reason no vegan runner has qualified for the Olympic marathon trials. Not the Olympics. The trials.
It's clearly possible to sustain life as a vegan, but success athletically has to be defined before you claim to have proven that possible to be successful athletically on a vegan diet.
I always thought one of the paradoxes of climate science was that (1) climate modeling is sound enough to project far into the future and determine magnitude, causality, and predict ecological, social, and economic impacts. And (2) geoengineering would be too dangerous because we don't know what the long term effects will be. That's probably not the exact phrasing of the IPCC or other consensus positions, but I don't think it's unreasonably far off either. Very speculative, but I suspect some of the skepticism of climate activism is that the solution always seems to be more socialism, rather than we would like to spend 0.005% of GDP to spray some calcite into the stratosphere.
MollieTheMare
30d ago
like the fact that crime is overwhelmingly interracial
Wait is this a typo or am I missing something?
In the US context don't most statistics support violent crime being primarily intraracial?
See for example table 6 of the latest FBI Crime in the U.S. or table 13 of U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Victimization, 2021. Excluding the Hispanic origin category, Both show >75% of perpetrators of violent crime being from the same grouping as the victim.
MollieTheMare
7mo ago
MollieTheMare
9mo ago
Not only does the warm air from the Mediterranean make Europe warmer, but the Great Plains and Midwest regularly have the continental polar air masse push south and bring sustained below 0°F temperatures. Many parts of the Middle of the US are consistently colder than coastal Canada. The mean minimum annual temperature in Sioux Falls is -19.2°F (-28.4°C), the mean minimum annual temperature in Belgrade is 14.7°F (-9°C). From personal experience, there is a big difference between -19.2°F and 14.7°F.
MollieTheMare
11mo ago
Slightly tangential, but relevant to the overall theme of the discussion the statement:
... sports where there testosterone does not give you an advantage
and
If men don't have any advantage in these sports...
Are not actually talking about the same thing. The 2019 report by usapowerlifting found that androgens like testosterone contribute about 10% to power-lifting total, where as male-female sex difference in total is 64%.
Somehow most of the discussion misses differences in motor neuron density, which primarily occur in the prenatal environment.
MollieTheMare
9mo ago
I'm reminded of quote from Teller that goes: "von Neumann would carry on a conversation with my 3-year-old son, and the two of them would talk as equals, and I sometimes wondered if he used the same principle when he talked to the rest of us."
I think the sentiment is something like the most clever can find stimulation in anything, they don't have to restrict themselves to only the things that they think are the most erudite.
It's the "official" builtin board style forum of (like the 3rd cousin?) of themotte. I think the relationship is roughly like:
lesswrong
└─> slatestarcodex ──> astralcodexten <─> datasecretslox
└──> r/slatestarcodex ──> r/themotte ──> themotte
Obviously the full history is a bit more complicated and there is a bunch of cross mixing between the branches.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
Interesting point. I do wonder what a comprehensive analysis of how you should value transit time and driving time for commuters would show. I wonder if there clean data on relative like/dislike of driving vs various quality metro systems.
I also don't think that even on safe and non-crowded trains you should value the time at full billable hour rate. Or that you should value the car time as total waste. Commuting by train requires walking time on either end that does not allow for reading, so on equal total commute time basis you don't yield the full time for semi-productive pursuits. Of the possible activities mentioned I think the closest analogs in a car are: talking with friends you are carpooling with, listing to audio books, listening to music, podcasts, or the news. I would concede there aren't close analogs to playing games or checking emails; though you might be able to take a call in a car but not on a train. I'm also unsure how much is lost from reading on the train vs audio book. Personally, the motion, sound from other commuters, and having to listen for the station call negate most of the advantages of reading over audio books for me.
MollieTheMare
15d ago
The Fussy Suitor Problem: A Deeper Lesson on Finding Love
Inspired by the Wellness Wednesday post post by @lagrangian, but mostly for Friday Fun, the fussy suitor problem (aka the secretary problem) has more to teach us about love than I initially realized.
The most common formulation of the problem deals with rank of potential suitors. After rejecting r suitors, you select the first suitor after r that is the highest ranking so far. Success is defined as choosing the suitor who would have been the highest ranking among the entire pool of suitors (size n). Most analyses focus on the probability of achieving this definition of success, denoted as P(r), which is straightforward to calculate. The “optimal” strategy converges on setting r = n/e (approximately 37% of n), resulting in a success rate of about 37%.
However, I always found this counterintuitive. Even with optimal play, you end up failing more than half the time.
In her book The Mathematics of Love Hanna Fry suggests, but does not demonstrate, that we can convert n to time, t. She also presents simulations where success is measured by quantile rather than absolute rank. For instance, if you end up with someone in the 95th percentile of compatibility, that might be considered a success. This shifts the optimal point to around 22% of t, with a success rate of 57%.
Still, I found this answer somewhat unsatisfying. It remains unclear how much less suitable it is to settle for the 95th percentile of compatibility. Additionally, I wondered if the calculation depends on the courtship process following a uniform geometric progression in time, although this assumption is common.
@lagrangian pointed out to me that the problem has a maximum expected value for payoff at r = sqrt(n), assuming uniform utility. While a more mathematically rigorous analysis exists, I decided to start by trying to build some intuition through simulation.
In this variant of we consider payoff in utilitons (u) rather than just quantile or rank information. For convenience, I assume there are 256 suitors.
The stopping point based on sqrt(n) grows much more slowly than the n/e case, so I don’t believe this significantly alters any qualitative conclusions. I’m pretty sure using the time domain here depends on the process and rate though.
I define P(miss) as the probability of missing out or accidentally exhausting the suitors, ultimately “settling” for the 256th suitor. In that case you met the one, but passed them up to settle for the last possible persion. Loss is defined as the difference in utility between the suitor selected by stopping at the best suitor encountered after r, and the utility that would have been gained by selecting the actual best suitor. Expected Shortfall (ES) is calculated at the 5th percentile.
I generate suitors from three underlying utility distributions:
- Exponential: Represents scenarios where there are pairings that could significantly improve your life, but most people are unsuitable.
- Normal: Assumes the suitor’s mutual utility is an average of reasonably well-behaved (mathematically) traits.
- Uniform: Chosen because we know the optimal point.
For convenience, I’ve set the means to 0 and the standard deviation to 1. If you believe I should have set the medians of the distributions to 0, subtract log(2) utilitons from the mean(u) exponential result.
Running simulations until convergence with the expected P(r), we obtain the following results:
| gen_dist | r | P(r) | P(miss) | <u> | <loss> | sd_loss | ES_5 | max_loss |
|----------|---------|------|---------|-----|--------|---------|------|----------|
| exp | n/e | 37% | 19% | 2.9 | 2.2 | 2.5 | 7.8 | 14.1 |
| exp | sqrt(n) | 17% | 3% | 3.0 | 2.1 | 1.8 | 6.6 | 14.8 |
|----------|---------|------|---------|-----|--------|---------|------|----------|
| norm | n/e | 37% | 19% | 1.7 | 1.2 | 1.5 | 4.6 | 7.0 |
| norm | sqrt(n) | 18% | 3% | 2.0 | 0.8 | 0.8 | 3.3 | 6.3 |
|----------|---------|------|---------|-----|--------|---------|------|----------|
| unif | n/e | 37% | 19% | 1.1 | 0.6 | 1.0 | 3.2 | 3.5 |
| unif | sqrt(n) | 17% | 3% | 1.5 | 0.2 | 0.5 | 2.1 | 3.5 |
What was most surprising to me is that early stopping (r = sqrt(n)) yields better results for both expected utility and downside risk. Previously, I would have assumed that since the later stopping criterion (r = n/e) is more than twice as likely to select the best suitor, the expected shortfall would be lower. However, the opposite holds true. You are more than 6 times as likely to have to settle in this scenario, so even if suitability is highly skewed as in the exponential case, expected value is still in favor of the r=sqrt(n) case! This is a completely different result than the r=n/e I had long accepted as optimal. The effect is even far more extreme than even the quantile-time based result.
All cases yield a positive expectation value. Since we set the mean of the generating distributions to 0, this implies that on average having some dating experience before deciding is beneficial. Don’t expect your first millihookup to turn into a marriage, but also don’t wait forever.
I should probably note for low, but plausible n <= 7, sqrt(n) is larger than n/e, but the whole number of suitors mean the optimal r (+/-1) is still given in the standard tables.
One curious factoid, is that actuaries are an appreciable outlier in terms of having a the lowest likelihood of divorce. Do they possess insights about modeling love that the rest of us don’t? I’d be very interested if anyone has other probabilistic models of relationship success. What do they know that the rest of the life, physical, and social sciences don't? Or is it that they are just more disposed to finding a suitable "good" partner than the one.
MollieTheMare
9mo ago
even in the 6 degrees F lows that Google says it has there
I don't think this is right. From the NOAA National weather service data portal, selecting Sioux Falls Area > Monthly summarized data > 2000-2023 > min temp > daily minimum, the mean minimum is -19°F with a max annual minimum of -5°F. Personally I draw the line for walking at 0°F. To me that's the point where a good hat and jacket aren't enough anymore. In sub 0°F conditions frostbite (or at least frostnip) is a real concern with any real time outdoors. I personal don't want to have to slather petroleum jelly all over my face in order to go buy some groceries.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
This seems like a reasonably fair summary to me.
While I find many of the Urbanist arguments appealing — and have at times commuted by transit, bike, and foot — for me there are two big weaknesses. First, that we should prioritize possible efficiencies at full capacity over observed performance. Second, is the strength of irreversibly of the situation. It seems quite possible that pure car-oriented and pure transit-oriented transportation are relative equilibrium states, but the transition state is not equilibrium.
I think the two objections are related. Ranking trains over cars in efficiency in long-term thinking requires some optimism about actual ridership. If ridership is expected to remain low over the long term in the US, it is by definition not short-term thinking to deprioritize it.
If all that has to be done to make transit superior is (1) Convince people to abandon existing driving infrastructure. (2) Figure out how to contain the high costs of projects in the US. (3) Improve the strength of our institutions and management (4) Move forward transit spending to update all outdated systems. Then there is NOT a small potential barrier to cross from the O’Toole analysis world to the idealist Urbanist paradise world.
Three small side notes to round things out. I generally thought the DC metro system was one of the more pleasant metro experiences in the US, but even that wasn't free from people involved seemingly actively trying to make it worse (sorry for the source but you can check the twitter thread if you're skeptical of the slant). I also can't say there were never uncomfortable situations on the DC metro. Second, it is fair to consider the impact of transit on infectious disease. Some transit analyses try to discount the recent drop in ridership, but unless you think there will never be another infectious disease again it seems silly to call for relying on a transportation method that will either not be there when you need it or be a vector for the disease to spread. Third, I'm unwilling to defend minimum parking requirements, but in terms of reveled preference I do think it's quite possible American really do prefer car-centric neighborhoods. And those that do rightfully bear (at least part) of the cost of the preference.
I was more referring to statements like (from the IPCC Climate Change 2023 Synthesis Report pp. 101)
Redistributive policies across sectors and regions that shield the poor and vulnerable, social safety nets, equity, inclusion and just transitions, at all scales can enable deeper societal ambitions and resolve trade-offs with sustainable development goals.
I'm not even saying it's wrong, but putting redistributive policies ahead of mechanical interventions is what I would argue could be perceived to be driven by a political agenda. That perception can erode trust in the institutions advocating for those interventions, even if the "Equity and Inclusion" and "Scientific Basis" sections are not logically dependent on each other.
I certainly was not making the argument that general public sector works are always bad. Even for things like highways though, there are clearly different strategies that spread the costs and responsibilities differently. For example, the primarily toll-based privately maintained and operated Autoroutes in France vs the free at the point of use Interstate Highway System in the US.
MollieTheMare
8mo ago
The closest thing I found from a quick search was “Education and Correctional Populations.” which gives, in circa approximately 1997, 2.4% of state inmates, 8.1% federal inmates, 22.0% general US population having a college degree or higher. No information on post-graduate degrees or specific crime. Though apparently the Bureau of Justice Statistics conducts regular surveys. Data is supposedly available at the link, but seems to be down.
Isn't the income for most convicted murderers zero? I guess it should be for the years trailing arrest. The Prison Policy Initiative has reports for both education and pre-incarceration incomes, I didn't look at all at the methodology. Median pre-incarceration income of all male 27-42 incarcerated people in 2014 dollars was $19,650 vs $41,250 for non-incarcerated men.
MollieTheMare
11mo ago
I'm also confused by this comparison, surely if you are going to pick a comparison this can't be the most dis-favorable to modern Jacksonville. The density is arguably higher, at least the buildings are taller.
It does show something I did think to myself last time I was in downtown Jacksonville though, the area has an absurd number of parking garages. I assume it's because I-95 is the most convenient way to get there.
I don't think "more" transit is the solution though. There's already several stations within close walking distance along downtown. But look at the top review for Central Station:
Not safe even if security is around they are useless, trams don't come on time. Doors closed on me twice which is dangerous at the same time consuming for commuters since tram time isn't accurate at all.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
Are new cars not less affordable now? I mean a new car in 2022 averaged $48,080. A new car in 1980 was something like $8,025 or $23,920 in inflation adjusted dollars. Part of this is consumer behavior and non-emissions or efficiency improvements. "CPI: New Vehicles" already "corrects" for quality improvements including emissions or efficiency improvements, so shouldn't be used to compare affordability.
MollieTheMare
19d ago
It is quite ironic that one of the biggest contributes to CO2 emissions reductions is fossil fuel companies fracking so aggressively they drove the price of natural gas negative at some points. Ultimately substituting NG for coal is probably a net benefit, but I'm pretty sure environmental activists are not happy with the growth of NG as a energy source.
It's been more than 15 years since An Inconvenient Truth came out and the IPPC won their Nobel Peace Prize. In that time it would have been totally possible to replace essentially all electricity production in developed countries with GEN III+ nuclear plants and make substantial progress on Gen IV plants. Instead, without utility scale storage, the focus on growing interment renewables has only entrench NG peaking plants as the dominant on-demand electricity generation source.
MollieTheMare
30d ago
I wonder if there should be a formal mechanism for preserving top level posts, or other important contextual bits.
On a slightly related note, what is the preferred way to request the mods to check an account for suspicious activity? It seems like there have been an unusually large number of new accounts dropping in, concern trolling/making low effort posts, then ghosting recently. Though brigading or getting linked from somewhere else seems plausible as well.
MollieTheMare
10mo ago
This is exactly why people talk about biological sex, presenting sex, and gender. That does not change the definition of biological sex. Using the terms interchangeably does nothing for clarity. He, she, man, and woman when used colloquially are typically used with an associated gender. That gender is correlated with sex (when describing people in English), but does not necessarily have the same definition.
Reproductive issues in the form of infertility is not identical to sterility. Yes, the normal usage of man or woman would typically still hold. No, sterile people cannot become biological fathers or biological mothers.
Those four terms exist exactly to describe the cases in your bulleted list.
The correlation is strong. The r value is larger than 0.7 which is the threshold used to determine if a correlation is strong in the sciences, including biology.
MollieTheMare
6mo ago
The study you are thinking of is probably this one. I would highly recommend against interpenetrating this as all the benefits of strength training with just some side effects.
(1) They measured fat-free mass not muscle mass. Steroids like Tren make you uptake water in the muscles, you get "fullness" in the form of water when taking anabolics, but the study wasn't long enough to measure real substantial muscle growth. This also explains the cross-sectional area measurement. The water thing is just like a turbo version of what happens with creatine.
(2) The strength increase in the training non-steriod group was greater than the steroid only group. The additional strength in the steroid group is probably largely attributable to two factors
- Slight increase in neural drive from steroids, this is nothing compared to long term strength training.
- Better leverages from being bigger. Your muscles are class 3 levers, just being bigger means you can lift more weight. Getting stronger in this way is not necessarily good for you, you can achieve the same thing by getting supper fat.
This study does come up all the time, but it was wayyyy to short to conclude that you will gain more actual muscle not training on gear than resistant training. If you talk to any experienced bodybuilder who is open about steroids they all think training is still important. If you don't stimulate your body for specific muscle protein synthesis all you will do is end up looking freakish and ogre like, not jacked and fit looking.
The side-effects are also no joke, even if you don't care about potentially nuking your nuts, Tren in particular can absolutely make your mood terrible.
Finally, I have to say I'm skeptical you've tried enough actual resistance training to dismiss it as a better primary option. Six months is barely long enough to try one training method. Can you really say you've given your full effort to trying: traditional bro split style stuff, calisthenics, pure strength training, crossift style stuff, and circuit training? I saw below you are already talking about training twice a week. Starting strength can be done in three 60 minute sessions a week (if you can superset your warmups for upcoming exercises between working sets). Is that really too much to ask? If you eat enough the gains will be obvious. You could easily put 100 pounds on a novice squat in 6 months. Faster progress than that, aided by steroids, is enough to tear tendons off the bone.
MollieTheMare
11mo ago
I know expecting people to show empathy for a (presumed) member of the enemy tribe is too much, but ffs we don't even actually know if she is in fact a woke liberal BLM-supporting enemy tribeswoman, we're just doing some sort of pseudo-Bayesian reasoning where she probably is so fuck her.
The argument that you should show empathy even to an enemy is noble, and I wish I had the generosity of spirit to really do it in this situation. I'm impressed by the people who still have to fortitude at this point in the culture war to do it.
That being said I don't think it's correct to say people cannot correct infer likely tribal affiliation in this case. In the canonical formulation blue tribe and red tribe do not necessarily perfectly align with political affiliation. Being a professional class, urban, person who cycles to work is already enough to fully establish blue tribe. Even if someone does occasionally vote Republican. In addition to that, her official gofundme, which admittedly is managed by her uncle, says:
...She holds racial justice and equity dear, and has dedicated her life to serving NYC's most challenged individuals.
That's enough to move from probably to almost certain in my book.
MollieTheMare
30d ago
Yeah, there are also condensed versions if you search the agent's name, but some of the splicing and commentary might leave a little bit to be desired.
Interestingly, when searching I found several "AI" generated looking articles that seem to have incorrect information about the case. One claimed the agent had settled with the city for $440k, but links to an entirely unrelated case.
Other sources claim the agent was fired from the ATF for his part in the incident. Though, it would be pretty funny if the official policy of the agency was for plain clothes agents to scream "I'm a federal fucking agent!" when confronted by uniformed officers.
MollieTheMare
5mo ago
I think I would propose Camp Fire as the, at lease progressive leaning, equivalent.
Notable alumni:
- Senator Elizabeth Warren (D Mass.)
- Senator Amy Klobuchar (D Minn.)
- Senator Dianne Feinstein (D Calif.)
- Gov. Kate Brown (D Oregon.)
A few left or progressive leaning celebrities and semi-notables in there as well. A couple of (R)'s too, to be fair.
MollieTheMare
6mo ago
I mean, it’s bird watching. I associate this hobby with innoffensive old people who stayed Episcopalian after it started using gay pride vestments, read the New York Times, and retired from their teaching job a few years ago thinking they should move to be with their grandkids but just don’t think it’s the right time.
This is a disturbingly precise description of one of the bird watching hobbyists I know. Makes you wonder.
The old just mayo packaging, before they were forced to changed, is by far the most egregious I've seen. It literally has a picture of an egg on the front with no 'egg free' disclaimer. I guess the claim was the plant superimposed on the egg was supposed to indicate that the egg was replaced by pea protein? I very much doubt the average consumer interpenetrated it that way, the name and illustration was much more suggestive of "only contains egg and neutral plant oil emulsion."
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