lemongrab
5mo ago
My best guess would be that it's something to do with the note at the bottom of the table where it says that all model results are adjusted for baseline SNAQ score. Like maybe the pre and post values are raw averages in each group, but the differences are model outputs from a model that includes an additional variable? I don't know though -- I was thrown off by the first line of that table, where the estimated coefficient, 0.58, isn't inside its own 95% CI, (1.08, 2.24).
lemongrab
6mo ago
That's good! Developing discipline is much more tractable if you have, in principle, the energy to do the shit you need to do!
Not that it's trivial, but at least it does sound like you're asking the right question.
So I'm thinking of "discipline" as a broader and longer term thing that's about persisting at overcoming obstacles in a structured and intentional way over time. This persistence takes, as one of its prereqs, at least the occasional availability of "energy", the immediate capacity to exert effort to overcome obstacles here and now.
It takes discipline (for many people) to keep a clean house day in and day out. It takes energy to get up right now and wash the dishes. If you rarely or never have the energy to get up and wash the dishes, you're missing one of the key parts of the discipline of keeping a clean house.
But it also takes energy to do things that aren't necessarily part of any pattern of discipline -- it takes energy to organize friends for an outing, or to ride your bike to the bodega, or to refine a tactic in a competitive videogame.
Set aside whether you're willing or able to pursue a sustained program of efforts for the sake of delayed or diffuse rewards -- the realm of discipline. In the more basic sense of energy, do you feel like you have the inclination to exert moderate immediate efforts for moderate near term rewards? Or do you consider exerting such efforts, but think "that sounds like too much work" and accept known low rewards for the sake of lowering effort?
Like being on time -- you're preparing to leave for work, and you get the moderate reward of getting there on time if you leave now instead of leaving in 10 minute. This isn't necessarily a matter of discipline and long term thinking -- this is "right now, is it too much effort to get up and leave for the sake of being less stressed out 10 minutes from now?"
Potentially it's a matter of discipline if there's a lot of earlier preparation that has to go into being ready to leave on time. But if it's just "I'm going to watch YouTube for another 10 minutes at the cost of being late", that seems like a different problem. What's it feel like to you?
Or say at your shitty min wage job you were actually paid daily for performance in some legible way, so that if you were able to do "50% more work" in your next shift than you normally do, by some measurable outcomes, you'd take home 50% more money at the end of that day. Does that opportunity sound appealing or aversive?
lemongrab
6mo ago
How confident are you that you have a problem with "discipline" as opposed to a problem with "energy"?
To clarify, I'd say the classic hyperactive ADHD person has a primary problem with discipline, not with energy. They can maintain a high level of activity, but it's poorly directed toward their professed goals. In contrast, somebody who's, say, chronically severely sleep deprived may incidentally have a problem with discipline, but primarily has a problem with energy -- there's not enough energy available to do what's needed to stay on top of their responsibilities, and redirecting it more strategically won't fix the problems.
Are you somebody who chronically doesn't do things you need to do, or are you somebody who just chronically doesn't do things, full stop? Where does the day go? I'd say if it tends to go to "the lowest-effort available alternative at any given moment", you may have a problem with energy, rather than discipline. This may have a variety of potential causes, including physical unwellness.
Not an expert on this issue, but my impression is that conditions there were exacerbated by
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neighboring slaveholding nations discouraging trade with them in the decades after the revolution -- a de facto embargo being especially hard on an island nation.
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huge reparations they had to pay to France under threat of military attack, which were such a large fraction (or perhaps initially, multiple) of their economic output for so long that successive governments could only focus on extracting enough wealth from the populace to service the debt
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early lack of economic development and limited trade led to low-tech dependence on burning wood for fuel, which in turn led to extensive deforestation, erosion, and desertification of the productive lands. Supposedly neighboring DR avoided a corresponding environmental catastrophe during the mid 20th century by having a stronger central government that could, for instance, execute illegal loggers in their territory (while outsourcing their supply of illegally-logged fuel to Haiti).
Don't know if any of these fully explain the difference from majority-black baseline, but the onerous debt -- which they kept having to pay into the 20th century to US investors who eventually purchased it from France -- may have contributed to setting them off on the wrong foot institutionally.
lemongrab
8mo ago
gluten is a fall guy for glyphosate in the wheat supply chain.
Gluten is probably a fall guy for fructans or other difficult-to-digest oligosaccharides that are naturally present in some grains.
lemongrab
10mo ago
don't know what the climate is like there
Amusingly, the town motto is literally "It's The Climate". Great place to sleep outside.
The FDA authorization for mifepristone is for abortions up 10 weeks, at which point the fetus is, at best, about the size of guppy. In the context of all the shed uterine tissue that's expelled alongside it, the "remains" are not even easily identifiable as such.
Aside, mifepristone is just one of two pharmacological components of the standard "medical" (as opposed to surgical) abortion. The other is misoprostol, which can induce abortion by itself, just somewhat less reliably. Mail-order abortions would not stop if mifepristone became completely unavailable tomorrow.
I don't think the market prices this well at all, outside of very broad "that whole sector (e.g. Hollywood) has a bad reputation" strokes.
When I think of typical workplace sexual quid pro quo, it's not an upfront "perform sexual favors to get this job", where the negotiation is open and transparent -- it's an eventual and unexpected "perform sexual favors to keep this job", often targeted specifically at an employee who the employer suspects lacks options at that time. And I'd guess it correlates positively, not negatively, with other unexpected and costly-to-the-employee behaviors like illegally withholding tips.
The market mechanism against this behavior is that employers who behave like this will have high turnover, but it's often ones in naturally high-turnover sectors who are doing it in the first place -- "guy who manages lots of young women who are working their first shitty service job" is like my central example of a workplace sexual harasser.
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