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PaperclipPerfector  11d ago (text post)   2293 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 24, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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It's almost Christmas again, which means every retail worker and most shoppers in general are dreading having to listen to Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You about a sextillion times over the next month. This dread has become such a cliche to the extent that Carey herself has pointed it out after Halloween at least the past couple of years on social media, warning people that it's time to be assaulted by that song again.

My question is, does anyone else still unironically like that song*? I'm not particularly one for Christmas, but listening to that song everywhere is one of the parts I look forward to in December, and when I used to run for exercise, that song used to be one of the mainstays on my exercise playlist year-round. I'm not well versed enough in music to meaningfully explain why I like it so much, but I find the extremely sugary-sweet wholesome lyrics along with the melody to be exceedingly pleasant in a way that few other songs are.

* Edit: I meant anyone else today, after having been forced to listen to it so many times each and every December over the past few decades.

I hate it and have always hated it. However I can listen to Wonderful Christmas Time by McCartney and Last Christmas by Wham endlessly.

Funny, because my dad hates McCartney's Wonderful Christmas because it's so repetitive.

Ah, but see, a Christmas song should only be judged according to how well it represents the best feelings of the holiday. Christmas itself is repetitive: it occurs yearly, it’s a ritual, it’s always the same theme. And so it makes sense that McCartney’s song possesses a repetitive theme. You can’t fault him on this. It’s “simply having a wonderful Christmas time”, after all; there was never any pretention. “We’re here tonight, and that’s enough” — this is about our simple and familiar holiday respite.

But listen. Here’s why it’s a good song. Do you hear that synthesizer? That’s 80’s, and if 80’s is anything, it’s Americana and economic miracles. Christmas is the Americanaconomic holiday of note. And with its notes the song instantly says something interesting and true about Christmas. The melody is simple, and the structure mirrors a sequence of anticipation and glee. Christmas is a hyper-anticipatory holiday: not only does it fall around winter break, which we look forward to in school, but the actual activity of Christmas involves children anticipating and receiving gifts. Hence the chorus relieves the anticipatory tension of the verses with its ecstasic, relaxed, gleeful “simply, having”. Possession. Simplicity. Yet the ultimate joy of possession is not the material gift but the sufficient “here tonight”. A perfection summation.

Now there’s a bridge, also. But the bridge is actually mediocre, not because it strays from the theme but because it’s uninteresting. The bridge is stereotypical Christmas connotation and doesn’t add to the value of the song.

and Last Christmas by Wham endlessly.

Finally a man of culture around here!

I was never particularly enamored with the song to begin with, but I’m just as indifferent to it now as I was the first time I heard it.

Yes, obviously millions of people unironically like the song, which is why it was such a massive hit at the time and remains a mainstay now. Retail workers just get sick of it because they have to hear it dozens of times every day for a couple of months; that’s enough to make any song annoying. It’s an objectively top-tier pop song, and uses interesting chord structures that are more typical of early-20th-century jazz-inflected Christmas music than they are of modern, more musically simple pop music.

Sorry, I didn't word my question properly. I meant, does anyone else here, after having been saturated with that song each and every December over the past few decades following its release, still unironically enjoy listening to it on the sextillion-and-first time it's played in their vicinity?

I think I’d be annoyed by it if I had to hear it more than three times a day for any significant length of time. But I imagine that for anyone who isn’t spending a significant amount of daily time at malls, supermarkets, or other public locations where music is being piped in, one is unlikely to encounter the song that often every day.

Inspired by various posts I've seen on Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit:

If the Democrats really wanted to carry out a "denazification" of the American electorate, in what ways should they go about doing it?

Edit: to clarify, I'm seeing a lot of people on the left respond to the election with things to the effect of "the Democrat party doesn't have a policy problem, the voters have a racism/sexism/Fascism problem." The party doesn't need to change anything about their policies or their candidates, or even their messaging, they need to fix our horrible electorate, and that it contains so many hateful bigots who would knowingly vote for a Fascist like Trump, over an ideal candidate like Kamala Harris. (See some here and here.) Thus, they call for a "denazification" of America.

Now, if I were to reply to these people with something like "And just how do you propose to do that?", I'd generally be dismissed. But if, in something like a parallel to Cunningham's Law, I instead ask "Do you think [Plan A] would be a good method of denazification? Or would [Plan B] be better?," it's much more likely to generate replies, and discussion, and thus likely more thought about what such a "denazification" would actually entail, how they probably can't actually do it, and maybe even get them to move on from the hysterics (I know, wishful thinking).

Simply redefine "Nazi" to refer only to people who were members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

Except that doesn't remove enough Fascist Trump voters to ensure a D victory in 2028, which is the point of "denazifying" the American electorate.

You didn't say anything about any D victory.

I edited my to clarify: the people talking about a Democrat campaign to "denazify" America are referring to Trump voters as the Nazis to be dealt with, so that we don't have a repeat of our recent election. I added why I would like some sample strategies, in responding to those calling for such.

Now where'd W leave that banner...?

Revoke Internet access for large swaths of the population.

How does that significantly reduce the number of fascist supporters of the fascist Trump among the American population?

In Putin's mind, 'denazificaton' really just means the eradication of Ukrainian national identity. I'm not sure it translates within a nation-state, especially now that the American right has become a multiracial working class coalition (at least for now).

In Putin's mind, 'denazificaton' really just means the eradication of Ukrainian national identity.

Except this isn't about Putin's use of the term, this is how Democrats correct the problem of too many sexist, racist, hateful fascists voting against their objectively correct policies, in favor of the obvious fascist Trump (because those voters want fascism, because they're hate-driven Nazis incapable of being reasoned with.) That Harris and the Democrats lost only because "there aren’t people worth “winning over,” there’s just a country overwhelmingly clogged with trash to eliminate." And further, "They chose to be fash like the supporters of every other fash machine in history. Name a single time that problem was solved by kindly talking them out of it please. At minimum they have to be driven to leave."

So how might left-wing Americans go about unclogging America by eliminating the Trump-supporting fascist trash? How do you drive them to leave… or more?

Does your position on the acceptability of braces/orthodontics for children differ from that for any of the following: eyelid surgery, nose job, lip filler, v-line jaw surgery? If so, why? (For purposes of this question assume that there are not medical indications for any of the above. I.e., consider only purely cosmetic cases, ignoring those in which braces may significantly improve chewing or where nose jobs may improve airflow, etc.

If we're only talking about braces: Significantly lower risk, less invasive, in theory much easier to reverse - you could just pull teeth out of alignment again if you wanted to, to the locations they where before if you made imprints/photos. In my mind, braces are much closer to resistance training (or daily wearing a weighted vest and ankle weights) than they are to surgery.

And besides the obvious non-cosmetic benefits of aligned teeth (which we're going to ignore as instructed), there's also the mostly-cosmetic benefit of tooth prosthetics and veneers fitting much better/easier onto an aligned set of teeth, allowing them to be thinner, cheaper and being seated more securely on the jaws. Just in case they're needed in old age...

It does. It seems orthodontics are less invasive than those options, though I acknowledge that it might just be familiarity bias.

My dentist says they make it easier to brush, floss etc, but not sure how much I believe her.

Can anyone think of any notable artworks produced by extremely online and transgressive subcultures like incels (but not limited to them)? Things like Negative XP. Ideally things with some artistic merit and not just meme value (like Elliot Roger's My Twisted World).

There's Saya no Uta, the visual novel. It's an anti-Crime and Punishment where the protag is pushed into doing evil through external circumstances, but instead of succumbing to guilt he slowly embraces the status of a monster -- partly because he has no choice, but partly because once the walls of normalcy have collapsed it's an oddly comfortable and liberating way to live -- though it could end violently at any time, and almost definitely will. The acute periods of violence are interspersed with a level of freedom and calm we never really get in our lives, being beyond the purview of all laws except those of nature. What's impressive is I'm not confident this was a deliberate aim of the writers. Because typically for us to take a theme away from a story, the writers will make a clear and deliberate effort early on to draw our attention, regardless of where the story's at; they'll bend the plot or characters to this end too. But here is an uncommon case where a theme emerges naturally, and the hand of the writer is never felt. I really admire this kind of story more than any other, because it has the highest likelihood of teaching us.

The first and only one that comes to mind is Katawa Shoujo, a hentai visual novel made by a bunch of people from 4chan, based off of a page of sketches of a bunch of disabled girls by a hentai artist named Raita. It's a basic dating sim style visual novel where the protagonist goes to a school for disabled people and can bed girls who are deaf, blind, lacking legs, lacking arms, or just has severe burns over most of her body. It's quite good and was well received and, IIRC, had a Steam release in the last year (all versions of it are completely free, AFAIK).

What are some games where the “reward mechanism” is increasingly delayed the longer you play?

A game like chess arguably has the same amount of reward per game regardless of elo, it just gets more difficult. (Games will take similar amount of time and chance of winning/losing doesn’t shift much). Same with MOBA games. World of Warcraft and other RPGs may seem as if they delay the rewards, because it takes longer to get to the next level, but I’m not totally sure if this is the case, because you still acquire loot and have same amount of exploration and combat while the next level is delayed.

I suppose Souls games may be an example: because you keep dying and retrying as you progress through game, then the reward (the completion) genuinely delays over time. A lot of older games have this mechanic, where you are forced to retry until you complete the level. This is rare in modern games. Puzzle games and games like Portal have this mechanic. Crosswords and Sudoku as well.

I’m in interested in how this mirrors the real life progression of skills; ie, real life contains an element of delayed rewards across progression. Reading a book goes from quick and fun (children’s books) to long and tedious (professions involving lots of reading). Math problems don’t just get harder, they may take 10x longer to solve. Occupational obligations may involve increasingly delayed feeling of reward. Someone’s goal in meditation may go from 5min to 35min. Etc.

Games having increasing delays is a very common feature. I'd argue that MMOs are a good example of this because while you may continually get loot, there's increasing delays in getting useful loot. Basically all video games have very quick rewards at the beginning in the "tutorial" section (which might not be explicitly set out as a tutorial, often just the early game introducing the mechanics via clearly intentionally easy levels) when teaching the mechanics followed by more spread out rewards. Which isn't necessarily exploitative: a more interesting, difficult challenge will of course take longer than the tutorial of "here's what the A button does".

But for a more pure version, you can look at "incremental games" or really any game with a gacha/loot box mechanic, which I understand is standard in generic modern mobile free-to-play games. Basically, there's a whole type of games where increasing the delay is combined with the option to pay real world money to shorten the delay.

I'm gonna pull an idea out of my ass, and you tell me if you agree: People at the extremes of intelligence are more honest.

Dumb people are of course candid, but it's actually hard to think of a brilliant person who didn't generally speak their mind, or who paid much heed to the rules of social convention. And you see lots of bright people with pronounced moral standards they're unwilling to compromise on. Really, what drives me insane about the 'net nowadays is (among many things) people are no longer very honest. Because this used to be a land of extremes, whereas now all the normies! from real life have made it their nest and imported the superficiality of IRL socializing. So you can no longer trust that someone means what they say.

This seems heavily confounded about the fact that honest people will communicate their brilliance in honest ways and use it towards pro-social ends, ie publishing scientific papers or teaching people, or just explaining their thoughts and intentions openly when queried. Meanwhile, brilliant but dishonest people will hide their brilliance and use it to gain power and wealth in sneaky ways. There are lots of politicians and high-level bureaucrats that are really really good at political manipulations, which requires a certain type of intelligence, even if they appear stupid when talking about object-level policies. Leaders of cults or Backscratcher Clubs are going to be very intelligent and also dishonest. There are brilliant lawyers and CEOs and investment bankers who make tons of money and keep their secrets to themselves because the more people know what they know the less advantage their intelligence gives them. Literally anyone dealing with zero-sum interactions has an incentive to be smarter than the people around them, meaning to not broadcast their intelligence, and to deceive the people around them into doing the wrong thing so they can be exploited.

People at the extremes of rational/scientific/autistic intelligence are honest, because the thing that distinguishes this type of intelligence from the sneaker manipulative type of intelligence is the focus on truth and objectivity. The former is often the stereotype people think of when they think of intelligence, but if you define it this way then the connection between intelligence and honesty becomes tautological. If instead you define intelligence as the ability to perform cognitive labor and/or solve problems required to achieve one's goals then we notice this large class of anti-social and dishonest but very intelligent and successful people doing things that pay more than science does.

Could it be that brilliant liars are simply smart enough to lie convincingly and are never found out?

Brilliant people lie by telling truths.

If you don’t set the high bar at prodigy level, we have counterexamples in Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon.

This whole theory rests on a no true Scotsman. Any time intelligence is categorized more than one step away from IQ it's just the author letting out their biases.

Does this place get indexed super fast by Google? The other day I searched for "Kamelanomicon" to see how many people had already made that joke, and we were the top result an hour after posting.
Are their scrapers just that regular these days? I've seen it in several cases where I've tried to look up old phrases or topics mentioned in a recent motte conversation, and that specific convo was in the top results.

Were you searching from a clean browser over a VPN? If not, it's likely that your hit was due to Google Personalized Search. Where a site you have visited in the past that contains a rare keyword is much more likely to be promoted to the top of the results it returns. I'm not sure it's confirmed, but it's possible they use browser fingerprinting for "personalization" as well now. So even on a fresh IP with no cookies, their browsing history linker is able to determine the "user" to personalize for.

Does this place get indexed super fast by Google?

The Motte should take a page from DSL and ban all indexing.

How are we going to attract new users without being indexed by Google?

Word of mouth to friends and acquaintances, mentions in other places, etc. There are options that don't rely on Google.

So when Musk took over Twitter (using the old name since it was the name back then) he famously fired about 3/4 of Twitter employees. Pretty much everybody who knew anything about anything predicted Twitter will fail catastrophically very soon after. Of course, now we know it didn't happen. My question is - does anybody have any evidence of Twitter service becoming worse at all in any way since then? I don't mean worse like "people can now post things I don't like" but objectively worse like site is not loading, or search not working or any of the stuff like that.

It's better than ever and people who say otherwise are showing sure signs of um.. EDS, or is it MDS?

Let's remind ourselves that there is no amount of real world success that can dissuade the true believers. There are still people in 2024 who think that Venezuela is either 1) thriving or 2) only failing because of US sanctions.

The Communists have still not admitted defeat, and think that the communism would work just great if it were only tried, man. On a similar note, the anti-Muskites still think that everything Musk has achieved is just luck and, furthermore, that they personally could have done better. It's all the worst sort of cope.

Twitter never needed those grifters and it's better without them. Almost all companies which employ laptop workers are in a similar state.

Some hot takes you've got there.

"True believers" are, by definition, awfully hard to convince. But why should "anti-Muskites" act anything like Communists? People hate him because he flatters their outgroup, not because of some abstract reasoning. He personally did something that annoyed them, so they started showing symptoms of Elon Derangement. This is pretty normal.

There are a lot of weird errors and inexplicable decisions on Twitter, but I can't tell if it's gotten worse. The timeline spazzes out constantly, showing the same stuff over and over. The other day my account was limited, then suspended out of the blue, then reinstated without comment after I sent an email asking why.

Granted, the only part of that different from 2020 was actually getting unbanned, but still.

The other day my account was limited, then suspended out of the blue, then reinstated without comment after I sent an email asking why.

OK so that at least disproves the theory moderation doesn't exist anymore ;) I remember pre-Musk I once created a secondary twitter account for some silly project of mine, made a hello world tweet and it was promptly permanently suspended. I didn't even bother to research why, I just dropped the twitter part of the project and forgot about it.

Not in such basics as 'not loading', but qualitatively the twitter experience is now way worse, to the point I don't really use it anymore it's so bad. The prioritisation of blue check replies has made replies on any post that becomes popular totally worthless, since it's mostly bots/meaningless garbage. For You is totally worthless as it just serves up the worst kind of lowest common denominator internet slop, and while one can (and I usually did) just use the other tab for accounts you follow, twitter alongside mostly giving me my own follows' posts used to regularly suggest interesting and worthwhile smaller posts and accounts. Now the garbage rises to the top, the cream to the bottom. Checking back now having been away for a few weeks I've been followed by 50+ scam bots.

So while it still functions what made the app useful and good has basically been totally ruined. I think monetisation was a dreadful idea since it gives strong incentives to post slop in order to rise to the top, and the same goes for allowing people to pay to boost their nonsense. No doubt the slop existed before Elon, but I at least never really had it pushed to me by twitter before, it became relentless so no I don't bother. Elon's own account is really the embodiment of the kind of place twitter has become. It would probably be good again if they summarily IP banned anyone who had ever bought a blue check.

I have no idea whether any of this has anything to do with the staff that were sacked, but I think it's a cautionary tale against tech bro 'disruptors' and the 'move fast and break things' philosophy. For all people rightly say 'twitter isn't real life', it used to be a pretty important gathering place for influential and interesting people in the UK politics, policy and journalism sphere. Now it tends to be like scrolling a big subreddit in 2014.

My experience is of course the opposite.

I see way more discussion about "real" topics like engineering. Twitter used to be mostly pop culture and culture war nonsense. Not it seems a lot more like real human beings having actual, real discussions (well...not really discussions. I still think that twitter/X are the wrong format for conversation).

The prioritisation of blue check replies has made replies on any post that becomes popular totally worthless, since it's mostly bots/meaningless garbage.

Haven't noticed that but I must be reading different parts of it, and I usually don't read the replies beyond the first dozen or so. Even that is mostly frivolous...

Checking back now having been away for a few weeks I've been followed by 50+ scam bots.

I feel a major FMO case here, I've had my twitter acct for years and still have 2 followers (that's how it should be, it's a strictly r/o account).

Elon's own account is really the embodiment of the kind of place twitter has become

I must miss the point here - what's wrong with Elon's account? I mean except the fact that miltibillionaire and owner of several huge enterprises spends so much time on stupid tweets, but it's his time not mine, why would I tell him how to spend it? Otherwise, I think his content is exactly what this format is for, or at least what I have always thought it's for. I know some people put longreads and effortposts into twitter, which is imho insane - just get a substack, dude! - but I never thought it should or ever would be the norm.

I think it's a cautionary tale against tech bro 'disruptors' and the 'move fast and break things' philosophy.

Not sure what it's supposed to caution us against though. Did you really imagine twitter would be some kind of philosopher's kingdom if not Musk? To me, it always have been a mess since the inception and that's the whole point. If "influential people", whoever they are, can't find a better place to gather and talk about serious stuff than twitter I think it's not Musk's problem. They are just doing it wrong (ah, if that were the only thing they are doing wrong...) - and also imagining that you would do politics, policy or journalism with pre-Musk moderation in place makes me deeply sad. Though as "deeply sad" is my default setting now thinking about anything related to UK politics, it's not much change, admittedly.

It looks like the specific departments where >75% of the employees were fired (primarily ad sales and content moderation, on my understanding) did fall over - ad revenue crashed, and content moderation is (quite deliberately on the part of Musk) no longer happening, except when Musk wants to ban one of his political opponents on a whim. There were also some moderately serious legal problems that looked like they stemmed from too many HR/finance/etc. staff being fired too fast. (If you fire the HR lady first, you replace her before you fire anyone else).

I think the fraction of the core technical staff fired was closer to 25%. And, per Jack Welch et. al, any organisation which hasn't been purged recently (which Twitter so hadn't been) can usefully fire the lowest-performing 20% of the staff - so the cull of the technical teams was no big deal.

It looks like the specific departments where >75% of the employees were fired (primarily ad sales and content moderation, on my understanding) did fall over - ad revenue crashed, and content moderation is (quite deliberately on the part of Musk) no longer happening, except when Musk wants to ban one of his political opponents on a whim.

The ad boycott doesn't seem like the service becoming worse, since the variety and types of ads that a user sees tends to have minimal impact on the user's experience. But even if it were, the ad boycott seems largely coincidental to the firing of ad sales employees, since, AFAIK, the ad boycott happened primarily for ideological reasons rather than due to the lack of resources or competence of the ad sales department on Twitter. The content moderation result seems like almost a strict improvement in service, though opinions obviously vary.

Did Musk really fire 75% of the ad sales department? That seems dumb for an ad business, even for him.

Unless he knew in advance there would be an advertiser boycott and wanted to save money in the long run.

He was planning to shift away from ad revenue and towards a subscription scheme before he closed the purchase.

Pretty much everybody who knew anything about anything predicted Twitter will fail catastrophically very soon after

Did they ?

Twitter was well known for the being the most do-nothing company in big tech for some time before 2022. My friend (deliberately) joined there in 2021, and did zero work. I mean it. He wanted to start a startup, so he he built his own product full time and free-loaded as a Twitter employee. Yes, he likely would've been laid off even without Elon's interference, but any other org would've kicked him out within the first 2 months.

Twitter at it's first user peak (around 2015) had 3500 employees. In 2022, It had 7500 without any additional user acquisition. In 2024, it has 2800. Twitter was a bloated company in dire need of layoffs. Twitter was totally fine in 2015, and it's only down 20% employees from that period. Twitter's work life balance is well known to have gone to shit. If every employee is working 20% more time, the effective hours worked haven't changed much.

A lot of twitter projects were 'growth projects'. They were trying to expand to other markets, build new products and worked on optimization. All of these people got fired. Some deserved it, but many were already net-positives for the company from a revenue standpoint. Eg: 2% code improvement = $2 million saved for $400k spent on an engineer. That sort of thing.

Elon has separated the AI org out of twitter. XAI already has 100 employees, and will quickly scale up to a few hundred. It may not be counted as part of twitter, but pre-elon twitter was trying to do exactly this under their cortex [1] org.

Twitter at its first user peak (around 2015) had 3500 employees. In 2022, It had 7500 without any additional user acquisition. In 2024, it has 2800.

In 2010, Google had just over 20,000 employees. Its major products were Search and AdSense, with YouTube, Chrome, GMail/Docs and Android following distantly behind.

Today, Google has almost 200,000 employees. Its major products are still Search and AdSense, which are barely better than they were in 2008, and they’re still distantly followed by YouTube, Chrome, GSuite and Android, with a modest cloud business added to the list.

Unlike Twitter, Google makes a lot of money. But it is still extraordinarily inefficient, and its headcount is likely at least 4x where it could be under competent administration. Every big tech business experiences extreme bloat because of a combination of the iron law of bureaucracy and more general fiefdom internal politics.

Its major products are still Search and AdSense, which are barely better than they were in 2008

I could swear Search is outright worse than it was in 2008...

For users, maybe, but bringing money to owners - probably not

It’s funny to call a $20B business “modest,” but I suppose that’s true for Google’s scale.

According to this report, their services division spent $87B to make $144B. The Cloud and “Other Bets” segments are basically rounding errors in comparison.

Did they ?

I certainly read it stated very confidently dozens of times.

Twitter was well known for the being the most do-nothing company in big tech for some time before 2022.

I worked with some people ex-Twitter, and they were pretty competent programmers. No idea what (if anything) they did in Twitter though.

Some deserved it, but many were already net-positives for the company from a revenue standpoint.

Products like what? Twitter revenue seems to be exclusively ads, isn't it?

Oh yeah, the hiring bar for twitter was still the same as other FANG companies. So, the employees (at least non-DEI programmers) were definitely competent. But it had insane redtape. My friend complained about the amount of redtape at twitter after leaving a team working on highly-sensitive data at Microsoft. So that's saying something.

Products like what?

They never saw the light of day. Most products created at big-tech die before they get too far. Google is infamous for this. But, it's an issue at other FAANGs too.

I definitely get more bot friend requests post elon. There was a while that i was getting lots of fake messages right at first, that's about it

TIL there's something called "friend request" on twitter. I had an account there for many years (exclusively for reading/bookmarking) never even had one.

It's no longer possible to read much of anything without logging in, which I suspect is a load shedding measure.

xcancel.com

You can still read the individual tweets, not the threads though, right?

Yes, though you also can't see a person's latest tweets from their profile page. So mostly you have to be linked to a tweet to see it.

I remember Aella or other Rationalist-adjacent person on social media sharing a word doc that compiles various controversial opinions and survey questions, anyone remember this and have a link to it?

What's the best body temperature?

Bryan Johnson, anti-aging zealot, recently raised eyebrows on X when he claimed to have a body temperature of just 93.4 °F (34.1 °C). He claimed that this was evidence of superior health. To me, his claim seems immediately suspicious and more likely to be a faulty measurement. Others pointed out that it would be very difficult for his body to fight infection at such low temperatures.

Nevertheless, body temperatures do vary between people and, interesting, over time.

We all "know" that the normal temperature is 98.6° F (37 °C). As it turns out, this was true once, but no longer. Body temperatures have been consistently falling. Today, the average temperature is closer to 97.9. My temperature is typically around 97.

Why is this happening? No one knows. Of course, many people blame measurement error. Other theories are that 1) people today have lower infection load 2) people today have lower metabolisms. #2 does seem likely. When we look at historical records, we often see even relatively sedentary men ate 3000, 5000, or even more kCals per day. Now, many men (myself included) will maintain their weight at 2000–2500 kCals, even with exercise.

The good news? There does seem to be some indication that lower temperatures correlate with longer life spans (in mice, of course). This is likely to be similar to caloric restriction where it might help humans, although not nearly as much as mice.

But what if I don't want to live forever, I just want to look good naked and have tons of energy? It turns out that there are people who take the opposite approach as Bryan Johnson and say that we need to increase our body temperature. For one, it will help prevent illness. But it will also increase one's metabolism, giving a person boundless energy, and allowing him to eat like a hummingbird while looking lean and ripped. Here's a guy who invented a diet where you can eat unlimited sugar before 3pm. There was another guy on Twitter who posted about his sugar maxxing diet and bragged about his body temp of 99.5. He looked pretty ripped. (Curse you, Twitter search).

These high-temperature guys all seem to follow an obscure Oregon dietician named Ray Peat who doesn't have a Wikipedia article, and is indeed only mentioned in Wikipedia on the article for Bronze Age Pervert. From the best I can tell, Ray Peat ate something like 3500 calories a day, half coming from simple sugars. He died in 2022 at age 86.

So, what's your body temp? What should it be?

When we look at historical records, we often see even relatively sedentary men ate 3000, 5000, or even more kCals per day.

Huh? Where are the historic sedentary men eating over 5000 calories on a daily basis?

Monasteries in the late Middle Ages, mostly.

These were well known for obesity.

Where are the historic sedentary-by-modern-standards men full stop?

Based on my own calorie requirement, a "sedentary" lifestyle without a car requires at least an extra 500 calories per day compared to a US-suburban sedentary lifestyle.

fireinabottle.net has some really interesting posts about historical calorie consumption. One I remember was about consumption in New York. I don't know if it ever got to 5000 calories, but it was certainly a high number. And he's also written about body temperatures declining over time. He attributes it to increased PUFA consumption from vegetable oil.

Annoyingly, the site seems to be down now, so I can't point to any actual posts.

One I remember was about consumption in New York

I don't have a link handy, but I seem to recall it being demonstrated to my satisfaction that what the Fire in a Bottle guy and the Slime Mold Time Mold guy were presenting as evidence of high historical calorie consumption failed to account for food wasted rather than eaten. Like annual production divided by number of people or something.

It's going to be hard for me to dig that up. It was on X and was based on records of courtiers in some European country.

Not the same, but here's the best I could do with 3 minutes of Perplexity: Trench soldiers eating 4600 kCals per day during WWI. Obviously, they were very active, but also must have weighed an average of like 140 pounds.

https://medicalmuseum.health.mil/micrograph/index.cfm/posts/2023/beef_bread_and_coffee_food_innovations_during_world_war_I

Even assuming extreme activity, this should only burn less than 3200 kCals per day: https://tdeecalculator.net/result.php?s=imperial&g=male&age=19&lbs=140&in=69&act=1.9&f=1

I've seen many other records of historical people eating large amounts of calories. Maybe they're dubious, I'm not sure.

records of courtiers in some European country.

These guys were probably fat. I can definitely buy a sedentary fat man eating five thousand calories a day.

Trench soldiers

It's pretty believable that trench warfare has higher caloric demands than athletic training. Athletes stop training once they are in danger of overexerting themselves, while the infantry has no such luxury.

That trench soldiers maintained weight on 4600 calories a day should make us extremely skeptical of sedentary, normal BMI people eating 5kcal day in, day out unless they have some kind of metabolic disease, let alone this happening often.

This is begging the question.

You assume that caloric consumption is determined almost entirely by activity level, and therefore any evidence against this theory must be wrong somehow.

My post of course, was about body temperature, not really about the causes of obesity, but I do understand the temptation to latch onto the hottest and most bikeshedd-y of all culture war items: the CICO thesis.

In any case, since I can't resist either, I will propose that higher body temperature provides a possible mechanism for people to burn a much higher (or lower) amount of calories than can be explained by the Mifflin-St. Jeor Equation.

From first principles, active bodily processes to either heat or cool one's flesh likely consume calories. Temperature gradients need to be maintained. In fact, I've seen work posing the question of the effect of indoor environment control on caloric expenditure (if you have electricity doing the work of regulating your environment, you likely have to expend less). Given that most people maintain a body temperature above that of ambient, it is theoretically plausible (even likely) that increased body temperature would increase caloric expenditure.

Of course, the rub usually comes in terms of magnitudes. How big is the effect? A casual scan of the literature doesn't turn up anything all that great. So, I would maintain my personal belief that there is likely a positive effect, but extremely low confidence in any sense of an estimate for magnitude.

Concerning equations, the question always is what it is that you're trying to do. For very small groups, you can go through a very intensive process of measuring all sorts of body characteristics, down to the size of individual organs, and use some pretty detailed estimates to try to get really close. Most people don't do anything like that; it's just too much effort. Instead, people often want to collapse larger-group data into a handful of variables for ease of estimation, knowing that any such effort will inherently have variability and error bars. The equation that you get, and how much variability it has, depends on which type of population you're targeting and which variables you're trying to collapse it down to. Obviously, targeting larger/smaller population types tends to increase/decrease variability; similarly, increasing/decreasing the number of variables (under mild assumptions of them being correlated at all to the dependent variable and not entirely codependent) tends to decrease/increase variability. If you're considering fit and athletically-active populations, a lot of folks recommend the Cunningham equation. It also does not include typical body temperature. I'm not sure what the codependence will look like, what the rough magnitude of the effect will be, and how much additional variability you could cut out by including typical body temperature, just because I'm not aware of anyone who has taken the time and money to specifically explore it.

therefore any evidence against this theory must be wrong somehow.

What evidence?

I do understand the temptation to latch onto the hottest and most bikeshedd-y of all culture war items: the CICO thesis.

I didn't see anything especially notable in the post except for this wild claim I'd never heard of before of skinny people often putting away over five thousand calories a day in the past.

In any case, since I can't resist either, I will propose that higher body temperature provides a possible mechanism for people to burn a much higher (or lower) amount of calories than can be explained by the Mifflin-St. Jeor Equation.

There's obviously some degree of RMR difference between people (and the existence of people at the tails of the RMR distribution does not contradict CICO in the slightest btw).

However, it's notable that people are eating way more food these days than at basically any point in the past. That figure is a little rough since it doesn't actually measure what people are eating - those numbers show a similar story but they only seem to go back to the seventies. So it's a little hard to imagine that our ancestors had significantly higher metabolisms while eating significantly less. Small changes are possible and not that interesting to me.

All but one were eaten by Henry VIII.

Interesting.

My husband tended to be 99 F when he was younger, and also attracted way more static electricity than I do. He eats things like an entire pound of bacon, then just paces a lot, or walks around barefoot in the snow or something. My daughter seems to have inherited his metabolism, and actually was sent home from pre-K a couple of times for "low grade fever," but then she got home and didn't have a fever.

My body temperature is a bit below average (I don't check it very often, because I almost never run a fever), and I'm lower energy, but also have fewer random health problems -- things like almost never getting headaches or nausea, even when we eat something a bit off, getting over colds and flus faster, stuff like that. This has been good for pregnancy, which went smoothly all three times.

There seem to be trade offs involved.

There seem to be trade offs involved.

There is a "woo" explanation that goes something like this:

In all plants and animals, there is a thrive/survive dynamic. During times of plenty, the plant will blossom, the animal will expend energy and look to breed. During times of starvation, the plant will go dormant, the animal will hibernate.

But the candle that burns brighter (high metabolism) is extinguished sooner. High metabolism may lead to better health, more energy, and visible abs, but it will also age one more quickly.

This is a universal principle of all life forms.

This woo stuff is maybe directionally accurate. It's certainly not very well-studied. Maybe I'm just hoping there's an upside to my vampire like pulse rate and body temperature.

When I was younger, my normal body temperature was around 99.7. I ate a terrifying amount of food, yet even without any regular exercise other than walking, I had a BMI that was barely above underweight. I thrived in cold weather, my blood pressure was on the verge of being too low, and my resting heart rate was in the 50s. I’m also fairly tall, and, interestingly, also used to generate a lot more static electricity than most other people I knew (@Gaashk, are you aware of any connection between body temperature/metabolism and static electricity?).

Unfortunately for me, it seems there may be something to your theory. Not only do mice studies present me with a bleak picture of my future, but when I compare myself to my former classmates, I seem to be wrinkling much more rapidly than any of them, even though I generally have a vampiric aversion to the sun, while they spend much more time in it.

Perhaps I should just take this as a hint from the universe to stop procrastinating and do something more with my life before my time is up.

Please let me know if you find out something useful about this topic.

FWIW, I also eat like a combine harvester, pace a lot, don't gain weight, and my skin ages poorly.

Not sure if there is anything to it all; maybe we're just reading too much into a bunch of coincidences.

So, what are you reading?

Still on Future Shock, 12 Commandments, Crystallizing Public Opinion and Galactic Patrol.

I started Dance Dance Dance on my Thanksgiving trip flight and it has all the hallmarks of the Murakami novels I prefer.

Have you already read A Wild Sheep Chase? The two books are mildly connected.

Yes! I really enjoyed it! That's why I got Dance Dance Dance.

I've read several of his, and yet my favourite is still the first one I read, which is also his normie basic bitch black sheep hit: Norwegian Wood, also a leading candidate for my favourite novel ever.

Nice! My favorite so far is 1Q84. I loved it's surrealness. I read A Windup Bird Chronicle first on a blind recommendation and thought it was very strange. But I've gotten a lot more appreciation for his style since then. I think Infinite Jest is my favorite novel but 1Q84 is close!

I'm reading Breakfast With Seneca by David Fideler. Basically the author takes several themes touched on by Seneca, and writes a chapter on each one with his own thoughts (and corroborating quotes from other Stoic writers). It's enjoyable, although not earth shattering since I have previously read Seneca's letters. But still, it's nice to spend more time reflecting on Stoic ideas, and think of new ways I can try to apply them better in my own life.

Have also just started The Confessions of Lady Nijō. It is pretty much what it says on the tin - Lady Nijō was one of the concubines of one of the emperors of Japan in the thirteenth century, and this is her writing about her life. Not sure I'll enjoy this one very much to be honest, but meh - it's a library book so I haven't lost anything if I don't wind up liking it.

About sixty pages into My Brilliant Friend. It makes Italy sound like Beirut.

Reading JD Vance's Hillbilly Elegy. It's a much shorter book, I'm halfway through already.

I'm not sure if there was much in the way of ghostwriting or assistance on this, but if it's not much, then it's remarkably good writing for a sitting politician.

It reminds me a little of Sowell's Black Rednecks, White Liberals, which put forth the idea that quite a few of the dysfunctions affecting black culture were actually copied from the white hillbilly culture.

Vance is a writer who later became a politician. Hillbilly Elegy is what made him famous and jump started a potential political career. It’s not a political memoir written for a sitting politician like Dreams From My Father

Interesting, I didn't know that! I'll have to take a closer look at how his career progressed.

At the point I'm at, I've been thinking, this is a pretty good autobiography, but I haven't yet seen anything that I would expect makes anyone think, wow I really want this guy to represent me in DC. Though I see it starting to go in that direction already with my last day's reading.

I just blew through 1,000 page Exodus by Peter F Hamilton. I’m pretty mixed on PFH. I loved Commonweath but I’ve tried and fail to get into his others. I’m taking a stab at Nights Dawn but that’s besides the point

I thought Exodus was great. His best work in quite some time. The universe, pacing, major plot lines - all great. Good characters. The dude is really really imaginative.

The book is actually contract work where it’s and in-universe tie in novel with a new sci fi RPG that’s in development but some legit ex-BioWare guys. I’m very skeptical that the game won’t be woke slop since it’s being published by WOTC.

All this is to say that I hope more people read this book and it has some success. PFH is legit and doesn’t seem to have gone performatively woke even if he has been bullied into no longer including sex scenes in his stories.

I'm honestly surprised he's still around considering everything, still more that he's getting that kind of work. Read the first two nights dawn books in elementary school, and the Commonwealth trilogy when it first came out.

Probably should get around to rereading and finishing the former, but it's harder to justify burning through a pile of doorstops in a weekend the way you could as a kid.

I've been getting VERY interesting in egregores and eldritch analogies lately, and I'll probably do an effortpost on them at some point, but in the meantime I'm trying to track down a brilliant rationalist-adjacent blog that did long-form essays about a bit of different egregores, some of which had Lovecraftian or Biblical names. My Google Fu is failing me - anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?

Pretty sure it was this one: https://exploringegregores.wordpress.com/

Yes!!! This is it. Thank you!

Np. Glad I bookmarked it on a whim years ago.

I thought it was /u/Beej67, but a Reddit search didn’t show much. Weak evidence, I know.

Was it Handwaving Freakoutery? (https://hwfo.substack.com/s/egregores/archive?sort=new)

No, but thanks for the implicit recommendation!

What life advice do you have?

(Yes, this is a very generic question. Make it as narrow or broad as you like. It does not at all need to be tailored to me.)

In your 30s, cherish each moment with your parents.

Especially true for immigrants. I visit my family annually. If my dad lives till a ripe old age of 80, then I'll only meet him 20 more times.

People pay an order of magnitude less attention to you than you think. Live your life and don't worry about what other people think.

Stay hydrated.

Confess Christ as your Lord and Master.

Why?

I mean this in the most sincere way. Other responses have straightforward mechanisms. I do not understand how that could be true for adopting a belief which I do not—can not?—rationally hold.

So I would be genuinely interested in hearing your justification.

Depends on your understanding of the word "rationally."

You could take a sort of meta-rational view and see that people who believe in Christ tend to have better life outcomes, and overall have their values and morals aligned in a more positive-sum way. Therefore the rational decision is to make Him the apex in your set of values.

Something like that. But it's complicated ofc.

Know exactly what kind of person you are.

Invest. Make your money work for you. Start by putting your money in a high-yield savings account.

Know what you want to do, and figure out an actionable plan to get there.

Now is the beginning of the rest of your life whether you want it to be or not. Make use of it.

As a general rule, the right time to do or start something is always now. Looking back on my life (about to broach mid 30s), everything would have been better if I had just started it earlier instead of trying to time it right. Whenever I thought "I want to do this, but now isn't the right time," I was wrong and I should have just started. From school, relationships, moves, investments, starting my business, etc.

I'm going against this advice, albeit temporarily. The counter advice is -

you can only prioritize 1 hard thing at a time.

In 2024, I took the 'just do it' advice. I wanted to start a startup asap. I began moonlighting. Built decks, figma walkthroughs, demos, talked to customers. But, all I have to show for it is a YC reject. I lost my cofounder (still my best friend) when he decided to pursue family goals instead. I couldn't do the startup justice while juggling another taxing job. I burnt the candle at both ends, and ended the year with a bad health scare.

I should've 'set myself up for success'. But the desperation to move at all costs put me on the back foot. I still want to start the startup, but I'm now going to do it by going back the basics.

2025, I'm taking a chill stop gap job. I want to take my time evaluating the right cofounder, getting health sorted so I can do a startup long-term and proposing my GF so my long term relationships are solid. It seems like a detour, but I'm hoping it'll make the start up doable the next time I try.

Second that. It took covid mess for me to realize that if I don't do some shit now, I may not even have a chance to do it at all. So if I think I should do stuff, then I should start doing it and not postpone it to the right time.

We're coming up on the holiday shopping season in America. So, mottizens, what are your recommendations for gifts for friends, children, parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, lovers, frienemies at work, etc?

Historically I am good for one (1) banger of a gift per year. I absolutely crush it with a large and thoughtful gift for one family member, and then the rest end up as "well I spent $25-50." Marriage has been great for me, because my wife is really good at getting gifts for everyone. But she'd like me to contribute more to the process, which is fair. So I figure it's good to start getting ideas together, especially for some of the people in our circle who are difficult to buy for.

My dad's theory of gifts has long been that the best gifts are something you'd want, but would never buy for yourself because you wouldn't spend the money. To this I would add things that the recipient wouldn't think of or know about, though this always has more danger of the recipient not actually liking it. There's a long theory of "buying experiences" but I generally try to avoid it unless I can personally take them there and know their schedule well enough to know they can go with me, I hate the gift card as a concept ever since I worked retail for a couple years and realized how few giftcards are ever actually used.

Thoughts I have this year:

-- For theory one, YETI items outside of the coolers. I've long been impressed by YETI's ability to essentially invent the status cooler as a market. Over time I've gotten a few of their other items, and I have to say they are all very nice. I got their espresso cups when they were on sale at Ace Hardware (an admittedly odd place to buy espresso cups), and I really like them. Their mugs come it fun colors, are objectively high quality, and are the kind of silly indulgence that most people won't buy for themselves.

-- For theory two, these emulators haven't achieved a ton of penetration in my social circles yet. I'm looking around for the best price/quality combo, and for ones that are easy to cleanse down to kid-appropriate games. Though to be fair, Twisted Metal 2 was the first game I got for PS1 and I turned out ok, I think.

-- For experiences, I have purchased rentals on Turo for a fun car for a day. Prices for something fun have been decent since the mid-engine vette dropped, and the cybertruck is a good option this year for something wild but fairly normal.

What are y'all doing? Especially for parents and women?

Miyoo Mini+ with onionOS is the best OOTB, you can pay a bit extra to have an SD card loaded up and preconfigured from sites like Litnxt. They also offer the Crossmix version of the Trimui Smart Pro similarly preconfigured.

The latest versions of the Anbernic 35XX SP (clamshell) are pretty dang good. And the Anbernic 40XXV is the only 40XX device I'd consider decent.

If people don't mind tinkering a fair bit to get everything to run right on Android, Retroid pretty much has the market cornered although the prices are significantly upwards.

My dad's theory of gifts has long been that the best gifts are something you'd want, but would never buy for yourself because you wouldn't spend the money.

I take a similar approach: buy a nicer version of something than they would buy, or even have already bought. E.g. they may have a couple $10 knives - buy a $100 knife.

I don't know, and am starting to understand how my older working class relatives ended up giving each other lame things like jeans, socks, and toothpaste. Anything desirable enough to be excited about must be discussed at length (we're currently considering a three day trip to a nearby city). We're low enough SES that this includes things like an $80 espresso machine. We're both picky about personal items, and it's very obvious when someone isn't using the thing you got them. I will be missed if I leave or get home early/late by even 10 minutes.

At least 5 year olds are fun to buy gifts for. They are the best gift recipients. We got ours pajamas, after previously not having any, and she was so happy about it, and wondered out loud if Santa had placed the pajamas on the store rack for us to see, since it's so great having princess pajamas.

If you know people well enough that you think that you've found something that fits what they like, and that they would buy, but they don't know about, that's good too. But that can be tricky to do.

My dad's theory of gifts has long been that the best gifts are something you'd want, but would never buy for yourself because you wouldn't spend the money. To this I would add things that the recipient wouldn't think of or know about, though this always has more danger of the recipient not actually liking it. There's a long theory of "buying experiences" but I generally try to avoid it unless I can personally take them there and know their schedule well enough to know they can go with me, I hate the gift card as a concept ever since I worked retail for a couple years and realized how few giftcards are ever actually used.

I broadly agree with both your dad's and your theory. The general issue with personalized gift-giving, is that often you end up muddling into subjects in which the gift-reciever is more knowledgable and idyosincratic than yourself: For example, I have a friend who really likes romantic novels, and I don't know much about them, should I gift her a critically acclaimed one? A silly, but popular one? Am I going to end up gifting something that she has already read?

My own advice, that doesn't overlap with what you've already said, would be:

  • Look for things on the edges of the area of overlap of your interests: You might not be able to figure out which are the best rugby jersey to gift your rugby-obsessed cousin, but you might be able to find him a great rugby-related book.
  • Rather than "gift experiences", gift consumables: Even if they're willing and able to buy it, a coffee-head will always appreciate a good bag of coffee.
  • Contary to the neuroticism of my first paragraph, an obvious gift is often a good gift, most people aren't thinking too deeply about this: A lion plushie for your friend's newborn named Lionel is likely to stand out, the bar for thoughtfulness is that low.

I generally believe in consumables theory, that you really can't go wrong with them and they will almost always be used. For the past few years I've often fallen back on a gift box of pastrami and pickles and such from Katz Deli. It is the kind of thing most people would never buy themselves but every man I have given it to greatly enjoyed it.

Obligatory reply with warmed over Jehovah's Witness nonsense that Christmas shouldn't be materialistic, or that such and such is a waste of money and you should give people I-Bonds or crypto or gold bullion or whatever.

That sounds contradictory. Giving people I-Bonds (or cash I guess) is the maximum materialistic gift - it contains the most material component and the least emotional/spiritual component. If anybody, Christians should know that material things can have spiritual meaning, and thus material things (like gifts) can be used to convey emotional/spiritual messages.

Conspiratorial types often talk about whistleblowers dying in suspicious circumstances strongly suggestive of foul play, but which were officially ruled as suicides. I seem to recall that many such accusations have been levelled against the Clintons. Are there any examples of this which strike you as particularly suspicious? (Research for NaNoWriMo.)