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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   2362 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for November 8, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Do air purifiers really help allergies?

Sorry if this has been asked before, but it's spring in Queensland, which means I have done what I do every spring since moving to my townhouse - spend months trying to figure out an effective solution to my allergies before giving up and just keeping the house shut up when I'm at home. Generally this means liberal use of air conditioning, but over the past week I have been noticing that my sinuses are getting stuffed up when the ac is on. I've cleaned the filters, but it doesn't seem to have fixed anything.

But Queensland summers really only tolerate either liberal use of ac or maximum air flow through the house, so I thought maybe an air purifier might help. But I've never thought about them before - I used to smoke 40 cigarettes a day - and everyone I know thinks they are a scam, including my friend who is a doctor, who said the only study he'd seen had air purifiers exacerbating allergy issues for almost as many people as it helped.

I asked him to send me the study, but that was a week ago and I am now over feeling run down and congested and like someone is pushing a needle behind my left eye, so what do you guys think? Get an air purifier or burn my neighbours' gardens to the ground?

Here's how I think about this:

Just in my personal experience, HEPA filters seem to help with allergies, and visibly help filter out smoke when it's detectable by smell.

But let's ask The Science. What do we see? The first question to ask - does it remove microscopic particles from the air? If it doesn't, we can just stop. This is something I'd expect good data on, it's a (relatively) hard-sciencey question. Looking at this and this, HEPA filters seem to reduce particle concentration (of pm2.5 and bigger particles, which google says is how big allergy-related particles are) by around 50%. Which is substantial, but intuitively seems like less than you'd want. Of course, though, this depends on exactly what HEPA filters they used, how much ventilation there was, what kind of particle, etc. The first study says "ventilation was through the door" - does this mean through gaps in the door, or was the door open? idk. The second study also compares having multiple HEPA filters to one, and three filters on 'medium flow' seems to (eyeballing a very poorly constructed graph) reach 75% reduction in particles. Just intuitively, by having a good model on a (somewhat noisy) high setting, and either having it in a small room without too much air exchange or having multiple for your home, you'd get meaningful (80%+) reductions.

The second study does note some increases in ion concentration (not particle concentration) in HEPA on scenarios. But the increases are only present for some ions, in some particle size categories, so I think it's just noise.

I'm not really sure how much to trust random studies like this anyway. One has authors from "Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar University" and "Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune" and the other from Taiwan. The Indian study mislabeled several of their tables to seemingly show that air purifiers double particle concentrations,.

Okay, just from personal experience I'm pretty sure it removes particles, and the science seems to confirm it removes the right ones. But inferring that it stops allergies from that isn't particularly justified. What about studies on allergy symptoms? Well, there are a lot of positive results on google scholar. But they're all positive results on some measure but not others, and they're all either n=20-40 RCTs or meta-analyses of 10 n=20-40 RCTs. I don't think one should believe any of these, either as evidence for or against.

So, uh, my guess is if you pick the right ones and use it correctly, they're effective, mostly because some people I know claim they are. It looks like good ones are $100-$150 on amazon, so if it doesn't work it won't hurt too much. I'm not sure how to match the airflow rate or w/e to how big your room/home is, there's probably a guide on that somewhere.

But if you need increased airflow, that'll significantly reduce the effectiveness of the air filters. Certainly airflow from outside, and if the AC is introducing new particles from itself or outside, as opposed to just recirculating them, that'll hurt too. I guess it'll probably still help, but idk either way.

Awesome, thanks for this - a lot of it is info I'd sussed out already, but looking for that study sent me down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and I emerged in a sea of insanity. Taking on your post, I bought an Electrolux with carbon filtering, so even if it doesn't help my allergies it will at least help my place smell nicer.

Suppose you are a 40 year old software engineer making 120k/year, and you somehow magically get banned for life from practicing the profession. You have decent savings to live off of for a bit and to supplement a smaller income for a while. What would you do? If you're so inclined, be specific and like narrate out a life plan.

Silly question, but why are you only making 120k/year? How long have you been in the industry? That's like entry-level for software engineers these days.

Has your time in the industry taught you anything about management at all? If I were you, I'd try to leverage your experience to become a tech lead. But maybe you could tell us more about why you don't want to be in the software industry anymore?

Where do you go, and what do you study, to make more?

I learned programming for a year, and since then have been working as a software developer (in crypto) for two years, and that's what I make. No degree or anything but I still think I can do better.

Well, I may not know too much about those answers, since I've had a relatively sheltered career. But I'll tell you what I think I know.

I did my undergrad at a school that has a pretty well-known CS department. And even though I wasn't too serious about pursuing a software career at the time, I had to choose some major, so I chose CS. And that ended up being a good decision. I don't think this makes me a better coder than most others in the industry, but the fact that I have the degree from a big name, it probably did well for me. It got me in the door of big tech, where I was able to work my way up to a nice salary. In big tech, you get your bosses to invest in your career, not just see you as a tool for getting work done. It's a growth-oriented culture, and managers are first and foremost judged by their managers on how well they grow their reports.

Other than making me look good, I mean, maybe also the universities taught me more about algorithms and theory, too. In your year-long programming learning, how much did you learn about how to analyze programs, think about algorithms, runtimes, space usage, different types of languages, etc? It's possible that that sort of in-depth thought about the theoretical nature of programming may be something else that's desirable about people who studied CS in college. Computer Science really is a separate thing from software engineering, and it's possible that you learn to think about code on a slightly different level. I'm not sure, because I don't really know what it's like to not have learned CS first.

The degree totally helped me, but you don't need it in big tech. They're not elitist, if you can show that you have the skills. If you don't have the degree, then you'll need like 3 to 5 years of industry experience, during which time you've amassed many stories where you've shown that you're hard working, methodical, you understand software, you care about the team you're on, and you're capable of making tradeoffs and decisions. Think about all of the times that you've personally done something that helped change the course of a project, or helped someone out, or made some sort of decision, and write them down and rehearse them for your interviews. If you have that, then you must also study Cracking the Coding Interview, and can absolutely get a high-paying job in big tech.

Also, you don't have to work in big tech to get a high paying job (though I know less about how to do this). But I think a lot of it comes down to, once again, you showing that you're methodical, smart, and hard-working, in much a similar way as above. And you can be hired as a tech lead for a smaller company. But once you're in a smaller company, there's usually less room for growth in salary (without simply leaving and going to another company), because the smaller companies are usually more focused on the bottom line instead of focusing on the growth of their employees.

I have no idea where these insane SWE salaries reported by everybody are, outside of a few specific cities. Never seen it anywhere near me, if it's here there must be some secret to finding it that I'm not aware of.

Hah, I feel the same way, people online with half my YOE who are ostensibly near me are reporting that they getting my salary! But still, from all my experience, your salary seems really low for someone who's not entry level. Location could have to do with it, how big your tech company is could have to do with it, whether or not you're pushing for higher salaries could have to do with it, and also sub-field and specialization could have to do with it.

No, your experience is typical. Only the top 10-20% of companies offer these insane salaries. Not everyone gets into FANG companies and if you aren't in a place like San Francisco, New York, Boston etc then you shouldn't expect 100k+ as entry software engineer even today. Depending on where you live 120k a year as a software engineer is very impressive. If you want those high salaries you have to be willing to change companies every 1-2 years, move, and get very good at doing interviews.

move to a cheap area?

Personally, I'd move into management.

What exactly don't you like about your job? Is it the actual work, the company culture, the commute, the lack of "meaning", or something else? Each of these has a different solution.

If you have money, become an entrepreneur. Buy a laundromat, or buy housing and rent it. Get multiple, independent streams of income. Landlording or laundromat (or whatever) stuff doesn't have to be full time; you can work while getting your footing.

Buy a laundromat

It seems like there are a lot of people doing this right now, but I would advise being very cautious. There are a lot of declining "mom and pop" businesses with massive hidden costs that sellers want to avoid disclosing, and newbies are falling into the trap. Water systems that need a complete rebuild, leaking gas tanks that touching in any way will cause a decade of EPA paperwork and fees/fines, and oh god the air conditioning. Not to mention lost suppliers and big clients that are making a lot of rural businesses impossible to run, but which the seller's carefully truncated records will show no sign of.

Someone in my town got conned into taking over a grocery store, and ended up paying multiple times the purchase price just to have the 60 year old gas tanks dug up and the soil sanitized to the EPA's satisfaction. He died, and now his aging boyfriend sells stationary and knick-knacks while serially renting out other parts of the building to restaurants and hobby stores that rarely survive a year (and never pay their rent that long).
Overall not a great investment.

You have to do your due diligence, but I've met people who got started like that. What you said is more or less true of buying any business

If by 'banned' do you mean 'unable to work as an independent contractor in any country'? If not, consider working remotely for an overseas company, or even relocating overseas. A lifetime of professional experience and the opportunity cost of wasting that experience is no small thing.

There are careers that are aligned with skills and traits that software engineers have. If I was only on 120k/year I would look at taking some Linkedin learning courses training in Agile and potentially becoming a Technical Business Analyst or even Product Owner. Courses would probably only take a few months if you hammered them full time. Once working again I'm sure your career could progress through commercial tracks rather than IT.

Side hustles might be independent software development making your own game (early access on Steam to finance/Patreon) or other software applications.

I'm not in IT at all, so I'm sure others might be able to find something more creative.

'banned' as in I kinda wish something would coerce me in this way because the thought of this being my vocation for the rest of my life is starting to feel pretty bleak. Really my post could have been reworded as something like "What are some options for a middle aged IT person who wants to change careers?" and just have people throw out ideas of "what I can be when I grow up" that aren't too ridiculous to choose as a middle aged man.

Like I know what I don't want but I don't know what I do.

40's isn't too late for a full career change. I met a guy at a meditation retreat once who went from being a tier one lawyer to a school teacher (and ended up fast tracking to principal). He was very happy with his decision even though he lost a chunk of his income, as he felt his old job was soulless.

Consider going to a proper career psychologist to help you figure out what you have an interest and aptitude in. You've probably got 20+ years of working left so its worth paying a few thousand if necessary for the happiness of working in a role that best suits you.

Also check if you have an Employee Assistance Program at your current workplace for free counseling along those lines (they're confidential).

I wish more people were introspective and aware of their internal motivations. It's annoying to have a girl say "I'm just not feeling it" after a few dates with no further feedback.

Maybe she just isn't feeling it (physical attraction). I know you want to think there is some deeper motivation given its ego protective, but Occams razor still applies here.

From my limited exp, I can tell you this happens when you don't follow rule 2. Rule 1 is the entry, rule 2 is the maintenance.

Out of curiosity, how many dates?

Let me turn it back on you a bit. Think deeply about your read of her, and of you. Why do you think she ducked out? Can you get that feedback even if it's not actually coming from her?

I think about five dates.

I can think of lots of potential reasons, but I'm clueless as to which we're most impactful.

In any case, I empathize with your disappointment.

Being a fellow male, I can't help but provide some minor advice. When I didn't make it with a woman, there were three, and only three reasons:

  • They didn't find me physically attractive.
  • I didn't try hard enough and schedule enough time for them to figure out who I was.
  • I became too vulnerable and emotional too quickly.

There's details under each of these, but they were the buckets. Another source of frustration for many men is the fact that #2 and #3 represent boundaries you have to work within.

I hate being in that situation. Really hard to tell if its just a personality mismatch or (if it has been happening regularly), there is some behaviour you have that is unattractive to most girls.

That kind of feedback would be really useful, but since you might only exhibit it on dates or one-on-one private situations with girls (an example would be being a really bad kisser; not saying this is you), its not something that your friends can help identify.

So you're kind of stuck and can't really improve without second guessing all of your dating behaviour.

Non-solicited advice (and this probably won't apply to you, but is generally useful for guys who keep finding themselves in this kind of situation): Some low hanging fruit can be optimising your fitness/fashion/hygiene. Another thing I find useful for 'very online' guys is to make sure that you are not mentally drained before your dates. If you've just spent 5 hours programming/playing games, you are not going to be a good date. Take a break from screens for a few hours before your dates or, in an emergency, meditate for half an hour. This will help you be present and improve your conversational ability.

Echoing self_made_human, not telling you the reason doesn't mean they don't know the reason. They might not, but, also, it's standard advice to never give a reason in such a situation. Among other problems, giving a reason makes some people think the reason is a problem to be fixed and then the relationship will happen after all, not merely an explanation.

I know. Still frustrating either way.

It's entirely possible she has concrete reasons, but doesn't wish to tell you because it might hurt your feelings or she's afraid you'll rage over it.

There's no point pressing it, and there plenty more fish out there either way.

I mean, the most likely scenario is she has concrete reasons she's not telling you, and those reasons are more like 'vibes' and are poor approximations of the load-bearing causes.

Also, though, if you revealed all of the tells you use to read someone, it makes it a lot easier for them to fake it later. Plus, I've heard women say that when they've given the men the honest reasons they didn't make it, the men react negatively.

My response to that is: Skill issue

Or at least for me it's usually very clear what is attractive about a woman, leaving aside near universals like looks, I prefer funny, kind women who love dogs and who I can hold a conversation with.

If they meet those criteria, I don't really see much room for subconscious deal-breakers.

I want to say that it's still a skill issue, and the reasons aren't actually that complicated and are accessible and influenceable to smart people with a bit of effort. That's true in a deep sense, but it's also true that the history of philosophy and psychology in adjacent areas is mostly series of hilarious failures at understanding human motivation and thought by very intelligent and subtle people, so it probably is going to be very challenging for even above-average people.

Some of it's a skill issue, but I think in the typical case, and almost certainly in the case of the OP, it's an incentive issue. What incentive does this particular person have to be properly introspective about what it is that she likes in a romantic partner? Perhaps a little bit better filtering, but is it that much better than just going on the whole "am I feeling it or not" test? That much better to be worth all the hard work and effort it takes to be actually introspective instead of falling into the extremely common trap of just convincing oneself that one is introspective? For some people, they're in a situation where being introspective in some particular area actually is worth it, and so they develop the skills for it (or not, and they just suffer). But for others, it's just not, so they don't bother, and they get to live better lives with more free time and less stress because of it.

Is there a rationalist / TheMotte meet up in SF? I used to belong to one in DC but haven’t gotten back into it since I moved away.

I could be wrong, but I don't think there's ever been a Motte specific meet up.

Your best bet is to wait for a Lesswrong/ACX meet up, I'm 100% certain that happens in SF on an annual basis, and there's bound to be some overlap!

I mean, it's SF. Probably more like weekly than annual. Considering Austin has a twice weekly meetup, I'd be shocked if SF doesn't.

I was speaking about formal ones open to all comers, the LW community is far more closely knit than us Mottizens, and I'm sure people here have hung out in person. I've certainly had offers to say hi if I'm ever in the States, but I wouldn't class that as a meet up.

Cheers

I posted a while ago asking for advice about switching from a job I really love, to a job with much higher pay (and apparently vacation time) and full remote. Well, I ended up getting that job, and start in a few weeks. So now I'm trying to set up a nice home office so that the remote work part doesn't turn into a negative. I have a sense of what kind of aesthetic I like, but I'm trying to find good artwork or desk decorations to add the final touches. Anyone know a good place or site to get inspiration for this? is the answer just pinterest/etsy or is there something I'm overlooking?

Buy a Putin themed calendar, like Japanese businessmen

I personally have some conversation starters in my background (that I actually find appealing).

I also have a small fridge next to my desk, and a couch for quick naps.

I am working on improving the overall appearance of my office.

Artifacts or artwork? how did you select your conversation starters?

I really like the idea of the small fridge, thank you

In this case, I have "The" massive Lego (Millennium Falcon) displayed behind me.

If I had my druthers, I'd have vinyl album sleeves up for the less nerdily-inclined and a representation of another hobby that I can speak deeply about. This is 2-birds 1-stone, because then you can use your office as a hobby item storage location, you just have to keep it neat and organized. I did like the idea of AI-generated artwork if you want it, but don't feel pressured to pander or shy away from abstract/purely aesthetic art.

Do think about potential downsides, though. For instance - I don't have anything with firearms displayed behind me for many reasons.

Man, what's with you and like 3 others suddenly landing significantly better jobs? I'm getting envious myself haha.

As for art, I think barring a few pieces I've saved over the years, I'm going to have an AI make something bespoke for me, you could give that a try.

Come to the US, we’ve got cost disease!

Though a lot of my industry has been struggling lately, and I couldn’t say whether that holds for the rest of the economy. Perhaps it’s the fabled “nonzero interest rate phenomenon.”

Come to the US, we’ve got cost disease!

Praying I can make it as a doctor, and then contribute to the rising cost of medical care 🙏

I dabbled in learning programming for a few weeks, but a few Leetcode easies in, I realized that with current visa restrictions being what they are, there's no way I can get credentials or competency high enough that I can beat the millions of other Indian programmers fighting for the same deal.

You decrease the cost of medical care wherever you practise medicine.

I certainly hand out medical advice for free on the Motte, so I can't imagine it gets cheaper than that haha

I have enjoyed playing around with AI to make various joke images, but I fear I'm not creative enough with my prompts to generate something interesting I'd actually enjoy looking at. Still, I'll give that a try.

In my case, I just got super lucky. A guy I worked with a few years ago reached out on linkedin and asked if I wanted to work at the company he now works for - I asked how much, he gave an answer and I had to take it. I think the key here is that the job is fully remote, but the salary is definitely keyed to being "acceptable" for the city the closest office is located in, which is a high cost of living city. I happen to live in an extremely low cost of living city (bought a 5 bed, 3 bath attached garage house for 300k in 2020).

I happen to live in an extremely low cost of living city (bought a 5 bed, 3 bath attached garage house for 300k in 2020).

Ouch. Don't remind me how much value ruble has lost. I could buy some land and build a similar house in a car-dependent suburbia of Moscow for about the same amount of money.

If the misfortune of others makes you feel better, a decent apartment or house in one of the major Indian metropolises costs about as much one in SF or London. And we make a tenth the money!

Anyone here do minimalist strength training?

I tend to fall into a pattern of lifting consistently for 3 months or so, then getting busy or injured and letting it lapse. So I never make any significant gains. I'm also a weekend warrior type athlete who plays an intense sport at a semi-competitive level. This really gets in the way of strength training. I'm doing way too much cardio and often suffer nagging overuse injuries.

I've tried Strong Lifts and Starting Strength. These programs seem okay, but better suited to a young person or one who doesn't do cardio or explosive sports.

Fortunately, there is research that the Pareto Principle applies to weightlifting. By doing just 1 heavy set a week one can get something like 50-80% of the strength gains one would by doing 15 sets.

Lately, I have reduced the volume of my workouts. It's feeling good so far. I'm still progressing and my knees feel better. I'm hoping that this will keep my consistent for a period of years and that the total gains I see will be much higher. I know I will reach a ceiling at some point which will require more volume to go past. I'll worry about that if it occurs.

There were a couple posts on Lesswrong about "optimal exercise" that you might like. This update, and the original one it links to.

WRT resistance training, I don't pursue any of the powerlifts (squat, bench, deadlift) anymore, instead focusing on other exercises that don't load the spine/knees as much but allow you to load the requisite musculature easily. Weighted step ups instead of squats can be loaded quite heavy. Hyperextensions, one-legged hypers, and reverse hyperextensions can work the posterior chain with 1/2-1/3 the load on the spine as deadlifts. Bench doesn't exactly load the spine but it is the most dangerous lift going by statistics (dropping the weight on yourself is the most common severe gym accident) and can be replaced with incline bench, dumbbell shoulder presses, and/or dips. These exercises are substantially easier to cue people on in a single session.

You might want to pick up 5/3/1 Forever. If you can get around Wendler's fairly poor explanation of how it works, there are a lot of fairly simple 2-day and 3-day templates that in theory could be done pretty quickly.

This is a question which has been asked here before, as well as in similar places, but more ideas are always welcome.

Through career progression and timely company changes, next week I will be starting a job at which I will earn far more money than I ever expected to make at any point in my life. My cost of living has not scaled with this at all. Something on the order of 15-20% of my income will amply cover all my needs. The rest is just gravy.

With this being the case: what are some ways in which I can use a surplus of money to improve my life?

I am also in a similar situation (not so dramatic perhaps, but I definitely didn't expect numbers on my income sheet to go up so fast). I even made a post here half a year ago before accepting the job offer asking for advice! I personally have too much of a middle class upbringing to ever consider spilling money into something that I can't convince my brain is good value for money. So so far I have just been treating people around me to nice restaurants and stashing most of the earnings in a checking account. But still some suggestions that might be of interest, roughly in an order of increasing cost:

  • Hire a cleaner. Not even that expensive if you don't have a large house.
  • High-end gym and/or private trainer.
  • Build yourself a solid wardrobe of high quality pieces that fit you well and match each other well. You can even hire professional help for shopping if you aren't sure about your judgment and don't want to spill money on expensive items that you will later not wear.
  • Do charity. Not the type of charity where you are feeding Western NGO types with your donations or giving mosquito blankets to African villages but stuff that leads to you having some standing in your community. My parents used to pay for medical treatments of poorer family members/acquittances and help with college tuitions of their kids etc. The respect and loyalty you get from such acts is difficult to describe if you have never witnessed people building such charity networks around them.
  • For any sporty hobby (surfing, skiing etc) you can spend a couple weeks with great private tutors in the best possible location and you will achieve a level of skill you didn't think possible. Later on this can lead to amazing vacations.
  • If you are the type of person (no judgment intended), high-end sex resorts in some Caribbean countries are the closest a man can reach the Islamic idea of heaven with money (at least non-billionaire level of money).

Ideally you will recognize that your brain is wired to seek all such status markers and worldly pleasures ultimately only for the purposes of passing on your genes in the best circumstances possible to the next generation. Try to leverage your situation to find a good partner and raise children in a favorable environment.

What's your living situation like? Buying a house ate up most of my money and also improved my life. It also opens a lot of opportunities to spend money on upgrades that you can't do in a rental.

Nice furniture is another option. My Aeron desk chair is a lot more comfortable than my cheap old one from Amazon. I love sitting in my Ekornes Stressless chair and reading. I sleep a lot better on an expensive king size mattress.

Hire a personal assistant to do all your life admin tasks. Hire a chef, or spend money such that you don't have to cook.

Just whip up a spreadsheet to calculate the new date at which you will be able to retire, and revel in the fact that it is only a few short years from now. (I recommend using the Consumer Expenditure Survey's "size of consumer unit by income before taxes: annual income less than 15 k$" numbers.)

Alternatively, if you have a cheap-but-rare porn preference (like skinny belly stuffing), see whether you can pay a few grand to sponsor a few videos.

Blessed be he who is not victim to lifestyle inflation.

Honestly, I struggle to understand this mindset. You can spend $100k on a nice 2 week vacation now, and that’s not hiring a yacht or being a baller in Monaco, that’s a modest 10 days or 2 weeks in Bora Bora or the Maldives. A nice new luxury car is $150-300k. A decent house in a nice part of a tier one city is probably over $5m. There are vicuña jackets at Loro Piana that cost $30k, and they’re actually very nice. Last year I still spent double than that on clothes and bags, and that was a comparatively lean year. I could easily spend a million dollars in a good department store in a few hours (hardmode: even without jewelry or furnishings). Truly, you are blessed.

I have faced a few problems in my life, but finding things to spend money on has never been one of them. Even many billionaires do not suffer from this dysfunction. My advice? Consider yourself lucky, save the money, and leave it for your kids to spend if you think them worthy.

You can spend $100k on a nice 2 week vacation now

How?? Or rather, what do you get out of a $100k 2 week vacation that you wouldn't get out of a $7k 2 week vacation (which still gives you $500 / day to play with, which in my experience is the level where I run out of waking hours to experience things faster than I run out of money with which to pay for those experiences). The only people I know who blow through high-5-figure amounts on a short vacation are people with major gambling problems.

Yeah the numbers don't add up. Even if every single one of your meals is in a Michelin Starred restaurant, and you live in hotel with gold plated toilets, and have a 24/7 slave literally physically carry you around so your feet don't have to touch the ground, you might reach 100k.

I think OP's budget included buying 50 Louis Vuitton items somewhere in there.

My examples were French Polynesia and the Maldives. My favorite resorts there are probably the Brando and Soneva Fushi (not Jani, although that’s more expensive), where a basic room is maybe $6k a night. That’s before food and drink (which obviously has to be flown in and is therefore extremely expensive), scuba diving ($250/pp/day) and/or other water sports, tips, transport by seaplane, flights to the country and various additional expenses. But this isn’t one-off stuff, there are whole large resort chains like Aman in this price segment with several dozen hotels around the world. Amangiri is probably $4k a night now for a basic room, that’s just to relax in the desert in Utah.

Thanks for the detailed response. And yeah I could see blowing through $500 / person / day on activities if you like scuba diving or anything involving flight. Still, even $500 / person / day for a family of 4 is only $28k over a 2 week period. So I think the question stands: what does Soneva Fushi (best price I can find is $2700 / night for a basic room) have that makes it better than e.g. Kihaa Maldives (a different 5 star resort in the maldives where even an instagrammable overwater bungalow with its own private infinity pool runs $500 / night, and a more normal room runs $275/night which includes breakfast and dinner).

Like don't get me wrong, Soneva Fushi looks nice but as far as I can tell it doesn't actually look substantially nicer than other nearby options.

I've never actually stayed at a $1000+ / night hotel - there has to be something better, or people wouldn't pay the extra amount. Unless it's just one of those things where once you're pulling in mid 7 figures a year you don't really care if you're spending $20k or $200k during your two week vacation because you run out of free time for vacations faster than you run out of discretionary money, so it's worth spending 10x as much for a 10% better experience.

I love seeing this and absolutely can't relate. My 2-week long Italian trip for $7k was extremely exorbitant. I felt like I bought whatever I wanted (Except for the 100 year anniversary edition Moto Guzzi I suppose), went to at least one Michelin star restaurant, and stayed in amazing places.

I'm knocked a Michelin star restaurant off my bucket list at it was like $5 per head. No regrets!

Yeah, we didn't go for something insanely expensive. Our biggest problem was assuming portions were tiny and vastly overbuying food. Could have got more wine.

Which? The only ones that cheap I can think of is probably that Chicken and rice hawker from singapore.

Also if you want to show off, eat at Michelin starred places. If you want to eat good, go to places that are "Bib Gourmand". It's a rating given out by Michelin for places they think is great value for money.

It was in Bangkok, but I can't recall the name rn, it had stars in two consecutive years, but I don't know if that makes it a two star restaurant or still a single one!

What's money good for if you can't spend it?

Then again, I count myself lucky that I'm not particularly consumerist, and barring buying a nicer house or car, my most expensive hobby, video games, has little to offer beyond splurging maybe 10 grand total on a top of the line PC, a ridiculous monitor and so on.

At least that's the case unless my income increases by an OOM or two, I'm sure I can find more hobbies to splurge or then, or donate some of it for political causes I care about.*

Fine liquors, ridiculously expensive clothing, fancy vacations, none particularly appeal to me, not that I'd complain if I got them.

*And invest heavily into index funds and tech companies but I intend to do that even with my minimal money, when I have more of it.

What's money good for if you can't spend it?

Safety, security, peace of mind coming from knowledge that you do not have to live from paycheck to paycheck, knowledge that you do not have to do cling to shitty job at any cost, knowledge that whatever is going to happen, you and your loved ones are not going to end destitute (barring some great catastrophe).

Trust me, I'm well aware of all of the above, and those are covered by "spend it". The potential spending is just deferred to the future, and in this case, we're talking about the lucky few who don't need to worry about that even if they're profligate purchasers otherwise, so I feel no need to spell that out myself.

Are you billionaire rich or mentally ill ?

I know people with 8-9 figure net worths and 1M USD + monthly incomes who don't spend even a fraction of this.

I don’t buy most of the things I cited and I’m not even close to billionaire rich. I was just illustrating that there are always things to spend money on. As for fashion, it’s my primary hobby (or at least expensive hobby, next to relatively cheap stuff like commenting here) and I buy a comparatively small number of interesting things a year. The spend a million dollars in a store thing was to say that I could if you gave me the money, not that I have or would, to be very clear.

There are vicuña jackets at Loro Piana that cost $30k, and they’re actually very nice.

I've never personally understood the allure of Vicuna, and I say this as someone who impulsively bought a $5k+ vicuna sweater when I was visiting New York this year shortly after getting my yearly bonus deposited into my account. I wore that thing like twice and didn't notice any difference from high end cashmere stuff you can get for $500, so I put the tags back on and it went back into its box where it has stayed. The sweater is extremely light too, significantly lighter than my other sweaters which psychologically makes me associate it with cheapness, as if the manufacturers had skimped out on yarn (my conscious brain knows vicuna wool itself is super light and LP would not do such a thing but that doesn't do anything for my subconscious), whenever I pick it up or wear it.

I have had many problems in my life, but finding things to spend money on has never been one of them.

Indeed, in the words of Oscar Wilde, “Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”

if you like a relaxing form of travel, stay at top tier all inclusive resorts for 4-5 days at a time.

Do you have children? My surplus money vanished around the time they began arriving.

Unfortunately not, lol. I'm in my 30s now and it's been very strange how I continue to meet women that don't want to have children. That's a separate conversation of course, but yeah, it's just surprised me.

I'll second learning to Fly. I haven't and won't, but it's one of those things you consider as just what "other people" do. But it doesn't have to be. You can do it. There's nothing stopping you.

Ever wanted to learn to fly? Before I was married and had children I got my private license, it's easy to spend money on expensive hobbies. 12 weeks of skiing in Austria with a private instructor / guide. There are lots of skills where time with an instructor can really speed mastery.

In my early 20's I wasn't meeting woman that seemed interested in marriage. ~26 I started telling women / everyone I wanted to be married before I was 30. I was married at 29 with 8 months to spare.

Spend some on things that will save time. Invest the rest. "Retire" early in the sense that you keep working, but now with total freedom.

I've been in your shoes for a long time and I still can't think of ways to spend my money. I tried to enforce a monthly minimum budget, but couldn't make it work.

Here's the one nice thing I have which gives me the most joy: A cleaning person.

I'd caution against giving a lot of money to charity unless you think through all the externalities. Giving money to people directly or to EA-type causes is probably good. Giving to more traditional charities is probably net negative.

Hire staff.

Cleaners, and landscapers.

It really depends on what level of wealth your at beyond that. Honestly the best thing you could do would be to live frugally for a while, invest heavily, then retire.

I apologize if this is better suited to a Sunday thread, but it's top of mind for me right now.

Any recommendations for reactionary reading? I want to be specific that I have no interest in the "Dark Enlightenment" Yarvin/Land side of things as I've read enough of that to know it really is permanently-online neo-reddit-Edge-Lord content.

To maybe give a bit of a Customers Also Liked vibe; I'm moving through the works of James Burnham and have read a lot of Russell Kirk and Willmoore Kendall. I know these folks would be more in the traditionalist conservative camp, which I have enjoyed. Wondering if there's anything beyond them that doesn't actually drop into out-and-proud monarchism / theocracy.

Andrew Klavan might be up your alley.

it really is edge lord content

I’m afraid I have some bad news about historical reactionaries. After the Second World War, fascism was edgy by default. Go back before the First, and things just start looking trad, partly because the modern nRx guys have built their aesthetic on it.

Maybe you’d have some luck with Thomas Carlyle?

Was just offered a data analyst position, specifically in Revenue Management, starts January. Will be my first data job, transitioning from software engineering. Will also be my first in-person corporate job as I've been working from home since the pandemic. Any advice? I'm pretty good with SQL and the Python ML libraries, also setting up basic data pipelines in the cloud. But I don't know anything about Revenue Management.

I'm an early career Data Scientist in e-commerce and logistics so I might not have the best advice, but maybe the most recent advice.

  1. You know pythons ML stack and sql already that's starting off on a good foot. I don't think you'd benefit much learning more technologies. Most BI tools are the same if you know how to query using sql and for the really dirty stuff you can just pull out pandas and create a report in a python notebook.
  2. Learn the domain well. Can't really help you much there. But this is non-negotiable. You will be struggling a whole lot if you get some numbers and you second guess yourself if these numbers pass the smell test or not.
  3. Don't skimp on statistics or more generally just math like a lot of developers do. As an analyst, you probably won't need to be a Statistics God, but once again knowing your stats 101 really well will save you from a lot of second guessing and awkward moments. Here's an anecdote when it saved me a lot of trouble. We track the 90th percentile timings for a lot of things. One of the higher ups was confused at to why 90th percentile of A + 90th percentile of B wasn't equal to 90th percentile of A+B. Well because it's not a linear function and that property doesn't apply. I was asked to investigate why "things weren't adding up". Knowing some basic math saved me a lot of time/headaches, and continue to do so.
  4. Know how to answer basic questions. "What was our revenue during Q3 for location X only during the every alternate weekends" should take you like 3 minutes to answer. Boy oh boy is there a lot of confusion because simple things like this that can be looked up don't get looked up. Don't take anyone's word for anything. Just look these things up.
  5. Know how to answer the hard questions. Lack of information is... information. There's a reason we can drop the nth column when one-hot-encoding without any information loss. Because the counterfactual is information! Basically don't think like an SQL monkey and limit yourself to things that only the BI tool can answer with its GUI. There are lot of opportunities for questions like this in logistics. There exists no columns in a database that allows one to catch warehouse workers slacking off, items going missing or items not being checked in, etc, but a lack of certain rows tells me where to look. So keep an open mind towards the data it probably has some secrets there in plain sight. I'm sure there are lots of things like this in Revenue Management as well.

They should pair you with a functional expert who knows about Revenue Management. Even if they don't I wouldn't worry too much. Revenue is pretty cut and dry quantitative, so you're probably going to have straightforward requests without much room for interpretation.

The upside for all data roles -- forget having to write real tests! Just run the damn pipeline / model / whatever. There is no integration, everything is a one-off.

Until you get a VP-level (or higher) who builds their promotion case on creating the Integrated Data Infrastructure Omniscient Technology and starts to require really strict sprints and CI/CD pipelines ... for building reports.

But, for the time being, if you've actually written code in a real SWE environment, data work will be technically less rigorous, but with the potential for more back and forth with human principals.

https://manifold.markets/BenjaminIkuta/will-skookumtree-pinetree-successfu?r=QmVuamFtaW5Ja3V0YQ

I made a prediction market about the Hock.

It's generally admirable to work towards a challenging goal, but I do hope he doesn't attempt it without thoroughly adequate preparation.

I have to say that I do not wish for Skookum to go kill himself in the Alaskan tundra, but I do find the evolution of “The Hock” highly entertaining. I only give him about a 10% chance of actually going through with his plan.

I personally find it very distasteful to bet on someone's dying. I hope earnestly and sincerely for his success.

The more people bet on his dying, the more accurate the estimate will be and the less likely he'll do it if it's too low. Hope won't help him.

It's Skookum the Hock guy himself - I don't find it distasteful. It's rather amusing to me, to be honest. The market has the Hock guy at 7 to 4 against...

DM me the day before you set out, I'll bother to make the account on Manifold so I can get some fake internet points.

Ah, it's in winter? Adieu skook. Seriously, don't do this. Go to donner lake, at least you can survive by eating your arms while you wait for the thaw.

People have camped in the area in the winter. I think he could do it, but when he talks about bringing skis, it worries me.

That poster is freaking incredible lmao. Awesome stuff.

Thanks - I made it myself, with a little bit of assistance from @SomeoneElse on Discord (who respects the Hock, but thinks it's stupid and doesn't recommend it). He suggested changing the position of some of the text.

What survival/outdoor experience do you have? If zero, or very little, I'm going to be hopefully one of many voices telling you not to do this. Did Chris McCandless teach us nothing?

The SSC/ACX discord has a whole bunch of memes about our very own Skook, he's notorious for his ad-Hock insanity well before he showed up here.

Assuming this one is original (or not), it still made me chuckle!

I figure it's like a gastrectomy. Gastrectomies are proven to help with weight loss, but have extreme negative side effects, and really their only purpose is to help you diet anyways. The Hock will be effective because training and getting outside of your comfort zone is always effective. The Hock itself--that is, putting yourself in a life-or-death situation--will accomplish basically nothing.

As far as whether he'll complete it, he seems to be taking preparation seriously. If he actually understands what he's getting himself into and is not autistic enough to go without GPS etc. I think he'll probably make it through.

and is not autistic enough to go without GPS etc.

I would hope! But he seems to value the lethal risk for its own sake...

I can't be bothered to make a Manifold account just for the sake of this market (even if it made me chortle) so I'm just going to verbally registered my "no".

The whole point of prediction markets is to predict more carefully than just saying offhand.

You think I'm aware of what Manifold is without getting that much? I'm simply too lazy to bother when it's something as profoundly stupid as the Hock!

I don't think any of us even know what the hock exactly is, so it's hard to say what completing it means.

I think he's going to make a post about it with more detail at some point.

That makes one of us.

I have two fitness goals at the moment, in priority order:

  1. Lose pounds of fat
  2. Gain pounds of muscle

For the recent past, I've been focusing on this by adopting a more "bulking" strategy, wherein, I'd use larger weight for my exercises, and try to push my muscles to hit higher and higher weight limits. I'd usually do this by doing 2 to 3 of sets of 12 to 15 reps for each muscle, trying to push myself to muscle failure. So basically, more weight, less reps.

However, for achieving my stated goals, how does the above bulking strategy compare to a "toning" strategy, where I'd essentially be doing less weight, for more reps, and more time. With this sort of strategy, I may be doing up to 5 minutes of reps at a time, but with 1/2 to 1/3 of the weight as I'd be doing for bulking.

Which strategy is better to help me achieve my goal? Or should I do a mix, in which case, what percentage of time should be spent on each?

To achieve body recomposition, you need a lot of protein and a calorie deficit. It's all in the diet.

The lifting strategy, so long as you're doing something reasonable, is far less important. You don't need a specialized program.

Strong first.

That's a particular program, but it's also a general philosophy.

The rep range you're talking about (12-15 or higher) is undoubtedly in the hypertrophy or endurance strikezone. You're building muscle mass (but not strength) or building your body's ability to process lactic acid efficiently (endurance).

A better strategy, especially if longevity is even a tertiary goal, is to build overall strength first. Strength is built in the 3-6 rep range, with 5 (or "fahve" according to Saint. Mark) being a generally agreed upon gold spot. Sets also fall into 3-5 for most of the big compounds, with a major exception being deadlifts which should be done for only 1 - 2 sets if at all. Some folks completely replace deadlifts with cleans or power cleans.

Why "Strong First"? Because it's the most "convertible" to other fitness goals; endurance, hypertrophy, or a mixture of the two that is often called "toning" (which isn't, strictly speaking, a thing). If you can squat, bench, press, clean / deadlift, and row heavy, you can then start to manipulate the weight-reps-sets schemes for your specific goals. Going the other way doesn't work. I've seen badass PT Marines who can do 20 pullups fail to deadlift their own bodyweight.

Additionally, there seems to be a growing amount of research indicating that resistance training is the best exercise form for longevity.

Here's the good news: Unless you already have been lifting serious for some time, your first six months of going to the gym will yield noticeable and impressive results. "n00b gainz" are real regardless of specific weight/sets/reps combos. This is also good because it frees you from the mental stress of really caring about hyper-optimization of your routines. One note, however - please, please, please do compound lifts with free weights (unless you have some prior injury where this would be a real safety hazard). Isolated lifts are pointless for anyone who isn't a bodybuilder and if they're really over-worked, can result in such proportional imbalance that they increase the likelihood of injury. Machines are ok if your gym is a typical corporate gym that skimps on squat racks. Stay away from nonsense like band work (there are applications for this, but not general fitness).

I've seen badass PT Marines who can do 20 pullups fail to deadlift their own bodyweight.

high skeptical of this

Stay away from nonsense like band work (there are applications for this, but not general fitness).

"band work" = resistance bands?

What's wrong with them? They seem like a minimal equipment way to do strength training. Maybe they just are only functional at weights too low to be useful? Or is there some deeper issue?

I see three major drawbacks to bands:

  1. The increments are too large. Exercises span resistances from like 5 Lbs-250 Lbs for a modestly trained person. Some exercises you may be only able to increment by 1-2lbs per period. So you would need an absurd amount of bands for full coverage. Compare this to a barbell where you can get 1/4# plates, or a suspension trainer/rings where the resistance can be changed infinitesimally by changing the angle you are pulling at.

  2. You need a surprisingly strong anchor point, as strong as you would need for a suspension trainer. At the point where you are installing anchors in your house, there are better options. Recall how Harry Reid somehow managed to blind himself in one eye using bands. I don't recall if this was part of the cover story for his pancreatic cancer now that I'm thinking about it though. My point is that a band going flying off and crippling you is at least plausible enough story for a US Senator.

  3. The force curve is exactly backwards of what would be effective for hypertrophy stimulus. Most of the literature indicates the greatest stimulus occurs near the stretched position for a muscle. This is when the band is least extended for most exercises, also the point of least resistance a la Hooke's law.

They are very convenient and cheap, and I do use them to warm up sometimes, but aren't generally considered very good for serious training. Well, unless you are an elite powerlifter who subscribes to westside style accommodating resistance. But then you're far too advanced for anything here.

Going the other way doesn't work.

Of course it does. It's called an accumulation phase and it's bog standard powerlifter training.

If you're in a powerlifting cycle of any sort, you've already move past the beginner lifter phase which, I believe, was OP's situation. We're talking about two different things.

When you're a beginner, just about anything you do is going to lead to gains, so it makes even less sense to say base building "doesn't work".

I've seen badass PT Marines who can do 20 pullups fail to deadlift their own bodyweight.

Like literally you've seen someone who you know can do 20 pullups fail to deadlift their own body weight? Or just like with poor form? I'm trying to understand how that's possible, like worst case they should be able to row that weight and stand up just pivoting around a bar that is already at waist height. I've seen people that can can do 20 pushups who cant deadlift their own bodyweight, but that's a totally different part of the kenetic chain.

All that being said, I do tend to agree, which is why I used fahves in my example below. I didn't want to be too dogmatic about it, because other stuff can work. My rough view of the literature is that somehow it even suggest that it 'should' work just a well or better. My not very well supported theory, on why the other stuff seems to work less well than the laboratories studies suggest is that normal people have no idea exactly how hard you have to go to reach true failure in rep ranges > 10. Like a 20 rep set of squats to total failure feels uncomfortable at rep 6, starts noticeably slowing down at 8, feels like your legs are going to explode at 12, feels like you're going to vomit at 15, feels like you're going to vomit blood at 18, and requires entering the shadow realm the last rep or two. The lab studies that indicate higher rep ranges work tend to at least have a undergraduate telling the participants to keep going if they obviously have reps left in the tank. From casual observation, I think unprompted most people stop at very uncomfortable which can be very far from failure in high rep ranges.

I do actually recommend the starting strength book as well as practical programing. The big advantage being the novice linear progression is pretty idiot proof, or more charitably novice proof. I was a little bit surprised that it's no longer on the fitness wiki, because it used to be the go to suggestion for beginners on their fitness journey.

entering the shadow realm

Peace be upon you, fellow gym-meme brother/sister.

Re: "20 pullups, but no deadlift?" The case that comes to mind was a long distance runner who I saw doing a PFT. Rail skinny, but did kill his pullups. By sheer insane coincidence, ran into him at the post gym later that day. 2 plate deadlift, had to cat-back it by the third rep. My theory is that the hyper-specifically trained for his pullups on the PFT by doing .... a shit ton of pullups for several months. I can see how that would over emphasize biceps-to-lats but not actually develop the full posterior chain through the glutes and hamstrings. I think you're also probably correct in the "form" argument - he had no conception of how to use his legs to start the rep.

Now, would've been able to rack pull 225? Hey, maybe.

Our toothpick-built distance runner was deadlifting a good deal more than his body weight and was doing pretty well for someone who doesn't lift much if at all. If he was trying and failing with 185 for a single rep that would be different.

Also, he most definitely would have been able to rack pull 225, given that his deadlift form was shitty and he nonetheless got 2 good reps at 225. Starting as a stick-thin non-lifting dude built like a gazelle.

not a surprise. being fat or extra weight is of no benefit for the deadlift, unlike other major lifts

The distance runner was just a very skinny and fitter-than-average special case of 'untrained dude attempting weightlifting'. For someone who may step foot in a weight room twice in a good year this is pretty decent for a complete and total n00b. Sure, anyone who's not a total stranger to a weight room (unlike this guy) will smoke him, but the guy's a runner, not a lifter; he'd smoke us in a 5K for sure.

No way did that guy weigh anything close to 225. And even that weight he could lift.

This may be bro-science, but I've been taught that lower weight + higher reps is what to go for if you want to prioritize muscle mass versus strength. The reasoning having to do with the total amount of time your muscles are being activated. Again, probably bro-science, but at the least, that indicates that there's nothing about using lower weight + higher reps that significantly reduce one's muscle gain from weight lifting, since if that were the case, people would have noticed and not developed this bit of old wives' tale.

More generally, my own personal experience and general "common sense" among people who lift weights has been that, for 99% of people, whatever weight lifting regimen that is safe, challenging, and regularly stuck to is the best one for achieving their fitness goals, whatever those goals are. The differences that come from different types of strategies only matter for that 1% of people who take this very seriously and/or compete against other people who are hyper-optimizing their body recomposition. If you're not in that category, I'd say the main concern should be, can I do this "toning" strategy just as safely and just as regularly while challenging myself about as much as my other strategy? If so, then it'd be good to add it into your exercise toolbox, if only for variety's sake.

Doing both goals is possible if you are a novice. In that case I would recommend sticking to the 5-20 rep range and focusing on clean technique. Pushing to true muscular failure is probably not necessary, I don't interpret this as a license to totally slack off though. I would just stop at technical failure or 1-2 reps shy, normally this is perceived as "hard." Especially for people who have never trained hard before.

The terminology used here is... slightly non-standard. The dominant factor for losing fat or gaining muscle, assuming hard resistance training, is energy or caloric balance. If you are not a novice, and you would like to do both, you will either have to separate the goals into distinct periods or (not recommended though @self_made_human might provide a counter argument) hop on anabolics.

@Mewis's description agrees with my own interpretation of the consensus on muscle building stimulus. It's not clear there is an upper bound for the number of reps where hypertrophy stimulus stops, but below 50-60% of one rep max weights getting anywhere close to an effective distance from failure is very difficult. For example, say we define an effective set as within 4 reps of muscular failure. Choosing a weight of 1/2 of 1RM might be anywhere from 20-100 reps for true muscular failure. This is the first problem with very low weights, choosing a target to hit is very hard. Now say the true number of clean reps to failure is 50, reps 40-46 are all going to feel horrible. If you stop at 40 though, we likely haven't gotten 'close enough' to failure to deliver a quality stimulus. This is despite doing a lot of mechanical work/volume. Compare to targeting 80% of 1RM. the number of reps to failure is likely 7 or 8. If you do 5 reps you are for sure within 4 reps of true failure. So you deliver a higher quality stimulus while having to do less total tonnage. At 30% of 1RM your not really targeting muscles in the anabolic or even anti-catabolic sense. You would probably be better off with a different modality of training, like an elliptical or something.

For completeness, for pure strength the 3-5 rep range is generally considered the Goldilocks zone (with occasional singles, doubles, and higher rep work).

not recommended though @self_made_human might provide a counter argument) hop on anabolics.

I'm no expert on the matter, and my previous post was largely asking for information about the drugs so I could make an informed decision, so I'm going to recuse myself for now!

There is not really any such thing as a 'toning' strategy. Though many people appreciate the toned look, which is to say, lithe and lean with only a bit of muscle, the fact is that a build like that is pretty easy to get without weights. To that end, doing easy sets where you come nowhere near failure would be quite effective because you wouldn't be stimulating any muscle growth.

There is an argument for doing sets with more reps. Anything from 5-30 reps is effective for stimulating muscle growth, and there is some evidence that on the higher end of that range, it's better for hypertrophy, while on the lower end of that range, it's better for strength, but the difference seems pretty small. However, this is assuming the same intensity - in other words, going to or close to failure. Though the exact mechanisms for muscle gain are not totally understood, one thing is clear - mechanical tension on the muscle itself is very important. If normally, you lifted 80kg on a particular lift for a set of ten, it's likely going to be very hard to stimulate growth going down to 40kg or 30kg. To take a real world example, it's not people who do a lot of steps that end up with big calves, it's people who have high bodyweight.

At the same time, a lot of people who are naturally muscular from heavy manual labor aren’t lifting ‘to failure’ when they’re stacking crates or moving machinery, they’re just doing a ‘lot of reps’.

manual labor does not make you much stronger, more like stronger people attracted to manual labor

I don't know how true that is. I myself am a laborer, and I work alongside other laborers - they tend to be physically fit, but only to the extent that the job selects for physically active young men. We have slender twinks and dad bods, and the guys with great physiques all go to the gym on top of whatever we do at work. It's not that manual labour doesn't do anything - even jogging and stretching have been shown to work as muscle stimulus in people who are totally untrained, so any level of physical activity is better than nothing. But if you carry 10kg boxes around for work, your body will adapt, and eventually you will find it no longer works as stimulus even when you do it for forty hours a week. Endurance runners do not end up with big legs, sprint cyclists do, because they're pumping their legs hard to create a lot of force to accelerate quickly - thus, placing a lot of tension on their quads.

But, even supposing this was true, it's still totally impractical. Maybe a workout regimen that replicated this situation could work - but it would take forty hours a week!

they tend to be physically fit, but only to the extent that the job selects for physically active young men. We have slender twinks and dad bods, and the guys with great physiques all go to the gym on top

yup...you cannot reliably predict how strong someone is or isn't by appearance except for very obvious cases

Or at another limit, endurance runners do literally thousands of reps of swinging their arms per workout but I would still expect someone who does 100 chin-ups a week to have a bigger upper body.

Manual laborers do tend to have good general physical preparedness and work capacity, so I would expect someone who does manual labor to be able to make better gains if they do resistance train. Only because they can handle more tonnage (sets x reps x weight / week) and more effective volume (hard sets / week). I wouldn't expect that much more on a volume equated basis beyond the selection effect mentioned by @Mewis.

I thought the general consensus was that while building strength is best done by lifting heavier things, hypertrophy (ie bulking) is best served by lighter weights for more reps. The powerlifter lifts less but heavier, the more vain bodybuilder lifts more but lighter?

I guess one my my questions is, if I'm looking to primarily gain muscle for the purpose of increasing my base metabolism, so I can lose weight, what's best? Hypertrophy or strength or something else?

The general consensus I'm familiar with on this is, this isn't worth it. It's been a while since I looked into it, but IIRC, if you replace 1 lbs of fat with 1 lbs of muscle in your body - no easy feat - this adds like 30-50 extra Calories to your daily energy usage. That's only like 1-2K extra Calories per month, which is only about half a pound of fat loss, or about 6 pounds a year. Not bad, but in the scale of a year, 6 pounds is basically just noise, and you're going to get much better returns on effort through cardio and diet.

But, of course, every bit does count, and it's not as if building muscle is bad for you or your weight loss. For that, I believe you want to increase mass, since for increasing BMR, the mass is what matters most (the types of fibers likely matter as well, but for BMR, it will be minimal, since the energy required to twitch those muscles isn't factored in). Which likely means less focus on strength (weight) and more on hypertrophy (e.g. reps to failure).

I think the consensus is something like 1-5 reps for strength. 6-10 for hypertrophy. I'm not sure what more than 10 gets you and it might be considered fuckarounditis.

My wireless in-ears got clogged with wax, disturbing the stereo balance, and after trying to clean it out with a q-tip dipped in isopropyl alcohol, I decided it was a shame to let it go to waste and then cleaned my ear canals out with it.

In hindsight, this was a pretty bad decision, my ears ache, and I think I might have caused local irritation or even a mild infection. I didn't expect that to happen, I've done it before with no real issue, but..

Fuck me, if putting q-tips in there is bad for me, why does it feel so right? At least without the alcohol..

One thing I noticed about a decade or two ago is that Q-tips and similar products always have instructions that explicitly tell you not to put it into your ear, only swab around the entrance. Presumably it's to avoid legal liability or something, but I don't think I've ever encountered anyone, including myself, who heeds this instruction, to the extent that it's actually unusual for someone to use Q-tips for something other than poking into their ears. It does feel, so, so right, though I admit I always have a bit of a dissatisfied ticklish feeling afterward.

I've never put a Q-tip in my ear. Not once. Naive me, until I read online, I thought basically all right-thinking people heeded this advice. Perforated ear drums seem like too big a deal to risk.

I've been cleaning inside of my ears with broken off wooden skewers and wads of cotton wool since.. well moving away from home where it was q-tips.

Trust me, even gently poking at the eardrum with something soft is excruciating, I can't imagine perforating it.

I've had no real issues 99.9% of the times I've used them in the ear canal, barring this particular incident with the leftover alcohol, and one time my mom cheaped out and bought the cheapest Chinese variant on Amazon.

The latter dislodged in my ear, and after I didn't pay too much attention, developed into a bad case of otitis media that had the ENT doctor who examined me suspect it was a fungal infection until the syringing brought out a moldy lump of cotton that had been festering in there for 6 months. So do check if all of it came back out with the wax!

Once you syringe your ears, you never go back. Q tips don’t get out the deep level wax.

Why do I want to get out the deep level wax? If I need a syringe to remove something that healthy bodies develop normally, I tend to assume that I shouldn't remove it.

Short Version: YES CHAD

Long Version: Your body has a natural process for managing the wax, and it is present for a reason, the absence of it has risks and the removal process has risks (even with liquid irrigation), for this reason it isn't recommended to due it anymore than necessary.........but it is a popular request.

For a few reasons (run of the mill buildup, a foreign body, leftover debris from an infection, shitty anatomy like narrow canals ) you can get buildup that can feel uncomfortable, be painful, create pressure on other structures.....or most commonly cause reduction in ability to hear (very common in the elderly).

It also tends to just FEEL good in the way that a lot of self care does. Ultimately you aren't supposed to do it very often.

Protip: if you are worried about wax build up impacting your hearing an easy way to check is to rub your fingers together close to each ear. If the sound level is different something is likely going down (if it's the same it could still be wax build up but the issue is more commonly expressed heavier on one side than the other).

Also human if you read this come on bruh. Terrible idea.

I happened to read this about 2 months late, and right after a ?middle ear infection /painful wax buildup that happened after I refrained from using q-tips for a good while :(

(Mostly because I ran out at home, and couldn't be bothered to buy more)

As a point of mild contention, if you develop noticeable hearing loss from wax buildup, I would assume that's clear evidence that your body isn't doing what it's supposed to in regards to keeping the ear canal nice and open.

As for ear irrigation, what's really the worst that can happen? A vasovagal syncope, assuming you aren't using boiling water. I had to irrigate a horrendous amount of wax back in my intern days, to the point that if I collected it all after a dozen patients, I could reproduce that candle scene from Shrek 1 haha.

As for q-tips, yeah, probably not a good idea, but I lump it into the same category of guilty pleasures as my love for biryani and disregard for my cardiovascular health. The one time it really backfired on me was because I used cheapo no-name buds that detached inside my ear while I didn't notice. I will only cease extolling the virtues of that practise when the GMC get my ass 🙏

I'm hammered so please forgive some element of nonsense here but keep in mind that earwax has several natural purposes that can be further impaired by irrigation, for instance if you have clogging but not full blockage it can be partially functional at most of its given tasks but failing at whats most superficially noticeable (that is: hearing).

If you are irrigating you are more likely to end up with shit like infections and physical trauma, which the wax is supposed to be assisting with.

Risk/reward benefit is tricky here.

As a side note lots of people end up with otitis because of things like rubbing the ear in response to irritation (which might be caused by something like eczema).

Try not to irritate it and that can make an honest to god huge difference.

The main thing for me is that one of my ear canals has a tendency to have the ear wax slightly come loose, loose enough that I can hear crackling when I walk or chew, but not so loose that I can get it out either through hopping or my pinkie finger, which usually just packs it in harder, only to come loose later as I walk. I either have to use a Q-tip or just tolerate the crackling sound (which isn't actually all that bad, since I'm not walking or chewing most of the time).

The rule of thumb is dont put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear (aka don't put shit in your ear). Officially you should talk to your doctor about this, unofficially depending on what's going on and your anatomy (including the earwax type) you might have luck with using something like Debrox, which is available over the counter in the U.S.

If you have a history of ear infections or anything else like that then have caution.

I've had to perform it as a therapeutic service for plenty of people while I was an intern doing my ENT rotation, so you can take my word for it that it can get bad enough to affect hearing.

The body, while usually a finely oiled machine, has plenty of minor and bizarre failure modes, and some people (like me) produce more earwax than the norm, even if I don't think it actually affects my hearing. I just find q-tips satisfying.

If you do it, try to get someone else to help you (since there is a minor risk of passing out from vagal stimuli, the nerve runs along the ear canal), and use lukewarm water that feels neutral on your hand, preferably boiled or distilled water, even if I don't think that particularly matters. Cold water can make it more likely you'll pass out, and overly hot.. You can guess why that's a bad idea I'm sure.

If you're doing it yourself, I recommend sitting or lying down if possible.

I've had that pleasure before, and the annoyance of doing it to hundreds of people during my ENT rotation, but it seems like a bit of a pain compared to just popping out the cotton.

Well, TIFU.

Today I managed to achieve the incredible feat of making it to work over two hours late. I was so smashed that I slept for 11 hours, through an alarm, and made it to work at 11:35 AM. Was expecting to be raked over the coals once I got there and apologised, but instead my superior repeatedly told me it was alright and that she was just worried if something had happened to me.

While I am usually a very reliable worker and often work close to 50 hour weeks (for a job that pays far lower than the median Australian salary), I don't feel good about it. At all. I stayed three hours after close of business just to try and make up for it and got off work at 8pm, something I was told I didn't have to do but did anyway. I feel especially bad because my superiors are genuinely nice to me and even though the job is tiring, requires a lot of task juggling, and doesn't pay very much at all, that's not their fault and I would really like to not disappoint them.

Interesting, this has never happened to me.

You understand this is going on your permanent record, right?

You understand this is going on your permanent record, right?

As I said, I'm not ecstatic about it. It's probably one of the biggest marks against myself I've earned while I've been there, and while it didn't affect any deadlines or critical tasks (I was able to finish all my work) it probably does have an impact on perceptions of reliability.

At the risk of sounding self-aggrandising, though, I will say I'm not too concerned about people's perceptions of me in the long run since I am aware people are generally happy with my performance. In the org I work at, there's a monthly meeting where you can nominate someone who's performed particularly well, and last month I received three separate nominations. I am told regularly that people have good things to say about me, and often have to be pushed by my superiors into going home. The reason why I was "smashed" enough to sleep 11 hours was not because of any particularly indulgent behaviour, it's because I have consistently tired myself out for the past month or so.

The main practical concern I have at this point is more that this could happen again and I want to incorporate protections against that into my routine. But if three alarms isn't enough to make me get up and stay up, it's hard to imagine something that will.

My hospital has the fun aspect of being incredibly anal about punch-in timings, so since everyone later than 2 minutes gets in a similar amount of trouble in the system, the administrators have long stopped giving a shit and rubber stamp all efforts on the app to "renormalize" the discrepancy.

Interesting, this has never happened to me.

Yeah, I've had colleagues show up about this late, and even more than my irritation, I'm genuinely baffled. What the fuck is going on? How is it even possible to sleep through an alarm? Obviously, different people have very different reactions to the world, but this just seems completely impossible to me. I'm not claiming that I'm a paragon of responsibility, I've had to take a sick day for a hangover, but I still woke up, put the day in the system, and canceled meetings.

I think it is honestly a function of how much you care.

When I think it is important the alarm is almost unnecessary, I will wake up at the correct time, 5-20 minutes before my alarm was scheduled to go off.

If it is only something I sort of want to get up for ... an alarm will help. I will get up when it buzzes, maybe snooze it once.

Occasionally, when I am incredibly tired and don't care too much about sleeping in. The alarm will not be registered in my memory. I think in most of these cases I have gotten up, turned off the alarm and gone back to sleep in a semi-daze/sleepwalking state. I have no recollection of turning off the alarm, but that is what happened.

I've never been that late, but if I'm tired enough, I'll turn off my alarm without completely waking up, go back to sleep, and not remember the alarm ever having gone off. That has only ever meant sleeping for another hour at most though.

How is it even possible to sleep through an alarm? Obviously, different people have very different reactions to the world, but this just seems completely impossible to me.

Not only have I slept through alarms, I went through a period where I would dream that I was waking up in my room, walk over to the alarm clock, be unable to shut it off, realize I was dreaming, wake up and go to turn off the alarm clock, realize I was still dreaming, and so on. I think the worst instance was three layers deep.

It helps to be extremely tired, and to make a habit of hitting the snooze button and otherwise increase your exposure to the alarm sound while on the edge of sleep.

False awakenings are fun and fascinating experiences. I used to have them here and there, though I haven't had one in a long time. I too had the habit of hitting the snooze button while in the half-awake state, and that half-awake state I think is a big factor in making these happen, along with the related phenomenon of lucid dreams.

I think there's a common idea, popularized in part by Inception, of dreams-within-dreams, where your dream-self falls asleep and dreams, and that dream-self can sleep and dream, and so forth, and when you awaken, you awaken to the previous dream layer, then awaken from that, and so forth, until you awaken to reality (presumably, anyway). I don't know how much research there is in this, but my pet theory is that it's nothing like that, and that it's all just one "layer" of dreaming. Dreams are, almost by definition, fictional experiences we have in our minds while we sleep, and at some point, we might have the fictional experience of awakening during the dream. This, when viewed retrospectively through our memories, then cleaves our dream to what came before that experience of awakening and what came after, with the former being the 2nd layer of dream, dream-within-a-dream. But, in fact, we hadn't fallen asleep while dreaming like how Leonardo DiCaprio's character fell asleep while riding a fictional van in a fictional cityscape contained within a dream in Inception. This would also be why we can shoot up multiple "levels" of dreams in a night and remember those (to whatever extent we remember dreams, which is a whole other issue), but we don't go down the "levels" by actively going to bed and falling asleep in a dream (at least, I haven't experienced this or heard other people mention this).

I've also independently slept through 3 separate alarms intentionally placed in 3 different places in my bedroom before, but not for reasons related to false awakenings. I just had bad sleeping habits and was a heavy sleeper.

A few years ago, I went drinking with some friends, forgot to set my alarm and woke up at 11am on the day of a critical pitch (which I shouldn’t even have been in, but had been drafted into at the last minute), which started at 10.30, 20+ missed calls on my phone. Firing me would have been at least arguably justified. Instead, when I met my boss that afternoon, he said some variant of “This happens to everyone once. Consider this your one get out of jail free card. I won’t mention it again. If it happens again, you’re fired”.

I thought that was pretty fair.

You got there, apologized, and worked hard; a sincere apology does a lot to defuse anger. I remember reading an anecdote about martial arts classes. Often, when someone is late, they get told to warm themselves up and are given some number of pushups "as punishment". But the important thing about the pushups is once they're done, they're done. The student is to let go of the shame of being late, and the instructor is to let go of any frustration towards the tardy student.

You probably feel like shit right now. While it is correct to be ashamed of getting smashed and missing work, it is not correct to blow that all out of proportion. You've apologised, and you've done your pushups. Let it go, and be on time from now on. Work hard and work well, but don't flog yourself into further slip-ups. That's better than carrying around anxiety over this.

Another test for the Motte:

The Moral Foundations test

I'm listed as being closest to libertarian, which I will admit isn't entirely incorrect, even if I'd prefer to term myself a classical liberal with libertarian tendencies. Ideally I'd prefer a test that broke things down in a more granular manner, but I suppose of the options available here, I can't complain too much it lumped me in with the libertarians.

My results below

/images/1699441366405206.webp

Your scores:

  • Care 75%
  • Loyalty 61%
  • Fairness 89%
  • Authority 67%
  • Purity 69%
  • Liberty 72% Your strongest moral foundation is Fairness. Your morality is closest to that of a Conservative.

I guess this is right. Feels close to what I was raised to believe were classic British values. Loyalty surprisingly low.

Your scores:

Care 58%
Loyalty 47%
Fairness 64%
Authority 47%
Purity 25%
Liberty 64%

You have no one strongest moral foundation.
Your morality is closest to that of a Libertarian.

Answered the questions mostly based on vibes, especially when they were ambiguous.

Your scores:

Care 78%

Loyalty 56%

Fairness 64%

Authority 67%

Purity 56%

Liberty 86%

Your strongest moral foundation is Liberty.

Your morality is closest to that of a Conservative.

Your scores:

Care 67%

Loyalty 42%

Fairness 58%

Authority 67%

Purity 42%

Liberty 78%

Your strongest moral foundation is Liberty.

Your morality is closest to that of a Conservative.

Guess I am a conservative after all then...

My condolences, especially since most "Conservatives" would find plenty of your views not particularly likeable!

Funnily enough I doubt most liberals etc. would find my views particularly likeable either. They don't seem to lie on the standard western belief spectrum cline so everyone basically matches me to "not one of us, so therefore likely one of them".

What a frustrating quiz. Is there some reason these are always left so ambiguous? Does Marl give up and close the tab the second he's forced to read more than 50 words in a row? Eg.

  • "Scott is hosting a dinner party. For dessert, he serves chocolate cake, shaped to look like dog poop." - I'm supposed to make a call about whether this is "morally okay or not" given no other information. Does this not obviously depend on who's at the dinner party, and their preferences, temperaments, etc? Scott is hosting a dinner party for his football buds who find it hilarious. Laughs are had, poop-cake enjoyed, etc. Fine, yeah, morally okay! Good even. Scott is hosting a dinner party for his in-laws, who he knows don't appreciate his twisted sense of humour. They are disgusted. Scott knew they would be disgusted, and did it anyway just to see the looks on their faces. That's bad.
  • "Some men have a private, all-male club and feminists take them to court, demanding that they open it up to women." - What is even being tested here? Is it having a private all-male club in the first place or taking the club to court to open it up? Presumably the latter. From the perspective of the feminists, they likely have a sincere belief they are doing the right thing. I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to say about this. I personally think people should be able to have exclusive clubs, but also think you should be able to oppose exclusive clubs if you feel that way. I guess I'm neutral? Again, if the question was more specific, I could come down stronger on one side or the other.
  • "A group of parents, concerned about their children's risk of obesity, demand that the local store stops selling XL sized candy bars and soft drinks." - Again, what is being tested? The parents have a reasonable concern, make an unreasonable demand, which they are entitled to make, and the store is entitled to reject. "Is this morally okay?". Is what morally okay?
  • "Sarah's dog has four puppies. She can only find a home for two of them, so she kills the other two with a stone to the head." - a little more information please? Could Sarah not afford to house the puppies herself, or does she simply not want them? Does she have any other options? Is that the most humane way she could have killed them, or is she just trying to avoid a vet bill?

I don't think I'm being pedantic here.

This is a flaw of pretty much any poll or quiz, regardless of the nominal goal it seeks, the average person is an attention deficient idiot whose eyes glaze over the moment they spot a caveat in the wild, so everyone is forced to sacrifice clarity for the sake of just getting more responses.

I'm a Bayesian, and I implicitly consider what I think is the most likely/representative scenario. I think the odds of someone serving a shit-cake is far higher if they know they're in an environment where it's not going to make someone puke, and that informed my answer (a solid triple upvote because I'd be mildly tickled at the idea myself, combined with not considering it offensive or worthy of condemnation).

Similarly, I assume the woman euthanizing the puppies isn't being actively malicious, and if they ended up un-adopted in a shelter, most of them would be put down by other means. I imagine the researchers who made the poll were more curious about the visceral gut reaction to the idea of poor little puppies being stoned to death as opposed to trying to tease out more subtle moral considerations, and while I'm a fan of dogs in general, I don't think the scenario I envisioned is condemnable.

Your scores:

Care 67%

Loyalty 89%

Fairness 78%

Authority 39%

Purity 44%

Liberty 86%

Your strongest moral foundation is Loyalty.

Your morality is closest to that of a Libertarian.

I'm fine with describing myself as something like "libertarian, but with demands for interpersonal loyalty and fairness". I'm not a fan of state-enforced loyalty and fairness, but I think strong social norms to shun people that step outside those bounds are basically good.

The question that probably exemplifies that the most is one that reacted to more strongly than I'd expect, and it was the one about the guy singing along to the other country's anthem at a soccer game. Sure, the question is incomplete and I can imagine good reasons someone might do that, but under the generic situation, I don't like the guy. He's a contrarian, he's disloyal, he just likes to fuck with people. I don't like him.

Care 83%
Loyalty 69%
Fairness 92%
Authority 64%
Purity 64%
Liberty 75%

Strongest moral foundation is fairness and I got matched to conservative.

However, I do score much higher on care and fairness than a typical conservative apparently. Actually, except for the libertarian on liberty I score higher or (almost) equal on every moral foundation compared to any of the profiles. I don't know how good my morality is, but I sure do seem to have a lot of it.

Well, I ended up taking the test three times.

The first run through was entirely vibes-based and I tried to really weigh out what felt like a triple-immoral vs. a double-immoral vs. a single-immoral, and vice-versa, usually trying to pick a direction one way or the other. This one was also probably the most influenced by the order I got served the questions in, because I think I got less decisive over the course of it.

That run matched me to Left-Liberal:

  • Care - 83%
  • Fairness - 67%
  • Loyalty - 36%
  • Authority - 28%
  • Purity - 17%
  • Liberty - 64%

The second run through I tried to keep with a strong preference for "neutral/not applicable" and only give any affirmative push either way if something about the situation particularly moved me strongly.

That run also matched me to Left-Liberal:

  • Care - 63%
  • Fairness - 58%
  • Loyalty - 31%
  • Authority - 28%
  • Purity - 31%
  • Liberty - 58%

For the third run I went maximalist and selected (three thumbs up) if I would fight for someone's right to not face legal consequences for the action, (three thumbs down) if I would fight for the threat of legal consequences to be imposed on someone for the action, and (neutral) in all other cases.

That run matched me to Libertarian:

  • Care - 33%
  • Fairness - 50%
  • Loyalty - 8%
  • Authority - 0%
  • Purity - 0%
  • Liberty - 83%

To me the scale itself is a little confusing. I can get an intuitive sense of what three different levels of morally wrong should feel like. But, I had trouble imagining what it means for something to be a little morally okay, quite a bit morally okay but not fully, or extremely morally okay.

I didn't interpret any of the options as communicating "this is a morally good action" so I wasn't really confident about my choices on that side of the scale.

In all three attempts I ended up giving a lot of "this is morally okay" answers to a lot of actions that would absolutely negatively impact the way I thought about a friend, colleague or stranger if I knew that they had done the action. I don't know if that means I've missed the point of the exercise or not.

(Sorry for the deletion of the previous iteration of this comment, I'm on mobile and replied as a top level instead of a comment accidentally.)

Thanks for taking the time to redo it multiple times, there's no clear guidance as to whether something is morally laudable/condemnable or whether you personally approve (assuming hypocrisy of some sort where the two diverge), so I personally went with the latter, since there were examples, like the officer covering up a friendly fire incident, where I think it would be morally superior for him to come clean, but I personally think it's excusable if he knows there will be severe consequences for an accident of war.

Care 31% Loyalty 31% Fairness 50% Authority 22% Purity 56% Liberty 83% Your strongest moral foundation is Liberty.

Your morality is closest to that of a Libertarian.

I definitely have libertarian sympathies, but I would still consider myself more conservative than libertarian, especially among popular social issues. What I find surprising is that I personally find loyalty very important in friendships and relationships, so that loyalty is so low is something surprising to me.

I've already shared a political compass poll, so I won't repeat it, but this one just condenses everyone down into 3 buckets of left liberal, conservative and libertarian. I certainly am closer to a libertarian than the other alternatives, at least I think that's the directional improvement, but on the full compass I was dead center.

As an Enlightened Centrist, I suppose I need to get a grill sooner rather than later!

I probably poll more libertarian at the moment because I don't highly respect authority (probably because authority seems to keep getting it wrong in the worst ways possible). I've taken a few political compass map polls and I tend to lean conservative in those, though less so than I would expected for myself.

Grilling is definitely a hobby I'm interest. And breadmaking. A personal goal is to smoke a brisket but I'll probably never have the time/disposable income/space to do it.

  • Care: 60
  • Loyalty: 80
  • Purity: 60
  • Liberty: 60
  • Fairness: 72
  • Authority: 86

Interestingly I answered ‘neutral’ to maybe half the questions, in that I didn’t really consider them moral issues (hiring the hotter over the more competent intern isn’t immoral, it just may or may not be poor business practice; killing a rabbit on TV is neither particularly immoral nor moral, nor is serving dog meat). My strongest positions related to respect for parents and authority, but I also thought the man not greeting the other parent at school because he was a janitor was very rude/wrong. Buying your kid all the toys so the others can’t have them is just deliberately petty and therefore wrong too.

Generally speaking, prosocial behavior is good, antisocial behavior is bad, libertarianism cannot effectively handle defectors, fanatics and degenerates, who are three primary risks to an advanced society (the NAP means that, by definition, libertarianism or even classical liberalism in general requires the great majority of the population to be ideologically libertarian to work).

killing a rabbit on TV

Yeah, I had to go neutral on this one. If it's for sadistic reasons, this is plainly evil. If it's because the animal was caught in a snare and they're going to butcher and eat it, well, that seems like a positive.

I think killing an animal just for views is antisocial. Now if it’s a documentary on farm life, and perhaps they even eat dogs, that’s fine.

Who even defends the NAP? At this point it’s just a club to attack classical liberal opinions generally, who of course did not wait for the NAP to come into being. And said ideas do not need to be implemented wholesale, they usually work fine and debate well one-on-one on the issue du jour.

"While on a live on-air tv show, a man kills a baby rabbit with a knife."

It doesn't specify whether this was done for shock value, not that you can rule that out. I don't see it making a difference myself, I value the life of a rabbit at roughly nil either way.

I mostly agree with you, which is why I'm mildly surprised our scores differ so much.

Your criticism of pure-blooded libertarianism is precisely why I don't consider myself a card carrying member, if someone was say, building an unaligned AGI or performing dangerous GOF research or maybe raising malaria ridden mosquitos in their backyard, I reserve the right to stop them by force, even if I'm tolerant of less pernicious activities.

Care 83% Loyalty 17% Fairness 67% Authority 0% Purity 33% Liberty 100%

Your strongest moral foundation is Liberty. Your morality is closest to that of a Libertarian.

nice, 0 auth, 100 liberty. I did treat every question as binary. Didn't know I was that caring, but I guess if there's no cost involved, I technically care.

I did treat every question as binary. Didn't know I was that caring, but I guess if there's no cost involved, I technically care.

Pollsters who go to the effort of having 7 different options in shambles.

I think that unless you strongly opine on a matter, the correct way of approaching this is to hit the neutral option. I'd be curious what your results would be if you re-did it with judicious use of the same, instead of maximally preferring one side of a binary!

Oh but I do strongly opine. Sorry, ‘a little bit okay’ is just okay. I could redo it, but the results would be those of a wishy-washy, incorrect version of me.

I would say that I highly prize fairness, I just have a different definition of it from the one used in the poll.

For example, I see nothing/little wrong with the manager privileging the prettier intern over the more competent one (this is grossly true in practise, see the halo effect, but that's orthogonal to the issue of whether that's good). Sure, I can agree that focusing on looks overly much over competence in an employee might be an example of misalignment from the idealized version of themselves that would be best for a business, but given that the two of them only had a minor difference in terms of competency, I don't particularly care. I see nothing wrong with women who opt for the casting-couch route for getting ahead either.

And depending on the job, being attractive might well be extremely important, people are more likely to return to a restaurant with a pretty and flirtatious waitress, even if she might occasionally get an order mixed up, and that's broadly true in most fields, especially anything people-oriented like sales.

Sure, I can agree that focusing on looks overly much over competence in an employee might be an example of misalignment from the idealized version of themselves that would be best for a business, but given that the two of them only had a minor difference in terms of competency, I don't particularly care.

My view on the matter seems common in practice, but uncommon to articulate, which is that being around attractive people is more pleasant and that all else equal, I would always choose the more attractive person. In the United States, so many people are grotesquely fat that it's easy to opt into being way more attractive than the median simply by being reasonably physically fit, which also makes attractiveness a marker for character.

Yeah that was a tough one. I did put okay, because the not okay route runs into the problem of unenforceable thoughtcrime. There’s an ambiguity in seeing ‘okay’ as either the most commendable course of action, or just an act which does not require any kind of punishment.

Care 69% Loyalty 44% Fairness 78% Authority 44% Purity 39% Liberty 50%

Your strongest moral foundation is Fairness.

Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.

I don't think we would get along. :P

I bicker happily with most people on the Motte, but IRL I'm a pretty chill person who can mix with just about any crowd. I suppose that's largely because this place is designed to discuss contentious topics and deeply-held beliefs, and my stance on FDA delenda est, HBD or the like doesn't come up much in normal contexts haha

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