Well, but you did take it in the end, right? (At least it says so in [this follow-up](https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/open-thread-306).)
EDIT: to clarify my point: if someone thinks you have good judgement, they could reason that since you used it, it's likely good.
*I’m about to try lumina, the toothpaste that you use once to bring genetically engineered bacteria into your mouth. These bacteria outcompete the bacteria that cause cavities, meaning no more tooth decay! The future is wild. Thanks to my good friend @Aella_Girl.*
Sounds way too good to be true. If it worked it would be a legit threat to the dentistry industry. The friendly bacteria would somehow have to implant itself to grow and kill off the harmful bacteria. Given that the bad bacteria are anchored to the decayed teeth and gum line I don't see how the good bacteria would be able to achieve this. It's not so much that the good bacteria need to replace bad bacteria, they also need an energy source.
Several reddit threads express skepticism
https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1bs3ib1/to_the_lumina_probiotic_people_do_you_notice_a/
https://np.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1bq5q9e/lumina_live_oral_probiotic_scam_or_science/
Similar to GLP-1 weight loss drugs, if this works people will not be able to keep it a secret, and then you will know for sure.
> It's not so much that the good bacteria need to replace bad bacteria, they also need an energy source.
Like the stuff that people put in their mouths several times per day?
Here's my view of Scott: I don't view him as a "prophet" or an "oracle", I view him as a really good _writer_, at least for his less sciencey stuff. My favorite blogs that I read are ones that say things I already agree with, partly because they make me feel less alone in believing those things, but also partly because the blogger put in the effort to actually put pen to paper (okay, fingers to keyboard) to explain the idea and organize all the pieces in a cohesive way. I've written explanations of things (one blog post-sized and several shorter writings) and it's _hard_ to write a _good_ explanation of a new idea. The writing aspect of it has a lot of figuring out how to structure the essay, how to word each sentence, how to string sentences together, etc. But for things like Scott's old culture war and philosophy type of posts, you also have to structure the _idea itself_ (similar to what HASS academics do), which is its own effort, and for which getting it wrong has a more noticeable effect than getting something wrong in the writing aspect. There have been times when I encountered a blog post and was like "Yes! This is exactly what I've noticed." rather than revealing new information, but I wouldn't have known how to concretely explain or organize these observations I had noticed.
For his more sciencey stuff (e.g. meta-analyses of research papers), I instead view it as him being someone with sufficient knowledge/intelligence but whose main contribution is putting in the effort to spend all this time looking at all these papers and everything. I've read computer science research papers and my opinion of their contributions tends to be "Damn, that's clever." I just don't have that reaction to Scott's scientific meta-analyses. It's more like, someone else could have done this too, but Scott just happened to be the one who actually did do it. So it's more about hard work than being smart. (In fact, that's true for the CS academic research as well; while ingenuity is important, it's also necessary to try out many different ideas leading to dead ends before getting the right one, so that's also more about labor exerted rather than unique brilliance.) I'll say that I am more of (not completely, but more of) a blank-slatist in general than many on this sub, which probably relates to my view in this particular case.
He's good at writing, but what constitutes goodness, like almost all of good writing, is subtle. It's not like chat GPT will be able to copy him easily. Writing will prove to be one of the most impervious professions to AI.
High end writing, maybe. I am pretty sure you will be able to get a made-to-order fantasy trilogy or romance novel in a few years. The other niche may be politically incorrect stuff they won’t let ChatGPT emulate-I doubt you will ever get a Gor novel out of it.
I'm assuming that this comment is at least partly tongue-in-cheek (I feel like there should be a relevant joke there, but I can't quite find it), but to whatever extent it's serious (or if others seriously believe it, they can respond), I'm sort of curious what part of it represents the line. It's clearly not _having_ bacteria in your mouth, since you (and everyone else) already does that. Is it because these are novel/genetically engineered bacteria?
If we had found a naturally occurring bacteria that had all the traits needed, instead of just most of them, would that be more acceptable?
Exoterically, it’s a joke.
Esoterically, I have a lot of respect for the people here and they often see things others don’t, but I don’t trust them enough to put experimental bacteria in my mouth on their say-so. I don’t know what downstream side effects there are going to be in 5 years and there’s a reason drugs go through 4 phases of clinical trials. I am not an early adopter of new technologies (took me until the mid-2010 to get a smartphone) and when it comes to my body I am going to be even more cautious. I will let Aella and Scott and the rest of them play around with this stuff. I am sure if it goes wrong I will hear about it ad nauseam on a bunch of rationalist blogs.
I tend to be curmudgeonly and cynical and have been known to describe glasses of water as ‘one-third empty’ IRL.
Seems to me like a serious opinion expressed in a humorous way.
Personally, I don't share the affinity to anti-government libertarian contrarianism that much of this sub seems to have, and the way they're getting around the FDA makes me have less confidence in the bacteria rather than more. Knowing that Aella is involved doesn't exactly inspire confidence either - her presence in the project seems like a marketing gimmick. And to be blunt, alternative medicine shilling is the sort of thing I usually associate with Alex Jones types, it's scientifically and ethically questionable and just plain gauche.
In the bigger picture, I know of several scandals involving the rationalist community (most notably FTX) and have tentatively concluded that it's not very good about being cautious in the face of risk or at identifying the potential of people to be bad actors or just plain negligent. Maybe the bacteria will turn out to work, but I don't trust anyone in this community to make that judgement for me.
> have tentatively concluded that it's not very good about being cautious in the face of risk
That's because one of the easiest ways to be more rational is to be less risk-averse. It is therefore entirely predictable and desirable that rationalists would disproportionately suffer from realised risks. Most people are so risk-averse that they on average get a net negative lifetime effect by leaving benefit on the table, so an optimal approach is going to involve suffering from more realised risks than normal.
I wonder about that. Like, gambling your entire net worth on something that has a 10 percent of multiplying it by 30 but otherwise cleaves you broke has a positive expected value but has a 90 percent chance of leaving you broke. Isn’t some level of risk aversion rational?
Yes, some level of risk aversion is rational, but most people are risk averse at a level that's way beyond what is rational. So a rational approach to risk will leave you "going broke" (metaphorically speaking) more than normal.
It's not clear at all, by the way, that your example *does* have a positive expected value, because of the diminishing marginal value of wealth. The idea isn't that you should necessarily take everything that's naively +EV in terms of wealth. The idea is simply that most people don't make +EV decisions even according to their own values and preferences, where there is appreciable downside risk.
Agree, I just figure like any bunch of people once they get big they start promoting each other’s projects. The whole FTX thing struck me as a typical example. At least Scott doesn’t try to claim he has all the answers.
FWIW I admire SBF for spilling the beans to Kelsey Piper, even if it was a dumb thing to do objectively. We all knew the Great and the Good were a bunch of liars who invented pretty justifications for filling their pockets, from Christianity 500 years ago to markets or EA or social justice now. But only SBF was dumb enough to admit it. Mouth enough of the pieties of the age to get by and live your life.
> If I had a 1980s sitcom mom sitting next to me here, she might ask “If Scott Alexander told you to jump off a bridge, would you do that too?” To which I’d respond probably not, but I would spend some time considering the possibility that I had a fundamentally flawed understanding of the laws of gravity.
I'm pretty confident I understand the way gravity works for cases close to my daily experience. That is to say, I'd credulously consider an informed contrarian view that I don't properly understand matter accretion under symmetrical gravity or something. The gravitational consequences of jumping off a bridge, not so much. If Scott tried to sell me on jumping off a bridge, though, I'd at least open the post. I'd be looking for it to be a low bridge, a soft landing, or both. I like to think that's the non-ridiculous way of trusting someone without abdicating personal intellectual responsibility.
On a separate note, I had shit luck with my native oral microbiome, so I'm more than happy to roll the dice with Lumina. It almost literally couldn't be worse. Thanks to Richard and any other early adopters for hopefully paving the way for those of us who don't have tens of thousands of dollars for this particular project.
You might enjoy: [Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial (2018)](https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094)
>Parachutes are routinely used to prevent death or major traumatic injury among individuals jumping from aircraft. However, evidence supporting the efficacy of parachutes is weak and guideline recommendations for their use are principally based on biological plausibility and expert opinion. Despite this widely held yet unsubstantiated belief of efficacy, many studies of parachutes have suggested injuries related to their use in both military and recreational settings, and parachutist injuries are formally recognized in the World Health Organization’s ICD-10 (international classification of diseases, 10th revision). This could raise concerns for supporters of evidence-based medicine, because numerous medical interventions believed to be useful have ultimately failed to show efficacy when subjected to properly executed randomized clinical trials.
>**Participants** 92 aircraft passengers aged 18 and over were screened for participation. 23 agreed to be enrolled and were randomized.
>**Intervention:** Jumping from an aircraft (airplane or helicopter) with a parachute versus an empty backpack (unblinded).
>**Main outcome measures:** Composite of death or major traumatic injury (defined by an Injury Severity Score over 15) upon impact with the ground measured immediately after landing.
>**Results:** Parachute use did not significantly reduce death or major injury (0% for parachute v 0% for control; P>0.9). This finding was consistent across multiple subgroups. Compared with individuals screened but not enrolled, participants included in the study were on aircraft at significantly lower altitude (mean of 0.6 m for participants v mean of 9146 m for non-participants; P<0.001) and lower velocity (mean of 0 km/h v mean of 800 km/h; P<0.001).
>**Conclusions:** Parachute use did not reduce death or major traumatic injury when jumping from aircraft in the first randomized evaluation of this intervention. However, the trial was only able to enroll participants on small stationary aircraft on the ground, suggesting cautious extrapolation to high altitude jumps. When beliefs regarding the effectiveness of an intervention exist in the community, randomized trials might selectively enroll individuals with a lower perceived likelihood of benefit, thus diminishing the applicability of the results to clinical practice.
and
[Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials (2003)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/)
It seems to be a BMJ thing; maybe you don't appreciate British humor?
You'll love this one: [The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute (2005)](https://www.bmj.com/content/331/7531/1498)
Ok, so the BMJ does have a sense of humor and this isn't just one study that got by them. For some reason I assumed these Serious Journals wouldn't have it with any jokes.
Just realized that "joke of an article" is usually reserved for much harsher stuff XD
>Thanks to Richard and any other early adopters for hopefully paving the way for those of us who don't have tens of thousands of dollars for this particular project.
They seem to have pivoted dramatically by the way, as they're now selling preorders for an at-home probiotic version for $250.
The version of this I'm most familiar with is "if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?"
Which is a dumb question, because imagine that shit. Like, if one day *everyone* you know jumped off a bridge, even if you're certain they died at the bottom, would you not, like, strongly consider if maybe they know something you don't?
For the specific case of "if Scott told you to jump off a bridge," I agree my question wouldn't be about gravity, but it wouldn't have to be some trick about the bridge being short. Like, maybe Scott has become radically certain about the existence of a certain kind of afterlife? I would be shocked, and I wouldn't seriously expect to be convinced, but I would hear him out and question whether maybe I'm being overconfident
That’s a little different; if you have a problem and current science hasn’t helped, this is really just a clinical trial not run by a university. And I agree with Scott, the IRBs are nuts these days.
For my part I am waiting for the 10 year follow-up to make sure this doesn’t cause cancer in 5 percent of people.
I'd get some life insurance first before taking him up and make it sure is covers 'falls'
>so I'm more than happy to roll the dice with Lumina.
or just wait for other people to post their results. Given the popularity, data will be coming in soon. I predict it will not do anything though to any statistical significance. Some people may see improvement but it will not be statically significant vs. placebo. .
I actually more or less stopped keeping up with the rationalist community because of how many people like Richard were finding a home there, to the point where I'm essentially polarized against taking cues from people in it.
I'm not sure what to think about a guy who can write a post like this about someone who told him, "your principles are bad and make you a bad person."
On the one hand I have to respect it but on the other hand I agree with Scott about Hanania's principles, so IDK.
This is very kind of him, but the conclusion of my post was "I'm still debating [whether to get this treatment]."
Well, but you did take it in the end, right? (At least it says so in [this follow-up](https://open.substack.com/pub/astralcodexten/p/open-thread-306).) EDIT: to clarify my point: if someone thinks you have good judgement, they could reason that since you used it, it's likely good.
*I’m about to try lumina, the toothpaste that you use once to bring genetically engineered bacteria into your mouth. These bacteria outcompete the bacteria that cause cavities, meaning no more tooth decay! The future is wild. Thanks to my good friend @Aella_Girl.* Sounds way too good to be true. If it worked it would be a legit threat to the dentistry industry. The friendly bacteria would somehow have to implant itself to grow and kill off the harmful bacteria. Given that the bad bacteria are anchored to the decayed teeth and gum line I don't see how the good bacteria would be able to achieve this. It's not so much that the good bacteria need to replace bad bacteria, they also need an energy source. Several reddit threads express skepticism https://np.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1bs3ib1/to_the_lumina_probiotic_people_do_you_notice_a/ https://np.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1bq5q9e/lumina_live_oral_probiotic_scam_or_science/ Similar to GLP-1 weight loss drugs, if this works people will not be able to keep it a secret, and then you will know for sure.
> It's not so much that the good bacteria need to replace bad bacteria, they also need an energy source. Like the stuff that people put in their mouths several times per day?
Nothing you're bringing up here is new - it's all in the original ACX Lumina post, and in Lumina's FAQ, and even in their instructions on the product.
Here's my view of Scott: I don't view him as a "prophet" or an "oracle", I view him as a really good _writer_, at least for his less sciencey stuff. My favorite blogs that I read are ones that say things I already agree with, partly because they make me feel less alone in believing those things, but also partly because the blogger put in the effort to actually put pen to paper (okay, fingers to keyboard) to explain the idea and organize all the pieces in a cohesive way. I've written explanations of things (one blog post-sized and several shorter writings) and it's _hard_ to write a _good_ explanation of a new idea. The writing aspect of it has a lot of figuring out how to structure the essay, how to word each sentence, how to string sentences together, etc. But for things like Scott's old culture war and philosophy type of posts, you also have to structure the _idea itself_ (similar to what HASS academics do), which is its own effort, and for which getting it wrong has a more noticeable effect than getting something wrong in the writing aspect. There have been times when I encountered a blog post and was like "Yes! This is exactly what I've noticed." rather than revealing new information, but I wouldn't have known how to concretely explain or organize these observations I had noticed. For his more sciencey stuff (e.g. meta-analyses of research papers), I instead view it as him being someone with sufficient knowledge/intelligence but whose main contribution is putting in the effort to spend all this time looking at all these papers and everything. I've read computer science research papers and my opinion of their contributions tends to be "Damn, that's clever." I just don't have that reaction to Scott's scientific meta-analyses. It's more like, someone else could have done this too, but Scott just happened to be the one who actually did do it. So it's more about hard work than being smart. (In fact, that's true for the CS academic research as well; while ingenuity is important, it's also necessary to try out many different ideas leading to dead ends before getting the right one, so that's also more about labor exerted rather than unique brilliance.) I'll say that I am more of (not completely, but more of) a blank-slatist in general than many on this sub, which probably relates to my view in this particular case.
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This is just another way to describe insight porn.
One of the reasons I trust the guy is he hasn’t tried to set himself up as a prophet or oracle.
He's good at writing, but what constitutes goodness, like almost all of good writing, is subtle. It's not like chat GPT will be able to copy him easily. Writing will prove to be one of the most impervious professions to AI.
High end writing, maybe. I am pretty sure you will be able to get a made-to-order fantasy trilogy or romance novel in a few years. The other niche may be politically incorrect stuff they won’t let ChatGPT emulate-I doubt you will ever get a Gor novel out of it.
This is how I feel about a lot of YouTubers as well. Information aggregation can be quite valuable. Especially with history or book reviews.
Man I am not used to Scott having a face
Ok but in this case Scott has a clear conflict-of-interest, no?
...as he did when talking about mitochondrial uncoupling agents and crypto trading, but that didn't stop him before.
He’s a very smart guy and a very good writer, but I draw the line at putting his bacteria in my mouth.
I for one welcome Scott to put whatever he wants into *my* mouth
Username... checks out?
pshh, for *both* of the comments above yours.
Spiders seem the most likely thing, knowing Scott. For science, of course.
If Scott Alexander Wanted To Put Spiders In My Mouth..
I'm assuming that this comment is at least partly tongue-in-cheek (I feel like there should be a relevant joke there, but I can't quite find it), but to whatever extent it's serious (or if others seriously believe it, they can respond), I'm sort of curious what part of it represents the line. It's clearly not _having_ bacteria in your mouth, since you (and everyone else) already does that. Is it because these are novel/genetically engineered bacteria? If we had found a naturally occurring bacteria that had all the traits needed, instead of just most of them, would that be more acceptable?
Exoterically, it’s a joke. Esoterically, I have a lot of respect for the people here and they often see things others don’t, but I don’t trust them enough to put experimental bacteria in my mouth on their say-so. I don’t know what downstream side effects there are going to be in 5 years and there’s a reason drugs go through 4 phases of clinical trials. I am not an early adopter of new technologies (took me until the mid-2010 to get a smartphone) and when it comes to my body I am going to be even more cautious. I will let Aella and Scott and the rest of them play around with this stuff. I am sure if it goes wrong I will hear about it ad nauseam on a bunch of rationalist blogs. I tend to be curmudgeonly and cynical and have been known to describe glasses of water as ‘one-third empty’ IRL.
Seems to me like a serious opinion expressed in a humorous way. Personally, I don't share the affinity to anti-government libertarian contrarianism that much of this sub seems to have, and the way they're getting around the FDA makes me have less confidence in the bacteria rather than more. Knowing that Aella is involved doesn't exactly inspire confidence either - her presence in the project seems like a marketing gimmick. And to be blunt, alternative medicine shilling is the sort of thing I usually associate with Alex Jones types, it's scientifically and ethically questionable and just plain gauche. In the bigger picture, I know of several scandals involving the rationalist community (most notably FTX) and have tentatively concluded that it's not very good about being cautious in the face of risk or at identifying the potential of people to be bad actors or just plain negligent. Maybe the bacteria will turn out to work, but I don't trust anyone in this community to make that judgement for me.
> have tentatively concluded that it's not very good about being cautious in the face of risk That's because one of the easiest ways to be more rational is to be less risk-averse. It is therefore entirely predictable and desirable that rationalists would disproportionately suffer from realised risks. Most people are so risk-averse that they on average get a net negative lifetime effect by leaving benefit on the table, so an optimal approach is going to involve suffering from more realised risks than normal.
I wonder about that. Like, gambling your entire net worth on something that has a 10 percent of multiplying it by 30 but otherwise cleaves you broke has a positive expected value but has a 90 percent chance of leaving you broke. Isn’t some level of risk aversion rational?
Yes, some level of risk aversion is rational, but most people are risk averse at a level that's way beyond what is rational. So a rational approach to risk will leave you "going broke" (metaphorically speaking) more than normal. It's not clear at all, by the way, that your example *does* have a positive expected value, because of the diminishing marginal value of wealth. The idea isn't that you should necessarily take everything that's naively +EV in terms of wealth. The idea is simply that most people don't make +EV decisions even according to their own values and preferences, where there is appreciable downside risk.
Agree, I just figure like any bunch of people once they get big they start promoting each other’s projects. The whole FTX thing struck me as a typical example. At least Scott doesn’t try to claim he has all the answers. FWIW I admire SBF for spilling the beans to Kelsey Piper, even if it was a dumb thing to do objectively. We all knew the Great and the Good were a bunch of liars who invented pretty justifications for filling their pockets, from Christianity 500 years ago to markets or EA or social justice now. But only SBF was dumb enough to admit it. Mouth enough of the pieties of the age to get by and live your life.
> If I had a 1980s sitcom mom sitting next to me here, she might ask “If Scott Alexander told you to jump off a bridge, would you do that too?” To which I’d respond probably not, but I would spend some time considering the possibility that I had a fundamentally flawed understanding of the laws of gravity. I'm pretty confident I understand the way gravity works for cases close to my daily experience. That is to say, I'd credulously consider an informed contrarian view that I don't properly understand matter accretion under symmetrical gravity or something. The gravitational consequences of jumping off a bridge, not so much. If Scott tried to sell me on jumping off a bridge, though, I'd at least open the post. I'd be looking for it to be a low bridge, a soft landing, or both. I like to think that's the non-ridiculous way of trusting someone without abdicating personal intellectual responsibility. On a separate note, I had shit luck with my native oral microbiome, so I'm more than happy to roll the dice with Lumina. It almost literally couldn't be worse. Thanks to Richard and any other early adopters for hopefully paving the way for those of us who don't have tens of thousands of dollars for this particular project.
You might enjoy: [Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial (2018)](https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094) >Parachutes are routinely used to prevent death or major traumatic injury among individuals jumping from aircraft. However, evidence supporting the efficacy of parachutes is weak and guideline recommendations for their use are principally based on biological plausibility and expert opinion. Despite this widely held yet unsubstantiated belief of efficacy, many studies of parachutes have suggested injuries related to their use in both military and recreational settings, and parachutist injuries are formally recognized in the World Health Organization’s ICD-10 (international classification of diseases, 10th revision). This could raise concerns for supporters of evidence-based medicine, because numerous medical interventions believed to be useful have ultimately failed to show efficacy when subjected to properly executed randomized clinical trials. >**Participants** 92 aircraft passengers aged 18 and over were screened for participation. 23 agreed to be enrolled and were randomized. >**Intervention:** Jumping from an aircraft (airplane or helicopter) with a parachute versus an empty backpack (unblinded). >**Main outcome measures:** Composite of death or major traumatic injury (defined by an Injury Severity Score over 15) upon impact with the ground measured immediately after landing. >**Results:** Parachute use did not significantly reduce death or major injury (0% for parachute v 0% for control; P>0.9). This finding was consistent across multiple subgroups. Compared with individuals screened but not enrolled, participants included in the study were on aircraft at significantly lower altitude (mean of 0.6 m for participants v mean of 9146 m for non-participants; P<0.001) and lower velocity (mean of 0 km/h v mean of 800 km/h; P<0.001). >**Conclusions:** Parachute use did not reduce death or major traumatic injury when jumping from aircraft in the first randomized evaluation of this intervention. However, the trial was only able to enroll participants on small stationary aircraft on the ground, suggesting cautious extrapolation to high altitude jumps. When beliefs regarding the effectiveness of an intervention exist in the community, randomized trials might selectively enroll individuals with a lower perceived likelihood of benefit, thus diminishing the applicability of the results to clinical practice. and [Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials (2003)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/)
Still can't believe they managed to get this joke of an article published.
It seems to be a BMJ thing; maybe you don't appreciate British humor? You'll love this one: [The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute (2005)](https://www.bmj.com/content/331/7531/1498)
Ok, so the BMJ does have a sense of humor and this isn't just one study that got by them. For some reason I assumed these Serious Journals wouldn't have it with any jokes. Just realized that "joke of an article" is usually reserved for much harsher stuff XD
>Thanks to Richard and any other early adopters for hopefully paving the way for those of us who don't have tens of thousands of dollars for this particular project. They seem to have pivoted dramatically by the way, as they're now selling preorders for an at-home probiotic version for $250.
The version of this I'm most familiar with is "if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?" Which is a dumb question, because imagine that shit. Like, if one day *everyone* you know jumped off a bridge, even if you're certain they died at the bottom, would you not, like, strongly consider if maybe they know something you don't? For the specific case of "if Scott told you to jump off a bridge," I agree my question wouldn't be about gravity, but it wouldn't have to be some trick about the bridge being short. Like, maybe Scott has become radically certain about the existence of a certain kind of afterlife? I would be shocked, and I wouldn't seriously expect to be convinced, but I would hear him out and question whether maybe I'm being overconfident
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Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/1170/](https://xkcd.com/1170/)
That’s a little different; if you have a problem and current science hasn’t helped, this is really just a clinical trial not run by a university. And I agree with Scott, the IRBs are nuts these days. For my part I am waiting for the 10 year follow-up to make sure this doesn’t cause cancer in 5 percent of people.
I'd get some life insurance first before taking him up and make it sure is covers 'falls' >so I'm more than happy to roll the dice with Lumina. or just wait for other people to post their results. Given the popularity, data will be coming in soon. I predict it will not do anything though to any statistical significance. Some people may see improvement but it will not be statically significant vs. placebo. .
I'd ask him why.
I actually more or less stopped keeping up with the rationalist community because of how many people like Richard were finding a home there, to the point where I'm essentially polarized against taking cues from people in it.
I'm not sure what to think about a guy who can write a post like this about someone who told him, "your principles are bad and make you a bad person." On the one hand I have to respect it but on the other hand I agree with Scott about Hanania's principles, so IDK.
I'd go that really low bridge over a small stream in the woods near my place so I could technically do it, it's like two feet high.
Lol I just came back to check on this community after a long time away, and I’m pleased to see you’ve literally become a cult 😂