the question everyone is asking [ Epistemic Status: Speculative unifying theory of biology.] I don’t know about you, but I greatly resent having to be a biological organism and subject to all the poor engineering and design decisions that entails. This has many manifestations. A recent one is often wondering, why is the entire body such garbage except for the liver? Take the kidneys. Once you reac

with absolutely no indication of neuroticism This is a great and wonderful contribution and you seem really nice and I’d like to show some appreciation but your comment is so complete and flawless that I can’t think of anything intelligent to say so I guess I won’t respond at all, sorry. This is a great and wonderful contribution and I have some further thoughts so I can respond naturally, great.

On doing what evolution wants us to do (Inspired by a post from Eli Tyre .) Many people make some variant of the following argument: Evolution is an “outer optimizer”. It is trying to make us maximize reproductive fitness. We are “inner optimizers”. We just do what feels good. But what feels good has been set by evolution, which is hoping that it will make us maximize reproductive fitness. But we

You face certain challenges Humans make carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is (edit: sometimes claimed to be) bad for cognition. But plants turn carbon dioxide back into oxygen. And plants are the one true home decoration strategy. So maybe if you get a lot of plants, you can you can keep carbon dioxide in check and keep your brain working? It’s theoretically possible. It’s probably just barely possib

An essay that may or may not reach a firm conclusion To blog is to get dunked on. I accept this. I even sometimes wonder if I should be grateful, as I suspect my willingness to get dunked on may represent a kind of comparative advantage. (You can tell yourself that if you try to placate the haters, you’ll just ruin things for people who like you. But how do you feel when you’re staring down barrel

And why does the brain use creatine anyway? Is creatine a weird steroid-like hormone or drug? No. Creatine is a nutrient. Most omnivores eat a gram or two per day from meat. Your body also synthesizes a gram or two per day. You need creatine to deliver energy inside of cells. It is normal and non-weird. Does creatine increase testosterone? Unlikely. This concern comes from one study in 2009 on 16

Here’s a conjecture: If you put any significant amount of text on the internet under different names, those identities can be linked using only the text itself. This is possible (I conject) because of the statistical “fingerprint” you leave in everything you write. Imagine a website where you can paste in some brand-new text someone just wrote. In return, the website provides links to all the text

How to discount your expectations If you read anything about health or longevity, you’ll soon find yourself in a world of hazard ratios. Some study might say that eating more fiber might change your risk of dying by a factor of HR = 0.90. Another might say that occasional smoking might change it by HR = 1.30. But how much should you care about that? Is HR = 0.90 or HR = 1.30 a lot? What if you don

Or human-ish I write every word I post on this blog myself. I can’t prove this, of course, but there’s some evidence: This blog existed before AI could write blog posts. If you put any of my posts into an AI-detector they will (I assume) come back squeaky clean. And now let me add this: I, dynomight, guarantee that every word I post here is the product of me physically hitting keys with my fingers

Some skepticism of vitamin D skepticism For a while there, many people thought vitamin D was magical—that it could improve bones, the heart, infections, cancer, heart disease, longevity, even mental health. But among people I respect, opinion is now overwhelmingly that taking vitamin D does nothing unless you’re severely deficient. The central argument is that while vitamin D levels are correlated

(Yes, but.) Over the past few years, I’ve seen many articles about mysterious rise in colorectal cancer (CRC) in young people. There are various stories for why this might be happening: General health. Maybe modern people are unhealthy (obesity, low physical activity, diabetes, poor sleep), leading to insulin resistance and chronic inflammation, meaning faster epithelial cell proliferation and a m

a polycausal theory News from the world of real jobs: Apparently, sometime between 10 and 20 years ago, it became standard for people to communicate by sending slide decks around. These slides are never presented. They aren’t intended to be presented. They’re born, they’re sent around, and they die. What? I stress, the question is not why (or if) people give bad presentations . The mystery is why

acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen This is an essay that recently appeared in Asterisk . Consider the rest of the risk issue for all your risk needs. Lots of people die after overdosing on acetaminophen (paracetamol, Tylenol, Panadol). In the U.S., it’s estimated to cause 56,000 emergency department visits, 2,600 hospitalizations, and 500 deaths per year. Acetaminophen has a scarily narrow therapeutic wi

out of spite In early January 2025, a family friend was over for lunch. One of my many guilty midwit pleasures is a love of New Year’s resolutions, so I asked her if she had made any. She said no, but mentioned that she had some relatives that were doing “damp January”. In case you’re not aware, Dry January is a challenge many people do to quit drinking alcohol during the month of January. These f

Why not benchmark with physical experiments? Coding, math, whatever. Can LLMs predict the outcomes of physical experiments? Suppose I pour 8 oz (226.8 g) of boiling water into a ceramic coffee mug that weighs 1.25 lb (0.57 kg). The ambient air is still and 20 degrees Celsius. The cup starts at room temperature. Give me an equation for the temperature of the water in Celsius over time. The only fre

thinking and bluffing EXHIBIT A Here is some text . It is made out of words . Here is a subsection And here are some bullet-points: Here is one . Here is another . Hierarchy Here is a numbered list. And now: Look at this . Bullets inside a number inside a section inside a section. What a time to be alive. Pictures The text can also contain pictures for you to look at with your eyes ¹. ¹ There can

Inventors and impacts 1. It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine—a gun—which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished. Richard Gatling (1861) 2. In 1923, Hermann Oberth published The Rocket t

ratios will be ratios How heritable is hair color? Well, if you’re a redhead and you have an identical twin, they will definitely also be a redhead. But the age at which twins go gray seems to vary a bit based on lifestyle. And there’s some randomness in where melanocytes end up on your skull when you’re an embryo. And your twin might dye their hair! So the correct answer is, some large number, bu

best life in category of achievable lives Why should you read novels? We tell children they’re magic carpets for the mind / exercise for the soul instead of the body / lighthouses in the great sea of time. But aren’t they ultimately a form of entertainment? Many years ago, I read Crime and Punishment. Here, with no research and no notes, is what I can remember about that book: It was pretty good.

because truth is many They say you’re supposed to choose your prior in advance. That’s why it’s called a “prior”. First , you’re supposed to say say how plausible different things are, and then you update your beliefs based on what you see in the world. For example, currently you are—I assume—trying to decide if you should stop reading this post and do something else with your life. If you’ve read