Hamartiogonic

Hamartiogonic , 2 days ago to coffee in Where can I learn about how to make coffee?

In addition to what everyone else has already mentioned, I would like to point out that tasting is a skill you can develop. It’s possible to taste the difference between two methods or recipes, but if you haven’t developed that skill, it’s very hard to tell if a particular change or consistency even matters. Without this skill, you won’t really appreciate the time and effort you put into making coffee in a particular way.

Hamartiogonic , 2 days ago to coffee in James Hoffmann on Andrew Huberman

I drink about two cups a day (400 ml in total), and I definitely get a headache if I drop my caffeine intake too suddenly. If I was adapted to drinking much less, then I might be able to go an entire day without noticing anything, but at the current level, it’s just not going to happen. Did James mention how much coffee do the participants normally drink every day? If they are all in the 1 cup club, these results are only exploring one extreme of the scale.

Hamartiogonic , 3 days ago to coffee in James Hoffmann on Andrew Huberman

And you would need to include exteme cases to make the effects visible. Having two cups a day might not be enough, and 4 might just approach the limit. People who drink like 10 cups a day should stand out in a study like this.

Hamartiogonic , 3 days ago to coffee in James Hoffmann on Andrew Huberman

That was a great video! James takes these things rather seriously when compared to other coffee people. For example, there are lots of people who say you should rinse the aeropress filter or stop pushing once you hear the hiss, but James said those things don’t matter, so why bother with extra steps like that. The same idea applies here. There are lots of strange but appealing ideas floating around, but many of them are not worth your time.

Hamartiogonic , 4 days ago to coffee in Does drinking coffee have any effects on a sore throat?

Last time I had a sore throat, I drank a lot of hibiscus (sort of like tea, but not even close). Obviously, I still had to fuel my caffeine addiction so I did have my usual coffee too, but most of the time I had a warm cup of hibiscus with me. Whatever you end up drinking, make sure it isn’t too hot, because that’s going to make everything worse. Hibiscus appeared to work just fine for me.

Hamartiogonic , 16 days ago to science in FDA rejects ecstasy as a therapy: what’s next for psychedelics?

The idea of modern medicine is to sell chemical compounds that actually have an effect. It’s a philosophical and ethical thing. All products have a unique psychological effect that gets intertwined with their biochemical effect. If you can’t study them individually, it’s impossible to tell if the biochemical effect even exists at all. If your medicine relies heavily, or even entirely, on the psychological side, it’s no different than homeopathy. The idea of modern medicine is to be better than the old stuff that preceded it.

I prefer to think of this as an equation like this: Pm+Bm=Pp+Bp

Pm=psychological effect, medicine

Bm=biochemical effect, medicine

Pp=psychological effect, placebo = surprisingly big

Bp=biochemical effect, placebo = 0

If these sides are equivalent, the medicine is just as effective as placebo. If the medicine side is bigger, you’ll want to know how much of it comes from the P and B terms. In order to figure that out, you would need to know some values. Normally, you can just assume that Pm=Pp, but if you can’t assume that, it you’re left with two unknowns in that equation. In this case, you really can’t assume them to be equal, which means that your data won’t allow you to figure out how much of the total effect comes from psychological and biochemical effects. It could be 50/50, 10/90, who knows. That sort of uncertainty is a serious problem, because of the philosophical and ethical side of developing medicine.

Hamartiogonic , 16 days ago to science in FDA rejects ecstasy as a therapy: what’s next for psychedelics?

Statistical tests are very picky. They have been designed by mathematicians in a mathematical ideal vacuum void of all reality. The method works in those ideal conditions, but when you take that method and apply it in messy reality where everything is flawed, you may run into some trouble. In simple cases, it’s easy to abide by the assumptions of the statistical test, but as your experiment gets more and more complicated, there are more and more potholes for you to dodge. Best case scenario is, your messy data is just barely clean enough that you can be reasonably sure the statistical test still works well enough and you can sort of trust the result up to a certain point.

However, when you know for a fact that some of the underlying assumptions of the statistical test are clearly being violated, all bets are off. Sure, you get a result, but who in their right mind would ever trust that result?

If the test says that the medicine is works, there’s clearly financial incentive to believe it and start selling those pills. If it says that the medicine is no better than placebo, there’s similar incentive to reject the test result and demand more experiments. Most of that debate goes out the window if you can be reasonably sure that the data is good enough and the result of your statistical test is reliable enough.

Hamartiogonic , 17 days ago to science in FDA rejects ecstasy as a therapy: what’s next for psychedelics?

Yeah, that’s the thing with placebo. It’s surprisingly effective, and separating the psychological effect from actual chemistry can be very tricky. If most participants can correctly identify if they’re bing fed the real drug or a placebo, it makes it impossible to figure out how much each effect contributes to the end result. Ideally, you would only use effective medicine that does not need the placebo effect to actually work.

Imagine, if all medicine had lots of placebo effect in them. How would you treat patients who are in a coma or otherwise unconscious?

Hamartiogonic , 18 days ago (edited 11 days ago) to science in A controversial experiment to artificially cool Earth was canceled — what we know about why

I’ve seen a bunch of Terminator style movies where an AI slices, dices, scorches and/or nukes humanity to oblivion long before climate change gets us. I have it on good authority that we don’t need worry about the temperature change.

Hamartiogonic , 21 days ago to science in The Physics of Trying to Crash Into the Sun

Space is mostly empty anyway, so the chances of crashing into anything is pretty low. That’s why space travel is so safe.

Hamartiogonic , 1 month ago to science in AI models fed AI-generated data quickly spew nonsense

If that gets implemented, it would help AI devs and common people hanging online.

Hamartiogonic , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to science in AI models fed AI-generated data quickly spew nonsense

A few years ago, people assumed that these AIs will continue to get better every year. Seems that we are already hitting some limits, and improving the models keeps getting harder and harder. It’s like the linewidth limits we have with CPU design.

Hamartiogonic , 1 month ago to mildlyinfuriating in Stop. Calling. Everything. AI

We should have hired him to make a scifi movie about how humanity fixed the climate change.

Hamartiogonic , 1 month ago to mildlyinfuriating in Stop. Calling. Everything. AI

LOL, I recall seeing HD sunglasses somewhere roughly 15 years ago. That was the period where everything had to have an HDMI port. I guess someone must have made an HDMI compatible toaster too.

Hamartiogonic , 1 month ago to science in Bill Gates-backed startup makes ‘butter’ out of water and carbon dioxide

Basic internet etiquette. Never read the article. Disagree with everyone. You are always right. Everyone else is always wrong etc.