site banner
PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   2311 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for December 13, 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).

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

How does the rat-diaspora do this? Rationally of course! With statistics. But the lower parts of our brains don’t understand statistics, so the real message is this: if you’re 64 you’ll get another 16 years according to the actuarial tables. If you’re completely healthy, run daily, have a highlighted and annotated copy of your medical records—if you’re literally doing everything right and within your power to take care of yourself—you can shade that up a couple years.

And if you're a billionaire or have a reputation for war crimes, you can bump that up to 100. Joking aside, your family tree is more predictive of how long you will live than actuarial stats. But even then, it comes down a lot to one-off factors, which can be mitigated or prevented with screening. Avoiding the big ones like heart disease or cancer and you can reasonably expect to live to 95+.

And if you're a billionaire or have a reputation for war crimes, you can bump that up to 100.

This attempt at joke is not funny.

Avoiding the big ones like heart disease or cancer and you can reasonably expect to live to 95+.

Ye, just win a genetic lottery bro. Not as unfunny as previous joke, still not rational. Tips on being rich: be born in 1st world country. It's easy, almost a billion people managed to do that, why can't you?

many people live to 95. hardly like winning a lottery. and with advances in medical technology, the odds increase. Someone who is 40 today has greater odds of living to 90 than someone who was 40 fifty years ago.

Many? Quick GPT question says 11.3% americans live up to 95. I wouldn't call this many.

your family tree is more predictive of how long you will live than actuarial stats

Not looking good for me, then.

Avoiding the big ones like heart disease or cancer and you can reasonably expect to live to 95+.

Or you do everything right and die from a mystery illness. Unlikely I guess, but I don’t see how I’ll personally ever be able to look at life the same way.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats