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Tips for a Better Life

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Re: Tips for a Better Life

#271

Post by jachee »

lifeformed wrote: post #252
nlh wrote: post #19

These are really great! I imagine one could write a paragraph (or more) on each, and one could setup a whole process of following through with all of them. In fact, this is inspiring: I'm going to put these in a list and review them regularly and try to take a (small) action on each. Anyone wanna try it with me? BTW - only two that I disagree with: > 13. When googling a recipe, precede it with ‘best’. You’ll find bet…

> 13. When googling a recipe, precede it with ‘best’. You’ll find better recipes. > No. You'll find recipes whose authors did bare-minimum SEO, not produced better recipes. This advice is only true because if you do this with many western foods it turns up Kenji Alt-Lopez's recipes that are named this way, and they actually are the best (well, most researched and perfected).

Perhaps a...

  s/best/Kenji Alt-Lopez/
...is warranted in order to improve the tip?

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#272

Post by lazyjones »

rantwasp wrote: post #239
lazyjones wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8% less cancer in healthy people is pretty significant (your 2nd link). But the whole discussion is moot when you assume everyone to be healthy. It's like saying plasters are useless because there's evidence that most legs aren't broken. Multivitamins are fine because most of us aren't perfectly healthy. Targeted vitamin supplements are better, but require regular blood testing (who has the time...).

here: https://www.insidetracker.com/ This is expensive AF, but you can get 40+ markers measured once every X months. And you can monitor exactly were you are and if the supplements you are taking are actually doing their job. (spoiler alert: not all supplements are created equal from purity and active ingredients pov)

It's not a bad idea, but instead of mailing samples across the Atlantic Ocean, I'd rather visit my doctor 2-3 times per year and let him take blood samples. If I wanted to spend more, I could get one to visit me at home.

I was actually looking at buying lab equipment for myself for extra flexibility, but lost interest. It's an interesting and underdeveloped market niche for all the self-tracking people though.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#273

Post by jimbokun »

duckmysick wrote: post #143
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google/DDG/Bing it and read some forum threads. Sure you can't get people to spoon feed you answers that way but do you really want to be spoon fed by people who don't actually know anything?

How do I know if forum threads are written by people with enough experience? Especially if they are giving conflicting advice. I don't have the expertise to make that call myself. If I had, I wouldn't need to look it up.

> Especially if they are giving conflicting advice.

That's the most useful scenario.

When you have people debating one thing being better than another, gives you specific claims you can follow up on and think about which factors are most important to making your decision.

If everyone agrees, or only one option is argued for, I would be more suspicious of the advice.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#274

Post by jimbokun »

amelius wrote: post #104

> If your work is done on a computer, get a second monitor. Less time navigating between windows means more time for thinking. I don't agree. Use a virtual desktop instead and switch workspaces with a keyboard shortcut. I'm currently using 9 workspaces, and monitors couldn't ever beat that UX.

Shifting your eyeballs to another monitor will always be more efficient than the key combinations to toggle back and forth between workspaces.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#275

Post by walleeee »

paulpauper wrote: post #33
NortySpock wrote: post #24

I think the compassion section has the most wisdom in it, especially the reasoning behind the recommendation: 82. Call your parents when you think of them, tell your friends when you love them. 83. Compliment people more. Many people have trouble thinking of themselves as smart, or pretty, or kind, unless told by someone else. You can help them out. 84. If somebody is undergoing group criticism, the tribal part in yo…

91. don't buy XRP but in seriousness, I think it is easier to apply these rules to people you know than strangers. Look how often people lose patience with each other online. >85. Cultivate compassion for those less intelligent than you. Many people, through no fault of their own, can’t handle forms, scammers, or complex situations. Be kind to them because the world is not. Interestingly, being smart does not protect…

> I think it is easier to apply these rules to people you know than strangers.

This, and they're also easier to apply in person. It's a lot harder to be casually vicious to someone you're face to face with, for most people at least (although some are quite capable of such IRL).

> Look how often people lose patience with each other online.

Many of the most popular platforms implicitly or explicitly reward self-righteous moralizing, dog-piling, mean-spirited snark, glib context-insensitivity, baiting/provocation, appeals to emotion, etc.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#276

Post by [deleted] »

c22 wrote: post #233
qntty wrote: post #25

Sorry, but a lot of this advice makes no sense or is pretty bad. 26. Are you on the fence about breaking up or leaving your job? You should probably go ahead and do it. People, on average, end up happier when they take the plunge. Seems illogical. Presumably the reason that people are happier after leaving their job is because, on average, they wait until they are ready. That doesn't mean anyone with the inclination…

I worked at my first job for over ten years, hated the last five... I guess you could say I waited until I was "ready" to quit, but in retrospect I think I was just scared. One day I quit on a whim and it felt great! That was the beginning of my journey of self-actualization.

[deleted]

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#277

Post by musingsole »

40. Should you freak out upon seeing your symptoms on the worst diseases on WebMD? Probably not! Look up the base rates for the disease and then apply Bayes’ Theorem

^ The most applicable use of Bayes' Theorem I've ever seen.

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#278

Post by corobo »

leetrout wrote: post #269

> Foolish people are right about most things. Endeavour to not let the opinions of foolish people automatically discredit those opinions. could someone rewrite that in a way that is more clear? I’m not getting the point.

Fools aren't fools all the time, don't dismiss everything they say as foolish just because it's them saying it

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#279

Post by Noos »

war1025 wrote: post #149
maverick2007 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also curious about this. Maybe OP was struggling with "what's the point of life if we all die anyways" and found Catholicism gave them an answer more quickly and efficiently than other methods like reading/synthesizing/applying what philosophers and other thinkers had to say about the issue? (I consider myself Catholic so this is definitely not meant to be a dunk on religion or Catholicism)

One thing that I appreciate about Catholicism is that it attempts to be a much more rigorous and academic approach to faith when compared to the more "evangelical" strains of Christianity popular in the US. The Reformation did some good with pointing out that religion doesn't need to be a solely academic pursuit, but some branches went to far and seem to have interpreted that as "there is nothing academic worth pursu…

No, not really. This is kind of a "converts mistake," in that they assume that the religion they convert to is only the educated, attractive apologists that won them over. The popular church venerates Padre Pio and really believes he could bilocate, manifested stigmata, and that you can pray to him for healing.

Happens with orthodoxy too, a lot of people get a rude awakening when they actually go into a Orthodox church and talk to people, aka "The Rod Dreher effect."

Re: Tips for a Better Life

#280

Post by naravara »

nlh wrote: post #19

These are really great! I imagine one could write a paragraph (or more) on each, and one could setup a whole process of following through with all of them. In fact, this is inspiring: I'm going to put these in a list and review them regularly and try to take a (small) action on each. Anyone wanna try it with me? BTW - only two that I disagree with: > 13. When googling a recipe, precede it with ‘best’. You’ll find bet…

Make that 97

> Where is the good knife?” If you’re looking for your good X, you have bad Xs. Throw those out.

No, I keep a bad knife because I don’t want to ruin my good knife by cutting open boxes with it. The bad stuff is useful to prevent wear and tear on the good stuff on low value things that don’t need to precision/durability/whatever.

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