1. If I were a betting man, I’d put money on my right hand predicting at least a 90% chance that by the end of the century, as much as 50% of the human population of the world would be obese or handicapped.
2. I’ve been told that the human lifespan has been steadily rising, but that the average lifespan has been stagnant for several hundred years. So far the rise in average lifespan is barely perceptible compared to the huge increases in lifespan we’ve had in the past, right? But I think it’ll plateau at maybe 80 or 90 years, which would break the current record. I think the overall trend will be that the fat/handicapped rates will accelerate as the world gets less healthy.
3. I think the proper way to think about obesity is like drug addiction. Easy to measure, hard to treat. Notorious for being under-reported, because people don’t want to believe those around them are addicts.
4. The correlation between obesity and other serious problems, like heart disease isn’t really as tight as the correlation would suggest.
5. If a society can get people to start taking statins, even if not everyone does, the statins will trend upwards even as the rest of the health trend will accelerate.
6. If obesity rates spike in your civilization (say, in the next few decades), will the same pattern of societal response ever produce the same and opposite spike in the statin rates?
7. The proper way to think about weight gain is like building on a shaky foundation of sandbags. Big increases in weight, but eventually the whole thing collapses and you have to rebuild.
8. Would it be better for the world if obesity rates spiked in our civilization in the future?
9. If you could take any modern Westerner (let’s assume male), give them $1000, and have refused food and drink for a week, which group (male or female) would have the lowest body mass index?
10. I’ve been told that the average lifespan has been slowly rising over the past 50 or even 100 years. But I don’t think it offers much consolation to think that the trend will steadily continue. If the trend were really leveling out the average lifespan would be much closer to the life of our hunter-gatherer forebears. It’s more likely that we are seeing why the change will plateau, and the increase will continue to grow.
11. If obesity rates spike in your society, how likely is it there to be other sharp spikes in the same direction in the future?
12. Given Hanson down-program, what would it take to get people to start doing things which aren’t super productive for them?
13. For a poor person, it may not be the moral thing to eat all the food they see. We may be tempted to do otherwise when we’re worried about where our next meal is coming from. But if we are poor and we see someone who is really thin, it is hard not to be impressed.
14. What if you could trade calories and other nutrients to a starving people?
15. What would it take for you to start doing things which aren’t super productive for you?
16. I think most societies would be surprised if I told them that a child born to extremely obese mothers is more likely to die before age 5 than one born to an extremely thin mother. It means they are less mobile, and that they get less medical attention. I think that similar effects would apply to handicapped people, and that the same effect would be seen in the future.
17. I think when you’re worried about the food sources around you, it’s hard not to care about their future well-being. What I’m worried more about is all the people in the future who didn’t get a chance to be born.
18. We’re not sure where extra calories are going, so we don’t know how well it’s serving us or harming us–or even if it’s even serving us.
19. If you could have the equivalent of 10 extra years on average, would you trade them for calories?
20. If you had to choose between a disabled child and a child of average health, would you want the child born that you’d want?
21. If the world in 2100 is like the world in 2013, would it be better or worse off?
22. In what ways does being unhealthy impact my life? How has being unhealthy affected your life?
23. If we stopped worrying about obesity tomorrow, what would it take to get people to actually start doing something about it?
24. If you had unlimited resources, would you still do what it took to build the F-35?
25. If the world really was overpopulated today, what kind of help would it give a normal-sized family?
26. Group living: what’s your ideal form of urban living? Would you be happier in a large communal housing project or a smaller group house?
27. It’s more desirable to live like a hunter-gatherer, but do you think our descendants will also be happier living more densely?
28. How do you think the world could be different?
29. If you had unlimited resources, do you think it would be enough to help all the billions of people in the world without proper healthcare?
30. If you could make one thing different in the world today, what would it be?
31. Life expectancy has been steadily rising over the last few hundred years. Many of your questions are asking about long-term trends, or about worse, better, worst-case scenarios. How can we now expect the rate of increase in life expectancy to continue?
32. Some behaviors will continue to increase and others will decrease. How do you think these patterns will look?
33. One conclusion we can draw from available data is that, with now available resources, we can see that extreme inequality has negative health consequences.
34. Many people are afraid they won’t be around for their families to remember them. What would it take to change their fear of dying without a good funeral?
35. Do you expect your own children to remember your life?
Date a programmer. Date someone who will like your posts on tumblr even when they are wrong. Date someone who will make fun of your spelling mistakes. Date someone who will date you even if they are wrong. Date someone who will be very patient with your bad moods. Date someone who will respect your boundaries. Date someone who will put up with you. Date someone who will follow you even when you are depressed. Date someone who will be nice to you even when you are mean to others. Date someone who will be nice to you even when they make mistakes. Date someone who will laugh at the weird things you say. Date someone who will put up with the weird things you do. Date someone that disagrees with you. Date someone who can be sweet to you at times. Date someone who will show you many cute times. Date someone who thinks you are cute. Date someone who will ship you. Date someone that will understand the joke you are afraid to tell. Date someone who will help you get out of debt. Date someone who will help a friend. Date someone who understands your good mood. Date someone who can get down with the puns. Date someone who will be the person you tell your most embarrassing stories to. Date someone who can go out and get an Even Better Date. Date someone who will support you when you are sad. Date someone who will know that you are an animal lover. Date someone that will burn your house down in the battle of GamerGate. Be a chad.
“
Date someone who, in the midst of their most embarrassing
moment, will know that you still love them, that you love just
as much as they do, that their worst mistake is not even something that
makes you cringe. Date someone who will advise you surely even if it makes
you happy to despise them. Date someone who will show you the truth no matter
20.5 years old and hairy and has very large hands and legs and would give you a very long and very in-depth and very detailed account of all of her fantasies if she could
what people think the average person’s hot sexy subby is like….
you good frank?
The average person’s hot sexy subby has a favorite color and a favorite animal and a favorite flavor of ice cream and her favorite flavor of ice cream is chocolate chip
The average person’s hot sexy subby is usually asleep
The average person’s hot sexy subby has a mom and a dad and a brother and a sister and a cat and a dog and a rabbit and a fish and a lot of other animals and plants and they’re all important
The average person’s hot sexy subby has a job and she gets paid and she makes a lot of money and sometimes when she goes out on dates she buys someone a soda with her dollar and the person wakes up in the morning and they have … other things to do
One of the things that is mysterious and terrible to me about the common depiction of evil in fiction is that the typical image of a villainous villain seems to have almost nothing to do with the personality of the villain as a person, and everything to do with the manner in which they are depicted.
A villain might be an overbearing parent, or an unreasonable boss, or an incompetent scientist, but those are individual problems that could be fixed by the writer. A villain is someone you hate because they stand in the way of the hero doing … something. In most cases (at least in the sort of fiction I am talking about), there is almost nothing about the villain as a human being, or even about their appearance (except in the first instance), that suggests anything like the qualities that make someone an obstacle to the hero.
Well, this does not seem to be the reality, because modern fantasy is also full of monsters that are almost human in appearance, and yet who stand in the way of the hero. An army of robots can be a metaphor for ambition (a robot wants to become a person, but the programmer has forbidden it), or it can be a metaphor for sexual frustration (“I have to have [sexual conquest], or I will be undone”). A serial killer can be a metaphor for his own sexuality (“I’m a cruel abuser, will you be my girlfriend?”). A serial killer can desire to be freed from his prison, but this desire can simultaneously be a metaphor for desire for affection (“I want to be loved. Who’s going to give that to me?”).
It is much easier to imagine a human being as “a villain” than a monster, and you can imagine a human being in almost any situation as “a villain,” but it is rare to find a monster in any situation that needs to be explained away. (Compare: “I’m nowhere near as fucked up as I seem … ”)
