From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mail.lang.hm (rrcs-45-59-245-186.west.biz.rr.com [45.59.245.186]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ADH-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by lists.bufferbloat.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 879093B29D; Wed, 4 Oct 2023 15:14:18 -0400 (EDT) Received: from dlang-mobile (unknown [10.2.2.69]) by mail.lang.hm (Postfix) with ESMTP id 737D81B08BB; Wed, 4 Oct 2023 12:14:17 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2023 12:14:17 -0700 (PDT) From: David Lang To: Dave Taht via Nnagain cc: bloat , Dave Taht In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <20231003205640.3.f99276b66eff3df4@mg-d1.substack.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; BOUNDARY="===============5384698220085515015==" Subject: Re: [NNagain] A good question - do you know how a toilet works? X-BeenThere: nnagain@lists.bufferbloat.net X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.20 Precedence: list List-Id: =?utf-8?q?Network_Neutrality_is_back!_Let=C2=B4s_make_the_technical_aspects_heard_this_time!?= List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2023 19:14:18 -0000 This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. --===============5384698220085515015== Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Unfortunantly, these days dissent from the manufactured concensus is being made illegal, not just unpopular, that path is being badly strained. David Lang On Wed, 4 Oct 2023, Dave Taht via Nnagain wrote: > I like to think, that as we defeated cholera, and designed water and septic > systems that just work, that engineers and scientists had successfully > informed policymakers of the right things to do - not always right, the > first time! > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: Adam Mastroianni > Date: Tue, Oct 3, 2023 at 1:57 PM > Subject: On the importance of staring directly into the sun > To: > > > It's also important to poke the heart of a dead pigeon > ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ > ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ > ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ > ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ > ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ > ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ > Forwarded this email? Subscribe here > > for more > On the importance of staring directly into the sun > It's > also important to poke the heart of a dead pigeon > > Adam Mastroianni > > Oct 3 > > > > > > > > READ IN APP > > > Listen to post · 22:53 > > > Photo > cred: my dad > > There's something very weird about the timeline of scientific discoveries > > . > > For the first few thousand years, it’s mostly math. Maybe a bunch of math > nerds hijacked the list, but it's pretty obvious that humans figured out a > lot of math before they figured out much else. The Greeks had the > beginnings of trigonometry by ~120 BCE > . > Chinese mathematicians figured out the fourth digit of pi by the year 250 > . > In India, Brahmagupta > > devised a way to “interpolate new values of the sine function” in 665, and > by this point we're already at mathematics that I no longer understand. > > Meanwhile, we didn't discover things that seem way more obvious until > literally a thousand years later. It's not until the 1620s, for instance, > that English physician William Harvey > > figured out how blood circulates through animal bodies by, among other > things, spitting on his finger and poking the heart of a dead pigeon. We > didn't really understand heredity until Gregor Mendel > > started gardening in the mid-1800s, we didn't grasp the basics of learning > until Ivan Pavlov > > started feeding his dogs in the early 1900s, and we didn't realize the > importance of running randomized-controlled trials until 1948 > > . > > Oh, and for 13 centuries, people thought that rotting meat turns into > maggots, until Francesco Redi > > did this: > > Nobody > thought to do this until 1668. Image credit: Amitchell125 > > > What took us so long? How did all this low-hanging fruit go unplucked for > centuries? Our ancestors weren't stupid—they were absolutely nailing it in > math, racking up centuries of top-notch numbers stuff, even while they were > like , “I hope my meat doesn't rot and turn into maggots.” > > A very straightforward theory of how science works is “we discover things > in order from easiest to hardest.” But what makes something hard to > discover? I don't mean *impossible *to discover—you can't see the rings of > Saturn without a telescope, for example. I mean cases where it seems like > we have everything we need to make a discovery, and yet we take centuries > to make it. Why does *that* happen? > > I think I have an answer, but we must unfortunately look for it in the > toilet. > *HOW DOES A TOILET WORK* > > Here's one of my favorite psychology studies of all time > . > You bring people into the lab, and you ask them, “Do you know how a toilet > works?” And they say “Uhh yes, I'm not an idiot.” And then you go “Okay, > could you please write down, step by step, how a toilet works.” And then > you ask them to explain something that requires knowledge of toilets, like > “How does pressing the lever on the side of the toilet cause the bowl to > empty and then refill again to a certain level?” > > What participants learn in this study is that, to their horror, they don't > really know how a toilet works, at least not nearly as well as they thought > they did. This isn't specific to toilets—you can get it with everything > from spray bottles to helicopters. > > Here's one from me: I realized recently that I don’t know how things dry. I > know *that *things dry, of course—I’m not an idiot! But *why *do they dry? > If you leave a wet towel hanging in the bathroom, eventually it won’t be > wet anymore. Where does the water go? Into the air, I assume, but I thought > liquid water is only supposed to become gas when it gets hot enough. > This trustworthy-seeming > website > > informs me it's because temperature is only the *average *amount of energy > in a volume of water, and individual water molecules can have way more or > less energy than that because they're all moving around randomly, and so by > chance some are going to pick up enough energy to slip their bonds and > rocket off into the air.¹ > > Psychologists have a name for this tendency to think we understand things > better than we do: the “illusion of explanatory depth.” We call it an > illusion because we live inside a proto-paradigm > > where we catch people making mistakes and go “aha! a bias!” and then > publish a paper on it. (...he said, having recently published a paper > called “The Illusion of Moral Decline > ”.) > But this particular illusion is a feature, not a bug. In fact, we can't > live without it. > > Think of it this way: for most of human history, we didn't know why things > fall down. People trip, cups spill, buildings topple, and nobody had any > good explanations for this, or at least not any true ones. If you didn't > have an illusion of explanatory depth, you'd spend your days dumbfounded: > “Why do things fall?? Why do you return to earth when you jump?? What's up > with clouds—they don't seem to fall at all!! Why do some things fall when > in water and some things don't?? Why can birds rise by flapping their > wings, but I can't rise by flapping my arms??” > > You can't live your life if you're always getting stuck on mysteries like > this. You'd get so mesmerized by the inexplicability of your porridge > falling into your bowl and bubbles rising in your water that you'd forget > to eat or drink and you'd die. That's why we *need *the illusion of > explanatory depth: most things have to feel like they make sense, even if > they don't, so that we can get on with the business of living. > > And indeed, people born before the discovery of gravity understood this > whole falling business exactly as well as they needed in order to survive. > They knew that they'd fall and die if they walked off a cliff, that the > things they throw in the air will fall down on people's heads, and that > houses tip over if they aren't built properly. Maybe they thought they > understood it better than they actually did, but for their purposes, they > understood it perfectly well. > > In fact, I humbly submit that, despite all our progress, the average human > today understands the things-falling-down problem only a tiny bit better > than the earliest humans did. Take me as a test case: if you asked me why > things fall down, I'd go, smugly, “Gravity!” But that's not an explanation. > I could go a little deeper: “Well, everything with mass exerts an invisible > force on other things, which pulls those things closer. More mass, more > force.” But why do things have this invisible force? How do they exert it? > Why does it make things come closer? I understand that *someone *could > probably answer those questions, but *I *cannot. To me, they're just some > arbitrary rules of the great board game of life, much like they were to all > of my ancestors. > *SMACK ME IN THE FACE AND TELL ME I KNOW NOTHING* > > Okay, so an illusion of explanatory depth is extremely important to staying > alive. It does, unfortunately, have a downside: it fools you into thinking > the universe isn't full of mysteries. > > This, I think, explains the curious course of our scientific discovery. You > might think that we discover things in order from *most *intuitive to *least > *intuitive. No, thanks to the illusion of explanatory depth, it often goes > the opposite way: we discover the *least *obvious things first, because > those are things that *we* *realize we don't understand*. > > That would fit with our incredible ancient progress in mathematics, because > math is *not *obvious. Here's an example: could you please tell me the > volume of this figure? > > Image > cred: Stumps > > > Unless you're a math whiz, I assume the answer does not spring to mind. > Maybe you get a sense of , “I think I learned how to do this in high > school, I bet I could get it if I thought for a little bit.” Or maybe, like > me, you just get a sense of despair. Either way, there's no illusion of > explanatory depth here; this problem absolutely smacks you in the face with > the realization that you don't know the answer, and it would at least take > some work to figure out. And that's exactly what you need to discover > something—to realize that you don't know it yet. Perhaps that's why the > ancient Egyptians nailed this one ~4,000 years ago > > ! > > I'm sure that progress in math still requires intuition and insight. > (Indeed, the mathematician Henri Poincaré reports that he came up with Fuschian > groups > —whatever > those are—suddenly and almost magically while he was getting on a bus > .) > But math, perhaps more so than any other intellectual pursuit, emits very > strongly what we might call *ignorance signals*, signs that there's > something you don't know. Maybe it's all the numbers and symbols, the funny > shapes, the level of abstraction, the amount of stuff you have to hold in > working memory, the heaviness you feel in your head when doing mental > math—whatever it is, it seems to have helped us do a lot of good math very > early in our intellectual history. > > Other subjects, however, emit fewer ignorance signals. Compare this > mathematical discovery from the second century > > : > > > With this physics discovery from 1586 > > : > > Image > cred: Theresa Knott > . > (The sizes of the spheres represents their masses, not their volumes.) > > The first one is a method > > of evaluating polynomials, and I don't even know what it means to evaluate > a polynomial (“Hey, nice polynomial you got there”?) The second one is an > experiment showing that heavier things and lighter things fall at the same > rate, which seems like the most obvious experiment in the world. So why did > we only discover it 12 centuries later? > > The answer, I believe, is that we had an illusion of explanatory depth for > weight but not for polynomials. It makes perfect intuitive sense that > heavier things should fall faster—after all, it's harder to hold them up! > Most people never encounter a situation where they have to know whether one > thing will fall faster than another; if you knock over a full glass and a > half-full glass, for instance, they'll both be empty glasses rather > quickly. Plus, some things obviously fall slowly, like feathers and flower > petals, so there's a precedent for things falling at different speeds. So > why bother tossing stuff off the Leaning Tower of Pisa? > > If that didn't satisfy your curiosity and you also happened to be born > after 322 BCE, you had an excellent guide for explaining why things fall > down: Aristotle > . > According to him, things fall down because the human world is made of four > elements, each with its natural place: earth at the bottom, then water, > then air, then fire. Things move in the physical world when they're forced > out of their natural order—earth in water will sink, air in water will > rise. This sounds silly to us today, but as the physicist Carlo Rovelli > explains in this terrific article > , > Aristotle actually did a great job: > > In summary, Aristotle’s physics of motion can be seen, after translation > into the language of classical physics, to yield a highly non trivial, but > correct empirical approximation to the actual physical behavior of objects > in motion in the circumscribed terrestrial domain for which the theory was > created. [...] The reason Aristotelian physics lasted so long is not > because it became dogma: it is because it is a very good theory. > > So yes, Aristotle's system suggests that heavy things should fall faster > than lighter things because they have more “natural motion” toward their > rightful place. This turns out to be wrong. But it was very hard to notice > why it was wrong because Aristotle's physics mostly made sense otherwise. > There simply weren't enough ignorance signals to make it seem reasonable to > check whether heavy things actually fall faster. I mean, if you stepped > into the Pantheon > > (built in the second century, a few hundred years after Aristotle) and > beheld its magnificent architecture that stayed up perfectly well—and still > does—you probably don't find yourself thinking, “We need a new system of > physics.”² > > Upgrade to paid > > *GO BLIND, GET HIGH, INVENT PSYCHOLOGY* > > Which brings us to psychology. No offense to the mathematicians, but most > of us find people way more interesting than numbers. So why did we spend > centuries studying numbers, while we've only recently started studying > people? > > Maybe it's because psychology is the domain with the deepest illusion of > explanatory depth. You open your eyes and see stuff, and although this > requires lots of complicated calculations and several anatomical miracles, > it doesn't feel mysterious at all. You hear a song and remember the lyrics > years later, and this seems totally natural. You and your spouse watch the > same movie and have different opinions about it, and the explanation seems > obvious: you're right and they're wrong. It's so easy to accept the wild > workings of the mind at face value, or to generate ad hoc explanations for > them, that you might never realize you have no idea how any of this works. > > While philosophers have occasionally made these illusions deeper by > spinning up spurious theories of psychology, I bet most of our illusion of > explanatory depth for psychology comes preinstalled or is acquired quickly > through experience. The brain's greatest trick is convincing you that it's > not doing any tricks at all, blocking your conscious access to most of what > it does and then giving you a perfectly reasonable account for what's going > on behind the curtain: > > Me: Hey brain, I notice that I can see stuff. How does that work? > > Brain: Oh, there are things in the world, and then I peek out through my > eyes and see them. > > Me: Cool, sounds good. > > Overcoming this expertly-maintained illusion requires a big push, which is > perhaps why we didn't do it until a German guy stared directly into the sun. > > Most histories of psychology as an experimental science begin with Gustav > Fechner > > setting up a psychophysical laboratory in the middle of the 1800s. What > those histories often fail to mention is that Fechner began as a physicist, > but then he suffered a mental breakdown after going blind because *he > stared at the sun for too long*. > > He was trying to study afterimages, those glowing spots you get in your > field of vision when you look at something bright and then look away. If > you do that too many times, it turns out, you fry your retinas and get > really depressed for three years > . > Fechner was completely blind for a while, and then he underwent treatment > by moxibustion > , > which is where you put a weed called mugwort on someone's skin and then set > it on fire. Besides leaving scars, this treatment somehow ruined his > digestion, and he almost starved to death before a family friend figured > out a way of preparing ham in a way that he liked; the friend said the idea > came to her in a dream. > > Fechner eventually recovered, but the experience turned him weird. Maybe it > was the mugwort, which has psychedelic properties according to this > seemingly-trustworthy > website > > ³, which would make sense, because when Fechner regained his sight, he > acted like someone who had been doing a lot of shrooms.⁴ His first > post-blindness project was a book about the mental life of plants. Then he > decided to invent a new religion. From the biography > > that appears at the beginning of the English translation of his > landmark *Elements > of Psychophysics*: > > Fechner's general intent was that his book should be a new gospel. The > title means practically “a revelation of the word.” Consciousness, Fechner > argued, is in all and through all. The earth, “our mother,” is a being like > ourselves but very much more perfect than ourselves. The soul does not die, > nor can it be exorcised by the priests of materialism when all being is > conscious. > > Fechner wrote seven books on the topic, but they never caught on, so he > decided he should give his new philosophy a “scientific foundation.” For > reasons not entirely clear to me now, he thought the most important thing > to do was set up a laboratory and do things like: show people two lights > that are almost equally bright and then ask them whether they can tell the > difference between the lights. I don't know if this ultimately provided > vindication for Fechner's philosophy, but he did discover > > that the “intensity of our sensation increases as the logarithm of an > increase in energy,” and thus laid down, for the first time in history, a > scientific law of psychology. > > Fechner's sun-addled realization helped get people to start both a) > wondering about how the mind works, and b) believing that you could study > it empirically. He and his friends Ernst Weber > > and Wilhelm Wundt > > turned the University of Leipzig into the hot place to be for psychology, > where they trained most of the prominent psychologists of that generation, > who in turn trained most of the prominent psychologists of the *next > *generation. > A good chunk of experimental psychologists working today are descendants of > Fechner and his friends, including me.⁵ > > Which is to say: the field of experimental psychology exists today at least > in part because a German guy stared at the sun for too long. > > What Fechner needed, of course, was not to get his eyeballs cooked, but to > get his illusion of explanatory depth dispelled. Virtually every human who > had ever existed before him felt content enough with their knowledge of the > mind to not bother learning anything more about it. A few people had been > curious enough to at least advance a few theories, but they didn't think it > was necessary to gather data. (Immanuel Kant, in fact, had written > > only 75 years before that gathering data was hopeless; we would never learn > much more about psychology than we already knew.) We could not make > progress in psychology until we understood how little we actually > understood, and perhaps going blind from staring at the sun, lying in bed > for three years, inhaling some burning mugwort, and inventing a new > religion makes you realize there are a lot of questions we haven't answered > yet. > > Fechner's intellectual descendants set about answering those questions, > many of which could have been answered long before, but nobody had thought > to do so. One of the most influential studies in developmental psychology, > for example, is about whether babies can recognize faces > ; > you can replicate it with some cardboard, a mirror, and a baby. Actually, > while you've got the baby handy, you can also replicate the Little Albert > experiment > —an > early proof of concept that humans can be classically conditioned—by > putting on a Santa Claus mask and banging some pots and pans to scare the > baby, but please don't do this. The original study on “learned helplessness > ” > used an electrified floor to shock dogs; you could conceivably replicate it > with a more ancient way of torturing a dog, but please don't do this > either. We didn't need modern technology or advanced mathematics to study > these topics—in fact, someone living hundreds or even thousands of years > ago probably could have done a half-decent version of almost every > study on this > random list > > of famous psychology experiments. The answers were simply waiting for us to > go looking for them. > *PLEASE FEED ME 11 SLICES OF BREAD PER DAY* > > It's easy to look back on the history of our discoveries and believe that > we've moved from an era of mysteries to an era of certainties. No: we've > always lived in an era of mysteries, and we've always lived in an era of > undue certainties. We know more than our ancestors did, yes, but far, far > less than we *think *we know. > > So where are our illusions of explanatory depth still the thickest? One is > in psychology, where I've argued > > that we're stuck doing things in ways that used to work but don't anymore, > or in ways that never worked at all. Another is probably in dentistry > , > where we have pretty bad evidence for almost everything. I'd wager that > “dark matter” and “dark energy” are going to end up looking silly, but what > do I know. > > The biggest illusions of explanatory depth might be in nutrition and weight > loss, where lots of people believe things very strongly for no good reason. > For instance, I grew up staring at this image on the back of my cereal box: > > > That's right: the government said I should eat *eleven slices of bread per > day*.⁶ > > Gulping down half a loaf of Wonderbread every day sounds crazy to many > people now, but those people also believe many things that will probably > sound crazy sometime soon. Eat a lot of fat/no don't! Eat a lot of meat/no > don't! Eat only at certain times/no, eat whenever you want! I was once at a > dinner where a professor politely refused a plate of potatoes because she > was “trying to lose weight,” and I had to giggle because I had just read > > about a bunch of people who lost weight eating *only *potatoes. At least > there are few things we all agree on—I mean, nobody thinks you can lose > weight by eating croissants all day! (Oh, wait > > .)⁷ > > Look: we don't really know what's going on here, which is fine. What's not > fine is *believing *that we know what's going on, because then we'll never > do what it takes to actually figure it out. The first step in solving the > mysteries is believing in the mysteries > > . > *WAKE UP AND SMELL THE MUGWORT* > > It's hard to overcome your illusions of explanatory depth, just like it's > hard to hold your breath for a long time—our urge to make sense of things > and our urge to breathe are both there for good reason, and our brains > don't trust us to turn those urges off at will. It takes practice. > > Fortunately, we have lots of role models. And now we can better understand > what made them so successful: their ability to understand how little they > understood. Francesco Redi, the man behind the rotting meat > experiment, describes > it well > > : > > Every day I am becoming more and more certain in my decision of not > believing anything about nature except what I have seen with my own eyes > and what has been confirmed by experiments repeated and repeated again; for > I have seen very clearly that it is most difficult to trace the truth since > it is so often disguised by untruth, and that many ancient and contemporary > authors resemble the sheep about which our divine poet [Dante] sings. > > Unfortunately, the illusion of explanatory depth takes many shapes. Our > ancestors believed that the Bible or Aristotle had everything figured out. > We got over that, but now some people believe that science itself has > everything figured out. We've done all the easy stuff, this line of > thinking goes, and so it's only the hardest discoveries that remain. > > Oh, how I hate this idea! > > It's just the illusion of explanatory depth dressed in a lab coat. And this > incarnation is the worst of all. If you think you know how a toilet works > when you actually don't, whatever—you still know enough to go #2 without > embarrassing yourself. But if you think you know how science works when you > actually don't, you're sunk—you literally can't do it if you think it's > impossible. > > Somewhere out there is our modern-day version of the rotting meat > experiment. There are ideas that are simply too obvious to see, obscured by > our theories that seem to make more sense than they actually do. Wherever > our convictions are strong and our evidence is weak, there is a > breakthrough waiting to happen. And then hundreds of years from now, our > descendants will look back and say, “I can't believe it took them so long!” > > So wake up and smell the mugwort! It's a new day and the sun is shining—*time > to go stare directly at it!* > > Experimental History lives to dispel illusions of explanatory depth, and > can do so only with your support > > Upgrade to paid > > 1 > > I accept this explanation in the same way I begrudgingly accept the long > list of arbitrary rules that precedes every new, complicated board game. > “Settlements and cities may only be placed at the corner of the terrain > hex—never along the edges.” Okay, fine. “When placing a greenery tile, you > increase the oxygen level, if possible, and also your TR. If you can’t > raise the oxygen level you don’t get the increase in TR either.” Got it. > “Water molecules can randomly gain enough energy to evaporate.” Sure, > whatever! > 2 > > Thomas Kuhn writes > > beautifully about this. He's trying to figure out why people had followed > Aristotle's system of physics for so long when it seems so dumb, and then > finally it clicks for him that Aristotle's system makes a lot of sense from > the *inside*: > > I was sitting at my desk with the text of Aristotle's *Physics* open in > front of me and with a four-colored pencil in my hand. Looking up, I gazed > abstractedly out the window of my room—the visual image is one I still > retain. Suddenly the fragments in my head sorted themselves out in a new > way, and fell into place together. My jaw dropped, for all at once > Aristotle seemed a very good physicist indeed, but of a sort I'd never > dreamed possible. Now I could understand why he had said what he'd said, > and what his authority had been. Statements that had previously seemed > egregious mistakes, now seemed at worst near misses within a powerful and > generally successful tradition. > > 3 > > It also, apparently, cures farts. > 4 > > Drugs show up curiously often > > in the history of scientific breakthroughs. > 5 > > Fechner > > -> Lotze > > -> Stumpf > > -> Langfield > > -> Allport > > -> Bruner > > -> Jones > > -> Gilbert > > -> me > 6 > > This was, in fact, merely a passing phase in federal dietary guidelines > , > which began by specifying five > > food groups, which then became seven food groups, then four, then six, then > up to five, then back to four, then six again, then five with seven > subgroups, and most recently six with 10 subgroups. > 7 > > “All you have to do is burn more calories than you consume,” is perhaps the > most smugly dispensed piece of dieting advice, but it's true only in the > most useless sense, like “all you have to do to make your car run is to fix > your car.” For more, see these three > > great > > posts > > from fellow bloggers ExFatLoss and SMTM. > > *Thanks for reading! If you like Experimental History, the best way to > support it is to take out a paid subscription. That also gives you access > to every post, like last week’s I sent Paul Bloom an email > > and my crash course in negotiation > .* > > Upgrade to paid > > > Like > > Comment > > Restack > > > > © 2023 Adam Mastroianni > New York, NY > Unsubscribe > > > [image: Get the app] > [image: > Start writing] > > > > --===============5384698220085515015==--