Epistemic status: I spent about 5 hours looking into this, and the next day developed covid myself.  I did a bit more research plus all of the writing while sick. So in addition to my normal warning that I have no medical credentials, you should keep in mind that this knowledge may be cursed.  Introduction Nitric Oxide Nasal Spray, sold under the brand name Enovid, is a reactive compound that kills viruses (and I suspect taxes your nasal tissue). It has recently been tested and marketed for treatment of covid. The protocol I found in papers was 2 sprays per nostril every 2-3 hours, a ..read more

Three months ago I suggested people consider inositol for treating combined vague mood issues and vague stomach issues. I knew a few people who’d really benefited from it, and when one talked about it on his popular Twitter account several more people popped up thanking him for the suggestion, because it fixed their lives too. But those reports didn’t come with a denominator, which made it hard to estimate the success rate; I was hoping mentioning it on my blog and doing a formal follow-up to capture the non-responders would give a more accurate number. Unfortunately, I didn’t get enough peopl ..read more

My last post tragically used the wrong link to the inositol feedback form. You can find it here: https://docs.google.com/forms/u/1/d/14pMLroudQ961GHvhl8UpC15nCW9bWdSrEOMpcwwEY4I/edit if you managed to find it through the original post don’t worry, this is the same form, you don’t have to submit twice ..read more

Two months ago I wrote about inositol as a treatment that occasionally works for anxiety and depression, especially when the user also has weird digestive issues (not medical advice, I am not a doctor). If that inspired you to try inositol I would love if you would fill out this 5-7 question survey about your experience. This follow-up data helps other people considering inositol, and is broadly helpful to me in figuring out what luck based medicine looks like.  And to the four people who already filled this out: gold star for epistemic virtue.  The survey doesn’t allow for a lot of ..read more

Another inside baseball EA post The Lightspeed application asks:  “What impact will [your project] have on the world? What is your project’s goal, how will you know if you’ve achieved it, and what is the path to impact?” LTFF uses an identical question, and SFF puts it even more strongly (“What is your organization’s plan for improving humanity’s long term prospects for survival and flourishing?”).  I’ve applied to all three grants of these at various points, and I’ve never liked this question. It feels like it wants a grand narrative of an amazing, systemic project that will measura ..read more

[Status: latest entry in a longrunning series] My last post on truthseeking in EA vegan advocacy got a lot of comments, but there’s one in particular I want to highlight as highly epistemically cooperative. I have two motivations for this: having just spotlighted some of the most epistemically uncooperative parts of a movement, it feels just to highlight good ones I think some people will find it surprising that I call this comment highly truthseeking and epistemically cooperative, which makes it useful for clarifying how I use those words.  In a tangential comment thread, I asked Trist ..read more

Introduction Effective altruism prides itself on truthseeking. That pride is justified in the sense that EA is better at truthseeking than most members of its reference category, and unjustified in that it is far from meeting its own standards. We’ve already seen dire consequences of the inability to detect bad actors who deflect investigation into potential problems, but by its nature you can never be sure you’ve found all the damage done by epistemic obfuscation because the point is to be self-cloaking.  My concern here is for the underlying dynamics of  EA’s weak epistemic immune ..read more

Summary: Do you have weird digestive symptoms and anxiety or depression? Consider trying inositol (affiliate link), especially if the symptoms started after antibiotics. Epistemic status: I did some research on this 10 years ago and didn’t write it down. In the last nine months I recommended it to a few people who (probably) really benefited from it. My track record on this kind of suggestion is mixed; the Apollo Neuro was mostly a dud but iron testing caught a lot of issues.  Background Inositol is a form of sugar. It’s used in messaging between cells in your body, which means it could i ..read more

Introduction Epistemic status: everything is stupid. I’m pretty sure I’m directionally right but this post is in large part correcting previous statements of mine, and there’s no reason to believe this is the last correction. Even if I am right, metabolism is highly individual and who knows how much of this applies to anyone else. This is going to get really in the weeds, so let me give you some highlights 1-2 pounds of watermelon/day kills my desire for processed desserts, but it takes several weeks to kick in. It is probably a microbiome thing. I have no idea if this works for other people ..read more

I keep seeing advice on ambition, aimed at people in college or early in their career, that would have been really bad for me at similar ages. Rather than contribute (more) to the list of people giving poorly universalized advice on ambition, I have written a letter to the one person I know my advice is right for: myself in the past. The Letter Dear Past Elizabeth, Your life is, in some sense, a series of definitions of success.  First you’re in early school, and success is defined for you by a handful of adults. You go where they say, do the assignments they say, when they say, and doing ..read more