starchild_3001
Joined 10 years ago
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387
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Member since
Oct 29
Recent submissions
Comment · 2 years ago
Comment · 3 years ago
This is biased reading at its worst. I was simply stating what the authors concluded based on their analysis of 10-20 studies (not just one). This is what they say in the abstract: "The results show that exercise does not reduce all-cause mortality and incident CVD in older adults or in people with chronic conditions, based on RCTs comprising ∼50,000 participants."
One study with 500 people doesn't prove a point.
Of the top of my head I know at least one other study where mid-life lifestyle intervention didn't reduce mortality (it slightly increased it in a statistically non-significant manner). 21 yrs follow up. ~3000 people. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.0...
Comment · 3 years ago
Diet and exercise are universally failed interventions to stop major diseases (CVD, cancer...). People who have a vested interest in them promote them (e.g. exercise specialists, keto experts, vegan gurus, your favorite TV Dr, harvard nutrition dept whose livelihood depends on the effectiveness of "optimal diet" etc), but the results in intervention trials have been extremely disappointing.
1) The best diet studies where people were asked to follow Mediterranean diet only managed to lower CVD and/or mortality by 10s of % points. This is a very poor outcome. At best adds a few years to someone's lifespan. At best. The average Mediterranean dieter fares a lot worse. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26528631/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4368053 Don't get me started about Keto, Vegan etc. Those have even less convincing evidence regarding hard outcomes (e.g. MACE, Cancer etc) though our opinion might change if they ever get tested in large scale.
2) Exercise is even worse. It has virtually zero effect on CVD outcomes, mortality outcomes in trials where participants were asked to change their behaviors. "Exercise did not reduce all-cause mortality and incident CVD in older adults or in people with chronic conditions, based on RCTs comprising ∼50,000 participants" https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=10512580439138189...
It's a myth that diet and exercise will save you from Cancer or CVD. There's virtually zero evidence for that, when you look at things from intervention point of view -- intervention evidence is the only evidence acceptable in science. The rest is pseudo-science or proto-science.
Btw, I believe weight loss is the best thing you can do to live longer (that is if you're overweight or obese). But diets still universally fail. E.g. bariatric surgery probably works, maybe drugs will be shown to work (Tirzepatide/Semaglutide I'm looking at you). A publication on how 90% of obese dieters fail after 1-2 yrs on the same diet: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764193/
Comment · 3 years ago
Buyer beware: Sensation sells (as is portrayed in this news article). Competitors are one click or one setting away. Last I tried switching to DuckDuckGo things didn't go so well -- just overall subpar experience. Bing arguably is a bit better, but that too didn't satisfy, despite the super cool chat feature (deserves kudos for that!).
Comment · 3 years ago
Thanks for sharing! My list of 12 most useful resources for machine learning quants can be found here:
http://gokhanmergen.com/quantBibliography.html
This list was compiled in 2009 before I took a full time job in an algorithmic trading company, but it's still relevant :) If anything ML is more relevant than ever in trading, except perhaps Deep Neural Nets, Transformers, Large Language Models etc are the norm today.
Comment · 3 years ago
Many of us know and follow rapamycin's story. There are some Drs in USA who're willing to prescribe it for longevity. I do hope some billionare will be willing to spend a few million on it to test it in clinical trials. Surely one of the most promising molecules out there, and very little sides when dosed intermittently.
Comment · 3 years ago
Correctness might be there. But there are also some grandiose claims in the abstract ("“There are no trigonometric proofs, because all the fundamental formulae of trigonometry are themselves based upon the truth of the Pythagorean Theorem.”) and the argument being novel. I don't have a way to verify these two. That's what the peer review is for.
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update: This video refers to another trigonometric proof that doesn't rely on sin^2 + cos^1 = 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6j2nZKwf20
I would write a more modest abstract for this work. Just my $0.02.
Comment · 3 years ago
Ok, I read through the proof, and I think I understood it. Thanks for posting this!
Until the authors' work is submitted to a journal and reviewed, it's hard to say everything claimed here is definitely correct & new.
Update: Nice video on the proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQD6lDwFmCc I like what they did :) Seems legit to me.
Btw, law of sines can be proven independently of pythagoras. So using that as a step is ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_sines
Comment · 3 years ago
Observational studies are just observational studies. Most of them report spurious correlations. Their results cannot be taken at face value. Only through intervention studies you can demonstrate causation. Intervention studies (RCTs) --- the meta-analysis that I linked --- in this case report a null result (no effect) regarding hard end points (CVD and death).
Comment · 3 years ago
Real means, not BS. Real means intervention studies. Observational studies can be hypothesis generating, but you cannot derive definitive conclusions from them. Only through intervention studies, you can be definitively sure about the causality.
Most observational studies simply report spurious correlations, and cannot be trusted --- especially when "reverse causality" is a strong possibility. That is people who are healthier and fitter tend to exercise more, therefore they experience less disease, death etc.
Only by taking sedentary individuals, and coaching them to exercise significantly more, and comparing with a control group, you can be sure of the causal benefits.
Comment · 3 years ago
Measuring associations is one thing. Intervening in people's lives to reduce disease and mortality with exercise is another. Here's what real science has to say about the latter:
Exercise did not reduce all-cause mortality and incident CVD in older adults or in people with chronic conditions, based on RCTs comprising ∼50,000 participants
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=10512580439138189...
The average sedentary HN reader, take comfort! Being a gym rat is good for you. Forcing yourself to become a gym rat from being sedentary has unclear benefits regarding hard outcomes.
Comment · 3 years ago
GDPR and DMA that came out of EU internet regulators don't impress me. They make it more arduous to browse the web, reduce the revenue collected by open web (content sites), reduce the quality of internet services, lower the quality of ads, hurt user experience, and hurt businesses who're looking to connect with customers.
Looks like EU will be doing the same with AI, and risk locking these countries out of the benefits of AI revolution.
Comment · 3 years ago
Good job human(s)! It should be obvious to anyone who's following chess AIs: Progress seems endless; we're constantly discovering tactics and anti-tactics to defeat the latest model. That's why computer ELO is going up on a straight line. Progress in Go is admittedly a bit more obscure. Fewer people are working on it (leela go, katago etc). This article demonstrates that we can expect a similar trend.
Comment · 3 years ago
Gladwell is an extremely gifted author. He's a poor social scientist. When he wears a social scientist's cloak, and tells engaging and highly believable stories, he's doing a disservice to society. I won't read another Gladwell book (story), nor do I recommend it to anyone.
AI is clearly in the right track regarding performance and the speed of progress. Is it human level in every task? Not really. It clearly has room to grow. Is it super human in many tasks? I think so. Just learn how to use it. Peace.