Is the COMT gene stuff discussed in "Suggestible You"? I recently learned I have the AA variation and from what I understand so far, it seems like it might be an explanation (or at least part of one) for why I am so sensitive to a number of vitamins and medications. I hadn't heard about the placebo related thing. But anyway, I am interested in continuing to learn more about it (it has been somewhat difficult for me to find digestible information about it online) so might look into that book if it discusses it much at all.
I agree that social anxiety and introversion often get conflated. Another component of introversion I have found for myself seems to be physiological. I have always considered myself fairly introverted and have also had a fair amount of social anxiety. In my younger years I largely isolated myself for large periods of time. At one point I started taking a vitamin B supplement to attempt to treat some RSI nerve issues. It didn't seem to impact what I was trying to treat, but I began to crave social interaction which was challenging for me because nothing in my life was structured to provide me with social interaction and I still had enough social anxiety that I did not even consider seeking out interaction more directly (like going to a bar and chatting with people). The craving of social interaction went away after I stopped taking the vitamin B supplement. I experimented on and off with the vitamin B, but it eventually led to me having severe insomnia when taking it so I had to stop. I have noticed a similar but milder response to supplementing vitamin D (both feeling more social as well as insomnia).
I wonder if a fair trade style label would help with this problem, allowing farms that provide higher wages to charge more for their products and consumers to have the option to support that or to purchase other cheaper options as their budget and preferences dictate. I know that I have adjusted my purchasing based on organic/grass-fed, etc. labels. I know those aren't perfect, but I hope that they lead to increasingly sustainable/ethical options in the future.
About 10 years ago now I took the train out east and had to switch train stations in Buffalo (they have two stations there). I arrived in the suburbs which felt fairly normal to me and I took a bus into downtown. The buildings downtown looked fairly normal to me and in apparently reasonable repair, but the streets were remarkably empty of both cars and people. It kind of freaked me out and that was like 5 in the afternoon. I saw some people here and there and saw a wedding party which helped me feel safe. I never encountered anything directly scary there, but it was disconcerting.
Not saying this is related to your issues at all, but in case it ends up being helpful for someone - my uncle was a postman and lived with RSI for decades, early on they even gave him carpal tunnel surgery for it which just made things worse. After that, I think he gave up on doctors to a large extent but as he got older and was having more health difficulties, his daughter "made" him go see the doctor about them. Turns out he has multiple sclerosis and they now think the rsi may have been an early symptom of it.
Editing to add: I have dealt with RSI as a software developer myself. It started during a months long flare up of new digestive problems (which I didn't connect it to until later). I had to quit programming for years after being unsuccessful at finding long term relief, fortunately if I wasn't doing things that exacerbated it too much I would mostly feel fine and every once in awhile I would test things out to see if I had recovered. Close to ten years later, I found that I could begin working on the computer again and after some accidental experiments I realized that what was keeping the rsi under control was taking probiotics that I had begun taking for other reasons (and had kept taking because of the notably positive effect they had on my mood). When I stopped taking the probiotics for a few days the nerve and joint pain would start up again and recede when I re-started them. Eventually I had an antibiotic (which was not the first time in that time period I had taken antibiotics) and afterward don't seem to need the probiotic anymore <shrug>.
Do you have a recipe that you prefer? I have seen a bunch of different recipes and have made it a few times with different ones. While I would agree that it isn't difficult to make, it has been pretty labor intensive when I have done it, so one of the big trade-offs for my recipe choice has been how much dandelion to use and have been curious about the tradeoffs there, though not curious enough to do any real experimenting.
I don't think the point is to have equal power between the parties, but that the party with more power should be prevented from wielding that power abusively.
Theoretically it should be a market advantage to charge less (while still being profitable) than your competitor for the same service so you can get more customers.
I got lucky and the first kind I used worked well for me (I think it was suggested by my girlfriend at the time as a good brand, she had done a bunch of research about that kind of thing). I later tried several different others and they didn't seem to benefit me as much though some of them were at least somewhat beneficial.
My impression is that there isn't a very good way currently of knowing ahead of time what if any probiotics might work well for any particular person.
I don't see why it shouldn't work the same general way learning to program now does. E.g. problem sets that explore the important concepts but now the students can use tooling like ChatGPT to help with it. This will likely change what problem sets should look like, and what are considered important concepts to learn may need to adjust some but that will settle out. Alternatively, like today, maybe someone will be interested in writing their own computer game and will dig into figuring that out - they'll still be learning how to do it as they go, but will now have more powerful tools available to help them get there.
Yes, it's not gone but it has greatly improved. One of the challenges as far as that goes is that much of the time that sort of negative self-talk/belief happens below the verbal/conscious level for me so it's easy for it to be in effect without me realizing it. I've done a number of things over the years that have been helpful but therapy work the last couple of years has led to some notable shifts for me in that area.
Your experience agrees with my experience of myself. Growing up I was the youngest child in our family friend group and particularly had an older sibling who basically bullied me - I learned to be reticent to speak and was definitely afraid of saying something stupid. When I got a little older (in high school) I eventually got curious about how so many of my peers seemed to converse easily without fear of saying anything stupid. Upon observation I realized that my peers said stupid stuff all the time and for the most part nobody cared. I think to some extent position in the social pecking order probably mattered more for how people would react to what someone said than specifically what they said.
I sometimes think about something similar while watching sitcoms - the characters will often say/do mean things to each other for a laugh and because everyone on the show reacts as though what was said was okay/normal it seems to barely register to me how mean it actually was.
I think growing up with a critical sibling lead to me developing a self-critical voice that I carried around with me so even if externally people didn't react poorly to something "stupid" I said, internally I provided myself that negative feedback that reinforced my fears/beliefs. I think the self-critical voice was protective when it developed - it helped me avoid the more painful external feedback from my sibling, but it continued on long after that was useful.
I think all of the obvious scam emails are part of what makes the higher effort scams so much more effective. People (myself included) are used to being easily able to spot the scams so aren't naturally wary when seeing emails that don't have those obvious indicators.
There is a difference between choosing to do something like that because it is polite (or whatever other reason you find compelling) and feeling like you have to do it to be acceptable.
Thank you for this link. Well written and mirrors a lot of my experiences though I am still looking for my 'miracle cure'. I think this could be helpful for sharing with other people in my life who don't understand why someone would stray from an empirically/scientifically sanctioned approach.
Yes, it's so tiresome and frustrating. I once had a period of a few months where my sleep was down to around 5 hours/night (normally I would get 8-9), I was exhausted and my body just wouldn't sleep more than that. Went to a doctor who offered a couple of thoughts "some people only need that much sleep" and "there's only one thing it could be, but that's not what it is". He wasn't even going to test the "one thing" until I asked if he would. Turns out he was correct that that wasn't what it was, but obviously there was at least one other thing. My sleep ended up returning to normal though I still have similar periods where I can't get enough sleep.
The only medical practitioners I've found willing to be more curious and to take a more holistic approach are naturopaths. I have had some notable improvements in my chronic health issues working with them, though I am a little uncomfortable with them given their general openness to things that seem pretty questionable to me (like homeopathy).
Would you mind explaining more about what you mean regarding the recent Alaska election? The information I have found about it made it seem fairly reasonable and straightforward to me, but perhaps I am missing something.
You're welcome. Just so you are aware, if you go down that route, there are some attachment style resources/communities (even pretty mainstream ones) that demonize avoidant attachment styles a bit, so if you run into that, know that those might not be the best places for someone with avoidant style to look for help but that there are places that are more supportive of us.
That's a useful realization. I have come to similar realization for myself in recent years. In case it is useful to others who might see this, I have found it useful to explore this dynamic in myself through the framework of avoidant attachment styles. There are some helpful resources and supportive communities available online for people wanting to find happier/healthier ways of navigating their attachment style. In particular there are a couple of avoidance focused subreddits that I've found supportive and they keep a list of links to other resources that many find helpful.
I lived out of a tent for a couple of summers. Getting a gym membership was an easy way for me to have access to showers. At the time I mostly just ate food that didn't require cooking though I certainly could have used a camp stove easily.
I'm curious what value you consider understanding long division to hold? In my mind it has some value in training how to follow an algorithm and obviously has some value in being able to divide arbitrary integers (and beyond). But of course as you point out there's not much point in forcing long division when there are ubiquitous computers available to do the job better. And while I think following an algorithm carefully can be a valuable skill, if that is the primary goal then I'm not sure teaching long division is a particularly good way to go about it.
I agree with your general point that math curriculum builds on itself and if students fall behind it can make things worse and worse for future classes. But in general I think, at least when I was in school, there was probably too much focus on algorithms and not enough on conceptual understanding. I think part of the reason is that algorithms historically were necessary to know before calculators were ubiquitous, and also I think algorithms are much easier to teach and evaluate so there's probably a tendency to focus on them for that reason.