Robin Hanson cited a survey of studies on vitamin supplementation. Their conclusion is that the dosages people take in multivitamins are harmful overall (except for selenium). Phil Goetz pointed out a huge flaw in the survey (it doesn't have the possibility of identifying lower doses that are helpful, if larger doses in some studies were harmful).

However, there exists a single, high quality study of vitamin C and E supplementation in old men, which uses high but reasonable doses (commonly taken by many people and present in some multivitamins). They looked at cancer and heart attack, but also total mortality.

I already knew that supplementing vitamin E was a bad idea. It turns out that even though it's not fat soluble (so megadoses get excreted out quickly), supplementing past the accepted-useful amount of vitamin C (100mg/day) is harmful.

In general, supplementing fat-soluble vitamins is dangerous, because the levels build up slowly (daily consumption is not needed). You should really get your blood levels checked, and supplement only if needed. On days when I don't get much sun (less than 10 minutes), I take 2000 IU of vitamin D. I should check if this is too much.

Alcohol increases insulin sensitivity (which is good). Alcohol consumption later in life is correlated with childhood intelligence. Alcohol leads to more risk-taking behavior even after sobering up. Alcohol (even heavy drinking) makes old people live longer.

It's a shame alcohol severely impairs (short term only, as far as I know) physical and mental coordination, and causes worse sleep. Otherwise it seems pretty nice.

On the other hand, I've heard that it causes small amounts of damage to brain cells (this may be "reefer madness" scare stories from church ladies), and for certain declines in intelligence are often caused by an accumulation of small amounts of damage (that aren't easy to observe, since the brain reroutes around damage - in extreme cases, massive damage from stroke or hemispherectomy can be overcome simply by learning the missing skills using new brain regions).

The evidence I see of harms from heavy alcohol use is mostly about thiamine deficiency (easily corrected) and liver disease (which allows poisons to reach and harm brain cells). Additionally, if alcohol use is heavy enough to cause withdrawal, then the brain becomes very excitable, and therefore can be severely damaged by Excitotoxicity.

Alcohol related brain damage is due to not also the direct toxic effects of alcohol; alcohol withdrawal, nutritional deficiency, electrolyte disturbances, and liver damage are also believed to contribute to alcohol related brain damage.^[57]

By electrolyte disturbances, I assume they mean that you pee a lot and therefore in drinking more water might end up with the wrong concentrations of salts etc.

Apparently alcohol is carcinogenic (3.5% of cancers are due to alcohol)[142], but since alcohol consumption is so widespread, I'm not sure exactly how carcinogenic 1 drink/day is.

It's difficult to judge the actual harms of alcohol due to the religious crazies with a stake in it (including AA). I've only related what seems plausible; there are dozens of other claims on Wikipedia.

In Nature's "obesity",

The obese BMI group displayed significantly lower task-related activation in the right parietal cortex, BA 40/7, (F(2,29) = 5.26, P = 0.011) than the normal (P = 0.016) and overweight (P = 0.047) BMI groups.

The difference is entirely explained by worse insulin sensitivity (a result of being very fat, esp. in the abdominal area). The task is 2-Back (which is easy). The specific brain region is definitely expected to activate in short-term memory tasks, and is associated with performance on them.

There are plenty of reasons to believe insulin resistance (usually due to obesity) damages the brain. Resistance means more insulin is produced, which harms the blood vessels in the brain, which exacerbates dementia (for the same reason, heavy smoking is bad).

insulin is an important factor for the successful operation of several processes related to learning and memory such as glucose metabolism, neurotransmitter release, and long-term potentiation (10,29). Insulin from the periphery has been shown to cross the blood–brain barrier in a dose-dependent manner (32). However, chronic hyperinsulinemia
and insulin resistance are believed to cause insulin receptors on the blood–brain barrier to downregulate, inducing
an insulin deficit state in the brain and negatively affecting neurophysiological processes critical to cognitive functioning (29). In keeping with these findings, rats with diet-induced obesity and insulin resistance display impairments in spatial memory and reduced hippocampal synaptic plasticity (30). Similarly, humans with diabetes mellitus exhibit impaired declarative memory and hippocampal atrophy (33). Last but not least, insulin resistance is implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s type dementia through stimulation of cellular release of amyloid-β and reduction in amyloid-β clearance (29).

part 1

Attitude (ch 4)

Within the last century, Western science and physics have made a startling discovery. We are part of the world we view. The very process of our observation changes the things we observe

uh oh ...

Eastern science has recognized this basic principle for a very long time. The mind is a set of events, and the observer participates in those events every time he or she looks inward. Meditation is participatory observation. What you are looking at responds to the process of looking.

You mean Eastern science has recognized the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that the product of the standard deviations of position and momentum of a particle is never less than half the Planck constant? AMAZING! No? Then you only embarrass yourself when you brag about how some thought that predates some scientific discovery is loosely analogous to it. Unless you're saying that some MAGIC source of wisdom caused the thought, that is now SCIENTIFICALLY PROVING, why even mention it? So sad, the authority you claim for Eastern science. What happened to "don't trust us because of our meditation-expert authority - find out for yourself"?

Anyway, how dense do you have to be to not grasp the difficulty of "thinking about what you're thinking about right now"? Clearly it's impossible to hold an exact model in your mind of what's in your mind. Great job, Eastern science.

The following attitudes are essential to success in practice. Most of them have been presented before. But we bring them together again here as a series of rules for application.

1. Don't expect anything. Just sit back and see what happens. Treat the whole thing as an experiment. Take an active interest in the test itself. But don't get distracted by your expectations about results. For that matter, don't be anxious for any result whatsoever. Let the meditation move along at its own speed and in its own direction.

The only way to introspect. Be quiet.

2. Don't strain: Don't force anything or make grand exaggerated efforts. Meditation is not aggressive. There is no violent striving. Just let your effort be relaxed and steady. 

Same as above.

3. Don't rush: There is no hurry, so take you time. Settle yourself on a cushion and sit as though you have a whole day. Anything really valuable takes time to develop. Patience, patience, patience.

Valuable/utility: some advice that isn't obvious or innate, are still pretty quickly transforming+improving. But on the other hand, they tend to have already circulated, and everyone has them.

Valuable/scarcity: obviously, by definition. If it were desirable and easy to develop, everyone would have done so until it's commonplace.

4. Don't cling to anything and don't reject anything: Let come what comes and accommodate yourself to that, whatever it is. If good mental images arise, that is fine. If bad mental images arise, that is fine, too. Look on all of it as equal and make yourself comfortable with whatever happens. Don't fight with what you experience, just observe it all mindfully.

Agreed. You can't possibly sense what your mind does associatively and automatically if you're screaming at it.

5. Let go: Learn to flow with all the changes that come up. Loosen up and relax.

6. Accept everything that arises: Accept your feelings, even the ones you wish you did not have. Accept your experiences, even the ones you hate. Don't condemn yourself for having human flaws and failings. Learn to see all the phenomena in the mind as being perfectly natural and understandable. Try to exercise a disinterested acceptance at all times and with respect to everything you experience.

7. Be gentle with yourself: Be kind to yourself. You may not be perfect, but you are all you've got to work with. The process of becoming who you will be begins first with the total acceptance of who you are.

Extremely redundant with what I've already agreed to above.

8. Investigate yourself: Question everything. Take nothing for granted. Don't believe anything because it sounds wise and pious and some holy men said it. See for yourself.

Of course.

That does not mean that you should be cynical, impudent or irreverent.

Because he hates it when you question his teachings :)

It means you should be empirical. Subject all statements to the actual test of your experience and let the results be your guide to truth. Insight meditation evolves out of an inner longing to wake up to what is real and to gain liberating insight to the true structure of existence. The entire practice hinges upon this desire to be awake to the truth. Without it, the practice is superficial.

Agree. It's necessary, but not sufficient, to want the truth in order to find it.

9. View all problems as challenges: Look upon negatives that arise as opportunities to learn and to grow. Don't run from them, condemn yourself or bear your burden in saintly silence. You have a problem? Great. More grist for the mill. Rejoice, dive in and investigate.

For some reason I don't consider such perspective-change mental illusions to be intellectually unhygienic. I'm okay with positive thinking, mental disintegration (compartmentalization), and hypocrisy to the extent that it works (leads to eventually-true belief). I'm just skeptical.

10. Don't ponder: You don't need to figure everything out. Discursive thinking won't free you from the trap. In mediation, the mind is purified naturally by mindfulness, by wordless bare attention. Habitual deliberation is not necessary to eliminate those things that are keeping you in bondage. All that is necessary is a clear, non-conceptual perception of what they are and how they work. That alone is sufficient to dissolve them. Concepts and reasoning just get in the way. Don't think. See.

I don't know. I'll try it. I think the risk of reasoning is that you'll make salient other problematic thoughts/feelings. It does seem to conflict with awareness of natural thinking processes if you're always sidetracking things.

11. Don't dwell upon contrasts: Differences do exist between people, but dwelling upon then is a dangerous process. Unless carefully handled, it leads directly to egotism. Ordinary human thinking is full of greed, jealousy and pride. A man seeing another man on the street may immediately think, "He is better looking than I am." The instant result is envy or shame. A girl seeing another girl may think, "I am prettier than she is." The instant result is pride. This sort of comparison is a mental habit, and it leads directly to ill feeling of one sort or another: greed, envy, pride, jealousy, hatred. It is an unskillful mental state, but we do it all the time. We compare our looks with others, our success, our accomplishments, our wealth, possessions, or I.Q. and all these lead to the same place--estrangement, barriers between people, and ill feeling.

The meditator's job is to cancel this unskillful habit by examining it thoroughly, and then replacing it with another. Rather than noticing the differences between self and others, the meditator trains himself to notice similarities. He centers his attention on those factors that are universal to all life, things that will move him closer to others. Thus his comparison, if any, leads to feelings of kinship rather than feelings of estrangement.

I have noticed that emphasizing in my mind what I have in common with a group of people helps me enjoy spending time with them. However, I don't think it makes sense to hide from true comparisons. I don't think justified and accurate pride or humility is harmful (except socially, if you advertise it indiscriminately). I see he says "unless carefully handled" and "don't dwell", so I'll consider this a point of possible agreement.

Breathing is a universal process. All vertebrates breathe in essentially the same manner. All living things exchange gasses with their environment in some way or other. This is one of the reasons that breathing is chosen as the focus of meditation.

Stupid reason, except I guess that automatic breathing is indeed regulated by part of the brain. I can't rule out that it's helpful to choose breathing in particular.

the meditator is advised to explore the process of his own breathing as a vehicle for realizing his own inherent connectedness with the rest of life. This does not mean that we shut our eyes to all the differences around us. Differences exist. It means simply that we de-emphasize contrasts and emphasize the universal factors.

Weird. Seems motivated by the silly 'all evil is due to egotism' belief in Buddhism, so unlikely to be true. But I'll give it a shot.

The recommended procedure is as follows:

When the meditator perceives any sensory object, he is not to dwell upon it in the ordinary egotistical way. He should rather examine the very process of perception itself. He should watch the feelings that arise and the mental activities that follow. He should note the changes that occur in his own consciousness as a result. In watching all these phenomena, the meditator must be aware of the universality of what he is seeing. That initial perception will spark pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feelings. That is a universal phenomenon. It occurs in the mind of others just as it does in his, and he should see that clearly. Following these feelings various reactions may arise. He may feel greed, lust, or jealousy. He may feel fear, worry, restlessness or boredom. These reactions are universal. He simple notes them and then generalizes. He should realize that these reactions are normal human responses and can arise in anybody. 

The practice of this style of comparison may feel forced and artificial at first, but it is no less natural than what we ordinarily do. It is merely unfamiliar. With practice, this habit pattern replaces our normal habit of egoistic comparing and feels far more natural in the long run. We become very understanding people as a result. we no longer get upset by the failings of others. We progress toward harmony with all life.

Sounds nice. But I'd actually like to do the opposite - to become more cognizant of the fact that others are NOT like me in their thinking (they don't know what I know, etc.) - because I know I sometimes do a poor job of communicating when I don't model that well. I guess "we're all BASICALLY the same" doesn't conflict with that more specific modeling of others' knowledge/goals/capabilities, and might be a nice anchor to attach fellow-feeling to. I also know that it can be great fun to laugh at the failings of others with friends, but I suppose all mirth won't cease just because I regularly stoke a generalized empathy.

I've started reading Mindfulness in Plain English.

My motivation in investigating any sort of Buddhist meditation is that, although I'm pretty detached already, I think I could be just as effective in the goals that you're supposed to not be "attached" to, with a quieter and more pleasurable internal life. I already think pretty hard about what's going on in my mind, and already try to form true, rather than comforting or self-serving, beliefs. I also already enjoy meditation or napping after enough physical exertion to involve me more in the immediate physical sensation rather than higher level goals, strivings, doubts, and worries in my life. I've heard enough mild recommendations from other intelligent folks that I'm open to the possibility that learning some existing meditation techniques might be more efficient than what comes naturally to me. I also doubt that I would have the desire to spend time regularly meditating unless I believed that it were better than the same amount of time exercising or sleeping, so I'm hoping to find some evidence of that.

My impression of Buddhists is that they want to permanently dissociate from their ego (from being afraid of states of mind, of things and people that they're anchored to), and meditation is a means to this end. Perhaps you can still behave normally (as if you care), but you want the ability to not care, to not be prevented from seeing reality as it is by your fear of what you might lose, or delusional expectation or obsessive fantasy of what you desire. I think that some Buddhists respond to real threats with extreme pacifism, which is tempting given the rewards they've learned from a sort of inwardly-directed pacifism, but stupid - not caring only works against excessive worry and affect in your own mind, not actual mortal conflicts with nature and other people.

What Meditation Is (ch 3)

I won't bother commenting on the first two chapters, since they were just long-winded introduction (useful for people who have never heard of meditaiton, perhaps).

paraphrased:

Different practices that have been called 'meditation':

Mere concentration exercises (focus thoughts in one area), which can result in calm/peace if what's concentrated on is simple and nonthreatening.

1. Judeo-Christian prayer and contemplation.

2. Yogic (Hindu) meditation - repeat a syllable, or focus on an object. Moving to complex focuses (imagined energy flows in body, chants, images) later.

3. Zen (Buddhist) meditation - either focus only on the experience of sitting, or try to solve impossible riddles. Both often under physical duress at a meditation retreat. Eventually you crack (in a good way, you hope).

4. Tantra (also Buddhist) - pretend you're one of the Tantric gods. Once you believe it, you're free to identify (or not) with yourself.

5. Vipassana (also Buddhist) - become more sensitive to your own mind. Pay attention and look for real insight. Most people don't realize it's possible to *really* pay attention. It may take them years of training to be able to do it.

(end paraphrase)

If I want a concentration exercise, I'll do something better than stare at a rock. I'll create music. I'll lift weights. I'll practice my skill in some sport or performance activity. I'll program computers for money. I'll play Dual N-Back. I'll think about my plans and beliefs. So I'm hoping for something more out of meditation than the opportunity to expend effort focusing my attention on something. I already focus my attention intentionally; I just do it on things that also have some other value to me.

Through the process of mindfulness, we slowly become aware of what we really are down below the ego image. We wake up to what life really is. It is not just a parade of ups and downs, lollipops and smacks on the wrist. That is an illusion. Life has a much deeper texture than that if we bother to look, and if we look in the right way.

The author breaks his "in Plain English" pledge already with "ego image". I presume he means the way we signal about ourselves to others for our profit, which necessarily involves rehearsing and self-deception (people are too good at detecting conscious lies and acting, so social confidence depends on hypocrisy and delusion).

Vipassana is a form of mental training that will teach you to experience the world in an entirely new way. You will learn for the first time what is truly happening to you, around you and within you. It is a process of self discovery, a participatory investigation in which you observe your own experiences while participating in them, and as they occur.

I can't wait. What is it? I want it :)

"I want to apprehend the true and deepest qualities of life, and I don't want to just accept somebody else's explanation. I want to see it for myself." If you pursue your meditation practice with this attitude, you will succeed.

That he makes this promise is nice, because I can be justifiably even more angry than usual if he turns out to have wasted my time. On the other hand, this is no different than other religions' empty promises that "if you ask God with a pure heart and good intent, the truth of this religion will be impressed upon you".

'Vipassana Bhavana' means the cultivation of the mind, aimed at seeing in a special way that leads to insight and to full understanding.

Ok, but what is it, specifically?

In Vipassana mediation we cultivate this special way of seeing life.

I don't think 'this' is merited since you haven't described it yet. You haven't convinced me that there's something real behind the words you're using.

We train ourselves to see reality exactly as it is, and we call this special mode of perception 'mindfulness.' This process of mindfulness is really quite different from what we usually do. We usually do not look into what is really there in front of us. We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those mental objects for the reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal pursuit of pleasure and gratification and an eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend all of our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears. We are endlessly seeking security. Meanwhile, the world of real experience flows by untouched and untasted. In Vipassana meditation we train ourselves to ignore the constant impulses to be more comfortable, and we dive into the reality instead.

 I don't agree that my perception is wrong. My attention is a limited resource; I sometimes benefit from not seeing the texture of the asphalt on the road. I'm open to trying new modes of perception. I agree that we spend a lot of effort seeking social validation and other forms of pleasure. I've also always been sympathetic to the idea that there's some value in really apprehending reality in an unbiased way, which certainly means disregarding which belief brings the most comfort.

When you relax your driving desire for comfort, real fulfillment arises. When you drop your hectic pursuit of gratification, the real beauty of life comes out. When you seek to know the reality without illusion, complete with all its pain and danger, that is when real freedom and security are yours. This is not some doctrine we are trying to drill into you. This is an observable reality, a thing you can and should see for yourself.

I expect that a feeling of relief arises. Nothing more. But I will see for myself.

Gotama the Buddha was a highly unorthodox individual and real anti-traditionalist. He did not offer his teaching as a set of dogmas, but rather as a set of propositions for each individual to investigate for himself. His invitation to one and all was 'Come and See'. One of the things he said to his followers was "Place no head above your own". By this he meant, don't accept somebody else's word. See for yourself.

This would be embarrassing if it were not so. It's the only reason I give your ideas my time.

From the Buddhist point of view, we human beings live in a very peculiar fashion. We view impermanent things as permanent, though everything is changing all around us. The process of change is constant and eternal. As you read these words, your body is aging. But you pay no attention to that. The book in you hand is decaying. The print is fading and the pages are becoming brittle. The walls around you are aging. The molecules within those walls are vibrating at an enormous rate, and everything is shifting, going to pieces and dissolving slowly. You pay no attention to that, either. Then one day you look around you. Your body is wrinkled and squeaky and you hurt. The book is a yellowed, useless lump; the building is caving in. So you pine for lost youth and you cry when the possessions are gone. Where does this pain come from? It comes from your own inattention. You failed to look closely at life. You failed to observe the constantly shifting flow of the world as it went by. You set up a collection of mental constructions, 'me', 'the book', 'the building', and you assume that they would endure forever. They never do. But you can tune into the constantly ongoing change. You can learn to perceive your life as an ever- flowing movement, a thing of great beauty like a dance or symphony. You can learn to take joy in the perpetual passing away of all phenomena. You can learn to live with the flow of existence rather than running perpetually against the grain.

This seems crazy to me. I'm aware that I'm going to die; none of the other stuff about molecules vibrating or peeling off from the walls or from my body matters at all. Sounds like emotional nonsense.

Our human perceptual habits are remarkably stupid in some ways. We tune out 99% of all the sensory stimuli we actually receive, and we solidify the remainder into discrete mental objects. Then we react to those mental objects in programmed habitual ways. An example: There you are, sitting alone in the stillness of a peaceful night. A dog barks in the distance. The perception itself is indescribably beautiful if you bother to examine it. Up out of that sea of silence come surging waves of sonic vibration. You start to hear the lovely complex patterns, and they are turned into scintillating electronic stimulations within the nervous system. The process is beautiful and fulfilling in itself. We humans tend to ignore it totally. Instead, we solidify that perception into a mental object. We paste a mental picture on it and we launch into a series of emotional and conceptual reactions to it. "There is that dog again. He is always barking at night. What a nuisance. Every night he is a real bother. Somebody should do something. Maybe I should call a cop. No, a dog catcher. So, I'll call the pound. No, maybe I'll just write a real nasty letter to the guy who owns that dog. No, too much trouble. I'll just get an ear plug." They are just perceptual and mental habits. You learn to respond this way as a child by copying the perceptual habits of those around you. These perceptual responses are not inherent in the structure of the nervous system. The circuits are there. But this is not the only way that our mental machinery can be used. That which has been learned can be unlearned. The first step is to realize what you are doing, as you are doing it, and stand back and quietly watch.

Okay, so you can reexamine things. You can even stare at a face until it becomes not a face, but a set of features. Sounds like a fun game. But I disagree that the way I think now is remarkably stupid.

The cause of suffering is that desire- aversion syndrome which we spoke of earlier. Up pops a perception. It could be anything--a beautiful girl, a handsome guy, speed boat, thug with a gun, truck bearing down on you, anything. Whatever it is, the very next thing we do is to react to the stimulus with a feeling about it.

It sounds like being a Buddhist is about taking a time-out from trying. That sounds nice. But there's also a time to care and to try. It's possible that by taking some time not trying or caring, I'll learn something about my mental habits and make some improvement that will help me succeed at trying. Or maybe I'll just be less stressed, but stop trying. I doubt that's a big risk, though.

Take worry. We worry a lot. Worry itself is the problem. Worry is a process. It has steps. Anxiety is not just a state of existence but a procedure. What you've got to do is to look at the very beginning of that procedure, those initial stages before the process has built up a head of steam. The very first link of the worry chain is the grasping/rejecting reaction. As soon as some phenomenon pops into the mind, we try mentally to grab onto it or push it away.

I don't think grabbing onto a good feeling in your mind is something to worry about, unless it's via a dangerous drug. But pushing away and avoiding a feeling (basically overriding it with disapproval from another part of your mind, based on the fact that the feeling is unwelcome in pursuing some strong goal-desire) does seem truth-destroying and stress-inducing.

Vipassana meditation teaches us how to scrutinize our own perceptual process with great precision. We learn to watch the arising of thought and perception with a feeling of serene detachment. We learn to view our own reactions to stimuli with calm and clarity. We begin to see ourselves reacting without getting caught up in the reactions themselves. The obsessive nature of thought slowly dies. We can still get married. We can still step out of the path of the truck. But we don't need to go through hell over either one.

Yes, I know this would be nice. I want to see things more clearly, and not suffer from internal emotional turmoil. Can you please describe how to do this? This is a painfully long preface.

Along with this new reality goes a new view of the most central aspect of reality: 'me'. A close inspection reveals that we have done the same thing to 'me' that we have done to all other perceptions. We have taken a flowing vortex of thought, feeling and sensation and we have solidified that into a mental construct. Then we have stuck a label onto it, 'me'.

I can't imagine how stupid you would have to be to not have a word/concept for 'me'.

And forever after, we treat it as if it were a static and enduring entity.

I've always been open to the possibility that I will change.

We view it as a thing separate from all other things.

Here's what I think: I am definitely separate from all other things. My 'I' concept is not a faithful representation of what I am, but I'm eager to learn more about myself. I'm also eager to change in ways that get me more of what I presently value. I have no fear at all that I will stop existing because I, or my 'I' concept, change. I know I'm going to die. Where I drift before that happens had better be marvelous than in some deluded "I always stayed true to myself" rut.

We pinch ourselves off from the rest of that process of eternal change which is the universe. And than we grieve over how lonely we feel.

While it's true I feel lonely and value very highly deep mutual understanding and communication with a friend, I reject your claim that this is because I have a concept for 'me'.

We ignore our inherent connectedness to all other beings and we decide that 'I' have to get more for 'me'; then we marvel at how greedy and insensitive human beings are. And on it goes. Every evil deed, every example of heartlessness in the world stems directly from this false sense of 'me' as distinct from all else that is out there.

Evil deeds are the result of natural human conflict, of the fact that it's often possible to profit at another man's expense, not because a 'me' concept prevents us from thinking 'when I harm any being, I'm harming the all-beings I'm a part of'. Maybe it feels good to think this, but I'm here for insight, not bullshit.

These are all major insights, of course. Each one is a deep- reaching understanding of one of the fundamental issues of human existence. They do not occur quickly, nor without considerable effort. But the payoff is big.

I wish you could make a reasonable case for the claims you've made, instead of making such extravagant promises of reward after years of commitment, which by the way will certainly bias my thinking if I foolishly choose to so commit.

They lead to a total transformation of your life. Every second of your existence thereafter is changed. The meditator who pushes all the way down this track achieves perfect mental health, a pure love for all that lives and complete cessation of suffering. That is not small goal. But you don't have to go all the way to reap benefits. They start right away and they pile up over the years.

Good, so you're still enticing me with the promise that you're going to explain something that's testable and will immediately give me some abilities or pleasure I didn't have before. I guess I can keep reading.

In the practice of mediation you become sensitive to the actual experience of living, to how things feel. You do not sit around developing subtle and aesthetic thoughts about living. You live. Vipassana meditation more than anything else is learning to live.

Okay, but what is it?

Exercise correlates with a reduced risk of suffering dementia in later life, just as excess visceral fat is correlated with an increased risk of later developing dementia. The underlying mechanisms are somewhat different, but they both boil down to the quality of the blood vessels in your brain. Impaired blood vessels mean a lower blood flow or the breakages and lesions of vascular dementia - neither of which is good for you in the long term.

Another issue to consider in this context is the ongoing impact of atherosclerosis, the build-up of fatty material on blood vessel walls. This can result in sudden death due to blockage and rupture of larger deposits, but the condition harms your brain across the years leading up to that point:

Atherosclerosis, dementia, and Alzheimer disease in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of aging cohort

We examined the relationship between systemic atherosclerosis, Alzheimer type pathology, and dementia in autopsies from 200 participants in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, a prospective study of the effect of aging on cognition, 175 of whom had complete body autopsies. ... we found that the presence of intracranial but not coronary or aortic atherosclerosis significantly increased the odds of dementia.

Just as for the other forms of damage to blood vessels in the brain mentioned above, atherosclerosis is largely something that you do to yourself as a result of your lifestyle. Being fat and sedentary will get you there. Unfortunately, the characteristic mitochondrial damage of aging also spurs the onset of atherosclerosis

Although (see table 1 of this paper) cranial atherosclerosis has a different mechanism and thus different risk factors than other atherosclerosis (frequently patients have one or the other but not both), you should indeed avoid getting fat, which increases the odds of it by 4-6 times.  You're at risk for a severe stroke if you have cranial atherosclerosis.

Also, heavy smoking (even decades earlier) is at least as harmful to your aging brain as a sedentary lifestyle, probably for the same reason it's a well known risk factor for stroke (it's harmful to blood vessels).

(see previous discussion of ego-depletion)

It looks like people studying people's decline in vigilance-required tasks over time need to take care not to suggest to their subjects the idea that they will probably fatigue.  The theory is that tasks that specifically require "self control" can lead to specific fatigue in other "self control" tasks, as distinct from general mental fatigue, although it's been found that glucose availability to the brain explains most of this.

A new study, which is much more careful than past ones, gives a pretty strong idea that people's expectations for how they'll perform while willpower-taxed are the determining factor (at least for artifical, low-motivation psych-study tasks), and further that when these expectations are manipulated (by push polling), that this obliterates the effects typically reported in the ego-depletion literature. Because of the push polling affecting performance, you can't just say that it's 'the person's idiosyncratic "availability of willpower" after a demanding task that shapes idiosyncratic beliefs about willpower'.

I reproduce here my comments from this LessWrong discussion:

What's demonstrated: if you prime an excuse for doing poorly, you will do poorly. I think there's already some similar research (different types of excuses, though). They also show that self-reported exhaustion (not just "ego depleting" tasks) leads to a difference in performance that goes in exactly the direction that the subjects are primed to believe (either being reminded of an existing belief, or being tricked into holding it with biased questions).

It surprises me that, of the people who don't claim to expect to flag when fatigued, those who report being exhausted by the depletion task actually make less errors than those who don't. Unless this is just due to warming up their inhibition/vigilance (both the initial and final tests require it) while, it suggests that positive expectations can boost performance, not just that available excuses can harm it.

I like that they demonstrated that errors on IQ problems tracks errors on mundane rule-following, vigilance type tasks, but it's amusing to me that people who believe they'll do worse when fatigued, actually test as smarter (less IQ test errors) when fresh, whereas those primed to believe they won't effectively fatigue improve slightly, but are still worse than the "limited resource" believers initial performance. This effect is still there, but probably not significant, for the simple but tiresome "willpower" testing (Stroop) task. I assume the "limited"-believers are more engaged by an IQ-proving question, either for signaling or entertainment, compared to the boring Stroop task. Disclaimer: these differences, from figures in pg 5 of the 

paper. aren't strongly significant (N ~= 50), so maybe I shouldn't conclude anything (the authors don't pin anything on them).

It seems reasonable to me that push polling about someone's future behavior will lead them to act consistently with the signal they just sent in the poll - like in Cialdini's Influence, where people are polled on whether they like to go to opera, or give charitably, by some attractive person they want to impress, and then after affirming are ambushed with a sales pitch (they thought it was an innocent poll but are trapped by their answers). So it seems reasonable to assume that those who were push-polled into believing they will become either sloppier, or more accurate, with fatigue, would act consonantly.

But I don't think this objection is likely the whole story. The simplest explanation is that people's stated expectations of their performance do shape their performance - the power of positive thinking, and obviously, negative. (possibly unvoiced/persistent expectations as well as explicitly declared, although of course it's nearly impossible to measure such things surreptitiously).

An analysis of 10 studies involving more than 3,800 people has found that glucosamine and chondroitin supplements for joint pain are ineffective either alone or in combination.

(no change in pain or actual joint condition)

I had been taking this for mild lower back and knee pain. I never noticed any benefit but trusted in the earlier research which said it definitely relieved pain. Pure placebo, it turns out.

Many missionaries admit to deep doubts. This often makes them more vehement in their persuasion, not more tentative. (If they were motivated only by helping others, then their doubts would in fact make them more tentative).

In a new study, 

David Gal and Derek Rucker from Northwestern University have found that when people’s confidence in their beliefs is shaken, they becomestronger advocates for those beliefs. The duo carried out three experiments involving issues such as animal testing, dietary preferences, and loyalty towards Macs over PCs. In each one, they subtly manipulated their subjects’ confidence and found the same thing: when faced with doubt, people shout even louder.

Gal and Rucker were inspired by a classic psychological book called When Prophecy Fails. In it, Leon Festinger and colleagues infiltrated an American cult whose leader, Dorothy Martin, convinced her followers that flying saucers would rescue them from an apocalyptic flood. Many believed her, giving up their livelihoods, possessions and loved ones in anticipation of their alien saviours. When the fated moment came and nothing happened, the group decided that their dedication had spared the Earth from destruction. In a reversal of their earlier distaste for publicity, they started to actively proselytise for their beliefs. Far from shattering their faith, the absent UFOs had turned them into zealous evangelists.

The case study inspired Festinger’s theory of “cognitive dissonance”, which describes the discomfort that people feel when they try to cope with conflicting ideas. Festinger reasoned that people will go to great lengths to reduce this conflict. Altering one’s beliefs in the face of new evidence is one solution but for Martin’s followers, this was too difficult. Their alternative was to try and muster social support for their ideas. If other people also believed, their internal conflicts would lessen.

Festinger predicted that when someone’s beliefs are challenged, they would try to raise support for those beliefs with paradoxical enthusiasm. Amazingly enough, during the intervening half-century, this prediction has never been tested in an experiment – that is, until now.

In their first experiment, Gal and Rucker asked 88 students to write about their views on animal testing for consumer goods, but only half of them were allowed to use their preferred hand. This may seem random, but previous studies have shown that people have less confidence in what they write with the hand they’re less comfortable with. Indeed, that’s what Gal and Rucker found in their study. When asked later, the volunteers who didn’t use their dominant hand were less confident in their views.

However, they were also more likely to try and persuade others of those same views. When they were asked to write something to persuade someone else about their opinions, those who felt less confident wrote significantly longer missives. With a sliver of doubt in their minds, they spent more effort in their attempts at persuasion.

Gal and Rucker also found that this extra effort vanished if the volunteers had a chance to affirm their own identity beforehand. If they were asked to identify their favourite items (books, cities, songs and so on) before writing about animal testing, the choice of hand had no effect on their advocacy attempts. If they were asked to say what their parents’ favourite things were, the hand effect reappeared.

In their second experiment with 151 fresh volunteers, Gal and Rucker found the same effect. This time, they influenced the recruits’ degree of confidence by asking half of them to relate memories where they were brimming with certainty, and the other half to describe relate memories where they were plagued with doubt Afterwards, the volunteers said whether they were vegans, vegetarians or meat-eaters, how confident they were in their opinions, and how important their choice was to them.

As expected, those who remembered times of uncertainty were less confident that their food choices were the right ones. And as before, those same doubtful volunteers advocated their beliefs more strongly. When asked to imagine convincing someone else about their diet, the uncertain group wrote significantly longer messages and spent longer composing those messages.

This experiment – with a different method of manipulating confidence, a different issue at stake, and a different measure of evangelical effort – adds weight to the results of the first one. However, the effect only held true among those who felt that their dietary preferences were important to them. This showed (perhaps, more expectedly) that the ties between doubt and advocacy are stronger for beliefs that are people hold more dearly.

The third experiment found similar results, using a far more trivial issue (well, supposedly more trivial). Gal and Rucker worked with 106 students who all thought that Macs were superiors to PCs. Again, the duo successfully manipulated the students’ confidence by asking them to remember a previous incident of certain resolve or uncertain doubt.

The students had to imagine convincing a PC-user about the merits of an Apple product but this time, half were told that they were talking to a Windows-diehard, and the others were faced with a more open-minded partner. As before, the students put more effort into persuading their imaginary partner if their own confidence was weakened, but only if their partner was receptive.

In all three cases, Gal and Zucker found that doubt turns people into stronger advocates. More subtly, their study shows that this effect is stronger if someone’s identity is threatened, if the belief is important to them, and if they think that others will listen. It all fits with a pattern of behaviour where people evangelise to strengthen their own faltering beliefs.

This all agrees with my experience.  It's reasonable to spend more time forming an argument for something you're not totally convinced of (ideally, you would also review the arguments against and possibly revise your belief). By carefully making a case, you should be effectively double checking that it's still worth believing in the doubtful thing.  As for "this effect is stronger if someone’s identity is threatened, if the belief is important to them, and if they think that others will listen", people always crave validation; people spend more effort on things they care about; people prefer to skip communicating with someone who isn't receptive, respectively.

I don't like the category "identity is threatened"; this can only really refer to the first study, which showed that being allowed to answer questions about who you are lessens the tendency to spend more effort justifying a belief that you struggled with (being forced to use your off-hand to write about it).