Agree! Also, my response to the sentence you quoted would be: Playing guitar and playing piano are (for many people) almost entirely separate skills, which feel very different, are learned differently, and have different cultural connotations. People are more likely to base their choice of instrument on that (and the things TAG mentioned) than on some kind of optimization for 'most versatile musical instrument'.

But also I don't disagree with the original quote :) I mean, it definitely seems true that a lot of people play the piano and guitar, fewer (but still many) play slightly less versatile things like violin and saxophone or other strummed instruments like banjo, not very many play piccolo or tuba, and almost no one plays theremin or very culturally specific instruments like bagpipes or shamisen (outside of the culture they're specific to).

The advice this post points to is probably useful for some people, but I think LessWrongers are the last people who need to be told to be less socially graceful in favor of more epistemic virtue. So much basic kindness is already lacking in the way that many rationalists interact, and it's often deeply painful to be around.

Also, I just don't really buy that there's a necessary, direct tradeoff between epistemic virtue and social grace. I am quite blunt, honest, and (I believe) epistemically virtuous, but I still generally interact in a way that endears me to people and makes them feel listened to and not attacked. (If you know me feel free to comment/agree/disagree on this statement.) I'm not saying that all of my interactions are 100% successful in this regard but I think I come across as basically kind and socially graceful without sacrificing honesty or epistemics.

I love this post, you're one of my favorite bloggers

A trauma is an instance where something hurts you, and you develop coping mechanisms to route around the hurt, but the coping mechanisms limit your action space, blind you to some things, and distort your thinking a bit.

🫣

You can fix your emotional problems/confusions, but it'll take awhile.

But how?

This is not a very good LW comment, but, I’m interested in talking about this with you some time if you’re up for it.

Okay I bought the specific LED lights you linked, and I have to disagree. The color temperature is nice enough, but they have a very noticeable refresh rate, such that if I wave them back and forth my eyes have trouble keeping track of them. I don't think these are any better than other LED string lights I have, and my husband thinks they're probably worse (more noticeable flicker, though perhaps comparable CRI). I would definitely not light a space with them.

That said, I'm not put out about having spent $10 on these, because they're supposedly meant for outdoor use, and I wanted our front porch to be more illuminated anyway and basically don't care about the light quality there. And the claim did seem worth testing!

Maybe, although the OP does say "How could something as fundamental as protein deficiency not be a standard, ordinary thing we test for?", so it sounded like it hadn't been tested at all.

But yeah now you've made me want to criticize the whole idea of normal ranges! One time I had a vitamin D deficiency that had me extremely ill for three months and even bedridden for part of that time, but clinically it was only mildly out of range, and the doctor just told me "Your vitamin D level is a bit low" – which I feel didn't sufficiently suggest that it might be the root cause of the debilitating illness I had gone to him about. In general Elizabeth and others have made me think that reference ranges are a lot more nonsense than they seem, and that they like all things in medicine are more likely to apply to ~tall white men, so I as a non-tall non-white non-man should be skeptical and pay more attention to things that are at the extremes of the reference range, even if they're not 'clinically significant'.

(That rant was not directed at you tbc, I just wanted to rant it, thanks)

This comment made me happy! Thanks for the positivity!! 💖

Hm, so, I definitely agree about having very little faith in the modern medical system's ability to figure out most problems. I have a lot of experience with this myself and it's rough — I'm sorry it was bad for you and I'm glad you got better!

However, I'm pretty surprised that your protein levels were never tested! When I go to a doctor in America and tell them that some new thing is mysteriously wrong with me, their first recourse is pretty much always to order blood tests, and consequently I have had my blood protein levels checked six times in the past five years as part of a standard hepatic function panel. I'm not super familiar with the medical field, but from Googling it looks like if you had a protein deficiency, that test would turn it up.

I guess maybe because of the symptoms you were presenting with, no one felt the need to check your liver function? But if that's the case I'm confused why they do it to me all the time, since one of my main problems is mysterious musculoskeletal pain. Hm.