I don’t usually. But I hang out with some people who do, and sometimes I do it by osmosis, and sometimes I do it because of OCD-related freaking out over violating taboos I don’t even believe in, which is probably the real reason for like half the superficially religious stuff I do.

A few times I’ve done it on purpose because I feel like it’s a useful way to distinguish between silly secular contexts like “Oh my God, that’s crazy”, versus actually having some semblance of religious awe; “G-d” seems like a real and awe-inspiring being in a way that the overused term “God” doesn’t. But overall it’s completely unprincipled and I feel kind of stupid about it.

I would like an 8 hour workday. But the studies keep showing that longer workdays don’t increase medical errors, so my argument would have to boil down to “Pleeeease? I have a lot of things I want to blog about!”

I’m not sure what exactly you’re expecting in a talk from me. I would do it for free (if I were in the area), but you’d probably still be getting ripped off.

I sincerely like making them. I hate having to read them, just like everyone else.

There’s a link between depression and not really liking/being up for anything, including relationships. And there’s a link between SSRIs and low libido - I don’t know to what degree this is purely sexual versus involves romantic feelings as well, but given that the hunger center in the hypothalamus can affect very high-level cognitive beliefs about food it wouldn’t surprise me.

I’m sorry to hear about your issues and I hope you’re able to sort them out.

What’s different about you?

I just get the impression that a lot of the weird violent fundamentalism stuff is Sunni-only, and most of the Shia seem to be hanging around creating nice communities and successful economies. Maybe this is just my bias. I guess Dubai and Qatar are the best economies in the Middle East, and they’re Sunni.

I know everyone always makes fun of people who say “if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide”, but since I’m not doing anything wrong it’s at least hard for me to become really worked up about this.

I think it’s sort of that…emotions and pragmatism and fear should at least by guiding my judgment here? And since I don’t have any emotional or pragmatic issues I don’t know what to think. Like I assume the NSA reads all my emails right now. And if there’s some bill to make the NSA and the CIA read all my emails, is that a horrible assault on freedom and we should all die nobly fighting for our liberty? Or does it just mean two computer programs will be auto-scanning my emails for the phrase “Allahu akbar” instead of one, and even Edward Snowden wouldn’t really get worked up about it? I dunno.

I wouldn’t frame it in terms of “mental health” - I think it’s on an axis skew to anxiety/depression/etc - but yeah, I find it pretty scary. I’m reading “The Hungry Brain” now which argues that obesity is because modern food is a superstimulus (well, it’s more complicated than that, I’ll review it eventually). In other areas, though, I’m surprised at how well we’re doing. Tumblr is probably a superstimulus for community or something, but not really in a bad way. It just means we’re getting more community. Netflix and erotica and so on seem to be making a lot of people very happy with unclear side effects (I know some people think porn has weird mental health issues, but my barrier for evidence here is high because Puritans gonna Puritan).

I expect at some point someone will come up with something horrible and then we’ll have to really confront this. If nothing else, the Amish will inherit the earth and we can start over from there.

Also, when did “superstimulus” become “hyperstimulus”. Stimulus inflation?

I don’t know much about this, but I’m very suspicious of anybody who connects anything more complicated than Parkinson’s disease to a simple imbalance in a single neurotransmitter.