Original Cin

This is a tank in Downtown Dekalb.

Another wonderful chart. I’m still losing weight keeping an eye on my carbs.

Because really, adult life is not about getting all the things that make you look stable and successful. Adult life is about constantly making difficult decisions about what you are going to give up.

3 Questions you ask me a lot, about money, Brazen Careerist

Besides being a support of SENS, I’d also like to see work done toward whole body transplants; an idea that usually makes my friends a bit jittery. “Won’t you have to kill someone in order to have your brain transplanted into them?” Well, I hope not; it would be much better if everyone on earth could benefit from such technology. My knowledge isn’t yet good enough to speculate on the details, but there have been plenty of alternatives kicked around, particularly the engineering of cloned brainless bodies. The benefits of such technology are so overwhelming that it boggles me that people aren’t working on it like crazy.

Another issue that might come up is one of identity. After all, people won’t be able to recognize you! But a society that supports the idea of a whole-body transplant shouldn’t have any trouble with this; you just need a doctor or some other authority to send “before” and “after” pictures to the government and your friends and family.

I’m currently trying to lose weight, so I’ve been keeping track of calories online with NutritionData. It’s been one of my favorite websites for years for looking things up, but I didn’t realize they had such a nifty tracking system. Can I admit that I think it’s fun to see how everything in my diet changes all at once every time I enter a new food? What’s more, this has already helped at least a little bit:

• Nutritiondata alerted me to the fact that I was getting much, much more saturated fat in my diet than I should have been.
• As long as enter Omega-3 and Omega-6 for (at least some!) custom foods, I actually have some idea what their ratio is
• Nutritiondata’s also let me know that I’ve been getting lots of vitamin A, which is a good thing once in a while, but not something you want to do every day.

There also some annoyances – most of the data in the ND database comes from the USDA; I often find myself entering nutritional labels for foods. But with so many users, I’m sure I’m duplicating the work that many, many other people have done before. If there were ever a more obvious case to apply a crowdsourcing philosophy to a website, I don’t know what it is. For some reason, I can’t share the labels I enter with other website users, and they can’t share with me. Why?

My diet was messed up by 3 hours of website downtime. A local app would be better. (I was going to ask why there isn’t a Gnutrition program, but it turns out there is and that’s exactly what it’s called. I might give it a try later.)

Nutritiondata should probably take a hint from the Advocates for Self-Government and change their nutritional/filling grid into a diamond, with very nutritional, filling foods at the top (I realized a week ago or so that I can do this with my goal grid).

Finally, and bizarrely, every new day involves clearing the old data out completely. There is no archive. I’ve just been jotting down notes in a tab-delimited text file. I understand why they might not want to store a bunch of what-I-ate for years and years on end, but they can’t hold onto information for, say, a week or so?

The big news that I’ve seen lately on several blogs is that fewer people are taking the GRE; I think I saw it at Marginal Revolution first. Anyway, posting at both this blog and FanCruft have been slim lately because I was studying for both a calculus exam and the GRE. I did great on both of them. Some thoughts:

• I did, in fact, get very, very discouraged by an experimental section where I had to guess at most of the answers, although I realized it was experimental about halfway through the next section. (An unlikely alternative: what I think was the experimental section was the real deal and I’m the luckiest person alive, having solved dozens of problem by guessing). Experimental sections suck.
• Studying made a huge difference. When I first took a GRE practice test, my quant score was only average. After reading about the GRE for a few months and doing a lot of practice problems, the next time I took a practice test, I got an average score for people trying to get into master’s programs in econ. My actual score on the test was above average for everyone that said they were hoping to get into a econ program. I used an ebook version of GRE Prep Course by Jeff Kolby and Scott Thornburg; I only got about halfway through the math section and only glanced at the verbal section on the book, but I’d still highly recommend it. (I’m getting my “averages” from ETS’s own PowerPrep)
• On a related note, reading about the format of the test actually helped a lot. Among other gems in the book; some types of problems on the test will yield faster to a “brute force” attempt where you plug in numbers than trying to solve them the “right” way. Since this is dangerous if you do it wrong, see the book for details.
• I decided that I wanted to go to grad school long before people were complaining about the current economic conditions. I am not easily swayed by minor, impersonal statistics in my grand plans. Maybe the fact that applications to take the GRE are down is a sign that, unusually, other people aren’t for a change either.
• Alternatively, maybe most of the people who would normally go into grad school are under the impression that GDP will increase by 10% overnight once Obama is sworn in, and the world will instantly be filled with candycanes, gumdrops, and
• On the flip side, having less competition to deal with can sometimes be a good thing, and I’m pretty sure this is one of those cases, so I like the news I’m reading about fewer people taking the GRE.

My roommate and I were talking about this topic – The Motley Fool on “What’s Wrong With Mutual Funds?“:

Here’s our oft-repeated fact that you should get through your head: The average actively managed stock mutual fund returns approximately 2% less per year to its shareholders than the stock market returns in general. That means that before your dollar even gets to the fund manager to invest, his company has already taken two cents off the top.

I disagree with the Motley Fool on a fair number of things, but they’re spot-on here regarding the average fund.

Have you ever had an opportunity to bet your life on something you believe in? I’m doing exactly that, although the situation is complex, and requires a fair amount of explanation of my beliefs and my financial situation.

To begin, when I very young, my parents took out (multiple!) life insurance policies for me, with a benefit of roundabout $100,000 and premiums of about $631/yr. The idea was that I would grow up, start a family, and have cheap insurance.

Problem – I have no interest in having children of my own, and thus no reasonable beneficiary to name for these policies. I don’t see any good reason for me to have children, and I don’t exactly think I’d be passing on awesome genes. After reading a bit about the age-genius curve for men, I’m not all too sure a spouse is really all that great an idea. What were they doing before I died that they don’t have any passive income streams or career to rely on?

So with no beneficiaries (assuming I don’t die before my parents) and policies that pay only in the event of my death (as opposed to something useful, like policies that would give me money in the event of a sever maiming), these life insurance policies are utterly worthless to me. $100,000 will buy a lot of something, but nothing I can actually enjoy when I’m dead. Except, of course, that I just so happen to have an interest in cryonics, and the cost to be vitrified is (very roughly) $100,000. It’s also common to pay for vitrification by naming a company as the beneficiary of a life insurance policy.

On the other hand, I want to use the money I can receive from surrendering the policies to help me move to a better location and take classes. I figure that the present value of this lifestyle change, just from the expected improvement in income over my entire life, is $499,310 given an 8% discount rate. It’s actually probably worth a lot more.

So now, to crunch some numbers. If I lived to age 80, the cost of these policies would be $34,705. This may seem like I’m assuming I’ll live longer than I really will, but the people who publish life expectancy figures get around the problem of increasing life span by ignoring it, and you should expect to live beyond what typical online statistics would say your life expectancy is (how bizarre is that?). We honestly have no idea where medical technology is going — maybe the government will regulate improvements out of existence, and average life expectancy won’t improve a day. Maybe it will decline. Maybe they’ll be a huge leap in our understanding of longevity, and all of these calculations will be moot and I’ll live a very long time no matter what I do. The foresight exchange says there’s a 22% chance of physical immortality of some sort becoming a reality, but it doesn’t say how. 80 years is “good enough”

Now then, against this expected cost of $35K, I have to try to figure out the expected benefit from cryonics. First of all, no one knows if cryonics will ever work as intended. My gut instinct is to say that the probability that cryonics will work is P(0.02), but a more informed person hints at P(0.05). I’ll use P(0.03). An expected value is the probability of an event multiplied by its payoff (or, probabilities by payoffs, as it is). But how do you quantify “Holy crap! It’s fifty years after my death, and I’m alive again?! Yippee!”? I presume that the technology required to get someone who’s been vitrified up and running again ought to also be good enough to keep them running for a fair amount of time, at least enough for a second lifespan. The question then becomes the still difficult but at least well studied “What is the value of life?” Estimates are all over the place, but it turns out that $4.7M is a conservative value. Multiply by 3%, and the expected return on cryonics is $141K. This exceeds the $35K the insurance would cost, so it wouldn’t be a bad bet per se, but the difference is far less than the $499K that I believe the value of surrendering the policies would give me.

If I use the policies I have for cryonics, I lose ($499K + $35K – $141K = ) $390K! So, keeping the policies is a no-go, big time.

An argument given to me by the agency that originally sold the insurance (and wants me to keep it) was that fewer than 1% of term policies ever have a payout. I’ll take this as true. This leads to the second half of my thinking on the subject. The majority of term life policies are for people older than I am, and for a term of at least ten years. This means that my chance of dying in the near future is small. Very, very small. It could happen — I could suffer a heart attack, get hit by a bus, or be assassinated at random by terrorists. But the probability of that happening within, say, the next five years is negligible, much, much smaller than 1%. I’d be a fool to wager any sum of money on a random 25 year old dieing before they’re 31. This opens the door for me to have my cake and eat it too — I can, essentially, bet that I not die before I turn 31, and then begin establishing finances and other arrangements for vitrification.

Say that a 10-year policy would have a $5K cost. While I’m covered by the policy, I save away $10K a year (challenging but doable even if things don’t go as planned). Even with no interest on the money I save (absurd given the 8% discount rate from much earlier), I’d be able to afford cryonics outright when my insurance ran out. The total cost of this “manual” route is $105K. The benefit is the $499K I believe I can get from moving, the $35K I no longer need to spend on the current policies, plus the expected value of cryonics, $141K for $675K, minus the cost of this alternative plan, $105K, for $570K. Even better, when I’m 41, although I can’t do anything about the $5K I’ve spent over the previous decade, the remaining $100K is entirely within my control. If cryonics looks at that point like it’s a pipe dream, and some other life-extension technique looks much more promising, I can redirect the money however I like. Maybe I’ll have kids after all — $100K is a decent college fund, and if they don’t want to go to college, it’s cash, and can be used for anything else. Maybe I’ll use the interest I’m earning on it to take a vacation to an exotic location every year. Maybe I’ll just let the money sit around and compound in case I ever need it.

So, I bet my life, since I’m hoping I won’t die in the short-term, as “inevitable” as it may be in the very long-run.

This tentative guideline to life is actually based on the title of one of the first blogs I encountered, The Skeptical Optimist. People think that there’s a contradiction between being skeptical and being an optimist, but it’s not true. I don’t think this actually goes far enough — I think it’s a good idea to be both cynical and optimistic.

Quite a long time ago, I was an avowed pessimist, and proud of it, thank you very much. I believed things were always getting worse, and virtually everyone who didn’t agree with me had an agenda of some sort.

I now believe that most people mean what they say. This isn’t because people are especially virtuous; it’s simply easier than lying. As economist Bryan Caplan puts it: “The legions of people who imagine that their opponents secretly agree with them are utterly deluded…. Sincerity is greatly overrated.” Also, on the subject of legions, there’s a legion of cognitive biases available to prop up your beliefs no matter what they are. So, people aren’t usually intentionally villainous, they’re just mostly self-interested and terribly biased.

But, none of that should get in the way of optimism. Often enough, people do the right thing, just because. Even if they didn’t, the result of the actions of greedy, myopic people can be something better than a dog-eat-dog train wreck, just because that’s the way society works.

Additionally, although you can’t change your personal circumstances, there is flexibility to your own choices which allows you to make the best of your own environment — if things are bad, make them better.

Inspired by running across my old (pen and paper) journal last night, and by this post at the Happiness Project, I decided to create a list of things I’ve learned (draft version):

• Be cynically optimistic.
• There is a cost to everything.
• Location, location, location — the physical world and its arrangement are still important
• Words are not weapons.
• Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. This goes double for advice, boasts, and what you’re thinking. Don’t believe everything you hear, no matter who says it or how confident they are. Even, especially, if they’ve made a living saying it. Beware cognitive bias.
• The world is strange. Cthulhu Mythos level strange. We just don’t notice because we’re used to it.
• Small things can have a big impact, but the most obvious example, compound interest, may be overrated.
• If something you want doesn’t exist, create it.
• Despite the fact that talk is cheap, the crowd may have a point when everyone is doing, or believes, something.
• We regret virtue more than vice. No, really.
• The cost of not buying something can often exceed its price.
• People are very important.

I’ll be going through each of these and evaluating and explaining them as I get time.

Well, I did it. I went to the business center and had a look around 3:00 in the afternoon today. I was terrified that at any second, someone would recognize me. They had put in a new (but cheap block-letter) sign with the company’s name on the outside of the building near the office. I entered, turned the corner, and…

…the call center is gone. Vanished. There wasn’t a sound. I could see inside through the glass door and windows. There was a small paper on the floor that had presumably been stuck to the door earlier — I couldn’t read what it said. The chairs, plastic desks, and Durabrand phones had been removed — even the connections for the phones were completely gone. Nothing remains but a large, empty office, waiting to be rented out to someone new.

Earlier this year, I had a job interview at a calling center. The job was cold-calling, straight commission, for mortgages. They were even nice enough to let me to sit in for a day and see how I did. I noticed a variety of things while I was there:

• The people there were generally young. Most were recent graduates from high school. At least one was a drop-out. Everyone was talking about how they were making big money, but…
• The desks were plastic
• The phones were $10 Durabrand things from Wal-Mart, which is fine for home use, but really did stick out as inadequate in that environment.
• The best salesperson admitted to having “tons of debt” and worried aloud about his car payments.
• I was a bit uncomfortable around people who, quite frankly, were a touch sociopathic.

I had read a bit, just a bit about signaling on Overcoming Bias, and I realized that while you can’t depend on people pulling in six figures to advertise this fact to the world, the extremely wealthy don’t generally sit behind plastic desks punching numbers on generic home phones. Combined with the idea that a good work environment was something to shoot for, I politely said that I wasn’t interested any more, and walked away. At the time, I thought was giving up a smaller than promised but still real income to do the right thing and be able to live comfortably with myself. Now, looking at the way the housing market in the U.S. has changed, it’s obvious I didn’t give up so much at all. In retrospect, I suspect that the shoddy, unprofessional environment actually signaled something else — that the call center was temporary, not a permanent investment.

It’s not aways that I get a chance to go and see if I’m right about my intuition. On my next day off from my current job, I’m going to discreetly go to the business center that housed this mortgage company, and see if I notice anything.

I recently put $500.00 into Prosper. I can’t believe the rates that I’m getting — they’re quite spectacular compared to my money would be making in a savings account or even in stocks. Of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch — we’ll see just how risky things are, but the average default rates do not look too terrible.

What really strikes me about Prosper is how it’s — I’ll admit it — fun. It’s neat to see the things that people need money for:

• House and rental property remodeling
• Recovering from identity theft
• Financing a documentary
• Throwing a wedding
• Opening a cat shelter

Fun. Here’s an affiliate link.

I’m ordering shoes online for the first time. The shoes that I’m getting are much shorter (11 vs. 13) than the ones I’m currently wearing — I didn’t believe the sizing chart until I actual put my current shoes up against my feet and noticed how much overhang there was at the end. I’ve never been able to find shoes that fit me quite right — one of my feet is an inch shorter than the other, and they’re both the same, double-wide width. Hopefully, I’ll have something better soon, but after a lifetime of shoe-shopping being a fairly major ordeal, I’m pretty apprehensive.