From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Oct 06 2001 - 15:50:05 MDT
On Sat, Oct 06, 2001 at 12:48:19PM -0700, I William Wiser wrote:
>
> Biomedical sciences include aging and diseases. For the
> elderly, aging and endogenous (internally caused) diseases
> are usually the biggest threat. For the poor poverty is
> usually the biggest threat but they mostly die from
> contagious diseases (brought about by poor sanitation,
> overcrowding, and bad diet). For the young and well off
> the biggest threat may be organized group violence (wars)
> or significant oppression, otherwise their biggest problem
> is also aging and endogenous diseases.
Lifestyle diseases seem to be a serious problem, in fact likely
far worse than endogenous diseases. These seem to be largely due
to our evolutionary past not meshing well with our technological
abilities to fulfill genetically promoted wishes - the energy
retaining drive makes us couch potatos, the drive for scarce
calories gives us cardiovascular disease and so on. Fortunately
this is of course possible to change - unfortunately it seems
that overcoming habits is in itself very hard (it is not hard to
*do*, but it is harder to get oneself to truly *want* it).
> If you want to help solve these problems start with your
> own psychology, health, and efficiency. The _Authoritative
> Guide to Self Help Books_ is a good place to start.
Ah, at last a metaselfhelp book! I have been looking for
something like that for a long time.
Of course, in a psychological study I read of who read self help
books the result was that the people reading them were those who
where motivated, had high self-esteem and liked to be in charge
of their lives. I.e. the people with the least need for the books
:-)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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