Nicely done, it really is an absurd rule. When I graduated and moved in with my then significant other and two roommates in Medford, back in 2009, this is why I had to be kept off the lease. (As a side effect, this made me ineligible for a resident parking permit for the first few months, but the town had no problem giving me tickets for using a non-resident parking permit as a resident).

This was really interesting! You probably already know this, but reading out loud was the norm, and silent reading unusual, for most of history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_reading That didn't really start to change until well after the invention of the printing press.

For most of my life, even now once in a while, I would subvocalize my own inner monologue. Definitely had to learn to suppress that in social situations.

I think there's a good chance the degree to which the world of 2050 looks different to the average person might have very little to do with GDP.

On the one hand, a large chunk of the GDP growth I expect will come from changes in how we produce, distribute, and use energy and chemicals and water and food and steel and concrete etc. But for most people what will mostly feel the same is that their home is warm in winter and cool in summer, and they can get from place to place reasonably easily, and they have machines that do their basic household chores.

On the other hand, something like self-driving cars, or augmented or virtual reality, or 3D printed organs, could be hugely tranaformative for society without necessarily impacting GDP growth much at all.

This was a great post, really appreciate the summary and analysis! And yeah, no one should have high certainty about nutritional questions this complicated.

For myself, I mostly eliminated these oils from my diet about 4 years ago, along with reducing industrially-processed food in general. Not 100%, I'm not a purist, but other than some occasional sunflower oil none of these are in foods I keep at home, and I only eat anywhere else 0-2 times per week.  I did lose a little weight in the beginning, maybe 10 lbs, but then stabilized. But what I have mostly noticed is that when I eat lots of fried food, depending on the oil used (which to some degree you can taste), I'm either fine, or feel exhausted/congested/thirsty for basically a full day. I think you may have a point about trans fata from reusing oil, since anecdotally this seems even worse for leftovers.

Of course, another thing I did at the same time is switch to grass-fed butter  and pasture-raised eggs. Organic meats and milk, not always pasture raised. Conventional cheeses. I've read things claiming the fatty acid composition is significantly different for these foods depending on what the animals eat, in terms of omega 3/6 ratios, saturated/unsaturated fat ratios, and fatty acid chain lengths. I've never looked too deeply into checking those claims, because for me the fact that they taste better is reason enough. As far as I can tell, it wasn't until WWII or later that we really started feeding cows corn and raising chickens in dense indoor cages with feed? Yet another variable/potential confounder for studies.

In what sense are these two viewpoints in tension?

This seems more a question of "observable by whom" vs "observable in principle."

This works too, yeah.

Yeah, I was thinking it's hard to beat dried salted meat, hard cheese, and oil or butter. 

You also don't have to assume that all the food travels the whole way. If (hypothetically) you want to send 1 soldier's worth of food and water 7 days away, and each person can only carry 3 days worth at a time, then you can try to have 3 days worth deposited 6 days out, and then have a porter make a 2 day round trip carrying 1 day's worth to leave for that soldier to pickup up on day 7. Then someone needs to have carried that 3 days worth to 6 days out, which you can do by having more porters make 1 day round trips from 5 days out, etc. Basically it you need exponentially more people and supplies the farther out your supply chains stretch. I think I first read about this in the context of the Incas, because potatoes are less calorie dense per pound than dried grains so it's an even bigger problem? Being able to get water along the way, and ideally to pillage the enemy's supplies, are also a very big deal.

I think at that point the limiting factors become the logistics of food, waste, water, and waste heat. In Age of Em Robin Hanson spends time talking about fractal plumbing systems and the like, for this kind of reason.

All good points, many I agree with. If nothing else, I think that humanity should pre-commit to following this strategy whenever we find ourselves in the strong position. It's the right choice ethically, and may also be protective against some potentially hostile outside forces.

However, I don't think the acausal trade case is strong enough that I would expect all sufficiently powerful civilizations to have adopted it. If I imagine two powerful civilizations with roughly identical starting points, one of which expanded while being willing to pay costs to accommodate weaker allies while the other did not and instead seized whatever they could, then it is not clear to me who wins when they meet. If I imagine a process by which a civilization becomes strong enough to travel the stars and destroy humanity, it's not clear to me that this requires it to have the kinds of minds that will deeply accept this reasoning. 

It might even be that the Fermi paradox makes the case stronger - if sapient life is rare, then the costs paid by the strong to cooperate are low, and it's easier to hold to such a strategy/ideal.