Open Thread 443

This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. Most content is free, some is subscriber only; you can subscribe here. Also:

1: ACX grantee Trevor Klee is looking for subjects for a study of his NeutraOat product, meant to protect against PFAS “forever chemicals”. Although this sounds like RFKslop, there’s decent evidence that these are dangerous and that some high-risk groups might be served well by reducing their exposure. Trevor writes:

NeutraOat is a modified oat fiber that's designed to selectively bind PFAS and certain other environmental toxicants in the gut, preventing them from being reabsorbed and reducing their levels in the blood. Following successful in-vitro tests in a simulated digestive system, we are now running a 12 week, at-home pilot in individuals with high PFAS levels, especially people with exposure to firefighting foams. For those who qualify, the pilot is completely free, and comes with before-and-after PFAS tests and vitamin/blood panels.

For more information on the pilot and to apply, visit pilot.neutraoat.com . If you’re wondering why you should care about PFAS levels at all, I recently wrote a blog post that there’s no safe level of PFAS exposure. Given that ~97% of Americans have some amount of PFAS in their blood, that’s bad news for just about everyone.

And please note: the pilot is purely for scientific purposes. We will not market to you or sell your data. We just want to see if this works as well as we think it does.

2: MIRI wants to march on Washington DC to stop the development of superintelligent AI. They’re trying an assurance contract: if you’d be interested in joining a 100,000 person protest, sign up, and you’ll be “activated” once the number of signatories reaches a hundred thousand.