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Cooked food is better than raw food because life is mostly concerned with energy. So from an evolutionary perspective, if cooking causes a loss of vitamins or creates a few long-term toxic compounds, the effect is relatively unimportant compared to the impact of more calories. A female chimpanzee with a better diet gives birth more often and her offspring have better survival rates. In subsistence cultures, better-fed mothers have more and healthier children. In addition to more offspring, they have greater competitive ability, better survival, and longer lives. When our ancestors first obtained extra calories by cooking their food, they and their descendants passed on more genes than others of their species who ate raw. The result was a new evolutionary opportunity.
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
Richard Wrangham
‘If a book has been in print for forty years, I can expect it to be in print for another forty years. But, and that is the main difference, if it survives another decade, then it will be expected to be in print another fifty years. This, simply, as a rule, tells you why things that have been around for a long time are not “aging” like persons, but “aging” in reverse. Every year that passes without extinction doubles the additional life expectancy. This is an indicator of some robustness. The robustness of an item is proportional to its life!
The Lindy Effect
Toby Ord
Many have stood their ground and faced the darkness when it comes for them. Fewer come for the darkness and force it to face them. It is a hard life, sometimes lonely, often short. I have told none to refuse that calling, but neither would I wish to increase their number.”
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality
Eliezer Yudkowsky
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