Oh, and their pain crew seems all jacked AF too (or at least closer to your "unicorn" status than not). I think Amato is the only one I've noticed who is not some lifting beast. Maybe they should do a podcast on why everyone else is and he isn't lol.

Nah. I'm good. Immediately after the test, I do the right thing and tell my wife who freaks out and stabs me for cheating on her. I get the second test in the morgue.

I'm not hiding behind it. The hot-cold empathy gap is a fact of human existence.

Even when it is not in play, we are **** at predicting our own behavior. The nutshell version is that we are incredibly bad at bayesian analysis. How many logs have authors who believe that they will not be in the 95% (a made up statistic, but probably close to accurate) who will absolutely fail at their simple fitness goals?

Why go with something difficult? A much better example that "proves" the uninteresting case is whether we should give a battery of blood tests to a brain-dead individual and then tell them the results.

Wait. Your clever point is that there are uninteresting and contrived cases in which it isn't 100% true beyond a doubt that there could possibly exist a test for which no one could be at risk? We already know that. Literally no one doubts that.

I could have given quite a few better examples yesterday. I could have tested every human being for their toenail growth rate and then used an extremely obscure Latin name to obfuscate the results and to not give a reference range along with the test, or put a gold star and smiley face next to the results. Or tested brain-dead people. Or prisoners who are perfectly immobilized.

Now that we have that out of the way, what does this have to do with testing non-symptomatic adult males for testosterone level? You don't actually believe that you can extrapolate anything useful about testosterone testing from this discussion, right? By "anything" I literally mean "anything at all, even with the wildest stretch of the imagination, that is relevant in even the remotest sense including things that do nothing more than rhyme with 'testosterone', 'adult' or 'male' that is actually true."

Well sure, just because most people are terrible at predicting their behavior at most things, it doesn't mean some people can predict their behavior sometimes. With the BTM2 view of the world, I have no way of predicting my behavior on anything. Hell, how can I possibly predict what I'll have for breakfast tomorrow. After all, humans are terrible at predicting their own behavior.



I'm not sure what you're referring to here. It's not like unnecessary color blindness testing doesn't happen in the real world. I'm sure I've had it done myself at least once where it was clearly unnecessary. It's a good thing I dodged a huge bullet from that unnecessary test!

Perhaps you missed it but I've already posted that I don't even think they should take T if they are asymptomatic and low. So, why would I think they should get tested? I thought we went over this multiple times. Obviously we're way beyond that now. The question is whether sometimes, some people can have an unnecessary test done with ~0 risk. It seems that you agree with this, but admitting you agree is too much for you.

The bolded is not true. You can easily guestimate the odds of a behavior occurring using bayesian statistics.

The mistakes are in thinking that you are not subject to those statistics, and particularly in completely ignoring base rates and only using personal characteristics. These mistakes are endemic and the cognitive distortions that lead to them are most likely an incurable aspect of nearly every human.

Again, what people can possibly do sometimes under certain conditions simply isn't interesting or particularly useful in formulating a plan of action. It is nothing but pure intellectual masturbation.

My point is that this example is unnecessary, uninteresting intellectual masturbation that has nothing even remotely related to whether testosterone tests ought be given to non-symptomatic individuals.

I absolutely agree with that statement (I would drop, or at least minimize, the "some people", since it would be aspects of the test results and other external circumstances that would be the primary driver of risk, not particular measurable characteristics of the person in question), but find it to be non-extrapolatory to the point of being entirely useless as a statement. Literally one person* in the entire world thinks that it matters or is relevant to real world problems.

*this might be a slight exaggeration. There could, given sufficient time for future generations to populate the world, perhaps within 20 generations if humanity really gets to ****ing, eventually be a second one.

Yes.

I'm not ignoring those, all I'm saying is that in certain cases I can use my personal characteristics and knowledge of base rates and come to an assessment that my risk is ~0 in a certain scenario (like looking at my insurance lab tests).

At the very least it can be useful when deciding what to do for yourself in a scenario. You can estimate the likelihood of outcomes, think about what you might do in each case, introduce some sort of factor for uncertainty and crunch those numbers. Sometimes, you'll end up with a number pretty close to zero.

FFS man, I started off at the very beginning about how this observation is not really practically relevant as the people who would find themselves in this situation would also likely correctly determine the test to be useless and not get it. Nor is it interesting - not even to me. But it is true.

Wtf dudes

Football games are **** this afternoon.

Just from these last few pages you can conclude

Melkerson 240 ng/dl
BriantheMick 250 ng/dl
Yugoslavian 310 ng/dl

Limpdick fest.


Downtown - 840 ng/dl possibly on TRT. Has like 8 kids, multiple ex's, bald, and short to the point alpha responses.

Ain't no way I'm that high losing 10+ lbs per month at my age. Probably indistinguishable from a menopausal woman at this point.

Free Thremp.

That brings up anther "T" issue. Now that everyone and their grandfather is on HRT, many don't consider anyone receiving extraneous testosterone for any reason to be natty. For someone for whom being natty is important, they should consider this. I think they should go for HRT is they are truly clinically low and not worry so much about that, but it does exist.

That's another thing about HRT. While some have come off it, it should be considered a lifelong commitment. So, it's a serious thing.

Wait, isn't bolded the default view. It would seem weird to think anything other than this.


But if you come off, does your T level slowly go back to pretty much what it would have been if you have never taken it. Same question for testicular mass/volume. Let's assume ten years since last exogenous T or PEDs of any kind.

There are plenty of hypogonadal people who aren't just a little low on T. For them, it's not about baseball bats in the morning or being a little tired. In the past, if they were brought up to levels normal for their age, I don't think I'd class them the same as someone on regular steroid cycles. Some powerlifting federations would accept doctor's notes, but now everyone can get a doctor's note for everything, as HRT is always, by definition, doctor-prescribed.

It's not my area of expertise at all, but my understanding is that it may or may not.

I get that some people need T. I mean really need it. That doesn't make them non-natty in my mind. Saying someone is not natty is not meant to be a judgmental thing, it's merely a description (i.e., they're taking exogenous T).

So the people with hypogonadism are certainly different from the competitive lifter and BBers on gear, and they're both different from the 50 yr old dudes who are on TRT. Nevertheless, I'd say they're all non-natty (at least while they're on it). They're very different kinds of non-natty, but non-natty nonetheless.

I don't disagree. In fact, that was my point.

If someone goes on TRT and wants to tell themselves they are just going to the upper limit of normal T, that's well and good, but it's not natty. It doesn't mean they shouldn't use it. To the contrary, I think men with low-T symptoms should. I'm just saying they should probably go into it with eyes open.

Good thing we got that straightened out.

Enlightening discussion lately.

Hey, G4S you're alive! How is the "do some exercise every day" going? I know you put together quite a string of days (last year? the year before? 10 years ago?), are you still doing that or has the pandemic pushed you to full GOICAD?

I really like this latest conversation. I think I've learned a lot but not sure exactly what.

sup bro

sup bro


Yugo - I made it 291 consecutive days last year before I had surgery to reattach a bicep tendon. Didn't do it this year, as I had another surgery in January (bone excision from my forearm) this year. I weight train about 4 days a week and mountain bike about 5 days a week, with a bunch of days at downhill parks. That's the scoop.

Piece of advice: Stop playing dodgeball. Figured that would have been obvious after the first go around!

Sounds great. Although about as many surgeries as when you were a professional strength athlete, yeah? Well, mountain biking 5xWeek sounds pretty great - .

They talk about their first years.

Not sure if that timestamp is working but it's at 32:45

I should have written it down.


Yea, although the surgeries were technically mountain bike related, I can't place all the blame there. Partial blame on stupidity or ignorance for sure.

But yea, it's a fine line between getting hurt and progressing at what I feel is an optimal rate. Sometimes I step over the line. But hey, I'm hitting big features at the bike parks that I never thought I'd hit!



Thank christ that dumpster fire of a thread was shut down. Well done, Monte.