> Building it to handle less than what you've seen before would be stupid.
Let me tell a second hand anecdote of a Burmese village.
It was a rather small collection of huts raised on tall poles. But it was a village none the less.
All paths in the village were laid out with a connected mass of wood. Along the path were sticks, rising pretty high up in the air. Somewhere along the top of the sticks were a lot of cuts made out in the wood, at various heights. By a knife or so.
In the dry season, this path laid on the ground to be walked on. You didn't have to walk on it of course, since the surrounding dirt was dry.
In the wet season however, floods often came. And so, they raised the path up along the sticks so that it became a water bridge for when floods came. They raised it to the level of the highest cuts that were made in the sticks. A very reasonable thing to do, in order to connect the village in times of crisis, without using boats.
Interestingly, however was the background of the cuts. Each cut represented a water height that had some time ago been the highest the flood had become. So each season, they only raised the water bridge to the level of the worst flood they had experienced.
They did not have a margin.
While they didn't prepare for less than what they had previously seen, they only prepared for the worst flood in history, and not the worst flood in history + a margin.
Listing old, famous intellectual people that have retained their wits is poor a excuse for evidence, since we don't know the ratio between old and famous intellectuals that have lost their wits vs that have retained them.
Here are some [1]. These are however not selected to be 'top' athletes, as far as I know.
I imagine that diet is irrelevant for athletic training, as long as it fulfills certain macro-nutrient requisites. Further, I image vegan athletes are only faced with the increased difficulty of finding and preparing quality sufficient food, compared to others with normative diets, due to lack of demand and meat centered cultures.
Finding an equivalent vegan alternative to chocolate pudding at <500g, 350kcal, 50g protein> for $2.5 [2] seems like a challenge. I'm sure that if they plan their diet, they can meet the same targets - whereas normative diets don't require you to plan anything really. You can just eat 2 of [2] and a chicken a day, and you're done (concerning only protein).
But then again, there are protein powders which balances it out, if we don't take price into account.
All in all, I think diet choices (assuming any choice to be a most healthy variant of chosen diet) mainly impacts long term health, and not short term goals such as muscle gains.
I addressed this when this study was discussed last week, but it's worth reminding that minutiae comparing is not the only technique used for fingerprint matching. [1]
Do note however, that masterprints are not applicable for all current solutions.[1] Their statement is of course biased, but they nevertheless point out a significant flaw in the referenced study.
Let me tell a second hand anecdote of a Burmese village.
It was a rather small collection of huts raised on tall poles. But it was a village none the less.
All paths in the village were laid out with a connected mass of wood. Along the path were sticks, rising pretty high up in the air. Somewhere along the top of the sticks were a lot of cuts made out in the wood, at various heights. By a knife or so.
In the dry season, this path laid on the ground to be walked on. You didn't have to walk on it of course, since the surrounding dirt was dry.
In the wet season however, floods often came. And so, they raised the path up along the sticks so that it became a water bridge for when floods came. They raised it to the level of the highest cuts that were made in the sticks. A very reasonable thing to do, in order to connect the village in times of crisis, without using boats.
Interestingly, however was the background of the cuts. Each cut represented a water height that had some time ago been the highest the flood had become. So each season, they only raised the water bridge to the level of the worst flood they had experienced.
They did not have a margin.
While they didn't prepare for less than what they had previously seen, they only prepared for the worst flood in history, and not the worst flood in history + a margin.