You say sin, I say disease
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You say sin, I say disease
1–10 of 57 posts
Re: You say sin, I say disease
#2Interesting obesity epidemic might be related to disease, specifically: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Adenovirus_se...
Re: You say sin, I say disease
#3More and more, I'm starting to come to the awful conclusion that most people have very little control over how their lives go. They maybe have a few key decision points in their life - but maybe not all that many.
And the rest is autopilot. They watch some subset of the new movies, new TV programs, websites they stumble across. They eat whatever's more or less served near them and eaten by people they associate with. They pick the political party that matches their friends and relatives, or no party, or maybe they pick up a book that has an emotional impact on them and swear loyalty to that. Maybe.
I hate this idea, because it seems to subtly advocate for totalitarianism, which I've been against my whole life. But then there's nagging voice that says, "well, just ban all the food that's unhealthy, and people will eat better..." - but we know where that road leads.
sigh
It's strange being someone who strives to be self reliant, studies and analyzes to make ethics from scratch, constantly examines and re-examines everything... I think there exists less people like this than I originally thought. No, less than that. Okay, divide that number by 10 again.
Less than that, even? Maybe.
Scary thoughts. I'm going to go eat some oatmeal now.
Re: You say sin, I say disease
#4Also linked in the comments at Stross's site:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2as/diseased_thinking_dissolving_que...
Re: You say sin, I say disease
#5I'm not buying it. There are too many outside variables. And as one commenter points out, this disease seems unusually concentrated in the USA. Also, any animal in constant proximity to humans is likely less lean than its wild counterparts.
Re: You say sin, I say disease
#6It's a problem in general when we pin the fault of something on a moral failing. It's a cop-out that does nothing to solve the problem. If we want to discourage some behavior in our society we have to look at the causes and try to mitigate them. Unfortunately many people refuse to even consider the reasons for people's behavior.
Re: You say sin, I say disease
#7More and more, I'm starting to come to the awful conclusion that most people have very little control over how their lives go. They maybe have a few key decision points in their life - but maybe not all that many. And the rest is autopilot. They watch some subset of the new movies, new TV programs, websites they stumble across. They eat whatever's more or less served near them and eaten by people they associate with.…
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Re: You say sin, I say disease
#8I don't find it surprising at all that the rats that feed on the scraps of human food are getting obese - they get the same trans fats, refined carbs and sugars and other stuff that people get.
Laboratory animals, again, are fed by humans. Are they fed strictly following the natural diet of fresh food they would eat in the wild? I doubt that - most likely at least some of it is substituted with cheaper option.
From my point of view, searching for a malicious virus that somehow makes us obese or some other obscure reason is just overcomplicating the issue.
When eating at our canteen at work I can peek into people's plates and the reflection of their choice of food on their size is fairly obvious in most cases.
Edit: just heard the sound of munching, which reminded me of an anectode: a colleague of mine quit smoking a couple of months ago. Now it looks like every time he feels like smoking a cig, he's eating a cookie instead. He also recently complained that after having a stable weight for years, he suddenly gained 5 kilos. Hmm, either he got stung by that virus, or too many cookies - pick your choice ...
Re: You say sin, I say disease
#9More and more, I'm starting to come to the awful conclusion that most people have very little control over how their lives go. They maybe have a few key decision points in their life - but maybe not all that many. And the rest is autopilot. They watch some subset of the new movies, new TV programs, websites they stumble across. They eat whatever's more or less served near them and eaten by people they associate with.…
The big problem with totalitarianism, in practice, is that there is no perfect leader (and even if there were, his or her successors would not be). Any defense of totalitarianism is totally dependent on believing the Platonic noble lie that your leaders are simply better than you, which violates what we know of human nature. If you decide to do everything Bob tells you, sure, he might force you to eat right — but he'll also force you to wash his car and leave your wife with him for the weekend.
Re: You say sin, I say disease
#10I'm not buying it. There are too many outside variables. And as one commenter points out, this disease seems unusually concentrated in the USA. Also, any animal in constant proximity to humans is likely less lean than its wild counterparts.
Agreed, the article makes too many conclusions from too few studies without sufficiently many independently reproduced results. Yet again I am happy that I've read http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html .