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The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

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Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#241

Post by kelnos »

aksss wrote: post #215
dsohn0 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Black people want their victimhood to last 1000 years. Let's not pretend American racism is somehow exceptional. Africans have been committing ethnic cleansing as a continental pastime for centuries and no one cries a river about that.

I often think the people who talk loudly and overly-much about the US’s endemic racism have never travelled abroad much to witness what the rest of the world is really like (looking at you, Japan). It’s a product of an education curriculum that is hyper-focused on the misdeeds of the US. While the misdeeds need attention the view completely lacks an honest accounting of how amazing the state of this 325m culturally h…

Serious question (because I don't know the answer, or how to find out): are there many other places in the (first) world where people of a minority race are singled out for harassment by law enforcement, to the point where police are routinely murdering people of that race with little to no consequences?

If not, then I think a focus on the US's particular brand of racism is warranted.

I do agree with you that it is fairly remarkable that the US is as stable as it is given the large mix of cultural views and values... but that doesn't let us off the hook for the problems we do have.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#242

Post by thaumasiotes »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #230
yongjik wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people stopped invoking racism everywhere, when plain "being misinformed" explains things just fine. Millions of Koreans swear up and down that MSG is bad for health. Are we also being racist? (Against whom?)

Do you ever use the phrase "long time no see"? It is treated as innocuous today but it is rooted in a mocking jest at broken English spoken by Chinese immigrants. The funny part is that I know Asian Americans who say it without knowing where it came from. You can be misinformed about something that is fundamentally racist. The twisted MSG belief system is just a less overtly racist version of "Chinese restaurants ser…

> The funny part is that I know Asian Americans who say it without knowing where it came from.

I know many Asian Chinese; they tend to really like saying "long time no see" because they find the saying so intuitive.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#243

Post by mgraczyk »

louisvgchi wrote: post #10

Dave Chang has a small scene in one of his Ugly Delicious (great show, by the way) episodes where he gets a group of non-Asian Americans, who claim to be MSG-allergic, to come and share their stories of MSG-related symptoms after eating at Chinese restaurants. He then hands out Doritos and American products that the participants claim they love and can eat all day. Hard to see where this is going... he says, all thes…

Hmm from my experience this belief is more common amongst Asian Americans than White Americans. Hard to believe that's caused by racism.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#244

Post by hombre_fatal »

kelnos wrote: post #241
aksss wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often think the people who talk loudly and overly-much about the US’s endemic racism have never travelled abroad much to witness what the rest of the world is really like (looking at you, Japan). It’s a product of an education curriculum that is hyper-focused on the misdeeds of the US. While the misdeeds need attention the view completely lacks an honest accounting of how amazing the state of this 325m culturally h…

Serious question (because I don't know the answer, or how to find out): are there many other places in the (first) world where people of a minority race are singled out for harassment by law enforcement, to the point where police are routinely murdering people of that race with little to no consequences? If not, then I think a focus on the US's particular brand of racism is warranted. I do agree with you that it is f…

But your claims aren’t back by data either. Your first paragraph is made up.

https://samharris.org/can-pull-back-brink/

(I link Sam Harris because of his bigger point about people echoing talking points completely divorced from the data, as you have done. You can check his data sources.)

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#245

Post by Ensorceled »

an_opabinia wrote: post #202
reitzensteinm wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It totally is systemic racism. But I wish there was another word for it, or that racism were not used interchangeably with systemic racism. There's a hell of a difference between "you're racist" and "you're spreading misinformation that only exists because your grandparents were racist". The latter will get a reaction from the vast majority of people like "oh shit, I had no idea, that's awful". The former will cause…

MSG aversion is relatively new. People’s attitudes about it change over the scale of decades. This is pretty consistent with most other food additives, like aspartame, certain preservatives and certain food colorings. While I agree there exists racism against Asian Americans in many places, it would behoove people who feel passionate about the elimination of prejudice around the world to fight for things not because…

> MSG aversion is relatively new.

I encountered the "MSG is Harmful" trope in university in the 1980's ... it's literally been around for generations now.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#246

Post by thaumasiotes »

mmanfrin wrote: post #233
suryabeep wrote: post #228

I cannot comment about MSG in Chinese food but I can provide my own experience with MSG. As a kid in Bangalore I used to eat a lot of instant noodles that had MSG in the seasoning packets. One time I got a very bad case of food poisoning and ended up in the hospital for 5 days. At the time, the doctors said the food poisoning was due to MSG. The circumstances being what they were, I doubt the doctors were influenced…

I'm a little astounded that on an article talking about the hoax pejoration of MSG, you describe a lifetime of eating MSG that includes a single instance of getting food poisoning and therefore promote the notion that 'MSG actually does have negative effects'. We wonder why it's so hard to counter the anti-vaxxer movement despite the initial studies that started them being disproven; this is such a perfect parallel.

Andrew Gelman frequently talks about a problem in the scientific literature, in which you see the following pattern:

1. A study is done at the typical (very low) level of quality, and it gets published somewhere.

2. A more careful study tries to replicate the effect and finds that it doesn't exist.

3. The world concludes that the effect doesn't occur in the very specific context observed in the second study, but does occur in all other contexts.

Gelman makes the point that if the two studies occurred in the other order -- first, a high-quality study finds no effect, and second, a low-quality study finds an effect -- no one would conclude the effect was generally present. But the order in which you perform studies is not actually relevant to anything.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#247

Post by Ensorceled »

hellodang wrote: post #226
reitzensteinm wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It totally is systemic racism. But I wish there was another word for it, or that racism were not used interchangeably with systemic racism. There's a hell of a difference between "you're racist" and "you're spreading misinformation that only exists because your grandparents were racist". The latter will get a reaction from the vast majority of people like "oh shit, I had no idea, that's awful". The former will cause…

Chinese food prominently features MSG. Chinese food is served in Chinese restaurants. MSG (and most foods containing natural glutamate) has been identified as a common migraine trigger in individuals sensitive to them, and this is just one symptom among many grouped under the term. “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” is the end result of this chain of logic, grounded not in racism, but in fact.

"No MSG" signs are prominent at pretty much every Chinese restaurant I've been to. This is hogwash of the worst sort.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#248

Post by shakna »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #229
suryabeep wrote: post #228

I cannot comment about MSG in Chinese food but I can provide my own experience with MSG. As a kid in Bangalore I used to eat a lot of instant noodles that had MSG in the seasoning packets. One time I got a very bad case of food poisoning and ended up in the hospital for 5 days. At the time, the doctors said the food poisoning was due to MSG. The circumstances being what they were, I doubt the doctors were influenced…

> However, I think one can build a tolerance to it, because I regularly eat it at restaurants and I haven't had any problems with it since that time as a kid. It is much more likely that: 1. You haven't had any problems with MSG ever, including that time as a kid, just as every experiment ever done on MSG would suggest; 2. Your doctors were influenced by coverage of MSG in the medical press outside India. Stupidity d…

> just as every experiment ever done on MSG would suggest;

> In 1995, the Food and Drug Administration asked an independent scientific group, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, to study MSG’s safety. It found that only a small number of people experienced any side effects, and that was only after consuming six times the normal serving of MSG on an empty stomach.

There is a _very_ small number of people who do in fact experience side effects when consuming MSG. Whilst it is pretty much harmless to most people, there is a population for who it creates discomfort. It isn't no one.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#249

Post by vkou »

yongjik wrote: post #26
louisvgchi wrote: post #10

Dave Chang has a small scene in one of his Ugly Delicious (great show, by the way) episodes where he gets a group of non-Asian Americans, who claim to be MSG-allergic, to come and share their stories of MSG-related symptoms after eating at Chinese restaurants. He then hands out Doritos and American products that the participants claim they love and can eat all day. Hard to see where this is going... he says, all thes…

I wish people stopped invoking racism everywhere, when plain "being misinformed" explains things just fine. Millions of Koreans swear up and down that MSG is bad for health. Are we also being racist? (Against whom?)

I wish more people understood that racism isn't just the cartoon boogieman of a redneck living in a trailer park who hates and fears _ethnic group_.

Re: The Strange Case of Dr. Ho Man Kwok (2019)

#250

Post by [deleted] »

wpietri wrote: post #150
yongjik wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people stopped invoking racism everywhere, when plain "being misinformed" explains things just fine. Millions of Koreans swear up and down that MSG is bad for health. Are we also being racist? (Against whom?)

I used to think the same way. But now that I see how pervasive a force racism has been in America's history, I have a different view. Now I think it's worth asking both questions: Is racism really at play? And given America's lasting, endemic racism, is there reason to think something makes it absent in a given case? A couple of the books that turned me around here: Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning", a history of…

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