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You say sin, I say disease

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Re: You say sin, I say disease

#31

Post by lotharbot »

Semiapies wrote: post #22

Sin, disease... What's wrong with a plain old fact? Are you overweight? Then you're overweight. Are you downright fat ? Then you're fat. Religious dogma aside (as I don't care about it), I'm going to say you're not committing a sin or evil act by being heavy. Barring the adenovirus hypothesis panning out or your having a known glandular issue, I'm going to guess that you don't have a disease. You just have a fact . A…

There are different types of problems; classifying them can help us address, research, analyze, and solve them.

I have known people who've struggled with mood and focus. Knowing if it's caused by a disease (depression), circumstance (losing a loved one), or intentional behavior (playing video games when they should've been sleeping), helps determine what sort of treatment is likely to be effective. Medicating a person for a character flaw is just as dangerous as castigating them for a disease.

Re: You say sin, I say disease

#32

Post by randallsquared »

Evgeny wrote: post #24
mtviewdave wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that you've learned some important lessons only for yourself. Extrapolations you make to other people--the minutia of how their bodies work, what sort of impulses and urges they have, how easy or difficult those urges are to control--are basically speculative. And judgments based just on speculation aren't really worth very much.

Well I hope I understand that. However, widespread obesity is a relatively recent problem. I'm not convinced that human bodies somehow started to work in a very different way over the span of just a few decades. The amount and compisition of what we place inside those bodies did change though. Overcoming the urges and impulses would require a certain amount of effort and self-control, but don't other positive changes…

I'm not convinced that human bodies somehow started to work in a very different way over the span of just a few decades. The amount and composition of what we place inside those bodies did change though.

Just like in times past, people tend to eat as much as they can, and do as little physical work as they can, in the extreme. It's just that we're all so incredibly wealthy now compared to our ancestors that this is no longer a reasonable strategy for maintaining a healthy weight.

Re: You say sin, I say disease

#33

Post by jonhendry »

archgoon wrote: post #30
Semiapies wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in "Modern Europe" have they banned all the unhealthy foods?

Denmark and Switzerland have both banned Transfats. Also, various bans exist for genetically modified foods in Europe. Sweeteners such as stevia, meats with bovine growth hormone, etc. I'm surprised people are unaware of this. My apologies for not citing it in my comment, I thought everyone was aware of this, and so I found the original implication that banning foods leads to totalitarianism absurd.

"Denmark and Switzerland have both banned Transfats"

Presumably you can still gorge yourself on bacon and whole milk and sugary cakes, pies, and cookies; then drink alcohol until you die.

Re: You say sin, I say disease

#34

Post by jonhendry »

devindotcom wrote: post #5

I'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.

" And as one commenter points out, this disease seems unusually concentrated in the USA"

And HIV is unusually concentrated in Africa. And cholera is endemic in south Asia (thus leading to suspicions that UN troops from Nepal are the source of the cholera outbreak in Haiti). It's not unheard of for infectious agents to be geographically localized.

Re: You say sin, I say disease

#35

Post by Natsu »

ihodes wrote: post #11
lionhearted wrote: post #3

More 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.…

Actually, scarier yet is whatever conclusions you seem to arrive at (or, more likely, those which you seem to asymptotically approach) will be baseless and unimportant on an absolute scale: you have to measure the worth of what you create against a scale you do not control. When you can point to an ought that logically follows from an is , that'll be the most important day in anyone's lives. In the meantime, I'm phil…

> When you can point to an ought that logically follows from an is, that'll be the most important day in anyone's lives.

There is a train heading for you, therefore you ought to get off the tracks.

(EDIT: And yes, I do recognize Hume's fork when I see it. I'm just glad I'm not sitting at a circular table with him, fighting over who gets to use it.)

Re: You say sin, I say disease

#36

Post by Natsu »

samd wrote: post #28
hugh3 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what about when it is just a moral failing? What if it is just a matter of developing the modest amount of willpower required to say "Actually on second thoughts I won't have that cheesecake for dessert, an apple will be just fine". In that case the worst thing you can possibly do is to blame it on anything other than personal failings.

I don't think a lack of willpower is a moral failing, but let's suppose it is. How does that help somebody eat healthy? Wouldn't it be more effective to just tell people to avoid cheesecake if they can't help but eat it when it's around? If you could find a way to give people the willpower to do the things they know they ought to do that'd be great, but nobody's managed to figure that one out yet.

> I don't think a lack of willpower is a moral failing, but let's suppose it is. How does that help somebody eat healthy?

They can train themselves to have more. There was a fine article on that very subject on HN some months ago. I believe it said that one key to self-control was not to attempt to fight the urge, but rather to avoid it.

The kid who tried to stare down the cookie broke down and ate it. The kid who hid under the table resisted (and got something better, later).

The nice thing about that is that learning to develop more willpower helps you everywhere.

Re: You say sin, I say disease

#37

Post by j_baker »

"And before you write it off as fat folks feeding Fido far too much"

As it turns out, there isn't necessarily a correlation between pets' bodyweights and owners' bodyweigts. At least, cats' bodyweight isn't (although I seem to remember reading about another study that even showed a negative correlation): http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...

Re: You say sin, I say disease

#39

Post by ihodes »

Natsu wrote: post #35
ihodes wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, scarier yet is whatever conclusions you seem to arrive at (or, more likely, those which you seem to asymptotically approach) will be baseless and unimportant on an absolute scale: you have to measure the worth of what you create against a scale you do not control. When you can point to an ought that logically follows from an is , that'll be the most important day in anyone's lives. In the meantime, I'm phil…

> When you can point to an ought that logically follows from an is, that'll be the most important day in anyone's lives. There is a train heading for you, therefore you ought to get off the tracks. (EDIT: And yes, I do recognize Hume's fork when I see it. I'm just glad I'm not sitting at a circular table with him, fighting over who gets to use it.)

Again, it's safer to separate my actual life from my philosophy: why get off the track? Death is inevitable, and not inherently worse than life.

Hume's a tricky bastard, and with enough Nietzsche to back him up, depressingly formidable.

So I arbitrarily give value to certain things in pursuit of a pleasant system of beliefs and a nice-feeling way of going about life.

Re: You say sin, I say disease

#40

Post by archgoon »

jonhendry wrote: post #33
archgoon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Denmark and Switzerland have both banned Transfats. Also, various bans exist for genetically modified foods in Europe. Sweeteners such as stevia, meats with bovine growth hormone, etc. I'm surprised people are unaware of this. My apologies for not citing it in my comment, I thought everyone was aware of this, and so I found the original implication that banning foods leads to totalitarianism absurd.

"Denmark and Switzerland have both banned Transfats" Presumably you can still gorge yourself on bacon and whole milk and sugary cakes, pies, and cookies; then drink alcohol until you die.

Really not particularly relevant. Funny, but misses the point that regulating food does not make you into a totalitarian state.
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