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prase comments on Practical Advice Backed By Deep Theories - Less Wrong
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http://sethroberts.net/science/ is totally unconvincing. The main promoter of the diet doesn't seem to have any decent evidence that it works.
Lacking evidence, it seems like another fad diet, whose most obvious purpose is to sell diet books by telling people what they desperately want to hear - that they can diet and lose weight - while still eating whatever they like.
To me, it looks like junk science that distracts people from advice that might actually help them.
I agree that the theory is unconvincing. Roberts seems to argue that organisms have brain-regulated mechanism which force the organisms to eat more if the food is more easily available. Such behaviour could be beneficial because during famines the supplies would be later depleted, but the explanation smells of group selection - I suppose that especially during famines the individual who eats as much as possible and stores that as fat will have great advantage against more modest members of his group, not speaking about other species. Am I missing something?
Pop evo-psych stories are a marketing strategy for diets, not a real reason to follow one. Look at the paleo diet - which apparently promotes the ancestral state of malnourishment and dehydration, on the basis of an evo-psych story.
Diets are best evaluated by testing them, not by telling memorable stories about their origins.
Why evo-psych? Psychology has nothing to do with that.
Diets are, of course, evaluated by testing, but Roberts goes further and makes an explanation of his diet, and whether this explanation is consistent from evolutionary perspective is a relevant question.
Or, in my view, not as far, by promoting an almost totally-untested diet.
Yes - the cost of gathering the food. Roberts's hypothesis is that if food is not plentiful, it's counterproductive to be so hungry that you burn a lot of calories looking for more food, versus sitting tight and drawing on your fat stores. Conversely, if food is plentiful, you'd be an idiot not to go get as much as you can handle.