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brazil84 comments on Outside the Laboratory - Less Wrong
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Yes, I am trying to nail down your position so that I can figure out exactly where we disagree.
You keep trying to change the subject to the causes of obesity. Which is an important question but not the question I have been addressing.
The threshold question is whether there are certain foods or types of foods which are particularly difficult to resist.
If we agreed on that, then we could go on to discuss why such foods or types of foods are difficult to resist -- is it because they are super-stimulus foods or some other reason? We could also discuss the role such foods play in obesity at an individual or societal level. But those are different questions.
You seem to have denied that there exist certain foods or types of foods which are difficult to resist. However, you seem to have made an exception for chocolate.
I have presented evidence that there are other foods which are difficult to resist "foods that are both sweet and high in fat (e.g., candies, cakes or pastries, ice cream)" -- at least for women.
You refuse to tell me if you dispute this evidence. Why are you playing hide the ball with your position?
Trust me, the sky won't fall if you simply admit that you were wrong.
Do you dispute the claim that "Women in particular report extreme liking of or craving for foods that are both sweet and high in fat (e.g., candies, cakes or pastries, ice cream)"? (And if not, is it a surprise to you?) This is the last time I will ask.
Ok, I've spotted the issue. I thought you were linking the two things: "These foods are hard to resist because they are superstimuli. Here, let me prove there are foods that are 'hard to resist' (whatever that means). Now that I've done so, it must be because they are superstimuli."
My problems with this are: you need to separate the experience of cravings in absence of food (ie: I can crave chocolate but not have chocolate) from the actual "difficulty to resist" (that needs definition) when the food item is in front of you. You then also need to define "superstimulus" such that the definition makes predictions, and justify belief in such a concept via showing that it applies to your examples of craved foods.
I've made an "exception" for actual drugs, as separate from the other content of food.
To show what I mean, it should be plain that if I lace a pitcher of water with morphine, you will slowly develop an addiction to the water in my pitcher. This is not because water is difficult to resist, it's because I drugged the water. The fact that theobromide or caffeine occur naturally doesn't make the food "hard to resist", it makes it contain a drug.
I don't see a working definition of "difficult to resist", is the issue. Lots of people get cravings and don't act on them, so getting a craving is not evidence that these women actually display less power of self-control when confronted with, say, cake, versus a control group.
In the same fashion, lots of people might say, "I need a damn drink!" when they're stressed-out, but the overwhelming majority of them don't become alcoholics, and most don't even actually take a drink!
Basically, you seem to my eyes to be failing to differentiate between "People like X" and "People can't control themselves around X".
It's reasonable to believe that if people report "extreme liking of or craving," for certain foods or types of foods, then a large percentage of people will find such foods difficult to resist. No reasonable person would dispute this without very strong evidence.
But anyway, we can't even get to that point because you won't even concede that people (or at least women) report "extreme liking of or craving" for certain foods or types of foods. I asked you three times if you you disputed this claim and you ignored my question each time.
Instead, you have decided to strawman me:
There's a difference between "extreme liking or craving for X" and "liking X." There is also a difference between "people have difficulty resisting X" and "people can't control themselves around X."
Sorry, but I have no interest in engaging with people who insist on playing hide the ball with their position. Nor do I engage with people who exaggerate my position to make it sound unreasonable.
This exchange is concluded.
Goodbye.
So... what is it?
Why do you think I have a definite position? My "position" here is that the vocabulary for hypotheses is ill-formed. We have effectively spent an entire conversation saying nothing at all because the terms were never defined clearly.
The Rat Park experiments suggest otherwise, at least as regards morphine.