KnaveOfAllTrades comments on [LINK] Soylent crowdfunding - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 21 May 2013 07:09PM

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Comment author: KnaveOfAllTrades 22 May 2013 08:37:46PM *  0 points [-]

Considering the amount of time, effort, money, and pain you have been or are willing to put in to decrease your fatness, I want to make sure that you've actually considered what your evidence is for whatever benefits and costs you perceive in decreasing your fatness. I haven't looked into studies in detail, but I think even reflecting on the discourse surrounding fat has a large effect on one's probability estimate for 'fat is evil'. By a noticeable (though not necessarily decisive) margin, I find the most plausible explanation for what little I know about fat to be that the world is crazy, people are mad and bigoted, fatness in itself does not on average cause any actionable (i.e. calling for large intervention) significant net loss of health, the medical community has failed to convincingly demonstrate such massive ill effects after controlling for other more plausible causes despite trying extremely hard to because it is privileging a false hypothesis, and that this research agenda is both motivated by and feeds into the aforementioned societal craziness.

(I claim that I'm not counter-other-optimizing-Eliezer_Yudkowsky / epistemic other-optimizing, but I suspect it'd be epistemic other-optimizing to insist you believe that.)

Comment author: [deleted] 25 May 2013 08:47:29AM *  0 points [-]

the medical community has failed to convincingly demonstrate such massive ill effects after controlling for other more plausible causes

This did control for lots of stuff.