= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Brillyant comments on Open Thread for February 18-24 2014 - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (454)
Yes, and no.
There are significant differences between some individuals' BMR. And some people are just better at managing will power. And some likely people experience much greater physiological responses to food than others.
In those ways, you're exactly right. I'm apparently wired to be able to white knuckle my way to a successful ~6 week diet where some others cannot.
But that wasn't really the thrust of the argument in the discussion I linked. Rather, it was all sorts of back and forth about the viability of popular dieting methods.
I agree dieting isn't easy to do for all sorts of reasons. But it is simple. And that seemed to be completely lost on a group of people that are way smarter than me.
It made me think twice about LW's views on all sorts of things that aren't easy or simple.
An alternative explanation might be that the "weightloss = energy output - energy intake" model is so simple that all the people involved in the discussion already understand it, consider it obvious and trivial, and have moved on to discussing harder questions.
Perhaps. Though from my recall that was not the case.
Back and forth should be expected in a realm where the studies are terrible and different methodologies seem to yield vastly different results for people based on unknown parameter differences between them.
-- Eliezer Yudkowsky
So yes, dieting is simple!