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Ozyrus comments on Stupid Questions, 2nd half of December - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (186)
Well, this is a stupid questions thread after all, so I might as well ask one that seems really stupid.
How can a person who promotes rationality have excess weight? Been bugging me for a while. Isn't it kinda the first thing you would want to apply your rationality to? If you have things to do that get you more utility, you can always pay diet specialist and just stick to the diet, because it seems to me that additional years to life will bring you more utility than any other activity you could spend that money on.
Easily :-)
This has been discussed a few times. EY has two answers, one a bit less reasonable and one a bit more. The less reasonable answer is that he's a unique snowflake and diet+exercise does not work for him. The more reasonable answer is that the process of losing weight downgrades his mental capabilities and he prefers a high level of mental functioning to losing weight.
From my (subjective, outside) point of view, the real reason is that he is unwilling to pay the various costs of losing weight. That, by the way, is not necessarily a rationality failure since rationality does not specify your value system and it's your values which determine whether a trade-off is worthwhile or not.
I don't think "unique snowflake" is a good description. Most people who attempt diet+exercise don't lose weight.
All people who create a calorie deficit via diet and exercise lose weight.
That claim starts by being false in a trivial way: Not every kind of calorie burn is due to exercise. At a QS conference I was talking to a woman who found that if she exercises in the morning she won't move much the rest of the day. She burned the most calories when she went out shopping for a day.
In more controlled enviroments lab animals who are fed a controlled diet weigh more than they weighted decades ago. I don't think that's due to the mouse running less maces.
More importantly it's irrelevant to the empirical fact that the success of the intervention of having people attempt to diet and exercise is medicore. It's rational to chose interventions that work for other people.
"All people who create a calorie deficit via diet and exercise lose weight" does not imply "but no people who create a calorie deficit via some other means do".
If you exercise you burn more calories for the time that you exercise. In the bailey-and-moat frame, the claim is that this deficit will get you to lose weight. That's not categorically true. To the extend that the calorie counting device the woman I was talking to can be trusted, she moved less at the days when she exercised.
Presence of adenovirus 36 correlates with obesity in children. If you model obesity as being caused by the virus, it's questionable whether
create a calorie deficit via diet and exercise to lose weightis the best strategy you can think of. Unfortunately that virus isn't the only illness that produces weight gain.Believing that virus aren't a problem because you have a theory in which you dearly believe is what prevented doctors from washing their hands. In the 19th century. Simply following the "it's the calorie stupid mantra" is structurally the same and not only because you can also prevent adenovirus from spreading by washing hands.
In an attempt to gain weight there was a month were I put 800 kcal worth of maltrodextrose into my tea every day. My weight didn't change a bit through it. I have a friend who personally reproduced the finding of Dave Asprey that putting 1000kcal of butter into coffee doesn't automatically lead to weight gain.
"All people who create a calorie deficit via diet and exercise lose weight" doesn't imply "all people who diet and exercise create a calorie deficit" either.
Exercising does create a calorie deficit for the time frame during which you exercise even in cases where it doesn't produce a deficit at daily accounting.
It also causes a weight loss for the time frame during which you exercise (mostly through sweating), but I guess Brillyant meant both "calorie deficit" and "weight loss" over longer timescales than that.
Generally, my claim is true.
Lumifer stated my opinion on why people don't lose weight pretty well: "the real reason is that [people are] unwilling to pay the various costs of losing weight."
It's difficult to achieve in many cases (dieting isn't fun), but we should be happy the formula for weight loss is pretty simple. People just choose not to do the things necessary.
I think there are some life hacky ways to approach fitness and weight loss. I, for instance, have very low will power. I'm lousy at moderation. My solution is to, as a zero tolerance policy, not eat certain foods. I also have a policy of working out 5 times a week, with no exceptions. I've used commitment contracts from time to time to aid me.
These are pretty simple measures. And all they do is allow me to (1) eat less and (2) exercise more. People just don't wanna.
Your example is just a play on the word "exercise". Shopping is exercise. Walking, moving.
Your statement is trivially true in regard to metabolism, however. ~65% of basal metabolic rate (or resting metabolic rate) is, IIRC, based on the amount of lean muscle an individual has. In this way, it seems the fit will find it easier to stay fit and those with small amounts of lean muscle will always be fighting an uphill battle.
I think the way LW talks about diet and weight loss is among the most irrational I've seen. It's not nearly as complicated as it's made out to be here. I'd imagine it's discouraging to many people.
You could create a weight loss book from all the knowledge and insight offered in the history of LW and it would be less valuable, in terms of its instrumental rationality to dieters, than a fortune cookie slip that said "Eat less, exercise more".
The difficulty and the costs vary enormously from one person to another. Some people eat and exercise as they please, without making any effort to control their weight, yet stay thin [1], while others blow up like balloons if they do that. For some, deliberately limiting their intake is a minor inconvenience; others find they cannot function.
Does "you just aren't willing to pay the cost" make any more sense about dieting and exercise than it would about buying a house?
(1) Me, for example, but I've known others. I don't know what proportion of the population this is true of. People without problems don't need to talk about them, so the impression from public discourse that everyone struggles to keep their weight down is biased.
This is obviously true of everything in life. The costs are different for different individuals to succeed at different pursuits.
Some people seem to be genetically predisposed to stay slender. In some cases, they have a BMR that aids them. IIRC, ~25% of BMR is some unknown component that is likely genetic. This is hundreds of calories a day and potentially tens of pounds (or more) over years/decades. Other times, people are just wired to do better at moderating food intake or sticking to a workout plan.
None of this changes what needs to be done to achieve a given weight.
BMR won't affect this. My weight, excluding temporary deviations due to illness, has been between 120 and 130 pounds for the last forty years. I only have a detailed record for the last 11 years (4011 days, to be precise), during which I have weighed myself nearly every day. Linear regression on the data gives a gradient of about -0.1 grams per day, or -400 grams over the whole period. However, as the standard deviation of the weight is about 700 grams, this is indistinguishable from zero (as I knew already from eyeballing the graph). In terms of calories, using the usual (but, it seems, not very accurate) estimate of 3500 calories per pound of fat, this is less than 1 calorie per day.
0.1 grams and 1 calorie per day are at least two orders of magnitude smaller that the precision with which you could measure daily diet or exertion.
According to an online BMR estimator based on age, weight, and height, my BMR has declined by 70 calories per day over that time, i.e. 700 times the daily trend in body weight. Add to that the fact that in the first half of the period I was driving somewhat more and cycling somewhat less than in the second half, yet no corresponding change in weight is visible in the graph. (Average weights for the first and second half differ by 0.22 pounds. My scales only have a resolution of 0.2 pounds.)
So it is clear that the factors varying from day to day and year to year completely overwhelm the size of the long-term trend. Yet despite that, the long term trend is effectively zero.
The only type of mechanism that can produce phenomena like this is active regulation. But the regulation is not being performed by "me", i.e. by deliberately chosen actions in response to observing my weight. (It was just as steady before I began daily measurements.) By what, then? I don't think anyone knows the answer to that.
Now, what would happen if I were to eat less? My experience is pretty much the same as what Eliezer has described: I get light-headed with hunger, and great mental and physical efforts become beyond me. I am fortunate enough to have no reason to do so. But I recognise that it is nothing but good fortune, and I am not going to smugly tell anyone else that they just have to pay the price, when the price may be beyond their means, and the price to me is zero. Eliezer's job and vocation is thinking, and if he cannot do that while dropping 100 pounds, then he cannot drop 100 pounds.
The mental and physical effort of many pursuits may be beyond many people...this does not change the reality of what must be done. There is nothing smug about that.
The difficulty of disciplining your diet, like anything else, decreases over time. It's near torture, at first, to deprive yourself of calories you're used to. But it gets easier. I've experienced this and heard the same from many people.
I'm not sure I follow your line of thinking on this.
Individual resting metabolism varies quite a bit between individuals. While age plays a factor, my understanding is ~65% has to do with lean muscle mass. (Ergo, it's a great idea to accumulate lean muscle in order that you can burn calories without exerting extra effort. Strength training and protein consumption help.)
IIRC, ~25% of BMR is a big giant mystery, and my assumption is it's genetic differences. This is a significant difference between any 2 people (sometimes 100's of calories per day). So, I'm not saying it will be as easy for any two people to maintain a given weight. In fact, it will X% harder for some people—leading them to need to devote that much more time, effort and resource just to keep up with other people who are more fortunate in this way.
And so again, how is this different than anything in life? If I want to excel at math, I would need to devote X% more time, effort, resource than other people who are fortunate in this area. It would require great mental and physical effort for me. Same if I want to excel at long distance running. Or chess. Or ventriloquism. I'd be predisposed to success in some pursuits and at a deficit in others.
A while ago I was speaking at a conference for people who were professionals at the subject of teaching people to lose weight. They generally also considered the topic to be complicated. Seeing the topic as being complicated is not a contrarian LW opinion but the opinion of the relevant professional field.
That has little to do with anything given that the amount of will power isn't predictive of diet adherence. See Baumeisters book on will power.
We do you talk about that instead of talking about a more relevant metric of success such as a long-term reduction in BMI? (Or another metric for being overweight)
So you are saying that going shopping would fall under your 5x times exercise per weak? It very likely isn't.
If you look in the dictionary
exerciseis defined as:: physical activity that is done in order to become stronger and healthier: a particular movement or series of movements done to become stronger and healthierShopping is not done to become stronger and healthier but is done for another end. Therefore it's not exercise.
Even if you don't look at the purpose of the activity, when you define any moving as exercise everybody exercises 24/7. That's very far from what most people mean with the term.
It is as complicated as someone would like to make it. Just like anything else. But that's not helping people lose weight, IMO. That's my point. Instrumental rationality suffers when we get too far away from the simple facts.
And it depends on your definition of "complicated"...
Perhaps you can point me to something more specific from the book?
My point is that I have experienced positive results not through moderation, but through abstinence from certain foods, and pre-commitment (if you will) to exercise. I try to eliminate will from the equation as much as possible.
I don't know what you mean. I think you misunderstood me.
On exercise/shopping: It's just semantics. Define either however you'd like. For my purposes, I define exercise similar to your dictionary, but I also have lots of hacks I incorporate into other regular activities to burn calories: always take the stairs, park in the back row of the lot, walk around the building every hour while I mentally plan my next hour of work, walk my dog everyday, etc.
The point is to create a calorie deficit. Consuming less and burning more. Create a calorie deficit and you'll lose weight 100% of the time. Not easy, but simple. It doesn't matter if that is through "Exercise" according to some formal definition.
Discussion on LW about the problem of obesity aren't just about instrumental rationality, they are also about epistemic rationality. The discussion about Eliezer's weight is one where the goal is having true beliefs.
If you claim you achieve positive results that means you actually lost weight, reducing your body-fat or reducing your weight circumference. If you achieved neither of those results, I don't think there a basis for you claiming positive results at weight loss.
It's not a formal definition but the standard definition. The definition that you also use when you speak about exercising 5 times per weak. You are playing bailey-and-moat when you use different definitions and switch them up to win arguments.
For a person deciding whether or not to exercise, the effects of the decision to exercise matter a great deal. For people who burn less calories in days where they exercise and who want to lose weight that's very valuable information. That's the thing that matters if you care about instrumental rationality.
I agree. I think it's useful to know why the diets that work are working. From my recall, discussions about low-carb diets, here and elsewhere, are particularly dumb.
I've achieved both. Predictably. Mine is just one anecdotal case. It doesn't mean much.
I've talked to enough people and seen plenty of results to feel confident enough to speak on the issue though.
Nutrition, by the way, is actually a complicated matter. It should be separated from simple weight loss in this discussion.
You're missing the point. You can Exercise© ZERO and lose weight, where exercise involves your standard definition. It doesn't matter.
I find it useful to set aside Exercise© time because (1) I enjoy it and (2) it helps me form a mental habit.
In regard to the woman who finds it useful to shop, but not Exercise©, I get it. I don't Run©, but I play basketball. I do this for a similar reason as she stated. I get tired and sore and bored and experience a low mood when I run. I'm happy and "competitively fulfilled" after playing basketball. Time flies and I am able to stay active for much longer.
The outcome is the same: Calories burned. More when I play basketball, since I tend to do it for longer.
I redirected the issue to the link of willpower producing dieting success to stackexchange.
Willpower (or more preceisely ability of self-control) did nothing to help people stick to diets. That's compatible with the model that the central variable that matter by an approach to dieting is shifting the bodies setpoint.
What does this mean?
If I am presented with food, what shall I call the mechanism that allows me to constrain myself from eating?
Are there factors (outside stress, lack of sleep, etc.) that may cause by ability to constrain myself to diminish?
If I have a rule for myself, backed by a commitment contract, that I will not eat chips, will this increase the likelihood I do not partake when presented with an opportunity?
Elaborate on this, please.
I don't know enough on the issue to say, but I think I'm advocating something similar to this practically. Dieting is difficult, but gets easier after some time. The body seems to get used to less food. My sense is that a new equilibrium is reached, where less food will suffice for regular functioning without hunger.
Is this what you mean?
What other discussions of diet and weight loss have you seen?
I've not a kept a log... but online discussion, discussion in the gym, among friends, colleagues, articles I've read, etc.
Interesting. Could you provide a source for this strange claim?
Without recommending the specific article, but to give a source: http://www.livescience.com/10277-obesity-rise-animals.html
I don't understand why this comment is met with such opposition. Calories are the amount of energy a food contains. If you use more energy than you take in, then you have to lose weight [stored energy]. There's literally no other way it could work.
The statement can even be further simplified to:
Then try rereading the discussion till you have an insight into why people disagree. I don't think you are too stupid to understand it if you make an effort to try to understand.
Your "real reason" is the same as Eliezer's second reason, except less specific.
It is less specific and therefore more likely.
Is that a good thing to be? My new hypothesis is that the real reason is something. There, probability close on 1. Isn't that useful!
That's a pretty big difference :-) and I'm not convinced EY's stated reason is actually the most important.
EY's little more reasonable answer makes a little sense. Your subjective point of view makes even more sense.
I guess it's stupid (and maybe wrong/ugly/cruel) of me to think along the lines of the OP, but I wonder about people who claim great rational abilities and aren't in very good shape. As you state, value systems vary, so maybe people have done the math and decided fitness isn't worth the effort... but it still makes me wonder.
As I said, it's not necessarily a rationality failure, but often it is.
Every once in a while, I try to hope against hope that LW will not decay and disappear into irrelevance... and then here we are, discussing Eliezer's weight.
It's a reasonable topic, I think. Not EY's particular weight necessarily, but the original question of why claimed rationality "experts" wouldn't almost automatically be in good shape.
If you are trying to promote rationality in the way that is done around here (rationality = winning at life), then it seems to be a reasonable expectation that certain aspects of your life would be in order.
Off the top of my head, I'd expect a person promoting rationality...
If I went to the home of one of the supposed Heros of Rationality and it was a smelly pigpen, then it would effect my view of their credibility because, c'mon... I'm a shitty rationalist and even I can keep my house clean. I'd feel the same way if that person couldn't manage their personal finances—why should I listen to someone who, under non-extenuating circumstances, can't pay their bills?
Physical fitness, in my experience, is a clear demonstration of instrumental rationality. You predictably get out what you put in. It's possible to put a practical plan in place to succeed at it. And it helps you win at life in many ways.
We're talking about a guy who wants to live forever, so it's difficult to make a case that someone like Eliezer would be negligent toward his own health. Given his previous record of thinking hard about hard problems, I find it more likely that he has already tried his best at this problem and found a compromise that acknowledges the way his body works and does not interfere with whatever other goals matter more to him. But even this extremely cautious way to describe it still sounds to me like a disrespectful intrusion into a stranger's life choices. I understand how discipline and self-control are related to good rationalist habits, but this kind of discussions always run the risk to degenerate into fat-shaming.
You're assuming a very mainstream value system.
That's not incompatible with the hypothesis that said costs would be higher for him than for the average person for whatever reason.
Why would he (or anyone) care about the average person in this context?
Very easy to say, not so easy to do. Food is a particularly tough issue, as there are strong countervailing motivations, in effect all through the day.
Health in general, yes. Weight is a significant aspect of that.
Additional years of health are probably the most bang for the buck. Yeah.
I honestly have no idea if I have excess bodyfat (not weight; at last check I was well under 140Lbs, which makes me lighter than some decidedly not overweight people I know, some of whom are shorter than me), but if I did and wanted to get rid of it... I have quite a few obstacles, the biggest being financial and Akrasia-from-Hell. Mostly that last one, because lack of akrasia = more problem-solving power = better chances of escaping the wellfare cliff. (I only half apply Akrasia to diet and exercise; it's rather that my options are limited. Though reducing akrasia might increase my ability to convince my hindbrain that cooking implements other than the microwave aren't that scary.)
So, personally, all my problem-solving ability really needs to go into overcoming Hellkrasia. If there are any circular problems involved, well, crap.
But I'm assuming you've encountered or know of lots of fat rationalists who can totally afford professionals and zany weight loss experiments. At this point I have to say that no one has convinced me to give any of the popular models for what makes fat people fat any especially large share of the probability. Of course I would start with diet and exercise, and would ask any aspiring rationalist who tries this method and fails to publish their data (which incidentally requires counting calories, which "incidentally" outperforms the honor system). Having said that, though, no one's convinced me that "eat less, exercise more" is the end-all solution for everyone (and I would therefore prefer that the data from the previous hypotheticals include some information regarding the sources of the calories, rather than simply the count).
(I'm pretty sure I remember someone in the Rationalist Community having done this at least once.)
Measuring RMR could reveal snowflake likelihood.
If ego depletion turns out to be real, choosing not to limit yourself in order to focus on something you find important might be a choice you make. Different people really do carry their fat differently, too, so there's that. Not everyone who runs marathons is slender, especially as they age.
And then there's injuries, but that brings up another subject.
I'm not sure how expensive whole body air displacement is in the civilian world, but it seems like a decent way to measure lean mass.
I would guess that 3D scanning is the better way. In principle a smart phone app should be able to do this sooner or later by using camera + accelerometer.
I am in fairly good shape but often wonder if I irrationally spend too much time exericising. I usually hit about 8 hrs/week of exercise. That adds up to a lot of opportunity cost over the years, especially if you take exponential growth into account.