I don't understand how your reply is responsive.

I recommend that people act in accordance with their (selfish) values because no other values are situated so as to be motivational. Motivation and values are brute facts, chemical processes that happen in individual brains, but that actually gives them an influence beyond that of mere reason, which could never produce obligations. My system also offers a solution to the paralysis brought on by infinitarian ethics - it's not the aggregate amount of well being that matters, it's only mine.

Because I believe this, recognizing that altruism is a subset of egoism is important for my system of ethics. I still believe in altruistic behavior, but only that which is motivated by empathy as opposed to some abstract sense of duty or fear of God's wrath or something.

Does my position make more sense now?

I pointed to sources that contain huge lists of sources, including such studies. Some of what I pointed to is free. There is no need to reproduce this here. The relevance here is to cascades, which occur without "conspiracies."

A common response to a cascade being pointed out is to call the observer a "conspiracy theorist," and that happens even if no conspiracy has been alleged. That people might be unconsciously motivated by issues of reputation and "face" is just what's so for human beings.

I mentioned funding and was explicit that I did not know if this had an actual effect on recommendations.

Taubes has laid out the history of the "official dietary recommendations," and he makes a persuasive case that some serious errors were made, and that some are persisting in beliefs that are not consistent with what is scientifically known.

Anyway, aceofspades asks for studies. He didn't specify the context, but it was that he had written

Would you mind linking to this research that shows low carb diets lower cardiac risk factors?

I linked to extensive coverage of that research, by science journalists. However, specifically, and just what I picked up quickly:

Weight loss with a low-carbohydrate, Mediterranean, or low-fat diet. (Blood lipids, i.e., cardiac risk factors, were studied.)

Comparison of the Atkins, Zone, Ornish, and LEARN diets for change in weight and related risk factors among overweight premenopausal women: the A TO Z Weight Loss Study: a randomized trial. (Lipid profile was studied.)

Systematic review of randomized controlled trials of low-carbohydrate vs. low-fat/low-calorie diets in the management of obesity and its comorbidities. (This is a "systematic review," very much on point as to cardiac risk.)

Part of my own experience:

I was under forty when my doctor, whom I trusted greatly, recommended that I go on a low-fat diet because I had mildly elevated cholesterol. Over 20 years later, the results: I'd gained about 30 lbs, my cholesterol levels were a lot higher. Sure, I wasn't terribly compliant, but I'd shifted the balance greatly toward low-fat. Turns out my experience was typical. Compliance with low-fat diets is commonly poor, and the effect of the recommendation is often weight gain and worsening lipids. So then statins are prescribed....

My new doctor suggested the South Beach diet (kind of a compromised lower-fat or lower-sat-fat Atkins diet, also by a famous cardiologist), but I did the research this time, and found that the science was stronger behind Atkins. I told him, and he led me into his office and handed me the standard textbook on diabetes, written in the 1920s, that described what was then the standard treatment for type II diabetes. A low-carb diet. Insulin had just been discovered, and insulin was considered a miracle drug for the rest, who didn't respond to low-carb diets. Fast forward, the American Diabetes Association discourages low-carb diets. Why? It's really a good question!

Well, why hadn't this doctor told me straight out about low-carb, that my high cholesterol was not necessarily a problem? It's a little thing called "standard of practice." He could lose his job and/or his license. However, he could smile at me and tell me "whatever you are doing, keep it up." (Because my lipids and other indicators of heart health improved greatly.)

And then I found from a biopsy that I have prostate cancer. Taubes describes a plausible mechanism for how high-carb diets can increase the incidence of prostate cancer.

My story is anecdotal, and there is much we don't know about diet, but "experts" still confidently tell us what to eat and what not to eat, and it's entirely possible that the advice given to me, in full good faith, 30 years ago, led me into a potentially fatal disease. And similar may be true for many others. And it is still going on.

I was referred to a radiation oncologist who advised radiation treatment, if not surgery. So, again, I did the research, and found that the latest advice for someone exactly my age and situation was "watchful waiting." I'm still more likely to die from something else than prostate cancer.

So why the recommendation from the oncologist? Well, it's what he does. Go to a carpenter, you are likely to get some advice that involves a hammer. But is he aware of the latest research? Probably, though possibly not. But he's not about to recommend something based on that, because it is not yet the "standard of practice," and he can get his ass sued. Even if the advice was right as to risks.)

Cascades are a real problem that dumb down social structures, and especially when they create a "scientific consensus" that isn't rooted in science and the scientific method. Cascades, however, occur in all kinds of social situations.

Altruistic behavior is usually thought of as motivated by compassion or caring for others, so I think you are wrong. You are the one arguing about definitions in order to trivialize my point, if anything.

Okay, read Taubes' article in the New York Times, "What if it's all been a big fat lie?". That's ten years old, there has been research published since then, but nothing to change the basic conclusions.

I suggest reading it before the rest here!

The organizations are not "scientific." They are largely political creatures, and how they are funded can be an issue. If cholesterol is not the problem, what happens to the statin drug market? But I don't know that recommendations are driven by funding.

Taubes is a thorough science writer, a skeptic, and it is indeed science that he's interested in. He is not selling a diet.

Taubes covers the history of diet recommendations in the U.S. It's shocking.

Something brief: In 1957, the American Heart Association opposed Ansel Keys (the author of the epidemiological study that got the whole fat=bad thing going), with a 15-page report, saying there was no evidence for the fat/heart disease hypothesis. Less than four years later, a 2-page report from the AHA totally reversed that, and, according to Taubes, that report included a half-page of "recent scientific references on dietary fat and atherosclerosis," many of which contradicted the conclusions of the report, which recommended reducing the risk of heart disease by reducing dietary fat..

What happened? Did the science change that quickly? Read Taubes! (i.e, read the book, "Good Calories, Bad Calories." Taubes also has a recent book, less technical, more popular, I think, but I haven't read it.)

I could point to studies; the Atkins diet in particular has been studied independently, and it improves cardiac risk factors, it does not make them worse. Yet it's a high-fat diet. So what is the risk?

Yes. I'm arguing against a commonly-recommended diet. I'm suggesting that relying on these agencies and their recommendations, without understanding the science, is very dangerous.

Taube had written a book about salt, and when he was doing the research, he noticed nutritional "expert" after "expert" who had no clue how science works, who used extremely poor reasoning, conclusion-driven. And he noticed the same when he started working on fat.

When I started reading in the field, out of personal necessity, I could see it myself, really poor "science" being commonly asserted as if it were simple fact.

Such as "a calorie is a calorie." I.e., it's said there is no difference between fat calories and carb calories, and the claim of Atkins that fat had a "metabolic advantage" was allegedly preposterous, this would supposedly violate the laws of thermodynamics.

However:

1. various foods take different amounts of energy to metabolize, and some calories are excreted.

2. food calories are not thermodynamic calories, and this is not merely the "kilocalorie" thing, they are modified according to metabolic factors estimated from studies that were done about a century ago, and that may not be accurate under various dietary conditions.

3. carb metabolism (burning glucose) runs the body in a different way, and has behavioral effects, compared to fat metabolism. Appetite shifts (fat suppresses appetite, generally).

There never was good evidence that saturated fats increased cardiovascular risk, that was speculation from the highly flawed Keys study. It was thought "well, to really know will take very expensive trials, we can't do that, so why not reduce fat? It can't hurt!"

But it could and probably did hurt. Lower fat in the diet, you almost certainly raise carbs, and quite possibly increase obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and there is an effect on cancer, apparently.

Bottom line, the officially-recommended diets have very little science behind them.

This really is not the place to debate the issue. Read the literature! Taubes is an excellent door into it, the book GCBC is about a fourth footnotes.

Or look at the Wikipedia article Saturated fat and cardiovascular disease controversy, (Do not trust Wikipedia articles to be neutral. They frequently are not. Use them to find other sources.)

It's tempting to sit back and trust the official organizations. It's a lot of work to actually read the evidence. However, is this important?

I thought it was, like, my life depends on it.

The AHA is a $600 million/year organization. If fat/heart disease hypothesis is as wrong as it appears to be, they may have cost Americans, in damage to health, a great deal more than that. Now, consider what we know about human organizations. When they get it spectacularly wrong, but before there is absolute proof, do they back up easily?

No. Their business is to be the experts, remember that $600 million per year.

It's not an argument about definitions, it's an argument about logical priority. Altruistic impulses are logically a subset of selfish ones because all impulses are selfish because they're only experienced internally. (I'm using impulse as roughly synonymous with an action taken because of values). Altruism is only relevant to your morality insofar as you value altruistic actions. Altruism can only be justified on somewhat selfish grounds. (To clarify, it can be justified on other grounds but I don't think those grounds make sense.)

It doesn't seem to me that this post actually makes any coherent argument. It spends a fair amount of words using seemingly metaphysical terms without actually saying anything. But that's not even the important thing.

Is this post supposed to increase my happiness or lifespan, or even that of someone else?

If this is article is actually correct, representative, etc. then the only thing it says to me is that the entire field of self-help is completely worthless, so I am going to actually operate under that assumption and just do what I want.

By listing those "suggestions," you are causing people at least one person to try to use them even though they are in my judgment largely worthless or at least not worth the time and effort required to try to adopt them (this judgment means little compared to actual evidence of their relative effectiveness, but since I haven't seen any it will have to suffice as a prior). I have also seen no plausible argument here that this type of bias actually causes unhappiness, and so I therefore care nothing about it.

In fact constructing this abstract system does not seem to convincingly help me further its purported goal

I think this is a common problem. That doesn't mean you have to give up on having your second-order desires agree with your first-order desires. It is possible to use your abstract models to change your day-to-day behaviour, and it's definitely possible to build a more accurate model of yourself and then use that model to make yourself do the things you endorse yourself doing (i.e. avoiding having to use willpower by making what you want to want to do the "default.")

As for me, I've decided that happiness is too elusive of a goal–I'm bad at predicting what will make me happier-than-baseline, the process of explicitly pursuing happiness seems to make it harder to achieve, and the hedonic treadmill effect means that even if I did, I would have to keep working at it constantly to stay in the same place. Instead, I default to a number of proxy measures: I want to be physically fit, so I endorse myself exercising and preferably enjoying exercise; I want to have enough money to satisfy my needs; I want to finish school with good grades; I want to read interesting books; I want to have a social life; I want to be a good friend. Taken all together, these are at least the building blocks of happiness, which happens by itself unless my brain chemistry gets too wacked out.

I would argue that the altruism should be part of the selfish utility function. The reason that you care about other people is because you value other people. If you did not value other people there is no reason they should be in your utility function.