All of rufford's Comments + Replies

rufford10

Have they mastered the art of getting ECA in countries where Ephedrine is a controlled substance?

2taw
Best check with your local bodybuilders. In UK you can conveniently order it from the Internet from this website or one of many others. In many countries ephedrine from natural sources doesn't fall under regulations. Politicians don't seem that bothered by that, as amounts found in ephedra isn't economical for large scale amphetamines manufacturing.
rufford10

I'm not actually sure that the diet, as you've written it, would work even if the theory were complete. You say that an association is formed between flavor X and calories and that association with X controls the set point. But why would X be the dominant factor, when you're already eating flavors A, B, through to W whose contribution to the set point got you to the weight you started at? Does the book elaborate on how the association works?

0waveman
Yes the strength of the association is cumulative. So if you eat highly flavored food that is high in calories, your set point goes up (think junk food). if you eat calories with little or no flavor, your set point goes down. Effectively your brain is trying to work out "is there lots of high calorie food around?" Part of the mechanism is the food/calories association. In the book he points to a fair number of pieces of evidence that point to this conclusion. And it explains a few things that are otherwise surprising Eg why is diet soda fattening (answer: you consume it at MacDonalds with high calorie foods and it adds to the associative power of the junk food meal by adding flavor). Eg why did my wife lose a lot of weight when she injured her nose and lost her sense of smell for a while (answer: her flavor/calorie associative mechanism broke). Why are high calorie hyperpalatable standardized foods so addictive: because they create super-strong associations. Lots more.... Obviously there are some missing pieces to the puzzle: Eg why does it fail with some people? Also he is a psychologist and misunderstands some aspects of food metabolism. For example, he says fructose is "low glycemic index" and therefore takes a while to be absorbed into your blood as glucose. In fact, generally, fructose (and the fructose component of table sugar) is not turned into glucose at all. It is usually metabolised into fats by the liver. Only when your liver is depleted of glycogen is it used to replenish the liver's glycogen, which can be turned into glucose.
rufford00

The first example to come to mind is Richard Halley from Atlas Shrugged, but I don't remember the book all that well.

rufford20

How would you know that you didn't both erase the memory of some event and erase the memory of erasing the memory of that event? The more you commit yourself to not tampering with your memories, the stronger the cognitive dissonance will be at having tampered with your memory.

1knb
I wouldn't know. In a world with this technology no one can ever know that they don't have some or maybe a great many erased memories. The only defense against this uncertainty is a self-binding constraint placed voluntarily on myself. Of course this is a limited defense, but short of a binding legal contract, its the best I can do.
rufford20

I think what he means is that addiction is a physiological condition. A number of drugs leave withdrawal symptoms if you try to stop taking them (alcohol, opiates, etc), but this sense of the word addiction is medical only. There are lots of other things (like computer and gambling addictions) that have only a psychological dependence [so are learned] and could be helped with memory blockers.

As an aside, it's a very low-resolution mindset that disregards an entire article because of one perceived mistake.

1Annoyance
That depends on the nature of the mistake.