This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The bulk of fat people do not want to be fat. Being fat is a #1 deterrent in a relationship, it reduces respect between peers, it harms health and reduces activity levels. And this is well-known. So the willpower theory doesn’t make sense in light of just how many fat people there are who otherwise practice willpower throughout their life.
Implying willpower, it would. It’s a 30-day intensive practice of delaying gratification according to an external timeline with serious feedback. That’s practice. So we can deduct another point off the scale of willpower theory. At a population level, a month of serious willpower practice every year does not affect weight. But we should expect it would, given that most fat people do want to lose weight, and they just practiced that skill for a month.
Fat people are aware that they need to eat less to lose weight. This cannot be accomplished for the reason we are trying to determine.
I agree.
But I don't think the bulk of fat people actually want to lose weight. To be a little more charitable and specific; they don't want to do what is required to lose the weight. That's because what is required is a radical and permanent change to dietary habits and exercise patterns. You don't go on a diet to get off a diet you change how you eat forever. You don't start an exercise regimen to stop it you make daily or near daily exercise a non-negotiable part of your existence. And this is all very not easy to do. Is it asking too much? I'd say it's relevant to what you actually want (see my first sentence here). Where are your relative values and how strong are they in their ranked order?
Most people (myself definitely included) prioritize stability, loss aversion, and generalized "comfort" in life. If you're not yet fat / obese you can have those things (and stay in ok shape for at least a while) by simply watching what you eat and staying generally active. If you're already fat/obese - you have to actively chose to value a difficult to achieve future state over immediate comfort, stability, familiarity. Wha'ts more, getting to that future state requires and incredible amount of intermediate DIScomfort. So you're not only changing your relative value preferences (which is in itself difficult) you're also committing to objective ow this hurts pain for at least some amount of time. That's quite a bit to ask (side note: this is, I think, the same mechanism by which people stay in jobs they don't like even though it's often fairly easy to move to a better job if you aren't time pressured).
But this doesn't mean fat people are ethically lazy or something. Not at all. I view it as self-knowledge problem. If you love basketball, but are 5'3", you're never going to the NBA no matter how hard you practice. If you have a certain genetic profile, you need to be aware that should you cross that threshold into actually fat/obese you might be there forever unless you make some pretty herculean life alterations. Prevention is key and, even then, not perfect.
As I write this, I realize it would be easy to take my argument all the way to "fat acceptance" which I am utterly opposed to for a whole host of reasons. Yet, here I am. Huh. I'll have to keep thinking on that.
Would an average obese person agree to the deal that goes like this "you lose enough weight to return to healthy bmi but from now on my magic will force you to eat within your calorie maintenance limit". I think answer is an obvious "yes", as we see with Ozempic or stomach reduction surgery. They do want to change their eating habits for benifit of being healthy they just can't force themselves to do it.
Yep. I'd say it's actually nearly the same as a diabetic who wants their insulin levels to be more stable but simply can't willpower their way to it.
But we also have to understand the very obvious future reality that many folks will gobble ozempic and similar drugs while making zero lifestyle changes. Perhaps they lose weight, perhaps not.
Except you can't regrow the islets of Langerhans but you can avoid putting food in your mouth.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Your arguments are completely irrational.
People make poor, counterproductive decisions they know will hurt them all the time. People stay in bad situations they know they should leave despite ongoing misery and self awareness. That fat people don't want to be fat and yet it's not enough to get them to sufficiently change their lifestyle is entirely explainable by human failings that affect all other areas of life.
As for fasting, most people can fast for a limited time. They can also do a vigorous exercise program for a limited time (the "New Year's resolution" phenomenon). Usually they'll lose weight. The weight doesn't stay off because the lifestyle changes don't stick.
Yes, fat people are aware they need to eat less and exercise more to lose weight. The problem is twofold: (1) They don't. (2) If they do, they become discouraged when they realize they have to keep doing it, and they stop.
If studies found that adults were making continually poorer decisions year after year, and that by 2030 half of all adults chronically made poor decisions, and this was ever-increasing, then I would look for non-volitional factors at play. Lead poisoning? Something involving early life? Something involving complex social-environmental reinforcement mechanisms? That’s what I would begin to look at. Do Americans today lack willpower relative to Americans in 1980 or did other things change? You could have bought lots of pastries and sugar and candy as early as the 1920s, when few were obese. Milk was cheap and highly caloric, alcohol plentiful.
Hunger is different from a typical rational decision. When people are very hungry they will resort to cannibalism and murder, which proves this. Alright, so somewhere between “quite famished” and “eating my crewmate” we may have the polyphagia of the obese. I agree with your (1) and (2), my disagreement is: (A) the problem stems from how their body non-willfully reacts to the cues of food, with enhanced hunger and decreased inhibitory control, versus (B) they really ought to want to be skinny more. We already have evidence of (A) in other cases, like certain drug treatments reliably increasing appetite and increasing weight gain despite not affecting their willpower.
Why? Why is it so hard to believe that humans are flawed creatures who, by and large, are not good decision makers? Why is it so unlikely that faced with unlimited temptation, most people will fail to resist?
Food is delicious. Exercise is unpleasant. That's a sufficient explanation.
Sugary food existed in the 1920s, but not in such abundance and variety, and not as cheaply. It wasn't so easy to pack HFCS and fat into absolutely everything. Fast food was still a luxury. Prepared meals were very much so. And the ratio of sedentary desk jobs was much lower.
Americans eat many more calories today, on average, and burn much fewer. There are probably cultural factors as well, that made eating fast food and sweets as staples more acceptable, and that caused a decrease in activity levels. But you are looking for some explanation for why people are bad at resisting temptation, and the answer is the question.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is this the equivalent of a pride of lions, a murder of crows, etc.?
Fucking epic.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link