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Part of epistemic hygiene is keeping away from people who themselves, don't argue in good faith. You yourself suggested that I not take everything written online seriously!
You can figure out how the world works. But the best way to do that is through direct experience. You yourself were forced to resort to Ultima Ratio - your own personal experience. That's also what I'm doing. What I was told did not correspond to my lying eyes. What should I do? Check myself into an insane asylum?
Again, you fall back on the research. But it's not obvious to me what guidance the research gives. If you perform calorie tracking and get an incorrect result, like a TDEE estimate that is too high, there's no study that can tell you why you got an incorrect result or what to do about it.
Check your hyperbole. Think seriously about whether this is a remotely reasonable thing to suggest. Perhaps think about the example of someone trying to make their own semiconductors. If their project fails, and they decide that being told that semiconductor physics works and that semiconductor technology is possible disagrees with their lying eyes, would you suggest that they check into an insane asylum? If not, what might you suggest instead?
If you're implying that I don't believe in the laws of Thermodynamics, I'm not. I'm not questioning them. I'm questioning the broader doctrine built around that motte, including the claim that calorie tracking always works and that it's impossible to eat 4000 calories a day and not gain weight.
If you're suggesting that counting calories is as difficult and complex as building semiconductors, you're free to make that claim, and I shan't bother arguing with it.
I mean, no? It's pretty consistent in the literature that in lab-controlled settings, calorie tracking always works, but 'out in the wild', it's far more mixed.
Not impossible. Everyone knows the legend of Michael Phelps, and I'm pretty confident I could come up with a variety of other examples of folks who are in that domain.
Not as difficult. I had said that that analogy was pushing various factors to the extreme to make a conceptual point. If you're accepting the conceptual point and want agreement that counting calories is less difficult/complex than building semiconductors, I think we're fully in agreement! Success!
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