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 -
Yes, indeed, but the "sufficiently" part can be much crueler on some people than others for reasons outside of self-control.
Agreed, and hopefully nobody would dispute that. I think what's being pushed back on here is the very strong claim in the OP of "A blow to the CICO theory of obesity". Given that due to the basic laws of physics CICO must be true, it's not really accurate to say that it has received a blow. That does not mean that focusing on CICO is the best strategy for any given person to effect weight loss, but the basic physical principle is true for them even if they struggle to make use of it in their lives.
I hate both extremes of the obesity conversation. One extreme -- of which there are examples -- is people who just flat out hate fat people, hate looking at them, have no compassion or understanding of any obstacles that have kept them in that state, and desire to shame and bully them for its own sake. I recall one motte user said something like, "people don't like fat people, don't want to be around them, and don't want to be friends with them."
I used to hold the view that you do, that nobody held the extreme form the obesity activists complain about. But when that post happened, I had to update in their direction. I had to update in the same way that seeing tumblrinaction posts that went "KILL ALL MEN. KILL ALL MEN. KILL ALL MEN." forced me to update my views on feminism, and started my turn from feminist-sympathetic to anti-feminist. There are certainly some people who hate the obese enough to segregate away from them.
The other extreme, of course, says that CICO is wrong not only as the sole guidance, but as the biochemical explanation of what's going on at a basic level. That's obviously false.
But I'm convinced there are more in the anti-obese extreme than in the pro-obese extreme, which is why I consider myself a moderate anti-fat-stigma person. Not in the sense that I believe being fat is good or healthy, but in the sense that I believe the shaming doesn't do the job, and just makes a bad situation worse, isolating people who need support rather than helping them take agency and affect their choices in whatever ways they can.
Health positivity, and not fat shaming, is the way to go. We should be promoting healthy, delicious meals that provide balanced nutrition, and socially boosting drinks that aren't drenched in sugar while providing the social and psychological appeal soda has. (Right now, soda is one of the only beverages you can get everywhere at a consistent quality. That should change.) Insofar as the fat activists oppose that, I oppose them.
The point is that people's desire for the obese to lose weight should be based in a concern for their health and a desire to see them live long, healthy lives, not from an aesthetic revulsion or contempt. The point of a lot of the discussion about set points is to encourage the view that "but for the grace of God go I."
The reality is that the cause of the obesity crisis is directly related to sedentary lifestyles, easily available cheap, calorie-dense food, and more sweets on store shelves than in a Wonka factory. They're social factors. We've put the human organism in an environment where our instincts -- like craving sweet fruit, which is relatively uncommon and seasonal in nature, or prizing meat, which was always the result of a bit of cleverness or a bit of strength -- backfire on us. What was once rare, and thus craved and hoarded, is now commonplace. And so like a dragon in a treasure vault, we hoard and we hoard. We're built for an environment where the most rewarding food takes the most work, but we live in a world of convenience foods and candy. Of course many people are going to lose control! (I believe the same about pornography. It should not be possible for millions of strangers to see Belle Delphine's vagina.)
The solution has to be social changes -- I think liberals are right and car culture is a big problem -- coupled with regulation, and medical marvels that help shift the needed willpower into a range more people have, as we're seeing now. But the big problem is that people's emotions, aesthetics, and experiences are getting mixed up with the data, and it seems impossible to talk about the ability of personal choices to improve health without getting called 'fatphobic', or to talk about the real and enduring social, biological, and psychological barriers that make it hard for many people to use willpower to control the problem without getting accused of using 'fatty logic'.
I actually don't hold that view! I have seen plenty of that behavior (all over the Internet and even on this very forum), so that I know that there is a very real problem with people who just have seething hatred of fat people. Some try to couch it in terms of "we need to shame them so they improve", but that's a lie (maybe even lying to themselves) used to justify picking on easy targets.
I also agree that shaming does not work, nor am I proposing it. I've written impassioned arguments against shaming fat people, in fact. It sucks major ass to be obese, and it's full of constant shame every time one looks in the mirror (ask me how I know, lol). If the soul-crushing shame we already apply to fat people hasn't fixed it, no amount of shaming will.
So as far as that goes, I don't think we really disagree at all. What I'm trying to push back on is the overcorrection I perceive in activists all over the Internet (and which, in fairness, I may have incorrectly read into this discussion - prejudice can do that to you). I've seen way too many fat acceptance activists (ironically, including on TiA like you said) take positions that are untrue and unhelpful, such as:
Needless to say, I find these positions to be not only incorrect, but actively harmful to the people they purport to help. I think they're coming from a place of love (which is good), but that isn't the only thing that matters imo. You also have to not allow people to continue in the unhealthy direction they are going, at least not without being gently nudged into a better direction. What I'm advocating for is an approach where we are frank (but kind) with people about their own culpability in the mess they are in, while also not falling back on empty "just do better bro" advice. I think it's possible to both be honest with people that yes, they bear responsibility, while also being compassionate about the difficulty of the change they need to make and how they may need strategies that go beyond simple effort of will.
I'm going to make an analogy in the hopes that it'll help to make my position clearer. I view the obesity problem as being somewhat similar to the disease of sin in Christian thought. While in a sense sin isn't any individual's fault (due to original sin corrupting man and the world), each individual still bears culpability for the sinful choices he made. And while a sinner can't fix himself (only Jesus can do that), he still has to acknowledge that he is a sinner, do his best to sin no more (even though that won't be enough), and accept the Lord's help in fixing the disease of sin within him. So while the problem is beyond the individual to fix himself, there is a personal choice that must be made to turn away from the old bad path. I see the obesity problem as having a lot in common with that.
I think it's helpful to distinguish two behaviors:
IIUC, you're addressing (1). (1) is actively directing sentiment at fat people. It's unkind for sure, and unlikely (?) to be helpful. Fat people aren't unaware they're fat.
I think (2) is more common, and that you may be conflating it with (1). (2) is a valid, common, reasonable, borderline inevitable way to feel. Any suggestion that people should strive to eliminate (2) is naive. People like beauty, health, and symmetry. The same reflex that makes us avoid corpses, shit, and disease makes us avoid obesity.
That doesn't mean we can't have empathy for the difficulty of losing weight, or the tribulations of being fat. Willpower is hard! Free will is a fuzzy concept at best. But, it also doesn't mean it's reasonable to want people to not have the disgust reaction they so commonly do - that's not the same as "shaming" fat people.
Fair distinction. And yes, I was addressing #1. We had a thread on the motte a few months back where people were arguing that the solution to the obesity problem in America is to try to shame fat people even harder, which I felt was not a realistic solution (even aside from whether we should do it for kindness reasons).
I would say I agree that eliminating #2 is not feasible. I think all we can reasonably expect is that even if people feel disgusted by someone, they don't then start saying "wow fatty you really ate that donut like the fat fuck you are" to the person in question. But how they feel is not really a problem as long as they aren't being mean to others.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Nobody brings up CICO as merely an underlying physical mechanism. The implication of CICO is always "therefore, the way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more, and it's your own fault that you are fat".
People who are against CICO are not denying thermodynamics; we are disputing that this is in any way a practical guide to action. It's like saying "the way to get rich is to earn more and spend less".
I mean, the OP is denying thermodynamics.
You're right that CICO in itself is not a practical guide to action. It's a description of what's happening. A practical guide to action would be one that helps you burn more calories than you eat. There isn't a universal solution for that, though unless you have an extremely unusual metabolism, the low-hanging fruit of "eat less and exercise more" will work, and the reason it doesn't work for you is that you don't like to eat less and you don't like to exercise more. This is true of most people, and while entirely understandable, it does not actually debunk the reality of CICO.
More options
Context Copy link
To be blunt: it is people's own fault that they are fat. It doesn't just happen, they made choices that led to that point. Perhaps there exists the occasional edge case where someone has a genuine medical condition that is hindering them, but the overwhelming majority of cases come down to bad personal choices and the consequences thereof.
And this isn't just about assessing blame - much like with addictions, you can't make progress until you acknowledge your own agency and the fact that you will need to make different choices if you want to get to a different place in life. The battle doesn't end there, and you might need to come up with different strategies based on your unique circumstances. But the fundamental truth is that it really is about personal responsibility in the main.
That is in fact also true. Lots of people who are fairly poor bust ass, live within their means, and get ahead as a result. It's hard, and you can suffer setbacks from circumstances even when you do everything right. But the fundamental truth holds.
Is it fundamentally the poor's own fault they are poor?
Depends on where you draw the line at for poor really. Wealth is a lot swingier than weight, you can't in a single evening consume enough calories to be the equivalent of gambling away your life savings. If by poor you just mean they are low wage earners with minimal skills for upward mobility then it is not their "fault" that they're poor. Although maybe having minimal skills could be thought of as a fault in some sense, usually we use fault to mean a problem with conscious decisions but it could also mean just having a unfortunate qualities. If someone is poor because they gamble away 20% of their paycheck and carry credit card balances then yes it's their fault.
More options
Context Copy link
In the United States, in the sense that it's relatively simple not to be poor? Yes. No, in that having lowing intelligence, high time preference, low conscientiousness makes it very hard to do the simple things.
More options
Context Copy link
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But the point is that staying poor is very often the result of bad personal choices. Not always, but often enough that trying to remove personal responsibility from the equation (as many activists do) is misguided.
Yeah that's fair and pretty sensible really. This is the motte though so I thought I'd better check.
More options
Context Copy link
Isn't this only true in countries/areas which have a high rate of social mobility? In countries that have more barriers to social mobility, since the poor have less power over their own lives, they have less responsibility for staying poor too, no?
Maybe. I suppose I can really only speak to my experiences in the US on this topic.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Up to a point. I recall stuffing myself with food, at least 4-5kcalories/day for 15yrs and my weight never got above 190 even though i was sedentary (all day on computer). That was three large meals, lots of snacks, and lots of soda. I didn't need willpower because my body decided to not store enough fat for my weight climb any higher. It's not a personal failing if for some people this threshold where surplus leads to fat storage is set too low or unreasonably low.
Sure, I'm happy to acknowledge that it varies. For example, I never had the supposed "teenage metabolism" even when I was a teenager. I gained weight from a very young age. But my frustration when people push back on CICO is that in my experience they usually blow right past "everyone's body is different and so the diet that works for one might not work for another" (which is reasonable), and into "CICO is nonsense and therefore people can't be expected to even try" (which is not).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It's really more like saying "the way to get poor is to spend more and earn less".
More options
Context Copy link
I feel it is a necessary tonic to people who claim it is physically impossible for them to lose weight, choosing to blame the outcome on other people or nature itself. CICO is the reductio ad absurdum which proves that the ultimate locus of control cannot be found elsewhere.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link