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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   14178 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 14, 2025

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It is disproved on the grounds that humans are not machines, they are in fact living animals, and hunger no more obeys our will than thirst or sleep. If I ask you to voluntarily keep yourself at starvation level for an extended period of time, and offer a moderate monetary reward, you will break after a few weeks when you smell a slice of pizza or remember cookies exist. If hunger were subordinate to our will, we wouldn’t have instances of cannibalism caused by intense hunger despite the preferences of the hungry party or the threat of eternal damnation. And when you remember that modern life already requires willpower and cognitive expenditure, it’s no more surprising that the obese cave to hunger than that a thirsty person drinks sewage.

No, it is not disproved. The second law of thermodynamics does not apply to only machines, it applies to everything.

You are conflating "calories in" with hunger. In a thermodynamic system sense, hunger does not matter. Hunger is not a thermodynamic property. Hunger has nothing to do with the second law.

  1. A person can be hungry and intake no calories.

  2. A person can be not hungry and intake many calories.

  3. A person can be hungry and intake calories.

  4. A person can be not hungry and intake no calories.

Yes, humans generally eat when they are hungry and do not eat when they are full. But this is outside of the second law.

So CICO is a theory in the sense that conservation of energy is a theory

That’s not how the expression is used. The expression is used with the implication that the feasible locus of control in obesity is our willpower in regards to caloric intake.

I have never heard of CICO used in any other manner than "eat less calories than your burn and you lose weight". But why not engage with what CICO actually means instead of how you think people use it? What does it matter how it is used?

What you describe is not actually a blow to CICO, it is a blow to what you contend is the common usage of CICO. Which, what would you like the second law of thermodynamics to say to that? "Congratulations, you have defeated your own definition of CICO?" Ok?

Only if you ignore the hundreds of millions of times it has practically failed. (I have a photo of a plane with a lot of red dots to show you.)

CICO does not actually fail in a thermodynamic sense. People just don't have the self control to limit the "CI" part to below the "CO" part. Maybe you could consider it a failure in a "people have a hard time limiting their diet because hunger is powerful" sense. Or "when people get hungry for a long time their metabolism slows down and reduces the CO which makes it harder to lose weight" sense. But in a energy in = energy out + energy accumulated system sense, it does not fail.

The metabolism slowdown is the major problem. Some people see such a huge slowdown despite still being fat and cutting calories to low levels. those people are screwed . you can only cut so much

you can only cut so much

Wrong.

Its a major problem for people trying to lose weight, its not a major problem for "your body is made of matter and therefore obeys the laws of thermodynamics; so CICO is unambiguously true to the extent it is a thermodynamic statement"

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