BasedProf(ACXDiscord)
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There is nothing at all inexplicable about that. Access to very palatable and not-very-satiating (cal for cal) food will change behaviours over time, these behaviours are also inherited in familial environments, and compound since once someone is obese, it becomes increasingly hard to get not-obese. With micro-cultural behaviour change which favours obesity, we're also seeing actual cultural changes toward acceptance and promotion of obesity-promoting behaviours, excessive eating among family and friends, increasingly sedentary lifestyles (lord knows the last two years will have accelerated that), forgetting how to cook, or deciding to not bother cooking the sorts of foods which are satiating and lower cal.
It's pretty disheartening, yeah. Putting aside the lying for a moment, I'm also pretty deeply concerned at the damage SMTM could do to public health, if funding and attention allowed them to reach a wider audience. From https://slimemoldtimemold.com/tag/a-chemical-hunger/
"Our suggestions are very prosaic: Be nice to yourself. Eat mostly what you want. Trust your instincts.
Diet and exercise won’t cure obesity, but this is actually good news for diet and exercise. You don’t need to put the dream of losing weight on their shoulders, and you can focus on their actual benefits instead. You should focus on your diet — not to get thin, but to make sure that you have enough energy to... (read 390 more words →)
Well, I never called them stupid. In fact, quite the opposite. I promised a series on SMTM on my new blog, but life has got in the way somewhat the last few weeks. I should perhaps get around to that now. Just a few notes on this:
Their interpretation of overfeeding studies is extremely odd. That's an aside, but it's one that I'll make good on in a few days. I've already discussed it at length on the ACX discord server, but not in a format conducive to just reposting here. So, a little note on my distaste for their appeals to "common interpretations", since those literally do not matter- something that is... (read 711 more words →)
I think I could grant they are actually correct there- it's just not actually in their evidence. Thanks for doing the math though.
I do not merely have "a different interpretation of some studies" to SMTM- or at least, this is not centrally why I make the rather specific accusation I do (which I stand entirely by) (A few points of closer-to-object-level disagreement to follow, concluding with my "real" response here, if you want to skip ahead).
The first of three instances I cite here is closest to the pattern you describe, and even there, I wouldn't suggest they were being purposefully misrepresentational if they had cited and disagreed with the paper in question. What we have instead is a paper clearly stating/providing, in its abstract and conclusion (and quite frankly, there is no other reasonable... (read 684 more words →)
Well, this has inspired me to finally make an account for LessWrong commenting!
As someone very familiar with the "science on obesity", I do not find SMTM remotely persuasive. https://basedprof.substack.com/p/smtm-mysteries canvasses the reasons why in detail, for those who are going to look at the link in the above article and be inclined to trust it. SMTM repeatedly misrepresent not just scientific consensus, but also literally the articles which they cite. There are multiple examples of it in the "Mysteries" post, but this isn't even the worst offender.
If you do not believe that EA should be in the business of giving money to proven liars, shown to be rather specifically lying about the... (read 706 more words →)
To be clear I think you've misunderstood me here, and that may be my fault. But, to clarify, I'm not saying anything, really, about the laymans' beliefs. Whenever I talk about "people believing x", I'm meaning "people who research diets and such". I don't care what laymen believe. As I said, laymen believe all sorts of silly stuff in all sorts of fields. But laypeople disproportionately believing astrology would not, for sake of argument, mandate that we do more research showing why astrology is bunk (no, I am not comparing the arguments of SMTM to astrology, I am only using the comparison for the specific point here about laymen and their irrelevance... (read more)