5 ms·

The section on Altitude and Watershed quality is really interesting.

JabavuAdams 5y ago
It's bad science. They did not do any work to rule out other factors that are correlated to altitude but that are not the watershed. Off the top of my head: lower oxygen levels leading to greater cardio-vascular fitness; affluence - in the US I would not be surprised if richer people live in the mountains, while poorer people live on the rivers like Mississippi; activity level -- more active people go to the mountains to do their mountain sports and so on. If you have thing X that you think might be partially caused by A, B, C, D you need to rule out B, C, D, before you say that A causes X. Otherwise we're back to 5G causing covid because if you draw a map of cell towers, it lines up with a map of hard-hit covid areas. For a concrete example, I'm reading a theoretical neuroscience paper on dimensionality. The authors found an interesting relationship, but they spend a lot of paper on showing that 3 or 4 different known things are not the cause of this interesting effect. They do this by measuring the extent to which the other known effects explain away the effect. When all that is done and a significant effect is still left, then they conclude that they've found something new and real. Humans are wired/encultured to find narratives more interesting than facts. So the watershed thing is a well-written narrative that makes it convincing but does nothing to establish the truth of the matter. While there are many many factors affecting obesity, I am still convinced that the most significant factor is that people are basically delusional about how much they actually need to eat and how much energy is actually in various foods. I could be wrong, but I've seen no rigorously done science that convinces me otherwise yet. I remember what it was like in the '80s. People just ate a lot less at every meal -- our portions have become ridiculous. If you work with immigrants (e.g. Russians). Look at some trim people and see how much they bring for lunch. One small sandwich, an apple, maybe a small salad. That's it. Pretty much any store or restaurant-bought meal here is going to be much more calorific than that. The whole "low-quality" foods thing strikes me as new-age marketing. There may be something there, but again I believe the overriding factor is that most people don't understand how little they need to eat when they're driving and sitting all day. EDIT> Also, in the '80s it was basically a luxury to eat out. You weren't going to go to Starbucks and have a cake in a cup for $5 EDIT2> I've watched smart people struggle with weight-loss and overeating my whole life. The excuses and delusions would not be surprising coming from a heroin addict. When I was 210 pounds after being 190 in university, I looked fat to myself. When I was 230 pounds after being 245, I looked slim to myself. This tells me that I, and the other people I have observed cannot be objective about food and weight. So I am very skeptical of non-rigorous opinions or popular-press opinions on the matter. I over-eat when I feel sad about having eaten too much -- that's literally crazy, and I've observed this craziness in everyone else I know who is fat! Food is such a social thing that we have person after person enabling and affirming our own bad habits. Grandma hopefully would never offer you a hit of heroin if you told her you were trying to get sober, but she'll totally offer you a big piece of pie if you tell her you want to lose some weight. Other people around the table will tell you "It's okay -- just this one time," and if you strenuously object you're being rude. We are delusional about food. EDIT3> In summary, we are extremely biased to find any reason other than we eat too much, and the quality of a lot of the writing and even science in this area is pretty low and compromised by financial motives.
- FredJames 5y ago
  > While there are many many factors affecting obesity, I am still convinced that the most significant factor is that people are basically delusional about how much they actually need to eat and how much energy is actually in various foods. I could be wrong, but I've seen no rigorously done science that convinces me otherwise yet. Why do you think that people become delusional or have become increasingly delusional in the last 40 to 50 years? I'm pretty convinced that things like adenovirus 36 infection, phthalate exposure (especially in utero and as a young child) are obesogenic. I do think you're right that people are probably eating larger portions than in the 80's and often eating more calories, but I wouldn't be surprised is a large part of the reason why was because of obesogenic compounds and diseases. Another reason I find this easy to believe is research on body weight homeostasis is pretty convincing. The leptin system is pretty strong at getting (some) people to eat less after eating more than usual one day and getting them to eat more after eating less than usual. There is also convincing research on what researchers call the gravitostat which, independent of leptin, alters hunger through weight-dependent signals from osteocytes in the large bones of the body.
  - JabavuAdams 5y ago
    > Why do you think that people become delusional or have become increasingly delusional in the last 40 to 50 years? I don't. I think they didn't have the opportunity to eat so much food because it was more expensive and going out was socially atypical. When my Mom is around, my Dad gains weight, but when she's away, he loses weight. Why? She's not literally force-feeding him, but when she's around there's a fully stocked fridge of delicious treats that he would not normally seek out. He/we just don't have the willpower to fight that. Here is a delicious thing -- don't eat it. So much easier not to have it in the house -- out of sight, out of mind. Same for me with COVID. When I was initially hunkered-down and buying staples I lost weight. Once I relaxed and started going on snack-runs I started gaining weight. It's the (social) environment. Those are personal examples of how the easy availability of food and snacks makes it more likely to overeat. As the culture changes to normalize overeating, people don't realize they're overeating and start to look for reasons why everyone is gaining weight, other than the obvious. Regarding homeostasis -- if portion sizes are increasing, everyone is overeating, and there's a culture of trying to find every factor except overeating, then you don't just eat too much one day, you eat too much every day. A rising tide bloats all floats? I find it really strange that we mostly ignore the advice of people who seem to be able to maintain a lower body weight (eat less, exercise more). Instead we are basically bombarded with complicated information from people who have weight problems. It's like you want to find out how to do car maintenance, but you ignore the people with well-running cars, and instead listen to all the people with terribly-maintained cars. Being overweight doesn't mean you're a bad person, although socially and emotionally the consequences are brutal. Because of these brutal consequences, I think we're biased to find any way at all that being overweight is not due to our own direct actions. Hence the search for all of these super-complicated and subtle higher-order effects. Could be wrong, but this is where I am after decades of watching incredibly irrational behaviour in myself, my family, and my friends. I'm convinced that it would be more helpful to treat this as food addiction, given the incredible mental contortions involved. EDIT> As another example of social factors. I seem to remember it being socially unacceptable to have one's shirt untucked in a non-athletic context in the '80s. I remember when I first started going in to work with shirt untucked. I can hide 20 pounds under there without people considering me fat. But there was a time when if you did up your belt, tucked your shirt in, and had overhang of belly over belt you were considered fat. On the one hand it's great that we're trying to be less brutal to heavier people. In an ideal future, people wouldn't be judged by their appearances at all. But in doing this, I wonder whether we're losing sight of the reality of the causes and effects.

It's bad science. They did not do any work to rule out other factors that are correlated to altitude but that are not the watershed. Off the top of my head: lower oxygen levels leading to greater cardio-vascular fitness; affluence - in the US I would not be surprised if richer people live in the mountains, while poorer people live on the rivers like Mississippi; activity level -- more active people go to the mountains to do their mountain sports and so on. If you have thing X that you think might be partially caused by A, B, C, D you need to rule out B, C, D, before you say that A causes X. Otherwise we're back to 5G causing covid because if you draw a map of cell towers, it lines up with a map of hard-hit covid areas. For a concrete example, I'm reading a theoretical neuroscience paper on dimensionality. The authors found an interesting relationship, but they spend a lot of paper on showing that 3 or 4 different known things are not the cause of this interesting effect. They do this by measuring the extent to which the other known effects explain away the effect. When all that is done and a significant effect is still left, then they conclude that they've found something new and real. Humans are wired/encultured to find narratives more interesting than facts. So the watershed thing is a well-written narrative that makes it convincing but does nothing to establish the truth of the matter. While there are many many factors affecting obesity, I am still convinced that the most significant factor is that people are basically delusional about how much they actually need to eat and how much energy is actually in various foods. I could be wrong, but I've seen no rigorously done science that convinces me otherwise yet. I remember what it was like in the '80s. People just ate a lot less at every meal -- our portions have become ridiculous. If you work with immigrants (e.g. Russians). Look at some trim people and see how much they bring for lunch. One small sandwich, an apple, maybe a small salad. That's it. Pretty much any store or restaurant-bought meal here is going to be much more calorific than that. The whole "low-quality" foods thing strikes me as new-age marketing. There may be something there, but again I believe the overriding factor is that most people don't understand how little they need to eat when they're driving and sitting all day. EDIT> Also, in the '80s it was basically a luxury to eat out. You weren't going to go to Starbucks and have a cake in a cup for $5 EDIT2> I've watched smart people struggle with weight-loss and overeating my whole life. The excuses and delusions would not be surprising coming from a heroin addict. When I was 210 pounds after being 190 in university, I looked fat to myself. When I was 230 pounds after being 245, I looked slim to myself. This tells me that I, and the other people I have observed cannot be objective about food and weight. So I am very skeptical of non-rigorous opinions or popular-press opinions on the matter. I over-eat when I feel sad about having eaten too much -- that's literally crazy, and I've observed this craziness in everyone else I know who is fat! Food is such a social thing that we have person after person enabling and affirming our own bad habits. Grandma hopefully would never offer you a hit of heroin if you told her you were trying to get sober, but she'll totally offer you a big piece of pie if you tell her you want to lose some weight. Other people around the table will tell you "It's okay -- just this one time," and if you strenuously object you're being rude. We are delusional about food. EDIT3> In summary, we are extremely biased to find any reason other than we eat too much, and the quality of a lot of the writing and even science in this area is pretty low and compromised by financial motives.

FredJames 5y ago
> While there are many many factors affecting obesity, I am still convinced that the most significant factor is that people are basically delusional about how much they actually need to eat and how much energy is actually in various foods. I could be wrong, but I've seen no rigorously done science that convinces me otherwise yet. Why do you think that people become delusional or have become increasingly delusional in the last 40 to 50 years? I'm pretty convinced that things like adenovirus 36 infection, phthalate exposure (especially in utero and as a young child) are obesogenic. I do think you're right that people are probably eating larger portions than in the 80's and often eating more calories, but I wouldn't be surprised is a large part of the reason why was because of obesogenic compounds and diseases. Another reason I find this easy to believe is research on body weight homeostasis is pretty convincing. The leptin system is pretty strong at getting (some) people to eat less after eating more than usual one day and getting them to eat more after eating less than usual. There is also convincing research on what researchers call the gravitostat which, independent of leptin, alters hunger through weight-dependent signals from osteocytes in the large bones of the body.
- JabavuAdams 5y ago
  > Why do you think that people become delusional or have become increasingly delusional in the last 40 to 50 years? I don't. I think they didn't have the opportunity to eat so much food because it was more expensive and going out was socially atypical. When my Mom is around, my Dad gains weight, but when she's away, he loses weight. Why? She's not literally force-feeding him, but when she's around there's a fully stocked fridge of delicious treats that he would not normally seek out. He/we just don't have the willpower to fight that. Here is a delicious thing -- don't eat it. So much easier not to have it in the house -- out of sight, out of mind. Same for me with COVID. When I was initially hunkered-down and buying staples I lost weight. Once I relaxed and started going on snack-runs I started gaining weight. It's the (social) environment. Those are personal examples of how the easy availability of food and snacks makes it more likely to overeat. As the culture changes to normalize overeating, people don't realize they're overeating and start to look for reasons why everyone is gaining weight, other than the obvious. Regarding homeostasis -- if portion sizes are increasing, everyone is overeating, and there's a culture of trying to find every factor except overeating, then you don't just eat too much one day, you eat too much every day. A rising tide bloats all floats? I find it really strange that we mostly ignore the advice of people who seem to be able to maintain a lower body weight (eat less, exercise more). Instead we are basically bombarded with complicated information from people who have weight problems. It's like you want to find out how to do car maintenance, but you ignore the people with well-running cars, and instead listen to all the people with terribly-maintained cars. Being overweight doesn't mean you're a bad person, although socially and emotionally the consequences are brutal. Because of these brutal consequences, I think we're biased to find any way at all that being overweight is not due to our own direct actions. Hence the search for all of these super-complicated and subtle higher-order effects. Could be wrong, but this is where I am after decades of watching incredibly irrational behaviour in myself, my family, and my friends. I'm convinced that it would be more helpful to treat this as food addiction, given the incredible mental contortions involved. EDIT> As another example of social factors. I seem to remember it being socially unacceptable to have one's shirt untucked in a non-athletic context in the '80s. I remember when I first started going in to work with shirt untucked. I can hide 20 pounds under there without people considering me fat. But there was a time when if you did up your belt, tucked your shirt in, and had overhang of belly over belt you were considered fat. On the one hand it's great that we're trying to be less brutal to heavier people. In an ideal future, people wouldn't be judged by their appearances at all. But in doing this, I wonder whether we're losing sight of the reality of the causes and effects.