3 ms·

The comments here, Jesus Christ. This is about harm reduction. Yes, being overweight is unhealthy, but it's more unhealthy to be overweight and never see the do

The comments here, Jesus Christ. This is about harm reduction. Yes, being overweight is unhealthy, but it's more unhealthy to be overweight and never see the doctor because you're ashamed of your body. People avoid going to the doctor for all kinds of irrational reasons. This is a way to entice a population that'd be embarrassed by a public weigh in (and thus avoid care) with an easy way out of their shame (thus hopefully not avoiding care).

aaroninsf 5y ago
The practice in question is driven by the grift, not organic. I believe it's safe to assert that the set of people for whom the determining factor in whether or not they seek medical care, or not, is a function of the actual stepping on a scale, is so small as to be a distraction. What general BMI someone is and what relevance that might have to whatever concerns bring them in, will of course be easily judged by health care professionals. The value in tracking a number is as others have said, specific and obvious, that it affords an opportunity to detect changes and incorporate them in a model that has to be constructed very quickly about potential diagnoses if any and next steps. IMO this is in large part grift which is wittingly or unwittingly in service of the broader politicization of expertise, which from my perspective amounts to nothing so much as an opting out of a science-based consensus reality in service of toy notions of liberty and what "harm" looks like.
happytoexplain 5y ago
I agree that some of the comments are, depressingly, of the standard internet variety (low-quality, reductionist, pointlessly negative/provocative, false equivalencies, etc). Regardless, I do have a hard time relating to the alleged benefactors of this card - I would be so much more embarrassed handing my doctor this card than having him learn my exact weight (yes, having it expressed as a metric hits a little harder - but it's not like he can't ballpark it by looking).

aaroninsf 5y ago

The practice in question is driven by the grift, not organic. I believe it's safe to assert that the set of people for whom the determining factor in whether or not they seek medical care, or not, is a function of the actual stepping on a scale, is so small as to be a distraction. What general BMI someone is and what relevance that might have to whatever concerns bring them in, will of course be easily judged by health care professionals. The value in tracking a number is as others have said, specific and obvious, that it affords an opportunity to detect changes and incorporate them in a model that has to be constructed very quickly about potential diagnoses if any and next steps. IMO this is in large part grift which is wittingly or unwittingly in service of the broader politicization of expertise, which from my perspective amounts to nothing so much as an opting out of a science-based consensus reality in service of toy notions of liberty and what "harm" looks like.

happytoexplain 5y ago

I agree that some of the comments are, depressingly, of the standard internet variety (low-quality, reductionist, pointlessly negative/provocative, false equivalencies, etc). Regardless, I do have a hard time relating to the alleged benefactors of this card - I would be so much more embarrassed handing my doctor this card than having him learn my exact weight (yes, having it expressed as a metric hits a little harder - but it's not like he can't ballpark it by looking).