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I hope I'm just misreading sarcasm there, but they are very much choices and that itself should be empowering because people can just as easily make a different
by kiba 3y ago
I hope I'm just misreading sarcasm there, but they are very much choices and that itself should be empowering because people can just as easily make a different choice.
If choice is so easy, anyone can pick up a textbook about mathematics, barring deficiency in cognitive capacity, become knowledgeable about mathematics. That doesn't happen not because people are stupid, but because the task is genuinely hard.
If choice is so easy, you would be able to able to choose to not to eat for three days and achieve that. For some people, it is extremely difficult. For others, that is easy. I have experienced both situations.
Real freedom, then, is to understand that your own mind has their own cause and effect and how to manipulate that to achieve 'freedom of choice', and the corresponding training to be able to do so.
To have whole societies exercising, then, is to understand the causal factors involved and the knobs needed to achieve that, and the organizational capacity to do so.
That is why to say that you 'have a choice' to not exercise or exercise is a defeatist attitude and to consign whole group of people to early death. What people need is not 'choices' but solutions to achieve those choices.
I myself continue to struggle. I have lost weight and then regained. There are time in which I can exercise for hours. There are times in which I achieved physical fitness that I at time I never thought I could. I will keep trying, but clearly I do not yet have mastery of my own mind.
- _heimdall 3y ago> If choice is so easy, anyone can pick up a textbook about mathematics, barring deficiency in cognitive capacity, become knowledgeable about mathematics. That doesn't happen not because people are stupid, but because the task is genuinely hard. You're conflating choice with a much more complex situation that raises questions of how people learn, how skills relate to nature versus nurture, and personal interest and motivations. I'm not arguing that avoiding junk food or choosing to exercise are easy, only that they are choices. Its really interesting to me that you take the view of choice as defeatist while I see the exact opposite, that the view of a lack of choice is defeatist. We both clearly have considered this in the past and feel strongly about our view, great reminder that people can seriously and genuinely consider the same situation and land on exactly opposite positions.
- kiba 3y agoYou can't make difficult choices you want unless you understand and trained to manipulate your own mind. A society can't become healthier, even if they are willing, unless they understood the steps they need to take to become healthier. Choice are meaningless if you can't do them, which is why they are traps.
- _heimdall 3y agoI'm not really sure how you even describe those as choices, or why you think people are destined to eat junk food. There are absolutely situations where economics or geographic limitations leave some with little choice beyond junk food. Beyond that, eating junk food is a choice. The beauty of choice is that we are offered the freedom to make it. Maybe you never want to eat junk food, or only occasionally, or maybe you really enjoy it and prefer to live on a junk food diet. Its a choice, and one that can be made today and changed tomorrow. Viewing things like exercise and diet as a non choice is insanely dis-empowering. I want to know that I can choose to change if its important to me, I don't want to feel powerless to genetics or the society in which I was born.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kiba 3y agoViewing things like exercise and diet as a non choice is insanely dis-empowering. I want to know that I can choose to change if its important to me, I don't want to feel powerless to genetics or the society in which I was born. It's not that I think people are destined to eat junk food, it's that describing what you eat as a choice is shallow and useless. A choice is only meaningful if you are able to implement it. Only with knowledge, training, and technology can you overcome the deficit. Combining that by changing the structure and incentives of society will amplify that effect. If people are continuously trying and failing to implement exercise and weight loss programs, it suggests that our knowledge and tools are incomplete. If we reach the point that obesity and 'lifestyle' related issues are a non-problem or can be overcome successfully long term, only then it becomes a meaningful choice. This is why I emphasized knowledge and skills, cause and effect over freedom of choices. Obesity is not just a problem on an individual level, but also on a societal level. If you want to solve them, you must manipulate all the levels of causality.