4 ms·

You need to find a middle ground between a high level and easily labeled category and scientific rigor. If the aim is raising awareness in consumers, erring on

You need to find a middle ground between a high level and easily labeled category and scientific rigor. If the aim is raising awareness in consumers, erring on the side of generality and dumbing down is preferred.

card_zero 3y ago
What if my aim is to raise awareness of how harmful dumbing down is?
- imjonse 3y ago
  It may not be harmful overall, that is the point. You can get people to eat less of the stuff that makes them ill without requiring them to have time for or interest in science and details. Anyone with enough energy to care will pick the subset of processed foods that they feel are healthy or harmless. What you call dumbing down is in line with how science works. Rough and inaccurate models first, refined in time or on demand.
  - card_zero 3y ago
    Terry Pratchett advocated something called "lies-to-children" to communicate science. I saw that, and was ashamed of him. Richard Dawkins wanted "consciousness raising" about certain issues around atheism (in fact, around lying to children), and this activist attitude made me uneasy, because it seemed manipulative, with its inbuilt assumption of correctness and the expected outcome of changing minds in a specific way. Various politicians endorse "nudge theory" with greater or lesser degrees of openness about it. I can't approve of any of this coercion, or your apologetics on the grounds of "it does them good". Having said that, I think all communication is inescapably slightly manipulative, starting from the mere fact of grabbing the audience's attention. But that doesn't mean we should double down on it.
    - imjonse 3y ago
      I don't think this is about principles, manipulation or anything that is usually a subject of heated and never settled debates. Saying processed food causes illness is a generalization which is very largely true, and considering that a large percentage of the population does not even think of food on the healthy/harmful axis, stating this as publicly as possible is actually the opposite of dumbing down. It is raising awareness for many people, or solidifying a message that others have already heard, and it's raising eyebrows in a smaller percentage of the population, who either already know this and are nitpicking about the message detail, or are generally bothered by the state/media/influencers interfering in how one leads their own life, or fear that such generalizations incorrectly put some traditional food in a bad light (see above comment about cured meats).
      - stakhanov 3y ago
        One problem I see (besides the paternalism, and talking down to people) is that "rigid schemas" of the kind that drives normies insane when nerdy types exhibit them and being smart vs. dumb are actually two very separate things. So, there are tons of people who have rigid schemas, and are actually quite dumb, and watching health food nuts on YouTube is actually a great way to observe them in the wild. If you tell them "don't eat anything that doesn't look the way it looks in nature", they are going to start eating raw soy beans and poison themselves, because "science said so". I don't think it's doing anyone any good if otherwise reputable news outlets, and actual scientists, throw even more oil into the fire of inaccurate information about nutrition.

card_zero 3y ago

What if my aim is to raise awareness of how harmful dumbing down is?

imjonse 3y ago
It may not be harmful overall, that is the point. You can get people to eat less of the stuff that makes them ill without requiring them to have time for or interest in science and details. Anyone with enough energy to care will pick the subset of processed foods that they feel are healthy or harmless. What you call dumbing down is in line with how science works. Rough and inaccurate models first, refined in time or on demand.
- card_zero 3y ago
  Terry Pratchett advocated something called "lies-to-children" to communicate science. I saw that, and was ashamed of him. Richard Dawkins wanted "consciousness raising" about certain issues around atheism (in fact, around lying to children), and this activist attitude made me uneasy, because it seemed manipulative, with its inbuilt assumption of correctness and the expected outcome of changing minds in a specific way. Various politicians endorse "nudge theory" with greater or lesser degrees of openness about it. I can't approve of any of this coercion, or your apologetics on the grounds of "it does them good". Having said that, I think all communication is inescapably slightly manipulative, starting from the mere fact of grabbing the audience's attention. But that doesn't mean we should double down on it.
  - imjonse 3y ago
    I don't think this is about principles, manipulation or anything that is usually a subject of heated and never settled debates. Saying processed food causes illness is a generalization which is very largely true, and considering that a large percentage of the population does not even think of food on the healthy/harmful axis, stating this as publicly as possible is actually the opposite of dumbing down. It is raising awareness for many people, or solidifying a message that others have already heard, and it's raising eyebrows in a smaller percentage of the population, who either already know this and are nitpicking about the message detail, or are generally bothered by the state/media/influencers interfering in how one leads their own life, or fear that such generalizations incorrectly put some traditional food in a bad light (see above comment about cured meats).
    - stakhanov 3y ago
      One problem I see (besides the paternalism, and talking down to people) is that "rigid schemas" of the kind that drives normies insane when nerdy types exhibit them and being smart vs. dumb are actually two very separate things. So, there are tons of people who have rigid schemas, and are actually quite dumb, and watching health food nuts on YouTube is actually a great way to observe them in the wild. If you tell them "don't eat anything that doesn't look the way it looks in nature", they are going to start eating raw soy beans and poison themselves, because "science said so". I don't think it's doing anyone any good if otherwise reputable news outlets, and actual scientists, throw even more oil into the fire of inaccurate information about nutrition.