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The human body is the most complex piece of machinery in the history of the known universe, and is highly variable from one person to the next, with all sorts o
by lukifer 14y ago
The human body is the most complex piece of machinery in the history of the known universe, and is highly variable from one person to the next, with all sorts of evolutionary cruft and random aberrations.
I understand we all need actionable information to maximize our odds at life, but any attempt at science journalism that doesn't start from that premise and instead tries to tell you "X good, Y bad" can probably be ignored, or at least taken with a grain of salt.
- div 14y agoThis particular article doesn't try to tell you "X good, Y bad", it's saying eat less, exercise more, or more specifically, if you want weight loss, as long as your diet leads to a caloric deficit, it doesn't matter _what_ you eat.
- lukifer 14y agoI should have been broader: I'm saying a simple narrative can't possibly tell the whole story of such complex chemical processes, whether it fits that particular snoclone or not, which includes "a calorie is a calorie". It's a leaky abstraction.
- ktizo 14y agoSurely on that argument, the body of almost any animal that is bigger than us is actually a more complex piece of machinery. Blue whales are massive, for instance and are made of far more cells than we are.
- KingMob 14y agoWell, not necessarily. The key factors are heterogeneity and complexity rather than size. E.g., the difference between a stick of RAM (relatively homogeneous and simple) vs a CPU (highly diverse). In fact, when it comes to brains, larger cetaceans seem to have simpler structures when compared to human brains, even though they're larger in absolute terms.
- Heinleinian 14y agoIt's not about size. Human brains produce consciousness. Can't argue with that.
- ktizo 14y agoa. How do you know that other brains don't. b. How do you know that consciousness is primarily a function of complexity. c. Complexity need not give recognisable output. d. The weather.