The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma

By this logic, you and everyone else agree to climate change. Everyone in Venezuela agrees to Maduro.

It has nothing to do with majority, it’s a collective action and balance of power.

You agree that if you stop eating or eat less, you will lose weight. Great. We’ll have to disagree on the definition of a solution

Cutting off someone’s leg will also cause them to lose weight. This is pretty simple. Is it a solution to obesity?

A large nuke dropped on Gaza would end the fighting there. Also simple. Is it a solution?

No, no, I hear you saying, these actions would lead to other problems, don’t solve the underlying complexities etc etc.

I’m having trouble believing that you can write in complete sentences but are too thick to understand how “just eat less” suffers from the same problems. So you must be trolling me - congrats! I’m ashamed it took me so long to recognize you’re just playing dumb.

I’ve cited a bunch of scientific papers showing why just eating less isn’t a solution. It may lead to temporary weight loss, but doesn’t solve the issue long term, and causes other harms. If you want to provide any evidence for your claims or to dispute mine, go for it. Otherwise, cheers! The solution to your ignorance is you just need to learn more. Simple!

If you stop eating or eat less, you will lose weight.

Of course you will. This does not mean it’s a solution to obesity.

Inarguably, eating less solves obesity and is simple to do.

Except it’s not. It’s not sustainable. Even with medical intervention, the vast majority of weight is regained.

It is within most people’s personal power to control their appetite

Except it’s not. The long term success rate of dieting (again, in the context ofa medical study) is 15%

Next, you just have to wrap your head around how simple eating less food is

Except it’s not. And the repeated weight loss and regain experienced by most dieters is arguably worse for health than just being overweight.

You can keep simplistically stating that it’s easy, despite all the evidence, and you will continue to sound as idiotic as a rich person floating on their inheritance and saying that poverty would be solved if people just weren’t so lazy.

Eating less will solve obesity.

Not fighting would solve war. Wouldn’t it?

You’re wrong in equating war with someone carrying extra weight, they are not the same situation at all.

War is often a very complex problem without a simple solution.

Right. Exactly! And obesity is a complex problem without a simple solution. Eating less is a trivially correct solution to obesity just as not fighting is a trivially correct solution to war. Please see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-analogy/

What obese people understand and whether they get admonished is immaterial to solving their obesity.

My point is that if it were actually so easy, it wouldn’t actually be a problem, would it?

If you’re aware that you’re making facetious arguments, then stop being facetious and implying false equivalents

I’m not implying anything, I’m offering analogies. And the sarcasm is a rhetorical device that seems to have flown right over your head. I’m sorry about that. I didn’t think you would actually believe I thought that the solution to war and poverty and depression was easy. They’re not. I’m trying to get you to see (argument by analogy, check the link again) that the solution to obesity is not either.

If your response is just “yes it is,” if you think that the trivial solution hasn’t been tried over and over again by millions of people who have desperately wanted to lose weight and keep it off, but have failed, you’re being willfully ignorant.

Hunger is a primal urge. It’s governed by a complex series of hormonal and neurological feedback loops. It’s influenced by sociological and psychological factors as well as the non-caloric nutritive content of available and tolerated foods. Those factors are shaped by culture and economics and history etc etc

When I say all this and you say “eating less is the solution”, it sounds just as silly and naive as when you talk about war being the result of historical factors, religious animosity, geopolitics etc, and I say the solution is not fighting. Which is to say, very silly and naive.

Misattributing your own false arguments to others doesn’t prove you any less wrong.

And continuing to push your facile argument doesn’t make you any more right.

War?

Fight less.

The facetious solutions you’re proposing to stopping a war or ending clinical depression are not as simple as you imagine,

Of course not! That’s what makes them facetious! But “fight less” is as useful a solution to war as “eat less” is a solution to obesity. Which is to say it’s trivially right, but not actually a solution at all.

are actually impractical and will not work

Right. It’s the same with obesity. Do you honestly think that obese people don’t understand the link between eating and weight gain? Do you think that they don’t spend their entire lives with people admonishing them for their weight?

Wait, you’re saying that there are nuances and subtleties that my simple solutions don’t take into consideration?!?

/s (I didn’t think this was necessary, but given your response…)

Clinical depressionObesity, on the other hand, is caused by various complex chemical imbalances influenced by various environmental and social factors, so you can’t simply disentangle yourself from those chemicals and circumstances

Yep, exactly!

Do you seriously think that eating - arguably one of the most fundamental and instinctual things that living things do - is not subject to complex chemical, environmental, and social factors? Really?

The solution “don’t eat so much” really is as naive as telling a clinically depressed person “just be happier” or telling a poor person “just go earn more” or telling Israelis and Palestinians “just don’t fight do much”.

Yes, the solutions really are that simple, at one level, but pretending like the knowledge of this solution gets us anywhere in terms of actually addressing the problem is just silly.

The problem with poverty is easily solved: people just need to earn more. Easy!

The problem of depression is easily solved: people just need to be happier. Easy!

The problem of obesity is easily solved: people just need to eat less. Easy!

I can solve war too - people just need to fight less! And death: people just need to age less!

Man, someone get me a McArthur genius grant already!

“May” is doing a lot of work here. This is a low-level regulatory element of a systemic protein. It’s a neat result - this kind of biochemical investigation is hard and worthwhile - but it’s miles from any kind of therapeutic AFAICT

And if these smart academically inclined people can’t reason about the merits of the system beyond whether it has worked for them, then they are as I accused them … unintelligent or childish.

Nah, it’s really hard to notice things that are against your incentives to notice. And if all of the people around you are prospering in the same system, extra hard. The myth of meritocracy is extremely compelling, possibly to an even greater extent in academia than elsewhere.

success in academia is its own reward with prestige that should not be underestimated.

No doubt. And listen, I’m on the tenure track job market at this very moment, having said that last year was definitely going to be my last attempt. There’s some kind of cultish nature, all the more inextricable in that I can see it, and it doesn’t stop me.

I guess my point is that it’s obvious to most of us that that success is extremely rare, and getting rarer. The thing that keeps me in it is the sense that I can do more good pursuing knowledge for knowledge’s sake than work that is easier and more remunerative but less fulfilling. Call that stupid or childish? Maybe 🤷.

I do these things. I also refuse to review for-profit journals and paper mills, post all of my code in open source repositories, and advocate for these practices whenever I get the chance. When I had a popular science blog over 10 years ago, writing about this stuff a bunch.

But as long as hiring committees are scanning CVs for the number of Nature/Science/Cell journals, and granting agencies aren’t insisting on different practices, this shit will continue.

I can understand why it seems the way. But the people doing academic research by and large could make a lot more money working less hard at some company, but choose instead to try to advance human knowledge.

The incentives are just terrible. When I was a PhD student, I railed against this system, but when it came time to publish, I was overruled by my PI. And I know now that he was right - success is built off publication, and the best journals have this shitty model.

I used to think that when I became boss, I wouldn’t participate in the bullshit, but if any of my trainees want a career in academia, that stance would be screwing them over. The rules need to come from the top, but the people at the top, almost by definition, are the ones that have prospered with the current system.

Those are 2 different animals btw, not one like you’re making out.

This makes it worse, not better. If it were one, it might be chalked up to a fluke.

What is the difference between “gruesome” and “horrific”? Is “horrific” allowed?

No, certainly not.

Again though - this is testing. This is the entire point of it.

No. Animal suffering is absolutely not the point. Humane treatment of animals does not mean that they will never suffer - they will. I’m not against using animals in experiments, indeed I’ve done so myself. Humane treatment means that you put in the effort and bear the cost of minimizing suffering to the extent possible.

Like I said - would you rather they just jumped straight to human trials and this happened to people?

This is not the trade off. There is a wide spectrum of behavior between “never test on animals” and “treat animals purely as tools.”

Animal testing need not be gruesome - and indeed must not be according to most and approvals.

Typically, minimizing animal suffering and humane procedures for determining when and how to euthanize animals is typically a big part of getting sign off for this kind of thing.