Except that, empirically speaking, there are lots and lots of people who actually can and do consume candy bars, soda pop, or pizza in moderation.
Which makes me wonder about the actual mind-mechanisms behind “superstimulus”, since we seem to be so very good at learning to deal with it.
It strikes me as an overstatement to say that “we” seem to be very good at dealing with it. In most Western countries, the rates of overweight and obesity are quite high and/or rising. Surely a large majority of those people are failing to eat some kinds of food in moderation. And I doubt those people are overconsuming fresh vegetables and oatmeal.
Anyway, do you agree that there is a problem with a decent percentage of people overconsuming foods which tend to be far richer in calories/salt/fat/sugar/etc. than what was typically available in the ancestral environment? And if you agree, what do you think is the cause of the problem?
Anyway, do you agree that there is a problem with a decent percentage of people overconsuming foods which tend to be far richer in calories/salt/fat/sugar/etc. than what was typically available in the ancestral environment?
I think that “decent percentage” is imprecise, but there’s definitely something going on that’s making people fatter.
It could be bad habits. It could be superstimulus effects (though I’m suspicious regarding the lack of professional literature on a concept that primarily seems to be LessWrongian rather than empirically studied). It could be food additives.
I don’t know yet; I need to see some actual studies to make a judgement.
It could be bad habits. It could be superstimulus effects (though I’m suspicious regarding the lack of professional literature on a concept that primarily seems to be LessWrongian rather than empirically studied). It could be food additives.
Putting aside the “why” question, do you agree that if you look at people who are overweight or obese, their overconsumption problems tend to focus on certain types of foods, which tend to be very high in calories?
Overconsumption means “high in calories” almost (if not quite) by definition. Someone who eats raw cabbage nonstop simply isn’t going to get to overconsumption levels.
Overconsumption means “high in calories” almost (if not quite) by definition. Someone who eats raw cabbage nonstop simply isn’t going to get to overconsumption levels.
So that means your answer is “yes”?
Also, it sounds like you are saying that among people who have difficulty resisting the urge to eat, there is no particular preference for foods like ice cream, french fries and cookies over foods like cabbage, tomatoes, and broccoli, it’s just that the former foods are more likely to cause obesity because they are higher in calories.
I’m saying that I don’t know of particular preferences within the set of high-calorie foods. There is also the problem of consuming mid-calorie foods like bread or pasta (which humans did for millenia without getting too damn fat until about the 1990s) in completely excessive amounts, for instance.
So basically, I don’t think you can yell “COOKIES ARE SUPERSTIMULUS, REDUCE COOKIE PRODUCTION NOW!” when in fact lots of fat people are consuming massive amounts of pasta while plenty of thin people consume small amounts of cookies. The picture is much more complicated than simply assuming some arbitrarily constructed reference class of “things not in the ancestral environment” (besides, ancestral hunter-gatherers often got plenty more calories than ancestral peasant farmers, despite coming earlier: which one is our “ancestral environment” here?), which we choose to label as “superstimulus” (does that term have a scientific grounding?), will automatically short-circuit people’s decision making.
besides, ancestral hunter-gatherers often got plenty more calories than ancestral peasant farmers, despite coming earlier: which one is our “ancestral environment” here?
This bears repeating. Also keep in mind, many people with western European ancestry have a much higher threshold for diabetes, due to that ancestry’s post-agricultural dietary habits. After several thousand years, agriculture becomes part of the evolutionary environment.
(In the long view, I often stop and ponder whose ancestral environment and population we are, and how the cultural and environmental choices we’re making today will shape the genetic predispositions of our 61st century descendants.)
(In the long view, I often stop and ponder whose ancestral environment and population we are, and how the cultural and environmental choices we’re making today will shape the genetic predispositions of our 61st century descendants.)
Maybe our 61st century descendants will have genes, but if we haven’t managed to beat the crap out of evolution and impose our own life-optimization criteria by the year 6000, I will be extremely disappointed.
which humans did for millenia without getting too damn fat until about the 1990s
That’s the really mysterious bit to me.
I don’t think excessive quantities are likely to be the problem, though. I read a caloric breakdown once of the lifestyle of a 10th-century Scandinavian farmer; the energy requirements turn out to be absurd by modern standards, something like six thousand kcal just to stay upright at the end of the day in peak season. (Winter life was a bit more sedentary, but still strenuous by modern standards.) If you’re consuming that much food regularly, an extra five hundred kcal here or there is a rounding error; it’s implausible that everyone back then just happened to manage their consumption to within a few percent. Nor was the civilization as a whole calorie-bound, as best we can tell. But judging from skeletal evidence, they didn’t suffer from many of the diseases of civilization that we do.
The obvious diff here is exertion, but the nutritional literature I’ve read tends to downplay its role. Or you could blame portion sizes relative to exertion, but larger portions are only fattening because of the excess calories, which brings us back to the original mystery. So either some novel aspect of the post-1900 diet is making modern Westerners fat, or the archaeology or the nutritional science is wrong, or I’m missing a step. And I don’t think I’m missing a step.
If I had to venture a guess, I might blame lots of simple sugars in the modern diet—honey was the only sweetener available for most of human history, and it was rare and expensive. But that’s extremely tentative and feels a little glib.
This article contains links to several peer-reviewed research studies on the matter.
[e]xamined samples collectively consisting of over 20,000 animals from 24 populations of animals representing eight species living with or around humans in industrialized societies. In all populations, the estimated coefficient for the trend of body weight over time was positive (i.e. increasing). Surprisingly, we find that over the past several decades, average mid-life body weights have risen among primates and rodents living in research colonies, as well as among feral rodents and domestic dogs and cats.
I’m saying that I don’t know of particular preferences within the set of high-calorie foods.
That doesn’t seem to contradict my point. It sounds like you do agree with me that there are certain foods or types of foods which (generally speaking) tend to be difficult for obese people to resist eating.
Once again, no. Please attempt to understand my view here instead of trying to force your own. I do not necessarily believe, in the absence of evidence, that the obesity epidemic arises from certain foods (tasty, unhealthy, or otherwise) drugging people into addiction just by being more intense than prehistoric foods.
No, food is not in and of itself a drug that can magically alter our decision-making apparatus in some way that doesn’t wash out when placed next to the other elements of individual lifestyle.
Some foods may contain drugs. Chocolate, for instance, contains theobromide, a mild stimulant and euphoric I find quite enjoyable. Beer contains alcohol, a fairly strong depressant. Some cheeses are said to contain opiates, which supposedly explain the “addictive” quality of cheeseburgers (though studies don’t seem to indicate very much evidence beyond that expected of motivated reasoners). Yet nobody eats or drinks chocolate-laced beer with cheese in it.
I think that attempting to talk about the obesity epidemic as a failure of rationality due to superstimulus in foods is an attempt to kick a sloppy variable and turn it into a stiff one. I think we need a competing alternate hypothesis.
For one thing, it’s not as if healthy foods are all dull! A simple chopped-vegetable salad made with fresh ingredients is tasty and healthy, for instance. (Of course, this assumes you live somewhere in which fresh, nutritious veggies are affordable in bulk.… hmm, another contributing factor to the obesity problem?)
Once again, no. Please attempt to understand my view here instead of trying to force your own.
I am trying to understand your view, and you are not helping things by evading my questions. The question I asked you said nothing about the obesity epidemic or the causes of obesity. You read that into the question yourself.
I will try one last time: Put aside the causes of obesity and the obesity epidemic.
I’m simply asking if you agree with me that for obese people, there tend to be certain foods or types of foods which are difficult to resist eating. It’s an extremely simple yes or no question.
I’m simply asking if you agree with me that for obese people, there tend to be certain foods or types of foods which are difficult to resist eating. It’s an extremely simple yes or no question.
And, to the best of my knowledge, the answer is no. Obese people don’t have a hard time not-eating some foods, they have a hard time not eating in general.
And, to the best of my knowledge, the answer is no. Obese people don’t have a hard time not-eating some foods, they have a hard time not eating in general.
Food cravings are extremely common, particularly among women. Cravings are frequently reported for specific types of foods, including chocolate and foods high in both sugar and fat
One cannot discuss cravings, sugar and fat without discussing the role of chocolate. Chocolate is the most frequently craved food in North America
By the way, is it a surprise to you that chocolate holds the spot as the most craved food as opposed to, say, raw cauliflower?
Here’s another big surprise for you:
Women in particular report extreme liking of or craving for foods that are both sweet and high in fat (e.g., candies, cakes or pastries, ice cream)
By the way, is it a surprise to you that chocolate holds the spot as the most craved food as opposed to, say, raw cauliflower?
Since chocolate contains a stimulant/euphoric drug, no, this is not surprising, and I even mentioned it.
What would be surprising is if we could see a correlation between obesity and cravings for specific non-chocolate items, or even some way of showing that people who don’t eat chocolate are massively less likely to be obese.
Since chocolate contains a stimulant/euphoric drug, no, this is not surprising
So are you conceding that at least chocolate is a specific food or type of food which many obese people tend to have difficulty resisting?
And what of the claim that “Women in particular report extreme liking of or craving for foods that are both sweet and high in fat (e.g., candies, cakes or pastries, ice cream)”
No, I’m saying that people have some difficulty resisting chocolate. That includes thin people.
And “people” includes “obese people,” agreed?
Also, please answer my other question:
Do you dispute the claim that “Women in particular report extreme liking of or craving for foods that are both sweet and high in fat (e.g., candies, cakes or pastries, ice cream)”?
Are we trying to find things out anymore, or are you just trying to hammer home “HA! OBESITY IS CAUSED BY SUPERSTIMULUS! THERE’S SOME MINOR EVIDENCE OF THINGS THAT SOUND KINDA LIKE SUPERSTIMULUS BEING SUBJECT TO CRAVINGS! TAKE THIS, YOU IGNORAMUS!”?
Yes, I am trying to nail down your position so that I can figure out exactly where we disagree.
You keep trying to change the subject to the causes of obesity. Which is an important question but not the question I have been addressing.
The threshold question is whether there are certain foods or types of foods which are particularly difficult to resist.
If we agreed on that, then we could go on to discuss why such foods or types of foods are difficult to resist—is it because they are super-stimulus foods or some other reason? We could also discuss the role such foods play in obesity at an individual or societal level. But those are different questions.
You seem to have denied that there exist certain foods or types of foods which are difficult to resist. However, you seem to have made an exception for chocolate.
I have presented evidence that there are other foods which are difficult to resist “foods that are both sweet and high in fat (e.g., candies, cakes or pastries, ice cream)”—at least for women.
You refuse to tell me if you dispute this evidence. Why are you playing hide the ball with your position?
Trust me, the sky won’t fall if you simply admit that you were wrong.
Do you dispute the claim that “Women in particular report extreme liking of or craving for foods that are both sweet and high in fat (e.g., candies, cakes or pastries, ice cream)”? (And if not, is it a surprise to you?) This is the last time I will ask.
If we agreed on that, then we could go on to discuss why such foods or types of foods are difficult to resist—is it because they are super-stimulus foods or some other reason? We could also discuss the role such foods play in obesity at an individual or societal level. But those are different questions.
Ok, I’ve spotted the issue. I thought you were linking the two things: “These foods are hard to resist because they are superstimuli. Here, let me prove there are foods that are ‘hard to resist’ (whatever that means). Now that I’ve done so, it must be because they are superstimuli.”
My problems with this are: you need to separate the experience of cravings in absence of food (ie: I can crave chocolate but not have chocolate) from the actual “difficulty to resist” (that needs definition) when the food item is in front of you. You then also need to define “superstimulus” such that the definition makes predictions, and justify belief in such a concept via showing that it applies to your examples of craved foods.
You seem to have denied that there exist certain foods or types of foods which are difficult to resist. However, you seem to have made an exception for chocolate.
I’ve made an “exception” for actual drugs, as separate from the other content of food.
To show what I mean, it should be plain that if I lace a pitcher of water with morphine, you will slowly develop an addiction to the water in my pitcher. This is not because water is difficult to resist, it’s because I drugged the water. The fact that theobromide or caffeine occur naturally doesn’t make the food “hard to resist”, it makes it contain a drug.
I have presented evidence that there are other foods which are difficult to resist “foods that are both sweet and high in fat (e.g., candies, cakes or pastries, ice cream)”—at least for women.
I don’t see a working definition of “difficult to resist”, is the issue. Lots of people get cravings and don’t act on them, so getting a craving is not evidence that these women actually display less power of self-control when confronted with, say, cake, versus a control group.
In the same fashion, lots of people might say, “I need a damn drink!” when they’re stressed-out, but the overwhelming majority of them don’t become alcoholics, and most don’t even actually take a drink!
Basically, you seem to my eyes to be failing to differentiate between “People like X” and “People can’t control themselves around X”.
To show what I mean, it should be plain that if I lace a pitcher of water with morphine, you will slowly develop an addiction to the water in my pitcher. This is not because water is difficult to resist, it’s because I drugged the water.
I don’t see a working definition of “difficult to resist”, is the issue.
It’s reasonable to believe that if people report “extreme liking of or craving,” for certain foods or types of foods, then a large percentage of people will find such foods difficult to resist. No reasonable person would dispute this without very strong evidence.
But anyway, we can’t even get to that point because you won’t even concede that people (or at least women) report “extreme liking of or craving” for certain foods or types of foods. I asked you three times if you you disputed this claim and you ignored my question each time.
Instead, you have decided to strawman me:
Basically, you seem to my eyes to be failing to differentiate between “People like X” and “People can’t control themselves around X”.
There’s a difference between “extreme liking or craving for X” and “liking X.” There is also a difference between “people have difficulty resisting X” and “people can’t control themselves around X.”
Sorry, but I have no interest in engaging with people who insist on playing hide the ball with their position. Nor do I engage with people who exaggerate my position to make it sound unreasonable.
There is also a difference between “people have difficulty resisting X” and “people can’t control themselves around X.”
So… what is it?
Sorry, but I have no interest in engaging with people who insist on playing hide the ball with their position.
Why do you think I have a definite position? My “position” here is that the vocabulary for hypotheses is ill-formed. We have effectively spent an entire conversation saying nothing at all because the terms were never defined clearly.
It strikes me as an overstatement to say that “we” seem to be very good at dealing with it. In most Western countries, the rates of overweight and obesity are quite high and/or rising. Surely a large majority of those people are failing to eat some kinds of food in moderation. And I doubt those people are overconsuming fresh vegetables and oatmeal.
Anyway, do you agree that there is a problem with a decent percentage of people overconsuming foods which tend to be far richer in calories/salt/fat/sugar/etc. than what was typically available in the ancestral environment? And if you agree, what do you think is the cause of the problem?
I think that “decent percentage” is imprecise, but there’s definitely something going on that’s making people fatter.
It could be bad habits. It could be superstimulus effects (though I’m suspicious regarding the lack of professional literature on a concept that primarily seems to be LessWrongian rather than empirically studied). It could be food additives.
I don’t know yet; I need to see some actual studies to make a judgement.
Putting aside the “why” question, do you agree that if you look at people who are overweight or obese, their overconsumption problems tend to focus on certain types of foods, which tend to be very high in calories?
Overconsumption means “high in calories” almost (if not quite) by definition. Someone who eats raw cabbage nonstop simply isn’t going to get to overconsumption levels.
So that means your answer is “yes”?
Also, it sounds like you are saying that among people who have difficulty resisting the urge to eat, there is no particular preference for foods like ice cream, french fries and cookies over foods like cabbage, tomatoes, and broccoli, it’s just that the former foods are more likely to cause obesity because they are higher in calories.
Do I understand you correctly?
I’m saying that I don’t know of particular preferences within the set of high-calorie foods. There is also the problem of consuming mid-calorie foods like bread or pasta (which humans did for millenia without getting too damn fat until about the 1990s) in completely excessive amounts, for instance.
So basically, I don’t think you can yell “COOKIES ARE SUPERSTIMULUS, REDUCE COOKIE PRODUCTION NOW!” when in fact lots of fat people are consuming massive amounts of pasta while plenty of thin people consume small amounts of cookies. The picture is much more complicated than simply assuming some arbitrarily constructed reference class of “things not in the ancestral environment” (besides, ancestral hunter-gatherers often got plenty more calories than ancestral peasant farmers, despite coming earlier: which one is our “ancestral environment” here?), which we choose to label as “superstimulus” (does that term have a scientific grounding?), will automatically short-circuit people’s decision making.
This bears repeating. Also keep in mind, many people with western European ancestry have a much higher threshold for diabetes, due to that ancestry’s post-agricultural dietary habits. After several thousand years, agriculture becomes part of the evolutionary environment.
(In the long view, I often stop and ponder whose ancestral environment and population we are, and how the cultural and environmental choices we’re making today will shape the genetic predispositions of our 61st century descendants.)
Maybe our 61st century descendants will have genes, but if we haven’t managed to beat the crap out of evolution and impose our own life-optimization criteria by the year 6000, I will be extremely disappointed.
That’s the really mysterious bit to me.
I don’t think excessive quantities are likely to be the problem, though. I read a caloric breakdown once of the lifestyle of a 10th-century Scandinavian farmer; the energy requirements turn out to be absurd by modern standards, something like six thousand kcal just to stay upright at the end of the day in peak season. (Winter life was a bit more sedentary, but still strenuous by modern standards.) If you’re consuming that much food regularly, an extra five hundred kcal here or there is a rounding error; it’s implausible that everyone back then just happened to manage their consumption to within a few percent. Nor was the civilization as a whole calorie-bound, as best we can tell. But judging from skeletal evidence, they didn’t suffer from many of the diseases of civilization that we do.
The obvious diff here is exertion, but the nutritional literature I’ve read tends to downplay its role. Or you could blame portion sizes relative to exertion, but larger portions are only fattening because of the excess calories, which brings us back to the original mystery. So either some novel aspect of the post-1900 diet is making modern Westerners fat, or the archaeology or the nutritional science is wrong, or I’m missing a step. And I don’t think I’m missing a step.
If I had to venture a guess, I might blame lots of simple sugars in the modern diet—honey was the only sweetener available for most of human history, and it was rare and expensive. But that’s extremely tentative and feels a little glib.
The really creepy part? Whatever it is, it’s making Western animals fat. Including the ones that aren’t fed scraps of human food.
That is remarkably interesting-if-true. Data?
This article contains links to several peer-reviewed research studies on the matter.
That doesn’t seem to contradict my point. It sounds like you do agree with me that there are certain foods or types of foods which (generally speaking) tend to be difficult for obese people to resist eating.
Right?
Once again, no. Please attempt to understand my view here instead of trying to force your own. I do not necessarily believe, in the absence of evidence, that the obesity epidemic arises from certain foods (tasty, unhealthy, or otherwise) drugging people into addiction just by being more intense than prehistoric foods.
No, food is not in and of itself a drug that can magically alter our decision-making apparatus in some way that doesn’t wash out when placed next to the other elements of individual lifestyle.
Some foods may contain drugs. Chocolate, for instance, contains theobromide, a mild stimulant and euphoric I find quite enjoyable. Beer contains alcohol, a fairly strong depressant. Some cheeses are said to contain opiates, which supposedly explain the “addictive” quality of cheeseburgers (though studies don’t seem to indicate very much evidence beyond that expected of motivated reasoners). Yet nobody eats or drinks chocolate-laced beer with cheese in it.
I think that attempting to talk about the obesity epidemic as a failure of rationality due to superstimulus in foods is an attempt to kick a sloppy variable and turn it into a stiff one. I think we need a competing alternate hypothesis.
For one thing, it’s not as if healthy foods are all dull! A simple chopped-vegetable salad made with fresh ingredients is tasty and healthy, for instance. (Of course, this assumes you live somewhere in which fresh, nutritious veggies are affordable in bulk.… hmm, another contributing factor to the obesity problem?)
I am trying to understand your view, and you are not helping things by evading my questions. The question I asked you said nothing about the obesity epidemic or the causes of obesity. You read that into the question yourself.
I will try one last time: Put aside the causes of obesity and the obesity epidemic.
I’m simply asking if you agree with me that for obese people, there tend to be certain foods or types of foods which are difficult to resist eating. It’s an extremely simple yes or no question.
And, to the best of my knowledge, the answer is no. Obese people don’t have a hard time not-eating some foods, they have a hard time not eating in general.
Here’s some research which may change your mind:
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/133/3/835S.full
By the way, is it a surprise to you that chocolate holds the spot as the most craved food as opposed to, say, raw cauliflower?
Here’s another big surprise for you:
Since chocolate contains a stimulant/euphoric drug, no, this is not surprising, and I even mentioned it.
What would be surprising is if we could see a correlation between obesity and cravings for specific non-chocolate items, or even some way of showing that people who don’t eat chocolate are massively less likely to be obese.
So are you conceding that at least chocolate is a specific food or type of food which many obese people tend to have difficulty resisting?
And what of the claim that “Women in particular report extreme liking of or craving for foods that are both sweet and high in fat (e.g., candies, cakes or pastries, ice cream)”
Do you dispute it? Is it a surprise to you?
No, I’m saying that people have some difficulty resisting chocolate. That includes thin people.
And “people” includes “obese people,” agreed?
Also, please answer my other question:
Do you dispute the claim that “Women in particular report extreme liking of or craving for foods that are both sweet and high in fat (e.g., candies, cakes or pastries, ice cream)”?
Is it a surprise to you?
Are we trying to find things out anymore, or are you just trying to hammer home “HA! OBESITY IS CAUSED BY SUPERSTIMULUS! THERE’S SOME MINOR EVIDENCE OF THINGS THAT SOUND KINDA LIKE SUPERSTIMULUS BEING SUBJECT TO CRAVINGS! TAKE THIS, YOU IGNORAMUS!”?
Because this is sounding like the latter.
Yes, I am trying to nail down your position so that I can figure out exactly where we disagree.
You keep trying to change the subject to the causes of obesity. Which is an important question but not the question I have been addressing.
The threshold question is whether there are certain foods or types of foods which are particularly difficult to resist.
If we agreed on that, then we could go on to discuss why such foods or types of foods are difficult to resist—is it because they are super-stimulus foods or some other reason? We could also discuss the role such foods play in obesity at an individual or societal level. But those are different questions.
You seem to have denied that there exist certain foods or types of foods which are difficult to resist. However, you seem to have made an exception for chocolate.
I have presented evidence that there are other foods which are difficult to resist “foods that are both sweet and high in fat (e.g., candies, cakes or pastries, ice cream)”—at least for women.
You refuse to tell me if you dispute this evidence. Why are you playing hide the ball with your position?
Trust me, the sky won’t fall if you simply admit that you were wrong.
Do you dispute the claim that “Women in particular report extreme liking of or craving for foods that are both sweet and high in fat (e.g., candies, cakes or pastries, ice cream)”? (And if not, is it a surprise to you?) This is the last time I will ask.
Ok, I’ve spotted the issue. I thought you were linking the two things: “These foods are hard to resist because they are superstimuli. Here, let me prove there are foods that are ‘hard to resist’ (whatever that means). Now that I’ve done so, it must be because they are superstimuli.”
My problems with this are: you need to separate the experience of cravings in absence of food (ie: I can crave chocolate but not have chocolate) from the actual “difficulty to resist” (that needs definition) when the food item is in front of you. You then also need to define “superstimulus” such that the definition makes predictions, and justify belief in such a concept via showing that it applies to your examples of craved foods.
I’ve made an “exception” for actual drugs, as separate from the other content of food.
To show what I mean, it should be plain that if I lace a pitcher of water with morphine, you will slowly develop an addiction to the water in my pitcher. This is not because water is difficult to resist, it’s because I drugged the water. The fact that theobromide or caffeine occur naturally doesn’t make the food “hard to resist”, it makes it contain a drug.
I don’t see a working definition of “difficult to resist”, is the issue. Lots of people get cravings and don’t act on them, so getting a craving is not evidence that these women actually display less power of self-control when confronted with, say, cake, versus a control group.
In the same fashion, lots of people might say, “I need a damn drink!” when they’re stressed-out, but the overwhelming majority of them don’t become alcoholics, and most don’t even actually take a drink!
Basically, you seem to my eyes to be failing to differentiate between “People like X” and “People can’t control themselves around X”.
The Rat Park experiments suggest otherwise, at least as regards morphine.
It’s reasonable to believe that if people report “extreme liking of or craving,” for certain foods or types of foods, then a large percentage of people will find such foods difficult to resist. No reasonable person would dispute this without very strong evidence.
But anyway, we can’t even get to that point because you won’t even concede that people (or at least women) report “extreme liking of or craving” for certain foods or types of foods. I asked you three times if you you disputed this claim and you ignored my question each time.
Instead, you have decided to strawman me:
There’s a difference between “extreme liking or craving for X” and “liking X.” There is also a difference between “people have difficulty resisting X” and “people can’t control themselves around X.”
Sorry, but I have no interest in engaging with people who insist on playing hide the ball with their position. Nor do I engage with people who exaggerate my position to make it sound unreasonable.
This exchange is concluded.
Goodbye.
So… what is it?
Why do you think I have a definite position? My “position” here is that the vocabulary for hypotheses is ill-formed. We have effectively spent an entire conversation saying nothing at all because the terms were never defined clearly.