I don’t know what point you’re really trying to make here; I find it irritating when people basically say, “I’m not convinced; convince me,” because it puts social pressure on me to overstate my case. (It’s also an example of the trap mentioned in HPMOR where continually answering someone’s interrogatories leads to the impression of subordinate status.)
I don’t agree with your arguments in Adams’ case, for a number of reasons, but because of the adversarial position you’re taking, an onlooker would likely confuse my attacks on your errors to be in support of Adams, which isn’t really my intent.
As I said before, I support the book, not Adams’ writing, beliefs, or opinions in general. It contains many practical points that are highly in agreement with the LW zeitgeist, backed with extensive study citations, along with many non-obvious and unique suggestions that appear to make more sense than the usual sort of suggestions.
Many of those suggestions could be thought of as rooted in a “shut up and multiply” frame of mind, like Adams notion that it’s worth using small amounts of “bad” or high-calorie foods to tempt one to eat more good foods—like dipping carrots in ranch dressing or cooking broccoli in regular butter—if one would otherwise not have eaten the “good” food.
This is the type of idea one usually doesn’t see in diet literature, because it appears to be against a deontological morality of “good” and “bad” foods, whereas Adams is making a consequentialist argument.
Quite a lot of the book is like that, actually, in the sense that Adams presents ideas that should occur to people—but usually don’t—due to biases of these sorts. He talks a lot about how a big purpose of the book is to give people permission to do these things, or to set an example. (He mentions that the example of one of his coworkers becoming published was a huge influence on his future path, and that his example of being published inspired coworkers at his next job. “Permission”, in the sense of peer examples or explicit encouragement, is a powerful tool of influence.)
At this point, I think I’ve said all I’m willing to on this subthread. If you want to know more, read the book and look at the citations yourself. The book is physically available in hundreds of libraries, and electronically available from dozens of library systems, so you needn’t spend a penny to look at the references (or advice) for yourself.
I think your point about status is a bit silly: I am asking you these questions because I defer to your judgement and value your expertise highly, which should raise rather than lower your status. Nonetheless I appreciate that it’s annoying to be put in the position of having to convince people to do something that’s good for them, so thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions. I think your arguments are good and it’s helped me and hopefully other people reading this to decide whether the book is worth reading.
I don’t know what point you’re really trying to make here; I find it irritating when people basically say, “I’m not convinced; convince me,” because it puts social pressure on me to overstate my case. (It’s also an example of the trap mentioned in HPMOR where continually answering someone’s interrogatories leads to the impression of subordinate status.)
I don’t agree with your arguments in Adams’ case, for a number of reasons, but because of the adversarial position you’re taking, an onlooker would likely confuse my attacks on your errors to be in support of Adams, which isn’t really my intent.
As I said before, I support the book, not Adams’ writing, beliefs, or opinions in general. It contains many practical points that are highly in agreement with the LW zeitgeist, backed with extensive study citations, along with many non-obvious and unique suggestions that appear to make more sense than the usual sort of suggestions.
Many of those suggestions could be thought of as rooted in a “shut up and multiply” frame of mind, like Adams notion that it’s worth using small amounts of “bad” or high-calorie foods to tempt one to eat more good foods—like dipping carrots in ranch dressing or cooking broccoli in regular butter—if one would otherwise not have eaten the “good” food.
This is the type of idea one usually doesn’t see in diet literature, because it appears to be against a deontological morality of “good” and “bad” foods, whereas Adams is making a consequentialist argument.
Quite a lot of the book is like that, actually, in the sense that Adams presents ideas that should occur to people—but usually don’t—due to biases of these sorts. He talks a lot about how a big purpose of the book is to give people permission to do these things, or to set an example. (He mentions that the example of one of his coworkers becoming published was a huge influence on his future path, and that his example of being published inspired coworkers at his next job. “Permission”, in the sense of peer examples or explicit encouragement, is a powerful tool of influence.)
At this point, I think I’ve said all I’m willing to on this subthread. If you want to know more, read the book and look at the citations yourself. The book is physically available in hundreds of libraries, and electronically available from dozens of library systems, so you needn’t spend a penny to look at the references (or advice) for yourself.
I think your point about status is a bit silly: I am asking you these questions because I defer to your judgement and value your expertise highly, which should raise rather than lower your status. Nonetheless I appreciate that it’s annoying to be put in the position of having to convince people to do something that’s good for them, so thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions. I think your arguments are good and it’s helped me and hopefully other people reading this to decide whether the book is worth reading.