I’ve moved away slightly from SJW attitudes on various matters, since starting to read LW and Yvain’s blog
[OT: just noting that one could be “away from SJW attitudes” in different directions, some of them mutually exclusive. For example, on some particular things (racial discrimination, etc) I take the Marxist view that activism can’t help the roots of the problem which are endemic to the functioning of capitalism—except that I don’t believe it’s possible or sane to try and replace global capitalism with something better anytime soon, either… so there might be no hope of reaching “endgame” for some struggles until post-scarcity. Although activists should probably at least try and defend the progress made on them to-date from being optimized away by hostile political agendas.]
The fact that weight loss attempts hardly ever work in the long run, is what has changed my views the most.
Actually, I still suspect that the benefiits in increased happiness and mental health would still be better than the marginal efficiency of pressuring lots of people to try and lose weight even if it depended in large part on personal behaviour. And social pressure is notoriously indiscriminate, so any undesirable messages would still hit people who can’t or don’t really need to change. Plus there are still all the socioeconomic factors outside people’s control, etc.
[OT: just noting that one could be “away from SJW attitudes” in different directions, some of them mutually exclusive. For example, on some particular things (racial discrimination, etc) I take the Marxist view that activism can’t help the roots of the problem which are endemic to the functioning of capitalism—except that I don’t believe it’s possible or sane to try and replace global capitalism with something better anytime soon, either… so there might be no hope of reaching “endgame” for some struggles until post-scarcity. Although activists should probably at least try and defend the progress made on them to-date from being optimized away by hostile political agendas.]
Actually, I still suspect that the benefiits in increased happiness and mental health would still be better than the marginal efficiency of pressuring lots of people to try and lose weight even if it depended in large part on personal behaviour. And social pressure is notoriously indiscriminate, so any undesirable messages would still hit people who can’t or don’t really need to change.
Plus there are still all the socioeconomic factors outside people’s control, etc.