Yes, and the 40% or whatever of America that’s obese are all “immune” to exercise. That’s surely it.
Funny how we were just discussing on LW people who self-handicap and make excuses in order to justify their failures. Might a bit of that be going on here as well?
The message that I’m taking home from your post is that if we wish to be “less wrong” we should avoid sarcasm. Here is my analysis.
The first paragraph alludes to the fattening of America in the recent past. Something has changed. The article about exercise talks about different genotypes responding differently to exercise, but it is not offering a diachronic account of the recent fattening. It seems unlikely that gene frequencies in the population have changed, leaving more people immune to exercise today than in the recent past, and the article does not propose this.
So hidden beneath the sarcasm is a relevant point, that immunity to exercise hasn’t undergone a recent big change. How much damage has this done to the logical coherence of the post?
Paragraph 2 talks of self-handicapping and making excuses. That sounds like human nature to me, and human nature hasn’t changed in forty years. So the same knock-down applies to both immunity to exercise and to self-handicapping.
Now AlexU may wish to come back and say: the rise of therapy culture and psycho-babble are big, recent changes. I’ll leaving those who favour this view to argue for it.
What I’m noticing is that the implicit negation in sarcasm makes it harder to follow the internal logic of a post. Using sarcasm makes it harder to write a clever and internally consistent post.
The message that I’m taking home from your post is that if we wish to be “less wrong” we should avoid sarcasm.
YES. And not just sarcasm, but a whole variety of devices of speech that fall under “not speaking with a straight face”. I’ve seen arguments couched in sarcasm with real rhetorical force, that simply could not be stated in straight-face language without looking obviously fallacious; and that’s leaving aside the effect you discuss, which is that it makes it harder for other people to discuss what you’ve said, or for that matter the straightforward way it makes the heat/light ratio worse.
I think that as we move from rationality as a lonely art to rationality as a group art, speaking with a straight face is one of the things we should be promoting. Though I’m sure I haven’t kept to this rule myself...
The first paragraph alludes to the fattening of America in the recent past. Something has changed.
It’s worth noting, in the context of this whole discussion, that the increasing homogenization of Americans’ eating habits because of franchise restaurants and mass-produced supermarket food is a possible change that is consistent with the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet.
Yes, and the 40% or whatever of America that’s obese are all “immune” to exercise. That’s surely it.
Funny how we were just discussing on LW people who self-handicap and make excuses in order to justify their failures. Might a bit of that be going on here as well?
The message that I’m taking home from your post is that if we wish to be “less wrong” we should avoid sarcasm. Here is my analysis.
The first paragraph alludes to the fattening of America in the recent past. Something has changed. The article about exercise talks about different genotypes responding differently to exercise, but it is not offering a diachronic account of the recent fattening. It seems unlikely that gene frequencies in the population have changed, leaving more people immune to exercise today than in the recent past, and the article does not propose this.
So hidden beneath the sarcasm is a relevant point, that immunity to exercise hasn’t undergone a recent big change. How much damage has this done to the logical coherence of the post?
Paragraph 2 talks of self-handicapping and making excuses. That sounds like human nature to me, and human nature hasn’t changed in forty years. So the same knock-down applies to both immunity to exercise and to self-handicapping.
Now AlexU may wish to come back and say: the rise of therapy culture and psycho-babble are big, recent changes. I’ll leaving those who favour this view to argue for it.
What I’m noticing is that the implicit negation in sarcasm makes it harder to follow the internal logic of a post. Using sarcasm makes it harder to write a clever and internally consistent post.
YES. And not just sarcasm, but a whole variety of devices of speech that fall under “not speaking with a straight face”. I’ve seen arguments couched in sarcasm with real rhetorical force, that simply could not be stated in straight-face language without looking obviously fallacious; and that’s leaving aside the effect you discuss, which is that it makes it harder for other people to discuss what you’ve said, or for that matter the straightforward way it makes the heat/light ratio worse.
I think that as we move from rationality as a lonely art to rationality as a group art, speaking with a straight face is one of the things we should be promoting. Though I’m sure I haven’t kept to this rule myself...
It’s worth noting, in the context of this whole discussion, that the increasing homogenization of Americans’ eating habits because of franchise restaurants and mass-produced supermarket food is a possible change that is consistent with the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet.
Hypothesis: at least some fraction of the weight gain is a result of dieting. A fair number of people regain more than they’ve lost.
As a result of the will-power and obligatory virtue model, some people go through the cycle many times.
Look, a relaxing picture.
Deep breaths.