Good news: my mental model of SMTM could also have them just skimming/cherry-picking the butter quote cited by BasedProf
Bad news: that’s not much better than the scenario where SMTM is, in fact, lying on purpose. And I haven’t looked deeply enough to tell if there’s reasonable alternatives.
More bad news: Yudkowsky and AppliedDivinity both seem to be on the giving-money-to-SMTM-without-checking-on-their-trustworthiness/responding-to-basedprof’s-criticisms-publicly grindset. And has SMTM responded to BP publicly either?
It’s pretty disheartening, yeah. Putting aside the lying for a moment, I’m also pretty deeply concerned at the damage SMTM could do to public health, if funding and attention allowed them to reach a wider audience. From https://slimemoldtimemold.com/tag/a-chemical-hunger/
“Our suggestions are very prosaic: Be nice to yourself. Eat mostly what you want. Trust your instincts.
Diet and exercise won’t cure obesity, but this is actually good news for diet and exercise. You don’t need to put the dream of losing weight on their shoulders, and you can focus on their actual benefits instead. You should focus on your diet — not to get thin, but to make sure that you have enough energy to do everything you want to do in life. This means eating enough and making sure you get what you need. You should exercise — not to slim down, but to gain strength and energy, and you shouldn’t get discouraged when you don’t drop 50 lbs fast.”
Obese? Don’t worry about it! It’s chemical, maybe with an added bit of genetics to explain why you’re fat and your friend who drinks the same water isn’t. “Don’t diet to get thin but to have enough energy” is basically “don’t diet to lose weight, in fact, if you feel low-energy, then don’t worry about gaining weight”. And this is terrible advice to give the obese and morbidly obese. Yes, you shouldn’t be terrible to such people, because that is no way to encourage change, and because you should not add to someone’s woes. But being fat, even “healthy eating and fat, and walking periodically and fat”, is still tied to worse actuarial outcomes, and direct and obvious health consequences. And it’s avoidable! I didn’t say much about this in my earlier comments, or on my own blog, because it’s not relevant so much to the population-level stuff, but it really is entirely possible to lose weight at the individual level. There are studies on this too.
It may be, especially for some people, not-easy. But lots of things that will add years and QALYs are not easy. What I’m quite sure doesn’t make it easier is imbibing this talk from SMTM, concluding that nothing can be done, and only wising up 2 or 5 or 10 years down the line, when you’re fatter, and afflicted potentially with conditions that ride along with additional weight gain, and decide to try losing weight then.
Like seriously, Eliezer, if you’re reading this, I’m happy to walk you through any research on this topic to your hearts content- I won’t ask for a “bounty” like Applied Divinity is offering, and I promise to patiently respond in any forum to any question on this, within my power to answer- where it is not I will appeal to others I know who are more knowledgeable. But please do not give money to these people, or encourage others to do the same. This is a time when providing money is at best a waste, and at worst, likely to actually make the world worse in a small but obvious way. At least, if you think I’m full of it, require a little more of them before taking said plunge.
Good news: my mental model of SMTM could also have them just skimming/cherry-picking the butter quote cited by BasedProf
Bad news: that’s not much better than the scenario where SMTM is, in fact, lying on purpose. And I haven’t looked deeply enough to tell if there’s reasonable alternatives.
More bad news: Yudkowsky and AppliedDivinity both seem to be on the giving-money-to-SMTM-without-checking-on-their-trustworthiness/responding-to-basedprof’s-criticisms-publicly grindset. And has SMTM responded to BP publicly either?
It’s pretty disheartening, yeah. Putting aside the lying for a moment, I’m also pretty deeply concerned at the damage SMTM could do to public health, if funding and attention allowed them to reach a wider audience. From https://slimemoldtimemold.com/tag/a-chemical-hunger/
“Our suggestions are very prosaic: Be nice to yourself. Eat mostly what you want. Trust your instincts.
Diet and exercise won’t cure obesity, but this is actually good news for diet and exercise. You don’t need to put the dream of losing weight on their shoulders, and you can focus on their actual benefits instead. You should focus on your diet — not to get thin, but to make sure that you have enough energy to do everything you want to do in life. This means eating enough and making sure you get what you need. You should exercise — not to slim down, but to gain strength and energy, and you shouldn’t get discouraged when you don’t drop 50 lbs fast.”
Obese? Don’t worry about it! It’s chemical, maybe with an added bit of genetics to explain why you’re fat and your friend who drinks the same water isn’t. “Don’t diet to get thin but to have enough energy” is basically “don’t diet to lose weight, in fact, if you feel low-energy, then don’t worry about gaining weight”. And this is terrible advice to give the obese and morbidly obese. Yes, you shouldn’t be terrible to such people, because that is no way to encourage change, and because you should not add to someone’s woes. But being fat, even “healthy eating and fat, and walking periodically and fat”, is still tied to worse actuarial outcomes, and direct and obvious health consequences. And it’s avoidable! I didn’t say much about this in my earlier comments, or on my own blog, because it’s not relevant so much to the population-level stuff, but it really is entirely possible to lose weight at the individual level. There are studies on this too.
It may be, especially for some people, not-easy. But lots of things that will add years and QALYs are not easy. What I’m quite sure doesn’t make it easier is imbibing this talk from SMTM, concluding that nothing can be done, and only wising up 2 or 5 or 10 years down the line, when you’re fatter, and afflicted potentially with conditions that ride along with additional weight gain, and decide to try losing weight then.
Like seriously, Eliezer, if you’re reading this, I’m happy to walk you through any research on this topic to your hearts content- I won’t ask for a “bounty” like Applied Divinity is offering, and I promise to patiently respond in any forum to any question on this, within my power to answer- where it is not I will appeal to others I know who are more knowledgeable. But please do not give money to these people, or encourage others to do the same. This is a time when providing money is at best a waste, and at worst, likely to actually make the world worse in a small but obvious way. At least, if you think I’m full of it, require a little more of them before taking said plunge.