- the fluff, basically, we try to kill it around here. Kill the fluff. And I agree with you about consequentialism/utilitarianism - it's in the "nice in theory, but treat with extreme caution in real world" camp. Intelligent deontological ethics seem to be a bit more grounded and less idealistic.

I have always been more drawn to virtue theory. I have of late been drawn to Wittgenstein's archly enigmatic, "aesthetics and ethics are one". I don't know if Wittgenstein ever said anything about disease. One philosopher I hugely admire is Peter Singer and he's a utilitarian of some stripe so that gives me pause for thought in dismissing consequentialism/utilitarianism but like I said I have been drawn more to virtue theory side of things.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/

I think the article you linked is an excellent example of smug superiority with lots of references to pet concepts while deficient in regard to the core subjects under discussion. The author demonstrates little practical experience with or research into the actual science around obesity, the actual medical practices related to obese patients, the reality of being an obese person, or the linguistic meaning of the word disease.

The author talks about a hypothetical Doctor but doesn't really seem to know much about medicine. The author asks "what is disease" but doesn't bother to do any real work to answer that question.

To answer your second question, a linguistic analysis of the word disease would look vaguely like the author's "What is a disease?" section, except it would involve real observation about how the word is used and in what contexts. The result is that rather than throwing your hands up in the air saying "it's meaningless to talk about whether something deserves to be a disease" you can say something like: "In a medical context, disease means this' in a research context, disease means this, in a casual context, there are two broad groups of people for whom disease means two different things" Armed with this more accurate language, you can start talking about actual concrete examples and explore more detailed and relevant hypothetical examples.

There should be a name for the 1st phenomenon, so that websites can use it as a tag. The latter would be too hard to distinguish from citation, however.

It's often been noted that the best way to discredit something good is to espouse it badly. How about: The best way to discredit something good is to be a jerk about it. (Disclosure: I'm at least as guilty of this as anyone here!)

Combined, these are quite often thought of as "bullying" or "trolling", but not necessarily so—it can also be felt, as the name suggests, while using tools with finesse or performing authoritative power exchanges; surgeons are a good example of someone who has routed gamist reward intrinsics to positive acts. I would interpret the posts you refer to as another.

That is all to say, this is the reverse of a fundamental attribution error: this is just how these people are, not something they can change. It's part of their utility function to "satisfy" their urge to smug, just as one would satisfy hunger or sexual arousal. And, if we want these people in our society, we should learn to accept that as long as it's not actively hurting anyone.

Smug emotional agression might not be a big sin in the grand scheme, but it is an annoyance. It can be a signal of immaturity or lack of certain kinds of awareness. It's like a musician who plays out of tune, or someone farting at a gathering of gourmets. I'd much rather spend time with people who aren't willfully or unconsciously annoying.

That's what I mean by "smug." It's not aggression—it's dominance demonstrated via acts of mastery over the world, and thus its inhabitants. Bullying—actual emotional aggression—is the frustrated refuge of the gamist who has no mastery to show off.