"It's not fate, it is expression of variance within a known or unknown distribution, and we can do more to understand it" --
In the end, you have fate within a certain variance. Generally speaking, it is better to know that you have 1 chance in 10 than 1 in I don't know how many chances, but still getting one outcome or the other is what we call “fate” or unexplainable/unpredictable/unforeseeable circumstances.
A probabilistic/statistical view of life that goes beyond the simpler but tremendously wrong dichotomous view is one of the best tools one can use to make life better for oneself and more readable in general.
Given that a few decades ago obesity and overweight rates were nowhere near what they are today, this shows that a large part of the population is weak, fragile, and not very interested in their well-being.
I want to emphasize that a few decades ago, people were much thinner in the Western world and did not hate their lives because they could not eat a triple cheeseburger, go hungry constantly, or feel physically deprived. Those were my parents and my grandparents, I know them.
But if you show them hyper-caloric food that makes them feel like crap, they can't say no. It's disappointing. And the same can be said for addiction to social media, horrible TV series, and constant music everywhere.
Do you think it is because the people before were mentally stronger? No, it is because they lived in a different environment. If you were to transport those people from decades ago to today, the same portion of them would become obese.
That's what I'm saying. It's not that people were stronger then, it's that, as many times throughout life, traits are revealed by circumstances, there's nothing particularly physiological about feeling the need to eat like hippopotamuses that have been deprived of food for months.
The unattractive, low-status man (or woman) has less trouble remaining faithful than the handsome, high-status man (or woman). Not because they are more virtuous, but because they are not as exposed to temptation. But fewer people justify the unfaithful than the “big eater.” And that's something society and culture have decided, for now.
> "there's nothing particularly physiological about feeling the need to eat like hippopotamuses that have been deprived of food for months."
There are many people who don't feel that need. They don't actively resist cramming cake into their mouths, they just glance at the cake disinterestedly and move on. Or eat a bit, and feel that's enough, and don't want more.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27936016 has discussions about the dramatic rise in obesity after ~1970; refined sugar, chocolate, butter, doughnuts, McDonalds, cars, TV, have been around longer than that. Could there be involvement from Glyphosate pesticide, from reduction in smoking appetite-suppressing cigarettes, Lithium contaminated water supplies, increased Vitamin A added to milk and grain supplies, rise in antibiotics used on farm animals, which causes some people to gain and retain weight more easily?
They are the same people now that they were then. Humanity has not become any more weak, fragile, or uninterested in their well-being — it has simply become harder to resist. TV was appointment viewing and cut off late at night. Before the walkman, there wasn’t much option for music everywhere (the scourge was newspaper-readers! but the paper is only so long). And that triple cheeseburger today wasn’t acceptable or available to eat unless you made it yourself. Healthy eating being hard is a product of collective decisions to make it hard.
It used to be that the devil on the shoulder was the tempter. It isn't depressing that parents and grandparents can't say no to lizard brain instincts, it's depressing that we allow companies to exploit that in a devilishly evil way - to harm people - for money, as much as they can, in almost every way they can think of.
Imagine how much money and time and effort is spent making Doritos 2% more tempting; the crunch, the flavour intensity, the packaging layout, the packaging colours, the mouthfeel, the shelf stability. The same for ice cream and everything else. How far can Kelloggs stretch the gap between the strawberry presented on the packaging and the almost-zero strawberry in the pop tart? Or the honey pictured on the Honey Nut Cheerios box with the "hint of honey" in the description on the back? How To Cook That[1] on YouTube on Kellogg's misleading and potentially misleading claims.
By looking at the size and bellies of construction workers, farmers, and people doing all sorts of jobs with significant physical activity, one cannot find much support for this hypothesis.
Back in the day, (almost) everybody was not fat, from the academically inclined to the construction worker. Today, many are overweight, from the professor to the agricultural worker. There used to be more walking, which increased caloric expenditure by 300-700 kcal per day, although sport and recreational physical activity was limited to the young.
The main problems have been the easy availability of cheap and tasty calories, combined with a surprisingly low resistance to the ingestion of those calories.
What the explanation is, that actually requires research. Anything from new food additives, changed lifestyle habits forced by the pandemic, increased chronic stress, screen addiction compromising other opportunities to be active, less walkable neighborhoods, more elevators, higher calorie diet, cost increase in healthy diet to just name a fraction of possible factors.
Or that the situation was different, advertisers hadn’t mastered the 24/7 cycle of selling easy junk food in both home form and fast food form. Every generation thinks they’re superior to the new generation and says “why don’t they just…. “ when a new generational problem comes up. People screaming out against ozempic and friends are just angry that maybe it does work well enough and that people don’t have to struggle for once. Our brains weren’t built for our modern life style. It used to be that people virtually had lots of experience eating Whole Foods, TV was relatively new, parental guidance on “that’s junk food, you can have a little not a lot”, our jobs weren’t built around screens and pecking on keyboards, bombarded by emails and phone calls even after we go home via 1 hour commute each way. It’s easy to say “you’re all a bunch of lazy bums” but it’s also lazy and not true.
> "People screaming out against ozempic and friends are just angry that maybe it does work well enough and that people don’t have to struggle for once"
No, I'm angry in the way that you punching me in the face with my own hand, saying "stop hitting yourself" then offering to sell me a painkiller subscription might make me. The sheer ridiculousness of Big Food vs Big Pharma with humans trapped in the middle. Humans presented by geeks as perfectly spherical rational decision makers, but actually lizard hind-brains wrapped in frontal lobes and language centers, with very exploitable biases, feelings, fears, and base drives and very few defenses against it, and those defenses being undermined at every turn by political lobbying and profit seeking.
But a lighter sentence could, for example, range from no jail time to rates of less than 100 percent of the expected sentence in the case of non-cooperation. The prosecutor's recommendation of no jail time is frankly disappointing. She may not have been the main offender, but she committed the crimes.
What would her sentence have been if she did not cooperate (and suppose other did or there was enough evidence anyway)? Fifteen+ years? Two years is not a picnic, but given the alternative, it looks like it is.
The prosecutor didn't recommend no jail time. Ellison's lawyers did.
Also, in addition to jail time, she's going to owe a huge sum of money. The feds are going to have a claim on any money she makes for the rest of her life.
For better or worse (I think a little of both), long max sentences exist in the US criminal justice system to allow rewarding cooperators and to threaten non-cooperators alike.
According to the article I read (CNBC),
"The prison term was significantly stiffer than the recommendation by the federal Probation Department that Judge Lewis Kaplan sentence Ellison, who had run the hedge fund Alameda Research, to three years of supervised release, with no time at all behind bars".
In the same article, "Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon urged Kaplan for leniency".
It seems to me, as prosecutors and Probation Dept talk to each other, that all, except Kaplan, agreed on no prison time for Ellison.
You suspect well, I do not.
Let me ask you another question for which you and I do not know the answer. Since she got 2 years in prison, she was not promised (i.e. she did not sign any binding agreement with the prosecutor, beyond "we will do our best to get you a lenient sentence") not to go to prison. Why then not a sentence of 5, 10, 15 years in prison?
I did not say or believe that the prosecutor lied or they should renege on their word, far from it. I said that if she got two years, it means that the agreement Ellison-DA was not for no prison time in exchange for cooperation.
Thus I asked why two years and not five or ten of whatever time under the expected sentence time in case of no cooperation.
The prosecutor doesn't pick a time, and cant promise it. The judge selects the sentence. This judge thought 2 years was reasonable after the fact, and was not bound to it.
Some alleles give people a tendency to gain weight via a higher appetite, slower metabolism, addiction to substances (in this case food). But no matter your alleles, you still have to pick up your fork and start attacking those triple portions of nachos. Let's not forget that 1-2 generations ago, the percentage of obese people was much lower than today, but the proportions of the above-mentioned alleles are very unlikely to have changed in 30-50 years.
Perhaps food is more ultra-processed now. Micro-plastics. Gut flora disruption. Seed oils. 5G vaccines. Name a fad and there's a [whatever the antonym for panacea is] for why obesity rates are higher.
It's feels unfair that a single Halloween Oreo cookie is 70 calories. The caloric density of modern and delicious food is absolutely insane.
And so, aside from a rare treat, which mostly leaves me sad (because I only get to eat two), I eat things that aren't ultra-processed 5G seed oil based. And my weight remains controlled despite said 5G vaccines, seed oils, and gut flora disruption.
Ozympic seems like a net good if it helps people control their weight. It just always seems preposterous when people blame "ultra-processed food" as the root problem, rather than the over consumption of said food as the problem.
I wrote that someone has to pick up that fork to eat those nachos. However, processed food makes it easier to eat more calories than you need. Ice cream used to be a once-a-week treat. Now, you can buy a pint of a caloric bomb for 2.99 USD. I'm not suggesting a conspiracy, but as someone who exercises frequently and eats similar food when traveling, I can say with conviction that something is going on with the food sold in the US. For example, I often get pimples on my face after eating pork or beef in the US. I never get pimples when I eat pork or beef in Europe or South America.
I have more problems not getting fat when I'm in the US and I feel more bloated. The usual explanation, which has merit, is that portions are bigger in the US and people move less than in other countries. However, I eat 95% of my meals at home, cooked by me, and I exercise 1 or 2 times daily.
Our lives are made up of and guided by narratives that sound good and just on paper, but are empirically proven wrong time and time again. Yet they persist.
Some come from the zeitgeist, others are eternal, biblical, and worse, unfalsifiable: "everything happens for a reason," "if you're meant to be together, you will be together," "just do a good job and you'll get what you deserve". The latter was voiced by my postdoc advisor, who did not take the time to look at the percentage of researchers who did good work but did not get a tenure-track position. But perhaps those who did not find jobs did not do good enough work, and the charade continues.
Almost all of his examples are/were failures, by all metrics.
Cause and effect requires observation, which means there will be a time delay between when a company does something shady and when the customers realize the rug was pulled out from under them. You can't know a pinto is going to blow up before it blows up. Once people realized, it almost destroyed the company [1]. The time delay between a correction in a company is even longer, because it requires another layer of observation.
None of these are proof that the error correction mechanism is broken, or that the quote is somehow untrue/fragile. Most of the egregious examples of broken feedback are those companies that make the red and blue politicians multi millionaires by the time they retire, usually with no-consequences government contracts.
edit: and, this fails miserably if you don't pay any attention to the end goal, which I've seen several times.
nit: you can indeed know a pinto would blow up before it blows up. But you go to your city square and get laughed at because they trust Ford over some car mechanic who looked deeply into the car.
Of course, I'm describing a literal forum here (physical forums! good times). I wonder how many whistleblowers out there highlighted some dark pattern in the past 20 years and were cast off as a conspiracy nut. Both publicly and in internal company channels.
nit2: it's so strange how times have changed. 40-50 years ago his Pinto recall was company ending. Nowadays the Cybertruck has had what? 5 recalls now? And it still has this bizarre cult behind it. What happened to people? what happened to wanting a driveable car (nevermind those truck minded audiences the cybertruck targets who claims to do more than just drive)?
Wiper was fixed with OTA update. Accelerator pedal was fixed on all trucks within the first week after it was discovered.
> And it still has this bizarre cult behind it.
That doesn't mean sales haven't been hurt, but anyone actually interested will see that the above list isn't an issue. Toyota had a similar recall some years ago, and it hurt their sales too [3]. It's a good idea to skip first model years of any car.
You're right about 4 and maybe 2. But #3 is pretty much by biggest one of my top 3 fears in a car. Stuck accelerator or non-working breaks. I was already cast off before hand but I'd never buy a new [car brand] car knowing that kind of issue existed before.
> I'd never buy a new [car brand] car knowing that kind of issue existed before.
There's some severe information bias here. If you actually believe this, then you're basically restricted from buying most vehicles. Toyota is out [1] along with, BMW [2], Ford [3], Chevy [4], Honda [5], Volvo [6], Mercedes [7] and more. The cars affected in those are similar to orders of magnitude more. These were all first results, one vehicle, but I'm sure there are many more examples for each.
The odd tribalism is what I find most interesting about the Cybertruck. And no, I'm not interested in buying a Cybertruck.
Well I did pretty good, because I never owned any of these brands of cars.
But I was talking more about models, not "all teslas are banned". If they can improve on these issues in next year's model, then that's something to be encouraged, not dropped altogether over one fixable issue.
>The odd tribalism is what I find most interesting about the Cybertruck.
I don't particularly care about any car enough to attack/defend it. But A bad pedal is a bad pedal, and I'm lucky if I get more than one time to learn that lesson in person. Of course I'm going to be wary if a recall this serious occurs.
Reducing regulations and generally “opening up” can be done largely without substantial cost outside of political will, which is costly for political parties because lobbies exist and represent single-issue voters.
Just as an example, Uber does not operate in Italy as it does in many other countries, including in Europe, because taxi drivers are historically a highly organized group/mafia that can move substantial numbers of votes. Allowing Uber to operate would, perhaps, cost votes in the short term, but it could happen without monetary cost. Instead, taking a cab in Rome is a nightmare because the taxi mafia has no interest in increasing the number of cabs on the road or opening up to competition.
There is not a single citizen who does not benefit in some way from the artificial limitation of supply (i.e., taxi drivers and their families) who agrees with the current regulations/restrictions, but for some reason (money or votes) no politician is willing to crack down hard on them.
Since it is not and will not be one of the voters' priorities, it is an issue that is talked about for a few days after a journalist has to wait 3 hours to get a cab and disappears for months until another journalist can't find a cab. A clear symptom of a political class that is corrupt, immature, or both. Incompetent, I would add to the list.
Still in Italy, reforming the cost of the Italian university could be done at a reasonable cost. However, the deep and historical connection between the university and the bureaucratic and political system makes it preferable for decision-makers to maintain a heavily nepotistic status quo that everyone says will change sooner or later, but has not changed and I don't think will change in the next 10-20 years.
Countries that bet on tourism are failing states that are busy trying to get what they can instead of creating what they might.
I will say one thing that may not sound good on paper, but makes a lot of sense in practice.
I do the bare minimum at work, and I do it neither badly nor to the best of my ability: I do it barely well enough. Doing it to the best of my ability would be counterproductive because it would affect others in my organization. I don't see a path to promotion because there isn't one. I am well paid.
Sometimes I dream of a job where I am challenged, valued, and appreciated for my professional contribution, not just because I speak well and have the right credentials. But the dreams quickly fade when I think about how much free time, energy, and desire I'd have to give up if that dream came true.
" in all fields including knowledge work I’d speculate the top performers are more likely to enjoy the activity for its own sake than the median performer"--
In soccer, a sport I am very familiar with on the playing side at a reasonably high level, this is not true. The median professional enjoys training and playing far less than the median spectator and median player of lesser quality would expect.
The common refrain, "If I had that opportunity, I would train like crazy," "I cannot understand how people can make that kind of money and live the dream of being a professional player and yet..." clashes with the reality of young people, like most top soccer players, who want to party, not train as much, and live a life of equal wealth but fewer obligations.
It is funny that we take such nonsense seriously when the inventor of radio and the brilliant people who built the telecommunications system on top of it said: "try this thing, you can call your mother who lives in Australia from the United States".
No, "the waves that can be used are not the eternal waves," they built a miracle and made people use it.
Suit yourself. I personally find it quite wise and generally applicable, and was able to intuit the exact response I was hoping for despite never having completed a read-through of the Tao. (In the first section, no less!)
I find the Tao has a knack for describing my atheist worldview in exactly the way the Bible doesn't. "Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him."
Doesn't it sound like the most self-absorbed footnote in the history of footnotes? "Attention, sailors. I just defined a new concept (--which is as new as the wheel, by the way--), which fundamentally changes how we see organizations, but it will be misused".
How people can take someone so self-indulgent and -absorbed seriously is beyond me. I am sure he is great at his job of nurturing start-ups, but what he had to say, he already said a long time ago.
In the end, you have fate within a certain variance. Generally speaking, it is better to know that you have 1 chance in 10 than 1 in I don't know how many chances, but still getting one outcome or the other is what we call “fate” or unexplainable/unpredictable/unforeseeable circumstances.
A probabilistic/statistical view of life that goes beyond the simpler but tremendously wrong dichotomous view is one of the best tools one can use to make life better for oneself and more readable in general.