Tuesday:
Obama: The Corn-based ethanol mandate is a wonderful example of government action to help fight global warming and ensure that farmers are able to afford high quality healthcare.
Wednesday:
Fox News decries the mandate as fascist communism and the death of America
Thursday:
Congressional Republicans unanimously vote to kill the mandate.
You can't attribute the drop in violent crime over 20 years so a single cherrypicked variable. Why do I call it cherrypicked? Because if you thought the probability of a household or individual owning a gun deterred you from robbing it then crime should have gone up since the number of households with guns has decreased. (I'd like the numbers on how many people are concealed carrying but I couldn't find them). How to explain the soaring sales? Existing owners buying multiple guns. They also suggest that more guns have led to fewer suicides when there's very good evidence to suggest the opposite.
Note I'm not sure I'd claim the drop in crime is correlated to the dropping gun ownership rates since I think the data is simply too messes. I'm also not sure that state level gun control has much impact on gun crime since the criminals that commit the bulk of crimes can easily bring in guns from out of state. But I think there's strong evidence that guns decrease safety.
I think you will find that, legally speaking, we DO have the right.
Having the ability and means to protect your household from others is a pretty fundamental thing, and its scary that so many people are prepared to trivialize it. As has been pointed out so many times, the premise that you can just cede all of your rights to the government and trust them to do the right thing has turned out to be wrong a million times over.
What, do you suppose the second amendment was written to allow people to hunt as a hobby?
You start out talking about protecting your household from other then jump to having the best tool for self-defence. But self-defence isn't necessarily the best way to protect your household, an armed 20 year old male gang member in Chicago is very well prepared to defend themselves, but he'll also have a horrifically high mortality rate. Within your household you've now introduced an elevated risk of suicide and accidents (could a depressed or reckless teen access a gun?).
Even if you assume that having a gun in your household made you more safe I believe it's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma, having a gun makes you more safe, but none of us having a gun makes everyone more safe.
The objective isn't to protect yourself, it's to be safe, and I believe everyone is safer is a society with far fewer guns.
And there we part company - unless you can identify some other mechanism for fat accumulation in fat cells, magically transforming non-insulin stimulating calories into insulin stimulating calories, or perhaps showing that at some calories > X, all additional calories promote insulin secretion and differential insulin resistance, I think your denial of the basic biochemistry is flat out wrong. We may disagree on the contributions of various factors, but can you really disagree with the biomechanics of differential insulin resistance?
I don't argue the biochemistry (hence the engine analogy), I argue that it isn't responsible for the obesity epidemic. You're not simply applying the biochemistry, you're claiming that our metabolic system essentially malfunctions in the presence of carbohydrates. I find that a very bold claim and the evidence isn't nearly strong enough to support that.
So this introduces a new geek/nerd design idea, should a manual system be designed first to simulate the eventual digital outcome. This provides a hands on, readily realisable system with established protocols that all operators and users can see and readily understand. It might take up a lot of space and take a lot of skilled design and hand crafting to achieve but it could be a more logical method of representing what needs to be achieved and provides manual backup for all automated elements.
Not sure this is feasible since the advantages of a manual system are very different from the advantages of a digital system. I think the better lesson is redundancy and modularity. When it comes to a can't fail website why not build two websites instead of one, mirror everything all the way down the chain. Even if they don't end up modular to the extent of swap in/out you've now given both teams a huge motivation to succeed since they both want to be the site that's used.
Have you actually looked at the cost/benefit of the plans in Oregon's ACA offerings? I did. The cheapest bronze plan (and the ACA is supposed to benefit the poor right?) costs 119/mo. Sounds like a bargain right? But after considering the 5250.00 deductible, and the fact that it only covers 60% of costs after the deductible is met, you'd have to spend 198.00 a month in medical bills to break even on having insurance, vs paying out of pocket.
Maybe a silver or gold plan is better? Here's the "highest quality" silver plan according to Oregon's ACA website: 242.00/mo premiums, but it doesn't pay for itself unless you have at least 300.00/mo in health costs. Invariably the better the plan, the higher the break even point, and thus the worse the value. Of course its disguised with low copays and stuff. The only way these are worthwhile is if you have very high costs, month after month.
So what do you propose?
Up till now the only solution opponents would ever suggest involved high deductible emergency plans... until they suddenly discovered that the ACA plans have high deductible. Now high deductibles are suddenly a travesty.
Hey, maybe Obama should mandate that every plan on the exchanges should include a free gun. Then Republicans will come out in favour of gun control!
Thus sayeth the man who didn't even read the book:)
All the small to medium doses of Taubes have been been misleading, I don't see the benefit in investing in a large dose, particularly when it would entail a bunch of secondary research to figure out what was legit and what was misleading.
But you seemed to hold it in more esteem than the complicated differential insulin resistance hypothesis...or did I misinterpret you?
I think there's some people who are trying to lose weight where it would be worthwhile to point out "you ate a bag of chips before supper, a box of fried chicken for supper, then a bowl of ice cream after supper, that's a massive number of calories, of course you're not going to lose weight by eating chicken for lunch". I don't think there's a lot of people in that situation, but for some the reality of the basic math may be sufficient.
As for the differential insulin resistance hypothesis, it's not that I think it's not complicated enough or given insufficient weight, I think it's flat out wrong. There's lots of evidence against it, and the evidence for it is also consistent with other better supported theories.
[...]
I'll argue that at best, you can dither about the contribution differential insulin hypothesis has to the total explanation of obesity - you may say 49%, I may say 51%, but to consider it useless is to ignore the basic biochemistry of the kreb's cycle.
You need a good engine to speed, but a good engine isn't the cause of speeding.
Taubes presents a falsifiable hypothesis, and a thorough accounting for the history and literature since 1850. Moreover, he continually stresses the dangerous line that is trod by those pseudo-scientists who, in the name of their personal precautionary principle, take their passion and drive past reality regardless of confounding data.
One that was falsified long before he presented it. And it's a bit rich for Taubes to call the actual researchers embracing the actual data pseudo-scientists ignoring confounding data while he trots out his grand theory of obesity that ignores huge swathes of evidence.
You said that if the answer isn't "well, it's complicated", then it's wrong. Do you think calories in/calories out isn't simple enough to be wrong?
Surely you noticed that in the very next sentenced I explained why it was complicated and why it didn't serve as a useful explanation for obesity.
Isn't that direct support for the differential insulin hypothesis? Hunger is caused by the partitioning of calories into fat, rather than muscles (through the influence of insulin), and exercise only drives hunger further unless fat is released from fat cells (again, moderated by insulin).
Sure it supports the differential insulin hypothesis, it also supports the palatability hypotheses, and gut bacteria, and sleep schedules, and satiety, and lifestyle, etc.
But there's a lot of other evidence that contradicts the differential insulin hypothesis.
You haven't even read his book, but you think he has misled people?:) As for basing my understanding, Taubes does us a great favor by actually *citing* his sources, and driving back to the source materials he's reviewed, I've come to the considered conclusion that he's done more than a fair job of representing the facts. Yes, there are nits to pick here and there, where one might argue he didn't quite give leptin enough play, but frankly, your assertions that he has misled anyone are all hearsay until you actually read the book.
I've heard multiple interviews with him, articles by him, and excerpts from his book. Frankly I don't feel it's worthwhile to read his book as I already know he's mislead people, fought strawmen, and I've cited multiple instances and sources (including the one from my previous comment) that show he's guilty of misrepresenting facts. Considering the fact you've failed to acknowledge any of the multiple clear instances of misrepresentation he's committed I'm skeptical of your partiality in deciding that he is trustworthy.
Honestly I'm reluctant to read his book because I'm worried about the knowledge he'll put in my head. Some of the stuff I know he's misrepresenting, but there's going to be a ton of background science that when I'll read I'll have to put a big mental flag around "Sounds plausible BUT DO NOT TRUST". For instance if he writes something about glucagon how will I know if I'm reading about the actual glucagon or the mythical glucagon that's required to back up Taubes theory?
Now you're going to argue that science is simply the output of the process of peer review, rather than the scientific method?:)
And how is cherrypicking data to come to a foregone conclusion the scientific method? For instance whether or not saturated fat is bad it's hard to take Taubes' evaluation of the evidence seriously when he misrepresents interview subjects.
Getting back to your original contention, that somehow any simple explanation is obviously false, but "calories in/calories out" is a less false(?) explanation than "differential insulin resistance" for obesity, seems to be a bit of cherry picking on your part. At the very least, if you're going to be consistent, you should be staking the claim that calories in/calories out doesn't capture the complexity of the biochemistry involved, and that differential insulin resistance doesn't capture the complexity of the biochemistry involved. Instead, it seems you've architected a complex rationale to buttress your belief system that you're afraid of letting go.
I never said "calories in/calories out" was false at all (no one considers lego calories). What I said was it wasn't necessarily useful. This is because reducing calories in as a matter of simply eating less is thwarted by hunger, and increasing calories out through exercise is difficult and potentially hamstrung by your resting metabolic rate.
The "differential insulin resistance" theory of obesity on the other hand is definitely false for the 10-20% of metabolically healthy obese, and probably false for the other 80-90% since the evidence suggests the insulin resistance is a symptom of obesity, not a cause (as covered in some of the review papers I linked to earlier).
Does it scare you to think that the past 40+ years of dietary advice and "common wisdom" of the researchers involved in the proposition might have been completely misguided?
Doesn't it scare you to think that you're basing your understanding of dietary science almost solely on a book by a man who's been shown numerous times to mislead his readers?
Yes indeed, he did. I challenge you to name any other book that comes close to doing such a thorough examination of the history and literature on obesity research over the past 150 years.
Science isn't done through books, public outreach is done through books. Science is done through papers. The only book I can think of that might have had a legitimate scientific impact is The Selfish Gene (and few others in evolutionary biology though always done by evolutionary biologists).
The key difference is peer review. It's easy to get a book published, and also easy to convince a bunch of non-experts that you are an expert. They don't know the conflicting evidence you ignored, or whether you've misrepresented you gave them, and they're not going to seriously punish you for misleading them like researchers would punish a colleague. All they have is your word and if you're a good story teller they'll probably be convinced. At the end you've invested the time and effort to read a book, been given what looks like privileged knowledge, and now have a huge incentive to buy in.
If Taubes' work was legit he wouldn't just be writing books and blog posts, he'd be publishing papers in obesity journals. But he won't do that because while his theory and evidence looks good at a glance he knows it won't stand up to the rigour of critical examination by people with a deep understanding of the subject.
But that's not really what matters for obesity - it's fat accumulation. Not only does a calorie need to be digested, it has to be stored as fat.
Or it has to be consumed as energy or excreted. I'm not saying it's a hugely useful guide for weight loss (though it works for some) but I don't see why you're arguing the concept.
That's not true at all. Insulin resistance was inferred, not measured, and differential insulin resistance (the key factor with the insulin hypothesis of obesity) wasn't even considered.
This article noting the 10-20% of MHO's just popped up in my RSS feed in the time since I last posted. If you really want to get an answer from an expert try posting there (though don't expect a long exchange).
Of course not. He was just the first one to make the definitive survey of the literature and history and publish his investigation. The townspeople who thought the castle was the tavern they were just drinking at were too drunk to see straight:)
You never did read his book, did you?:) Borrow it from a library if you're worried about lining his pockets, but please, understand that Taubes isn't simply pointing at an old tavern and calling it a castle, he's showing that the emperor has no clothes.
Gary Taubes is not a researcher, he's a reporter who had an idea then, went cherry picking for evidence to support his idea, then wrote a really book about it, which he could do because he's a reporter and a very good writer.
He did NOT "make the definitive survey of the literature and history" books by reporters with no formal training in a field rarely produce high quality scientific work, that's not being elitist that just common sense in understanding the strength and weaknesses of people with different backgrounds. If you want actual reviews on insulin and obesity look here. I can't find one that addresses Taubes directly, most likely because it's a question they answer in undergrad and don't find it worthwhile to ask.
You've basically got two possible scenarios. 1) A science reporter heard about low-carb diets (which ARE supported in literature), got an idea about how they worked from his basic understanding of how insulin works, became convinced it was true, then went looking for evidence to prove it and write a compelling but mislead book. or 2) For decades thousands of fulltime researchers have got everything wrong and have been missing an answer so obvious that a reporter essentially proved it at a glance.
Note that Taubes' book is NOT an investigation because an investigation implies you're looking for the answer. When Taubes wrote his book he'd already decided on his insulin mechanism years ago. Taubes' book is a summarization of the evidence for his theories, which is fine, except I don't believe he started his investigation with an open mind.
Also note I've pointed out Taubes' history of attacking straw men, misrepresenting evidence, and ignoring hugely inconvenient pieces of data like Asia. These are not the qualities of someone looking for the truth and if you launch into a investigation with that kind of confirmation bias you'll almost certainly be wrong.
For fat accumulation, it only matters on the cellular level. If you put 1000 calories of undigestible plastic into your mouth, you may count it as a "calorie in" on the organism level, but it simply doesn't count for fat accumulation
Strawman, calories in/out has always referred to digestible calories. It's not always useful as diet advice but it is technically true and when studies actually look at weight loss it's always reflected in calories in/out.
And none of it was very compelling, primarily because differential insulin resistance was never directly measured in any of your citations. As I believe we both agreed, what's necessary is a definitive series of metabolic ward studies.
I don't believe I agreed that was required. There were multiple populations with carb, starch, and even sugar heavy diets who were all thin as well as a significant proportion of obese people with no insulin resistance. For a theory that purports to explain everything there's a lot of people for whom it explains nothing.
Certainly the Kreb's cycle is complicated. Certainly insulin is the dominant player in fat accumulation, but not the only one. Certainly people have unique differential insulin resistance. I'm not sure why you think the insulin hypothesis, given all of the complications it admits to, is too simple to be true.
At the most basic. Because it's an obvious answer, and if an entire field of research with thousands of research who study the those systems in great detail says "yes we looked at that decades ago and a thousand times since then and it's still not true" then I tend to believe them. It's not like Gary Taubes is some explorer who sailed a ship across the ocean, and told everyone he found a new island. He's some guy who walked into a town pointed at the old tavern and said "hey look! It's a castle!" and the townspeople said "no it's a tavern, we were just in there having drinks", and he said "no it's a castle! It's got rocks and everything!" And then he went off to write a guidebook on the castle.
Calories in vs. calories out isn't just accurate on the cellular level, it's Newton's first law. That doesn't necessarily make it helpful but it's certainly true.
And I showed you a ton of counter evidence against the insulin hypothesis last time. A buddy of mine gave me a useful piece of advice when it came to human biology. Whenever someone tells you they found an important mechanism ask them "does it govern X?". If they don't answer "well... it's complicated" then they're probably wrong.
OK, you're a "winner" in the health care insurance lottery, congratulations. But realize that the rest of us are the "losers" who are paying not just the cost of our health insurance, but part of yours, too.
Welcome to a civilized society.
Here's the deal, people in your country are going to get sick and need medical care and you have two options, 1) let them suffer and die or 2) treat them by taking dollars out of your pocket.
It doesn't matter how the dollars leave your pocket, taxes or higher insurance premiums, but you're gonna have to pay.
Thing is I expect the ACA will lead to you paying less in the long term since some of the people paying now will have been freeloading before. As a youth you'll pay more by being grouped with older people, but when you age you'll recoup that and more.
I'm not sure this is the case. My understanding is that a lot of the broken forms came from earlier in October and November when the site was still very broken. I think this was a mistake, the only excuse I can think of for leaving the site online in that state was they were hoping to speed up the development through live testing, but it lead to a lot of bad data getting into the system and those people getting used as guinea pigs.
But at this point the errors are largely fixed, I'm sure some still exist but it sounds like the site is pretty functional at this point.
Sorry DogDude, but you've barked up the wrong tree. Calories in, calories out is a gross simplification that glosses over the most important factors of biochemistry.
Fat accumulation is driven by insulin, and the specific insulin resistance of fat cells versus other cells. You may be one of the lucky folks who is particularly insulin sensitive, allowing you to eat whatever you want without fat accumulation. Bully for you. On the other hand, anyone who is obese is suffering from a biochemical problem, not a mathematical calorie problem.
Put another way, the *type* of calorie matters. If you are obese, the only way to address it is to address the biochemistry, not the math.
You again:)
I couldn't help but comment that you countered his technically accurate gross simplification with an inaccurate gross simplification:)
I'd argue this, it doesn't seem cause heart disease as was suggested but it doesn't suppress appetite. Protein is the one that will reduce your appetite, but fat and carbs are pretty much neutral in their effects on appetite. The main danger with saturated fat is it makes food more palatable (mmmmmm.... bacon) which leads to us eating more of it.
I think they were probably speeding but I'm not sure it's obvious.
For one thing, 45 mph is REALLY REALLY fast.
Not by driving standards of course, but when you actually think of the forces involved it's quite a bit of speed.
From the other comments it sounds like the car was really hard to handle at a normal speed, possibly so hard that he would lose control rounding a corner (or maybe trying to dodge a squirrel).
As for the damage, I suspect that it's a lot less sturdy than ordinary vehicles. Between the fire and the barebones structure it might not have taken much to completely total it.
An actor that made his millions staring in films about illegal street racing dies in a high speed car crash. Poetic justice I suppose. I wonder how many impressionable youths or their innocent victims have died trying to emulate him.
So by your logic, the Grand Theft Auto video game series is a "murder simulator", as Jack Thompson put it?
I don't think anybody is going to play GTA, think murder is fun and cool, then go out and murder someone.
I don't think anybody is going to watch a gang movie, think murder is fun and cool, then go out and murder someone.
But I do think a lot of people are going to go out, watch a movie about how awesome and cool street racing is, then go out and drive at unsafe speeds (and some of them will die), some in actual street races.
I don't think it should be banned or censored, but it's sure as hell not a genre I'm going to endorse.
Ok, city at ground zero turns, and maybe one or two other cities where someone was bit and fled the city. Either way the whole city turns and then.... the zombies hop on a car and drive to the next city? You'd have a lot of zombie free cities watching what was happening and having a chance to prepare, so no apocalypse.
Even the Walking Dead scenario where everybody turns on death the virus won't infect the entire planet at once. No matter what happens you have cities, countries full of unzombified people preparing for the onslaught.
If you search for X, and get confronted with an adversarial opinion, the contrary information is being pushed at you which is threatening and probably responsible for the negative emotional reaction.
If you search for X, see where the adversarial opinions are, but don't actually have to see them when you want to, that's more a pull mechanism and you feel much less threatened as a result.
From what I can tell glancing at the paper their system is very much a pull mechanism which probably lowers the negative response.
Germans are recognized by humans and they don't have to attend US schools or pay US taxes
That's because Germans don't live in the US. If a German resided in the US, they would certainly be expected to do those things. These chimps will live in the US, so US laws would apply to them.
Germans were a bad example, corporations have legal personhood and they don't have to go to school, or pay taxes in a lot of cases but that's another debate entirely:)
But also relevant is people who are legally incompetent. Legally incompetent people don't have the ability to enter contracts or do any of the things you're worried about, they have a legal guardian who controls their affairs.
If the suit succeeded and they were declared legal persons I suspect the change would be the current owners of Chimpanzees would turn from owners into legal guardians. The main difference is instead of the Chimps being property to use as they wished (as long as they weren't abused) the responsibilities of that guardian would now be to ensure the welfare of the Chimpanzees.
I don't know the exact outcome they want
I'm thinking this point should be explored a little more deeply.
True but the fact it isn't really in the article doesn't mean they haven't thought it out. Sooner or later we're going to have to deal with animal welfare in a serious way, I find it really hard to believe that future generations won't look back at our current farming practices with extreme disapproval. As for our treatment of cognitively advanced animals like primates, elephants, dolphins, and possibly pigs, I suspect they'll also look down on that with strong disapproval.
I don't know the exact outcome they want but I'm pretty sure they're not trying to claim Chimps should be treated like ordinary humans. And even if they were that doesn't lead to your examples, Germans are recognized by humans and they don't have to attend US schools or pay US taxes, but that still doesn't mean you're allowed to own one.
I think the claim is that chimps are sentient beings who are worthy of personhood. And the implication of that is they have the right to control their lives and they can't be owned. When you consider that a chimp might have self awareness comparable to a human the idea that it could be kept in a cage its whole life or have its children taken away and sold is troubling.
Slashdot Mirror
Tuesday:
Obama: The Corn-based ethanol mandate is a wonderful example of government action to help fight global warming and ensure that farmers are able to afford high quality healthcare.
Wednesday:
Fox News decries the mandate as fascist communism and the death of America
Thursday:
Congressional Republicans unanimously vote to kill the mandate.
You can't attribute the drop in violent crime over 20 years so a single cherrypicked variable. Why do I call it cherrypicked? Because if you thought the probability of a household or individual owning a gun deterred you from robbing it then crime should have gone up since the number of households with guns has decreased. (I'd like the numbers on how many people are concealed carrying but I couldn't find them). How to explain the soaring sales? Existing owners buying multiple guns. They also suggest that more guns have led to fewer suicides when there's very good evidence to suggest the opposite.
Note I'm not sure I'd claim the drop in crime is correlated to the dropping gun ownership rates since I think the data is simply too messes. I'm also not sure that state level gun control has much impact on gun crime since the criminals that commit the bulk of crimes can easily bring in guns from out of state. But I think there's strong evidence that guns decrease safety.
I think you will find that, legally speaking, we DO have the right.
Having the ability and means to protect your household from others is a pretty fundamental thing, and its scary that so many people are prepared to trivialize it. As has been pointed out so many times, the premise that you can just cede all of your rights to the government and trust them to do the right thing has turned out to be wrong a million times over.
What, do you suppose the second amendment was written to allow people to hunt as a hobby?
You start out talking about protecting your household from other then jump to having the best tool for self-defence. But self-defence isn't necessarily the best way to protect your household, an armed 20 year old male gang member in Chicago is very well prepared to defend themselves, but he'll also have a horrifically high mortality rate. Within your household you've now introduced an elevated risk of suicide and accidents (could a depressed or reckless teen access a gun?).
Even if you assume that having a gun in your household made you more safe I believe it's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma, having a gun makes you more safe, but none of us having a gun makes everyone more safe.
The objective isn't to protect yourself, it's to be safe, and I believe everyone is safer is a society with far fewer guns.
And there we part company - unless you can identify some other mechanism for fat accumulation in fat cells, magically transforming non-insulin stimulating calories into insulin stimulating calories, or perhaps showing that at some calories > X, all additional calories promote insulin secretion and differential insulin resistance, I think your denial of the basic biochemistry is flat out wrong. We may disagree on the contributions of various factors, but can you really disagree with the biomechanics of differential insulin resistance?
I don't argue the biochemistry (hence the engine analogy), I argue that it isn't responsible for the obesity epidemic. You're not simply applying the biochemistry, you're claiming that our metabolic system essentially malfunctions in the presence of carbohydrates. I find that a very bold claim and the evidence isn't nearly strong enough to support that.
So this introduces a new geek/nerd design idea, should a manual system be designed first to simulate the eventual digital outcome. This provides a hands on, readily realisable system with established protocols that all operators and users can see and readily understand. It might take up a lot of space and take a lot of skilled design and hand crafting to achieve but it could be a more logical method of representing what needs to be achieved and provides manual backup for all automated elements.
Not sure this is feasible since the advantages of a manual system are very different from the advantages of a digital system. I think the better lesson is redundancy and modularity. When it comes to a can't fail website why not build two websites instead of one, mirror everything all the way down the chain. Even if they don't end up modular to the extent of swap in/out you've now given both teams a huge motivation to succeed since they both want to be the site that's used.
Have you actually looked at the cost/benefit of the plans in Oregon's ACA offerings? I did. The cheapest bronze plan (and the ACA is supposed to benefit the poor right?) costs 119/mo. Sounds like a bargain right? But after considering the 5250.00 deductible, and the fact that it only covers 60% of costs after the deductible is met, you'd have to spend 198.00 a month in medical bills to break even on having insurance, vs paying out of pocket.
Maybe a silver or gold plan is better? Here's the "highest quality" silver plan according to Oregon's ACA website: 242.00/mo premiums, but it doesn't pay for itself unless you have at least 300.00/mo in health costs. Invariably the better the plan, the higher the break even point, and thus the worse the value. Of course its disguised with low copays and stuff. The only way these are worthwhile is if you have very high costs, month after month.
So what do you propose?
Up till now the only solution opponents would ever suggest involved high deductible emergency plans... until they suddenly discovered that the ACA plans have high deductible. Now high deductibles are suddenly a travesty.
Hey, maybe Obama should mandate that every plan on the exchanges should include a free gun. Then Republicans will come out in favour of gun control!
Thus sayeth the man who didn't even read the book :)
All the small to medium doses of Taubes have been been misleading, I don't see the benefit in investing in a large dose, particularly when it would entail a bunch of secondary research to figure out what was legit and what was misleading.
But you seemed to hold it in more esteem than the complicated differential insulin resistance hypothesis...or did I misinterpret you?
I think there's some people who are trying to lose weight where it would be worthwhile to point out "you ate a bag of chips before supper, a box of fried chicken for supper, then a bowl of ice cream after supper, that's a massive number of calories, of course you're not going to lose weight by eating chicken for lunch". I don't think there's a lot of people in that situation, but for some the reality of the basic math may be sufficient.
As for the differential insulin resistance hypothesis, it's not that I think it's not complicated enough or given insufficient weight, I think it's flat out wrong. There's lots of evidence against it, and the evidence for it is also consistent with other better supported theories.
[...]
I'll argue that at best, you can dither about the contribution differential insulin hypothesis has to the total explanation of obesity - you may say 49%, I may say 51%, but to consider it useless is to ignore the basic biochemistry of the kreb's cycle.
You need a good engine to speed, but a good engine isn't the cause of speeding.
Taubes presents a falsifiable hypothesis, and a thorough accounting for the history and literature since 1850. Moreover, he continually stresses the dangerous line that is trod by those pseudo-scientists who, in the name of their personal precautionary principle, take their passion and drive past reality regardless of confounding data.
One that was falsified long before he presented it. And it's a bit rich for Taubes to call the actual researchers embracing the actual data pseudo-scientists ignoring confounding data while he trots out his grand theory of obesity that ignores huge swathes of evidence.
You said that if the answer isn't "well, it's complicated", then it's wrong. Do you think calories in/calories out isn't simple enough to be wrong?
Surely you noticed that in the very next sentenced I explained why it was complicated and why it didn't serve as a useful explanation for obesity.
Isn't that direct support for the differential insulin hypothesis? Hunger is caused by the partitioning of calories into fat, rather than muscles (through the influence of insulin), and exercise only drives hunger further unless fat is released from fat cells (again, moderated by insulin).
Sure it supports the differential insulin hypothesis, it also supports the palatability hypotheses, and gut bacteria, and sleep schedules, and satiety, and lifestyle, etc.
But there's a lot of other evidence that contradicts the differential insulin hypothesis.
You haven't even read his book, but you think he has misled people? :) As for basing my understanding, Taubes does us a great favor by actually *citing* his sources, and driving back to the source materials he's reviewed, I've come to the considered conclusion that he's done more than a fair job of representing the facts. Yes, there are nits to pick here and there, where one might argue he didn't quite give leptin enough play, but frankly, your assertions that he has misled anyone are all hearsay until you actually read the book.
I've heard multiple interviews with him, articles by him, and excerpts from his book. Frankly I don't feel it's worthwhile to read his book as I already know he's mislead people, fought strawmen, and I've cited multiple instances and sources (including the one from my previous comment) that show he's guilty of misrepresenting facts. Considering the fact you've failed to acknowledge any of the multiple clear instances of misrepresentation he's committed I'm skeptical of your partiality in deciding that he is trustworthy.
Honestly I'm reluctant to read his book because I'm worried about the knowledge he'll put in my head. Some of the stuff I know he's misrepresenting, but there's going to be a ton of background science that when I'll read I'll have to put a big mental flag around "Sounds plausible BUT DO NOT TRUST". For instance if he writes something about glucagon how will I know if I'm reading about the actual glucagon or the mythical glucagon that's required to back up Taubes theory?
Now you're going to argue that science is simply the output of the process of peer review, rather than the scientific method? :)
And how is cherrypicking data to come to a foregone conclusion the scientific method? For instance whether or not saturated fat is bad it's hard to take Taubes' evaluation of the evidence seriously when he misrepresents interview subjects.
Getting back to your original contention, that somehow any simple explanation is obviously false, but "calories in/calories out" is a less false(?) explanation than "differential insulin resistance" for obesity, seems to be a bit of cherry picking on your part. At the very least, if you're going to be consistent, you should be staking the claim that calories in/calories out doesn't capture the complexity of the biochemistry involved, and that differential insulin resistance doesn't capture the complexity of the biochemistry involved. Instead, it seems you've architected a complex rationale to buttress your belief system that you're afraid of letting go.
I never said "calories in/calories out" was false at all (no one considers lego calories). What I said was it wasn't necessarily useful. This is because reducing calories in as a matter of simply eating less is thwarted by hunger, and increasing calories out through exercise is difficult and potentially hamstrung by your resting metabolic rate.
The "differential insulin resistance" theory of obesity on the other hand is definitely false for the 10-20% of metabolically healthy obese, and probably false for the other 80-90% since the evidence suggests the insulin resistance is a symptom of obesity, not a cause (as covered in some of the review papers I linked to earlier).
Does it scare you to think that the past 40+ years of dietary advice and "common wisdom" of the researchers involved in the proposition might have been completely misguided?
Doesn't it scare you to think that you're basing your understanding of dietary science almost solely on a book by a man who's been shown numerous times to mislead his readers?
Yes indeed, he did. I challenge you to name any other book that comes close to doing such a thorough examination of the history and literature on obesity research over the past 150 years.
Science isn't done through books, public outreach is done through books. Science is done through papers. The only book I can think of that might have had a legitimate scientific impact is The Selfish Gene (and few others in evolutionary biology though always done by evolutionary biologists).
The key difference is peer review. It's easy to get a book published, and also easy to convince a bunch of non-experts that you are an expert. They don't know the conflicting evidence you ignored, or whether you've misrepresented you gave them, and they're not going to seriously punish you for misleading them like researchers would punish a colleague. All they have is your word and if you're a good story teller they'll probably be convinced. At the end you've invested the time and effort to read a book, been given what looks like privileged knowledge, and now have a huge incentive to buy in.
If Taubes' work was legit he wouldn't just be writing books and blog posts, he'd be publishing papers in obesity journals. But he won't do that because while his theory and evidence looks good at a glance he knows it won't stand up to the rigour of critical examination by people with a deep understanding of the subject.
But that's not really what matters for obesity - it's fat accumulation. Not only does a calorie need to be digested, it has to be stored as fat.
Or it has to be consumed as energy or excreted. I'm not saying it's a hugely useful guide for weight loss (though it works for some) but I don't see why you're arguing the concept.
That's not true at all. Insulin resistance was inferred, not measured, and differential insulin resistance (the key factor with the insulin hypothesis of obesity) wasn't even considered.
This article noting the 10-20% of MHO's just popped up in my RSS feed in the time since I last posted. If you really want to get an answer from an expert try posting there (though don't expect a long exchange).
Of course not. He was just the first one to make the definitive survey of the literature and history and publish his investigation. The townspeople who thought the castle was the tavern they were just drinking at were too drunk to see straight :)
You never did read his book, did you? :) Borrow it from a library if you're worried about lining his pockets, but please, understand that Taubes isn't simply pointing at an old tavern and calling it a castle, he's showing that the emperor has no clothes.
Gary Taubes is not a researcher, he's a reporter who had an idea then, went cherry picking for evidence to support his idea, then wrote a really book about it, which he could do because he's a reporter and a very good writer.
He did NOT "make the definitive survey of the literature and history" books by reporters with no formal training in a field rarely produce high quality scientific work, that's not being elitist that just common sense in understanding the strength and weaknesses of people with different backgrounds. If you want actual reviews on insulin and obesity look here. I can't find one that addresses Taubes directly, most likely because it's a question they answer in undergrad and don't find it worthwhile to ask.
You've basically got two possible scenarios. 1) A science reporter heard about low-carb diets (which ARE supported in literature), got an idea about how they worked from his basic understanding of how insulin works, became convinced it was true, then went looking for evidence to prove it and write a compelling but mislead book.
or 2) For decades thousands of fulltime researchers have got everything wrong and have been missing an answer so obvious that a reporter essentially proved it at a glance.
Note that Taubes' book is NOT an investigation because an investigation implies you're looking for the answer. When Taubes wrote his book he'd already decided on his insulin mechanism years ago. Taubes' book is a summarization of the evidence for his theories, which is fine, except I don't believe he started his investigation with an open mind.
Also note I've pointed out Taubes' history of attacking straw men, misrepresenting evidence, and ignoring hugely inconvenient pieces of data like Asia. These are not the qualities of someone looking for the truth and if you launch into a investigation with that kind of confirmation bias you'll almost certainly be wrong.
For fat accumulation, it only matters on the cellular level. If you put 1000 calories of undigestible plastic into your mouth, you may count it as a "calorie in" on the organism level, but it simply doesn't count for fat accumulation
Strawman, calories in/out has always referred to digestible calories. It's not always useful as diet advice but it is technically true and when studies actually look at weight loss it's always reflected in calories in/out.
And none of it was very compelling, primarily because differential insulin resistance was never directly measured in any of your citations. As I believe we both agreed, what's necessary is a definitive series of metabolic ward studies.
I don't believe I agreed that was required. There were multiple populations with carb, starch, and even sugar heavy diets who were all thin as well as a significant proportion of obese people with no insulin resistance. For a theory that purports to explain everything there's a lot of people for whom it explains nothing.
Certainly the Kreb's cycle is complicated. Certainly insulin is the dominant player in fat accumulation, but not the only one. Certainly people have unique differential insulin resistance. I'm not sure why you think the insulin hypothesis, given all of the complications it admits to, is too simple to be true.
At the most basic. Because it's an obvious answer, and if an entire field of research with thousands of research who study the those systems in great detail says "yes we looked at that decades ago and a thousand times since then and it's still not true" then I tend to believe them. It's not like Gary Taubes is some explorer who sailed a ship across the ocean, and told everyone he found a new island. He's some guy who walked into a town pointed at the old tavern and said "hey look! It's a castle!" and the townspeople said "no it's a tavern, we were just in there having drinks", and he said "no it's a castle! It's got rocks and everything!" And then he went off to write a guidebook on the castle.
Calories in vs. calories out isn't just accurate on the cellular level, it's Newton's first law. That doesn't necessarily make it helpful but it's certainly true.
And I showed you a ton of counter evidence against the insulin hypothesis last time. A buddy of mine gave me a useful piece of advice when it came to human biology. Whenever someone tells you they found an important mechanism ask them "does it govern X?". If they don't answer "well... it's complicated" then they're probably wrong.
OK, you're a "winner" in the health care insurance lottery, congratulations. But realize that the rest of us are the "losers" who are paying not just the cost of our health insurance, but part of yours, too.
Welcome to a civilized society.
Here's the deal, people in your country are going to get sick and need medical care and you have two options, 1) let them suffer and die or 2) treat them by taking dollars out of your pocket.
It doesn't matter how the dollars leave your pocket, taxes or higher insurance premiums, but you're gonna have to pay.
Thing is I expect the ACA will lead to you paying less in the long term since some of the people paying now will have been freeloading before. As a youth you'll pay more by being grouped with older people, but when you age you'll recoup that and more.
I'm not sure this is the case. My understanding is that a lot of the broken forms came from earlier in October and November when the site was still very broken. I think this was a mistake, the only excuse I can think of for leaving the site online in that state was they were hoping to speed up the development through live testing, but it lead to a lot of bad data getting into the system and those people getting used as guinea pigs.
But at this point the errors are largely fixed, I'm sure some still exist but it sounds like the site is pretty functional at this point.
Sorry DogDude, but you've barked up the wrong tree. Calories in, calories out is a gross simplification that glosses over the most important factors of biochemistry.
Fat accumulation is driven by insulin, and the specific insulin resistance of fat cells versus other cells. You may be one of the lucky folks who is particularly insulin sensitive, allowing you to eat whatever you want without fat accumulation. Bully for you. On the other hand, anyone who is obese is suffering from a biochemical problem, not a mathematical calorie problem.
Put another way, the *type* of calorie matters. If you are obese, the only way to address it is to address the biochemistry, not the math.
You again :)
I couldn't help but comment that you countered his technically accurate gross simplification with an inaccurate gross simplification :)
Cow's are herbivores who are fed the cheapest food possible, I'm not sure that's a relevant guide for humans.
Though if you want to push it what do cows ingest when they experience their most drastic weight gain? Fatty whole cow's milk.
I'd argue this, it doesn't seem cause heart disease as was suggested but it doesn't suppress appetite. Protein is the one that will reduce your appetite, but fat and carbs are pretty much neutral in their effects on appetite. The main danger with saturated fat is it makes food more palatable (mmmmmm.... bacon) which leads to us eating more of it.
I think they were probably speeding but I'm not sure it's obvious.
For one thing, 45 mph is REALLY REALLY fast.
Not by driving standards of course, but when you actually think of the forces involved it's quite a bit of speed.
From the other comments it sounds like the car was really hard to handle at a normal speed, possibly so hard that he would lose control rounding a corner (or maybe trying to dodge a squirrel).
As for the damage, I suspect that it's a lot less sturdy than ordinary vehicles. Between the fire and the barebones structure it might not have taken much to completely total it.
An actor that made his millions staring in films about illegal street racing dies in a high speed car crash. Poetic justice I suppose. I wonder how many impressionable youths or their innocent victims have died trying to emulate him.
So by your logic, the Grand Theft Auto video game series is a "murder simulator", as Jack Thompson put it?
I don't think anybody is going to play GTA, think murder is fun and cool, then go out and murder someone.
I don't think anybody is going to watch a gang movie, think murder is fun and cool, then go out and murder someone.
But I do think a lot of people are going to go out, watch a movie about how awesome and cool street racing is, then go out and drive at unsafe speeds (and some of them will die), some in actual street races.
I don't think it should be banned or censored, but it's sure as hell not a genre I'm going to endorse.
There's no start of the epidemic.
Assume the traditional, you get bit you turn.
Ok, city at ground zero turns, and maybe one or two other cities where someone was bit and fled the city. Either way the whole city turns and then.... the zombies hop on a car and drive to the next city? You'd have a lot of zombie free cities watching what was happening and having a chance to prepare, so no apocalypse.
Even the Walking Dead scenario where everybody turns on death the virus won't infect the entire planet at once. No matter what happens you have cities, countries full of unzombified people preparing for the onslaught.
And elephants are very small if you only look at one of their hairs.
Maybe Fox News is fair if you take out all the commentary. But if you take out the commentary it's not really Fox News.
If you search for X, and get confronted with an adversarial opinion, the contrary information is being pushed at you which is threatening and probably responsible for the negative emotional reaction.
If you search for X, see where the adversarial opinions are, but don't actually have to see them when you want to, that's more a pull mechanism and you feel much less threatened as a result.
From what I can tell glancing at the paper their system is very much a pull mechanism which probably lowers the negative response.
Germans are recognized by humans and they don't have to attend US schools or pay US taxes
That's because Germans don't live in the US. If a German resided in the US, they would certainly be expected to do those things. These chimps will live in the US, so US laws would apply to them.
Germans were a bad example, corporations have legal personhood and they don't have to go to school, or pay taxes in a lot of cases but that's another debate entirely :)
But also relevant is people who are legally incompetent. Legally incompetent people don't have the ability to enter contracts or do any of the things you're worried about, they have a legal guardian who controls their affairs.
If the suit succeeded and they were declared legal persons I suspect the change would be the current owners of Chimpanzees would turn from owners into legal guardians. The main difference is instead of the Chimps being property to use as they wished (as long as they weren't abused) the responsibilities of that guardian would now be to ensure the welfare of the Chimpanzees.
I don't know the exact outcome they want
I'm thinking this point should be explored a little more deeply.
True but the fact it isn't really in the article doesn't mean they haven't thought it out. Sooner or later we're going to have to deal with animal welfare in a serious way, I find it really hard to believe that future generations won't look back at our current farming practices with extreme disapproval. As for our treatment of cognitively advanced animals like primates, elephants, dolphins, and possibly pigs, I suspect they'll also look down on that with strong disapproval.
I don't know the exact outcome they want but I'm pretty sure they're not trying to claim Chimps should be treated like ordinary humans. And even if they were that doesn't lead to your examples, Germans are recognized by humans and they don't have to attend US schools or pay US taxes, but that still doesn't mean you're allowed to own one.
I think the claim is that chimps are sentient beings who are worthy of personhood. And the implication of that is they have the right to control their lives and they can't be owned. When you consider that a chimp might have self awareness comparable to a human the idea that it could be kept in a cage its whole life or have its children taken away and sold is troubling.