ControlsFreak
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User ID: 1422
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
What is the "something other than X"?
What I perhaps was not clear on was that I was wanting you to describe what you think X is. What is the foil that has been shown to be wrong, such that "something else" must be going on? What is that something that is separate from the something else? Note that this question goes all the way back to here, where presumably, the X that is wrong was already presented in the conversation.
I'd also note that you did not mention anything about how to reconcile your views with what SMTM has written about CICO. Is this not one of the "folk theories" that he demonstrated was wrong?
Though, to go ahead and discuss the question of homeostasis, consider historical examples of obese people, some going all the way back to antiquity (often rich folks). Did they lack homeostasis? Were those people exposed to this "something else" in their diet or environment, disrupting their homeostasis?
(FYI, SMTM says it's not sugar, so you might want to update. That's one of the "folk theories" that he's proven wrong, too.)
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Fair enough that that's one possible interpretation. Allow me to forward an alternate explanation - I care about predictive value. What would be evidence to distinguish between the two possible interpretations? Besides, of course, my internal subjective experience upon reading the article? (FYI, it was along the lines of, "Heh. That's funny. They really do just all play the same games. Oh yeah, I remember a prediction about this that I should follow up on!")
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
What do you mean when you say, "There's something else going on"? What is the "something other than X"? Please speak plainly and directly about what you are meaning to say. Also, please take into account SMTM's writing on CICO in your description, as that appears to be related to one of the "folk theories" that you said were wrong, according to his explanation.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Fair enough on SOL. What a shame. Anyone who can solve this problem will get all the kudos I have to give.
No one cares
I care. I like basic consistency.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
This seems extremely plausible to me as a matter of Constitutional law. Assuming it survives appeals, is there any form of home distilling that is "worth it"?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I would like to not scream bloody murder.
Ten months ago, a prediction was made here:
It's very clear to me that if Trump's opponents did the things that Trump himself has done you would be screaming bloody murder. If Biden was on stage getting crowds to chant "lock him up"? If Democrats put together alternate slates of electors in states they lost and tried to get Harris to declare them the real ones? ...
Whelp, here we are. Frankly, I still don't care a whit about his crowds chanting stuff. I do, indeed, care about the actual authorities bringing actual shoestring cases based on sketchy interpretations of laws (where the FEC has disagreed with said sketchy interpretation, but we don't have a circuit court ruling saying that they're wrong, and where there's an extremely strong First Amendment defense1).
Similarly, I might observe that the "good conscience" clause talk reminds me of the "regularly given" clause talk, where in the latter case it remained talk and the former case is yet to be seen... but I certainly wouldn't scream bloody murder. I'd say that it's probably a somewhat sketch interpretation of the rules in both cases, probably not great, but it's at least sort of in line with the general types of somewhat ridiculous procedural rules lawyering I expect from modern political parties.
Would anyone else like to scream bloody murder?
1 - I also just recently listened to a Short Circuit Podcast where they talked about a completely different campaign finance case. The legal expert on the topic very directly and blithely mentioned that SCOTUS has only allowed these laws to be justified by quid pro quo concerns (exchanging money for official acts), exactly as I have been saying in the Trump case, where it makes no sense to think that Trump entered into a quid pro quo with Trump to exchange Trump's money to Trump for Trump's official acts, just because he used an intermediary to make the payment. He didn't mention the application to Trump's case, but it's yet another example of just how common and boring it is to know this for subject matter experts, how completely true and uncontroversial it is in general, and how the only thing you need to do is an extremely simple application of this boring principle to Trump's case.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
A Culture War Truce Opportunity
...or maybe more of a prisoner swap? Or maybe just "demonstration of commitment to principle". Whatever. One thing I've often done in conversations with partisans who want to use some interesting interpretation of law in order to go after a politician they don't like is to really press on their interpretation and confirm that they're willing to apply it in all those ways against politicians they do like. Honestly, most of the time, people just haven't thought in a very nuanced way about interpretation of the law or how politicians/governments typically operate.
So this week, the DC Circuit ruled on a campaign finance case. No, this is not some forward-looking case about behavior that could affect the next election. No, it's not a case about the last Presidential or Congressional election, so there's no possibility for silly partisans to say that any current elected officials are illegitimate or whatever. It's a blast from the past, feeling almost as nostalgic to me as my recent comment on Trump v. US and the Mueller investigation.
In 2016, a political action committee called Correct The Record set out to, well, correct what they believed to be deficiencies in the internet record concerning Hillary Clinton. This was not a years-long effort to manipulate Wikipedia; that post was a couple days ago. But it's kinda like that in some way. Politics is on the spectrum of information war, as was discussed. Whether you believe it's gross 'malinformation' designed to skew perceptions or think that it's just fundamentally good people trying to bring some aspect of truth to light most likely just depends on your relative political valence. In any event, I recall the reddit jokes about Correct The Record back from those days, so again, a bit of nostalgia, but nothing too surprising at first.
It turns out that Correct The Record openly coordinated their activities with the Clinton campaign. This is normally a big no-no for a PAC, but they thought they could leverage an "internet exemption" from 2006, which
does not require an individual or political committee to estimate and report the marginal costs of blogging or social media posting in coordination with a campaign, but instead exempts unpaid “communications over the Internet” from the contribution limitations and disclosure requirements that otherwise apply to coordinated political advocacy.
And boy did they try to drive a truck through this exemption. They hired staff, hired round-the-clock fact checkers (I guess to troll reddit), conducted polls, produced lengthy research memos, professionally produced videos, and more. They apparently spent like $6M doing this, which is guess is 'marginal' for some applications, but it seems generally quite discontinuous with the spirit of the exemption. They argued that since all of their efforts would eventually, in some way, result as a post or blog or comment or something on the internet, any and all of that effort was simply an "input" to a marginal cost blog or social media post.
Some private citizens (yes yes, it's possible that they're a whatever-level partisan group, even though they claim to be nonpartisan; I didn't bother going to look them up, because it probably doesn't matter) complained about this to the FEC, because apparently, there is a formalized process for the FEC to take in and respond to such complaints. The FEC didn't care. So, they took it to court. Because apparently, you can do that. After some standing hiccups, the district court said that the FEC's interpretation is "contrary to law" and that this kind of PAC behavior in coordination with the campaign totally triggers the conversion from being an 'independent expenditure' to being a 'campaign contribution'. The DC Circuit now agrees.
What is the opportunity here? Well, what are the chances that someone who worked for Correct The Record or the Hillary For America campaign worked from New York or some other state that has various business records laws? What are the chances that someone, anyone, involved in this scheme created a business record somewhere that referred to money spent on this scheme as an "input" to writing a blog in some way that is not an accurate representation of the DC Circuit's interpretation of the law. The probability has got to be high. So, the opportunity is clear - bring the world a scalp. I don't think we need 34 felony charges; even just one will suffice. Bring one single felony charge against anyone involved in this, using some state-level crime like business records fraud, built on an interpretation of federal campaign finance law. At least in this case, you'll have circuit court precedent saying that the underlying action was not compliant with the law. At least in this case, there does not seem to be some additional First Amendment defense possible. It's a pretty clear cut opportunity. If you think it's legitimate to prosecute such felonies generally, then it is highly highly probable that you can bring at least one, and it would demonstrate your commitment to that belief of legitimacy generally.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I sympathize. I'd love to help, but I can't quite tell from your comment the reason why you can't use that eating plan, so I can't really do much to help point you in the right direction to create a new one that will work for your new situation. I'm not asking you to disclose your medical issue, and I really don't need to know in any way. But you'll likely need to find someone who you can be close enough to to talk about it with and work out a game plan for the future that fits your individual scenario.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
You're asking me to explain the obesity epidemic.
No, I'm not. It would be simple enough for you to just propose an experiment to show that CICO doesn't work. You know, to demonstrate that "something else is going on". For example, you could propose an experiment where subjects are fed maintenance level calories, but gain weight. Or where they're fed deficit level calories, but maintain weight. You could show something specific about a weird nonlinearity that actually contributes to a claim that "something else must be going on". Anything. Literally anything at all that contributes to that. In any way whatsoever.
But I don't think you want to even try to demonstrate that "something else must be going on". You simply want to say that many people don't choose to do a thing, even given extremely mild informational content. That has never been contested, nor does it imply that "something else must be going on".
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
People didn't just suddenly lose willpower. Nor did they suddenly lose the knowledge that diet and exercise were important.
This is a bad strawman, and you should feel bad.
You might not agree with SlimeMoldTimeMold, but they do a good job of explaining why all the various folk theories are wrong.
SMTM acknowledges that calories have something to do with it. He just thinks there's some magic 'nonlinearity' somewhere in the middle. Fine, whatever. Give me a model. Tell me how we can design an experiment to confirm or falsify your belief. Imagine that we have enough resources to run a lab-controlled study with a double digit number of subjects for a year or two. What do you do?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I agree that there's a lot of magic wand thinking, but as I alluded to, I think this is aided by an absolutely abhorrent culture on the topic. You have the people trying to sell you something, so they're going to promise the moon. Then, when people give up, they turn to a different magic thinking (e.g., @jeroboem's "There's something else going on, IMO") and just imagine that it must be some magic chemical or something. Even when my wife agreed that we would track our calories and see how it went, she would repeatedly have times where her weekly windowed average weight wasn't visibly going down for like a single data point (maybe even two points) and would go off on "MAYBE IT'S NOT WORKING ANYMORE" with no real rational explanation of why it would suddenly stop working. Just some sort of unknown magic. Spoiler: it always kept working. After enough time and then seeing the summary data over a year or two, she said, "I knew, but I didn't know know." Now she "know knows". Before, there was always a gap, a gnawing hole, where magic could constantly sneak in and make her default to thinking that it's just too weird and complicated and that there's probably "something else going on".
Perhaps ozempic will actually be a magic wand for a lot of people. It seems genuinely useful for a lot of folks. I don't think I've seen any indication that ozempic magically causes people to exercise more, though, and exercise has significant bodily benefits beyond just caloric balance.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Very much stuff like this. Obviously, just saying, "Have you considered diet and exercise?" isn't going to accomplish anything, and many criticisms boil the entire category of "diet and exercise" into a version of just saying, "Have you considered diet and exercise?" That's pretty whack, and to use the analogy of alcohol mentioned elsewhere here, it would be about as useful as thinking that the only way to reduce alcoholism is to just say, "Have you considered drinking less alcohol?" Like, naw dawg, people need actionable ways to get there, and that unfortunately needs to be relatively individualized to different folks' lifestyle and preferences, which makes it tough.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I'm not sure if diet is an order of magnitude more important, so much as it is that it's a lot easier to be 2x off on your diet, producing catastrophic results, than it is to have disastrous results from being 2x off on exercise.
I mostly found it interesting that one of the specific claims for why "diet doesn't work", the specific mechanism mentioned, is insulin resistance, and that lo and behold, exercise pretty much directly fixes that (on top of the other benefits it has). It sort of makes all the arguments about diet, alone, feel like they're missing a huge component. I kinda knew that exercise was important and helpful, but I didn't know before how it very specifically should contribute to the culture war around diet. It was always a bit of an afterthought, an "Oh yeah, it would be nice to exercise, too, but it's more important to get your diet right," but perhaps it should be more prominent and not just sidelined in the discussion.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Great intuition. I don't do much with endurance sports, so I didn't have a great intuition for that number. His reference to a study or studies in the podcast was a little difficult to follow, and I didn't actually look it up. My first interpretation was that he mentioned two separate studies, one that was a six week intervention, where he spelled out that they had three fifteen minutes "bouts" on a stairmaster at 65% VO2Max. Then, I thought he referred to a different study and said "a single 45 minute bout", which I just tried to interpret as "in a different study, instead of doing three fifteen minutes bouts, we had them do one 45 minute one" (and I only mentioned what I thought was the latter study in my comment). But now I think that interpretation was wrong. I think I found the study, and I think it's just the one study (that is not to say that I have any knowledge of replication/failure or whether there he's a man of one study; just that what I thought was two separate studies is just one study). It looks like in that same paper, they reported data after one session (that is, one day of doing three fifteen minute bouts) as well as data after the full six week intervention. So, I think he just misspoke to use the term "bout" ambiguously. From the paper, it looks like they had a five minute rest between each fifteen minute set. Does this seem more reasonable to you?
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Your alternate framing seems to come out of nowhere and appears unrelated to my comment.
my body's set weight
This is a theoretically-fraught concept that is not (and perhaps can not be) supported by the data.
Getting close to a year ago, I talked about GOLO, a weight loss program that I heard about from an ad in a podcast I was listening to. I found it oddly satisfying, because they were trying to launder the standard science on CICO through explicit anti-CICO messaging; truly a beauty of capitalism. Their biggest tag line for what they think is going wrong with a lot of people was insulin resistance. Whelp, while I was at the gym this morning, what popped up in my podcast list? A two hour long Peter Attia podcast specifically on insulin resistance with MD/PhD Gerald Shulman, an academic researcher on the topic.
They talked about the prevalence of insulin resistance in the population. No, it is not obscure. Obesity basically causes it directly, and yeah, the population obesity numbers are high. They also talked about diabetes, both Type I and Type II, as well as some studies on healthy, lean young adults who had two parents with Type II diabetes and who displayed insulin resistance (i.e., at high risk of developing Type II diabetes). But yeah, lots of people do have insulin resistance, so things like GOLO are at least capturing a slice of reality, even though it's clear that they're not really specially targeting insulin resistant individuals. They're not testing people for insulin resistance and then tailoring their program accordingly; they're again just laundering the standard advice and giving it to all comers, whether they're actually insulin resistant or not.
They talked a lot about molecular mechanisms, evolutionary explanations, etc., in great gory detail, far more than I could do justice trying to reproduce here. I'll hopefully suffice by describing one concept; they distinguish between insulin resistance in muscle versus what happens in the liver down the chain (which can cause fatty liver disease, which is now working its way up to being one of the leading causes of death or other conditions that cause death). Apparently, many folks develop muscle insulin resistance, so glucose is not able to be deposited in muscle as glycogen, so it ends up in the liver, and all sorts of problems follow.
What can we do about this? "Exercise reverses this muscle insulin resistance ... exercise in muscle actually will prevent fatty liver and liver insulin resistance". [EDIT: They talked about a couple different studies, but Upon further review in the comments below; I think this part was just one study. They did talk about other studies generally, but I had interpreted this section as referring to two different studies, but now I think it refers to just one] remember that population of otherwise healthy, lean, young adults with parents who have Type II diabetes? They had them do a single bout session of exercise (45min 3 sets of 15min at 65% VO2Max), and that was sufficient to open up the necessary translocation pathway, resulting in "more glucose deposition as muscle glycogen and significant reductions in [something too technical for me to try to explain in this comment] and significant reductions in liver triglyceride."
What about beyond that population, thinking about just other obese people? "What can we do about this? If we can get our patients to lose weight; this of course is the best. Diet and exercise of course is the best thing, and that's the first thing I tell my patients. We really drill into them how we can really fix everything that's wrong with them through this process. [Emphasis added; italics felt true to the audio; bold is my own focus]"
We know a lot about how this works. We know how to fix it. Exercise still is the single most effective medical intervention we know of. If exercise were a pill being prescribed, it would be hands down the most effective thing for all-cause mortality. Paired with diet, it's basically a superpower against a vast swath of modern maladies. Doctors know this, they know how it works and why, they've known this for a long time now, and they'll say it in public. Some, like this guy, will even say it so bluntly to patients. But many doctors know that patients don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear the science; they don't want to "follow the science" (i.e., actually do the thing). He also mentions that even though they try to drill this into patients, many of them still just don't do it. Patients get annoyed with doctors telling them the truth, and this results in a lot of doctors giving up and not even telling them anymore. Just avoid the topic. I had one obese friend tell me that she practically begged her doctor for advice with her weight, and he said, "You know, you're just getting older..."
You don't have to believe the GOLOs of the world. You don't have to believe the sign on the gym swearing that they'll help you lose 20lbs in 30 days. They're grifting, and they're helping to confuse many many people about how their bodies work. But the evidence is pretty solid that basically whatever the excuse is, in this case insulin resistance, the most well-documented and scientifically-supported solution is still diet and exercise.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Is it just me or does this "good conscience" clause talk really remind anyone else of the "regularly given" clause talk back in 2020? Of course, because the script writers for reality are so stinking good at their jobs, the partisan valence is somewhat switched.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
"ox goring is good, but now that my ox is gored I feel uncomfortable."
Same as it ever was. I started really noticing with the discourse around doxxing/hacking. I didn't completely get into it in my recent post about Assange, but that was a very solid undercurrent. Whenever there was a new hack, a new release, a new doxx, it seemed like no one was asking, "Is this type of hacking/releasing/doxxing okay or bad in general?" Instead, it was always, "Who was hacked/doxxed/had their business released? Are they 'good' or 'bad'? Then, I can decide whether this is sunlight being a disinfectant or a grave crime against the right to privacy and security." The flip-flopping was obvious going back to the Ashley Madison hack. "Serves those cheaters right," was met with, "...but there are good reasons why a regular person would want to use Ashley Madison," which was met with, "...and there were scary government email addresses in the hack, so screw those guys." Basically no one had any sort of consistency, right on down the line. The complete polar valence switch on Wikileaks when they hit the DNC was just too insanely high-profile for anyone to not notice.
Even today, I just fired up reddit this morning to be informed that "gay furry hackers" hit the Heritage Foundation, with claims of it having something to do with Project 2025. The vast vast vast majority of people will simply dutifully line up on their side of this one, as well. I'm sure this phenomenon has been going on for centuries before I was cognizant enough to see it, but damn if it isn't sad. Especially because the most common reaction to feeling shitty about your own ox being gored seems to be, "Well, now I'm going to go off intently trying to make them feel this shitty, too." Revenge is a much more fundamental human emotion than principle.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I think it's an honest estimation of the words that you are saying and how they map to the materials in question, mostly because it doesn't seem like you've actually read the materials in question. It's supposed to invoke the idea that there is a wide gulf between what your position is/the ideas you actually hold and the words that you are using/what is in evidence. Like, the narrative you think you have going on in your head is just totally disconnected.
Did The Motte ever discuss the outcome of the NetChoice cases? Did I miss it? I don't like to admit this, but I will admit that I want to brag ever so slightly. There is a lot to interpret in the mix of opinions, but what I think was my core prediction was:
I cannot imagine five members of the Court will sign off on saying that the Constitution guarantees GMail the right to refuse private communications service based solely on their dislike of an individual's politics.
And I think that was vindicated. They rejected the facial challenge on the grounds that there are just too many different types of things being lumped into one bucket, all at once, with plenty of references to direct messaging as being of particular concern.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
My recollection of what I've read in the past (which is not worth much) is that if a person is in, for example, a significant calorie deficit, it often comes with lethargy and lack of activity, but if it goes on enough to be a serious threat to life, apparently folks basically involuntarily have a need for movement, bursts of activity. They can't help themselves but to get up and move. So the relation is somewhat state-dependent. Maybe just conserve energy during typical lean periods, but if stuff gets really bad, obviously sitting around wasn't getting the job done, and so the risk of using your last ounce of energy is worth the chance that maybe you'll find a last second food source.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
Regular supervision and adjustment of the dosage is part and parcel of responsible medical care.
Ok, great. So you agree with Purdue's materials.
During sales visits, Purdue reps made false and misleading claims directly to the professionals who care for Massachusetts patients.
What false and misleading claims?
in-person sales visits
...like what is done for literally every other drug out there? You say that this is 'literal kickbacks'. Prosecute that shit for any of the hundreds of other drugs where they do similar in-person sales visits, and then I'll think about believing you.
show doctors charts emphasizing Medicare coverage for its opioids and use profiles of fake elderly patients, complete with staged photographs
So, like, a training mock-up?
Could it be possible that they made an accurate and true scientific discovery while faking data in order to sell more of their product?
Dawg, you skipped the part where you were supposed to show that they faked data in research.
ControlsFreak
2yr ago
I think there's a significant difference between, "We'll go through all the work of pursuing this as though it is plausibly a real, criminal violation of criminal statutes, write all about how it could indeed be a violation of specific, named, criminal statutes and a theory of how such a case could plausibly be constructed, but then decline to make a 'traditional prosecutorial determination'," and, "Oh come on, this clearly and obviously could not plausibly be a criminal matter, because this is a core Presidential power."
You're right that impeachment would still have been a matter of a purely political question, but it would have been vastly better if we sort of collectively realized that the entire Mueller business on this topic was bull honky, told him to close up shop, and just told Congress to do their own investigation and impeach if they want without the dog and pony show.
Good question! What the court is doing is saying what the law is, was, and essentially always has been. This is just what the statute has meant since it was passed. Even in qualified immunity cases, they still say that they are determining what the law has been all along, just that it had not yet been "clearly established". Of course, there is no such thing as qualified immunity for PACs.
In any event, this complaint would also hit Trump's case. We didn't have any Circuit interpretation in 2016 that what Trump did actually violated the law and lacked a First Amendment defense. In fact, they also share a similarity in that the FEC's interpretation at the time was that the behavior was okay. The only real difference is that we haven't yet had a single court of law rule that the elements of what Trump did actually violate the federal statute, whereas we do have that here.
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