thejdizzler
3mo ago
Indeed I just looked up the lancet meta-analysis and a BMI of 25-27 seems optimal! That's a little messed up that they're still setting the threshold that low for "healthy", as the curve is quite steep between 20 and 25 and much less steep on the other side.
Link for those interested: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(18)30288-2/fulltext
thejdizzler
3mo ago
This is exactly the realization I've come to. Nothing I will say will convince you to adopt my moral position because it's not a logical position to hold (like any and every moral proposition). Rather than heckle people who will not be receptive, it would be much better for vegans to strategize about practical ways to reduce average meat consumption by focusing on non-moral incentives that can actually be debated, such as removing subsidies for animal ag, encouraging the development of lab grown meat, etc.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
I think this is the crux of the disagreement. We both have axiomatically different reasons for holding our positions. There’s no reasoning across that gap. I’m not going to convince you, and you aren’t going to convince me.
However, it seems from the last paragraph that if we could provide adequate amounts of meat/protein with less suffering you would be in support of that. As would I think most users on this form. That seems like a much more fruitful focus of vegan political efforts than the bullshit that PETA wastes its funding on.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
Yea I think it's gotta be genetic because those injuries were from the days I was chowing down on steak/hamburgers every night at the college dining hall, so unlikely that it was from diet.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
Probably a difference in bone density. I have to think I have lighter bones, which probably explains all the stress fractures in college.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
Don't know why I'm stumbling on this post from /u/satirizedoor now a year later and nearly two years after the original post that I made. I still call myself vegan, but I do eat oysters now. I have come to find most vegans, including my past self, as annoying as you: there is a lack of real reflection as to what the goals of the movement are, and if the individual actions that vegans advocate are actually effective at accomplishing those goals. Total cessation of animal suffering is as impossible as it would be totalitarian (some vegans advocate for GMOing away all predators). Some amount of meat eating will always be part of human culture, and is frankly, indistinguishable and perhaps better than what goes on in the wild. My problem in reality is with industrial factory farming. It would be far better for these animals and the planet if we merely advocated for reduction in meat consumption, but that position isn't really justifiable outside of utilitarianism. Most people are not utilitarian I think, which makes it difficult to advocate for a position that fails on consequentialist/deontological grounds. The fact is that some people don't think animals have moral worth, while others do. There's very little ability to reason across that line, despite pretty good scientific evidence that most farm animals do have some rudimentary reasoning and emotional abilities equivalent to that of a small child. To vegans like myself, this evidence is helpful but rather superfluous. My beliefs about animal consciousness come from personal interactions I've had with animals. For those who aren't vegan, evidence of reasoning and/emotional reactions isn't sufficient evidence of consciousness or moral worth. Being able to solve puzzles or display emotions isn't very good evidence that there's something going on inside of another creature.
I'm still convinced that veganism isn't harmful for performance, at least in endurance sports. Plenty of endurance athletes at the highest levels are at least mostly vegan. However, I think that performance enhancement is a different question that I don't think has really been settled scientifically. There are without a doubt certain plant-based substances that are performance enhancers (beet juice), but I don't think this says anything about the efficacy of the diet as a whole. A cycling YouTuber that I vaguely follow, Dylan Johnson is vegan for recovery reasons, as plant-based diets are apparently much less pro-inflammatory than meat-based diets. I can't say I'm fully convinced by this: I think the real culprit in inflammation may be macronutrient ratios. Diets high in fat, which many vegans also have, seem to be particularly pro-inflammatory, at least in animal models. There's also good evidence that high protein consumption is linked to decreases in lifespan, but again this isn't exclusive to meat-eating populations.
I am more shocked by how skewed most user's idea of a healthy body weight is. I'm closer to 160 now, but a 150 with a height of 6' put me at a very normal BMI of 20. I recognize that this weight makes it very difficult to be a strongman, but that's not my goal, nor the goal of most Americans. It is an absurd position to tell me that I am a twig or emaciated at that weight when I am well within the bounds of a healthy BMI.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
Is there anywhere to see which pages actually link to your substack posts?
thejdizzler
3mo ago
Since our stipend got raised to $52k this year, I actually have significant money to invest every month. Any tips other than just dumping into index funds? I've been doing about a third into index funds, a third into specific stocks and keeping a third liquid in money market. In my IRA it's about 70% index funds and 30% individual stocks.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
I agree. Societies that ban these tools will lose, either on the field of battle or via economic competition (brain drain). I think with AI the case is that the tools aren't very useful/ actually hurt a society's productivity in the medium to long-run.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
I agree totally on both fronts. We are suffering from Dutch disease as a society.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
Yes, I think this began with the Industrial Revolution and the decline of Artisans as a social class.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
Oh I see I misunderstood what you were saying there originally. That is a good point. I would say that the reason that people don't choose that path probably only has a little to do with alienation. Despite the discomfort with alienation, I think the modern people do enjoy distinct material advantages (that they would not have as a subsistence farmer) that make them not want to give up that lifestyle, at least voluntarily. There are however a lot of examples in the 19th century, mainly in Chile and Argentina, of kidnappings of white settlers by native Americans where the kidnapee preferred to stay with the subsistence tribe rather than return to industrial abundance.
My view on why specialization causes alienation is because specialization tends to disconnect you from the product of your labor. A craftsman is going to feel much less alienated than an assembly line worker, even though the later is far more productive, because he gets to see the finished product and feel responsible for it. The same I think is true in knowledge work. A research scientist 50 years ago could do experiments and publish largely independently. But now, at least in my field, papers routinely have over twenty authors: the work no longer really feels like it's yours.
There's gotta be some spiritual way around this phenomena though. One counter example I can bring to mind from the Middle Ages are the stonemasons who worked on cathedrals. They didn't get to see the finished product of their labor, as cathedrals routinely took hundreds of years to build. Nor did they really get to feel responsible for the work that they were doing: there were hundreds if not thousands of people working on these buildings. Yet from what I've read, most of them did not feel very alienated from the work that they were doing. For the glory of God was a very powerful motivator.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
The thing is I don't think people felt alienated from their work in the past. Sure people were bored or unsatisfied, but alienation seems to be a distinctly modern phenomena that comes with specialization. The tough thing which I think Fromm is highlighting is that specialization is also really good for productivity.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
I'm not sure Tesla and SpaceX are actually "effective". Tesla did certainly do a lot of good in making electric cars "cool" but the product on offer is far shittier and more expensive than Chinese or even US automaker electric cars. SpaceX is a classic case of overpromising and underdelivering. It can't even do something the US government could do in the 1960s consistently.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
I seem to have lost the ability to focus on a book for more than 30 minutes in the last month, which is concerning. Maybe this is just an ebb in the tidal process that is my relationship with reading, but this time it feels different. It's not so much a lack of time, but feeling like I should be doing something else (working, running, or texting mainly). Sometimes this feeling is valid, but mainly reading is for time when I don't have the energy to do these things (run, work, or be social).
What can I do about this? Or do I just need to chill?
thejdizzler
3mo ago
I'm so sorry to hear this!
thejdizzler
3mo ago
At least at Hopkins (where I am), it's woke all the way down.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
- 40 minute walk, 15 minute drive with usual traffic
- 40 minute walk, 20 minute bus ride
- 30 minute drive. Fruit, berries.
- 20 min walk 5 minute drive
- Looks like 22 minute drive
- 40 minute drive or 15 minute train from station that is about ~20 minutes away from where I live.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
It's also quite difficult to use TheMotte in a way that encourages low effort. My best performing posts are ones I spend time on, which is usually a form of deep work. There really isn't enough content on here to doomscroll, and reading comments is actually usually pretty high energy.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
Great observations. I wish there were tools that could do this. Cold Turkey sort of approximately gets close to this, but it's very very crude and requires a lot of upfront effort/willpower.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
Yea I agree with this sentiment. There are all these studies (mainly to do with reading) that gamification actually backfires. If you give a kid money or some other external reward for reading that actually is a pretty surefire way to avoid that kid developing a real love for reading. And so too with any other hobby you might be able to think of.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
Good observation. I also agree that the hustle-culture memes aren't reflective of how people's efforts can actually be allocated. A common failure mode I see in myself is over-scheduling things in my down-time and not doing any of them and gaming/scrolling instead. I really should be resting during that time.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
Maybe better suited to a Wellness Wednesday post, but I think there's a significant culture war angle here too.
To what extent is the current competency crisis in government, academia, etc. caused by an inability to spend time by oneself and actually put in the work? I've lamented in the past the decline in the social landscape, at least in the United States, but among the social environments that I have been finding recently in Baltimore, there seems to be almost a pathological fear of spending time alone in order to put in the work to actually improve at the thing that we're supposed to be doing together. For example, I've recently been going to a Spanish Happy Hour group at a brewery Thursday evenings after work. There are usually at least a few native speakers there, but aside from them, most people are at a quite elementary stage with the language, and aren't doing anything outside of the happy hour to improve. For some people this makes sense: they're mainly there to socialize not to learn, but for others, like the guy who organizes the group (Alex), the lack of progress is baffling to me. Alex started the group to improve his Spanish so he could communicate better with his girlfriend's family. And yet he seems unable to find the time to practice outside of happy hour (with reading/TV/shows/flashcards). I see the same thing with my new roommate, who is absolutely in love with the country and culture of Spain, and goes to happy hour with me, but won't put in the solitary effort to actually improve at the language. I see the same thing with running: people only going to run clubs to socialize and then expecting to run fast when they don't put in outside mileage on their own time, and even within the philosophy book club that I run where people seem unable to do the 30 pages of reading we discuss every other week.
I see this with myself as well, especially in my PhD. I know what I need to do to be successful: read the papers and do the experiments I have planned, but instead I find myself goofing off with labmates, texting/calling friends while I do busywork, or on this forum posting. Phones may have isolated in some ways, but at the same time, the current media environment seems to have created a constant yearning for companionship that I don't think is conducive to actually growing in competence and skill in areas outside of socialization.
thejdizzler
3mo ago
Looks like Russians have just stormed into the center of both Pokrovsk and Kupyansk. Maybe the Ukrainian collapse has actually begun?
I think he has said that it's mainly for recovery and weight management reasons. It's very difficult to gain weight when you are primarily eating high volumes of vegetables. Tour riders probably have much more effective ways of maintaining and losing weight with precision that semi-pro athletes like Dylan Johnson don't have access to (mainly thinking a team of nutritionists). In terms of recovery, the same is probably true, although that does suggest that there aren't any particularly big advantages to maintaining a strict vegan diet. The healthiest cohorts in pretty much any dietary meta-analysis aren't vegetarians or vegans, but pescatarians or people who follow the mediterranean diet, which contains some amount of eat. This suggests both that some amount of meat is healthy for you, and also probably that most of the recovery/reduced inflammation gains come from cutting down on meat consumption, not eliminating it. I doubt that most riders have a very meat heavy-diet (they need lots of carbs for performance reasons, and meat has almost 0 carbs), so Dylan's alpha by being more strictly plant-based is likely quite low.
In terms of my own performance, I'm starting to think that it's time to think about locking down a source of eggs from local chickens that I know are treated-well and thinking about introducing fish low in the food chain (like Sardines or anchovies) that I don't feel ethically conflicted about and seeing if that makes any difference. For now though certainly going to keep eating oysters.
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