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I had originally posted this in the Friday fun thread but it turns out that it was killing the vibe in there. Not sure what I was thinking. Anyway...
Note: I will completely qualify Portugal Europe and Portland Oregon in this article because they're easy to mix up.
Is liberalism peaking in Oregon?
In 2020, the state of Oregon passed a referendum, ballot Measure 110, which decriminalized all drugs(!) with a vote of 58% in favor.
Voters in Oregon (such as myself) believed this was the path to enlightened drug policy, being informed by the revered Portugal Europe model. Tacked onto the referendum was a bit of social justice theory as well: the police would be required to document in detail the race of anyone they stopped from now on for any reason. To ensure the police weren't disproportionately harassing the 2.3% of the population that's black.
As an occasional drug enjoyer, I do find it a relief to wander the streets of Portland Oregon squirting ketamine up my nostrils like I'm a visionary tech CEO without fear of police. But in broad strokes it appears to be a disaster.
Indeed, the ensuing data was an almost perfect A/B test, the kind you'd run with no shame over which kind of font improved e-commerce site checkout conversions.
By 2023, Oregon's drug overdose rate was well outpacing the rest of the country, so much so that the police officers regularly Narcan with them and revive people splayed out in public parks. Sometimes the same person from week to week. It's true this coincides with the fentanyl epidemic, which could confound the data and have bumped up overdoses everywhere but that wouldn't explain alone why deaths have especially increased in Oregon. The timing fits M110.
https://www.axios.com/local/portland/2024/02/21/fentanyl-overdose-rate-oregon-spikes
At some point someone decided to compare notes with Portugal Europe's system. Some stark differences!
https://gooddrugpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/PortugalvOregon1.pdf
Briefly, Portugal Europe uses a carrot and stick model with a lot of negative incentive, whereas Oregon just kinda writes a $100 ticket and suggests calling a hotline for your raging drug problem maybe.
In the first 15 months after Measure 110 took effect, state auditors found, only 119 people called the state’s 24-hour hotline. That meant the cost of operating the hotline amounted to roughly $7,000 per call. The total number of callers as of early December of last year had only amounted to 943.
The absence of stick appears to not be very effective in encouraging users to seek treatment.
Are the kids having fun at least? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/health/portland-oregon-drugs.html (paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/fHxWk)
That's the brightest part of the article. The rest is pretty depressing and sad and sickening and worrisome.
After a few years of this, the Oregon legislature yesterday finished voting to re-criminalize drugs.
The NYT again https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/us/oregon-drug-decriminalization-rollback-measure-110.html (paywall bypass: https://archive.ph/3zksH)
The governor has indicated that she would sign.
Critics are out in force, arguing that the legislature overrode the will of voters (remember it was passed by referendum) and that the state sabotaged the program by not efficiently distributing treatment resources to addicts. This poster believes the low uptake and missing negative incentives prove that drug harm reduction is not primarily about access to treatment, but about incentive not to use. I do sympathize that better public services and addiction resources that people actually trusted would help, but fentanyl complicates the situation substantially. People need to hit bottom before they seek help (or so goes the popular saying) but fentanyl is so potent and unpredictable that they're dying of an unexpected OD before they find themselves at bottom, ready to seek change.
Frankly, I'm surprised Oregon repealed this so quickly. Has liberalism peaked in Oregon?
As someone who voted for the referendum back in 2020, I'm a little sad that some of the overdose deaths are on my hands. Kind of. Like 1 millionth of the overdose deaths perhaps. It's good to run experiments though, right? This was a pretty good experiment. We at least have an upper bound on how liberal a drug policy we should pursue.
I believe this shows Oregon is not quite as ideologically liberal as previously led to believe. Or, at least, not anymore.
If one compares drug decriminalization, or general decriminalization policies with countries that follow law and order, the later not only have less drug abuse but also don't have to imprison that many people. The influence of such policy of drug criminalization for most of the world with such policies is for people successfully be dissuaded from abusing harmful drugs.
Drug abuse is a societal scourge and it is another example how libertine policies and attitutes lead to greater suffering but also greater imposition on people's freedom than the sacrifice required from making good trade offs and abstaining from harmful behavior. For the loss of what is good by becoming addicted to drugs is quite greater.
At the end of the day the libertine's have a cope that their policy leads to worse consequences but people get good and hard what they choose. But we shouldn't accept this cope way off thinking. The worse outcomes and society sucking more under such policies is good reason to not respect this course.
Same could also be said with obesity, or even the long term problems of lack of children.
We live in an age where there is a crisis of lack of smaller self sacrifices, for ultimate a greater negative end. In line with the proverb "An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure".
Now, you can't force people to have children, or not get fat, in the same way you can enforce criminalization of drugs, although there are things you could do, but the moralists on these issues are correct. Contrarily the people who have been spreading apathy and downplaying have had a corrosive effect on society.
Beyond just policy, there is also a morality involved with society that does end up relating to what happens and pressures people and also affects the law. So we can judge and contrast the libertine morality with more conservative one on drugs and other issues.
The ridicule of the people trying to dissuade people from bad behaviors and such campaigns, especially on drugs have been one of the most unjust reactions and self destructive ones for society. That kind of judgementalism against wise moralism is disastrous. We need the right kind of moralism. A good society is one where there is moral pressure in the right directions. While a completely non judgemental society is impossible.
Now that we see decline in various important issues, we should appreciate more the conservatives of the past who maintained certain good mores and actually fought to preserve them. Of course you need the right balance of enforcement, or conservatism, but modern conservatives have mostly not been too much on the excessive conservative side in the recent past on such issues. Seeing the effect of liberals taking control I do appreciate actual conservatives more, while in the past I had more mixed feelings about them. People should go back and see what each faction was pushing and claiming, examine how things played out and praise those who got them right, and criticize those who got them wrong.
Oh and the point is good trade offs and knowing what you are doing instead of relying on wishful thinking. Drug restriction policies have had a good track record in modernity. So the idea is for a general ethic of societal discipline for long term good on important areas. Still, no reason to enforce restrictions in a manner that the excessive restriction is more damaging to society than the gain. Or at least to persist where it would be unwise. See covid lockdowns which have been the more excessive uncharted waters type of policy, although serious enough diseases could justify such impositions.
Are you sure you can put the blame for the obesity epidemic at the feet of morality? I don't know how thoroughly the Chemical Hunger hypothesis has been discredited, but it seemed plausible to me and a bunch of the issues they raised make it impossible for me to take morality based explanations for the obesity epidemic seriously - unless you want to claim that there's a correlation between altitude and moral fortitude.
Though that said I am actually open to a more mystical morality play interpretation. The idea that environmental damage caused by oil extraction (the same energy resource responsible for our current prosperity) is poisoning the population in a way that makes them more dependent upon extravagant energy expenditure propped up by fossil fuels is poetic enough that I want to believe it is true even if it actually isn't.
The chemical hunger hypothesis is not the default hypothesis for the rise of obesity. The default is that we have a rise of a more obisogenic environment but it is also hard not to see the rise in general of detrimental behaviors related to superstimuli and people avoiding better for long term health of society self sacrifice.
Anyway, the blame of the individual can be reduced by the fact that people are affected by society and by what habits it fosters. And part of the default thesis is that more addictive "hyper palatable" food is affordable and more available to people today.
People eat more calories, and have larger plates.
I think moralism of the kind promoted by certain people which is only about the individual is going to be inadequate and you need greater societal transformations which go further. Japan is an example of a place where the norms at such that promote lower obesity, while their cuisine still has plenty of tasty foods.
One of my points is that if people adopt good habits early, and a society under the reigns of sensible moralism promotes long term greater happiness with less of the worse outcomes that arise from a society that avoids the self discipline. We know for example that is much harder to lose weight after you become obese than to remain fit. Same with drugs, easier to not become addicted than to get rid of the habit. This also relates to the valuable ancient understanding of freedom which isn't the only way of freedom that matters, but it does. Which is about people being free from their vices and living a life that better fulfills their potential. The later also relates with modern understanding, which we have seen in various metrics a decline upon, even if in other metrics we have seen a rise.
Part of the hostility to this kind of moralism has to do also with avoiding blame, and responsibility, but it is true that the decline in such norms has lead to a more irresponsible society with worse consequences for it. So lets admit that unpleasant truth and seek pragmatic responses.
I agree with this, but I don't think that actually provides a justification for the "moral failing" hypothesis - the moral failing hypothesis just can't explain what's actually happening. There are just too many odd correlations and relationships within the data for the moral failing hypothesis to be that plausible - at most it can be a small contributor to part of the problem. What's the 'moral failing' explanation for why obesity is correlated with altitude/water-tables? Don't forget that this obesity epidemic is impacting animals as well - it doesn't seem plausible to me that the decrease in willingness to sacrifice for society has caused feral rats to start overeating and getting fat.
You mentioned Japan, but I found myself losing weight there extremely quickly and easily without making any changes to my moral behaviour or character. Similarly, shifts in my weight that occurred outside Japan seemed much more correlated to environmental exposure than to the specifics of diet/behaviour - I have personal experience with rapid weightloss, and the moral failure hypothesis just did not match up to my inner experience at all. I found that when I (accidentally at the time) lowered my exposure to the kind of environmental pollutants hypothesised to cause obesity what followed was a sudden increase in energy and a decrease in appetite. Previously I'd lost weight by caloric restriction and strict dietary control which required a lot of willpower, but that loss was correlated with a lot of negative side effects and lethargy (as the chemical hunger hypothesis would suggest) - whereas I actually had to exert willpower in order to avoid losing weight on the "cut out pollutants" diet, rather than the opposite.
I just can't see the justification for endorsing the morality hypothesis when there are so many facts that it just utterly fails to explain - and there's no real predictive power there either. If you're right, we'd be able to look back at other instances of societal trust/morality collapsing and find obesity epidemics there too - but to the best of my knowledge, this just hasn't happened. I'm more than happy to be convinced that your hypothesis has legs, but you're going to have to provide a bit more evidence and explain a bunch of the questions that chemical hunger raises before I can accept it as more than a small contribution.
I'm willing to believe that our society has less self-sacrifice in it - hell, I'm substantially less willing to shoulder sacrifices for the sake of my society, but I think that's in large part due to my society endorsing and encouraging things I morally disagree with. There are a bunch of corrupt criminals shoving their faces into the collective trough of society, and I see no reason to make personal sacrifices just to empower them and leave me and my family worse off - as far as I'm concerned, making personal sacrifices in support of the Global American Empire is far more immoral than restricting my circle of care to those close and dear to me.
By living in a society governed by a different morality, you were exposed to a less obesogenic environment, with smaller plates, less hyper palatable food, I probably should have mentioned this too, but also food choices that are less calorie dense, and more satiating probably too. You probably also mimicked how other people behaved and how they ate.
Basically, you benefited by the fact that you were living among the Japanese in a society organized and ruled by their laws and public morality. Yes that does kind of change some of the calculus of individual vs collective influences which are the result of multiple individuals behaving in a way that promotes a certain dominant behaviors and habits.
Also, in comparison to someone consuming enough calories that would make them overweight, by behaving in a way that is better for your long term, you did change your behavior in a manner that was an improvement morally. The amount of self sacrifice once society adopts better norms might not be that great, indeed. This is a selling point!
It actually isn't that big of a sacrifice, to follow from the beginning the kind of habit that avoid harmful drugs, don't eat too much calories, you walk around (which studies have shown to reduce depression). The point is that it is a worthy trade off and the decline of moralism has lead to greater suffering that is definitely not worth it. I guess, it is debatable how difficult it is to do so once you have experienced the other habits, and what would happen if we put obese people in places like Japan on the long term and where their weight would stabilize at. I know what would happen if you replaced the Japanese with enough of the obese, Japan will become fat as they will be following those habits and norms and foods and the food industry, laws and public expectations, shaming, all will change.
But why are the pollutants the issue and not the fact that the available food you had to choose from was less likely to make you fat? Because lower calories and more satiating per calorie. Less amount of oils probably too.
Some foods are also inherently more satiating. Harder to become fat on them than on fast food. Hence, by changing the dominant diet and promoting more Japan style the norm that people should eat say balanced meals, not too many calories, prefer more satiating foods, the result will be a reduction in obesity.
Too bad for the fast food industry which will decline, but a type of food industry is here to stay even with people eating less.
Like the perceived impossibility of crime in places like El Salvador where Bukele was able to deal with it in a manner where the trade off was certainly worth it.
I guess, one could note that action is more effective than convinsing people. Maybe just changing the available food choices would end up resulting in less obesity than just talking about individual responsibility. Although there is a symbiotic relationship between big business and consumers consuming bigger plates, and more addictive hyper palatable food.
Well, I agree with you that the GAE isn't worth sacrificing your life for it and that is a hostile empire to you and yours. I sympathize entirely with that. I am also not a keen of the negative influence it has by trying to promote cultural marxism, or the warmongering and color revolutions. I am more talking about sacrifices for the greater good of the people involved.
Indeed, parts of the problems of GAE is anarchotyranny and decriminalization policies promoted by elites like Soros, biggest corporations endorsing BLM, etc, etc. The changes I advocate, including other changes not focused upon here will go against plenty of what the people in charge of GAE preach to the detriment of those under their influence.
I recall reading a lesswrong post linked in the old subreddit which argued convincingly against the chemical hypothesis and directly addressed the water altitude arguement.https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-probably-not-lithium
Ed Yudkowsky doesn't even accept the truth that is CICO, so don't take this as me endorsing rationalist thinkers as an authority. Just on its own merits I found then when I read it that article to be good and made a better case than the slime mold time mold blog.https://slimemoldtimemold.com/
That article would do a better job arguing specifically against the chemicals hypothesis than I would, so I would recommend you read it for the counter.
I ate vast quantities of extremely fatty and oily luxury cuisine, to the point that I had ¥9000 breakfasts five days in a row. I also had more than one occasion where native Japanese people told me that I was eating a lot. At the same time, I had much more oily and fatty food - ramen, A5 marbling wagyu, otoro tuna, bizarrely flavoured gourmet kit-kats, crepes, viennese coffee, montblancs, fried street food, etc. I still lost over 5kg in three weeks. At the same time, my subjective experience matched up to when I accidentally adopted a diet similar to the potato diet recommended by the chemical hunger crowd - I felt like I had vast amounts of energy and simply ate whenever I was hungry or wanted to taste something interesting. In contrast, when I used willpower to eat an incredibly restrictive diet consisting largely of unpalatable food (protein sparing modified fasting) I found myself with intense cravings and lethargy that I only overcame with the usage of caffeine and whatever other stimulants they included in preworkout powders). This is why I blamed the pollutants rather than any sort of moral difference - because that's how it matched up to what I actually experienced.
I recall reading that counterpiece and then the SMTM refutation of it - but I'm not too eager to rehash that argument given that I haven't bothered keeping up with the literature for the past two years. If there are any argumentative data/food nerds here, I'd love to read a serious discussion on this hypothesis! I took a quick glance at the SMTM blog and they are still doing research on the basis of the chemical hunger hypothesis, so I'm not too sure that it has been comprehensively defeated. But even if it was, my own personal experiences are not ones that match up to the moral failing hypothesis at all. That all said, I do think there is actually a moral element to societal influence on food choices. The biggest difference from my perspective was that if you try to eat cheaply in Japan without access to a kitchen you would largely be eating riceballs, seaweed, fish, soybeans and other largely healthy choices. Trying to do the same in western nations leads to eating some incredibly unhealthy products (HFCS, McDonalds, etc), and this is the kind of issue that I think a healthy government would step in and address - but god knows I wouldn't trust current western governments to do this well...
There are studies that show that the addition of vinegar in a carb rich meal lowers glucose and insulin response in healthy individuals, which is associated with weight loss.
My understanding is that Japanese food has a lot of vinegar in it, which may have contributed. I don’t know if it would offset 9000 calorie meals.
I had a lot of obviously bad food that didn't have any vinegar in it - but it probably was present. That said the meals themselves were 9000 yen, not calories (big difference).
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