domain:forecasting.substack.com
thejdizzler
2d ago
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.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
2d ago
· Edited 2d ago
What makes it superior for sporting over either something like a hunting rifle, or something like a fairground gun that shoots tiny bullets of a few millimetres calibre? It's hard to believe that the knowledge that you are "sporting" with a weapon that would be a prime choice for actually killing people, and preparing/building skills for a hypothetical situation in which you would want to kill someone, is not an important factor in the choice; the circumstance that actual use of civilian firearms appears pretty strongly correlated with the belief that there should be a legal way to kill people further supports this interpretation.
is a lot like saying that the primary purpose of alcoholic drinks is to get cirrhosis of the liver.
If the development of alcoholic drinks were driven by people trying to find better ways to get cirrhosis of the liver, there still were large and massively funded organisations deliberately binge-drinking to the point of getting it and gatherings of alcoholic drink enjoyers regularly involved enthusiastic arguments which cocktail gets you more scar tissue faster, and the most popular fictional depictions of alcoholic drinks all involved flashy celebrations of how they induce cirrhosis, then maybe this comparison would work.
As it stands, the argument comes across as being more in the class of arguing that CP (AI-generated, to dispel the most obvious counterargument) should be legal and easily available, and its principal purpose is artistic edification (chosen for being a similarly nebulous term as "sporting", distinguished from its lower-status counterpart "sexual gratification"/"fantasizing about killing", resp., only by the speaker's attitude towards the act), but incidentally you also find the idea that there shouldn't be a legal way to have sex with minors wrong. (That's approximately an actual constellation of ideas some pre-1990 libertines over here in Europe had!)
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
2d ago
Does that data take into account fat to muscle ratio?
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Is that thé origin? I had assumed it was an old French word for game meat or some such- I’m used to viande being a word for a meat without a specified name, viande de boeuf sounds nearly as strange as viande de poullard and I’d assume it was referring to bison meat or something.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2d ago
Look at this nerd, writing a proof with lemmas to win an Internet argument. You love to see it. :D
celluloid_dream
2d ago
A fair point, but it doesn't follow that because nuclear weapons led to the development of the internet, the average citizen should be permitted to possess nuclear weapons.
The telos of a nuclear bomb, is still death (or at least massive destruction). The telos of the internet has evolved.
Shrike
2d ago
I specifically support the two being linked in some way. Dispossessing someone of firearms is a statement by society that someone is untrustworthy and unable to govern themselves, and there's no need to pretend otherwise by giving them the right to vote under the pretense that such a person can govern others.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2d ago
I will grant that you are being consistent. It is a very unusual moral framework, but then again, so is mine and I'm happy with it.
4bpp
Now I am become a Helpful, Honest and Harmless Assistant, the destroyer of jobs
2d ago
Having a purpose that in turn is mostly a means to an end that is killing is not the same as being directly, immediately, specifically only good for killing (and various activities wherein the fun is contingent on imagining them as practice for killing people under the right circumstances).
That the common European value system ignores these basic truths is not a recommendation in its favor.
I don't think it ignores any "basic truths" that there are in what you wrote, and evidently this argument is not persuasive to those that subscribe to it. As it stands, there is a negligible amount of the older American ethos making inroads in the rest of the world, but the anti-gun value system is capturing large swathes of the US population - if you care for gun rights, it would be more reasonable to try and find new arguments rather than digging in your heels about the old apologetic tradition and dismiss competing views as "divorced from reality".
thejdizzler
2d 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
Shrike
2d ago
The principle purpose (as measured by actual use) of all civilian firearms, no matter how outlandish, is sporting.
I of course find the idea that there shouldn't be a legal way to kill people wrong, and it's against the ethos and traditions of my country's heritage (and indeed most of Europe's, arguably) but to say the primary purpose of e.g. an AR-15 is to kill people is a lot like saying that the primary purpose of alcoholic drinks is to get cirrhosis of the liver.
2rafa
2d ago
I think the biggest logical fallacy (or questionable ethical framework) in her stance is damnation-by-association. If a chimpanzee has never molested another chimp, nor eaten it, does it make it an individually honorable chimp? What proportion of individuals must not have committed grave sin for the whole to be condemned?
It would be individually honorable but not collectively so, because dishonorable behavior is common enough (by my own arbitrary standard and based on my own limited knowledge) among chimps to affect my perception of them as a species.
I consider octopuses highly intelligent and capable. But they do very regularly eat each other. I consider pigs very intelligent, deeply empathetic, rather soulful animals. But again, they eat each other all the time. When eating octopus or pork, I am, if anything assimilating to ‘their’ moral universe. If pigs in 2025 committed cannibalism at the same extremely low rate as humans in 2025 (and again, I care about the present when it comes to my own personal ethics) then I would feel worse about eating them.
A chicken is neither honorable nor dishonorable. It falls below the arbitrary threshold of intelligence beneath which I have determined the distinction is meaningless.
Jiro
2d ago
Not only would I not count Communist "elections", I'd point out that if Communist countries had had genuine free elections, most of them would be gone pretty fast. Which makes all the deaths caused by them attributable to not having universal suffrage.
Of course, this means that even counting Germany, the deaths from not having suffrage exceed the deaths from having it (especially if you count the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as starting WWII and making some of the deaths the fault of lack of suffrage.)
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2d ago
I share your feelings here. I just couldn't be bothered to complain.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
You have no idea how happy it makes me that someone got the joke.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Probably not. I would probably, though not strongly, feel worse about hearing that a nepalese kid died than that a species of fly in the Amazon died out. Though, at this point, we're talking about very very very very minor degrees of caring to begin with.
On the other hand, I'm clearly going to feel more upset at the news that 1,000 rhinos were poached than at the news that 1,000 Bangladeshis died somehow or other.
I'm not sure what the equation looks like exactly. I could probably be persuaded by an ecologist that some species I don't care about now is actually really interesting/necessary/unique/whatever such that I value it above the dead foreigner.
I'm just rejecting the idea that every single human life is more valuable than every single animal life. I don't think that is the case, either intrinsically or by intuitive feeling or by revealed preferences of people. Even an ethos argument built around the depravity of individuals, I'm not sure I get there: I'd probably think someone who poached bald eagles was a worse person than the median murderer.
Now I'd probably sign on for the idea that every single human being is allowed to value their own or their loved ones lives above every single animal life as a general rule. But globally, I don't value them that way, and no one else does either.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2d ago
This claim is lacking in nuance.
My understanding of the scientific/medical consensus is that a well-planned vegan diet isn't harmful to kids. (I pray that even the most committed vegan mom doesn't refuse to breast feed her child on those grounds, but then again, people try to make their cats vegan).
This represents an additional challenge, you have to be very careful to ensure that your kids don't end up missing B12 etc. It is simply easier to feed them the same stuff everyone else eats and not worry about it too much. In other words, a quantitative instead of qualitative issue.
I looked up a bunch of citations, but I'm too drunk/busy to format them. I will dig them up later if you really want them.
MollieTheMare
2d ago
I recall making the point that athleticism and endurance performance were not wholly synonyms when the original post mas made. The qualifier of "at least in endurance sports" is appreciated. I would probably concede, not actively harmful, controlling for macro nutrient composition and micro-nutrient availability.
Its interesting you cite a gravel cyclist in your discussion. I see marathon distance running as one of the sports where it is the least sub-optimal. Cycling nutrition was a area where there was surprisingly little systematic study. It seems like not that long ago World Tour teams were only doing like 60 g/hour of carbs, while 120 g/hour is normal now. Given that, it does seem possible that the state of the art will change. That being said, Dylan Johnson is certainly cutting against the grain of what the World Tour teams apparently think is optimal. Honey is a common binder and carb source for rice cakes for Pro teams. I think most teams also allow riders milk with their coffee, even during the Tour. Whey is an extremely common ingredient in post-race recovery drinks, you see it featured in essentially every Tour nutrition interview where they disclose whats in the drink.
Looking at the very top level of gravel riding, arguably the Monuments like the Tour of Flanders, Paris–Roubaix, and Strade Bianche were the top level of gravel before gravel was a category. Based on the UCI Gravel World Championships it seems like the classics riders are still at least one level above those in the UCI Gravel World Series. All this to say Pogi and Cancellara are clearly levels above Dylan Johnson (who is very very good). I'm very sure I've seen video or photos of them drinking either flat whites or cappuccinos. I think I even recall a video of Cancellara eating fish back in the Leopard-Trek days, and one where Pogačar has beef in his fridge. It doesn't seem likely that adopting a vegan diet is the key to optimal gravel riding performance. Not necessarily actively very harmful, but I'm actually a bit surprised Johnson claims it's for performance reasons.
celluloid_dream
2d ago
Having laid out a slippery slope, you now understand why I argue against background checks for buying a gun. Gun rights are like speech rights; no prior restraint is reasonable, nor are special rules which impose some sort of additional burdensome responsibility for exercising the right (the equivalent for speech here is "stochastic terrorism").
But you mean this in a purely legal sense, right? "shall not be infringed", etc. because it says so in the 2A and that's that.
Curious if you'd feel the same way if the amendment explicitly covered any scale of weapon, up to and including planet-ending weapons of mass destruction.
RenOS
something is wrong
2d ago
In europe it's quite common even for terrorists and other hard criminals to use knifes simply bc guns are just too hard to get for them. And that's despite hunting licences being available!
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
I might trust you with a gun, but I don't trust the guy who just broke your car window in the middle of the night and stole your gun.
And that's much harder to solve, because even if you require people to store guns securely at all times are we gonna start arresting people because they forgot it in their car coming home from the range?
Someone breaking into a car to steal a gun is likely a prohibited possessor. Sending prohibited possessors caught with a firearm to prison for long stretches is one solution. It is probably one of the most straightforward solutions given the frequency that someone committing a crime with a firearm has prior criminal convictions and has been caught with a gun before. Given the general anti-firearm position of the DNC, it seems like a no-brainer policy position to support, but of course they cannot because of reasons.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
2d ago
You are correct. But the apparent contradiction doesn't exist. It might seem to: On one hand, I profess a functional indifference to the moral worth of non-human animals; on the other, I admit a deep and abiding love for my own dogs, to the point where I would have few qualms about visiting significant unpleasantness upon anyone who harmed them.
This isn't so much a contradiction as it is a clarification, best captured by amending my original statement: I don't care about the moral worth of most non-human animals. The ones in my circle of concern are a rounding error, statistically speaking - 99.99999...% of them fall outside it.
My moral framework isn't a flat, universalist plane where all entities of a certain class are assigned equal value. It’s better modeled as a series of intensely-felt concentric circles.
For example:
I love my mother. I would inflict what the law might term 'grievous bodily harm' upon anyone who purposefully hurt her. This is a non-negotiable axiom of my existence.
And yet, I do not, as a rule, love the mothers of other people. I might feel a general, abstract goodwill toward the concept of motherhood, especially in an era of demographic decline. I might even feel a pang of sympathy hearing a story about a stranger's ailing mother. But my level of emotional and practical investment is, let's be honest, functionally zero. My strong protective instinct is parochial; it does not generalize. I suspect for most people, it operates the same way. I suspect you love your mother more than you love mine.
This model extends to almost everything. I am willing to be taxed (in theory, if the system were effective) to prevent my phone from being snatched on the streets of London. I am not, however, moved to donate to an anti-thievery initiative in Nigeria. My concern is a function of proximity and personal stake. I disagree with Singer when it comes to the failures of a Newtonian model of ethical obligations, a child drowning in front of me compels me to act far stronger than one in Australia. The latter is, as far as I'm concerned, not my business.
This brings us to the dogs. My dogs are my dogs. The pleasant-looking labrador I met near St. Pancras station today received some affectionate scratches because he was a "good boy" and reminded me of my own, but my moral obligation began and ended there. If a restaurant in Sichuan province serves dog, my sole practical concern is ensuring my pups never wander off unattended if we visit.
As I've outlined elsewhere, my moral system is built not on a universalist foundation, but on a framework that approximates it through the mutual respect of property and sovereignty. It's a system designed for a world of bounded sympathies.
Calling a beloved pet "property" sounds cold, I know, and perhaps it’s an imprecise shorthand. They are a special class of entity within my sphere of sovereignty, one imbued with immense sentimental value, more akin to an irreplaceable family heirloom or a child than to a fungible commodity like a chair. But they exist within that sphere, and my duties toward them are products of that relationshipof ownership, stewardship, and affection. The cow destined for a steakhouse does not.
A committed utilitarian might call this a classic cognitive bias, a failure to apply the principle of impartiality, a failure of my moral software. I do not care, who gave them the right to dictate objective morality? But I find this model to be more descriptively accurate of how most humans actually operate, and perhaps more prescriptively stable than a universalism that demands a level of saintly, impartial concern that almost no one can consistently achieve.
So the paradox resolves cleanly. My dogs are loved not because they are dogs, but because they are mine. My concern for them is an exception that proves the rule*: my moral landscape is not flat, but mountainous, with peaks of intense personal obligation surrounded by vast plains of practical indifference. It's not a universalist's map, but I find it an honest and livable one.
*That phrase, for once, applied correctly.
RoyGBivensAction
Zensunni Scientologist
2d ago
When I cross the border to the states, there's often a moment of shock upon seeing someone with a gun on their hip going about their day in a gas station, or restaurant, or shopping mall.
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It's interesting how open carry has changed in the US in the past 30 years. I grew up in a place with many guns and where open carry was legal, but only the most trashy of rednecks would open carry, and they were derided by other gun owners. "Whatsamatter, you think the Russians are going to invade today?" Now if I visit home, I'm probably going to see someone open carrying at the grocery store or whatnot.
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I read lots of hiking journals, and Europeans, Canadians, or incredibly insulated coastal blue tribers encountering open carry among the people of MT, ID, WY, and NM on the Continental Divide Trail never ceases to entertain me. They range from "ohmygod this guy had a gun on his hip at a coffee shop, I was so close to dying, what's wrong with your country" to "I was scared at first and then we talked and he invited me to go target shooting so I took a day off hiking and went shooting (after never touching a gun before) and it was the most fun I've ever had in my life."
Not in this study. It's just a giant meta analysis on 3.6 million Britons. I think they just collected BMI and cause of death data from the NHS. I would imagine that higher muscle mass decreases all-cause mortality risk though.
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