Of course, the Amish are way ahead of everyone there. Choosing for slowness, and especially, thinking about what they're willing to take on or not, and where and how (eg computer at the office but not at home). It probably helps to have a community around you, both to support the 'privations' and, to lessen the need for addictants.
The link to the Paleolithic diet made me think that one strategy against increasing addition is to normalize for evolutionary time. Still requires a lot of learned, subjective insight. But basically, anything that has proved itself via evolution is more sturdy and is worth congregating around (these include immediate things that affect the body, but also the evolution of societies, etc.).
Bravo on another great essay though. This made me smile:
You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly.
"(these include immediate things that affect the body, but also the evolution of societies, etc.)"
This is really much of the appeal of Christianity, and other forms of culture that have survived some test of time. I say this in response to pg's foot note:
"Unless we mass produce social customs. I suspect the recent resurgence of evangelical Christianity in the US is partly a reaction to drugs."
Not just drugs, but all the different things pg cites as addictive. Plugging in to older value systems is one way of putting a brake on those impulses. This, of course, is true of many other religious and cultural systems that have stood the test of time, not just Christianity.
I am also struck by how successful families and subcultures often have strong mechanisms in place to stigmatize these addictive impulses. Modelling self control and discipline has a lot to do with how success and prosperity is transferred across generations. By itself, accumulated cash will dissipate very quickly if the necessary character traits are not transferred along with it.
Possibly related: Apparently, India is somewhat perplexed by a resurgence of spirituality among the highly educated. No real effect in rural areas, but the heavy earners are becoming uncharacteristically religious.
Modern evangelical Christianity is very much a mass-market phenomenon. It doesn't exist without Glenn Beck and his ilk, who are very much artifacts of the Internet echo chamber (though they perhaps owe more to Fox News, cable news being a bit of a prototype for the Internet's monotonous assault on reason.)
It's very fashionable in the hacker community to treat Christianity as an anti-science establishment, but that's really a brash generalization that isn't even supported by facts. You'll even find a lot of evangelical Christians who are stauch proponents of the theory of evolution.
It's a rather tired meme that Evangelicals are engaging in an all-out assault on the scientific establishment, when that simply isn't true. There is a large, vocal evangelical contingent that espouses creationism, but 'evangelicals' are a much more complex and noisy bunch than one might expect.
To put it simply: I've been to quite a few churches that were direct examples of the overload culture that PG is writing about. Some of them were evangelical, most of them had congregations whose political beliefs are in no way uniform. And again, evangelical is in no way a synonym for right-wing. PG is overreaching here. But, it was a footnote, so I've already gone on more than is justified.
I really wish I didn't down-vote this. I got derailed by what I thought was going to be a short-sighted rant about Christians and Glenn Beck. In short, however, I think you're right on the money.
Many Christians I know refer to modern evangelical Christianity as "evangelicalism." It connotes a social construction that has its roots in church life, but its purpose is a far cry from a biblical understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. IMO, this accounts for the rise of Beck, Limbaugh, and other talking heads. They preach a message that isn't watered down. They sound impassioned and convictional, unlike the guy standing in front of them on Sunday morning.
> Not just drugs, but all the different things pg cites as addictive. Plugging in to older value systems is one way of putting a brake on those impulses. This, of course, is true of many other religious and cultural systems that have stood the test of time, not just Christianity.
I hope I was not the only one who instantly thought of Neal Stephenson's _The Diamond Age_ and its phyles (especially the Victorians).
Just didn't get around to working it into my comment. :)
I remember reading that, wondering who is today's equivalent of the Victorians. (The Victorians, of course, were the historical equivalent of the Victorians.)
> I remember reading that, wondering who is today's equivalent of the Victorians.
Inside the US? I'd go with the Amish first, inasmuch as they pretty much are from the Victorian era. (Technically they were much earlier, but I figure they've drifted that far forward.)
Outside of small or weird groups, I would guess the Asian-Americans (Japan/China/South Korea, to be exact) are the closest in their high valuation of education, thrift, repressed social mores, and reputation.
The Paleolithic diet is one of the dumbest ideas I've encountered in my entire life. Its followers tend to discount vast piles of medical research in favor of tiny experiments that suggest what they hope to be true. This kind of behavior is common for adherents of any fringe diet, but paleo goes a step further.
Even its concept is flawed. Some things it discards, such as wheat are barely changed from what our ancestors were eating long before agriculture or town settlements. One reason wheat was adopted so widely so early is that it didn't need to change much to be domesticated (see Guns Germs and Steel). Strawberries on the other hand, weren't domesticated until medieval times, and the same is true of many nuts, most notably almonds. Cattle has also undergone a far larger genetic transformation than many of our primary grain crops. Most damning to the idea of a paleo diet is that we have, too.
Human evolution has clearly accelerated with population growth. According to some anthropologists, modern humans differ more from those 5,000 years ago than those humans differed from Neanderthal.
In short, the paleo diet rests on flawed assumptions about evolution, the history of agriculture and ignores the main body of nutritional research and is rightfully considered a fad diet by the NHS and similar organizations.
Edit: It's also horribly unsustainable. A hummer-driving vegan doesn't have anywhere near the ecological footprint of a bicycle-riding "paleo" dieter.
I'd like to respond and not leave your assertions unchallenged, but I think your post is a bit too charged and absolutistic to engage with..pretty clear there is little room for debate.
I'll just say that since switching to a diet that contains whole foods consisting of meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, I've never felt better or been in better shape. I've seen the same results in many friends. If I have a big meal of grains I'll feel sick and almost hungover as a result.
Your mileage may vary, but have you tried it and seen what happens to your body? I've experimented with many types of diets, including strict veganism for about 3 months. So far a "paleo" diet has worked the best, for me.
I've never really tried to "diet", but I have experimented for sports. 15 years ago, when I was a competitive runner. At my healthiest point, I was eating about 70% of my calories from carbohydrates, had a resting pulse of 48 and could run a 10k in under 35 minutes. I did try experimenting with more meat and fewer complex carbohydrates. The result was, my performance suffered greatly and my sweat started to stink. I've also tried being entirely vegan, which also lead to worse results. Once I went back to eating mostly grains, vegetables and fruit with a modest amount of animal products, I started feeling and doing better. Every single good runner, swimmer or cyclist I've known has eaten a relatively similar diet. The only exception I can think of is some of the most extreme ultra guys, who seem to need the absolute most calorie dense junk food they can find.
Since then I've become more sedentary, but have still maintained lower cholesterol and blood pressure than the majority of people in their 20's. I started eating richer foods several years ago in Taiwan and put on some weight, but found it disappears quickly after returning to a more normal (Chinese) rice and vegetable based diet.
> What we call wheat today is quite different from the wheat of Biblical times. Emmer and einkorn wheat were the original grains harvested from wild growths, then cultivated. Triticum aestivum, the natural hybrid of emmer and goatgrass, also entered the picture, gradually replacing emmer and einkorn.
> The 25,000+ wheat strains now populating the farmlands of the world are considerably different from the bread wheat of Egyptians, different in gluten content, different in gluten structure, different in dozens of other non-gluten proteins, different in carbohydrate content. Modern wheat has been hybridized, introgressed, and back-bred to increase yield, make a shorter stalk in order to hold up to greater seed yield, along with many other characteristics. Much of the genetic work to create modern wheat strains are well-intended to feed the world, as well as to provide patent-protected seeds for agribusiness.
He goes on to try einkorn bread, and doesn't get the same reactions and BG rise that he does with regular bread. Search for 'einkorn' on that blog if you're curious.
I can't read blogspot from here in China, and I'm not generally interested in bloggers when it comes to highly controversial issues such as nutrition.
but I do realize wheat has changed in some ways, primarily in that it sprouts every season now. Try subjecting popular "paleo" foods to the same scrutiny you just subjected wheat to-- most currently popular fruits weren't eaten at all until the past few hundred years, walnut trees had to be grafted in order to be cultivated and most almonds killed people who ate them! Similarly, big game on each continent was hunted to extinction, especially in Australia and the Americas. Domesticated animals have been bred to be far different than anything our ancestors encountered.
It's strange to me that you use Guns, Germs, and Steel as an example of the virtues of wheat, when Jared Diamond called agriculture "the worst mistake in the history of the human race." (The article itself supports the basic idea that hunter-gathers were individually healthier than farmers: http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/m...)
> The Paleolithic diet is one of the dumbest ideas I've encountered in my entire life. Its followers tend to discount vast piles of medical research in favor of tiny experiments that suggest what they hope to be true. This kind of behavior is common for adherents of any fringe diet, but paleo goes a step further
While there is indeed a paleo re-enactment fringe that tries to live as they understand our ancient ancestors would, not just nutrition-wise, I find that there's actually a good bit of research-based and evidence-based thinking going over these "vast piles of medical research" you mention and finding that they don't really support the current accepted dogma of nutritional recommendations, and that indeed this research is pretty flimsy itself, if you were to believe Taubes, Lustig, Cordain, Eades, others, and tellingly now there is an alarming increase in obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases as an apparently direct result of the public by-and-large complying with common-wisdom "healthy" recommendations.
> Even its concept is flawed. Some things it discards, such as wheat are barely changed from what our ancestors were eating long before agriculture or town settlements
Oh? Wheat requires several months from cultivation to being ready for consumption. Perhaps it was consumed "long before agriculture or town settlements" but then it seems quite implausible that it would amount to anything significant in terms of nutrition, not to mention that it still requires quite a bit of processing before it can be eaten so it isn't exactly readily available nutrients.
But lets for a moment assume that yes, there have been many changes and genetic transformations to fruits, nuts, the meats we consume and ourselves. How is it unreasonable, given the catastrophic results of following current nutritional dogma, to look into our over 2 Million- year evolutionary history for clues on what we may be doing wrong, and noting that we've had agriculture for only 0.5% of that time. Even if after agriculture our rate of change multiplied 10-fold, we would still have a nutritional heritage of over 95% of our history where we most likely did not consume, in general, 60-80% of our nutrients from grains and certainly not from sugar, or refined vegetable oils.
That sounds like a pretty good clue to me.
> is rightfully considered a fad diet by the NHS and similar organizations
And then people all over are giving these ideas a go, and lo! they're feeling better, losing their excess weight, reversing chronic diseases, feeling energetic, not having hunger ups-and-downs, not feeling bloated, etc. (granted, this is all anecdotal evidence) And yet this is one of the dumbest ideas you've encountered in your entire life? You must be pretty lucky having a life of plentiful great ideas.
> It's also horribly unsustainable. A hummer-driving vegan...
There was the shadow of a reasonable argument there. It is entirely possible that given our current population of over 6 billion people, not all of us could follow the exact same diet, then again, there's no reason why anyone would suggest that. A good 1/5th of earth's population does not eat cattle for cultural reasons, cattle is not the only meat, and it can be raised sustainably (while being more nutritious), and there are other good sources of the necessary nutrients from the paleo perpective, and the needs of a male vary from those of a female, from a baby, from a child, from youth to middle age to old age, from summer to winter, from health to injury to fertility vs infertility, from athletes to sages, etc. There's plenty of wiggle room for me to believe that it is indeed sustainable.
I find that there's actually a good bit of research-based and evidence-based thinking going over these "vast piles of medical research" you mention and finding that they don't really support the current accepted dogma of nutritional recommendations, and that indeed this research is pretty flimsy itself, if you were to believe Taubes, Lustig, Cordain, Eades, others, and tellingly now there is an alarming increase in obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases as an apparently direct result of the public by-and-large complying with common-wisdom "healthy" recommendations.
I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say "current nutritional dogma". What I was talking about was the fact that the longest lived people in the world eat rice as a primary nutritional staple, or a combination of rice and wheat. All of the countries with the worst obesity and life-style disease epidemics are countries which consume far more protein than necessary and a great deal of meat in general. Not only that, but the proportion is linear-- the US and Mexico consume the most animal products and have the worst rates of lifestyle diseases, with Canada and the UK slightly behind that, and so on all the way to the leanest and least "paleo" countries in eastern Asia.
Even in the healthiest of countries, i.e. Japan, S. Korea, etc, those people who have adopted higher-protein western style diets are the same people starting to manifest some of the same lifestyle diseases westerners have had for decades. Those eating more traditional, mostly plant-based diets are not.
As someone who has lived in Asia for the most of my life it sickens me to see fat people who eat too much meat grasp and Atkins, paleo and other fad diets that involve eating even more of what made them sick in the first place. I know a lot of people who eat rice or noodles every single meal and not a single one are as fat as the average person I see when I go back to visit the US.
The avoidance of highly processed food is sound, but the overall diet is anything but.
I'm no paleo advocate, but your statistics are totally wrong.
Denmark is the world leader in per-capita meat consumption, followed by New Zealand and Luxembourg. The USA is number 4. Canada is in the top 10, but the UK and Mexico are not. Mexico isn't even in the top 30.
Likewise, consider two of the main diet-influenced lifestyle diseases: heart disease and diabetes. Countries in Eastern Europe are all ahead of the US in heart disease incidence and deaths per capita, as are Germany, Norway, Ireland, the UK, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia. There is a higher incidence of diabetes per capita in Germany, Argentina, South Korea, Spain, Mexico and Puerto Rico vs. the US.
If you don't adjust per-capita, the countries with the most heart disease and diabetes are China, India and Russia.
Looking at meat along (as opposed to animal products), Mexico doesn't make it to the top, but it is still far above Asian levels (even China). The US is cited as being at the top in many places, though it's possible Denmark is ignored due to having a smaller population than some US cities.
It's also worth pointing out that S. Koreans have a longer life expectancy than people in either the US or Denmark, despite being less economically developed and have a much smaller social system. Note that the countries topping the life expectancy rankings, Japan and HK are both big rice eaters, and that #3, Iceland gets most its meat as fish.
That said, after reading your post and once again researching the statistics, I'm absolutely shocked how quickly rich countries other than the US have been increasing their meat consumption. I couldn't find lists that looked at total consumption of animal products, but the rankings in terms of meat itself have changed a lot. I'm still 100% sure that eating rice at breakfast, lunch and dinner is part of the traditional Japanese diet, and that they out-live the heavy meat/cheese/butter eaters in other rich countries.
Have you considered the possibility that the paleo diet may be one of those rare things that is horribly flawed in theory but works just fine in practice?
You're correct that there's no good nutritional reason to only eat "paleo" foods (though certainly, almost all the foods that you should definitely avoid, like chocolate, chips and cheesecake, are non-paleo). You're also correct that a modern "paleo" diet doesn't have all that much in common with a hunter-gatherer's diet anyway.
But as a useful heuristic for coming up with a healthy diet for weight loss in the modern world, it's not too bad. If you're trying to lose weight only three things really matter:
a) Are you maintaining a calorie deficit?
b) Are you getting enough nutrients?
c) Is the diet easy to stick to, or does it make you hungry/give you cravings?
The paleo diet seems to work fairly well by all of these metrics. It's really just a standard low-GI diet with a few other things unnecessarily banned (beans, dairy). The restrictive nature of the diet means you eat a diet rich in meats and vegetables, which are nutrient rich and fill you up with relatively few calories. The low-GI nature of the diet stabilizes your blood sugar and stops you getting the hunger pangs you'd get on a more carb-rich calorie-restictive diet. And it seems to be relatively easy to stick to with only a moderate amount of willpower -- I've been on it for nearly three weeks now and the idea of eating a brownie just gives me a headache.
I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone trying to maintain weight, since I think it would be difficult and expensive to consume enough calories for a healthy lifestyle without eating modest amounts of grains. And the prohibition on beans and dairy is probably unnecessary. But as a workable heuristic for weight loss, "eat paleo foods" isn't half bad.
I worry we may be heading for a future in which only a few people plot their own itinerary through no-land, while everyone else books a package tour.
That's been the case for the majority of human history. It's mostly the case now. Most non-religious, progressive thinking people, don't actually think through most issues for themselves. They believe in institutions - academia, NPR, etc. Most people believe what they do about nutrition for instance, not from reading studies themselves, but through accredited officials (PHD's) as interpreted by the NYTimes.
I'm not sure whether you're particularly referring to media bias and dumbed-down science journalism, which is certainly an issue, but the general practice of 'trusting an expert' seems sound to me - the effort required to become an expert yourself in every field that affects you would be incredible, whilst trusting someone else who has that expert knowledge to translate into layman's terms for you is more efficient.
This is essentially just society optimizing itself through specification - just have 1 person become the nutrition expert and do all the tests and experimentation, and then they can share that knowledge with the rest. Whilst the nutritionist is busy, that leaves others free to invent fusion power and quantum computing.
Nearly all institutions are run primarily for their own benefit. We often forget this when we receive their products/information/services. Sometimes, we're lucky enough to receive correct information or things that don't harm us. Trusting an expert is a good idea as you say, but trusting an expert whose opinion has been normalized by an institution is quite dangerous. It's less dangerous if you fully understand the motives of the institution, but with today's treacherous institutions, even most people in the institution are unaware of the motives and their consequences.
This phenomenon, also called "rational ignorance" by economists, is a problem for democracies. Not every person has the time to become an expert on everything, but they still vote on it.
I wonder how many people would be happy to "delegate their vote" if there was some officially supported way of doing it.
This would be an interesting way of reimagining representative democracy in the digital age. Why should we bother limiting ourselves to a fixed number of representatives? Let everyone vote on everything _but_ let people choose to assign their vote to someone else.
Rather than electing representatives, I'd choose someone whose intellect and experience I trust, and delegate my voting rights to them. They'd become my representative. When someone accumulated enough other people's votes, they'd reach the political stature of people like senators.
Only if the candidate you voted for won. If they didn't they're still the representative of your constituency, but not in any politically meaningful sense your representative.
Something closer to moultano's proposal would be a running referendum on everything, where you can choose to revocably delegate your vote (revocable as in you can remove the delegation, not reverse the vote).
But even an MP I didn't vote for, I can still write to, or show up at their constituents meeting or whatever. They're still going to pay attention, a) they don't know how I voted anyway and b) they want my vote next time!
I would like to be able to delegate my vote on particular subjects to particular people. That way I don't have to worry if an economist I respect has a restrictive idea of gay rights or something like that, I can just pick a trustworthy delegate for each topic. A computer can ask me to break conflicts where it appears that a particular law should go to two different delegates.
One of the issues with nutrition is that there is so much conflicting advice to wade through. Even if you do get down to the science it can still be unclear what you should follow.
I started eating primal/paleo/low carb (I prefer the latter) after reading 'good calories, bad calories' by Gary Taubes. I've been linking people to these notes for a while now: http://higher-thought.net/complete-notes-to-good-calories-ba... you miss some nuances, explainations and a boatload of references from the book, but it's a nice intro.
As far as being vegan goes, check out 'the vegetarian myth' by Leirre Keith, I've been reading parts of it and it's both entertaining and it really gets under your skin.
> we'll have to figure out for ourselves what to avoid and how
At its most basic Paleo Nutrition is mostly about avoiding or minimizing so-called neolithic agents of disease: refined carbohydrates, grains, processed oils.
> It will actually become a reasonable strategy… to suspect everything new
It may be that thinking of it as a "modern" approach to nutrition (ironic in that it's supposed to be the "ancestral" way of eating, but the linked Wikipedia article does call it modern) can help the adoption of the Paleo diet, because "it's new" and because it's new, "addictive".
I noticed the internet becoming especially addicting to me with the addition of HULU to the internet.
Before HULU it was very easy to keep myself from wasting the US average of 4.5hrs of TV watching a day. I just gave away my TV. During that period I had a lot more time to work, enjoy books, friends, the outdoors or other more enjoyable but less addicting activities.
Now however TV is a part of the internet and I have difficulty blocking it. I've tried editing hosts files, rescuetime, and even made my own app (8aweek YC W08). But I'm on a losing battle with this addiction so far.
Thanks for this excellent essay. In my case, it describes a painfully current issue.
I am looking for strategies on how to deal with this addiction. How to start? Where to get help? Where to find the force to escape? How to convince myself that I want to change and WHY?
"heroin, and crack have in common is that they're all more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors."
Heroin and crack aren't more concentrated, they just get absorbed faster into the brain. For whatever reason the faster a substance gets absorbed the more likely you are to get addicted to it. For any given drug smoking it is the most likely to lead to addiction, followed by injection, snorting, sublingual, and eating in that order. Obviously this doesn't change your point at all, but I only mention it because it stands to reason that the addictiveness of other things works the same way. (For example, you might be able to keep HN equally useful but make it less addictive if there were a way to slow down the rate of gratification.)
Just like PG's last article, there is an inherent irony in finding this on Hacker News.
PG is right though, the internet is addictive. The question of what to do about it is still left open, though. For now, I'm going to disconnect for a few hours. Hopefully when I get back on I'll have something productive to show for it.
I agree with the main thrust of this essay, but there are nuances & counter-examples that make me more optimistic:
For example, a nuance: More people are giving up television, magazines & newspapers than ever before - perhaps we (as humans) have a finite need of/tolerance for distractions, and are satisfying this need/reaching this tolerance more efficiently via the internet now?
A counter-example (on the increase in 'hardness' of society's addictions): The Finns (and others) originally did not have practical access to alcohol, so they took locally available hallucinogens (and saw santa!). Then vodka, and later beer became affordable, so they now largely drink these instead - ie. the move is not inevitably one-way (see also various temperance movements). Also Hogarth chronicled Britain's descent into gin excess, but although this seemed overwhelming and permanent at the time, it was relatively brief.
In short: humans have always adapted better than predicted to change - so far.
"More people are giving up television, magazines & newspapers than ever before"
In many of the discussions about people giving up "TV," it turned out that many just turned off their cable and consumed video through Hulu, Netflix and other online sources.
So, put another way, do you think even people who have given up TV, etc. have, on average, actually reduced their total amount of time consuming content of one form or another, when Facebook and everything else on the Internet is included?
On one hand, TiVo, Hulu, and Netflix have replaced casual channel-surfing (which can consume unlimited time) with purposeful TV watching where you only watch the shows that you want to watch. OTOH, the amount of TV available these days is enormous (cable now has four-digit channel numbers) and there are recommendation engines that can always find more for you to watch.
Well, in going from cable to Netflix, I probably reduced my time spent watching moving pictures by 75% (not that it was very high to begin with). In addition to the rationing involved (at least at the beginning, before the proliferation of Instant Watch), there was perhaps the decreased sense of "must get my money's worth." Paying $60/month for cable to watch two hours a week feels more wasteful than paying $10/month for the same.
I think that people tend to watch more TV with less enjoyment when it's just a cable stream into your house. I think that people don't end up tending to things like channel-surfing. It's hard to plop down on the couch and watch whatever happens to be the 'best thing on' when the video is on-demand and you have a choice in the matter. This is the same reason that so many people felt liberated by things like TiVo. It allowed them to just tell TiVo what they liked to watch, and they didn't have to worry about gathering around the TV set at a time specified by a channel's scheduling selections.
Just another day it dawned on me that an important part of the overwhelming success of television (specially cable television) is that it's another unpredictable-rewards skinner box. There are the good shows you know and expect (and their fixed schedule induces lots of tradeoffs, like "why get up now if X is in half an hour") and the possibility of finding something nice zapping is akin to a slot machine.
Video on demand makes it easier to watch a specific content, but harder to just zone out in front of the tv, which is the most addictive and destructive activity.
>In many of the discussions about people giving up "TV," it turned out that many just turned off their cable and consumed video through Hulu, Netflix and other online sources.
So you mean they've been superseded by more addictive technologies? :)
The easiest thing I've found to get over the internet addiction is to have a critical amount of shit that is more mentally engaging around. I have a bunch of MIT lectures on my iPhone, and I have several highly interesting books around. I know those are usually more valuable to me than the blog du jour, so if I feel that I've spent too much time on reddit or whatever I just pick up the book, or go back to watching an algorithms course for awhile. Eventually the mind gets quieter and its easier to focus more on the task at hand. Also, use the internet for actions, rather than consumption. If you haven't produced at least one blog post or comment for every ten you've read, go comment somewhere or write a blog post. Produce based on what you consume, otherwise you're just piling up mental debt.
If one has to abstain from society's norms to live appropriately, then I imagine it'll be increasingly difficult to make a living for one that abstains, at least in any area based on technological change. E.g., Paul would have a harder time conducting an effective business (or even perhaps being as well informed as an investor) involved with iPhone Apps. Not to say one must make a living on the technological fringes (that become the societal norms), however, such a course is limiting for the abstainer, for better or worse.
You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly.
i've been surprised by just how true this statement is. i resolved to make some lifestyle changes this year to be healthier (without being overly zealous) and it's been amazing how reactions have made me feel like i'm behaving strangely. especially regarding alcohol at social events.
Why do you think that explanation is particularly probable out of all of the other possibilities? It seems more likely that society would consider actions strange if the actions have justifications that most people don't understand or agree with, and they don't succeed in masking their judgement.
I think this because there are plenty of vegetarians and non-smokers, and non-drinkers around that people overall don't really find it weird. I myself do eat meat and drink alcohol but it is so little overall in a year that you could almost count me as a vegetarian and as a non-alcohol drinker. I do not smoke at all. Also, I've noticed that people that claim to be vegetarians do it in such a way that they come off smug.
> I've noticed that people that claim to be vegetarians do it in such a way that they come off smug.
Unfortunately the act of unapologetically refusing to participate in something that most other people do is often considered smug. This is rather similar to the way atheists are considered smug by many religious people where as agnostics are not.
I don't think religious people consider atheists smug. If nothing else they think they are going to hell. The thing is that many people come out and say "I'm a vegetarian" as if it were the second coming of Jesus. Honestly who gives a crap whether you are a vegetarian or not. No need to announce it to the world.
Do they just walk up and introduce themselves like: "Hi, I'm Bob. Oh, and I'm a vegetarian." ? Or is it more like: "No thanks, I don't eat meat. I'm a vegetarian."
The second version doesn't really come off as smug, unless you're just someone that is easily offended. Interpreting that as anything more than an explanation of why the person doesn't want to accept your offer of meat (or something with meat) is spending too much time reading into it.
Some people get offended at conversations like this:
smoker: You got a smoke?
non-smoker: Sorry, I don't smoke.
Whether or not the smoker thinks that the non-smoker is being smug has more to do with the baggage that the smoker brings to the table (e.g. perceiving all non-smokers as looking down at him/her for being a smoker).
Yup... (not that there aren't plenty of smug people to go around....)
I quit drinking for quite a long time - and in some situations it was impossible for me NOT to be rude. I very politely said "Nope, just a diet coke thanks!" when first asked for a drink.... then they'd keep pushing and pushing...... I'd drop a polite "Sorry man, I don't drink...".... no smug at all.
It's after that that I might pull some attitude, when you just can't leave it alone and won't respect me enough and KEEP ASKING ME TO DRINK. If you're not a friend, and not a colleague, then i'll just ignore you likely. If you are a friend or colleague, you are showing a distinct and inappropriate lack of respect for my decision not to drink.
Now - if you are already wasted, I'll grant you a grain of salt or two... I want you to have fun (I'm having fun) - but if you KEEP pushing me, I'm going to KEEP flatly refusing, and at some point, when I'm not having fun anymore, I'm going to leave - and I refuse to be the bad guy in that situation.
Yup... (not that there aren't plenty of smug people to go around....)
I quit drinking for quite a long time - and in some situations it was impossible for me NOT to be rude. I very politely said "Nope, just a diet coke thanks!" when first asked for a drink.... then they'd keep pushing and pushing...... I'd drop a polite "Sorry man, I don't drink...".... no smug at all.
It's after that that I might pull some attitude, when you just can't leave it alone and won't respect me enough and KEEP ASKING ME TO DRINK. If you're not a friend, and not a colleague, then i'll just ignore you likely. If you are a friend or colleague, you are showing a distinct and inappropriate lack of respect for my decision not to drink.
Now - if you are already wasted, I'll grant you a grain of salt or two... I want you to have fun (I'm having fun) - but if you KEEP pushing me, I'm going to KEEP flatly refusing, and at some point, when I'm not having fun anymore, I'm going to leave - and I refuse to be the bad guy in that situation.
I believe you're pretty much right on this, though I'd label it as a form of social signaling rather than outright smugness. It's the sort of group-identification we like, and depending on the group, want to signal "I made a better choice than you, you should be in my group too."
The whole "I'm a vegan!" is similar to "I'm a Christian", "I'm an environmentalist!", "I'm an Objectivist!", "I'm an Atheist!", "I'm gay!" phrases I often hear or read, and that social signaling can easily come off as smug/arrogant/annoying/pushy, and in general just make us not like the person. More action-oriented phrasings like "I don't smoke", "I don't eat meat", "I don't believe in any deity" seem more reasonable and I think they produce better conversation.
This depends, if you flat refuse all alcohol I can see how this would come across strange at social events. People that are drinking want everyone else in their presence to be loosened up a little as well. I would imagine the reaction would be different between I don't drink and I'm only having a couple.
What is more interesting would be if your not drinking but are still relaxed and are lively with other people present, whether you seem strange because your not drinking or whether it's got to do with your interactions due to not drinking.
I personally don't see anything wrong with not drinking unless your acting condescending to those that have had a few.
I think you're onto to something there. People probably have good reasons to try and avoid mismatches in levels of drinking at an event. Drinking breaks down social barriers but in doing so it makes people vulnerable. Maybe if you can sufficiently signal your commitment to the social situation without drinking you'd do better - ie make a bit of a fool of yourself to show your uninhibited state. As an experiment perhaps next party the grandparent commenter goes to he can wear a ridiculous Hawaiian shirt or something.
I can see how it could put the drinker in a vulnerable position. Though what's interesting is when I am around drunk people, my own inhibition naturally drops even without drinking.
Ive been thinking about the addictiveness of information a fair bunch lately. I would be interested in hearing from people about the following few questions
a) Is this just a geek thing ? Many applications we work on utilise existing data, our tools are changing constantly, there are sage geeks sharing their hard earned wisdom. To keep up with all the above we consume a lot of information on a daily basis. A conversation with my dentist and a few doctor friends were mostly replied with - "How do you get time to read on the internet on a daily basis?". My dentist also pointed out that in his field developments are few and far between so once hes out of the office at 5, its no books or reading for him.
b) I would also be interested in hearing from some people who were born post 1995, or from a time when internet connectivity was already pervasive. Do they look at the internet with the same eyes of enchanted addictiveness or do they take it for granted ?
Being addicted to cigarrettes is one thing. They are bad but not as bad as drugs like Marijuana (Maybe, don't know, I don't smoke). It seems that for a lot of people that do Marijuana it eventually becomes too mild for them. Also, once they are using drugs, using more potent ones doesn't seem like a big deal.
This is only an anecdote: I had a friend who started using Marijuana. He said he only used it once in a while and it was no big deal. That it wasn't that bad really because he didn't use any of the more potent stuff like cocaine as other guys did. In his mind I supposed he was convincing himself that the really bad guys are using cocaine. According to him using Marijuana is no big deal. Two years latter I had a conversation with him and he tells me he was arrested for using cocaine while driving. He tells me it is no big deal because he only uses it every once in a while and that he is not like other guys that use more potent drugs. No big deal really.
It seems to me that starting with a mild drug can lead to using more dangerous drugs. And yet every once in a while I read somebody saying that you should use Marijuana or that Marijuana is no big deal.
No point really, just ranting a little. I guess I would like to tell you Marijuana users that if you like it don't try to convince the rest of us into thinking it is no big deal. Go ahead and use your crap if you want but don't advertise it to the rest of us as if it is no big deal.
Wouldn't it be peculiar if the sort of person who was going to use cocaine didn't first try marijuana, or, for that matter, alcohol or cigarettes? Who jumps in at the deep end?
You have this theory that marijuana (lets be consistent and say alcohol too) cause cocaine use.
You take the fact that cocaine users have almost invariably first used such substances as evidence supporting your theory, without recognising that this pattern is what we would expect to observe in any event. The idea of a cocaine user who has never touched alcohol is a bizarre one.
(By the way, why the focus on marijuana? Can you formulate a version of your argument that doesn't apply just as well to alcohol? I'll grant you that cigarettes have only a mild effect, but the effects of alcohol and cannabis are broadly similar; if anything, alcohol has a stronger effect.)
You start with an illegal substance. You are already breaking the law so what is the big deal with using an even stronger substance. That seems to be the rationale used by a lot of people. I guess I should have made that clear in my original example. Believe it or not your moral values start to decrease once you start breaking them. I'll take it to another extreme: Once a criminal has become used to breaking the law, doing one more crime doesn't seem like a big deal to them.
Many people will not switch from cigarettes to Marijuana because their moral values does not allow them to. i.e. They see using an illegal substance as immoral. However, if somehow you convince them to use Marijuana and break their moral value what many of them will do is to rationalize that using Marijuana is no big deal. Especially if a lot of peers are re-inforcing that notion (as many are trying to do here in Hacker News. Or to put it another way, a rotten apple will rotten all the others). That moral value is lost. Since there is no longer a moral value stopping them from using illegal substances using Cocaine is really no big deal anymore.
I hypothesize that this is how criminals are created in general. The first time the commit a crime they may be really nervous, eventually they get used to it and many may go on to commit worse crimes. I guess this is why it is so important to teach kids strong moral values. Also to keep them away from bad influences. They are the most vulnerable in their teenage years from breaking their moral values. If they have not broken their moral values after their mid twenties they are probably not going to anymore.
You've now completely changed your argument. Originally it was "mild drugs lead to strong drugs". I noted that alcohol is a mild drug. Now your argument is "mild crime leads to strong crime". If I can summon a good argument against that, will you just come up with a third argument for what you're already committed to believing?
Mild crime does not lead to strong crime. Like many people, in my teenage days I downloaded some music illegally. Most of us didn't become burglars. But I guarantee you almost all burglars (of the correct age group and technical skills) have downloaded music illegally.
I have not changed my original stance. I've just provided more arguments to this mild debate. I know, we've all downloaded illegal music and yes many of us believe this is no big deal even though objectively speaking it is wrong. Somebody worked really hard for those songs.
OK. So lets agree that doing Marijuana may not 100% of the time lead to cocaine use. That doesn't mean that it doens't increases the likelyhood of using it because you've already broken multiple moral values that go beyond just drinking or smoking.
Another example: Does smoking mean that you are going to get cancer? No. But it has been proven in plenty of studies that it does increases your chances of getting cancer. And I think we can agree that using Marijuana is a step closer to using cocaine than just drinking alcohol. For once, if you are using Marijuana that means that you already have a person providing you an illegal substance. That same person can probably get you cocaine and anything else you want. If you only drink alcohol you would still have to find this illegal substance distributor.
Finally, are you making the claim that there is nothing wrong with smoking Marijuana. If so does that mean that you would be OK if your kids smoke Marijuana? Now please be honest.
"Finally, are you making the claim that there is nothing wrong with smoking Marijuana. If so does that mean that you would be OK if your kids smoke Marijuana? Now please be honest."
I'll make that claim. If my children were of an age where marijuana would not hurt their development, I would not only be okay with it, I would smoke it with them and listen to music.
It's possible to have a moral compass aside from the law. Law is a horrible moral compass--governments are among the least moral institutions on earth. Wearing a beard was illegal in communist Albania. My moral compass is totally fine with downloading music and smoking marijuana. It's not fine with waterboarding or theft or murder.
I don't have kids, but I have friends who have smoked marijuana with their parents, bought marijuana for their parents, received a bong from their parents as a gift, etc. It's not that uncommon.
The amount who try marijuana that move on to cocaine isn't even close to 100%. Even if I was to grant you that marijuana was a stepping stone, statistics put the number less than 50%. Most polls put the amount of American adults who've tried marijuana close to 42%. Only around 16% have tried cocaine. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1821697,00.ht...
Also, most marijuana dealers only deal enough to smoke for free plus a little extra. They certainly aren't getting rich off it. And many of them don't have connections to other drugs.
That said, there is some truth to what you are saying... In school we are taught that ALL drugs are bad, that they will kill you, ruin your life, etc. Then people try marijuana, and realize it actually isn't a big deal. So that can lead some people to incorrectly conclude that all they learned was lies, not just the part about marijuana, and so they recklessly continue trying other drugs. I'll grant you this happens occasionally. But the fault there not within marijuana, but within the current education policy of treating all drugs equally. Give kids the truth and a little respect, and they just might surprise you.
One thing I've noticed is that when people first become open minded and try marijuana, despite everything they've been told by authority figures, they don't necessarily try anything more dangerous because their peers know it's bad. Since it tends to be an inherently social activity (in most cases you are convinced by peers to try it), you will inevitably discuss further experimentation. When enough people mention the risks of hard drugs, you'll tend to stay away from them.
There is a lot of truth to this, peers are a strong influence. I do think, however, that things would improve further if the schools were honest as well. At the very least, it'd be one less thing that erodes trust in the government as an authority.
First, there are at least two possible explanations for the the even you witnessed - one that marijuana was a gateway drug for your friend, and the other is that your friend was simply fucked up to start with and found his solace in drugs. You have dismissed one of the options and then concluded the truthfulness of the other (which is a serious defect of cognition).
Your second problem is that you are treating an anecdote as data. It ain't.
That is why I called it an anecdote to begin with. It is a serious defect in cognition that you did not realize that this is why I spelled it out as such. I knew him during high school. From what I know about him I think he just gave in to peer pressure as many do.
I don't know about that. It's more frustrating to use long-term than a full fledged browser, so while it gets the job done for utilitarian fact-finding while on the go, it can't feed an unfocused addiction. At least not in my case.
The answer is clearly to rely less on social antibodies to specific addictions and more on recognizing and fighting the general pattern of addictiveness, an effort that this essay itself is a part of. The more we learn about the generic properties of addiction, the more we can not only recognize addictive and harmful things earlier, but also deliberately make worthwhile tasks addictive as well, such as exercise as an obvious example.
I think PG makes a good point, but I hesitate to call some of these things addictions, because many typical people get over them. I watched a lot of TV when I was a little kid, but practically none once I was past twelve. I watched my daughter do the same switch, but even more rapidly. I found MMOGs incredibly attractive when they first came out, but much, much less attractive by a few years later (as measured by no subscriptions). A lot of things people call addictive are qualitatively different from an addition to opiates, say.
Still, he's definitely right that the world is getting more addictive.
The "Slow movement" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Movement ) is an interesting example of an attempt to create a mass movement that addresses some of these issues, while not completely cutting off modern conveniences.
(I'm linking it not because I agree, but because it's an interesting example of an attempt to collectively change people's response to modern technology. Examples like the Amish are in a similar vein, but much more extreme.)
One problem that people who work with computers for a living have versus people who don't, is that, if you are an internet addict and you are, e.g. a nurse, you can always just avoid computers altogether for, say a week or a month, if your addiction gets out of hand.
But for people who work with a computer for their day job, avoiding the cause of the addiction is much tougher.
It's like if a TV critic had a TV addiction. He/She couldn't just stop watching TV altogether to defeat the addiction.
Sometimes I think the only solution for extreme cases is to take a sabbatical from work and become something like a waiter for a few months. No computers needed and lots of human interaction.
A while back PG said that he has a separate work computer that's not connected to the Internet. RMS goes even farther, only interacting with the Net via email.
Anathem is set on and around the planet Arbre. Thousands of years prior to the events in the novel, society was on the verge of collapse. Intellectuals entered concents, much like monastic communities but without the religious elements. Here, the avout—a term for intellectuals living under vows and separated from saecular society [...]—retain only limited access to tools and technology and are watched over by officials answering to the outside world (known as the Sæcular Power).
That's different. In Anathem, the world suffered one Manhatten project too many. Governments isolated the geeks and confiscated their toys as a survival measure.
Internet addiction seems to be the elephant in the room of modern culture. Whole families are addicted, but it's not talked about. Not to mention the more, shall we say, illicit side of the 'net.
That said, TV and newspapers are arguably just as bad (or worse) and they've been around for ages. So that's... reassuring.
However I think the iPad an iPhone are good in the sense that they remove the social isolation involved with logging onto the net.
"That said, TV and newspapers are arguably just as bad (or worse)....."
How are newspapers as bad or worse than internet addiction? You don't have most of the members of a family going off to read newspapers in different parts of the house.
Newspapers are like the internet in that every single day people waste an hour or more of their life reading them. They also clutter your living room and raise your carbon footprint. And also... reading the Daily Mail or The Guardian everyday can't be good for you! Realistically they're not as bad as TV or the net though.
It might be too broad to refer to the internet as a single entity. Those of us with internet addiction are actually addicted to specific things online - the internet is just the medium.
In the case of hacker news, what we're addicted to is startup news and gossip. It's ironic that this very morning I was thinking about how to produce some sort of audio version of HN for my daily commute.
> In the case of hacker news, what we're addicted to is startup news and gossip.
Not me. I'm more interested in programming technology and understanding how trends in technology shape society -- and reading PG's essay has helped me do this.
I actually want to get an iPad just to quarantine my internet addiction. If I treat my computer purely as a workspace I'll get more done while at my computer; if I've got an iPad for other things, I won't go through Hacker News withdrawals.
This was inspired by something PG said in another essay--that he deals with internet addiction by using separate computers for work and internet. The iPad is just a purpose built machine for that, in my view.
I agree. If I can get all RSS, twitter, video, etc. on the iPad and off the computer it will start to feel more like a TV or entertainment device. This way I will feel like I'm wasting time vs. working.
It didn't work though. I always ended up slipping into using the Internet on my work computer. Even after I bought a new computer, nicer than my work computer, for using the Internet. So now I've gone back to one computer, which I basically treat as radioactive and have exiled to a corner of the room. I should add a warning notice to that essay.
I'm making an attempt at trying to establish myself online to catch the attention of VCs and angels now that I've moved to the bay area, but the result has been a constant urge to monitor everything. Buried within PG's essay is a hint that maybe he thinks it's not worth it in retrospect - zen painter or junkie hacker it seems.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 277 ms ] threadAnd vice-versa.
86 points by whatusername 196 days ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1046378
Bravo on another great essay though. This made me smile:
You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly.
This is really much of the appeal of Christianity, and other forms of culture that have survived some test of time. I say this in response to pg's foot note:
"Unless we mass produce social customs. I suspect the recent resurgence of evangelical Christianity in the US is partly a reaction to drugs."
Not just drugs, but all the different things pg cites as addictive. Plugging in to older value systems is one way of putting a brake on those impulses. This, of course, is true of many other religious and cultural systems that have stood the test of time, not just Christianity.
I am also struck by how successful families and subcultures often have strong mechanisms in place to stigmatize these addictive impulses. Modelling self control and discipline has a lot to do with how success and prosperity is transferred across generations. By itself, accumulated cash will dissipate very quickly if the necessary character traits are not transferred along with it.
It's very fashionable in the hacker community to treat Christianity as an anti-science establishment, but that's really a brash generalization that isn't even supported by facts. You'll even find a lot of evangelical Christians who are stauch proponents of the theory of evolution.
It's a rather tired meme that Evangelicals are engaging in an all-out assault on the scientific establishment, when that simply isn't true. There is a large, vocal evangelical contingent that espouses creationism, but 'evangelicals' are a much more complex and noisy bunch than one might expect.
To put it simply: I've been to quite a few churches that were direct examples of the overload culture that PG is writing about. Some of them were evangelical, most of them had congregations whose political beliefs are in no way uniform. And again, evangelical is in no way a synonym for right-wing. PG is overreaching here. But, it was a footnote, so I've already gone on more than is justified.
Many Christians I know refer to modern evangelical Christianity as "evangelicalism." It connotes a social construction that has its roots in church life, but its purpose is a far cry from a biblical understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. IMO, this accounts for the rise of Beck, Limbaugh, and other talking heads. They preach a message that isn't watered down. They sound impassioned and convictional, unlike the guy standing in front of them on Sunday morning.
I hope I was not the only one who instantly thought of Neal Stephenson's _The Diamond Age_ and its phyles (especially the Victorians).
Just didn't get around to working it into my comment. :)
I remember reading that, wondering who is today's equivalent of the Victorians. (The Victorians, of course, were the historical equivalent of the Victorians.)
Inside the US? I'd go with the Amish first, inasmuch as they pretty much are from the Victorian era. (Technically they were much earlier, but I figure they've drifted that far forward.)
Outside of small or weird groups, I would guess the Asian-Americans (Japan/China/South Korea, to be exact) are the closest in their high valuation of education, thrift, repressed social mores, and reputation.
Even its concept is flawed. Some things it discards, such as wheat are barely changed from what our ancestors were eating long before agriculture or town settlements. One reason wheat was adopted so widely so early is that it didn't need to change much to be domesticated (see Guns Germs and Steel). Strawberries on the other hand, weren't domesticated until medieval times, and the same is true of many nuts, most notably almonds. Cattle has also undergone a far larger genetic transformation than many of our primary grain crops. Most damning to the idea of a paleo diet is that we have, too.
Human evolution has clearly accelerated with population growth. According to some anthropologists, modern humans differ more from those 5,000 years ago than those humans differed from Neanderthal.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1043228620071210
In short, the paleo diet rests on flawed assumptions about evolution, the history of agriculture and ignores the main body of nutritional research and is rightfully considered a fad diet by the NHS and similar organizations.
Edit: It's also horribly unsustainable. A hummer-driving vegan doesn't have anywhere near the ecological footprint of a bicycle-riding "paleo" dieter.
I'll just say that since switching to a diet that contains whole foods consisting of meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, I've never felt better or been in better shape. I've seen the same results in many friends. If I have a big meal of grains I'll feel sick and almost hungover as a result.
Your mileage may vary, but have you tried it and seen what happens to your body? I've experimented with many types of diets, including strict veganism for about 3 months. So far a "paleo" diet has worked the best, for me.
Since then I've become more sedentary, but have still maintained lower cholesterol and blood pressure than the majority of people in their 20's. I started eating richer foods several years ago in Taiwan and put on some weight, but found it disappears quickly after returning to a more normal (Chinese) rice and vegetable based diet.
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/in-search-of-wheat...
> What we call wheat today is quite different from the wheat of Biblical times. Emmer and einkorn wheat were the original grains harvested from wild growths, then cultivated. Triticum aestivum, the natural hybrid of emmer and goatgrass, also entered the picture, gradually replacing emmer and einkorn.
> The 25,000+ wheat strains now populating the farmlands of the world are considerably different from the bread wheat of Egyptians, different in gluten content, different in gluten structure, different in dozens of other non-gluten proteins, different in carbohydrate content. Modern wheat has been hybridized, introgressed, and back-bred to increase yield, make a shorter stalk in order to hold up to greater seed yield, along with many other characteristics. Much of the genetic work to create modern wheat strains are well-intended to feed the world, as well as to provide patent-protected seeds for agribusiness.
He goes on to try einkorn bread, and doesn't get the same reactions and BG rise that he does with regular bread. Search for 'einkorn' on that blog if you're curious.
but I do realize wheat has changed in some ways, primarily in that it sprouts every season now. Try subjecting popular "paleo" foods to the same scrutiny you just subjected wheat to-- most currently popular fruits weren't eaten at all until the past few hundred years, walnut trees had to be grafted in order to be cultivated and most almonds killed people who ate them! Similarly, big game on each continent was hunted to extinction, especially in Australia and the Americas. Domesticated animals have been bred to be far different than anything our ancestors encountered.
Wheat has changed little by comparison.
While there is indeed a paleo re-enactment fringe that tries to live as they understand our ancient ancestors would, not just nutrition-wise, I find that there's actually a good bit of research-based and evidence-based thinking going over these "vast piles of medical research" you mention and finding that they don't really support the current accepted dogma of nutritional recommendations, and that indeed this research is pretty flimsy itself, if you were to believe Taubes, Lustig, Cordain, Eades, others, and tellingly now there is an alarming increase in obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases as an apparently direct result of the public by-and-large complying with common-wisdom "healthy" recommendations.
> Even its concept is flawed. Some things it discards, such as wheat are barely changed from what our ancestors were eating long before agriculture or town settlements
Oh? Wheat requires several months from cultivation to being ready for consumption. Perhaps it was consumed "long before agriculture or town settlements" but then it seems quite implausible that it would amount to anything significant in terms of nutrition, not to mention that it still requires quite a bit of processing before it can be eaten so it isn't exactly readily available nutrients.
But lets for a moment assume that yes, there have been many changes and genetic transformations to fruits, nuts, the meats we consume and ourselves. How is it unreasonable, given the catastrophic results of following current nutritional dogma, to look into our over 2 Million- year evolutionary history for clues on what we may be doing wrong, and noting that we've had agriculture for only 0.5% of that time. Even if after agriculture our rate of change multiplied 10-fold, we would still have a nutritional heritage of over 95% of our history where we most likely did not consume, in general, 60-80% of our nutrients from grains and certainly not from sugar, or refined vegetable oils.
That sounds like a pretty good clue to me.
> is rightfully considered a fad diet by the NHS and similar organizations
And then people all over are giving these ideas a go, and lo! they're feeling better, losing their excess weight, reversing chronic diseases, feeling energetic, not having hunger ups-and-downs, not feeling bloated, etc. (granted, this is all anecdotal evidence) And yet this is one of the dumbest ideas you've encountered in your entire life? You must be pretty lucky having a life of plentiful great ideas.
> It's also horribly unsustainable. A hummer-driving vegan...
There was the shadow of a reasonable argument there. It is entirely possible that given our current population of over 6 billion people, not all of us could follow the exact same diet, then again, there's no reason why anyone would suggest that. A good 1/5th of earth's population does not eat cattle for cultural reasons, cattle is not the only meat, and it can be raised sustainably (while being more nutritious), and there are other good sources of the necessary nutrients from the paleo perpective, and the needs of a male vary from those of a female, from a baby, from a child, from youth to middle age to old age, from summer to winter, from health to injury to fertility vs infertility, from athletes to sages, etc. There's plenty of wiggle room for me to believe that it is indeed sustainable.
Sorry for the long post.
I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say "current nutritional dogma". What I was talking about was the fact that the longest lived people in the world eat rice as a primary nutritional staple, or a combination of rice and wheat. All of the countries with the worst obesity and life-style disease epidemics are countries which consume far more protein than necessary and a great deal of meat in general. Not only that, but the proportion is linear-- the US and Mexico consume the most animal products and have the worst rates of lifestyle diseases, with Canada and the UK slightly behind that, and so on all the way to the leanest and least "paleo" countries in eastern Asia.
Even in the healthiest of countries, i.e. Japan, S. Korea, etc, those people who have adopted higher-protein western style diets are the same people starting to manifest some of the same lifestyle diseases westerners have had for decades. Those eating more traditional, mostly plant-based diets are not.
As someone who has lived in Asia for the most of my life it sickens me to see fat people who eat too much meat grasp and Atkins, paleo and other fad diets that involve eating even more of what made them sick in the first place. I know a lot of people who eat rice or noodles every single meal and not a single one are as fat as the average person I see when I go back to visit the US.
The avoidance of highly processed food is sound, but the overall diet is anything but.
Denmark is the world leader in per-capita meat consumption, followed by New Zealand and Luxembourg. The USA is number 4. Canada is in the top 10, but the UK and Mexico are not. Mexico isn't even in the top 30.
Likewise, consider two of the main diet-influenced lifestyle diseases: heart disease and diabetes. Countries in Eastern Europe are all ahead of the US in heart disease incidence and deaths per capita, as are Germany, Norway, Ireland, the UK, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia. There is a higher incidence of diabetes per capita in Germany, Argentina, South Korea, Spain, Mexico and Puerto Rico vs. the US.
If you don't adjust per-capita, the countries with the most heart disease and diabetes are China, India and Russia.
United States Leads World Meat Stampede http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1626
It's also worth pointing out that S. Koreans have a longer life expectancy than people in either the US or Denmark, despite being less economically developed and have a much smaller social system. Note that the countries topping the life expectancy rankings, Japan and HK are both big rice eaters, and that #3, Iceland gets most its meat as fish.
That said, after reading your post and once again researching the statistics, I'm absolutely shocked how quickly rich countries other than the US have been increasing their meat consumption. I couldn't find lists that looked at total consumption of animal products, but the rankings in terms of meat itself have changed a lot. I'm still 100% sure that eating rice at breakfast, lunch and dinner is part of the traditional Japanese diet, and that they out-live the heavy meat/cheese/butter eaters in other rich countries.
You're correct that there's no good nutritional reason to only eat "paleo" foods (though certainly, almost all the foods that you should definitely avoid, like chocolate, chips and cheesecake, are non-paleo). You're also correct that a modern "paleo" diet doesn't have all that much in common with a hunter-gatherer's diet anyway.
But as a useful heuristic for coming up with a healthy diet for weight loss in the modern world, it's not too bad. If you're trying to lose weight only three things really matter:
a) Are you maintaining a calorie deficit?
b) Are you getting enough nutrients?
c) Is the diet easy to stick to, or does it make you hungry/give you cravings?
The paleo diet seems to work fairly well by all of these metrics. It's really just a standard low-GI diet with a few other things unnecessarily banned (beans, dairy). The restrictive nature of the diet means you eat a diet rich in meats and vegetables, which are nutrient rich and fill you up with relatively few calories. The low-GI nature of the diet stabilizes your blood sugar and stops you getting the hunger pangs you'd get on a more carb-rich calorie-restictive diet. And it seems to be relatively easy to stick to with only a moderate amount of willpower -- I've been on it for nearly three weeks now and the idea of eating a brownie just gives me a headache.
I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone trying to maintain weight, since I think it would be difficult and expensive to consume enough calories for a healthy lifestyle without eating modest amounts of grains. And the prohibition on beans and dairy is probably unnecessary. But as a workable heuristic for weight loss, "eat paleo foods" isn't half bad.
That's been the case for the majority of human history. It's mostly the case now. Most non-religious, progressive thinking people, don't actually think through most issues for themselves. They believe in institutions - academia, NPR, etc. Most people believe what they do about nutrition for instance, not from reading studies themselves, but through accredited officials (PHD's) as interpreted by the NYTimes.
This is essentially just society optimizing itself through specification - just have 1 person become the nutrition expert and do all the tests and experimentation, and then they can share that knowledge with the rest. Whilst the nutritionist is busy, that leaves others free to invent fusion power and quantum computing.
This would be an interesting way of reimagining representative democracy in the digital age. Why should we bother limiting ourselves to a fixed number of representatives? Let everyone vote on everything _but_ let people choose to assign their vote to someone else.
Rather than electing representatives, I'd choose someone whose intellect and experience I trust, and delegate my voting rights to them. They'd become my representative. When someone accumulated enough other people's votes, they'd reach the political stature of people like senators.
Something closer to moultano's proposal would be a running referendum on everything, where you can choose to revocably delegate your vote (revocable as in you can remove the delegation, not reverse the vote).
With regards to the diet itself though: works for me, so I'm happy with it.
But I would like to educate myself about paleo, especially since it provides some compelling arguments while sounding yummy.
As far as being vegan goes, check out 'the vegetarian myth' by Leirre Keith, I've been reading parts of it and it's both entertaining and it really gets under your skin.
But what is PG's opinion here?
> we'll have to figure out for ourselves what to avoid and how
At its most basic Paleo Nutrition is mostly about avoiding or minimizing so-called neolithic agents of disease: refined carbohydrates, grains, processed oils.
> It will actually become a reasonable strategy… to suspect everything new
It may be that thinking of it as a "modern" approach to nutrition (ironic in that it's supposed to be the "ancestral" way of eating, but the linked Wikipedia article does call it modern) can help the adoption of the Paleo diet, because "it's new" and because it's new, "addictive".
Before HULU it was very easy to keep myself from wasting the US average of 4.5hrs of TV watching a day. I just gave away my TV. During that period I had a lot more time to work, enjoy books, friends, the outdoors or other more enjoyable but less addicting activities.
Now however TV is a part of the internet and I have difficulty blocking it. I've tried editing hosts files, rescuetime, and even made my own app (8aweek YC W08). But I'm on a losing battle with this addiction so far.
I am looking for strategies on how to deal with this addiction. How to start? Where to get help? Where to find the force to escape? How to convince myself that I want to change and WHY?
Heroin and crack aren't more concentrated, they just get absorbed faster into the brain. For whatever reason the faster a substance gets absorbed the more likely you are to get addicted to it. For any given drug smoking it is the most likely to lead to addiction, followed by injection, snorting, sublingual, and eating in that order. Obviously this doesn't change your point at all, but I only mention it because it stands to reason that the addictiveness of other things works the same way. (For example, you might be able to keep HN equally useful but make it less addictive if there were a way to slow down the rate of gratification.)
PG is right though, the internet is addictive. The question of what to do about it is still left open, though. For now, I'm going to disconnect for a few hours. Hopefully when I get back on I'll have something productive to show for it.
In short: humans have always adapted better than predicted to change - so far.
In many of the discussions about people giving up "TV," it turned out that many just turned off their cable and consumed video through Hulu, Netflix and other online sources.
So, put another way, do you think even people who have given up TV, etc. have, on average, actually reduced their total amount of time consuming content of one form or another, when Facebook and everything else on the Internet is included?
i) The same thing, but at a time of your own choosing, or:
ii) Only niche programmes of interest to you.
Or some combination of the two. Either way, mediocre programmes are less likely to occupy your time.
Video on demand makes it easier to watch a specific content, but harder to just zone out in front of the tv, which is the most addictive and destructive activity.
So you mean they've been superseded by more addictive technologies? :)
i've been surprised by just how true this statement is. i resolved to make some lifestyle changes this year to be healthier (without being overly zealous) and it's been amazing how reactions have made me feel like i'm behaving strangely. especially regarding alcohol at social events.
Unfortunately the act of unapologetically refusing to participate in something that most other people do is often considered smug. This is rather similar to the way atheists are considered smug by many religious people where as agnostics are not.
The second version doesn't really come off as smug, unless you're just someone that is easily offended. Interpreting that as anything more than an explanation of why the person doesn't want to accept your offer of meat (or something with meat) is spending too much time reading into it.
Some people get offended at conversations like this:
Whether or not the smoker thinks that the non-smoker is being smug has more to do with the baggage that the smoker brings to the table (e.g. perceiving all non-smokers as looking down at him/her for being a smoker).I quit drinking for quite a long time - and in some situations it was impossible for me NOT to be rude. I very politely said "Nope, just a diet coke thanks!" when first asked for a drink.... then they'd keep pushing and pushing...... I'd drop a polite "Sorry man, I don't drink...".... no smug at all. It's after that that I might pull some attitude, when you just can't leave it alone and won't respect me enough and KEEP ASKING ME TO DRINK. If you're not a friend, and not a colleague, then i'll just ignore you likely. If you are a friend or colleague, you are showing a distinct and inappropriate lack of respect for my decision not to drink. Now - if you are already wasted, I'll grant you a grain of salt or two... I want you to have fun (I'm having fun) - but if you KEEP pushing me, I'm going to KEEP flatly refusing, and at some point, when I'm not having fun anymore, I'm going to leave - and I refuse to be the bad guy in that situation.
I quit drinking for quite a long time - and in some situations it was impossible for me NOT to be rude. I very politely said "Nope, just a diet coke thanks!" when first asked for a drink.... then they'd keep pushing and pushing...... I'd drop a polite "Sorry man, I don't drink...".... no smug at all. It's after that that I might pull some attitude, when you just can't leave it alone and won't respect me enough and KEEP ASKING ME TO DRINK. If you're not a friend, and not a colleague, then i'll just ignore you likely. If you are a friend or colleague, you are showing a distinct and inappropriate lack of respect for my decision not to drink. Now - if you are already wasted, I'll grant you a grain of salt or two... I want you to have fun (I'm having fun) - but if you KEEP pushing me, I'm going to KEEP flatly refusing, and at some point, when I'm not having fun anymore, I'm going to leave - and I refuse to be the bad guy in that situation.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mention...
The whole "I'm a vegan!" is similar to "I'm a Christian", "I'm an environmentalist!", "I'm an Objectivist!", "I'm an Atheist!", "I'm gay!" phrases I often hear or read, and that social signaling can easily come off as smug/arrogant/annoying/pushy, and in general just make us not like the person. More action-oriented phrasings like "I don't smoke", "I don't eat meat", "I don't believe in any deity" seem more reasonable and I think they produce better conversation.
What is more interesting would be if your not drinking but are still relaxed and are lively with other people present, whether you seem strange because your not drinking or whether it's got to do with your interactions due to not drinking.
I personally don't see anything wrong with not drinking unless your acting condescending to those that have had a few.
Maybe it was those improv classes...
It probably helps that said friends are mature adults who don't use drunkenness as an excuse for antisocial stupidity.
This is only an anecdote: I had a friend who started using Marijuana. He said he only used it once in a while and it was no big deal. That it wasn't that bad really because he didn't use any of the more potent stuff like cocaine as other guys did. In his mind I supposed he was convincing himself that the really bad guys are using cocaine. According to him using Marijuana is no big deal. Two years latter I had a conversation with him and he tells me he was arrested for using cocaine while driving. He tells me it is no big deal because he only uses it every once in a while and that he is not like other guys that use more potent drugs. No big deal really.
It seems to me that starting with a mild drug can lead to using more dangerous drugs. And yet every once in a while I read somebody saying that you should use Marijuana or that Marijuana is no big deal.
No point really, just ranting a little. I guess I would like to tell you Marijuana users that if you like it don't try to convince the rest of us into thinking it is no big deal. Go ahead and use your crap if you want but don't advertise it to the rest of us as if it is no big deal.
You take the fact that cocaine users have almost invariably first used such substances as evidence supporting your theory, without recognising that this pattern is what we would expect to observe in any event. The idea of a cocaine user who has never touched alcohol is a bizarre one.
(By the way, why the focus on marijuana? Can you formulate a version of your argument that doesn't apply just as well to alcohol? I'll grant you that cigarettes have only a mild effect, but the effects of alcohol and cannabis are broadly similar; if anything, alcohol has a stronger effect.)
Many people will not switch from cigarettes to Marijuana because their moral values does not allow them to. i.e. They see using an illegal substance as immoral. However, if somehow you convince them to use Marijuana and break their moral value what many of them will do is to rationalize that using Marijuana is no big deal. Especially if a lot of peers are re-inforcing that notion (as many are trying to do here in Hacker News. Or to put it another way, a rotten apple will rotten all the others). That moral value is lost. Since there is no longer a moral value stopping them from using illegal substances using Cocaine is really no big deal anymore.
I hypothesize that this is how criminals are created in general. The first time the commit a crime they may be really nervous, eventually they get used to it and many may go on to commit worse crimes. I guess this is why it is so important to teach kids strong moral values. Also to keep them away from bad influences. They are the most vulnerable in their teenage years from breaking their moral values. If they have not broken their moral values after their mid twenties they are probably not going to anymore.
Mild crime does not lead to strong crime. Like many people, in my teenage days I downloaded some music illegally. Most of us didn't become burglars. But I guarantee you almost all burglars (of the correct age group and technical skills) have downloaded music illegally.
OK. So lets agree that doing Marijuana may not 100% of the time lead to cocaine use. That doesn't mean that it doens't increases the likelyhood of using it because you've already broken multiple moral values that go beyond just drinking or smoking.
Another example: Does smoking mean that you are going to get cancer? No. But it has been proven in plenty of studies that it does increases your chances of getting cancer. And I think we can agree that using Marijuana is a step closer to using cocaine than just drinking alcohol. For once, if you are using Marijuana that means that you already have a person providing you an illegal substance. That same person can probably get you cocaine and anything else you want. If you only drink alcohol you would still have to find this illegal substance distributor.
Finally, are you making the claim that there is nothing wrong with smoking Marijuana. If so does that mean that you would be OK if your kids smoke Marijuana? Now please be honest.
I'll make that claim. If my children were of an age where marijuana would not hurt their development, I would not only be okay with it, I would smoke it with them and listen to music.
It's possible to have a moral compass aside from the law. Law is a horrible moral compass--governments are among the least moral institutions on earth. Wearing a beard was illegal in communist Albania. My moral compass is totally fine with downloading music and smoking marijuana. It's not fine with waterboarding or theft or murder.
The amount who try marijuana that move on to cocaine isn't even close to 100%. Even if I was to grant you that marijuana was a stepping stone, statistics put the number less than 50%. Most polls put the amount of American adults who've tried marijuana close to 42%. Only around 16% have tried cocaine. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1821697,00.ht...
Also, most marijuana dealers only deal enough to smoke for free plus a little extra. They certainly aren't getting rich off it. And many of them don't have connections to other drugs.
That said, there is some truth to what you are saying... In school we are taught that ALL drugs are bad, that they will kill you, ruin your life, etc. Then people try marijuana, and realize it actually isn't a big deal. So that can lead some people to incorrectly conclude that all they learned was lies, not just the part about marijuana, and so they recklessly continue trying other drugs. I'll grant you this happens occasionally. But the fault there not within marijuana, but within the current education policy of treating all drugs equally. Give kids the truth and a little respect, and they just might surprise you.
First, there are at least two possible explanations for the the even you witnessed - one that marijuana was a gateway drug for your friend, and the other is that your friend was simply fucked up to start with and found his solace in drugs. You have dismissed one of the options and then concluded the truthfulness of the other (which is a serious defect of cognition).
Your second problem is that you are treating an anecdote as data. It ain't.
Still, he's definitely right that the world is getting more addictive.
(I'm linking it not because I agree, but because it's an interesting example of an attempt to collectively change people's response to modern technology. Examples like the Amish are in a similar vein, but much more extreme.)
But for people who work with a computer for their day job, avoiding the cause of the addiction is much tougher.
It's like if a TV critic had a TV addiction. He/She couldn't just stop watching TV altogether to defeat the addiction.
Sometimes I think the only solution for extreme cases is to take a sabbatical from work and become something like a waiter for a few months. No computers needed and lots of human interaction.
Anathem is set on and around the planet Arbre. Thousands of years prior to the events in the novel, society was on the verge of collapse. Intellectuals entered concents, much like monastic communities but without the religious elements. Here, the avout—a term for intellectuals living under vows and separated from saecular society [...]—retain only limited access to tools and technology and are watched over by officials answering to the outside world (known as the Sæcular Power).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem
That said, TV and newspapers are arguably just as bad (or worse) and they've been around for ages. So that's... reassuring.
However I think the iPad an iPhone are good in the sense that they remove the social isolation involved with logging onto the net.
How are newspapers as bad or worse than internet addiction? You don't have most of the members of a family going off to read newspapers in different parts of the house.
In the case of hacker news, what we're addicted to is startup news and gossip. It's ironic that this very morning I was thinking about how to produce some sort of audio version of HN for my daily commute.
Not me. I'm more interested in programming technology and understanding how trends in technology shape society -- and reading PG's essay has helped me do this.
This was inspired by something PG said in another essay--that he deals with internet addiction by using separate computers for work and internet. The iPad is just a purpose built machine for that, in my view.
Edit: Added one.