Dietary Nihilism

[@KaneB]

Jacob Stegenga on medical nihilism: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mn_UdXaKZa-XoMU Bayesian epistemology: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oKfaaGepbt6oZ7c kzbin.info/www/bejne/eZ25eqptlL-tiac

[@afdulmitdemklappstuhl9607]

Kanes Mom: Eat your vegetables Kane:

[@KaneB]

I actually love vegetables, pretty much all kinds of them.

[@neoepicurean3772]

I thought you made a video on anorexia.

[@Bibibosh]

If you dont train your mind, your souls skeletonise!

[@bigol7169]

Lmao

[@Lembo101]

Its always nice when one of Kane's videos puts a long held gut feeling or intuition into words, with citations, references, and thought experiments. My mother has always been keeping abreast of which foods are "cancer fighting" and I've always had skepticism and cynicism about these claims. Furthermore my type 1 diabetic father has found after years of monitoring his blood glucose he has a few paradoxical reactions to certain types of food, so if he just blindly followed the "best informed advice" without measuring results himself he could have gotten into some trouble. I suppose I may have been a dietary nihilist this whole time, largely in the vein of people should study their own bodies rather than the just following aggregate results from dietary studies.

[@alexbreiding]

Nutrition science has been overwhelmingly consistent and rigorous for many decades. I did not realize this until I shifted into a the biomedical research field. The issue is truly with science communication and information literacy.

[@wmpx34]

That’s a polite way of saying there’s a shitload of quacks and snake-oil salesmen out there scamming people with fake bullshit. And they get away with it largely because of what Mr. Kane says here: It’s very, very hard to say whether something does or doesn’t have a tiny effect. So it’s easy to fool people into thinking it does.

[@blackroses6315]

Dietary/Medical nihilism seems like a ridiculous name to me, and concluding that changing your diet will not cause large changes is also ridiculous to me. This seems to me just a healthy amount of skepticism, but the tangible effects of diet on health and appearance are undeniable, and to say a healthy diet is unknown is silly. We know what diets are healthy, we just aren’t educated as a society, comparable to being an existential nihilist because you’ve never heard of a meaning of life before. This also assumes that a healthy diet is desired, and attainable, while in reality most people in fitness do not aim for a healthy diet, but a diet that is conducive to a specific sport or appearance. Defining a healthy diet is also vital to knowing what we are looking for, because a diet that gives you a long life vs healthy life vs good looks vs feeling the best are all different goals. I could go deeper into this if you have any questions, but another great video, thank you for making it!

[@KaneB]

Stegenga chose the name "medical nihilism" because he takes himself to be reviving a view commonly defended by physicians in the 1800s who called themselves "therapeutic nihilists." But perhaps something like "medical skepticism" would be a better name, given the many uses of "nihilism" these days. I wouldn't take the dietary nihilist as claiming that changing one's diet will not cause large changes. Rather, the dietary nihilist takes a skeptical stance: either we don't know whether a given dietary change will cause large changes, or we don't know what exactly those changes will be. As for the idea that "the tangible effects of diet on health and appearance are undeniable"... well, that is exactly what the dietary nihilist denies, or is at least skeptical about. Dietary nihilism isn't my invention; there are people who have actually defended this kind of view, such as John Ioannidis.

[@DeadEndFrog]

Greatest philosopher on youtube, ladies

[@luszczi]

Nice, this is just what I need for those times when I don't feel like discussing health topics at dinner parties. Confuse, tire, force the change of subject. I will study this diligently.

[@LiquidDemocracyNH]

Loved this, I've heard of "Bayesian" arguments before but never knew what they were, turns out I really like them

[@tomyproconsul]

In my case I tried a lot of diets, most recently the carnivore diet, I did it religiously for 6 months and while I experienced improvements for a short amount of time I was feeling like shit again after the end of 6 months. I also ate all kinds of vitamins, minerals, brain improving nootropics, creatine etc It was getting crazy and I just stopped eating any supplements and apart from saving money nothing bad or good happened. I think many people had similar experiences to mine and intuitively became some kind of dietary nihilists.

[@KaneB]

This is only anecdotal, but I've heard a lot of people report a similar thing: they try a particular diet and find that it makes them feel wonderful for a few months, but the improvements never seem to last. Perhaps the diet genuinely has improved things, and the apparent return to baseline is due to hedonic adaptation. But then you'd expect people to feel worse again when they stop the diet.

[@inoculatedcity]

@@KaneB​​⁠​⁠I’m sure the results for this would also be pretty terrible but given this tendency, I wonder if just changing diets as soon as benefits slow down would be better? Sounds pretty funny but I’d be interested in what would actually happen. My predictions are that the dramatic improvements in the early stages would diminish the more you switch diets, and you would probably end up trying a diet that you have a pretty negative reaction to.

[@speedracer448]

Didn't Jordan Peterson literally almost unalive himself from this meme diet?

[@fastemil123]

@@speedracer448yes

[@KaneB]

@@speedracer448 I think it was benzos that nearly killed him, not the diet.

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

That was indeed interesting; more interesting than I expected. Also, I note that you spent the first ~50 minutes establishing your thesis to inassailability, only to spend the last ~90 seconds delivering the "oh, shit" ramification of that thesis. A real sting in the tail. Well played.

[@martinbennett2228]

Your reference to scurvy provides an obvious counterexample, however on fad diets, you are right: it would be better to believe none of them than to hope to pick out the one that would be of some use. The annoying thing is that it would probably not be so very difficult (despite the real difficulties that you mention) to have a more rigorous understanding of dietary health. Up to some point towards the end of the nineteenth century medical nihilism or an attachment to homeopathy was quite probably more likely than not to lead to a better health outcome. Today we know that for an increasing number of conditions (some of which you mention) turning to a homeopath or refusing medical treatment would be fatal. An area worth exploring is psychology and psychiatry: should we trust psychologists and psychiatrists? How can we know if we have reached the point where it is better to be treated by practitioners than not?

[@ainzooalgown1364]

Everything in moderation, I always say. You can never commit infinite willpower to adhere to or abstain from certain foods, so you must make concerted efforts to cut back as the season demands it. That is why I believe in feasting & fasting.

[@StrangeCornersOfThought]

The mere fact that philosopher's are actively thematizing this just fills my heart with joy.

[@Deltax64]

I'll challenge some points made here: - A small effect size should not necessarily cause us to distrust the result. The only thing that should matter is the p-value, which already accounts for both effect and sample size. So, it doesn't make sense to criticise a study for having a small effect size if their p-value is small enough. - Those paradoxes you mention can easily be explained by having small effect sizes, so the above criticism applies. - Just because industry funded papers tend to have industry-favourable results does not imply that the results are being steered towards a conclusion. Perhaps research is only directed towards hypotheses which are believed to be true, in fear of an embarassing negative result. - Your argument for why P(H) is low seems to be more of an argument for having *low credence* in H, rather than assigning a low probability to H. By the same logic you'd also have a low credence in the claim 'H is false', but the probability we assign should be different.

[@blabit4983]

Yup, all my thoughts too. This position seems either trivial if it's just saying we should update accordingly based on the strength of the evidence (which nutrition researchers do), or just false if it's claiming there is not often very strong evidence for nutrition hypotheses in the research today

[@andersaskjrgensen5468]

To be sure, this is not Dietary Nihilism. This view is more like Dietary Scepticism or at most Dietary Pessimism. Dietary Nihilism would be the view that there's no values available to judge whether you eat pellets of aluminium or pears

[@InefficientCustard]

I feel like this argument generalises to basically any area with small effect sizes and opportunities for corruption, like if you have to accept dietary or medical nihilism, you also have to accept psychological nihilism, therapeutic nihilism, economic nihilism etc.

[@5driedgrams]

This looks more like dietary skepticism instead of niilism.

[@KaneB]

Yeah, I'm just following Stegenga's terminology. He went with "medical nihilism" rather than "medical skepticism" because in the 1800s, there was a tradition of physicians defending the skeptical view who called themselves "therapeutic nihilists".

[@intellectually_lazy]

really the problem is with the reporting, the way it's framed by the time it reaches the public, frequently based on one study, and if it fails to be replicated, it's not front page news

[@37saya42]

It seems to me that P(E|H) heavily depends on the hypothesis. Using the red meat example, we use the evidence of the phenomenon where there people who consume red meat has a 17% higher chance of cancer than those who dont. Now consider 2 hypothesis: A) Eating red meat causes cancer. B) Eating red meat raises the chance of cancer relatively by 17%. while P(E|A) is low, P(E|B) is exceptionally higher. If I stop eating red meat based on me trusting hypothesis B, this does not seem to affect P(E|H).

[@sebleblan]

The "honey" part of the Haza diet is a bit misleading. They eat the whole bee's nest, wax and all. It's not just the sugar...

[@KaneB]

Not sure how that's misleading unless you're thinking of "honey" as pots of honey that you buy from the average grocery store, which obviously the Hadza don't have. Maybe should have put "honeycomb" though. Either way, they eat a hell of a lot of honey.

[@sebleblan]

@@KaneB Yeah, that's what I meant, most people think of honey as the liquid part only I think.

[@KaneB]

@@sebleblan You're right. It would have been better had I clarified this in the video.

[@sebleblan]

@@KaneB No sweat, its not a video about the Haza diet, its fine in the comments :)

[@speedracer448]

Healthiest diet is a diverse diet. Eating the same food over and over overbreeds certain gut bacteria while other important bacteria won't survive the repeated diet. Humans evolved through an everlastingly changing environment where foods were only available in a certain area during a certain time of the year. This is mostly still the case for farmers, however any one of us can go up to the gas station and eat the same processed foods 7 days a week 52 weeks a year. My diet consists of fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes, roots, whole grains, lowfat meat, lowfat or fat free dairy, and a lot of dark chocolate. I also eat a lot of frozen foods since I'm too lazy to cook most of the time. Also for 90% of the population, the only real supplements we should prioritize are Vitamin B12 and protein since the rest of everything like magnesium can be easily found in all sorts of omnivorous diets

[@justus4684]

We are making it out of obesity with this one

[@MochiB4mbi]

😂😂

[@s.lazarus]

I really like the topics you choose.

[@intellectually_lazy]

as a lay person, reading or clicking on some "breakthrough" your confidence in the information should be low for reasons i've stated in my previous comment. with access to medical journals and cross referencing several, you may be justified in greater confidence, or when accessing a source known for such rigor. likewise confidence should decrease for sponsored sources

[@TheoEvian]

The thing with diets is: there are tons of combinations of things that you can eat and be alright. Then there are things that you just won't survive on but you probably won't be poor or stupid enough to try that: eating only white rice for example or any diet that would give you scurvy. There are certainly some things that you shouldn't overdo - you know all of these already (for example it really helped me health-wise when I reduced my sugar intake). Otherwise you can be a dietary nihilist and I mostly am. Like it really isn't worth obsessing over this or that fad and because you are watching this video already I think you know that.

[@antirealist]

I would say the effect of a diet is pretty negligible without emphasis on exercise/lifestyle. Also, diet is less about "what" you eat and more about "how much" you eat. It's all about macro/micro nutrient amounts and ratios. Though I would go as to say that if there's anything close to being a magic bullet it's exercise. I'm a former couch potato who got his degree in philosophy but am now training my body to prepare for military service in special operations. I've been on both sides.

[@SynaTek240]

I hadn't heard about the brazil nut selenium toxicity. As a brazil nut enjoyer, that is very spooky indeed lol

[@KaneB]

I love Brazil nuts too. Unfortunately, you shouldn't be eating more than 2 or 3 per day. They're super high in selenium.

[@blabit4983]

I dont understand why having a small effect size means we should be less confident in the causal link.

[@blabit4983]

Additionally, I don't get how this is different than the position of mainstream nutrition. Professional nutrition researchers understand all the limitations of nutrition research, and yet there is still strong evidence for lots of nutrition hypotheses

[@carterprince8497]

Because p-hacking generally finds (dubious) relationships with smaller effect sizes, there are more publishable (novel, interesting) findings with small effect sizes than large ones, and small effect sizes require large samples to detect properly which in general published research lacks.

[@orangereplyer]

Thank you, I didn't know brazil nuts could cause selenium poisoning.

[@KaneB]

It sucks because I love Brazil nuts. I could easily eat a bag of Brazil nuts.

[@benzur3503]

Why nihilism and not pessimism?

[@jasper1583]

The human body contains the most ancient kept secrets and histories. A good diet always include how you respond to foods, not just the foods themselves. The sacred secretion/kundalini is the key to health I think.

[@jackeasling3294]

I don't know why, but every time Kane says "Hello KZbin!", I picture him throwing gang signs like 🤟🤘 as he says it HAHAHAH! Btw @Kane B when are you gonna reply to my message on your "Relaxed Realism" video?

[@KaneB]

I didn't like that video so I've been mostly ignoring the comments lol I just checked what you wrote, and I think you're correct: the "moral fixed points" is compatible with relaxed realism, since it doesn't require a commitment to metaphysical truthmakers for moral truths. However, it's also compatible with more robust forms of realism. It might be that the moral fixed points are conceptual truths, but that nevertheless they track objective moral properties.

[@rebeccar25]

@@KaneByeah that video should be deleted

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

@@rebeccar25 Really?! I should watch it soon before it goes!

[@low3242]

What do you think about Ray Peat?

[@KaneB]

Never heard of him before. Looked him up and he sounds like a total crank.

[@JohnSmith-yt8di]

@@KaneB That was my initial impression of him as well but it's far from it. He has a PhD in human physiology and has written extensively on nutrition, physiology and biology. A lot of his ideas aren't really fringe like healing crystals. He's not an osteopathic or chiropractic doctor. There is a lot of belief in woo among some of the people who follow him. Interesting enough a big emphasis of his is metabolism and thyroid. It's interesting that elsewhere you've complained about cold hands and just being cold overall. Thermogenesis , the production of body heat, is one of the first bodily functions to go when metabolism is downregulated. So is mood, libido, bowel movements and a host of other things. Have you been tested for hypothyroidism (low thyroid function)?

[@JohnSmith-yt8di]

@@KaneBAlso I think you came to that conclusion because you read the RationalWiki entry on him. Which is the first thing to pop up on Google if you search Ray Peat. That website is run by a former neo-Nazi/autistic guy called Oliver Smith who is totally unhinged. The name is a dead giveaway that the guy has issues.

[@KaneB]

@@JohnSmith-yt8di There are cranks with PhDs. At the end of the day, the situation as I see it is this: For almost every diet imaginable, there are people with relevant PhDs arguing for it, and they can usually find plenty of studies that support their claims, while proposing seemingly plausible mechanisms to explain why their favoured diet works. I could study all these people very carefully and try to come to my own conclusion, but that doesn't seem like a worthwhile use of my time given the poor state of evidence in the field. For what it's worth though, my judgment is that this evidence points against some of the things that Peat is saying. In any case, there is no force on this planet that will persuade me to stop eating nuts. So I can either get on board with Peat and believe that I'm poisoning myself, or I just assume that the orthodoxy (and almost all of the non-orthodoxy beyond Peat) is right about nuts. Obviously, the latter option is more appealing. As for the cold hands, that problem seems to have cleared up in the last few months or so. My fingers no longer go visibly blue. I can think of a couple of possible reasons for this: First, I've been doing arm exercises with weights, and second, I've shifted to an over 90% whole foods diet. I'm not zealous about it; I still eat chocolate, and occasionally I'll make myself a sandwich or a pizza or whatever. But mostly I eat vegetables, fruits, pulses, and nuts, with very minimal preparation. Whether either of these factors is actually what's helped, I don't know.

[@JohnSmith-yt8di]

@@KaneBYes there are cranks with PhDs but usually they graduate from no-name schools or for profit institutions. I believe Dr. Peat went to the University of Oregon. I disagree with him on a few things like caffeine. But keep in mind there is no Ray Peat diet, he's just a guy who has his own thoughts on nutrition. That's it. As far as your fingers turning blue there is no way exercising with weights could have done that unless you are training them in such an unheard of way. I think perhaps on your whole food diet you may not be eating enough calories. That's a big issue with that way of eating. Since if you eat by volume what you ate you previously in whole foods you will undereat your caloric requirements. The remedy of course is weighing your food and counting your calories. It sounds like the nuts have helped you with your blue fingers since those might be due to poor circulation which can come about due to starvation from being on a low calorie diet and you're already a skinny guy. So the nuts being sources of fat are providing with you the remainder of your caloric needs. Good luck. I want to thank you for the video. Dietary nihilism was something up until now that I had never heard of but definitely describes my attitude towards nutrition and diets after a few years researching this topic.

[@AR0ACE]

Is there an equivalent for the gield of philosophy? So a philosophical nihilism?

[@KaneB]

The equivalent would be what? I guess something like: "We ought to have low confidence in the claims defended by philosophers." Then yes, there are plenty of folks who defend such positions. See my recent video "Anti-Philosophy": kzbin.info/www/bejne/rGqsnGCcg5t1odk

[@AR0ACE]

​@@KaneBthank you, that's what I was looking for!

[@PetkesPaintings]

@@KaneBwrong. Typical diet for our species is burger

[@intellectually_lazy]

hate to break it to you, but for a lot of us a healthy diet isn't an option. i personally have been eating a lot more hot dogs and fake cheese lately on bleached white bread

[@intellectually_lazy]

wait, 100g is 1/10 kg 1kg is 2.2lbs so 100g is .22lbs or about 3 1/2 oz, less than a patty on a quarter pounder (or royale as the french say - according to slj). you say that's more than the average peson eats daily? even keeping in mind much of your audience are americans? i think that's some math you forgot to check

[@KaneB]

www.health.harvard.edu/blog/an-omnivores-dilemma-how-much-red-meat-is-too-much-2019123018519 "In fact, on average we [Americans] eat about five servings (17 ounces) of red and processed meat per week." 17 ounces is about 482 grams. So that puts you at about 70 grams per day on average. Obviously though, some people eat much more than the average.

[@intellectually_lazy]

i've never had scurvy and i've never given you $, so...

[@chluff]

it's understandable as this doesn't seem to be common knowledge outside of australia, but the preferred term is "aboriginal people" - "aborigine" is considered offensive or even a slur. I do have to say that your use of the term "non-civilised peoples" leaves a sour taste though.

[@KaneB]

It's interesting that you apparently assumed I was just unaware that "Aborigine" is considered offensive, but you weren't similarly charitable regarding the phrase "non-civilized". Anyway, thanks for letting me know.

[@chluff]

@@KaneB I mean, I guess it just seems clear to me that the peoples you were describing are perfectly well civilised, their civilisations just take a different shape than ours. I wouldn't describe it as a slur, just an unfortunate phrasing. Apologies if I appeared uncharitable - to be clear, it was obvious in both cases that you weren't being intentionally derogatory. In the "aborigine" case you were using a word which carried connotations you were unaware of. in the "non-civilised" case you didn't choose your words carefully (again, understandable), but there was no extra information I had to impart. I would imagine you saw the issue with "non-civilised" on your own once it was pointed out

[@chluff]

@@KaneB reading back over my comment, I can see how it reads as a contrast between the use of one phrase being "understandable" and the other not. that wasn't really my intention, I think I just wanted the sentences to flow well together and I didn't think about how "I do have to say that... though" reads like it's in contrast to the previous sentence.

[@JohnSmith-yt8di]

They are non-civilized lmao. What about them smacks of high civilization?

[@JohnSmith-yt8di]

Also when did Aborigine become offensive? It's only offensive to insane leftists with too much free time. Abo could be considered offensive but it really isn't. It's just a very casual term that you wouldn't use when talking about them in a more formal setting.

[@1999_reborn]

Currently eating McDonalds

[@mark110292]

Hhh good one Dr. B.

[@filipfilipov9056]

Cool 😎

[@KripkeSaul]

Reading Cofnas lately, eh?

[@KaneB]

No.

[@KaneB]

Just looked him up and although some of his work would presumably be in line with dietary nihilism, he also says things like this: "when you deviate from the typical diet for your species, to one which has not been tested and properly established to be healthy or good for the brain, you are conducting an experiment and you are taking a risk" -- According to the dietary nihilist, there is no such thing as a diet that has been properly established to be healthy and good for the brain, beyond avoiding nutritional deficiencies and toxicity. Moreover, according to everybody who's spent five minutes reading about the variety of diets across different societies, there is no such thing as a diet typical for our species.

[@bigol7169]

"Nutrition science is the lowest form of epidemiology" - Vinay Prasad. Go see his damning lecture of the inconsistency and corruption within nutrition science. All dietary advice depends on who's funding it

[@KaneB]

This one? kzbin.info/www/bejne/gXW8aIuPosdppKs

[@zeebpc]

🤣🤣🤣🤣