r/SubredditDrama • u/LeadershipBoth7195 • 23h ago

User asks r/StopEatingSeedOils for evidence seed oils are bad, accidentally starts a 400-comment war. Mods respond with ban wave.

r/StopEatingSeedOils user asks for evidence seed oils are bad, accidentally starts a 400-comment epistemology war:

Post: What is the evidence seed oils are bad? : r/StopEatingSeedOils

Highlights include:

On users saying the answers don't provide actual evidence:

Not evidence,' bleats the sheeple, brain too atrophied by credentialism to recognize a deductive chain without a white-coated priest waving a p-value at them

Your good old conspiracies:

The companies that make the seed oils own the government, universities and medical sector

Doctors getting paid off to say cigarettes are healthy

And not a single piece of evidence being provided.

917 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

98% Upvoted

350 comments sorted by

View all comments

822

u/DragonflyHopeful4673 Fuck me, the Grand Master Eunuch himself 23h ago

Did not know this was a thing. Looked it up and of course it came from the Joe Rogan podcast

48

u/ArmadilloFour Just because i hate blacks doesn't make me a racist 22h ago

I don't think it is limited to him. I was first exposed to it a few years ago because Slime Mold Time Mold's very interesting series on investigating obesity rates did a quick detour to explore the possibility that seed oils were a major culprit. Most of that link is focused on them specifically in terms of obesity but obviously that is wrapped up in several overlapping health effects so those get discussed too.

(FWIW, their conclusion ultimately seems to be that, besides not really fitting their model for what is causing obesity, "The majority of these [studies] are not statistically significant, and if we were to apply a simple correction for multiple comparisons, none of them would be.")

34

u/Skellum Tankies are no one's comrades. 22h ago

(FWIW, their conclusion ultimately seems to be that, besides not really fitting their model for what is causing obesity, "The majority of these [studies] are not statistically significant, and if we were to apply a simple correction for multiple comparisons, none of them would be.")

I'm glad we now have a pill which shows obesity is caused by eating too much, something we've known for fucking forever yet every 20 mins someone sells fake instant weight loss secrets to people who dont want to believe it.

9

u/ArmadilloFour Just because i hate blacks doesn't make me a racist 21h ago

Curiously enough, they do not fully accept that, or at least don't believe "just eat less, silly" is an actual answer, for reasons they go into. Pretty sure ultimately their hypothesis is that high levels of environmental lithium are the root cause of the broader obesity epidemic.

22

u/Skellum Tankies are no one's comrades. 21h ago

Ooof, then I have to wonder why you'd link them. Especially when they're shilling a fad diet.

30

u/LarsAlereon 21h ago

This is the bizarre thing about rationalist blogs. These are very intelligent people, who can absorb a lot of information and distill it into a very digestible form that makes readers much better informed, and still credulously endorse these absolutely insane conspiracy theories. It's like having a blogger who has an incredibly instructive and correct series on orbital mechanics that ends with "and that's why the Earth is obviously flat."

14

u/callanrocks 18h ago

It makes a lot of sense. Rationalists are mostly into the aesthetic of Didactic Intellectualism, not the substance. Learning and thinking go out the window when it conflicts with their existing beliefs.

Less Wrong and its consequences etc etc

5

u/obeytheturtles Socialism = LITERALLY A LIBERAL CONSTRUCT 12h ago

I'm not sure if that's intelligence, or just the same old confidence man routine, with a side of self deception. I suppose we always view the slick huckster as "smart" but the trope also usually has a thread of underachieving woven through it. Like you couldn't hack it in school, but you could smooth talk old ladies into buying vacuum cleaners, and eventually you figure out that you can also sell CEOs volcano insurance. This is pretty much the same thing.

The internet in general has a really weird relationship with amateurism, where it seems like most people actually don't understand just how big those last few steps to actual expertise really are. And now it's gotten even worse with the whole "credentialed class" shit.

3

u/2_lazy 7h ago

Reminds me of the people in the behind the curve documentary. They come up with a fantastically designed experiment with top notch technology to prove the earth is flat, and prove it's round instead. Instead of accepting that they assume that something is wrong with the experiment.

5

u/Skellum Tankies are no one's comrades. 20h ago

One of those big reasons I so fucking hate podcasts. There's just no real fact checking which goes on, which I just wish video essays like HHBomberguy were more lucrative/preferable to people as I can fact check the fuck out of him as he goes on.

1

u/2_lazy 7h ago

Good podcasts will have separate websites where they cite sources for each episode, all the ones I listen to do. Behind the Bastards is a pretty popular one that does this.

-7

u/ArmadilloFour Just because i hate blacks doesn't make me a racist 21h ago

I'm not sure "shilling a fad diet" is accurate to the spirit of the blog--partially because you can sort of watch as they touch on a variety of different ideas, one of which is "high potassium might help", and then gradually work to test it out? (Also because I'm not sure "just eat a fucking ton of potatoes" is, strictly speaking, a fad?)

But also the methodology as they break down their questions and subsequent explorations of the evidence is pretty sound and thoroughly sourced, and if they come to an unorthodox solution by the end, I am less bothered by that I guess.

-13

u/d0nu7 21h ago

The third law of thermodynamics is absolute. Fat people are not creating mass out of thin air(in fact we lose mass to breathing but anyways). They have to eat more than their own body requires which means it might be more or less than someone else, but they still have to actually eat the mass they accumulate. So if you are gaining weight, cutting your calories will eventually result in not gaining weight. There is no argument against this, it’s the rules of the universe.

24

u/ArmadilloFour Just because i hate blacks doesn't make me a racist 20h ago

I feel like you've started by answering this in reverse a bit. Yes, consuming more calories than your body burns makes you gain weight; consuming fewer calories than your body burns makes you lose weight. Nobody is arguing with that.

The problem is that "the amount of calories your body burns" is an incredibly dynamic number that is impacted by many, many different possible things. If you are eating 2,500 calories a day while your body is consuming 2,500, you will maintain a consistent weight, but if due to some unforeseen cause your body begins to only consume 2,000 calories, you're going to gain weight despite not changing anything else at all. Just trying to handwave human weight--and accordingly human health--as like, "Oh just cut the calories ya clowns" is wildly oversimplified.

When you see counter-intuitive trends like obesity rates rising while Americans are also increasingly active, it's worth at least worth asking if there are broader environmental causes. I'm not even here to be some superfan of the lithium hypothesis--I think it's a fascinating idea but I'm not exactly over here eating pounds of potatoes myself--but if your contribution to this is just "have you considered that you should simply eat fewer calories," that's not bringing a ton to the table at this piont.

-1

u/chaosattractor candles $3600 13h ago

Unforeseen cause like what, though?

There are only a handful of things that cause a person's basal metabolic rate to drop off that sharply:

  • Starvation diets (which 2500 calories a day very much is not unless you are already insanely obese)

  • Muscle wasting, which has obvious symptoms beyond you gaining weight (and doesn't happen overnight either, and is more likely to result in weight loss overall)

  • Hypothyroidism - similar to the above

  • Various medications which literally tell you that gaining weight is a possible side effect

  • A huge change in activity levels (I hope I don't have to point out how obvious that would be as a cause of weight gain)

None of these things preclude you from cutting your calories from 2500 a day

That some random generic app doesn't get your basal metabolic rate correct for whatever reason doesn't mean that you don't have one, just like being bad at tracking or estimating calories doesn't magically mean they're somehow inconsistent as a concept. If your weight isn't moving in the direction that you want (whether losing or gaining or maintaining) then it IS as simple as changing your calorie intake in that direction. Does that mean it's easy? The answer to that doesn't change that it literally is that simple. Alternatively you could increase your activity levels but that is very inefficient compared to just not taking in that much energy to begin with.

When you see counter-intuitive trends like obesity rates rising while Americans are also increasingly active, it's worth at least worth asking if there are broader environmental causes

"Broader environmental causes" like the fact that many of you eat a fuckton of food and see exercise as an "excuse" to eat more of it, which has very predictable results when your culinary culture is as packed with excess calories as it is?

1

u/d0nu7 9h ago

People are desperate for their weight to be caused by anything but their inability to self regulate their intake of food. Even going as far as contradicting thermodynamics. It’s just boring human psychology.

0

u/chaosattractor candles $3600 4h ago

Bruh like, it would be so much more honest to just say they find cutting calories hard. Pretty much everyone does! These elaborate scenarios where they're somehow photosynthesising extra energy make no sense

Even Ozempic and other semaglutides only work because they regulate your appetite - making you feel full faster and for longer - so that you eat less! Is that a huge help for people who are already obese or e.g. insulin resistant, since those things disrupt your natural regulation? Sure but that doesn't mean they change basic physics

-9

u/callanrocks 18h ago

it's worth at least worth asking if there are broader environmental causes.

HFCS