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by anchochilis 1381 days ago
This thread is full of people commenting along the lines of "I have been able to manage my weight successfully, so other people must be fat because they're lazy idiots."

HN is full of people who will accept nuance and complexity in technical discussions. Why not in this area as well, where individual biology, cultural expectations, economic incentives, and environmental factors intersect with personal choice?
2 comments
wsc981 1381 days ago
Look at this video with fragments from England and Ireland 120 years ago.

https://twitter.com/bo66ie29/status/1565100701755314180?s=20...

How many fat people you see?

Do you think human biology changed a lot the past 120 years?

I think just a bit of movement each day and eating healthy food is enough for 99% of people to prevent getting overweight.

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anchochilis 1380 days ago
The very point I'm trying to make is that human nature has not changed in the past 120 years. What has changed is the social and technological context in which we live.

Take a group of people from the 1900s and drop them in to the US in 2022, they would likely experience obesity at similar rates.

It's not that people made more virtuous choices in 1900, it's that food was scarcer, less palatable, and more nutritious, and physical activity was a part of daily life.

A busy suburban parent in a 2-income household did not need to squeeze in time to make a home-cooked meal and a Peloton workout around a 9-5 desk job with an hour+ car commute.

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ZeroGravitas 1381 days ago
There's plenty of victim blaming on technical topics too.

Any negative impact of tech on people will have comments saying “well they should have just..."

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