I'm not suggesting any solutions for all poor fat people. In fact what I'm advocating against is the idea that generic advice for all people of a very broad category is not as generally applicable and, in fact, runs into the rhetoric I said earlier that it both provides inapplicable and blaming advice. There are a great many, many problems with generic advice for a very broad set of society of millions of people.
If no hypothetical advice can pass a "No True Sctosman" test, stop giving hypothetical advice to the simplest example of a complex problem.
Im not suggesting blanket advice for all people either.
I think we might agree, but just be coming at it from different ends.
>stop giving hypothetical advice to the simplest example of a complex problem.
Surely we agree that a lot of fat people could benefit from eating less and exercising, correct? We could debate what proportion of people fall into the simplest example, but that is less interesting. What is interesting more interesting to me is when you think advice can be given and what kind:
Are you suggesting that nobody should ever give this advice to eat less and exercise more?
Are you suggesting that any advice that ascribes individual agency and control is inappropriate?
Are you suggesting that only discussing the complex socio-systemic causes is appropriate?
I'm suggesting that you should give advice to specific people and specific circumstances over giving advice to hypothetically generic people and then casting blame on the many, many individuals for which the hypothetical doesn't apply.
Can you say "fat people who are physically and mentally capable would benefit from eating less than exercising"?
What, specifically, are the harms this is trying to avoid? Does it avoid people incapable of exercises accidentally injuring themselves? People blaming themselves when they have no ability to exercise and no control over their diet?
I literally already said what the harm of generic advice is: generic advice to a too-broad situation is often both inapplicable and blaming the individual.
What I'm trying to get at is why you think those things are so bad that it warrants never issuing general advice, and why the downsides outweigh any potential benefit.
All I can do is guess at the reasons why.
For example, inapplicable advice might lead to collateral damage like someone blaming themselves for not exercising when they are wheelchair bound. This all assumes that anyone who hears the advice can't decide if it is applicable to them or not.
Less charitably, I wonder if you are reacting negatively to the idea that people should feel responsible for their own behavior, and this is the Crux of our difference.
I think it's always bad to give advice that large subsets of people the advice is applying to can't use. It's just calling the advice bad advice.
You're reading too much into this. I just want advice to be useful. I consider advice useful when it's able to be used by the people it applies to. Generic advice fails to be able to be used by a large subset of people it applies to, and therefore generic advice isn't useful, and therefore I think it's bad advice.
Think of it like this:
Person A: "If you're new to programming, just start with javascript."
Person B: "But what if they want to start in game development, finance programming, or data science instead? Javascript isn't that helpful to them. I think you should be more specific. 'New To Programming' is too broad of a field."
Person A: "Oh, so you don't think people should feel responsible for your own behavior?"
Person A is clearly projecting nonsense at person B, who is just pointing out the advice is too broad. That's it.
If no hypothetical advice can pass a "No True Sctosman" test, stop giving hypothetical advice to the simplest example of a complex problem.