Nobody was suggesting solutions, but in regards to GLP-1 agonists as solving the 'problem' perfectly, no, it's just solving the symptoms. The problem is scientific advancement creating hyper palatable food and drink with no nutritional value and low satiety, combined with the food drive increases that comes with eating and drinking that food, combined with the removal of general fitness and mobility as a core requirement to being able to receive food and drink. I'm not saying there's a way to put back in the box but let's not kid ourselves that these drugs are a perfect solution either.
I think GLP-1s are a great hack until gene therapy can be used to fix the underlying genetic issue that leads to the brain chemistry expression requiring the temporary GLP-1 patch.
It can be manufactured inexpensively, scales up, and will be as common as insulin or Metformin.
I'm no big lover of short form video content, but Cal Newport comes across as a bit obtuse in this article. Why is he surprised about these videos being used for consumptive purposes? I find the short, attention grabbing videos ala reels, tiktok, shorts, or vine not much different than modern tv. Have you tried watching TV from your peripheral vision? It's nothing but rapid, jarring cuts and bursts of color.
A few weeks ago, I read a 1300 page fantasy book. A few weeks before that, I read a 400 page nonfiction book on a subject I'm interested in. I've also read philosophy, wrote in a journal, watched tv shows and movies, browsed TikTok for hours, and took many walks around the park. I really can't say I find any of these experiences any more meaningful than the others. Anti-consumptive behavior has its place when a life is out of balance, but we're all going to die, so does it really matter in the end?
TV is very different despite being made to look like short bursts of colors and cuts because unlike short form content, there is a theme or a story that is being played through, our brain is engaged on a much longer arc of a story than short video content which does not give the viewer enough time to think beyond what is shown.
I agree that the medium through which one has pleasurable experiences is very subjective, but at the same time how much of it is consumed, absorbed and captured is what I think matters when talking about a medium being just for consumption purposes. Earlier web and social media was a lot about contributing and having a dialogue now its vastly about consumption or some form of outlet which does not encourage any traditional engagement but a passive viewing.
That being said, all these channels also have content which is good and enriching. But to reach that one has to be familiar with the platform to navigate away from the algorithm and also be looking for it. The idea that TikTok throws in only the entertaining content for selected topics at the get go says a lot of the culture its promoting and encouraging.
From reading about this and Ozempic it appears the main functionality is reducing appetite / blood sugar spikes which results in weight loss. I am curious for those who are using it who have traditionally had a relatively poor diet (refined carbs, sugars, etc), has it changed what foods are desirable or does it simply reduce the amount eaten? In addition, when using these products and switching to a healthy diet such as high protein, which already typically affects satiety, does it cause the inability to eat an adequate amount of calories to function properly?
I was diagnosed with Diabetes 2 years ago.
As soon as I found out I immediately changed my diet.
0 carbs
My blood sugar would still go too high.
My fasting blood sugar (first reading in the morning after waking up. "12+hr fasting") was often the highest of the day.
I spent the next 14 months trying different drugs to mitigate my blood sugar levels.
So one day out of desperation I asked my Doctor if i could try ozempic.
It worked INCREDIBLY well.
I started adding carbs back into my diet.
My blood sugar stayed in good shape.
I started loosing weight too.
Before Ozempic and going 0-carbs I lost ~20lbs over 14 months.
After taking Ozempic I have lost ~80lbs.
I still STRONGLY desire sugar/sugary foods.
My cravings for bread is really bad too.
Ozempic controlled my sugar so well that I have been able to add carbs back into my life.
Is it even possible to have high blood sugar while eating zero carbs? You could be catabolising muscle mass but that would be a case of extreme malnutrition and/or type 1 diabetes.
These drugs fix symptoms only, and only for ad long as you keep using them. They have adverse effects, and probably well beyond the published ones. Most signs point to T2D being caused by insulin resistance, which builds up through bad diet and lifestyle. You can 'fix' symptoms by forcing the body to pump out more insulin, but science and common sense would indicate that this could end up worse off in the long run.
Did you measure 1 hour after wake up? At wakeup there's the "dawn effect" where glucose rises/ketones fall.
What diet did you really try? Keto diet is known to ~easily fix T2D. A good company that can do that is virtahealth.com.
The only way to quit drugs (sugar) is to no take drugs at all, not take less drugs.
Source: I do keto diet but for other reasons. I was addicted to carbs, but not fat, and am no more. I would end up as T2D in 10-20 years though. If I restart carbs I will get addicted again.
It's probably the protein. Not eating fat should also feel horrible too, messing hormones etc.
Source: Pretty well known in keto epilepsy/cancer/psychiatry. I do epilepsy keto diet. Having high protein will increase glucose & lower ketones (tested blood many times with just 2 ingridients beef & beef fat). I aim for 80%-90% of calories from fat. Or 2 to 1 weight ratio of fat and protein/carbs.
For T2D you probably need just 60% fat calories though.
Why is your preferred set of professionals better than another? Do you have research showing that treating obesity as a substance abuse disorder has positive outcomes?
My dad was like you. At age 61 I finally got him to try 90 days of only fresh home squeezed/extracted vegetable juice. Technically all his calories those 3 months came from the sugars in the vegetables (celery, beets, carrots, cucumbers, tomato, orange).
All his markers improved, even diabetic markers, and blood pressure. He's off the 3 meds he was on.
Definitely. I'm not saying that 10 lbs of vegetables a day is healthy or anything. That would be crazy. You gotta add processed hormone injected meats, boiled dairy, and preservatives to get a healthy balanced diet.
Population that spends more every decade and gets less healthy, vs senior citizen that gets off all his meds by changing his eating habits by trying juice for 90 days.
No, although anecdotally some people find they can't eat high-fat foods any more. It has changed my reaction to hyperpalatable foods though, in that I don't really get the buzzing "just smoked a cigarette" effect from them any more.
> when using these products and switching to a healthy diet such as high protein, which already typically affects satiety, does it cause the inability to eat an adequate amount of calories to function properly
Not if you don't ramp your dosage up too quickly, but if you were to overdo it, then I guess it would.
I am curious too. I'm not "obese" by the medical defs (84kg, 177cm, 50s) but I could eat forever and constantly and I find that every time I finish some small amount of work (need to switch to the next issue) I get up and walk to the refrigerator looking for a snack. I generally keep from overeating by just not having any junk food nearby (though that's harder at work) and almost no calorie laden drinks. I don't feel hungry, I just seem to love eating. So I wonder if Ozempic would have any affect if all it does is remove my appetite since it "feels" like I don't have one most of the time.
Yes, the psychology of eating is generally under explored topic.
Some of the most obese people I knew had serious psychological wounds that they never healed.
Personally I end up feeling the opposite - I can eat the same weekday lunch for days in a row, and often get a sense of boredom of food before fullness.
I enjoy food, but I also enjoy lots of other things.. and not every bite/meal needs to be a work of culinary art. Italians would probably find this sacrilege.
For me there's a sense of food fitting a function during the week - nutrient/calories, versus going out to dinner on weekend for the social/enjoyment aspects.
I'm 35, same weight and similar symptoms.
I'm just always hungry.
I found some sort of balance where I go 5 times/week to the gym, increased muscles and eat very healthy (fruit, legumes, chicken, veggies). It still didn't solve the problem of being always hungry.
I could say it's psychological, but my son, 3, is the same: he is constantly looking for food. My daughter (6) is like my wife and she sometimes barely eats.
I'd love to lose weight though. I have been going to the gym a lot for the whole year, but my weight dropped only temporarily.
From what I understand about Ozempic and friends is that it's not meant for super long-term use (I can't remember the exact time, like months to a year at most). Do you feel like that's reasonable? As in, do you feel like this is letting you form better habits that will continue after you stop using it? Or do you even have a feel for that (probably hard to guess how you will feel when you are off it)?
There have been long-term studies of semaglutide much longer than a year. I'm not aware of any finding that indicates that long-term use should be avoided. There is some indication that the weight loss plateaus within the first several years for most people, but the weight control and blood sugar control effects are persistent.
does it cause the inability to eat an adequate amount of calories to function properly
IANAD, but anecdotally it has been seen that a substantial - and arguably worrisome - amount of the weight loss is in lean body mass[0], so probably. GLP-1 agonists are for many obese and at-risk diabetics a worthwhile trade-off. Losing that last pesky 10 lbs. because you don't want to give up your daily 500 calorie latte? Probably not.
If you dont resistance train, any weight loss regimen will cause a loss of lean body mass, medications aren't different from an "organically" achieved caloric deficit. Training and size of the deficit as well as genetics heavily shift the proportion of adipose to lean tissue (which includes water) lost.
So far as i know, the signal that glp1 agonists are particularly worse for lean mass retention isn't strong enough to claim that they're worse for muscle mass retention than normal dieting.
You answered your own question. “… reducing appetite…” . It’s all about CICO but also not about that. The real game-changer is the fact people don’t have to have the will power of a Zen guru to fight off the hunger pangs. That’s the 90% you should take away from this. It’s almost effortless, and that’s a huge deal. People have been proposing what you say for a 100 years and obesity only got worse. If a drug can fix it relatively safely more power to them.
I don't have any discussion on the LLM factor of this conversation, but I'll weigh in on cover letters. As a hiring manager running a fully remote team with medium-low on the pay scale, I can tell you that any open position I post is inundated with 700+ resumes. This is after initial HR filtering. There is no way realistically for me to review all of these resumes, and cover letters I will just completely ignore. I basically draw arbitrary lines in the sand to reduce resume count below 100 (college degree, no unemployment gaps, at least 2 years exp at each job), and even then it feels like throwing darts to pick a reasonable amount of candidates to interview (10-15). And don't even get me started on the candidates that don't actually have any of the experience that is on their resume, or that are googling every question I ask, or are showing up on camera in sweat pants and a tank top.
I dread interviewing and will almost always just ask my network or coworkers for referrals because posting positions online seems such a terrible way to source candidates these days.
I feel like I watch both threads casually every first of the month, and nothing felt weird or different about this one to me. I haven't ever kept track of total posts, more of the ratio between who wants to be hired posts vs who's hiring posts. Is it possible that a majority of posts aren't made on the day of the post?
One big difference between life in 1719 and today is the pervasive feeling that humanity is somehow bad or immoral and that the sustainability of the lives that we live are precarious. The combination of the internet, advances in science and our understanding of the world, the complete inundation of all media with news, and the fact that bad news is easier to engage with, has created this curtain of gloom across the educated spheres of the human race.
I personally believe this phenomenon is the cause of a great many of the current problems we have today. Excessive greed and hoarding is a fear response. Rabid political polarization either to try to fix the problems we face or ignore them and protect our mental health. There is a large shortage of faith in the future, and there's a lot of realization that technological advancements of the past have created some of the overwhelming problems we face today.
Distraction and nostalgia are the best selling items in the modern world. Depression and suicide are the highest they've ever been. The social fabric is unwinding, and communities are dying, and an article like this comes along that makes me wonder just how it would feel to struggle and strive in a world in which the future had so much potential.
Who knows though? Maybe this feeling is something that was pervasive in these times.
>Rabid political polarization either to try to fix the problems we face or ignore them and protect our mental health
Just a nitpick. I don't believe that political polarization is today any worse than it was in the past, and if anything it may be less and diminishing overall. Bear in mind that for much of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, people (not talking about militaries here but regular civilians) in even the most developed countries of these times would regularly beat each other to death en masse over political issues that today might seem absurd as causes for such violence. Yes, people in many parts of the world still do this, but it seems to be diminishing and certainly has done so in the most developed nations.
Pervious to the 18th to 20th centuries, the polarization was even more deadly, except that innate human tribalism was hinged around religious differences more than purely ideological/political ones of a secular nature.
Even the idea of "misinformation" being a a record modern problem is absurd. I invite anyone today to read the grossly biased, rabidly yellow journalism of any time before the late 20th century to see just how blatantly manipulation of popular beliefs was practiced by almost all media sources then available, for one motive or another.
I read the article and agree with a few points. It is important to recognize the decline of community and family dynamics in the west and how that impacts people. Some conclusions, however, I don't agree with.
1. The author posits the idea that we will become boring or unlikeable, even if we were not this way before. I personally don't see that take place in my surroundings. People's personalities don't tend to change too much, and barring some radical illness such as dementia (which the author mentions), I find it hard to believe that someone generally found as interesting would become boring after a certain amount of time.
2. The author points out the dichotomy between people wanting independence from community for most of their lives, while also wanting care when they are in need, but from my experience, people who desire independence strongly also desire it in times of weakness. I know many people in my extended family who have been independent and they continue to ask for nothing and want nothing even as their bodies fail.
I'm also a little confused as to the notion of people desiring independence from community. While I know many people that desired independence from local community microcosms, such as church, small rural towns, or disagreeable family, many of those people still want community. I really am not seeing the issue that this author refers to in the article of people essentially wanting to be independent and optional from all communities in order to maintain wealth. In my experience the main issue people are having is that we don't have ready made replacements to traditional communities and online communities are not fulfilling the social requirements of being a human.
> I'm also a little confused as to the notion of people desiring independence from community. While I know many people that desired independence from local community microcosms, such as church, small rural towns, or disagreeable family, many of those people still want community.
Right I think the author correctly identifies some of the causes and contours of the decline of certain traditional community modes, but she has a massive blindspot for new models of community that have IMO risen in the last decades. For people in my milleu "found family" or other forms of less-local but equally-supportive community have become very popular.
She says:
> But there is a trade off. At a societal level, we can be rich, or we can be communitarian. I don’t think we can be both – at least, not for long.
But this seems too clean to me. I see the dynamic she's pointing out, but her account is only one strand in a larger cultural pattern.
> But there is a trade off. At a societal level, we can be rich, or we can be communitarian. I don’t think we can be both – at least, not for long.
This in particularly strikes me as something I’d expect from a certain Jordan Balthazar Peterson: he often frames things like wealth inequality or patriarchy as immovable hierarchies; pitting left and right, rich and poor, gay and straight, as dichotomies that cannot coexist for long without one (guess which one) eventually becoming the dominant.
It’s a very defeatist attitude, and suggests “but what can be done?” and rarely offers solutions beyond sticking with the status quo. I think it’s absolutely possible to be rich and communitarian.
I actually disagree with large swaths of the article, but on these points:
> 1. The author posits the idea that we will become boring or unlikeable, even if we were not this way before. I personally don't see that take place in my surroundings. People's personalities don't tend to change too much, and barring some radical illness such as dementia (which the author mentions), I find it hard to believe that someone generally found as interesting would become boring after a certain amount of time.
When you work 40+ hours a week and are raising kids, there's a limit to how boring and unlikable you can be just because you are inflicting yourself on others less often.
> 2. The author points out the dichotomy between people wanting independence from community for most of their lives, while also wanting care when they are in need, but from my experience, people who desire independence strongly also desire it in times of weakness. I know many people in my extended family who have been independent and they continue to ask for nothing and want nothing even as their bodies fail.
I think if you change "wanting care" to "needing care" then the dichotomy stands. I'm seeing it right now with my extended family.
> I'm also a little confused as to the notion of people desiring independence from community. While I know many people that desired independence from local community microcosms, such as church, small rural towns, or disagreeable family, many of those people still want community. I really am not seeing the issue that this author refers to in the article of people essentially wanting to be independent and optional from all communities in order to maintain wealth. In my experience the main issue people are having is that we don't have ready made replacements to traditional communities and online communities are not fulfilling the social requirements of being a human.
I agree that I don't see people "wanting to be independent ... in order to maintain wealth" but the concept that those who are more independent can build wealth faster seems believable. I do see people wanting to be independent because of the downsides of community (e.g. the proverbial "gossipy neighbors" who will make your communal life miserable if you do not placate them).
I also think that non-family community has been greatly demolished because people have found substitutes for many of the upsides of community; not just with wealth affording living alone, but with entertainment replacing various community activities; bowling leagues, fraternal organizations, even sitting at a bar drinking beer with friends have been in steady decline since the invention of the Television.
People aren't avoiding the pro-social behaviors pined about in the article to sit in the darkness, lonely twiddling their thumbs. They are playing video games, watching TV/videos, and doom scrolling.
> I agree that I don't see people "wanting to be independent ... in order to maintain wealth"
One way in which I see this is that people move away from parents/relatives or outsource their care so that they can focus on their careers in middle age.
> One way in which I see this is that people move away from parents/relatives or outsource their care so that they can focus on their careers in middle age.
(Assuming they are paying for outsourcing their care), TFA would include that on the communal side of things, given explicit examples of immigrants sending money back home and black Rhodesian workers financially supporting their extended families.
I see a lot of this argument when social media is brought up. A lot of people generally agree with the idea that there are a lot more supportive environments available on the web than in a traditional small town with narrow ideals. I would argue though that the statistics do not bear this truth out: if having these communities and support groups are so necessary, then why is suicide and mental health worse now than they were prior to the internet?
I'm starting to question that idea too. It seems like, just as often, these supportive environments on the web like to spiral down into an attitude of "ONLY this group supports and likes you; the rest of the world is hostile to you. Literal Nazis lurk outside your door ready to murder you. Better just keep posting online, and be sure to warn any new members about the Nazis outside their doors."
as far as I can tell this seems to be a very US thing, through somewhat exported from there through YT/TickTock/etc. (especially to other English speaking countries)
similar to this "over the top social justice" I'm mainly seeing in the US
honestly I have no idea what is going on with the US but it looks really really unhealthy and dangerous not just for the US (not just the points above but also many other points, like religious extremism, or the distribution of fascistic mindsets (but not Nazis) and others)
like being able to realize how messed up the world is, or how bad your own situation and future chances are can have a huge negative impact for a child which doesn't really have has much power (or at least it seems so for the child) to change anything until it's too late
at the same time while there are a lot of support structures in the internet and I have meet people which likely wouldn't be alive today without that there are also many bad places and people in the internet
and the way TockTock (and similar but lesser degree YouTube) work can easily lead to a situation where people can intentionally target young people, most times without any consequences or risk for themself
additionally there are factors unrelated to the internet but more related to the fact that "the west" moved from a economical boom time to a sequence of one down turn after another with few good long term outlooks
For example when I grew up with the feelings that I can make mistakes, especially in my youth, and have chances to recover. Even if I had messed up to a point of not geting a school degree the outlook was still one where I could recover from it if I put effort in.
But when I speak with kits today they often say they get the feeling they aren't allowed to do any mistakes, they have no second and third chances, no time to experiment, and hardly any chances to recover. They have the feeling that even if they don't mess up in the internet they might be punished for small mistakes they did in their youth years later.
This puts a _lot_ of pressure on them.
Then their is how poisons the climate change debate is for children, on one hand you have the people which just don't take it serious at all, but even a small child can relatively easily research that that is pretty much nonsense. But on the other side you often have people which go into extremes like "humans will die out", "it's already nearly to late", "if we don't act now we are all domed". Which is also somewhat nonsensical as while climate change will most likely make the quality of live for humans in general way way worse the chance for direct extinction is limited (sadly not non-existing due to hard to estimate chain effect, and many especially cost cities and even some flat countries will most likely not survive if we look at it realistically). That is depressing, but that isn't what makes the debate poisonous. What makes it poisonous is that you get told you can change it by "being a better human and not doing this or that". Except that this is pretty much a lie. For one especially if you are less wealthy you often don't have a realistic choice in many cases. For the other a lot of problem areas for climate pollution are not in the reach of what some normal person can effect through their buying decisions, even if most do so. But telling someone "they" can change it while it pretty obvious doesn't seem to work and looks pretty hopless is _extreamly_ poisonous to the mental state of a person if they believe it and care about the outcome, especially if they are young and inexperienced.
So even more pressure, perceived dark future and hopelessness.
Then us potentially heading into another cold war or WW3 probably isn't helping either.
Sometimes not knowing can be bliss.
But even without access to a phone can a child still grow up in a innocent world today?
