Quitting red meat for good

[Scholar]

25 minutes ago, undeather said:

It's not about trust - it's about actually doing the god damn work.
I have spent the last 9 years studying and practicing medicine, analyzing thousands of papers, doing the statistical analysis myself, writing for journals, going into integral/holistic medicine, critiquing our mainstream biomedical models, working out my own epistemiology with people like Daniel Schmachtenberger - so when I tell you something, it's not this ruminated pile of garbage information I found on youtube or some unfounded trust in a particular institution. 

I am so sick of people falling into this anti-science trench. Nothing personal against you Stovo, but when you mention things like funding or bias, do you even have the slightest clue what you are talking about? Be really honest with yourself: Do you know how funding works? Because let me tell you that this alone is a incredibly complex topic and since you have propably never conducted a study, you dont know jackshit about it. Its always these strawmen arguments and this inflated sense of "knowing whats really going on" thats ubiquitous in todays information ecology.

Everyone is biased and thats why we NEED the scientific method. To not fall for personal biases is the basis of any scientific investigation. This is why we have well desgined placebo-controlled randomized trials and objective statistical standards to evaluate the data. This is what science is all about and you use it as an argument against scientists? This is literally what half of philosophy of science/epistemiology is actually about. In fact, the most biased information you will find is from random videos, blogposts or books on the internet. But it seems like people think that those inidividuals somehow know more and think clearer than the scientist who works everyday on a given topic for decades. 

Yes, there is also appropriate critique since sciece itself is inherently reductive but please, stop with that nonsense.

Also, food lables? What does a food lable tell me? Absolutely nothing which is relevant to this discussion.
Where on the food lable can I get the information about saturated fat being casucally connected with heart disease?
What about the effect of heme-iron or acrylamides? 
What about the connection between red meat & colon cancer?

Its such a stupid argument, almost to the point of being insulting.
Show some humility my friend.

I do wonder how you would solve the epistemic problems from a layman's perspective. You seem to say "blind" trust in institutions is unfounded, my position is that trust in institutions is really all we have as laymen. There is no way I can verify in any meaningful way even the most trivial inormation about health out there, I must assume certain things to be true on the basis of me trusting the process or the institution.

Once the public loses trust in institutions, there is really nothing you can do, because the institutions are the foundation for knowledge making. No single individual could possibly verify all information, and even if they could, it would be a life's work. So we cannot expect laymen to just do the research themselves and come to conclusions.

 

In the end, all we can do is advocate for trust in institutions, almost blind trust. What else can the layman do in an information landscape as ours? If we undermine trust, we can undermine everything, because institutional trust is the basis of civilization. Laymen are not even equipped to "do their own research".

I have not yet found a really good resolution for this issue, it seems like either the system collapses due to lack of trust, or we open the door for corruption due to blind trust. But what else is there? People simply do not have the time and competency, nor self-consciousness, to be attempting to understand what is actually going on within the information landscape.

 

I have said it before, but one of the greatest challenges we are facing the 21st century is this epistemic problem of how to navigate modern information landscapes, because everything else depends on it.

Just think about how much time and effort it takes to educate a single person on this forum who is convinced otherwise. Even if you are completely rational it might not work. We cannot even think about progressing mankind because we are so busy trying to shovel out the endless garbage everyone is throwing our way.

I am curious to hear your thoughts on this.

Edited August 1, 2022 by Scholar

[zurew]

2 hours ago, Scholar said:

In the end, all we can do is advocate for trust in institutions, almost blind trust.

The idea would be to make a system where the independent participants are holding each other accountable. This can only be done if they are incentivised to do so, and this is sort of built in the current system already. 

Example:

Different institutions are making different vaccines to cure covid19. All independent institutions have an incentive to point out the flaws in other vaccines because that way they can dominate the market with their vaccines and they can make more money.

 

3 hours ago, Stovo said:

Consider 1) funding flows for science, and 2) scientists own self biases

Whats your alternative system/solution though? Both of your points have so much worse alternatives compared to science and the scientific process, and thats the problem.

 

Funding in and of itself is not a bad thing.

Without funding, research cannot happen. Why would anyone do science if their return on invesment is negative? Why would anyone do any science for free, if they need to invenst in millions and millions of dollars to do research?  Of course, the funding aspect could sometimes make the whole process more flawed, but other institutions are incentivised to point out the flaws in those studies (especially, if the market is competitive). Also, this is why the peer review process exist, this is why institutions with biased, shit studies can't pass through the peer review grinder without notice (but even if  they could, the chances are really really low).

Edited August 1, 2022 by zurew

[Scholar]

32 minutes ago, zurew said:

The idea would be to make a system where the independent participants are holding each other accountable. This can only be done if they are incentivised to do so, and this is sort of built in the current system already. 

Example:

Different institutions are making different vaccines to cure covid19. All independent institutions have an incentive to point out the flaws in other vaccines because that way they can dominate the market with their vaccines and they can make more money.

To establish the fact that they are incentivised to do so, or that independent participants even exists, requires institutions. And it will require faith in those institutions to have faith in the process.

You'll end up just moving the epistemic problem one layer down, and the skeptic can still point to that and say "But this is corrupt, I don't trust this! How can I know these participants even are independent? What if it's all a lie?".

 

Edited August 1, 2022 by Scholar

[undeather]

2 hours ago, Scholar said:

I do wonder how you would solve the epistemic problems from a layman's perspective. You seem to say "blind" trust in institutions is unfounded, my position is that trust in institutions is really all we have as laymen. There is no way I can verify in any meaningful way even the most trivial inormation about health out there, I must assume certain things to be true on the basis of me trusting the process or the institution.

Once the public loses trust in institutions, there is really nothing you can do, because the institutions are the foundation for knowledge making. No single individual could possibly verify all information, and even if they could, it would be a life's work. So we cannot expect laymen to just do the research themselves and come to conclusions.

 

In the end, all we can do is advocate for trust in institutions, almost blind trust. What else can the layman do in an information landscape as ours? If we undermine trust, we can undermine everything, because institutional trust is the basis of civilization. Laymen are not even equipped to "do their own research".

I have not yet found a really good resolution for this issue, it seems like either the system collapses due to lack of trust, or we open the door for corruption due to blind trust. But what else is there? People simply do not have the time and competency, nor self-consciousness, to be attempting to understand what is actually going on within the information landscape.

 

I have said it before, but one of the greatest challenges we are facing the 21st century is this epistemic problem of how to navigate modern information landscapes, because everything else depends on it.

Just think about how much time and effort it takes to educate a single person on this forum who is convinced otherwise. Even if you are completely rational it might not work. We cannot even think about progressing mankind because we are so busy trying to shovel out the endless garbage everyone is throwing our way.

I am curious to hear your thoughts on this.

I think your analysis of the problem is spot on and well written.
I would love to give you a lengthy and thoughtful reply but I am super busy at the moment/for the next days.

Basically, the emergence of something like an Institution 2.0, which is heuristically rooted in an integral framework, based on good faith & honest dialogues between thoughtleaders of different hypotheses and a quality transmission of the sensemaking process for the greater public. This is already happening in small circles but is nowhere near where it should be. Our current institutions lack in all these components and since we cant go any step further without them, we gotta upgrade! 

Also, I think we should make epistemology a mandatory subject in every school. We do not equip our future generations for the obstacles they will face in their future. In the 21th centurary, its much more important how to think than what - we all have the whole knowledgebase of mankind literally below your fingertip on your smartphone. What to do with it is the crucial question...

The exponential growth of our information ecology is another issues, but I think AI will come handy one day to analyze datasets inconceivable for the human brain. I dont see any way around this and it comes again with a whole set of new problems - but yeah, thats what we are in for

The thing with laymen is that even though they are not equipped to make sense of the data - most of them are NOT stupid. If you take the time and explain it to them in a rational way and on equal terms, it's actually crazy what you can achieve when no one gets captured by bullshit tribal narratives. I managed to do this couple of times when it came to vaccine hesitancy in elderly people. There is a certain percentage who are beyond any help, but thats okay too - all we have to aim for is the the majority. 

 

[zurew]

2 hours ago, Scholar said:

You'll end up just moving the epistemic problem one layer down, and the skeptic can still point to that and say "But this is corrupt, I don't trust this! How can I know these participants even are independent? What if it's all a lie?".

I think there is a meta question here: Why would anyone not trust the institutions? There could be multiple answers given, but i don't think that the main answer is that "because they think, that the epistemic process is flawed" and here is why: Those people who don't trust institutions , they either have to trust other sources of media or other alternative sources , or they are the ones who only trust themselves, so they think that they are knowledgeable enough to decide complex stuff on their own.

People who consume alternative media without any critical thinking, are the majority, and those are the ones who use a very similar epistemic process like us (because we have to have a blind faith in institutions, if are not educated enough, and if we don't have enough time to research and learn about the subject). Of course, the difference is that we don't have to trust only one source, but it is still a kind of similar epistemic process. So my point would be that the majority of people from that "sceptic" group isn't sceptic, because what kind of epistemic process is being used, but because of other reasons, so the solution need to be found elsewhere (imo).

On the other hand, some people from the "I don't trust any single outer source,  i can know things by myself better" group could be educated on certain subjects by experts, because some of them are open to learn how things work.

 

Depending on how well educated im on a particular subject and how much time i have to learn and research, im sometimes in the "I will find out myself own my own" group (which in practice means that i will try to learn the subject from experts), and in other times, becuase i don't have time to research everything, i will have to blindly trust the institutions and sometimes there is the middle line, where i know some stuff, but i also have to have some faith.

Edited August 1, 2022 by zurew

[Stovo]

7 hours ago, undeather said:

It's not about trust - it's about actually doing the god damn work.
I have spent the last 9 years studying and practicing medicine, analyzing thousands of papers, doing the statistical analysis myself, writing for journals, going into integral/holistic medicine, critiquing our mainstream biomedical models, working out my own epistemiology with people like Daniel Schmachtenberger - so when I tell you something, it's not this ruminated pile of garbage information I found on youtube or some unfounded trust in a particular institution. 

I am so sick of people falling into this anti-science trench. Nothing personal against you Stovo, but when you mention things like funding or bias, do you even have the slightest clue what you are talking about? Be really honest with yourself: Do you know how funding works? Because let me tell you that this alone is a incredibly complex topic and since you have propably never conducted a study, you dont know jackshit about it. Its always these strawmen arguments and this inflated sense of "knowing whats really going on" thats ubiquitous in todays information ecology.

Everyone is biased and thats why we NEED the scientific method. To not fall for personal biases is the basis of any scientific investigation. This is why we have well desgined placebo-controlled randomized trials and objective statistical standards to evaluate the data. This is what science is all about and you use it as an argument against scientists? This is literally what half of philosophy of science/epistemiology is actually about. In fact, the most biased information you will find is from random videos, blogposts or books on the internet. But it seems like people think that those inidividuals somehow know more and think clearer than the scientist who works everyday on a given topic for decades. 

Yes, there is also appropriate critique since sciece itself is inherently reductive but please, stop with that nonsense.

Also, food lables? What does a food lable tell me? Absolutely nothing which is relevant to this discussion.
Where on the food lable can I get the information about saturated fat being casucally connected with heart disease?
What about the effect of heme-iron or acrylamides? 
What about the connection between red meat & colon cancer?

Its such a stupid argument, almost to the point of being insulting.
Show some humility my friend.

Your appeal to authority is just desperate at this point. 

I'm not anti science, the science on nutrition is simply poor and littered with biases. Whether you're vegan, carnivore, or in-between you could easily find "science" that fits your narrative. 

It's a difficult pill for stage green people to swallow; that red meat is good for you, because they desperately don't want it to be true for ethical reasons. 

[King Merk]

Ultimately you have to listen to your own body as the highest authority.

I’ve been a vegan.

I’ve done keto.

I’ve counted macros.

I’ve been vegetarian.

I’ve done intermittent fasting.

Hell I’ve even done a week long prolonged water only fast.

At my core what I care about most is what works meaning what makes me feel the best. 

And for me that’s a high fat carnivorous diet made primarily of organic grass fed beef and suet.

All I do is share what works for me.

If you feel like you’re at the pinnacle of your possible health then keep doing what you’re doing. Whether that’s eating red meat or not. 

But if you’re not looking & feeling like a superstar who’s full of energy every day then I say keep making adjustments.

[zurew]

@Stovo How can you go from "science is biased and not good on this matter" to "i can confidently say, red meat is good for you, according to my bro science" ? 

Edited August 2, 2022 by zurew

[undeather]

8 hours ago, Stovo said:

Your appeal to authority is just desperate at this point. 

I'm not anti science, the science on nutrition is simply poor and littered with biases. Whether you're vegan, carnivore, or in-between you could easily find "science" that fits your narrative. 

It's a difficult pill for stage green people to swallow; that red meat is good for you, because they desperately don't want it to be true for ethical reasons. 

Not all nutrition science is poor and littered with biases - this is simply not the case. You are speaking nonsense.
Yes, cherrypicking data and narrative warfare exists - some approaches, especially in nutritional epistemology suffer from systemic problems but this does not mean that there isnt good scientific practice that gives us valuable information about the world. 

And yes, I am definitely appealing to my authority. Why wouldn't I? I have studied these issues for almost a decade....
I respect people with different views when I feel that they did the necessary work to come to those conclusions - I cant respect yours, because you obviosuly defend nonsense. 

Also, I dont know how can say this with a straight face and then the evidence YOU bring forward is "just read the food lable bro" or "we have always eaten that - so it has to be healthy" - cant you see your own ignorance right there? 

It's a Dunnung-Kruger masterclass...

I dont care about ethics - I still eat red meat. 

Edited August 2, 2022 by undeather

[Stovo]

16 hours ago, zurew said:

@Stovo How can you go from "science is biased and not good on this matter" to "i can confidently say, red meat is good for you, according to my bro science" ? 

I do the science myself from my own experience. 

You're right though, I cannot 100% guarantee that I'm not missing something and I won't get some illness related to my red meat consumption. 

14 hours ago, undeather said:

I dont care about ethics - I still eat red meat. 

Then I don't think our viewpoints are much apart

[Scholar]

10 hours ago, Stovo said:

Then I don't think our viewpoints are much apart

lol

[Jannes]

@Stovo So basically your ONLY point is that you say that „I feel good on red meat, therefore it’s good for humans?“

First of all you can bullshit yourself to a pretty large extend if you want something to be true. For example you could think that you can only be loved if you are different and you feel special being on a different diet or you heard something on the internet that red meat is the magic pill for your health and therefore solves all of your problems because health in connected to all other areas of your life. I did a pretty dumb raw vegan diet for some time because that were my motivations. I didn’t feel good on it but I wanted it to be the solutions for all my problems so bad because my problems were so overwhelming for me that I lied to myself. Not saying that is you of course but it just makes me cautious that not everybody who says they feel great on xyz is actually honest with himself. 

But secondly this is just your subjective point of view. How can you claim that red meat is good for other people then ? You don’t know anything about science, you ONLY have your own experience.
  

 

[Stovo]

@Jannes Nope, I've also done solid research into the nutrition. 

Painting me as someone that doesn't understand the science is what others here have tried when appealing to authority. 

It's true it might not be good for everyone, but I don't know anybody who eats red meat who feels bad after eating it. 

I actually wish it wasn't true that red meat is good for you, it would make things easier regarding the environment and the ethical dilemma. My bias is to say that plant foods are good for you which I tried for several years until I learned about nutrition. 

[Jannes]

33 minutes ago, Stovo said:

@Jannes Nope, I've also done solid research into the nutrition. 
 

then lay out your arguments 

33 minutes ago, Stovo said:

I actually wish it wasn't true that red meat is good for you, it would make things easier regarding the environment and the ethical dilemma. My bias is to say that plant foods are good for you which I tried for several years until I learned about nutrition. 

What was your plant based nutrition like ?

[RendHeaven]

On 8/3/2022 at 7:30 AM, Stovo said:

@Jannes Nope, I've also done solid research into the nutrition. 

Painting me as someone that doesn't understand the science is what others here have tried when appealing to authority. 

It's true it might not be good for everyone, but I don't know anybody who eats red meat who feels bad after eating it. 

I actually wish it wasn't true that red meat is good for you, it would make things easier regarding the environment and the ethical dilemma. My bias is to say that plant foods are good for you which I tried for several years until I learned about nutrition. 

Wow, we are in identical boats