Humanities & Cultures

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Human society and cultural news, studies, and other things of that nature. From linguistics to philosophy to religion to anthropology, if it's an academic discipline you can most likely put it here.

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More Americans are nonreligious. Who are they and what do they believe? (www.washingtonpost.com)

submitted 10 months ago by Gaywallet@beehaw.org to c/humanities@beehaw.org

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[–] Moira_Mayhem@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Anyone who paints science in such a negative light, as you have

I think you may have some deep-seated issues, I'm a STEM major. Science is pretty awesome, just not the end-all be-all of human experience.

Please provide some specific examples.

Ok. So in the mid-90s the scientific consensus for weight loss was simple: You must maintain a calorie deficit, this is the only way to lose weight.

If you went to your doctor and asked 'How do I lose weight without burning more calories than I consume', you would be told it is impossible, against the laws of thermodynamics, and if such a method could be found it would probably involve drugs with strong side effects.

This is not true.

And we've known its not true for a while now, but 'scientific consensus' refused to acknowledge results that disproved the earlier stated 'peer reviewed facts'.

You can (easily) lose weight on a low carb diet (keto) even if you exceed your calorie consumption by 1000kcal or more (I was intaking 4500-5000 kcal of food a day and lost over 80 lbs in a pace of two years.

The thing is, scientific consensus is JUST NOW starting to catch up with this, and NOW there are peer-reviewed studies showing losing weight on keto doesn't require a caloric deficit.

This illustrates my point: There is an arrogance in academia that precludes so many things based on assumptions.

That isn't even touching the current Reproducibility Crisis that is calling into question decades of supposed 'objectively peer reviewed' results.

Perception is inherently flawed and for all intents and purposes cannot be as correct as objective,

I'm sorry but going from 290 to 210lbs in a years time isn't a flaw in perception.

. The scientific method exists in large part to remove hand-waving guesswork and pure fictitious nonsense

Up until basically only five years ago, nearly all medical professionals called weight loss without caloric deficit pure fictitious nonsense. I think this proves that just because a bunch of out of touch researchers, self-satisfied in their academic prestige, declare something fictitious nonsense that it does not automatically mean that it actually is.

A great example is a feather falling slower than a bowling ball in atmosphere. Your first perception would not lead you to understand the science of gravity as we now know it thanks to rigorous scientific proof.

I sincerely disagree. Everyone on the planet will tell you that the feather will fall slower in atmosphere.

I think you are trying to reference the same experiment in a vacuum.

But I'm getting the impression you are less a practitioner of science than you are a religious fanatic with science as your god.

[–] agegamon@beehaw.org 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I appreciate 90% of your comment. *I thought it was a wall of text at first but a fantastic example of science being misapplied, and I appreciate it. Thank you for following through.

Part of what science purists need to understand is that current science can be - and sometimes is - completely incorrect.

I will also point out, however, that one anecdote does not discredit my original argument. Yes perception is important but the human condition is inherently flawed. Your perception is not perfect, no matter if it ultimately is "right" or "wrong." We must be critical and question results. I am glad in this case that losing weight is possible without a calorie deficit (and in fact am doing it myself through the same method you mentioned!). But that doesn't mean our perception is somehow better than the scientific method. It means - as you rightly pointed out - that science was not being practiced by those doctors, et al, who said it was "impossible."

You misunderstood my point about perception and the feather/bowling ball, though I see what you mean and am not upset about that. Yes, basically all people will tell you that the feather falls slower. However, does that mean that gravity affects the feather less? If a person didn't already have modern science/knowledge to tell them how gravity and air resistance, fluid mechanics, yadda yadda work, a person might come to the wrong conclusion - as many did before - which is that gravity affects heavy things more. It's completely nonsense, as you and I know. But we know that because of that objective, thoroughly reviewed science.

The jibe about science as my "god" is personally insulting but understandable for you to make, especially since I have zero patience with trolls and will immediately discredit and block them. I will not argue with you if you want to discredit me in a similar way, I simply want people to not be idiots and want them to use science rather than regurgitating the same horseshit that they "feel" is right.