superqd

The most fundamental problem in the U.S. is this: Infinite Growth Capitalism

The VAST majority of what is wrong with our society (political and obviously economic) can be traced to this. It's the expectation that every economic endeavor must show a return on investment - forever. That every entity must strive to optimize the bottom line every day of its existence. Optimizing for growth above all else crushes and consumes everything.

Increasing local manufacturing will only create more opportunities for people to be indentured to a company that literally hates their existence.

A company is forced to build here in the U.S. and people are supposed to rejoice they now have another option for their lives to simply be tolerated and disposable?

It is so deeply painful to witness in my lifetime how our nation's law makers have openly become so profoundly morally and intellectually bankrupt.

Nitpick: lots of text descriptions of visual patterns - this article could use at least 5 visual aid images.

This x 1000

That is the main reason I go to the dentist is to prevent gum issues, which I have had once or twice.

Maybe. I grew up in a very rural area. Others I'm related to have plenty of cavities, and others my age do too...

So... is the existence, or non-existence, of a certain bacteria why some people never get cavities? I'm sure there can be multiple factors, but I'm 51 and never had a cavity, but don't really know the specifics of what might be different about the environment of my mouth that seems to discourage, or not encourage, the formation of cavities.

And yet it garnered millions of users within days. It has inspired people who don't do computers to feel like they can actually get amazing things done with computers. The pace of creative use cases discovered by non-tech types, with such a lazy interface, is nearly impossible to keep up with.

It has democratized what is possible with technology, when that technology was programmable with natural language, i.e., by just asking questions, or asking it to do things, in every day language. It meant people who didn't know how to build software could get software to do their bidding regardless.

This likely depends on the degree and the purpose for which you tried to obtain it.

Some online Masters degree programs are just scams preying on people's desire to improve their careers. They are successful because so many employer's won't pay or promote to certain positions without advanced degrees. So there is a real demand for degrees like MBAs.

For some degrees, the real value is the additional education you receive because of the increased complexity of the subject. Not everyone goes after these degrees for the same reason. For me, I went to grad school in physics not because I thought it would help my career, but because I wanted to learn more physics. I don't think this is the typical reason for which advanced degrees are sought anymore, but at least in some cases, like mine, master's degrees aren't scams, but a necessary part of deeper education into a specific area.

In this case, a "well established method" simply means common-place methodology, not necessarily a robust scientific protocol.

The problem is the humans. We are not reliable witnesses, even of our own pasts, and unless we are following very strict diets, most of us essentially follow a mostly random walk with our food intake across a narrow range of food groups (even caloric intake can be wildly inconsistent over time). I've met enough people who completely underestimate their consumption of desserts, e.g., that they mentally reduce the occurrence of such events in their personal historical narratives. That alone could put many from both low-carb vegans and low-carb meat eaters into the high-carb category.

Which is the point, the worst failure of this methodology is that there is no evidence that human memory, regarding food consumption, provides an accurate measure over long periods of time. If you cannot establish the trustworthiness of the most basic tool of your methodology, then almost by definition it's meaningless. The error in self reporting could be high enough such that the true classification of 80% of the low carb group is actually high carb. Or the vegan group could be nearly half high-carb, etc.

Without a thorough vetting of the accuracy of the instrumentation used in the research (FFQ in this case), we cannot know the margins of error. But we have apriori reasons for believing the accuracy to be significantly high. Adding more people to the group doesn't increase the accuracy in this case, it only increases the volume of the noise. Is the True Low Carb ratio of each group 10% or 90%? Who knows.

If we can't validate the accuracy of the tools, it makes the results essentially a random choice between the possible conclusions. It means they haven't disproven the null hypothesis.

Which is why I favor some form of sequestration of smaller populations of similar genetic makeup (multiple groups for each type of diet), etc. But that is mostly impractical.

Oh, yeah, the biochemistry of individuals is what makes so especially challenging, but not insurmountable. Maybe we are in a simulation to find out whether eating fish is good for you...

I just don't know how ethical it would be to force a particular diet that might affect someone's life expectancy without their consent. I mean, I suppose you could get volunteers...

I just think there is far too much noise in this sort of study to draw any sort of conclusion. An effect has to be very strong to manifest in such noise. Yeah, if the difference in life expectancy was 3 decades, say, then perhaps it would show in such noise.

Every time I've considered how to really do nutrition research, it essentially amounts to a prison, even if voluntary. You would need to be able to lock different populations away from any source of food than what you provide, and control their daily activities, etc, for at least 2 years, though you could likely get some results after only 6 months.

Yeah, it bugs me deeply that this passes as science (and other such "research"). I realize it's difficult to conduct meaningful science in this area, given how different the biochemistry of every person is, but it's something I believe we can do. Given how important our health is, it's something I feel we really need to do.