Posts by Todd

I think it's a great video to understand what Epicurus was opposing.

Part of what makes it valuable is that Carl Sagan has (I think) a pretty good popular reputation as a scientist. To hear his scathing criticism of Plato lends credence to our strong anti-Platonic views...makes it seem a bit less crazy, maybe, to be railing against Plato all the time.

The video itself is a bit dated. Might be cool if we could use the audio with our own images...but I assume there would be copyright issues with that.

Quote from Cassius

40:44 - Pythagorus and Plato "provided an intellectually respectable justification for a corrupt social order."" - led to a slave economy -

The part about leading to a slave economy is not historically correct, and it's not what Carl Sagan says in the video either.

The slave economy existed long before Plato. I'm not sure about the situation at the time of Pythagoras. Slavery may not have been as widespread then, but was likely still considered the normal way of things.

Carl Sagan says the mercantile tradition of the Ionians led to a slave economy (an unsubstantiated claim, IMO), and that Athens had a vast slave population at the time of Plato and Aristotle (true).

Quote from Wikipedia

By 600 BC, chattel slavery had spread in Greece. By the 5th century BC, slaves made up one-third of the total population in some city-states. Between 40-80% of the population of Classical Athens were slaves.

Quote from Cassius

I know things are much more complicated than that, but what is your viewpoint as to that line of argument, and that it is almost as important "what you eat" as it is "how much you eat?"

I've not read Taubes specifically, but I've heard other people make this argument. So assuming they all mean the same thing...

I would say I agree, but I think you are somewhat mischaracterizing their argument.

You have to look at what they're saying in the context of arguing against the conventional advice to simply "eat less and/or exercise more".

I don't think they are saying that is factually wrong; they're saying it is not actually very helpful advice.

I think this thread was supposed to be about personal experience, but I want to say some more about it. Feel free to move this to another thread if that would be more appropriate.

Let's start with some facts.

Weight loss requires a caloric deficit (aside from surgery). All the rest is just about ways of making a caloric deficit easier to sustain.

All carbohydrates are converted into glucose.*

The human body prefers to use glucose for energy rather than fat. This is because...

Too much glucose in the bloodstream is harmful.**

I believe those are all generally accepted facts. Now, I will speculate a bit...

The body's fat burning mechanisms are not just sitting around waiting to be used whenever they are needed. Like muscle tissue, they have to be maintained, and maintaining them requires resources. The body doesn't like to waste resources. Like muscle tissue, when the fat-burning mechanisms are not utilized, the body will not devote resources to maintaining them.

If that is true...

Naive calorie restriction is difficult because when carbohydrates are consumed every few hours, the fat-burning mechanisms are not utilized to a sufficient degree to signal the body to develop them. When glucose runs out, even though there may be stored body fat available, the fat-burning mechanisms aren't capable of meeting the body's demands, and the body demands more glucose, like an addict.

The various forms of carbohydrate restriction make glucose unavailable for sufficiently long periods of time for the body to engage the fat-burning mechanisms. This burns fat, obviously, but it also signals to the body that these processes are going to be used, and that resources should be devoted to building and maintaining them.

To evaluate the poll options in light of the above:

Definitely effective, but difficult to practice:***

General Calorie Restriction

Likely to be effective:

Carbohydrate Restriction

Intermittent Fasting (temporary carb-restriction)

Carnivore Diet

Multi-day Fasting

Likely to be ineffective unless combined with an effective method:

Mediterranean Diet

Primarily Exercise

Vegetarianism

Out of scope:

Weight loss medication or supplement

Weight loss surgery

Finally, to be clear, all of the above is looking at this strictly from a weight loss perspective. I am not commenting on other health effects, positive or negative.

=====

*This is not quite accurate (there are non-digestible carbohydrates), but it's close enough for this discussion.

**This is why diabetes is bad. It is also why the body will burn alcohol for energy in preference to both glucose and fat: because alcohol in the bloodstream is even worse than glucose.

***I think of this like a natural but unnecessary desire. If you find yourself in a situation where calorie restriction is easy, like famine, shipwreck, imprisonment...go for it. Otherwise, there are probably less painful approaches to weight loss.

Fantastic podcast!

I've never been overweight, so feel free to ignore my opinion.

I've been doing some form of carb restriction for the last 10 or 15 years. Not strict by any means. Mainly I just try to limit sugar and grains (also seed oils). I lift weights 2-3 times/week.

I wasn't sure the best place to post this...

In the New Member Meet & Greet last night, Cassius asked what triggered me to abandon Catholicism, and then later asked if I had any book recommendations. I didn't have good answers at the time, but I remembered something later.

Probably the book that pushed me over the edge from Catholic-by-inertia was Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason.

After that, I also spent some time reading textual criticism of the Bible, I particularly recall Albert Schweitzer's The Quest of the Historical Jesus. But also more recent works in that area since the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls.

Those aren't Epicurean (obviously). And Paine is pushing Deism.

And I wouldn't recommend them to committed Christians (to avoid making enemies!).

But for people who are fed up with Christianity but just can't bring themselves to reject it completely, maybe those would be useful.

Not to sound like a skeptic, but to me, this kind of thing is a reminder of how much we really don't know - even in areas that we tend to assume modern science has pretty well figured out.

This is especially irritating in the "how to be an epicurean" genre of books when they get into specific, supposedly scientific, lifestyle advice, psychology, etc.

Reminds me of an anecdote about reading a news article about the field you work in, and thinking, "That is so misleading! Lots of people disagree about that. That's not even what the paper said! The paper they're referencing was retracted 6 months ago!" Then you read an article about a subject with which you're less familiar, and you don't realize it may well have all the same issues.

Now back to being dogmatic.

Quote from Cassius

I think I see why it is tempting to include a summary statement about the level of bodies with their emergent properties being just as "real" as the level of atoms and void. I see that myself as a hugely important point to make as the way to understand atomism that does not lead to nihilism/despair

To me, it just seems obvious that it's all one reality. I can't even imagine thinking otherwise.

If anything, I'd go the opposite direction: what I see around me and interact with every day is obviously real; it's what I can't see that I would be tempted to question.

To someone who sees atomism as leading to nihilism or despair, I'd say they're forgetting the part about relying on the senses.

Using the right words helps too. Different aspects of one reality.

Quote from Cassius

Todd in your item 4 "this idea" is a reference to point 3, or to something else. I agree with all your points but wanted to be sure I understood this one.

I'm referring to their entire #18.

In reading the texts you quoted yesterday, I just don't see how this is any kind of key takeaway. I couldn't even see where it was explicitly stated. Implied, OK...but does that qualify it to be a fundamental principle?

(I mean it's obviously subjective as to what would qualify, as Nate has amply shown. This one seems like a big stretch to me.)

From my perspective, I see 4 issues (but I reserve the right to identify more!)

1. Levels. This is just about terminology to me. I don't think I have any concerns about the ideas being described (so far as I understand them). But "2 levels of reality" sounds Platonic. It sounds kind of close to "2 realities". As Cassius has noted, if there are multiple levels, is one better, or more important somehow? It also has kind of a gnostic tinge...like there is secret knowledge about other levels of reality that will eventually be revealed to those who progress in their studies. Just everything about the word feels wrong to me. All this would be resolved by just using "aspect" or some other word instead of "levels". To me, this is about clarity of explanation.
2. Two. If there are multiple levels or aspects, why only 2?
3. Timeless. I think I know where they're getting this from. If they just mean "eternal" or always existing, I'm fine with that, I just think they should use a different word. I suspect they may mean something else, and I would disagree. I'd be happy to expand if anyone wants to dive into it.
4. I don't think this idea deserves to be elevated to the level of a fundamental principle, or whatever they are calling them. As I've said before, this is not even an attribute of reality. It is a matter of the perspective of the observer.

I had a difficult time figuring out what the image for corrosive desires was. (I now see they are credit cards.)

Quote from Nate

As Todd mentioned, #18 seems almost Platonic, and I do not find support for this proposition in Epicurus’ texts. I may be missing something in translation, but at this point I do not accept this one.

They also claim that this is proven because the opposite is invalid.

What is the opposite of 2 levels of reality? One, three, ten? Zero? Offhand, I can think of atomic/sub-atomic, molecular, cellular, <whatever you want to call the human-scale things>, geological, cosmological. I'm sure there are others, and also that the people who specialize in those fields break them down even further.

I'd be happy to talk about different aspects of reality instead of levels. "Aspect" implies an observer, rather than something inherent in the thing observed.

Thanks Onenski for bumping this thread and bringing it to my attention!

Another book to read (or re-read, I have the original, but it sounds like the updates were substantial).

Another way of stating my issue with the "two levels of reality" (or perhaps another problem with it)...

The so-called "two levels" are not actually any property (or accident) of reality. The two levels are a result of the limits of our ability to perceive reality. There is what we can perceive and what we cannot perceive. Reality is just what is.

If at some time in the distant future, humans evolved the ability to see (or otherwise perceive) atoms directly, would reality have changed in any way? No, only our ability to perceive it would have changed.

Yeah, I get the point. I guess I just don't like the sound of two levels of reality. Sounds dangerously close to "two realities".

I'm not seeing anything in the Letter to Herodotus or Book 1 that I take to be suggesting 2 levels of reality. I only noticed some references to there being things we can see and things we can't see. (I was skimming quickly, so maybe I missed something.)

That seems a far cry from saying there are 2 levels of reality. You might as well say there are things we can smell and things we can't smell.

If anyone has a more specific reference for this "two levels" idea, I'd appreciate it.

Quote from Nate

18. There are two levels of reality, the level of atoms within the void that is timeless and the level of the sensible world set in time. The opposite holds no validity."

This is new to me, and a bit surprising. Did Epicurus say this? Where is it coming from?

Sounds almost Platonic.

Quote from Kalosyni

What good is knowing your destination if you don't know which road to take to get there?

It's a necessary first step to getting there, isn't it?

Would you blindly follow a road if you didn't know where it was taking you? Maybe you are simply enjoying the trip for it's own sake. That's fine, but still, you'd want to know that it's not taking you into the middle of a war zone (for example).

Quote from Cassius

The reason allegories and parables are useful, like art and music and the like, is that they help people get a firm grip of the core of the issue and hold onto it confidently when troubles and challenges arise, as they inevitably do. The Michelle Pinto graphic crystalizes the anti-supernatural aspect of Epicurean philosophy in the "one picture is worth a thousand words" way. Music is similarly effective.

I was discussing something like this with my 8-year old recently.

She was trying to impress me with the fact that she had memorized the lyrics to an entire song. I tried (possibly failed) to explain how having the music to go along with it made the words of the song far more memorable.

I can easily recall the words to songs I liked (or even dumb TV commercials) from 25 years ago.