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Comment by Pulcinella | Hacker News Reader

Can you demonstrate that "fat acceptance" is deadly? I certainly have seen proof that Nazism is.

That's not apples to apples. Nazism is deadly, as it obesity (neither universally). Accepting people regardless of weight seems safer, and reaching out to people with questionable beliefs strikes me as productive.

Obesity is obviously deadly and fat "acceptance" is just as disastrous as meth acceptance. In fact, obesity kills far more than meth.

But my greater point is that we are obviously all okay with negative social stimulus (shaming et. al.) to curb bad behaviors. This is how virtually all social conditioning works and it's part of how we have a civil society. I don't think it's a good idea to decide some negative behaviors should be immune to negative social stimulus. Apply the same rule to everything, one way or the other.

It apparently costs the global economy around 2 trillion a year due to various causes

http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/20/news/economy/fat-obesity-cos...

"fat acceptance is deadly" ≠ "obesity has costs to the economy"

Edit to add: 'yjftsjthsd-h points out that this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15224303) In this entire thread a lot of people are unknowingly or willfully talking past each other. That's the tough part about heated issues like this. Actually taking the time to break down and listen to each other to understand where we're coming from first—even if we don't agree with the conclusions on the other side—is fundamental to us having a useful, constructive discussion.

Obesity is a negative for both the individual and society. The fat acceptance movement is terrible because being fat isn't some sort of permanent, genetic condition that's out of people's control. You control what you put in your mouth and how much exercise you get, it's a choice.

Should we have an ignorance acceptance movement, where we don't push people to educate themselves? That's a choice as well.

The fact remains that 95% of people going on diets to lose weight aren't successful in keeping it off long-term and the only method that seems to show significant success is surgery. I find it hard to believe that the only problem here is that fat people aren't aware they're fat. Harping on it in the way you're advocating just discourages people from doing anything healthy, since, you know, if getting slim is all that matters, why bother exercising if you're still fat at the end?

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