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Comment by foobears42 | Hacker News Reader

> There is more to weight gain than lack of willpower.

Is there? The study you quoted suggests the opposite. The drug doesn't directly cause fat to melt off. The fat is lost by eating less. Why is the control group eating more? lack of....

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Hold your breath for 3 minutes. This should be doable, with sufficient willpower. Freedivers can go much much longer. You didn't succeed?

Shame on you and your lack of willpower!

Biological urges are powerful, don't be so quick to judge.

No one should be expected to go from eating in an unhealthy fashion to a healthy one, just as one would not learn to hold one's breath for three minutes right away. But there are those who try and get better, and there are those who try and don't, and there are some people who simply don't try. This drug is good for the second group. But is bad for the third, the people who will use this to continue eating badly, just with the consequences less visible. And I think it could also be bad for the first: by hiding the immediate effects of bad habits, it removes the encouragement to get better. The concern that this may allow people to maintain bad diets but not see the effects in the short term is a valid one.

> Why is the control group eating more?

Because they aren't taking an appetite suppressing drug. It's easier to not eat when you aren't hungry, so it's easier to lose weight with the same amount of willpower compared to people that aren't taking an appetite suppressing drug. Willpower has no part in the study, it doesn't "suggest the opposite".

Willpower is exactly why they eat more. They feel a pang of hunger in their grossly stretched out stomach and can't resist eating.

The drug does not remove fat. It removes the feeling of hunger. Assume both groups have little willpower (they are fat after all). The control group feels hunger and continues satisfying that hunger with food as they have no will power. The group with suppressed hunger from the drug also have no willpower, but since they feel no hunger they eat normal amounts.

honestly who cares? it's not a competition. most people eat when they are hungry and stop when they're not hungry anymore. for me this results in being at the lower end of the ideal weight range for a person my size. it takes no willpower at all; I don't even think about it until I read a thread like this. other people, for whatever reason, have an appetite that is out of proportion with what their body needs. why not just let them solve their problem however they see fit? if a drug is part of their weight loss regimen, so be it.

So we agree that there is more to weight gain than lack of willpower then. It wouldn't be a stretch to then imagine that not all people feel hunger the same (as hormones usually vary from people to people), and thus that for some people, it takes less willpower to maintain a healthy weight.

Poverty is solved by earning more money. BAM I just won the war on poverty.

Crime is solved by just not commiting crimes. BAM I just solved crime.

Drug problems is solved by just doing less drugs. BAM I just won the drug war.

You should read "The Hungry Brain" [0]. It's by a neuroscientist, who explains the deep ways that the appetite mechanism is wired into just about every area of our brain, making "willpower" very hard to sustain. As just one example, prisoners placed on a forced starvation diet became obsessed with cooking implements. It also provides strong evidence that physiological mechanisms (not conscious choices) are behind appetite differences and fat mass variations in the population.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Hungry-Brain-Outsmarting-Instincts-Ov...

If the drug is granting people willpower, then it really is miraculous.

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