Which means I don't trust almost anything in psychology, social sciences, or quirky health, nutrition and lifestyle recommendations if they don't sound like something somebody from 1000 years ago could have done.
Some people don't understand skepticism, and get muddled up in Occam's razor or something (which is just modus tollens of the similarly dubious "where there's smoke, there's fire"; a good starting point perhaps, but nothing to draw conclusions from), and they think that if they can't prove something, it must be false. That's not correct either. If you there is no proof, it could be either way.
We're in this bizarre zeitgeist where everyone is telling you to listen to science because it's all true, but for the love of god, don't engage in any sort of scientific inquiry yourself, who knows what heterodoxy you might arrive at.
The coffee machine at work has a bunch of advertisement stuck on it, how the coffee has been fine-tuned by experts and tested by scientists to be the optimal coffee experience. Like what the heck, am I not a better judge of whether I like the coffee than a bunch of scientists?
Impossible standard to prove.
> Which means I don't trust almost anything in psychology, social sciences, or quirky health, nutrition and lifestyle recommendations if they don't sound like something somebody from 1000 years ago could have done.
The myth of the paleo* = good is so dumb.
Of course most "paleo" nutritionists are scammers pushing cookbooks and dubious nutritional supplements.
You're right: most of the protein in the diets of our paleolithic ancestors came from insects and leftover carrion from the kills of more optimized carnivores. I've never seen these recommended in a Paleo diet.
The other thing is our understanding of nutritional science is so, so bad. It's just such a difficult area to attack with the scientific method. We've made good progress for sure but there's still so many unknowns.
Paleo is dumb because it ignores all other greater selective factors. It would be like judging wearing kevlar vests as good protection from cancer and heart disease because after you empty a revolver of hollow points into every fifty year old subject's chests the ones wearing kevlar lived the longest.
"For the majority of human existencr the diet which helped survival the most was high calorie because it meant they weren't starving."
Just like how our bodies were optimized to extract vitamin D from the abundant sunlignt, and to get benefits from physical activity.
"Paleo is dumb because it ignores all other greater selective factors"
"It would be like judging wearing kevlar vests as good protection from cancer and heart disease because after you empty a revolver of hollow points into every fifty year old subject's chests the ones wearing kevlar lived the longest."