Hacker News Reader

Comment by mjevans | Hacker News Reader

It is practically impossible to conduct a long term health study on something like an artificial sweetener. The only way I can think of to accurately remove environmental noise is to collect extensive records on a _large_ population, and then line up A / B sets where the only major difference between the sets (other exposures similar) are the sweeteners.

With a lot of samples that fulfill that criteria a historic review might be able to identify statistical anomalies towards outcomes (positive or negative) that are common to the matched A and B sides of the set.

I could see an AI administering such a data collection and comparison in an accurate and ethical way; but only the scifi grade strong / true AI.

View on HN

It's also impossible to do this on almost every other substance we use. I'll focus my energy on avoiding things we know for sure are problematic like refined sugar and get to artificial sweeteners when everything else more important is solved.

Why not just avoid both?

Because humans are not automatons and there is value in deriving pleasure from one's lived experiences?

This isn't a difficult question.

Is diabetes pleasurable? Is having a heart attack at 60 pleasurable?

You should attempt to balance pleasure that has long term risks associated with it.

This ("life is about fun, drink a can of coca cola a day") has been brought up multiple times by multiple different people in this comment section and quite frankly it's one of the more bewildering things I've seen on HN, and I have showdead on.

Never once has not drinking soda or sugary drinks or food ever impacted my life negatively. Takes like the ones you're referring to are completely alien to me.

The amount of flagged and downvoted comments that voice similar sentiment in this thread branch seems curious.

You can live a pleasurable life without eating and drinking unnecessary added sugars. You might even have a higher quality of life by eliminating sources of potential negative health effects.

Note how your answer equally works whether the question is "why not avoid extra sugar?", "why not quit smoking?", "why not abstain from drugs?", "why require consent?", etc.

There is value in not deriving pleasure just as there is value in deriving pleasure. In fact, I don't really know what you mean by "value", but I would not be at all surprised if deriving personal pleasure were found to be orthogonal even to own satisfaction overall.

Upon reflection, I don't even think I share your meaning of "pleasure". Yours appears to be heavily influenced by big corporations's marketing departments. I used to smoke and consume sugar excessively and every time made me feel good, yet I overall better when I don't do those things. There are no ads that show you that, of course.

You honestly think that refined sugars are more problematic than artificial sweeteners?

Yes.

Refined sugars have clearly demonstrated problems. Most artificial sweeteners do not.

You can't really say that when they're only a couple decades into human history. Remember saccharine? It was considered safe until it wasn't.

>Remember saccharine? It was considered safe until it wasn't.

It's hilarious that you brought this up, because based on wikipedia[1], it the trend actually: it was considered safe until it wasn't ...until it was

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccharin#Safety_and_health_ef...

> You can't really say that when they're only a couple decades into human history.

My statement is accurate.

> Remember saccharine? It was considered safe until it wasn't.

That's more true of sugar than saccharine.

100% NSS are better than tons of carbs and sugar loaded food.

Yes, and this is a hill I will die on. Refined sugars are arguably responsible for billions in healthcare expenses, lowered quality of life and lowered life expectancy for millions of people in the US.

>It is practically impossible to conduct a long term health study on something like an artificial sweetener. The only way I can think of to accurately remove environmental noise is to collect extensive records on a _large_ population, and then line up A / B sets where the only major difference between the sets (other exposures similar) are the sweeteners.

The concern with cohort studies isn't "noise", it's confounders. eg. people who eat smoked meats tend to eat other unhealthy foods, so they live shorter lives, but smoked foods in and of themselves aren't harmful. Having a bigger sample size does nothing to combat this. You can "control" for confounders, but comes with its own problems. Control for too little variables, and you still get confounding, control for too much, and you run into p-hacking territory.

Genuine question: How was it determined that smoked or processed meat is bad? Could the same processes be applied to non sugar sweeteners?

Yes, that process is statistical modeling and it can be applied to quantify numerous problems.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com