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Comment by fierro | Hacker News Reader

it's so fascinating when health/fitness discussions crop up on HN. absolutely not gatekeeping, but just observing that compared to the technical topics, there is sooo much more disagreement while at the same time, more conviction. Seems like people really believe they know what they are talking about, whereas when it comes to the technical discussions, the tone seems more curious/introspective vs. dogmatic.

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I totally agree! I'm an MD with a BS in human nutrition and a deep personal interest in diet and fitness (which is what eventually prompted me to pursue medical school). One of my most common refrains is the paradox between the tremendous proportion of the human population that consumes food, the tremendous proportion for whom diet strongly impacts health, in contrast to the tragically small body of truly rigorous, adequately powered, properly controlled, sufficiently longitudinal, non-surrogate-outcome'd research on the topic.

It's also surprising how many on HN seem more willing to accept my half-baked self-taught opinions on tech topics than they are my opinions on health. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Isn't that just a manifestation of the old saying that "the more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know"? On health/fitness forums, I'm sure the health/fitness discussions are more nuanced and the technical discussions are clownish.

Noticed the same the other day on an audit discussion. Got downvotes. Fine whatever. Thing is I’ve got about a decade experience in it…presumably a bit more than the average hn’er

Makes me wonder what I’m commenting on with strong opinions despite being less than well informed

I think it's because tech is the only thing the average HNer knows enough about to know that they know nothing.

For a group that likes to think of itself as fact-based, things really go off the rail on HN when it comes to nutrition or medicine in general.

I've never seen more people hold incredibly strong convictions that are based on factually incorrect things in my life.

Anything is accepted besides "stop stuffing your face". When weight management or diet comes up, HN definitely loses their cool.

I’ve spent a lot of time around smart and eccentric people and around various diet and exercise “communities” and one thing I’ve noticed is that smart and eccentric people are so much more likely to subscribe to faddish, heterodox diets and exercise routines.

Tech attracts a lot of smart, eccentric people with anti-authoritarian, anti-mainstream bents. Bizarre ideas strongly held about health and nutrition emerge naturally among this group.

Makes you wonder what else they’re not really experts about, but that can also be a feature. A guy doesn’t know you can’t just put a supercomputer touchscreen in everyone’s pocket but he also doesn’t know carrots don’t cure cancer.

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