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Comment by brennaw1 | Hacker News Reader

Can we just let people be fat and happy

We can! But should we?

Being fat is similar to being a drug user. At first, you actually are fat and happy. Over time, being fat will absolutely reduce your happiness from the medical, societal, and physical issues that arise. Similar to how drug users build up a tolerance and instead of using the drug to be happy, they use the drug to feel normal.

And just to state a simple fact, I do not condone shaming people with weight control issues.

I have thought of this before.

But it isn't really the same. Drugs, the really bad ones will probably ruin your life or kill you in the space of two or three years.

Being fat unless it's super super severe often won't start impacting your health seriously until your 30's or 40's.

on the opposite side anorexia will kill you much faster than obesity

So what about smoking?

It's good that we discourage smoking, even aside from the secondhand smoke component.

Some drugs will kill you slowly also. Doesn't mean they're good for you.

At 30, you have more than half your life ahead of you. At 40, you are just about the halfway mark.

That's just the more serious longterm effects. The reversible short term ones are immediate.

I was at a birthday hike for a friend - up a short granite hill for good views, some slow meandering around a lake. Very relaxed stuff. One of her guests couldn't make it up the hill. Full on bawling, had to leave early. This woman could not participate in even a casual hike for a friends party and she clearly wanted to be able to.

I was fat but below the obesity level before I started my whole thing and the first "benefit" I noticed was that I could do any physical activity. I might be bad at it, but I could rock climb, and kayak, and play basketball with people. The "Oh, I can't do that" was simply _gone_.

> on the opposite side anorexia will kill you much faster than obesity

* Anorexia nervosa, about 5.1 deaths per 1000 person-years

* Obesity, about 200 deaths per 1000 person-years.

Being fat has numerous social penalties. I think they originate from instinctive reactions embedded deep in peoples’ brains, and those reactions are flat-out not going to go away from anything we can do today.

Really bad drugs kill through overdose, whether from low quality supply or some users' inability to manage their addiction. I think there are more 'functional addicts' around than most realize. It seems to me that a good comparison to morbid obesity is tobacco smoking; you can keep at that for a long time but the odds of cumulative damage becoming disabling rise inexorably.

Anyone is welcome to be fat and happy, but don't put down those who want to un-fat to be happy. Don't come back with that fatness is a social construct stuff either; your fat and happy idea is just as much a social construct.

And please don't ask me to pay for your healthcare because you chose to be fat and happy.

I hate this sentiment. It can be used about, well, anything at all that might cause your risk of anything to go up as far as science understands it today (which might be different tomorrow, they're always learning).

Accident while biking? Nope - too risky, no care for you. Eat red meat and get cancer? Too bad, no treatment for you. Same for drinking wine, or doing any of the thousands of things "they" say MAY raise your cancer risk.

Joint problems happen to all manner of people, thin or fat, but we'll only pay for treatment for the thin ones.

It just goes on.

That mostly seems reasonable. Get in a car crash? Your car premiums go up. Get in a bike accident and need medical care? Your medical premiums go up. Have too high a body fat? Higher premiums. Smoke? Higher premiums.

With a single payer system you could also price it into things like red meat and alcohol through a sales tax that goes to insurance.

To extend your examples: why aren't we coupling this to incentives? Car crashes are much more debilitating than bicycle crashes, and most bicycling in the world is done for transport, yet we heavily incentivize car culture.

As a casual bicycle user, you're far more likely to have a serious bicycle collision from being hit by a car driver.

Not sure what you mean by "Car crashes are much more debilitating than bicycle crashes."

If a cyclist gets hit by a car at any significant speed, he's likely seriously injured or dead, while the car driver is likely unscathed, at least physically.

If two cars collide, unless they are traveling at quite high speeds or are particularly unlucky, everyone will probably walk away, as they are surrounded by a steel structure that has been specifically engineered to protect vehicle occupants in the most common crash scenarios, in addition to the protection provided by safety belts and airbags. The cyclist has none of this.

If two bicycles collide, well it depends but scrapes and possibly broken bones are likely, along with possible concussion or worse head injury.

We know that bicycle usage in places like the Netherlands doesn't result in frequent serious accidents like you describe. The safety culture is totally different, and injuries like that are low despite a much more casual approach to helmets. There are people on cargo bikes transporting goods and going shopping with their children.

This is an infrastructure problem, not a bicycle problem. The infrastructure problem exists because places like the USA prioritize cars.

Even the two bicycle collision you describe is quite rare outside of competitive sports. People casually bicycling to work aren't going at such speeds, don't go closely in opposite directions, and really have no reason to do so.

Bicycling is very safe when you remove car interaction from the equation.

Check out this YT channel for more info backed by data: https://youtube.com/c/notjustbikes

I agree it's something of a slippery slope and a lot of arguments would be had about where the lines are, but already done for some things. I have to sign a "smoke free affidavit" at work or else pay more for my health insurance.

Yes, to a certain degree. But now we are in an obesity epidemic. It is just as bad as people smoking in the previous generations. Loads of people are MORBIDLY obese.

Good for them?

Why? Have you seen the medical outcomes for people in that group who develop acute medical problems? I don't mean just the statistical outcomes, but the qualitative individual ones. Other than 'possibly survive a sudden famine' I cannot think of a single thing morbid obesity makes better.

Better than being stripped of their human agency and choice.

Better to be fat and happy than skinny with someone controlling your life

Being controlled by the corn/sugar industry doesn't sound great to me but you do you.

I can say no to the corn industry. I can't say no to the government.

It kind of really puts a load on the healthcare system and makes everyone’s rates go up. Plus it’s terrible for the individual themselves. Societal pressure is a fantastic motivator.

Shame is a terrible motivator for weight loss. It just doesn't really work. Nobody gets fat because they think being fat is okay. Fat people tend to be struggling with other things that they largely need to tackle before they have the emotional bandwidth to do the un-fat thing.

Fat shaming doesn't help anyone lose weight, it just makes you feel superior.

It works very well. If they’re struggling with other things societal shame will make sure losing weight becomes their major struggle.

The thing about claiming things like this is they require a strong scientific consensus. Otherwise, if they're wrong, its just hurting people, sometimes even killing them. Many girls die every year from EDs, and societal shame is a strong candidate for their cause.

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