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Comment by rustcleaner | Hacker News Reader

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That seems like a needlessly bitter response, why the antipathy?

There is a weird crowd of people on the internet that have convinced themselves that seed oils are the cause of many ailments.

It doesn’t have a ton of scientific backing but Joe Rogan promoted some guru doctor a while back that spread the idea to a lot more people.

The saga of John Yudkin and Pure White and Deadly should give you pause.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yudkin

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure,_White_and_Deadly

Or you know the article on highly processed foods that made the home page the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39746915 ... Could the seed oils thing be a bit much? Sure. Could canola and its use be part of the problem as a highly processed food. Maybe. Is any one doing the research? None of us know...

Why people have some aversion to seed oils, a highly processed food: "Canola oil is made at a processing facility by slightly heating and then crushing the seed.[34] Almost all commercial canola oil is then extracted using hexane solvent, which is recovered at the end of processing. Finally, the canola oil is refined using water precipitation and organic acid to remove gums and free fatty acids, filtering to remove color, and deodorizing using steam distillation. Sometimes the oil is also bleached for a lighter color." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed_oil

I'm not sure that sounds like food...

> I'm not sure that sounds like food...

A lot of things don't when you describe them in such detailed, clinical ways.

You can also buy (just like you can with quality olive oils) cold pressed canola which is manufactured simply by crushing the seed. The seed oil folks would have it that this is no better, AFAICT.

>Joe Rogan promoted

You mean he did an episode where he had a conversation with the doctor? Or was the doctor a sponsor of the show where he advertised products?

I don't think simply having a conversation about an idea counts as promotion.

Advertising is another matter though..

Having a conversation in a very public place can certainly end up promoting ideas

Take a popular piece of media, inject a conversation about fringe ideas with some crackpot that would have very limited reach otherwise. This gives very high visibility to very fringe ideas.

Giving undue weight to fringe viewpoints is promoting those viewpoints.

Promotion: "activity that supports or provides active encouragement for the furtherance of a cause"

Simply discussing an idea, even giving undue weight, is not promotion.

Conflating the two is dangerous as it provides justification for censorship. The free exchange of ideas and information is the only way a democracy can survive.

If the idea is bad or wrong, it will be debated and ultimately defeated in the marketplace of ideas.

> If the idea is bad or wrong, it will be debated and ultimately defeated in the marketplace of ideas.

This implies the existence of a marketplace of ideas where people can freely trade thoughts.

It was not the case in the past (i.e. you go to jail or are excommunicated for dissent), and it is increasingly not the case in the modern world (i.e. the algorithm is telling you what they want you to hear).

You cannot have a free marketplace of ideas in a world where the forums these ideas are being discussed have an incentive of causing conflict and keeping you engaged.

This is not an attack on you or anything, I just think we should all be more aware that everything we hear today has an agenda hidden behind it, which is malicious more often than honest.

> If the idea is bad or wrong, it will be debated and ultimately defeated in the marketplace of ideas.

Sure, and I have a bridge to sell you.

The marketplace of ideas is a myth predicated on the willingness of participants to promote and evaluate their ideas honestly, and due to that honesty to stop promoting such ideas when they are shown to be wrong or inadequate. It requires participants to even be interested in how good their ideas are and be open to discussing them and changing views if these ideas are found wanting.

Observing real life, what we have is people flooding the zone with unmitigated faeces, either for profit or idealogical motives. They are uninterested in whether these ideas are true, good or even useful, whether there are 'better' ideas, and they often dominate through volume and repetition. Tribal cohesion ensures the spread of ideas as much or more than honest debate.

The marketplace of ideas is dead, if it ever really existed. A fairytale for children.

> If the idea is bad or wrong, it will be debated and ultimately defeated in the marketplace of ideas.

And saying "Rogan promoted quack doctor making nonscientific claims again and thus the idea spread" is necessary part of that process. Too many people think that "marketplace of ideas" means "I get to spread lies and other side can not say that I am a liar".

When you have a massive megaphone, your choices have impact at scale.

So "having a conversation" is functionally identical to promoting, as is "just asking questions" if you're Tucker Carlson, or "exercising your free speech" if you're Elon Musk amplifying easily disproven talking points about immigration, etc.

Noblesse oblige.

‘I’m just asking questions’ might be one of the more toxic lines I’ve come across in the last few years.

The problem with Joe Rogan is that he's not smart and his audience is not smart. He's a pseudo-intellectual. He gifts crackpots an enormous audience of gullible people. He lends credibility to them with softball interviews devoid of critical analysis. He's spoon-feeding suckers what they want to hear. He couches it all in a thin veneer of balanced reporting and barstool philosophizing, under the guise of fairness, but he's elevating ideas that have no business being elevated. It's even worse than outright promotion.

wanting censorship of "unapproved" conversations is objectively worse

If he’s not smart why’s he so successful. Why did he have a job hosting fear factor. A job hosting UFC. A job being a stand up comic. He’s also short - which I thought meant the cards are stacked against you? He also has a black belt. They don’t give those out. He currently has the biggest, arguably most successful podcast of all time.

But he’s not smart right? Years and years of winning but he’s not smart.

You are capable of thinking and you are smart but that doesn’t mean you are right. Don’t conflate the two

How can one conclude he isn’t smart? Are you politically charged against him. Has he wronged you or your loved ones? Would you say he was not ‘smart’ if you had write a report for a 3 Letter agency?

You can get to the top once if you’re lucky. But if you keep ending up there…

> Why did he have a job hosting fear factor. A job hosting UFC

That has no relationship with someone being able to have meaningful discussions on complex topics. Probably even the opposite..

You don’t get a job in front of camera unless you’re good looking or talented. Rogan was not good looking.

He’s certainly talented. However again that has almost bo relationship to being able to have meaningful discussions on highly complex topics.

I think it stops being just a conversation when you make the choice to broadcast it.

> I don't think

yes.

I’m on the same page as you regarding the anti-“saturated animal fats” crowd, but I actually don’t mind them. My animal-based cooking oil spend would be a lot higher if everyone stopped buying plant-based oils.

You try to avoid oxidised UFAs and you get oxidised cholesterol instead [0], which is at least as bad and probably worse [1].

[0] https://sci-hub.se/https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf97...

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mnfr.200500063

Olive oil pulled from human consumption? Good luck with that.

Discounting one set of reductive misinformed ideas while putting forward another. You love to see it.

Biggest comment score hit in a while...

(... worth it.)

'At least I annoyed someone' is one of the biggest red flags for a fool who thinks they are smart.

Parties interested in intelligent discourse will avoid you, and lurking readers will cement their opion as opposite yours.

It's the scream of a child rationalising rejection.

This is true in some forums, but not on this one. On this one, posting things that are even slightly non-consensus leads to grumbling and downvotes.

Far fewer people can downvote than can upvote, though. You generally have to post something a little more evocative than "slightly non-consensus".

But even taking your argument at face value, even if you take pride in having annoyed people for having expressed an opinion you find valuable, it's boring and petulant and ugly to then brag about it. Surely you can't be arguing for that kind of behavior.

You know the saying: flak in the ass is a good sign you're on target!

Yeah once it becomes clear you’re in the kind of forum I am talking about the satisfaction doesn’t come from the presumed effect on others but the signal that you actually may have said something important.

> The matched subjects who ate meat (including poultry and fish) were more than twice as likely to become demented as their vegetarian counterparts (relative risk 2.18, p = 0.065) and the discrepancy was further widened (relative risk 2.99, p = 0.048) when past meat consumption was taken into account

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8327020/

That's a small observational study from 1993, with p>.05 outside of the subgroup analysis. Whatever search strategy led you to it is severely flawed.

is this better? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10517714

> While we did not find statistically significant evidence to support an association of consuming relatively more plant- and fewer animal-based foods with the risk of dementia, our HR of 0.93 (95% CI: 0.86–1.01) for the hPDI cannot rule out a subtle beneficial effect of healthy plant-based eating on the brain.

"cannot rule out a subtle effect". Otherwise not statistically significant. Great.

it doesn't seem like plant food causes Alzheimer though

Oh, yeah. Sorry, that makes sense.

I get migraines from plant and seed oils, my thought on this is, that they're kinda rancid. You can't get them fresh enough in the supermarket. The one oil I didn't get strong migraine from was fresh olive oil.

You're also looking at a time-window of 1-5 days, depending on your metabolism.

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