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Comment by thefourthchime | Hacker News Reader

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HN isn't only for tech news. This guy was a prime example of being a "hacker". He hacked his diet and gathered data. Unfortunately in this particular case his data was very flawed.

But he definitely had the hacker ethos.

I would say he had a conman's ethos. He didn't hack his diet, he concocted a narrative and conceived of a guise he could sell it under. And all the problems he reported having due to his diet neglected a very large part of that diet, namely the vast quantities of alcohol he consumed.

So yeah, he died. That's sad for him and his people. And I'm sure he had some decent qualities as most people do. However, I won't remember him as a particularly honest or ethical man.

> I would say he had a conman's ethos. He didn't hack his diet, he concocted a narrative and conceived of a guise he could sell it under. And all the problems he reported having due to his diet neglected a very large part of that diet, namely the vast quantities of alcohol he consumed.

No. The euphemism then isn’t “hacker” but “disruptor”.

Move fast and break things.

You know the bull isn't the hero in the china shop analogy, right?

Moving fast and breaking things itself isn't something to be praised.

If you have to lie to promote a course of action you believe will lead to better outcomes, maybe it's you who is wrong. Maybe that course of action won't lead to the outcomes you think.

And if I have to replicate all of the work you did just to find out which of your results were related to what you were pushing, why should I take anything you say at face value?

Facetious.

TIL that going on a diet (any diet is a restriction on what to eat) is hacking.

The diet wasn't the hack. The data collection before, during, and after, while changing the diet was the hack.

Lying about being alcoholic (his liver) is also a hack. He hacked the MDs.

Besides the lying though it would have been better to stick to the one thing that he was investigating: fast food. He already had some ridiculous extra requirements like always finishing his meals and a high calorie count (the former sounds like some ingrained motherly “finish your meal!” scorning latent in the psychology of some adults, not a fast food thing per se). But he also stopped exercising and restricted his steps per day. It is much more interesting to change only one variable in your life when that variable is the thing that you are supposed to be critiquing.

Or else change the investigation to “Average American Me”.

I mean, changing your eating habits is absolutely a form of hacking in pretty much every sense of the word and it can be used to significantly change your life.

In the sense that the word turns into a self-parodying meme.

Yes, words do evolve over time. Hack originally meant to cut with heavy blows, like with an axe. It then came to mean a clever and unexpected or unorthodox solution to a technical problem. It has since been generalized and adopted by the general population to mean a trick, shortcut, skill, or novel method used increase productivity.

The right diet is absolutely an effective way to increase productivity in life changing ways.

> This guy was a prime example of being a "hacker".

Huge stretch

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