Hacker News Reader

Comment by tidbits | Hacker News Reader

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Respectfully, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology)

Your weight is 100% within your control. There is no luck like there is in business, a career, investments or overall health

Survivorship bias is irrelevant

Choice isn't binary, it's a continuous distribution. There are thousands of factors influencing the power you have over your weight. That's why I'm thin and I don't try at all, and other people are overweight and cry from trying so hard.

Are we in agreement that for someone without specific medical issues, gaining weight is caused by eating excess calories?

What other factors influence that outside of you making the choice to eat something?

Can you just make the choice to solve P versus NP? Or climb K2? There's a lot of factors that affect a persons ability to make any choice. Willpower, knowledge and experiences, time, intelligence, etc.

There's thousands of factors that influence you making that choice, some factors in your blood, some from your childhood, and some from how your day went.

I'm very lucky that the stars aligned, so I don't have to try at all. Really, zero effort.

Others have to try very, very hard every day of their life. They need to think about what they're eating constantly. Do you know when I think about what I'm eating? Never. I just eat whatever I want, whenever I want.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com