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Comment by lm28469 | Hacker News Reader

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44194015 and marked it off-topic.

If I can use hormones to suppress the urge to consume unnecessary calories while maintaining or increasing muscle mass, I’m willing to pay for it. I’m just using biochemistry to improve executive function. Make it work, make it right, make it fast.

There is no extra credit for making existence harder than it has to be, and it is already hard as is.

Regeneron’s Semaglutide Plus Trevogrumab Combo Demonstrates Superior Fat Loss with Reduced Muscle Wasting in Obesity Trial - https://www.pharmexec.com/view/regeneron-semaglutide-trevogr...

Western society still has the puritan ethic baked into it. If life isn't pain and suffering and struggle, it's worthless.

You’re right unfortunately. Onward.

Semaglutide is an absolute game changer drug, but it doesn't save you from poor nutrition.

I found that I can work on building a healthy diet independent of semaglutide doing its thing, regardless of how much weight I lost.

I bet people making the same mistake as I did, saying to myself that I will get better at building a healthy diet and then taking semaglutide because I want to see myself as "strong". Or maybe it means that I don't need help.

Better to just do it for your health and figure out the rest. There's no shame in asking for help.

The drugs are the help. Nutrition is of course important (quality macros, broadly speaking, proteins, fats, fiber), but you’re not going to outrun a misfiring reward center demanding you eat when you don’t need to with “willpower” or whatever folks want to call it. There is no shame in needing pharma interventions or other medical assistance. We are imperfect, and that’s okay.

I agree with your understanding of physics, but when you put human decision making in the loop you have to account for that in any solution. For some "eating less and moving more" can have other consequences. O was always taught good engineering requires an understanding of human behavior. I would prefer to eat less and move more.

You talked as if eating less and moving more is easy.

Like, that's like the primary challenge of public health intervention.

If it was so easy, people would do it and we wouldn't be talking about it.

People will do literally anything to get rich except earning more and spending less.

I used to think this was intelligence related, like less intelligent people were not able to understand how to maintain positive savings (spend only what is possible after contributing to savings).

But with age I think rationalization is the more powerful force that outweighs intelligence. I notice that people who struggle with money usually have powerful convictions that are silly and capricious, but they are unable to see that. They build arguments upon rationalizations instead of facts or data. Spending money on rationalized things makes perfect sense in their mind.

I think it's a three-circle venn diagram of knowledge - intelligence - rationalization. You can accrue a lot of knowledge via rote memorization, but it doesn't mean that you are intelligent. And you can have limited knowledge of a subject, but somehow "just get it" which comes with intelligence. And finally, you can have intelligence but utterly fail to see beyond rationalizations.

You're talking about emotions. Rationalization is the end process of abusing your intelligence to serve your faulty emotions, rather than understanding and interacting with your emotions so that it serves you rather than the other way around.

That is a brilliant idea! I honestly wish I'd thought of that before. All I've gotta to is overlook a few billion years of evolution telling my mouth to demolish a buffet to stock up for the scarce times. Piece of cake!

It's almost like we have a billion years of evolution working against us in the "willingly reduce your caloric intake and fat reserves" department

People will do literally anything else other than just completely abstain from sex if they don't want (more) kids.

This seems vastly less useful and safe than just taking Ozempic.

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