Hacker News Reader

Comment by achandra03 | Hacker News Reader

I think this is probably due to people suffering from the just-world fallacy. Most folks like to believe that if you do the right things and consume the right stuff you'll have a long and healthy life when the fact of the matter is that luck/randomness plays a much larger role in your health than most people would like to admit.

View on HN

One hundred percent. I work in film, and recently had an argument with a friend around this point. He's incredibly healthy, and frequently works a large number of unsociable hours. I was pointing out that filmmaking hours make no concession for family or age. He'd convinced himself that he'll have no more difficulty doing 80 hour weeks in his forties and fifties than he does in his mid thirties, because he 'takes care of himself'. The implication being that everyone could work those hours if they just ate better and held multiple martial arts belts as he does. It was no use pointing out that he'd confused cause and effect.

Certainly people work their way up and fade into a less strenuous role. Surely they don't just kick people to the curb. That would suck.

(Laughs in post 50 year old software developer)

For set related jobs, the hours are the shoot. If the shoot runs long, everybody's on set. It's an exploitative - and in my view, completely unnecessary - culture. The marriages, parental relationships and health costs cannot be justified by the supposed necessity of dollar savings. But currently - especially in the US, film sets all to often work sweatshop hours. More enlightened practices, like 'French hours' (a ten hour day), are also possible. The films created under these conditions don't seem any worse, and the people involved are inarguably happier and healthier.

You can control your luck a bit though. Granted you could be in perfect health but roll a 1 five times in a row and get a heart attack when you are 40. Or you could be crushing junk food and alcohol but you just keep rolling 6s and make it to 80.

If you look at the sequence of events that happen to trigger a heart attack, it becomes really clear how big a role luck is, but still you can mitigate each step. Studying this stuff also makes your body seem like a walking time bomb.

That plus not realizing that dealing with your chronic illness can be as much or more than a full time job, and the people with them tend to know MOUNTAINS more than you do about it.

Yes, these are true, doing the right thing, eating well and taking caring of yourself is not a magical bullet.

However it's irrefutable that exercising, sleeping and nutrition improves your health.

Will it prevent you from ever getting cancer? no, but it sure helps.

My mother passed away from cancer, she always exercised and took care of herself, it made the quality of her life much better. Looking back, she would have suffered much more had she not done that.

I dont think this is right... most people I know care more about not doing the "wrong" thing than feeling entitled for doing the "right" thing.

The issue often manifests in victim blaming. They assume that because something bad has happened to someone then the someone must be guilty of some transgression. Its often done on an unconscious level and we have to check ourselves that we're not doing it.

You’re probably right but it’s also true that that is a very (probably unintended) cruel worldview that thought to the end claims all those suffering had it coming, and as such deserves to be called out and those having it should reconsider.

One should acknowledge the role genes/luck play in disease, while also admitting that there are a few foods about which there is more or less consensus they are very bad for your health. So you can roll your eyes if someone suggests eating kale sprouts will cure all your problems but don't just keep eating junk food as if the opposite of their take must be good.

This. I'm as exhausted as anyone about the latest macro/micro nutrient diet. But also, when I binge on a bag of potato chips, I assume (correctly) that I'll feel like shit later. Calorie dense food that's easily procured and eaten to excess was not part of our evolutionary path up to now. Every individual person is a cornucopia of variables though too, and one persons perfect diet would kill someone else. So advice is hard to give out, but there are clearly some broad guidelines to eating and health that help you mitigate bad dice rolls.

> one persons perfect diet would kill someone else Besides allergies, that's not literally true, is it? Or would you say that allergies or severe intolerances are common enough that such dramatic diet fitness differences exist?

I think we're only beginning to appreciate just how sensitive our guts are to the abuse modern high-calorie food can dish out.

Honestly, given the extent to which many people's diets consist primarily of bleached and re-enriched wheat separated from the germ or simply refined corn, I think there are many more people who are slowly poisoned by their diet than realize it.

Yet there's plenty of hyperbole in my statement too. I don't think you could murder someone by making them eat your diet, unless it consisted of bags of broken glass.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com