Comment by vjsrinivas
4 hours ago
I feel like its another symptom of dying health institutions. These kinds of beliefs also lead people down other ridiculous roads.
I've seen the thought process of someone go from:
- replacing seed oils with animal-based oils
- arguing against the role of LDL in increased CVD and events
- building a more animal-centric and meat-heavy diet
- using "looks-maxxing" terminology to describe their diet and associated beliefs around that diet
- digging deeper into that subculture and believing our ancestors only ate meat
- why do we eat plants or "goy-slop"? well because of [x]
- extreme pseduo-science about other topics
From a technological prespective, we all know that social media accelerates this thought pipeline by feeding people certain content. I also feel like Instagram orders comments in a certain way to specifically engage an individual user. Like making sure they see either a statement they'd agree with OR vehemently disagree with. This is regardless of the number of likes.
What happens is that you have to find ways to dismiss the body of evidence to take on positions like "beef tallow and butter are actually amazing for you".
e.g. Since saturated fat is well-known to increase LDL/ApoB, and these people have high blood lipids because of it, they have to dismiss the research on it to continue believing it's healthy.
It further entrenches them in a position where they can be convinced of absolutely anything because they've given up all epistemic standards which is why they overlap with all sorts of contrarian positions learned from social media and youtube videos.
Exactly what I was getting at. Social media doesn't help since these algorithms can cocoon somebody from content that might challenge their notions.