I was also distracted by the footnotes, since even though I found them quite funny, [3] at least is obviously wrong: “there’s no known intervention which can cause weight loss.” Sure there is—the effectiveness of bariatric surgery is quite well evidenced at this point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bariatric_surgery#Weight_loss).
I generally share Eliezer’s assessment of the state of conventional wisdom in dietary science (abysmal), but careless formulations like this one are—well, distracting.
Also, even if he meant non-surgical interventions, it should be “which can reliably cause long-term weight loss”—there are people who lose weight by dieting, and a few of them don’t even gain it back.
I was also distracted by the footnotes, since even though I found them quite funny, [3] at least is obviously wrong: “there’s no known intervention which can cause weight loss.” Sure there is—the effectiveness of bariatric surgery is quite well evidenced at this point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bariatric_surgery#Weight_loss).
I generally share Eliezer’s assessment of the state of conventional wisdom in dietary science (abysmal), but careless formulations like this one are—well, distracting.
Also, even if he meant non-surgical interventions, it should be “which can reliably cause long-term weight loss”—there are people who lose weight by dieting, and a few of them don’t even gain it back.