We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Samizdata quote of the day This is about Mike Raynor doing the Lord’s work by producing another yet computer model that makes happy predictions about the sugar tax. You can read it here. As always, the words ‘garbage in, garbage out’ spring to mind.
If you wish to take such models seriously, that is your look out. Regardless of whether obesity rates rise, fall or stay the same, campaigners will produce another model in a few years claiming that the rate of obesity in 2018 was lower than it would have been had there not been a tax. That, too, will be treated as fact by their supplicants in the media. It is impossible to prove that nanny state policies fail. The goal posts are always moved. Scientific claims in ‘public health’ are unfalsifiable, which is to that they are not scientific.
– Christopher Snowdon
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, âPorcupinesâ, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty FrĂ©dĂ©ric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
What models predict and facts show is irrelevant.
The regulatory classes will always propose more rules and laws to keep themselves in work.
There is a simple question whenever you see modelling, which is to ask the skill of the model – the ability to predict outcomes accurately.
Further, if someone is suggesting using a model to predict policy, note that the skill is often done on hindcasting (so they’ve fed the data in historically and got accurate results, which is reasonable practice I guess) and that skill in forecasting is generally not announced, mainly because the drive for outputs means even reasonable scientists (most of them) end up publishing model predictions without waiting, and then tweak the model in line with reality before releasing the next set of predictions.
Fortunately for scientists, our politicians are generally too stupid to actually ask civil servants about the skill of any given prediction (with the odd exception – most recent Univeristy ministers seem to have understood this for some reason (maybe David Willets left notes…)).
The following information came from a little ticket that was printed out by a BMI calculating weighing machine at my local gym.
04/12/16
WEIGHT: 11st10lb – 74.5kg.
HEIGHT: 5′ 8.5″ – 1.74m.
B.M.I. : 24.6
Your ideal weight for a B.M.I. Between 18.5 and 25 is:
8st 11lb to 11st 13lb
56.0kg to 75.6kg
I’m 58, a type two diabetic but really fit. I’m going to be attempting my first iron distance triathlon next July. According to my BMI I am borderline overweight. You really don’t have to look very hard to see that government policy is based on nonsense.
Good luck for your Ironman Stonyground, completed my first this year. Also initially rated at the higher end of the scale (but then with the training shed loads of weight. However my coach then told me I needed to regain body fat, which put me back up at the top of the range).
Running policy on a measure such as BMI is lunacy. It’s not a direct measure, not even really a good proxy. It should be kept far away from the government’s use.
Snowdon’s remarks are true across the entire range of policy issues, which is to say across the entire range of human life as there are fewer and fewer human actions that are not the subject of a state policy. This should be alarming (that’s too mild a word) to all endorsers of the political theory and philosophy of the modern technocratic expert managerial state. It has long been clear that the very methodologies that are the foundation of such a state, their ultimate justification, have been so mangled and manipulated as to easily accommodate politicization. Today, the so-called argument from evidence is really just an appeal to authority, of which there is no shortage ready, willing and able to produce both the data and the inferences therefrom that support whatever pre-determined political positions are held by the people commissioning the “studies.”
Not sure what’s being advanced here.
Does anyone question that a rise in price brings about a decrease in demand?
Does anyone question that, relative to other foods, sugar provides non-nutritious calories and is a major factor in obesity?
If the point is that these people should leave us alone and let us make our own choices, I can wholeheartedly agree.
But the tone of the post and comments seems to be more an attack on these two assumptions.
It’s perfectly valid to say “while your choices might well be more healthy, you lack the right to make them for me.” But that’s a bare expression of personal philosophy, with little persuasive value. It’s more persuasive to argue that they have not proven their choices to be more healthy, but, in this case, it sort of flies against what we know.
Stonyground,
I suffer from the fact I am built on rather barrel-like lines, and therefore despite the fact I run two-three times a week (at least half an hour), play football once or twice and normally play squash as well, I am heavy for my height. My favourite comment on this was a nurse at a healthcheck who noted to me my BMI was a few ounces off obese, and that this showed quite how stupid a measure it was. She noted that BMI is also wonderful for making out to naturally skinny people that they are underweight…
It does make you wonder how we have a system where a measure which is known to be inaccurate and which only uses one variable (height) to determine healthy weight is still used. Intertia is a powerful force…
If a detergent company were to use the kinds of statistical shenanigans that are routinely used by the likes of Public Health England or GISS, to ‘prove’ that ‘Whizzo Washes Whiter’, then they would be subject to all sorts of sanctions for misleading their customers and possible jail time if anyone was injured due to their malfeasance.
But these types of pressure groups, wholly owned by the state and paid for by the taxpayer, will suffer no accountability whatsoever even if/when their dodgy science is shown up for all the world to see.
Does anyone question that, relative to other foods, sugar provides non-nutritious calories and is a major factor in obesity?
I think the point is that, in a state that regards itself as making policy via unquestionable scientific knowledge and expertise, for a national government to make policy affecting tens of millions of people on the basis of some general belief about the effects of sugar widely held more or less by an indeterminate number of people, is problematic to say the least. I know people who drink liters of soda each week and are quite thin. How do those examples not falsify the theory? Exactly how many grams of what kinds of sugar translate into how many pounds on a particular individual? Isn’t that something necessary to know before we can be said to “know”? Where is the line dividing nutrition from non-nutrition for sugars? All sugars, or just certain ones? Is the effect the same on men and women? On all ages? I don’t think these questions have yet been decisively answered.
Our knowledge is still incomplete. I personally am willing to accept the general belief because it just “sounds right,” but is that how expertise-based policy ought to work? But I think the point is that inferences made on measures of statistical correlation are suspect because it is so easy to produce whatever correlation suits one’s political leanings. I think state coercion flattering itself that it is based on objective knowledge must be based on something more than a “does anyone question. . . .?”
Does anyone question that a rise in price brings about a decrease in demand?
Me, and anyone who has done Economics… Elastic and Inelastic demand. Google it.
gunit,
One problem of this is the definition of obesity (using BMI) is clearly junk science. So it is rather difficult to justify anything as causing obesity.
And sugar is not in itself harmful – it is harmful in excess (or to diabetics, or small children in excess) but that is contextual. What is being done here is a general ruling to affect everyone regardless of context, a simplification of a complicated issue and an attempted abrogation of personal rights in favour of a centrally-approved behaviour.
So this is not about obfuscating aroudn the right to be obese, but rather noting that whilst excess sugar consumption will make me unhealthily fat, it might not the next person, and therefore our health is our concern. Plus there is the right you do raise to be obese – to enjoy food regardless of the health consequences – which is no minor thing either.
This is a collective punishment delivered by a loud pressure group, (funded by taxpayers), that has a bee in it’s bonnet about fatties and an irrational fear of some SMERSH like entity called ‘Big Sugar’, aided and abetted by a spineless government that has forgotten it’s purpose.
The way to treat people with obesity or diabetes II is on an individual basis. (Despite gunit’s claims above, there are plenty of causes of obesity, not all of which involve sugar and the simple advice to eat less and exercise more doesn’t work for everyone. Nor, of course, does taxing sugar.)
If a little old lady likes a chocolate digestive with her cup of tea in the afternoon she should not be punished because some kid down the street is a lard arse.
She’s already been punished because the manufacturer replaced the saturated fat that the biscuit was made with with vegetable oil that makes it taste bland and will now be further punished by the nasty taste of artificial sweeteners.
So say no to collective punishment and support individual treatment for sick people.
“Google it.”
I well could, and might even end up with something I wrote back when completing my undergrad degree (one of which’s majors was economics.)
I can’t tell if you are implying that pricing for sugar might be price-inelastic, or simply going for the gotcha in the face of my overly-broad statement.
(Actually, yes, I can.)
(ETA: no, I didn’t write what I link to.)
Good grief.
Substitute “demand for sugar might be price-inelastic” for “pricing for sugar . . .”
Typing too fast.
Yes it was a response to your overly-broad statement. “Does anyone question…” is asking for it, isn’t it? đ As to Sugar there are many substitutes available, therefore elastic demand for sugar.
@Watchman
“Intertia is a powerful force⊔
Yes indeed. How long is it since the work of the ‘scientist’ who told us that fat was really bad for us has been discredited? He set out to prove that this was the case but when his research proved otherwise he faked his results. It is possible that the present increase in the incidence of type two diabetes cases is due to people avoiding fat and relying on carbohydrates instead.
Also, as you say, the BMI takes no account of your natural build. People just naturally come in lots of different shapes. My problem is that I am naturally blessed with an excellent physique but these zealots still want to claim that I am too fat.
@Stonyground: ” It is possible that the present increase in the incidence of type two diabetes cases is due to people avoiding fat and relying on carbohydrates instead.”
Indeed. Swiss Re comes right out and says it:
http://media.swissre.com/documents/Medical+Newsletter+4+2016+EN.pdf
Brilliant, isn’t it? 40 years after George McGovern’s committee advised the US that people should eat less fat and more carbohydrates, it’s now clear that this was wrong. Of course the fact that McGovern was involved should have been a clue, but nevertheless. The ill effects (pun intended) of the US government’s dietary guidelines, which have directly led to the obesity “crisis” in the developed world, should be a cautionary tale for anybody who thinks that government actually knows what it’s doing.
I particularly like one of the headlines in Swiss Re’s report:
The scientific report guiding the US dietary guidelines: is it scientific?
Spoiler: it’s not. I await with bated breath a similar headline, along these lines:
The scientific consensus guiding the climate change concerns: is it scientific?
Hopefully we won’t have to wait 40 years to see that one.
I will add that I never bought into the US dietary guidelines. But then I’m not stupid. I was blessed with grandparents who lived to a ripe old age, and I figured that what they eat is likely to be better for me than anybody the government can cook up. So red meat, pork fat (my grandmother made donuts which she fried in lard; you haven’t lived until you’ve tasted those), wine, and grappa are a not insignificant portion of my calorie intake. And while I don’t know my BMI (because I don’t care), I’m in rather good shape and definitely not overweight.
“âDoes anyone questionâŠâ is asking for it, isnât it?”
Oh, yeah. There are lots of places one can be lazy. Sometimes I forget where they aren’t.
This may be of interest.
To me it says there is still far more that we don’t know than we do know. So perhaps sweeping moralistic government edicts on the matter are premature?
As it happens, Kip Hansen has two pieces up at Anthony W.’s site that are pertinent not to the economic question but to sugar in the diet, and to “obesity” in general. (“Obesity”: Moving goal-posts?)
Both are interesting, but it’s the comment streams that are really fascinating. Both are quite long, but persevere. Heck, you might also want to check out “The Salt Wars.” ;>)
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/17/modern-scientific-controversies-part-4-the-obesity-epidemic/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/07/19/modern-scientific-controversies-part-3-the-war-on-sugar/
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/06/09/modern-scientific-controversies-part-1-the-salt-wars/