Comment by rngname22 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rngname22 | Hacker News Reader

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Can we agree it's a spectrum?

There are some fat people for whom hunger is instant and incessant and a constant distraction, and perhaps losing 5 years of life at old age is worth it.

For other people, maybe someone who's 20 lbs overweight and would like to be able to play with their kids without running out of breath, maybe the annoyance of being hungry isn't actually that bad for them.

Pain is subjective. One person's excruciating pain - the same stimulus could be a mild annoyance to someone else. I've been tattooed for 6 hours and was able to easily distract myself and laugh while listening to a comedy podcast, other people can't handle holding their finger over a flame for more than a millisecond or can't eat a hot slice of pizza out of the oven.

Pain and annoyance and discomfort can also be acclimated to. What might be really difficult and distracting might become something you get used to and learn to tune out. But then again, to be fair - maybe not. Maybe for some people that hunger is not something they can learn to live with.

I love that this whole thread has been about people who don't seem to understand the experience of others, and you just compared having a 6 hour tattoo to living a lifetime of hunger.

The comparison was that for some it may be excruciating and that others it may not. Maybe a tattoo isn't the best analogy, but their main point is apropos to the idea that understanding the experience of others may be difficult when there is a wider range of experience than many want to admit.

I don't believe that was the intent of your parent. The 6 hours of tattooing was instead a scenario they have personally experienced where they have also observed others having wildly divergent experiences from themselves, despite the same inputs, and are using that to bootstrap a framework for understanding how wildly different others' experiences with hunger might be from their own.

It definitely belies a level of privilege that some people must intentionally seek out discomfort or pain in order to begin to even approximate the agony others are inherently forced to live through. I don't believe privilege is itself a moral failing, or we're stuck with whole categories of 'original sin'. It's what objectives its used to enable that potentially indict those that possess it.

I used to drink soda as a fidget. I needed something to stim while poring over shitty code trying to extract cleverness. The preponderance of free soda situations in the 90’s tells me there were a lot more of us hiding in plain sight. Several times I switched to water or tea and lost 10 lbs pretty quickly. Usually after bad news from the dentist.

That’s not a weight-loss plan though, that’s a fit-back-into-your-current-wardrobe plan. People with “weight problems” are generally on an upward slope and a point source puts a notch in the graph, it doesn’t zero the slope or take it negative. What it does say, if anything, is that there are factors we can control that moves the needle, but they are the journey not the destination.

Okay but, again, this is a waaay higher standard to place on a fat person than a thin person just because they're fat. As a thin person I never have to "learn to live with" somewhat hungry forever and I think expecting fat people to is stupid. I never have to decide whether or not a lifetime of hunger is worth 5 extra years of life, or if my hunger isn't so bad I can tune it out. That's a standard I don't hold myself to as a thin person, why would I hold a fat person to that standard?

As a thin person, you might have to learn to live with sexual urges that you cannot act on, on violent urges you cannot act on, on urges to scream at your boss for being a moron or better yet just walk out and never go back to work that you cannot act on.

Some of those urges may be stronger for some people than for others.

The same way that urges of hunger can be experienced differently by differently people (at both a signaling hormone / chemical level as well as a psychological/willpower equipment level).

Are you suggesting that the feeling of hunger experienced by overweight and obese people is universally a higher standard than any other discomfort or natural drive humans experience?

Frankly if I am horny all the time, I need that addressed. If I'm homicidal all the time, I need that addressed. Same thing I think if a fat person is hungry all the time that should be addressed. People are generally not wandering around wanting to fuck all the time or wanting to kill all the time, and we generally consider it a disorder if they are. I think obese people are disordered in some way, either they need psychological help to navigate their relationship with food or medical intervention to handle their hunger [semaglutide affects hormones and reduces hunger, so I think something is wrong with an obese person's hormones?]. But I refuse to believe it is totally normal and healthy for fat people to just feel hungry all the time.

That's a pretty fair point.

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