End-user Package vs. Underlying Theory

Earlier, I was in a Twitter-chat about the Paleo/Primal style of eating.

(BTW, shameless plug: follow me @ImpulseStrength if you aren’t already. Just do it.)

Now, I want to preface this by saying I really have nothing against Paleo diets as a way of eating – or lifestyle, if you’re one of “those”. It will work if you follow it, because it’s not a bad collection of rules.

But that’s actually what I want to talk about. Where does the validity of an idea stop? Even if Paleo eating is a good idea, can we use that fact to extrapolate, speculate, and/or justify other claims associated with the concept?

To follow where I’m going, here’s a fun example: You tell me that the sky is blue, and it clearly is; I then suggest that a fairy’s magic wand has made the sky blue. Does the true premise “the sky is blue” automatically support the premise “a fairy’s magic wand made it happen”?

Of course not. That’s horribly flawed reasoning. Just because you say X caused Y, or assume X caused Y because that’s what you were told, does not mean that X actually caused Y. It doesn’t matter how true or obvious Y is; that condition says nothing about its relationship with X.

Unfortunately, this is also the reasoning that was given to me in the Twitter #paleo chat. No, it wasn’t really that hashtag, but have fun with it!

Let’s look at more relevant scenarios:

“I do 1000 crunches a day and I have great abs. Therefore spot reduction is real.”

“I eat Paleo, and I look great and feel great. Paleo eating controls insulin, therefore insulin is what made me fat and/or lethargic.”

Logic fail class one-quintozillion. That’s around 10^10000th.

This is the difference between a solid end-user package and the theory underlying that package. The package itself is just a system of rules: it’s a training program, it’s a diet, it’s an instruction manual, whatever. It’s something you take out of the box and use according to the set of rules it lays out.

It doesn’t matter how good Paleo eating works – that doesn’t automatically justify your crazy claims that insulin is the devil and an over-unity mechanism that creates mass from nothing.

“Where’d those extra 5 lbs of fat on your ass come from?”

“Insulin!”

No. Bad science. Bad.

If I sold you one of my training programs and told you that it worked by vibrating your body thetans monads, and you got the greatest results of your life, would you assume it was really Liebniz’s monads, or would you look for a simpler solution that didn’t involve magic?

Pseudo-science is pseudo-science, even if you use keywords from the real thing.

The end-user package is all that matters if you’re after results, and I don’t see Paleo as being a bad idea. You eat proteins, you eat fruits, veggies, and nuts, and stay away from grains and processed stuff. That works because it makes you eat a good quality diet (quality as in nutrient-rich) and not over-eat on the crap that’s most likely to make you over-eat, like processed sugars and high-fat junk.

That’s not magic, that’s just a good system of rules to eat right. You eat less food and provide your body with essential nutrients: MAGIC! No, seriously, Occam’s razor, folks. This doesn’t require magic.

It also doesn’t give you any right to start pretending you understand physiology or fat metabolism.