kevin

You agree that if you stop eating or eat less, you will lose weight. Great. We'll have to disagree on the definition of a solution

Cutting off someone's leg will also cause them to lose weight. This is pretty simple. Is it a solution to obesity?

A large nuke dropped on Gaza would end the fighting there. Also simple. Is it a solution?

No, no, I hear you saying, these actions would lead to other problems, don't solve the underlying complexities etc etc.

I'm having trouble believing that you can write in complete sentences but are too thick to understand how "just eat less" suffers from the same problems. So you must be trolling me - congrats! I'm ashamed it took me so long to recognize you're just playing dumb.

I've cited a bunch of scientific papers showing why just eating less isn't a solution. It may lead to temporary weight loss, but doesn't solve the issue long term, and causes other harms. If you want to provide any evidence for your claims or to dispute mine, go for it. Otherwise, cheers! The solution to your ignorance is you just need to learn more. Simple!

If you stop eating or eat less, you will lose weight.

Of course you will. This does not mean it's a solution to obesity.

Inarguably, eating less solves obesity and is simple to do.

Except it's not. It's not sustainable. Even with medical intervention, the vast majority of weight is regained.

It is within most people's personal power to control their appetite

Except it's not. The long term success rate of dieting (again, in the context ofa medical study) is 15%

Next, you just have to wrap your head around how simple eating less food is

Except it's not. And the repeated weight loss and regain experienced by most dieters is arguably worse for health than just being overweight.

You can keep simplistically stating that it's easy, despite all the evidence, and you will continue to sound as idiotic as a rich person floating on their inheritance and saying that poverty would be solved if people just weren't so lazy.

Eating less will solve obesity.

Not fighting would solve war. Wouldn't it?

You're wrong in equating war with someone carrying extra weight, they are not the same situation at all.

War is often a very complex problem without a simple solution.

Right. Exactly! And obesity is a complex problem without a simple solution. Eating less is a trivially correct solution to obesity just as not fighting is a trivially correct solution to war. Please see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-analogy/

What obese people understand and whether they get admonished is immaterial to solving their obesity.

My point is that if it were actually so easy, it wouldn't actually be a problem, would it?

If you're aware that you're making facetious arguments, then stop being facetious and implying false equivalents

I'm not implying anything, I'm offering analogies. And the sarcasm is a rhetorical device that seems to have flown right over your head. I'm sorry about that. I didn't think you would actually believe I thought that the solution to war and poverty and depression was easy. They're not. I'm trying to get you to see (argument by analogy, check the link again) that the solution to obesity is not either.

If your response is just "yes it is," if you think that the trivial solution hasn't been tried over and over again by millions of people who have desperately wanted to lose weight and keep it off, but have failed, you're being willfully ignorant.

Hunger is a primal urge. It's governed by a complex series of hormonal and neurological feedback loops. It's influenced by sociological and psychological factors as well as the non-caloric nutritive content of available and tolerated foods. Those factors are shaped by culture and economics and history etc etc

When I say all this and you say "eating less is the solution", it sounds just as silly and naive as when you talk about war being the result of historical factors, religious animosity, geopolitics etc, and I say the solution is not fighting. Which is to say, very silly and naive.

Misattributing your own false arguments to others doesn't prove you any less wrong.

And continuing to push your facile argument doesn't make you any more right.

War?

Fight less.

The facetious solutions you're proposing to stopping a war or ending clinical depression are not as simple as you imagine,

Of course not! That's what makes them facetious! But "fight less" is as useful a solution to war as "eat less" is a solution to obesity. Which is to say it's trivially right, but not actually a solution at all.

are actually impractical and will not work

Right. It's the same with obesity. Do you honestly think that obese people don't understand the link between eating and weight gain? Do you think that they don't spend their entire lives with people admonishing them for their weight?

Wait, you're saying that there are nuances and subtleties that my simple solutions don't take into consideration?!?

/s (I didn't think this was necessary, but given your response...)

~~Clinical depression~~Obesity, on the other hand, is caused by various complex chemical imbalances influenced by various environmental and social factors, so you can't simply disentangle yourself from those chemicals and circumstances

Yep, exactly!

Do you seriously think that eating - arguably one of the most fundamental and instinctual things that living things do - is not subject to complex chemical, environmental, and social factors? Really?

The solution "don't eat so much" really is as naive as telling a clinically depressed person "just be happier" or telling a poor person "just go earn more" or telling Israelis and Palestinians "just don't fight do much".

Yes, the solutions really are that simple, at one level, but pretending like the knowledge of this solution gets us anywhere in terms of actually addressing the problem is just silly.

The problem with poverty is easily solved: people just need to earn more. Easy!

The problem of depression is easily solved: people just need to be happier. Easy!

The problem of obesity is easily solved: people just need to eat less. Easy!

I can solve war too - people just need to fight less! And death: people just need to age less!

Man, someone get me a McArthur genius grant already!

Oops, thanks for the heads up! No idea where that came from

9 times out of 10, what I want is tldr (https://tldr.sh/). There are a bunch of terminal interfaces for it, I use tealdeer.

That's fair. Another example of what you describe that I'm more familiar with is Epic (medical records software). My hypothesis is that the differences that matter are:

1. Cost of switching is higher and/or
2. The people making the decision (business manager, hospital admin) are farther from the actual users of the software.

Could be lots of other reasons too, but these are the ones that jump out at me.

Really the only thing that I miss on Linux is creative cloud stuff. Yeah, gimp and inkscape cover 80% of the functionality of PS and Illustrator right out of the gate, and I bet I could get to 90% if I sank a bunch of hours into learning the differences. Which is amazing for open source software.

But there's a gap when you have a team of dedicated and highly paid developers and hordes of creatives testing everything out and demanding progress that's going to be hard to overcome.

That's basically how I use desktop files generally, the kde launch menu (similar to the old Windows "start"... I don't know what it's called) comes up when I tap super, and then I can start typing and find what I want to launch.

You can set that up to run custom scripts, but all desktop files are there by default.

Normally running a command does execute a binary.

I'm not certain, but I'm wondering if OP means that new programs don't automatically get a "desktop" app or whatever. I'm often annoyed when I have to manually create the file that lets me access software from the launch menu