>If some minorities (and let's not dance around the issue; we mean black people) are underrepresented at these institutions, that is a wake up call. It means that the public school system in our country has, in aggregate, failed black children and that decades of racial injustice have forced black people into self-perpetuating cycles of generational poverty.
This is only true if it is reasonable to expect similar performance and outcomes between different population groups. Is it? Why should we expect blacks to perform as well academically as Ashkenazim and east asians, two population groups with notably high average IQ?
Are people who do not attend multicult schools really at a disadvantage in life? Who says Harvard and other elite schools have any interest in "diversity" in "many other ways" than racially? Do their admissions policies include quotas for different religions, political ideologies, professional interests, extracurricular interests, etc.? No, their interest in "diversity" ends at skin color.
Through four years and working for around thirty different families, I only met one that were just clearly in need of help. And they were a couple suffering from undiagnosed developmental disabilities. (The local social services took the opportunity of our construction project to gain access to the house and get them properly into the system.) Almost everyone else we worked for were just shiftless leechers prone to outbursts of violence.
It made me realize that most "humanitarian" outfits serving "the poor" are doing a great disservice to the elimination of human suffering. Subsidizing "the poor" just creates more poor people. If we really wanted to reduce human suffering, we would leave "the poor" to die off and subsidize the family formation and procreation of successful people.
What is challenging is dealing with the finiteness of time. Having to prioritize my list of what I want to do/learn and slowly progress through it. Sometimes new things suddenly come up and move their way to a high priority. Other things will, at times, be moved down the list according to changes in my interest level or circumstances. But what is an entirely foreign experience to me is having something I want to do, arriving at the time to do it, and just... not doing it.
I can only think that people who have this kind of experience must be suffering from self-deception or dissonance between what they believe they want and what they really do want. Like the student who tries his damnedest on exam day but has not spent any time familiarizing himself with the course material. What we want is revealed by our behavior, not what we think. What I actually am is what I do.
As to the particular topic at hand, it is a core value of mine to keep my body as able as possible for as long as possible. My body is the vessel that conveys my existence through time-space and getting the most out of that existence requires optimizing my fitness. If I were to wake up one day twenty pounds overweight and pre-hypertensive, remedying that situation would shoot up my priority list. It would become an emergency situation that would simply have to be dealt with as expeditiously as possible. So when I hear people talk about how much they "really want" to lose weight but then present no behavioral evidence to support that statement, I can only conclude they they are either simply lying for the sake of garnering social approval or are deluding themselves as to their true desires.
But this is a well-trod path. There is no need to reinvent or rediscover anything. In fact, belaboring the "how" is really just a diversion that prevents success. Anyone who is successful at body transformation does two things: 1) Permanently changes their diet 2) Permanently changes their activity level. The particulars vary in any number of ways but the one constant is that the person moves from thinking to action. The process becomes not something that they "try" or "work on" but an imperative.
A guy I went to high school with was an all-star center on our (American) football team at six feet tall and 294 lbs. He had always been "the fat guy" from the time we were children. Between the end of one football season and the start of the next school year, he dropped to 160 lbs. When he spoke on the topic of his change, he always first answered the "how" question with this response: "I just decided I was tired of being fat." For him, the particulars involved introducing heaping servings of fibrous vegetables (to help satiety) and running. But those things were of secondary importance.
45 years and old and resigned to being dumpy and hypertensive. Then he decided "fuck this" and changed his life. This is how it always works. You have to become sufficiently fed up to no longer accept the status quo. No one can do that for you nor will it appear in any study, book, or other "how-to-be-fit" advice.
This is why I no longer talk to people in real life about this topic. I can give them an endless supply of information on nutrition & programming but not the one thing without which they are doomed to failure.
I do as I please. Whether others consider the goals I set for myself sufficiently challenging or making the most of my "potential" does not concern me in the least.
> Anyone who disputes this is scientifically illiterate.
Well, those who possess a lower IQ are more likely to become obese. So perhaps not understanding the way the universe works is how they wind up obese in the first place. Not too surprising, then, that they would be unable to comprehend how to get themselves out of that state. And there is certainly no shortage of charlatans and mountebanks out there all too ready to lead them astray.
Learning new things is fun. Lifting twice my bodyweight for reps is hard work. You sound like a typical fatty harboring the delusion that fit people are incapable of excelling at anything other than being fit. This is a particularly laughable notion given the clear evidence that low IQ is positively correlated with obesity [1] (and, likewise, physical fitness is positively correlated with higher IQ and cognitive function).
>Eating healthy is incredibly difficult in western society,
This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on this site. Fresh, healthy, affordable food has never been more accessible to any society.
>"Just eat less" is not a very helpful answer, it's incredibly frustrating to hear, believe me.
Eating less is the only thing that works. You only find this advice unhelpful because it's hard. But the reason it's hard is because you've trained yourself to overeat and now you have to break that habit, a habit that has its psychological and physiological meathooks in you. People who haven't lived their entire lives stuffing themselves to the bursting point have no problems autoregulating. I mean, shit, my cat can manage it.
>It takes a lot of effort, lots of planning (preparing food, planning what, where and when to eat, snacks, etc) and a LOT of information (nutrition, insulin effects on the body, pros and cons of current 'fad' diets, etc) which takes a while to collect, also, lots of trial an error.
You sound like a pathetic whiny snot who has embraced a life of learned helplessness.
