It's hard to discuss the question without throwing insults or stereotypes around. So, if you'll all bear with me, Ima try my darnest best to avoid doing so while still providing some insights, I hope.
Taubes said it best: Obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation. It's a disorder, not normal. The implication is that when all is normal, we're lean.
What is smarts? Well, smarts can be defined in several ways. The first one starts just with the brain. Smarts is the brain, the brain is a biological organ, it follows that it should work best when all is normal. Or, smarts is the ability to solve a problem. Or, smarts is the actual performance in theoretical tests. Or, smarts is the ability to learn new things. Or, smarts is the ability to remember stuff. Or, smarts is the ability to cut through all the BS and find the genuine honest-to-goodness facts. Or, (insert your own definition of smarts).
So, in no particular order, for example "when all is normal" applies to both smarts and obesity, whereby we should expect both best smarts and best leanness when all is in fact normal. Or, if we use the no-BS definition of smarts, most of us on this forum have developed this ability thoroughly, especially when it applies to diet/obesity/health, especially when compared to let's say Jillian Michaels for example. And if we take a quick look at who are the obesity experts we respect, almost all of them have had to face the same problem personally. They had incentive, they found a genuine solution. Necessity is the mother of invention, they say. This illustrates well the problem-solving definition of smarts. However, here it's impossible to determine smarts before the problem occurs, so we can't say fat people are smarter just because they're the ones who prefer low-carb.
Then there's the idea that smarter people are more successful or leaner or better in any other endeavor we can imagine. That's not strictly true. Smarts and success don't actually track. That's because of the principle of smart enough. Here goes. If you're smart enough to do A, B, and C, and if it takes A, B, and C to make a million bucks, you'll be just as rich as the next guy who's also smart enough, or if you prefer, you must be at least as smart as the other guy who also made a million bucks that way. Being 2x or 10x smarter won't give you 2 or 10 millions bucks. But if you are smart enough to do A, B, and C, you're also probably smart enough to realize that if you did it once to get 1 million bucks, you can get 2 million bucks by doing A, B, and C again. I bet no matter how smart (or how dumb) you think you are, you understood what I just said.
This idea of smart enough comes from a guy Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. Basically, success in anything doesn't track with smarts because success doesn't depend on smarts, it depends on circumstances. Specifically, opportunity and support. Conversely, lack of success depends on missed opportunities or obstacles blocking those opportunities and lack of support. Let's take my experience as an example. I had the opportunity to surf the web for information on my problem, much more information than I would have had access to without a computer, and this computer was provided to me by support from different sources. See? I didn't need to be any smarter than the next guy with a computer. I just needed to be smart enough to capitalize on this enormous access to information and the opportunity to get a computer for cheap. The threshold for smarts in this endeavor is actually pretty low.
To stick with the question of are obese people smarter, we could say those who prefer low-carb must be smart enough since low-carb does indeed do what it does better than other alternatives. But then we could say the same about lean people who also prefer low-carb. But then again we could also say we prefer low-carb just cuz it tastes better so it's got nothing to do with smarts. We still don't have a clear answer to the question.
Let's go back to that "when all is normal" thing that's common to both obesity and the brain. It's not the end of it, there's more, cuz we know more. For example, we now know it's possible to be lean yet suffer from some brain disorder. If I use my paradigm, I can explain the relationship between fat tissue and the brain through hormones and cell receptors and stuff like that. It's also possible to be obese yet suffer no brain disorder at all. Since obesity is a problem that needs a solution, and since smarts depends mostly on the brain, it follows that those most likely to find that solution are those who are both obese and without brain disorders.
Then there's this thing that happens when we initially go low-carb. Well, it happened to me anyways. I got smarter. Since I'm nobody special, Ima say it must happen to everybody who goes low-carb, it's what I expect to happen. Remember I said smarts can be defined in several ways? Well, I don't mean to say I suddenly became a genuises. Instead, everything I did before, I could now do better. So, I could remember things more accurately, follow a train of thought more deeply, focus on an idea for longer, get back to the original idea that spawned the train of thought more quickly and more clearly, and so forth. Here's the kicker. I went low-carb during a period when I must have been less smart. I didn't have to be smarter, I only had to be smart enough.
And so, Ima take a position on this. Obese people must be more likely to get smarter. It's the best I can do.
Last edited by M Levac : Mon, May-18-15 at 17:59.
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