I think that in the future medical professional will be amazed at the ignorance of their predecessors, not just on dietary issues, but on their willingness to remove perhaps vital organs at the first sign of trouble. When I was a kid, many of my cohorts had their tonsils and adenoids removed (as did my step brother) almost routinely. I feel fortunate that I’m still whole. I think that the medical community has figured out that these are more useful items than they used to believe, but if this theory is correct, they will have to rethink approaches to appendicitis as well, perhaps even coming up with an artificial one (or regrowing with stem cells?).
I’ve always had high cholesterol (around 240 total), but I’ve never bought into the statin thing. And over the past year, since I went mostly paleo in my diet, I’ve gotten it down to 207 (as of October), with HDL of eighty and triglycerides below fifty, so for me at least, diet makes a big difference (not by cutting out cholesterol, but by cutting out the wrong carbs). I’ve also lost almost twenty pounds, though that wans’t a goal (and I gained seven or eight pounds over the holidays, what with the mashed potatoes and bread with holiday meals). The notion that “you are what you eat” and that fat makes you fat and cholesterol gives you high cholesterol is primitive thinking, and yet it remains the medical mainstream view. And while it’s been good for the drug companies, I think that it’s killed millions over the decades, including my father.
Michael Shermer may be right, but he certainly doesn’t make the case for it. It just looks like an unsupported assertion to me. And he seems to conflate AI with the Singularity.
I don’t believe in God, but, I swear, people who believe there is no God, and don’t want anyone else to believe in Him are complete asshats, and this kind of nonsense is completely counterproductive to their cause.