Peatarian.com Is Now BeesandButterflies.org?

[Such_Saturation]

so now the forum will start reccomending fish oil, kale smoothies, whey protein shakes ?

They already do that, look around.

 

[VoS]

... So from what I saw there was a possibility of visitors falling into an abyss of abstractions, accepting claims and subsequently ruining their health without anyone really being too aware of it, after a while they’d make a post telling people to leave the forum or that it’s all quackery.

I don’t think this is due to this or that person at all except maybe me as having made the forum, if I consider every person I saw on Peatarian they all have their story and none of them were as stiff as some of the scapegoat-seeking like to believe, still I ended up thinking people are better off moving to the more active platforms.

Bruno, I really appreciate what you did, or I hope will continue to do with "Peatarian." The information accumulated there is far more valuable, at least to someone like me, than you seem to realize. For me, it would have been a moral tragedy had it never been created, a little like George Bailey never being born, in It's a Wonderful Peatarian.

And here's, I think, why, in Ray Peat's own words:

Ten Question Interview July 7, 2012

1. How long have you been making yourself accessible through emails?

Since getting email, about ten years.

2. How many emails do you answer per week approximately?

In a recent week, 140, many just yes or no, or a couple of words, and a few long ones.

3. When you started answering emails, did you foresee that this would involve so many questions from people and be your primary method of interacting with the public rather than formal consultations? Was it something that evolved for you or was it an intentional revolution of redefining how scientists interact with society by being so accessible and not being motivated by money?

Knowledge isn’t a commodity, especially not a fungible commodity, as the medical business sees it. Consciousness and culture are part of the life process. It is exactly the commoditization of medical knowledge that makes it dangerous, and generally stupid. Doctors buy their knowledge, and then resell it over and over; it’s valuable as a commodity, so its value has to be protected by the equivalent of a copyright, the system of laws establishing the profession. Without its special status, its worthlessness would be quickly demonstrated. When A.C. Guyton wrote his textbook of medical physiology (the most widely used text in the world) in the 1950s, it was trash; as it was studied and applied by generations of physicians, it was still trash. The most compliant patients who bought their treatment from the most authoritative, Guytonesque, doctors were buying their own disability and death.

Each time you learn something, your consciousness becomes something different, and the questions you ask will be different; you don’t know what the next appropriate question will be when you haven’t assimilated the earlier answers. Until you see something as the answer to an urgent question, you can’t see that it has any value. The unexpected can’t be a commodity. When people buy professional knowledge they get what they pay for, a commodity in a system that sustains ignorance.

4. Why do you help so many people through emails? Are there any spiritual or humanitarian motivations? Or is it more about collecting scientific data?

More than 50 years ago, I realized that the US culture had become effectively totalitarian, with decorations, and even the decorations were being fixed by the specialists (the Congress for Cultural Freedom, for example). I went through a series of graduate studies and projects looking for places where reality could influence the culture, rather than being obliterated by it. The academic culture, though, was rapidly changing for the worse. Over a period of a few years I happened to see a few people recover immediately from what doctors had considered incurable problems, using simple and inexpensive methods, and then I realized that some people were willing to discard their old ideas when those conflicted with useful facts, especially when the useful facts could save their life. I started doing evening and weekend classes in nutrition and endocrinology, seeing health as a way to get reality into the culture. My newsletter grew out of the classes, and that led to answering mail, which is cheaper and easier on the internet.

5. Are you concerned your words will be taken out of context?

I start with trying to make a context clear, because everyone’s context is different, and meanings change when they are learned. Ideally, things should make no sense until they make the right sense. People often tell me their diagnosis, and want to know what they should do for it; they want to set the context. Very often, the most important thing is to diagnose the diagnostician. When people used to come to my house for consultations, they would mention how they heard about me. When the medical society would send their agents posing as people with health problems, the people they chose were cultural clichés, who wanted “a diagnosis and a prescription.” I would tell them they should see a doctor if that was what they wanted. Sometimes they would record my classes, and the things they took out of context didn’t mean anything. Since the contextuality of communication is always in the foreground when I talk or write, you know that someone is confusing me with an authority when they talk about my “protocol” for something. Context is everything, and it’s individual and empirical.

6. How do you balance encouraging a person’s curiosity with giving them the answers to their questions? Are you guided by any motivations such as enabling our independent conclusions?

In classes, where the subject matter is an area of knowledge, I look for aspects of it that I think will be unexpected by the students, so they will sense that they are going to change as they explore the new knowledge. When a particular person’s health is the issue, I have always tried to design a short course in the things that I think they need to know. It’s usually not what they expected and wanted, but if they can see points that illuminate their experience, they might be motivated to think about the implications. I think I try to make people aware of the importance of perceiving complexity and the incompleteness of tentative conclusions.

7. What impact would you like to see your research make on society? Reaching the largest amount of people? or a certain type of person? Or are you completely detached from the outcome?

I’d like to see it lead to the disestablishment of medicine. The same general outcomes Ivan Illich worked for. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDr71LHO0Jo)

8. You put your research out there for free while others use it to make money, how do you feel about this?

When research is paid for by taxpayers, and government grant money even pays the journals to publish it, and mostly public money pays for universities to subscribe to the journals at outrageous prices, then I think it’s approximately criminal for the journals to charge for electronic access to it. If knowledge gets its value from scarcity, and the owner of the information deliberately makes it scarce, then ignorance becomes an essential part of the value system.

For a while when I was doing consultations/classes at home I would tell people that it would take an hour or two, and that they could pay me 1/1000 of their annual income, and it worked all right with most (low income) people, but high income people objected.

9. Do you have any tricks, techniques or tips for minimizing stress in dealing with the public?

I don’t think so. Perceiving the existence of the culture is necessarily stressful, and any opportunity to modify it tends to reduce the stress.

10. Do you have pet peeves regarding the nature of certain emails? Is there anything you want your emailers to know? Double spaces? Keep it short? One question at a time? More detail? Less detail?

When I’m in Mexico, sometimes the wire is so slow that it can take minutes for a letter to trickle down the wire, and under such conditions it’s best if they just read the articles on the internet, and look up some of the references; that can keep a person busy for years. Driving to Michoacan is sometimes faster than the internet.

http://raypeatinsight.com/2013/06/06/ra ... revisited/

 

[uuy8778yyi]

so now the forum will start reccomending fish oil, kale smoothies, whey protein shakes ?

They already do that, look around.

what about cashew nut cheese ,
raw chocolate,
raw chinese herbs
and hemp/chia cereal ?

 

[Such_Saturation]

so now the forum will start reccomending fish oil, kale smoothies, whey protein shakes ?

They already do that, look around.

what about cashew nut cheese ,
raw chocolate,
raw chinese herbs
and hemp/chia cereal ?

Seen at least two of those

 

[johns74]

I think what's frustrating is that it now reads like an apology for Ray Peat's ideas and pretty much slanders those of us interested in him.

It's less than a tempest in a teapot.

 

[Dorito Loyalist]

It's too bad it had to end this way, but Peatarian.com had been getting steadily worse over time. Show me one good thing in the world that's not going to ***t.

 

[narouz]

Apparently a melodrama had unfolded over time there, I gather.
What is the gist of what happened?
I read Bruno's post but I'd like to hear more.

I seldom went over there
but when I did I liked it.

 

[Blossom]

What a shame and there is no blame whatsoever pointed toward you Bruno. Thanks Bruno for your efforts and good intentions in providing peatarian freely for people to come together and discuss Peat's work. Ultimately it's every person's responsibility to decide what goes in their mouth and how to live their life. It saddens me that there is such harsh judgment/criticism toward people who choose to follow what some would consider a strict interpretation of Peat's dietary principles. He does mention the benefits of certain foods repeatedly. Sometimes our health contexts call for more attention to this area of his work. When I was wasting away and feared I had cancer I followed a much more stringent approach by my own choice and would hate for someone to feel ridiculed for choosing to do the same. There is so much more to discuss about Peat than food but the truth is so many of us find him in such a compromised state that we need to build a solid nutritional foundation first. It's sad that even within the Peat community there is so much judgement about this.
I do think there are many who stumble upon Peat's work and expect immediate, positive results and give up too quickly because we have been indoctrinated by medicine from childhood to believe in magic bullets. Healing is rarely a linear forward progressing process. It's more like a spiral staircase with twists and turns and stumbling backwards from time to time. I'm certainly saddened that this has happened mainly for what it says about our culture in general these days. People are quick to blame others for their perceived failures instead of taking full responsibility for understanding and correcting their own issues. Peat's work empowers us to begin to do this for ourselves and help each other along the way. I wish you all the best Bruno and although it may be hard to see right now I'm certain good things have resulted from your efforts.

 

[Blossom]

Maybe a better analogy would be the staircase at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies that was constantly changing and dropping people off in unexpected places.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

It's about improving health and generally getting real world results...
Of course there's a few silly posts (disguised as 'critiques', 'debates' or 'discussions') but they're relatively rare...

You're saying you're for a good liberal arts education? :)

Witness above an example of a silly post -- whose author is well accomplished at such. At every chance, he enjoys 'discussions' and 'debate' on the topic of what a 'diet' is.

In general, what degrades the value of a community, as seen over at Peaterian, is often a few individuals who treat it as playground posting nonsense and drivel. They're usually the 'regulars' who post daily and appear to have no social interaction aside from the forums -- instead of an adjunct to their lives it becomes their lives and the resulting drama ensues.

Like any garden, if you do nothing, weeds will takeover. Peaterian lacked good moderation and was overrun with weeds.

I know you're insinuating that I am one of said folk. I'll remind you that nothing one enjoys is a waste of time, and your perception of "nonsense and drivel" is completely up you. That is something that is repeated ad nauseum on nutrition forums, and everytime I see it, it makes me wonder if the person who wrote it is aware of any of the following common practices that people do everyday:

Camp outside an Apple store for nights and days in effort to buy their new product (applies to "sneakerheads" who do the same thing for sneakers as well)
Go to a bar and get drunk
Go "out" on a Friday and or Saturday night to hang out with and try to impress people of whom you really don't care about and who really don't care about you, or share the same interests as you, only to stay up until 4 am and wake up at 2 pm the next day with a hangover
Buy designer clothing and apparel
Do drugs in an attempt to escape ones boring life
Go to a restaurant that serves overpriced low quality food and to add salt to the wound, gives bad service
Go to a sporting event with paid tickets in hand and jersey on back
Go to Comic Con
Play Video Games
Go to church
Stand out on a busy street and handout flyers for your religion (I see this every Saturday in "liberal" Los Angeles), or even worse, hold up a sign and yell though a loudspeaker
Go to Burning Man
Go to a Phish concert
Go to a rave, pop some E, then die from hyponatremia
Watch network TV shows (the only time I enjoy a show is while I'm eating and digesting a meal, other than that, it is a waste of time, to me.)
Solve a Rubik's cube
Go to a shrink
Spend precious time producing and editing this video: (and this persons whole YT channel for that matter)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcmT2mCimxo

Those are just a few things I can think of off the top that I consider nonsense and drivel, in my opinion, of course. There are many thousands more. But to people who enjoy such acts, I waste no time trying to convince them that they are wasting theirs.

If you don't like certain posts, I think it's because you disagree with the content of the posts, not because they really are simple "nonsense." They are ideas and concepts that were posted to bring a further conversation. Getting angry about nutritional disagreements is the leading cause of angst in forums.

I was there from the beginning, July of 12', only two months after B started it. I wasn't a weed. But I guess my antics were enough to bring IG to type her first post as seen here in the comments section:

http://beesandbutterflies.org/22199/ray ... ing-for-me

There were only about 20 people who actively participated on there anyway. Most of the usernames were spam bots, or people who saw B's posts on Paleohacks in 12' and created an account. These were mostly people who were into paleo but when they saw people saying OJ and ice cream were good, they became interested, but only temporarily.

 

[cantstoppeating]

...

Sometimes you had people talking about caries while guzzling coke, not that anyone imposed this on them but I felt like the forum could have promoted this. They would then supplement fat-solubles, minerals, etcetera, all the while never considering that they didn’t seem to need these supplements before.

...

To briefly hone in on this, only because I've recently taken up 1-2 litres a day, coke/pepsi should not be consumed in a hypothyroid state because:

1) the extra phosphorous can cause or exacerbate symptoms of high parathyroid hormone (which leeches calcium from bones and teeth)
2) the acid erodes enamel
3) the caffeine can cause or increase stress hormones even with the accompanying sugar

So coke should be used only when the metabolism is humming nicely. I consume it even though my metabolism isn't yet humming nicely because I make sure to get extra calcium carbonate (to maintain a calcium to phosphorus ratio above 1.5:1), extra fructose (to maintain liver glycogen stores) and frequent mouth rinses using salt (to neutralise the acid).

 

[pboy]

reading some of those quotes in VoS post...I think in a way, arguing aside...peatarian might be kind of exactly whats needed and expected. Peats work is basically to have REAL talk, and in the process, people start realizing...real talk and conversation, people start realizing how many dogmas and theories and concepts are just business created for profit, and have nothing to do with reality....in the process of that, of the people realizing and dissolving and letting go of deeply entrenched widespread dogmas, theres bound to be a lot of ...back and forth. In a way its better on a forum than in life...unless the people are really cool, cause then its safer and no shouting and people can get up and come back at their convenience.

However, it seemed all that was happening a lot of times was people...this is a huge problem everywhere, people try to discredit one meem or theory with another meem or theory...almost never actually speaking from intelligently done...created, self experimentation and experience without any preconceived notions. TO do that, it takes a special level of open mindedness...which I daresay has been bred out of most people past the age of like 11. Im sure that's why LSD is kind of...(ive never used it, but have similar things) highly useful and in the background recommended or that it might have benefit. In my case, not saying it was necessary but it DEFINATELY sped things up and...was much more than that, and also helped me overcome family stuff...really be strong in my own identity despite being in the eye of the storm of m odern life, was (is?) cannabis. I think really our overall society and systems and widespread dogma, meems, ect...fierce business ruthless sinful way of operating as a collective, is so bad and people are kind of trapped with others who will always discredit and nag...it takes these potent herbal kind of medicines to really allow an individual to bust out of it and be confident and strong in being real. Ive honestly never seen an example of someone who has those qualities that hasn't used some kind of substance like that

 

[cantstoppeating]

I know you're insinuating that I am one of said folk. I'll remind you that nothing one enjoys is a waste of time, and your perception of "nonsense and drivel" is completely up you. That is something that is repeated ad nauseum on nutrition forums, and everytime I see it, it makes me wonder if the person who wrote it is aware of any of the following common practices that people do everyday:

Camp outside an Apple store for nights and days in effort to buy their new product (applies to "sneakerheads" who do the same thing for sneakers as well)
Go to a bar and get drunk
Go "out" on a Friday and or Saturday night to hang out with and try to impress people of whom you really don't care about and who really don't care about you, or share the same interests as you, only to stay up until 4 am and wake up at 2 pm the next day with a hangover
Buy designer clothing and apparel
Do drugs in an attempt to escape ones boring life
Go to a restaurant that serves overpriced low quality food and to add salt to the wound, gives bad service
Go to a sporting event with paid tickets in hand and jersey on back
Go to Comic Con
Play Video Games
Go to church
Stand out on a busy street and handout flyers for your religion (I see this every Saturday in "liberal" Los Angeles), or even worse, hold up a sign and yell though a loudspeaker
Go to Burning Man
Go to a Phish concert
Go to a rave, pop some E, then die from hyponatremia
Watch network TV shows (the only time I enjoy a show is while I'm eating and digesting a meal, other than that, it is a waste of time, to me.)
Solve a Rubik's cube
Go to a shrink
Spend precious time producing and editing this video: (and this persons whole YT channel for that matter)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcmT2mCimxo

Those are just a few things I can think of off the top that I consider nonsense and drivel, in my opinion, of course. There are many thousands more. But to people who enjoy such acts, I waste no time trying to convince them that they are wasting theirs.

If you don't like certain posts, I think it's because you disagree with the content of the posts, not because they really are simple "nonsense." They are ideas and concepts that were posted to bring a further conversation. Getting angry about nutritional disagreements is the leading cause of angst in forums.

I was there from the beginning, July of 12', only two months after B started it. I wasn't a weed. But I guess my antics were enough to bring IG to type her first post as seen here in the comments section:

http://beesandbutterflies.org/22199/ray ... ing-for-me

There were only about 20 people who actively participated on there anyway. Most of the usernames were spam bots, or people who saw B's posts on Paleohacks in 12' and created an account. These were mostly people who were into paleo but when they saw people saying OJ and ice cream were good, they became interested, but only temporarily.

I don't know who you are but it's revealing that you identified with my post.

Thank you for giving me a laugh. You replied to my point about nonsense and drivel by posting nonsense and drivel.

At the chance of becoming hypocritical by engaging nonsense and drivel, I'll stop right here.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

Nice dodge. If you don't know who I am, then please provide at least one post from peatarian, not by me, that you are claiming is "nonsense and drivel." Just one. The website and all of it's posts are still there. You won't because you can't, because your original post was talking about me and what I've posted there. There is no one else who fits your description, thus, it shows you simply disagree with what I post but you beat around the bush.

 

[Such_Saturation]

video

That video must have made a thousand dollars in revenue after Google's cut

 

[KAPOW]

To John74:
Sorry for the late reply. Online, a "forum" is consistently defined as a place for public discussion, whereas a blog is considered more of a personal page, which belongs to a single person (or a small group). I have been an avid reader and/or active member of several different online forums for well over a decade, and I know very little about what it takes to build and maintain such a community, but I'm confident that none of the administrators on those other sites would think it acceptable to summarily dissolve their respective forum, insert the prefix "Anti" into its page description, imply that the site's diverse membership has devolved into a bunch of *cultists*, and do all of this in the *middle of the night* without a moment's notice. If they were to behave in such a manner, their behavior would be considered arrogant at best, contemptuous at worst. (Would it be considered acceptable here)?

Maybe this isn't the best analogy, but many years ago, when I was a student, my husband and I found ourselves occasionally offering our home to people who were living on the streets for one reason or another. A couple of people stayed with us for months at a time. Although we knew that at some point we might have to face the challenges associated with ending the arrangement, we felt that, having invited them to come into our home, we owed them some basic courtesies (such as notice) to prepare for the transition. Imagine if I had decided to put their things out on the lawn in the middle of the night, deride them, and call them names? Even if it's technically legal to do so, if I had behaved in such a way, I sure wouldn't have expected them to react with gratitude. (I realize that the circumstances are very different, but just as I didn't have to open up my home to these people, nobody forced anyone to start a public forum and invite hundreds of members to join and actively participate. I think it's important to highlight the difference between feeling entitled to something which one doesn't deserve and to basic human courtesies).

I have several interests that take precedence over my interest in human health, and I wasn't a very active member of the forum, but this was the most engaging and intellectually stimulating health-oriented forum I have ever come across. I was (and am) extremely grateful to ALL of its members, many of whom have taught me a lot (even though I rarely bothered to tell them so). Bruno could have shown a modicum of respect and consideration for the feelings of the members, and for any intellectual/emotional/social investment that so many had made, politely informed us that he had decided to close down the forum in the next few days or weeks, and let us wrap up any lingering questions or answers we had, searches we wanted to make, goodbyes or thank you's we wanted to say to the forum as a whole, etc. If he had done so, I would have been happy to not only send him a note of thanks, but to reimburse him financially for much more than my share of membership. In fact, I would still be happy to do so if he were to change a few things....

I have one final thing to say about the assertion that, by its very nature, Peatarian was "way too cultish."

Peatarian was a forum where the majority of posts didn't even mention Peat's name. It was a place where a hostile member called Peat a "disturbed man" and got only a polite and measured response back, where more than one person felt free to dismiss some of Peat's views as "ridiculous," where a certain person posted a "Critical Review Series" which consistently got many more upvotes (and more positive feedback) than the average post, where that same person could accuse Peat of *fabricating* many of his anecdotes, and have that accusation go largely unchallenged.....

I'd love to just settle the question once and for all: What kind of "cult" allows its members to not only criticize, but to repeatedly insult (if not defame) its "leader" or "object of veneration"?? (Hint: It's not a cult. It's just a whole lot of different people with a whole lot of different opinions, talents, etc., who are more likely than the average person to be really smart, question authority, and drink lots of coffee and orange juice. And that kind of combination can sometimes be really stimulating and wonderful and sometimes just make a big ugly mess).

Finally: I thought it was absolutely awesome while it lasted and I am going to miss it (and everyone associated with it) a heck of a lot.

 

[johns74]

Wow. What an incredible level of ungratefulness.

At least I say: Thank you Bruno for building the site and letting many people learn with it. As the forum quality went down (this was done by the users, not by Bruno), I can see why you wouldn't want to associate your wonderful, dedicated, artistic work with the lower quality content created by the users. Thus, the decision to take it down makes sense to me. Your work was being associated with lower quality stuff. And it turns out, very ungrateful people as well who clearly didn't deserve it at all.

 

[VoS]

Wow. What an incredible level of ungratefulness.
.... the decision to take it down makes sense to me. Your work was being associated with lower quality stuff. And it turns out, very ungrateful people as well who clearly didn't deserve it at all.

@johns74, kapow's point is that Bruno/zozo is wrong to call the community "cultish" and to shut it down on the basis of that charge. You did not respond to her argument.

Here's an example, I think, of what she may mean. I just pulled it up almost at random, and I see countless others:

@kiwifriut,

Unlike pathetic bastards like you, I have a life. I do not need to create a new user name in order to comment on a site full of brainwashed donkeys like you.

I am not afraid of anyone here. I say what I damn well please and I do not hide.

Why is everyone here so preoccupied with me and my opinions if I am wrong about Peat? Wheat and PUFAs dedicates entire threads to me and mentions me in his comments. I give Anon nightmares and he has accused you, Kiwifruit, of being my husband, LOL.

Even your sister-bastards on Charlie's forum can't get me out of their heads. Spokey has called me a troll and accused me of being Anon, but if he were a true peatarian, he would know that Anon is really J. Haidut, the opportunistic a$$hole who has taken over Charlie's site, calls me a troll. And I don't even comment on Charlie's site, LOL.

Shouldn't the glowing health of you peatarians be enough evidence that Peat is right and therefore anyone who criticizes him is wrong and should be ignored? It is really amazing how so many peatards can't stop thinking about me when I wouldn't spit on any of you if you were on fire, LOL.

No one ever kicks a dead dog. If I were wrong about Peat, you wouldn't even remember my name.

commented Aug 6, 2014 by IslandGirl

You and I may disagree with IslandGirl and others, and consider what she and others posted to be "lower quality content," but I don't see what's "cultish" about allowing that kind of attack, and responding to it on the merits.

As context, when she says, "Anon is really J." I think she means that "J." was someone who was banned from this forum, but was free to post at Peatarian under the name of "Anon." (But you would know more than I, since I was quite new to Peatarian.)

 

[KAPOW]

Thank you, Vos.

John,
I basically suggested that I would have been happy to send Bruno both a thank you note and a check if only he hadn't suddenly renamed the forum the "Anti Ray- Peat forum" and derided us as being "cultists." And I added that I would still be willing to do so. If that makes me guilty of "an incredible level of ungratefulness," then I can accept that label.

 

[VoS]

I just got a message from Charlie saying "Banned".