The irony here is using fitness as an example of knowable things.

Fitness guidelines is very much not a settled science, and is highly variable per individual beyond the very basics (to lose weight eat fewer calories than you burn, to build muscle you should lift heavy things).

For every study saying that 8-12 reps x3 is the optimal muscle growth strategy there is another saying that 20x2 is better, and a third saying that 5x5 is better. If you want to know how much protein you should eat to gain muscle mass, good luck; most studies have settled on 1.6g/kg per day as the maximum amount that will have an effect, but you can find many reputable fitness sources suggesting double that.

You can memorize "facts", but they will change as the state of the art changes... or is Pluto still a planet?

The ability to parse information and sources, as well as knowing the limits of your knowledge is far more important than memorizing things.

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procaryote 3 days ago | parent [-]

They're very knowable, it's just that there's a lot more money in making things up

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bluGill 3 days ago | parent [-]

They are not very knowable. It is expensive to design a study that would work. All too often a real world attempt to figure this out conclude "despite our best efforts we couldn't get people to behave in the needed way". So we have proxy studies that we hope mean something, but might not. Mixed in are lots of people making data fit their conclusion, and then selling it as fact.

Few people have the time to figure things out and so it isn't knowable even though all the steps are easy to lay out.

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procaryote 2 days ago | parent [-]

There are lots and lots of studies and metastudies etc. We know lots about nutrition and sports performance, and learn more and more

But we produce a lot more made up stuff to generate views and sell products

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dghlsakjg 19 hours ago | parent [-]

You are also making the assumption that studies and metastudies are not trying to sell you something or that the authors aren't trying to prove something that the science doesn't support.

	▲	procaryote 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think every study is completely corrupt. I wouldn't call it an assumption as much as an assessment that a lot of studies seem to agree with reality pretty well. Pragmatically I suspect this might be because most of the market don't actually read these things, and are just as happy with made up bs.