Today’s r/science threads refuse to flatter easy assumptions: health looks less like a bathroom scale and more like a clock and a community, minds can be razor-sharp without being kind, and systems—not just individuals—set the stage. If you came for neat narratives, you won’t find them; what’s on offer is data that forces uncomfortable upgrades to our models.
Health is being redefined: from measurement to time and expectation
BMI alone is giving way to a more textured silhouette; a recalibration of obesity in U.S. adults pushed prevalence toward 70%, not 40%, as shown in the community’s discussion of a broader definition that blends BMI with body-fat distribution. In the same vein, expectation outmuscled ingredients in a placebo-controlled IBS experiment where the nocebo effect overshadowed gluten, reminding us that beliefs can be biologically expensive.
"Every article on health basically boils down to... 'Imagine being rich, imagine how healthy you'd be.'" - u/lurpeli (945 points)
If time is medicine, many are under-dosed; an argument that “time poverty” functions like a clinical risk factor for dementia proposes “temporal justice” as public-health policy. And when care evaporates, outcomes worsen; a pooled cancer analysis tying loneliness to elevated mortality reframes social ties as vital infrastructure rather than soft variables.
The mind’s double-edged clarity
Reading minds is not the same as caring about them; evidence that certain psychopathic traits sharpen theory-of-mind shows precision without warmth. That cool clarity is also the raw material of coercion, as research on how domestic abusers engineer “trauma bonds” before violence makes painfully clear.
"People in the comments here realize that not everyone that has psychopathic traits is a bad person that’s out to harm people, right?" - u/randomquestionsig (361 points)
Moral conflict is its own pathology: findings that pornography use clashes with personal morals, deepening shame and loneliness while secure friendships buffer the damage point to attachment as antidote to isolation’s spiral.
"So if you grow up learning to hate yourself for having sexual desires, your life is worse off." - u/EmbarrassedHelp (150 points)
Aging, agency, and the systems that shape outcomes
We should retire the youth-worship reflex; work contending many of us peak mentally and emotionally around 60 argues that speed fades while judgment compounds. Meanwhile, comparative criminology showing youth crime rates in sharp decline rejects the perpetual panic about kids gone feral, suggesting lifestyles and social scaffolding matter more than moral alarm.
"I hated this about working in tech. Unless you really wanted to be in management (which I didn't) the only way to make more money is to bounce between companies every couple years, or get lucky with a startup that takes off." - u/jaxonfairfield (413 points)
If agency feels constrained, it often is; an economics paper tracing no-poaching collusion among major US tech firms to wage suppression and lower satisfaction clarifies how labor markets quietly sand down mobility and pay. When systems tax time, tie hands, or fragment support, the consequences surface as “personal” problems—the day’s data suggests they are anything but.