An Apt Analogy

I like this analogy from a crossfit journal article on the "nutrition wars". To me it's a good representation of what it means "to have reality on your side". There's no guarantee you'll win, and there's work to be done to publicize and explain your position, but at least you have a constant pressure working for you. (Another analogy would be that you have the wind at your back.)

We write here today in 2003 gloating. Gloating, because it is our perception that we are decisively winning the diet war. In the public square, the realization that carbs, not fat, make you sick and fat is spreading rapidly. Spreading like truth unobstructed. The position that carbohydrate is essentially toxic at common consumption levels was a truth suppressed by political and industrial corruption of science and journalism. Suppressing truth is like holding a beach ball under water; it takes constant work against a tireless resistance. They have slipped and our position sits like the beach ball on top of the water, where everyone can see it.

We interpret our position of being clearly visible, as winning the diet wars because our diet better models human nutrition and will always trump the opposition’s model if tested. Ours works, theirs doesn’t. Where theirs does work, ours works better. Their success required our being kept out of the marketplace. Underwater preferably.

By the way, the whole article is worth reading for an example of how a paradigm can change.