Recently, the American Medical Association defined obesity as a disease. Obesity is defined as having a BMI greater than or equal to 30.  Your BMI is defined as your mass in kg divided by the square of your height in meters.

 All of these definitions kind of make sense when taken individually – being really fat has the same detrimental effects as many other diseases --> we need a way to define “being really fat” --> a metric based on how much you weigh compared to your height is a good indicator of how fat you are.

 However, when we open up the bigger picture, the blinding absurdities shine through.  Due to a metric based on 19th century Belgians and the opinions of a group of individuals, Arnold Schwarzenegger at contest weight would now be defined as diseased:

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 Even in engineering, where hard mechanical things are far more clear cut and measurable, it is hard to get metrics and data that accurately represent reality.  When it comes to information about squishy humans - health, happiness, and the like – it is nearly impossible for numbers to capture reality. Although the engineer in me wants to quantify everything and screams with frustration when he can’t, more and more I believe that we need to admit that “it’s complicated” and not obscure reality with dangerous simplifying assumptions.