People who lie about how much they eat are jerks

I have a friend that repeated Dave Asprey's experiment and added 1000 kcal of calories via butter per day. The person knew enough about his diet to know that this meant that he consumed more calories. They didn't put any weight by doing the experiment for a month.

"I have a friend who..." isn't terribly compelling evidence. :)

As far as "resting" metabolism goes, there are also very different resting states.

From my recall, basal metabolic rates can vary significantly between otherwise very similar individuals. ~60% of BMR variances are determined by differences in lean muscle mass. But even when two individuals are the same age, gender, lean muscle %... they can still have BMR differences that would seem to contribute to weight gain in some individuals over time... even if their diet and exercise routine was identical to someone who maintained a stable weight.

I don't think it's as simple as OP is making it. But I also don't think it's as complicated as LW seems to make it.

As long as we're accepting anecdotal evidence, I've gained and lost in a ~40lb range (~160-200lb) over the last few years according to essentially a very predictable 'calories consumed minus calories burned' model. During some periods, I've kept copious spreadsheets of every calorie and every rep in the gym. It's been very predictable once I had some good data.

Again, for clarity's sake and so that I am not pestered on this point, I think there is more to the equation than just calorie arithmetic (and there are plenty of cases where people are predisposed to obesity no matter what they try and of course no one should be shamed for their body weight) ...but there is not nearly as much woo and mystery to losing weight as many on LW would try to make you think.

I think the main reason people end up desiring for weight loss to be a lot more than just calorie math is that while much of weight loss is simple, it's also super fucking hard. It's emotional. And being hungry sucks and makes your crabby. And making these changes will diminish your capacity to do other things for a while. Just like any other pursuit requires you to allocate resources, you can't expect to put effort into incorporating a brand new dieting strategy and exercise regiment while maintaining the exact same level of productivity and focus. There is an adjustment period. Then it gets easier.

Because it's super fucking hard and emotional, it makes sense to me that fad diets are as popular as they are. But maybe there isn't a hack? Maybe much of what needs to be done amounts to changing habits? Which is simple, but hard.

Calories vs physical exercise is not a physical law.

I said energy in / energy out. On the way in that means calories in, on the way out, around 30%(or more) of your daily burn is your base metabolic rate while you are awake, the things your body does to keep you alive. Heart pumping, stomach churning, breathing stuff.

Exercise is probably less than 1/6th of your daily burn. Unless you are marathon running in which case you are probably eating enough to more than compensate for it.

the idea that you lose weight by converting mass directly into energy

Okay... I never suggested weighing the food you eat, but that was a dieting fad in the 60s or so (it didn't last for reasons of that's now how energy in food works)

This is commonly called the base metabolic rate (the burn of hearts pumping, muscles turning and stomachs churning). Differences in base metabolic rate don't explain the full observed differences in weight. It would be nice, but it's not enough.

come up with a different model that better explains the observations?

I did. It was: People don't really know what they are saying when they say, "I eat anything and don't put on weight". And people are bad at introspection on themselves.

Dieting is more about therapeutically soothing one's self.  The black box CICO is a good foundation but people eat because their emotions, cognition and somatic experience tell them they need to.  Dieting is one of the hardest things people do because it's a long effort process, however I believe there's ways to do it easier.  I haven't solved the dieting problem completely for myself but I feel like I am close.

I'd suggest people now to look at the immunity to change process in the book "right weight, right mind" and also do therapy with a therapist you trust on the issue if it remains significant and a battle.

I don't think I disagree anywhere.

An extra apple a day translates, over years, to up to 50 extra pounds.

No it doesn't. You use up more calories when you weigh more. If you eat an apple a day you will reach an equilibrium where you have just enough extra weight to burn a number of calories per day equivalent to an apple. 95 calories in an apple will still get you to about 9.5 kilograms extra, which is a lot, but not near 50 pounds and it won't increase without limit.)

There are fat athletes. I can believe that starting from being very sedentary is harder if you're fat.

you can't oppose them short of persistently starving yourself (which ruins your health).

Citation needed. We're not talking about anorexia, we're talking about, say, naturally 300 lbs people "persistently starving" themselves to 200 lbs. Would that ruin their health?