The database is structured annoyingly. I get the impression that the designer of Reddit did not use the SQL prompt much.

Perhaps all examples must be some amount of ambiguous or controversial, but that doesn't serve as a good reason to use one that is this amount of it, when there are examples less so readily available.

This is going to be controversial unless everybody somehow agrees that their wish is "wrong" by some standard.

Currently, even implying that someone is wrong makes a person look bad. For the person to be comfortable, it's very helpful to look after their reputations. This is part of why I wouldn't bring up the ice-cream thing in public. (The ice-cream isn't actually something I would care about - to my personal diet views, it's probably healthier than bread. But if you mapped it to a more serious analogous case.)

I cannot think of any objective standard to judge when such paternalism would be appropriate and when it wouldn't

Rather than an objective standard, I find it more helpful to think about my personal behavior. How much do I want other people to trust me? The more trust I want and the more I want them to be comfortable, the more I can look out for their interests.

This thinking (people cannot be trusted knowing what's good for them) is something nobody is willing to accept in general, but everyone is perfectly willing to accept in some specific cases or other.

I'm not sure there are actually cases where I'm perfectly willing to accept it, except for cases of trivial importance. Even if I go against their wishes, I'm quite averse to it.

Assuming the people who are asking you for ice cream are not minor children under your care, let them have ice cream and keep your well-intentioned worrying out of it. (Depending on how you feel about being manipulative you could arrange to never have extra around, I suppose.)

I'm not sure what I'd do if someone I knew were doing particularly destructive drugs or actively cutting themselves. Probably Google for advice; maybe stop being friends with them if it really bothered me. I don't think I endorse calling the shrinks on somebody against their will, but I might ask if they wanted help finding help.

It's rather annoying than offensive. Every mention of problems related to obesity reinforces the present unhealthily and unaesthetically thin female cultural weight standard. Therefore I am a bit annoyed when this topic is brought up when not necessary.

Not every drug, but some examples of drugs, are more unambiguously and uncontroversially unhealthful than any kind of food. (I didn't claim to be offended. I'm way too unsurprised to be offended.)

Who could you say this to for whom it would be novel information that they are not at their standard-ideal weight?

Not realizing that you're overweigh or underestimating the extent is actually pretty common, at least in certain populations. See also, item three in this cracked article. It

(Upvoted)

That would not be a way to say it respectfully. Or desirably!

Probably the best way to think about what I mean by doing it respectfully is "would this make the person unhappy or uncomfortable?" If yes, that's not what I mean (this is a hard point for me to convey - I can say "respectfully" but it's hard to map to a case where the person isn't displeased, though that is what I'm talking about).

So what I would do (and was imagining). The person is comfortable with their weight. Ideally, they're happy, outgoing, achieving good things, being successful. The person enjoys eating ice-cream, they aren't going to change this soon, I know this, they know the things I know, and it's not a problem. If I thought it would bother someone, if there was nothing actually unique and useful I could point out to them, I wouldn't.

But if they asked me, while feeling pretty comfortable about themselves and looking to branch out, if I thought they might be able to lose weight, maybe be a little healthier, I would say "Yeah, of course!" (with the implication "You're certainly going to succeed, if that's what you want to do.") If they seem bothered, I'd mention that it's all good, certainly no need to if they don't want to. (Verbal tone here is important, and unfortunately difficult to express through this text.)

and if I knew them well,

I used this as a shorthand for "this is the sort of thing we could talk about happily, and that the person was interested in". (In my comment above, I mentally mapped to a case where I might actually convey helpful and/or unique information.)

None of this was very clear about my comment. "working to avoid any stigma", "respectfully pointing out" and "if they want more ice cream I'll support their decision" are tightly clustered descriptions of underly-specified things. The main thing is "is the person happy", "have I made them look bad," "are they interested," and "am I actually helping". I would point something out when the answers are anticipated-yes, anticipate-no, yes, and yes.

I'd probably say "I don't feel like ice cream" or "I'll feel bad because of your weight" (or put it in terms of wanting to spare my feelings some other way) If I wanted you to not eat ice cream.

Also, how is self injury more clear cut than obese people eating ice cream? If you mean actual injury, sure, but if you mean that how it's usually used I'd have to disagree that that's true generally. Obese people are usually, in part obese because they are eating too much ice cream (or equivalent.) I think Self harming is usually more a symptom rather than a contributing cause. and it requires heavier intervention to stop in that you can't just not go with people to eat ice cream, for example, because it's not usually a social activity.

I agree that it would be ridiculous to openly respond with anything that amounts to "no ice cream for you, you're too fat" though.

Well, it has 1 downvote. In answering, I went too straight for giving a functional description of what I do, rather than 1) sufficiently pointing out how it's done (e.g. going out of my way to tell someone when it's neither helpful nor wanted is not decreasing stigma, though that's the more natural map thing to map my answer to) and 2) writing my answer such that the answer itself helped to reduce stigma, make people comfortable, etc.

...but thank you for answering in a manner consistent with your theory.

You're welcome! However, I didn't select these strategies so that I could write consistent comments on LW, I selected them because I really like their results.