Author Archives: Greg Linster

March 23, 2013

Book Review: Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

By Greg Linster

Catching Fire How Cooking Made Us Human

Many people from a range of scientific disciplines have put forth an answer to the following grand question: what made us human?  Surprisingly, many of these brilliant scientific minds overlooked a simple thing that most of us do everyday, i.e., cook (or at least eat cooked food).  In his book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, the biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham (of Harvard fame) takes a stab at answering the grand question by putting forward what he calls “the cooking hypothesis”.  And his argument that cooking is what made us human is quite compelling.

Scientific evidence shows that 1.8 million years ago, the first apes learned to cook.  But why are we the only apes that eat cooked food today?

Like many others, I think the answer to living better today can be found in our evolutionary past, but thanks to myriad cognitive biases in conjunction with the narrative fallacy, we have a tendency to grossly deceive ourselves.  For example, both the raw meat eating Paleo dude and the new-age raw vegan hipster are making the same mistake.  Both seem to embrace a teleological argument that concludes that humans weren’t meant to evolve beyond how they were, say, 10,000 years ago.  Accordingly, they think they are improving their health through avoiding something that may turn out to be fundamentally human and essential to our well-being (i.e., cooking).  Through their ability to craft a believable paleolithic narrative they have convinced themselves that it’s the other people who don’t get it.

It’s undeniably true that humans need food in order to live, but what do we really know about how we are supposed to eat?  Or what we ate in the past?  What role (if any) did cooked food play in our evolution? These types of questions are inherently difficult to answer with fact due to the scant record of evidence and the diversity that ranges across the human species.  The problem with making grand theories about the past is that they often rest on too few facts.  Evolution is a fact, but why and how it occurs still remains in the territory of theory.  The fact of the matter is that we don’t know what made us human, but Wrangham’s cooking hypothesis (flawed as it may be) is an important narrative to consider.

So what do we know about cooked food?  Most importantly, we know that cooking increases the amount of energy our bodies obtain from food.  Surprisingly few Americans have heard of this experiment, but the BBC once persuaded a dozen people with high blood pressure to go on an “Evo Diet” at the Paignton zoo (this diet consisted of consuming raw food just like our ape cousins).  The results were surprising. Even though the participants consumed massive amounts of raw food, it did wonders for improving their blood pressure and waistlines. It’s important to note that this was a short-term experiment and in all likelihood these participants would have eventually crossed into harmful territory without cooked food. Nonetheless, there is an important lesson to take away.  Caloric deprivation, whether from pure fasting or simply eating very little, seems to provide health benefits.

Wrangham points out that cooking food fundamentally alters its caloric value and the nutrients we can absorb from it.  This likely explains why primitive hunter-gatherers simply can’t survive on a purely raw-food diet.  The human digestive system simply cannot consume enough calories and nutrients from raw food alone.  Wrangham’s idea is that the extra energy that comes from cooked foods gave the first cooks biological advantages, and ultimately reproductive advantages, that can be explained by the theory of natural selection.

For as much as the cooking hypothesis makes sense, I think it needs to be considered in conjunction with many other hypothesis as well (e.g., the Man-the-Hunter hypothesis).  What made us human is most likely a complex intersection of many things.  My own speculations are that both cooking and meat-eating were an integral part of the human enterprise.  Wrangham, however, seems to naively downplay the importance of meat eating.  ”Meat eating”, he writes, “has had less impact on our bodies than cooked food”. He goes on to say that “Even vegetarians thrive on cooked diets. We are cooks more than carnivores.”  However, it’s far too easy to get the causation backwards in these just-so narratives.  In other words, are we cooks because we’re carnivores or are we carnivores because we’re cooks?

The very thing that Wrangham suggests made us human may also be the very thing that makes a sucker for this narrative.  Nonetheless, speculative as it is, Wrangham’s theory is fascinating food for thought.

Comments Off | posted in Biological Anthropology

February 28, 2013

When Paleo Logic Fails

By Greg Linster

Terms like “the paleo diet”, “primal lifestyle”, “evolutionary fitness”, and “ancestral health” all operate under the shared premise that our evolutionary past is the key to understanding how to be healthy today.  While I certainly don’t agree with any movement that has one size fits all recommendations, I do agree that this premise is an important place to start from.  However, it can also be a dangerous place to start from because naive reasoning without evidence can easily lead us astray (we all fall victim to this to some degree).  Nonetheless, understanding how and why we evolved the way we did is one key to understanding how we can be healthier and live better today.

I recently finished reading The World Until Yesterday (a book I enjoyed more than I thought I would) which focuses on what we can learn from traditional societies in terms of our health, social relations, conflicts, child-rearing, and treatment of the elderly.  As Diamond puts it in the book: ”All human societies have been traditional for far longer than any society has been modern.”  Even though I don’t agree with everything he wrote, I think Diamond makes a compelling case that we can learn from studying our hunter-gatherer ancestors (even though he doesn’t really advocate a paleo diet per se).

This seems like a reasonable starting point and many evolution enthusiasts share this belief.  If one were simply to consider the fact that most of our species’ existence has been spent as hunter-gatherers it would seem that we have much to learn from our ancestors in terms of how to live well, both biologically and culturally.  But is this so, or is this a Paleofantasy? [1]

The first thing to consider is that adaptations (both biological and cultural) don’t necessarily scale linearly.  Just like technological growth, evolution can stagnate for long periods of time, and then quickly accelerate due to selection pressures and for other reasons that are opaque to us.  For example, in just the last 10,000 years things like the ability to tolerate lactose and blue eyes have appeared in the human race.  It also turns out that many people have also developed an ability to eat and properly digest grains (a big no-no paleo diet advocates).  [2]  This evidence, however, doesn’t stop some paleo zealots from proclaiming that evolution cannot occur in such a short period of time.

The paleo diet theory, then, seems to make sense until one examines the evidence.  If human evolution is accelerating, as the evidence shows that it is, then it doesn’t matter how long we ate a “paleo diet” for — what matters is what we have now adapted to eat.  Then again, let’s not rush to dismiss the paleo diet (and its many variations) simply because some populations have adapted to tolerate grains.  Maybe the paleo folks have a point, i.e., just because something is edible it doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s also an optimal (or even good) source of nutrition.

The real issue here is that when you think about it, paleo logic can fail us in terms of how we think about both health and culture (largely due to the narrative fallacy).  This makes any sort of dietary advice very difficult to give because certain populations have adapted to eat certain things that others haven’t.  The implication is, of course, that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all optimal diet for everyone.

Paleo Logic is a good a starting point, but when something sounds nice in theory and doesn’t hold up empirically, then I’d suggest ditching the bogus theory.

Notes:

[1] See this excerpt in The Chronicle of Higher Education from a book called Paleofantasy.

[2] See The 10,000 Year Explosion.

2 comments | posted in Paleo Logic

February 18, 2013

Why I Want To Hunt & Fish

By Greg Linster

Meat Eater

The deepest relationships you can have in life are with people (particularly the people that brought you into existence) and the things that sustain you, like food. Modernity has fundamentally altered our relationships with both people and food, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.  One thing that has changed in regard to our relationship with food is that we have become incredibly disconnected from the process that brings the food to our plate.  This phenomenon seems to be creating a growing malaise among many of today’s young people, including the difficult to define hipster. [1]  In other words, we have largely forgotten that we are, at our core, hunters (not desk jockeys).

Anyway, I recently finished reading Meat Eater and it’s a personal reflection on hunting chock-full of personal anecdotes detailing Steven Rinella’s hunting and fishing adventures. It’s also somewhat of a philosophical inquiry and spiritual memoir. Or as Rinella himself puts it, “this book uses the ancient art of the hunting story to answer the questions of why I hunt, who I am as a hunter, and what hunting means to me.” It turns out that Rinella believes that spiritually connecting with the food that sustains us is part of what makes us human, and with this, I wholly agree.

According to the British primatologist Richard Wrangham, cooking is what made us human (a review of his book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human is forthcoming). I agree with Wrangham, but after reading Steven Rinella’s Meat Eater, I’d also argue that hunting is what allowed us to cook.

Some may say we were “born to run” (which may have some truth depending on how we define “run”), but I think it’s more accurate to say that we were born to hunt. [1]  In light of evolutionary past, it only makes sense then that the desire to grow your own food and hunt/fish your own eat meat is as visceral a desire as there can be.

I have a confession to make though: the economist in me loathes the locavore movement and the idea of hunting/gathering all of your own food.  However, the philosopher in me understands that there are quality differences, and ethical and aesthetic preferences, that aren’t always captured in naive economic and financial analysis. [2] In other words, not everything economists call a commodity is a actually a commodity. The meat from a grain-fed industrially raised cow, for example, may be financially cheaper than wild elk meat (especially if you hunt it yourself), but that the quality of the nourishment provided by the wild elk meat, even if it’s just spiritually, is different. This is something that naive rationalists cannot seem to understand.

Anyway, each chapter of the book depicts a different time in Rinella’s life. In the first chapter, he describes his introduction to hunting at the age of ten for the opening day of Michigan’s squirrel hunting season. The remainder of the chapters cover everything from fishing in the Yucatan to hunting in Alaska. While there are some practical tips included at the end of each chapter, this book is certainly not to be confused for a “how-to” guide.

I’ve had the itch to get into hunting/fishing my own meat for quite some time now. As I pursue that endeavor, it was nice to read Rinella’s account of why he hunts. Before you decide to take on any new hobbies, you probably ought to figure out why you want to do it.  I’ve figured out why I want to hunt and fish, and I hope others do too.

Notes:

[1] See this Slate article called “Hipsters Who Hunt”.

[2] See my post “The Case Against the Marathon”

[3] See my post “Protect the Environment: Eat Global!”

Comments Off | posted in Hunting & Fishing

February 13, 2013

Book Review: Antifragile

By Greg Linster

Book Review: Antifragile

Not too long ago I wrote a short post about Antifragile.  At the time I wrote that post, I was working on this review, with plans to submit it to a few publications.  Alas, I came to find out that several other reviewers beat me to the punch.   The beauty (and perhaps tragedy too) of having a blog is that no piece of writing goes to waste — there is always a place to publish your writing. 

***

In The Bed of Procrustes, Nassim Taleb’s book of aphorisms, he wrote: “An idea starts to be interesting when you get scared of taking it to its logical conclusion.”

Here’s a thought experiment: suppose you were sending a package with delicate items to a friend – what would you write on the package?  Since you don’t want the ornaments to break, you’d likely write “fragile” on the package.  Now, suppose for some strange reason you were sending some rocks (say, a pet rock) in a package to a friend – what would you write on the package then?  Obviously you wouldn’t need to write anything on it because the rocks are robust and wouldn’t be harmed even if they were grossly mishandled.

Those may sound like banal questions, with trivial answers, but here’s a more interesting question: what would you write on a package that you wanted to be purposely mishandled?  Or, what should we call something that is the exact opposite fragile, i.e., something that is not only robust, but actually gets stronger from being mishandled?  Until fairly recently there was no word for this term, but the answer is that you’d write the neologism “antifragile”, coined by Taleb in his provocative book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder.

Antifragile is part of a larger corpus called Incerto, which includes the books Dynamic Hedging, Fooled By Randomness, The Black Swan, and The Bed of Procrustes.  Technically, Antifragile itself is composed of seven books, but I will simply refer to it as one book for the purpose of this review. [1]

***

One of the most interesting things about being human is that we can understand things we can’t necessarily articulate.  Often the reason we can’t articulate an idea is that we lack the linguistic tool to talk about it, but lacking the tool to talk about an idea doesn’t necessarily preclude us from understanding it.  Taleb is not the first human to understand antifragility, but he is the first person to give us the linguistic tool to talk about it.

Taleb cites an interesting anecdote from the linguist Guy Deutscher near the beginning of the book.  What Taleb learned from Deutscher was that until 140 years ago the Greeks didn’t have a word for the color blue.  Strangely though, they still saw the color blue when they looked to the sky.  They weren’t, then, physically color blind, but rather culturally color blind.  Similarly, even though we have long understood some of the ramifications of antifragility when we’ve seen it, we moderns have been culturally blind to it.

Evolution is the perfect example of a system with antifragile properties.  Biological evolution, in particular, thrives off of randomness, stressors, and volatility, which ultimately cause adaptations to occur in individual organisms, and evolution to occur in the species.  For example, consider the discovery of penicillin.  It was an evolutionary (and harmful) shock to bacteria, but new forms of bacteria have adapted to the point where they are immune to the devastating consequences of penicillin.  By trying to harm the bacteria, we have actually made them stronger, and this is precisely because they are antifragile.  Although Taleb never explicitly puts it this way, I think for things biological, antifragile properties are a necessary trait.

One of the more practical things Taleb points out in the book is that the human body is also antifragile.  Intuitively, and more importantly empirically, weightlifters have long understood this.  They purposely break down their muscles through the stress of lifting heavy weights and their muscles rebuild themselves to be stronger than they were before adapting to the stress.  Antifragile systems (like humans) benefit from the recently revived concept of hormesis, which is the idea that small doses of harmful substances (like alcohol) are actually good for you because they make you stronger. [2]  Or, as the toxicologists would say, “The dose determines the poison.”  Taleb, however, is scornful of those who use his ideas to justify the pseudo-science of homeopathy.

Another ancient idea that is discussed in the book is iatrogenics, which means harm caused by the healer.  Taleb suggests that Mother Nature and our bodies have a natural way of healing themselves and we often cause more harm through trying to naively “fix” things with medicines and surgical procedures (although this is not to say that all medicines and surgical procedures are bad).  The old practice of bloodletting is the perfect example.  Taleb reminds us that iatrogenic effects occur in fields outside of medicine too, like our economies and educational institutions.

As astute readers of his prior works know, Taleb is not particularly fond of most bankers, academics, economists, and journalists for a plethora of reasons, namely because they suffer from a form of epistemic arrogance and naïve rationalism that not only harms themselves, but harms others as well.  In Antifragile, Taleb has coined the term “fragilista” to refer to these individuals.  Fragilistas, according to Taleb, naively try to suck the antifragility out of systems that depend on it for its wellbeing, and they occasionally suffer from severe ethical lapses too.

Neurotic soccer moms are one such type of fragilista and they join the company of fragilista economists and journalists like Alan Greenspan, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and Thomas Friedman.  Fragilista Robert Rubin, the former high ranking Citigroup official, had the honor of having “The Bob Rubin Problem” named after him because of an ethical lapse in which he finagled his way into getting financial upside without any possible downside at the taxpayers expense (a violation of Hammurabi’s Code).

For readers unfamiliar with Hammurabi’s Code, Taleb described it as follows in a 2011 New York Times editorial: “If a builder builds a house for a man and does not make its construction firm, and the house which he has built collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death.”  The central idea behind the code, then, is that no one knows more about the house than the architect and they should not gain the upside without being exposed to downside.  The ancient Babylonians clearly recognized that the code would remedy the problems that occur in situations where there was an upside-without-downside asymmetry problem, like there is with modern banker’s bonuses.

***

For as much as I love this book (and Taleb’s other work), there is one thing that I must take issue with.  It seems to me that being both a humanist and a proponent of antifragility are incompatible views.  Taleb, however, claims that he is both of these things.  The reason I see this as a contradiction is because human biological evolution cannot progress without stress and selection pressures (of all kinds) on individual humans.  Thus, our attempts at saving weak individual people and trying to eliminate individual suffering may come at the expense of fragilizing the human species as a whole.  Humanists, in this sense, are fragilistas.

As a humanist, one should innately value all human life and want to limit human suffering to any extent possible (a position I’m in favor of).  However, should this be done at the expense of fragilizing the species?  Not all fragilistas have ill intentions, and good-hearted efforts to improve the human condition often paradoxically make things worse.  As the old cliché goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

In his philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra Nietzsche introduced the ideas of both the ubermensch (translated to be the overman or superman) and the last man.  One interpretation of Nietzsche’s work could be that the last man is the evolutionary byproduct of a society run by fragilistas and that the ubermensch is the human ideal for proponents of antifragility (i.e., all that humans can become).

As a proponent of antifragility myself, this interpretation makes me uncomfortable, but I cannot deny the fact that there is definitely a Nietzechean ring to the idea of antifragility.  If Nietzsche’s ubermensch can be understood to be the byproduct of humanity’s antifragility, then, Zarathustra was right, humanity can overcome itself if only it avoids fragilizing itself.

Perhaps one of the things that defines us as humans, then, is that we morally, ethically, and systematically try to remove antifragility from the very antifragile system that created us (i.e., Mother Nature).   After reading this book, I can’t help but think that Nietzsche understood something startlingly haunting about the human condition: whatever supersedes humanity will embrace its antifragility.

Notes:

[1] You can find my review of Fooled By Randomness here.  You can find my review of The Black Swan here.  You can find my review of The Bed of Procrustes here.

[2] See my post “Why I Practice Hormetism”

Comments Off | posted in Antifragility

January 30, 2013

The No News Diet

By Greg Linster

Rolf Dobelli is an author, novelist (unfortunately it’s difficult to find non-German translations of his work), entrepreneur, and the founder of Zurich Minds. [1]  In 2010, he wrote a very provocative article titled “Avoid News”.  I have now read the article several times (slowly) and it inspired this essay response.  You can read this essay response even if you haven’t read Dobelli’s article, but I highly recommend reading the article before reading my response.

***

In The Bed of Procrustes, the aphoristically elegant Nassim Taleb wrote:  ”To bankrupt a fool, give him information.”  Rolf Dobelli shares this sentiment and claims that “news is to the mind what sugar is to the body”.  In other words, it’s toxic!

Depending on how one defines “news”, I absolutely agree with Dobelli.  However, I can’t help but notice that Dobelli never explicitly defined what “news” is in his piece — he certainly implicitly defined it — but there is ambiguity in this implied definition that needs to be resolved.  Nonetheless, I get his point and I don’t want to quibble over semantics.

Dobelli claims that “Most people believe that having more information helps them make better decisions.”  It’s not only important to point out that the people who hold this belief are wrong, but also that more information is sometimes better, but not always.  Sometimes more information can also make things worse.

In this vein, there is a particularly important idea that can be generalized.  Most people tend to believe that being proactive is better than doing nothing, but they fail to miss the point that action often, but certainly not always, makes things worse.  Much to your employers dismay, you may actually be a more valuable employee if you read essays on the Web all day than if you try to “make things better” at work.  This is because doing “nothing” generally does not cause harm. Despite the fact that I know this is true, I cannot in good faith recommend that you tell this to your boss because I don’t tell this to my boss (skin in the game).

When it comes to reading, I’ve come up with my own heuristic (i.e., a rule of thumb) to deal with the “news” problem Dobelli describes: when choosing what to read, make sure that it *is not* harming your intellectual health instead of trying to improve your intellectual health.  I find that most people follow the opposite strategy and thus I agree with Dobelli about the following: ”Reading news to understand the world is worse than not reading anything.”

Is all “news” really as toxic as Dobelli suggests though?  The answer is certainly no.  Suppose, for instance, that you lived in Colorado Springs this past summer when the fires occurred there and that you followed Dobelli’s advice to the tee.  Also, suppose that all your neighbors did the same.  How would you have ever known when to evacuate your house?  Most “news” is probably worthless, but some “news” can be very valuable as is evidenced here.  It’s absolutely true, then, that not all “news” is of equal value.

I’m sure Facebook updates would fall into the category of “news” in Dobelli’s lexicon, but I cannot agree with him that all Facebook posts are worthless either.  Sure, some types of Facebook usage are harmful, but certainly not all.  I’ve developed a connection with many people who share important, interesting, and insightful things on Facebook — things that create value in my life.  However, too much of a good thing eventually becomes a bad thing, and the onus is on the individual to find that balance. [2]

Since I’ve come to the conclusion that not all “news” is inherently valuable or inherently worthless, I’m left to further conclude that what matters in today’s world is how you filter information.  However, filtering itself leads to a whole host of problems (e.g., confirmation bias) that could (and probably should) be addressed in a separate essay.

Despite the fact that I agree with Dobelli, I do believe that his position is a bit extreme (after-all, he uses a bold title that attracts attention much like many news articles do).  Like most things in life, not all “news” is bad.  Sure, most “news” is useless, irrelevant, or flat out wrong, but there are instances where I think “news” is valuable (the Colorado Springs fire example above).

Even though I know intellectually that not all “news” is bad, I sympathize with the gist of Dobelli’s argument because I also know that it’s easier to fast than diet.  Since all value is subjective, it’s important to remember that some people know things that aren’t worth knowing.  One of the beauties of life is that you get to decide what is.

Notes:

[1] His new non-fiction book The Art of Thinking Clearly will have an English edition.

[2] I think it’s healthy to take prolonged breaks from the Internet.  For this reason, I never take offense if someone misses something I post online that I think is important.

1 comment | posted in No News Diet

December 27, 2012

The Barbell Coffee Drinking Strategy

By Greg Linster

The Barbell Coffee Drinking Strategy

Every since I first read The Black Swan I’ve tried to apply the barbell strategy (i.e., a form of hedging using asymmetric diversification) to as many areas of life as I can possibly apply it.  In other words, the barbell strategy is a strategy in which you insulate yourself from negative Black Swans (extremely low probability events with devastating consequences), all the while still taking a small gamble to reap the benefits of positive Black Swans (extremely low probability events with an exponentially wild payoff).

Let me illustrate this concept as it would pertain to investing.  A barbell strategy in investing would include a portfolio that is made up of mostly (say, 90%) hyper-conservative investments and a small portion (say, 10%) hyper-risky investments, with absolutely no midlevel-risk.  Not only does the barbell strategy apply to investing, it is equally applicable to diet and fitness. [1]  Allow me to share an anecdote about my own experiences applying the barbell strategy with diet and fitness.

 +++

Prior to reading The Black Swan I was into triathlon.  As a former competitive athlete in college, the sport helped fill a void in my life.  However, I also naively thought that all of the chronic training was not only making me more aerobically fit, but healthier too.  What a foolish belief that was! [2]

Rather abruptly after reading The Black Swan, I had an epiphany of sorts.  I realized how chronically tired I had become and I decided to quit “training”.  While formally training, I ate quite a bit and frequently (usually six-times a day) all the while staying relatively lean.  Luckily, I had read Loren Cordain’s book The Paleo Diet For Athletes long before I started seriously training, so at least most of the food I was eating was of a high quality (wild game, veggies, fish, grass-fed beef, fruit, quinoa, and some rice).

After I decided to quit training I was worried that I could I never maintain a lean physique without rigorous aerobic efforts (i.e., the opposite of the barbell strategy).  After-all, the only time in my life I had achieved a level of leanness I was happy with was when I was training hard.  Then again, I had never used a barbell strategy when it came to diet and fitness either.

Here’s what I decided to do: I ditched my training logs and quit doing any formal training all together.  I started walking a lot and would go to the local park near my house to do intense 10-15 minute workouts that included sprints, pull-ups, burpies, jump-squats, and push-ups (the kind of stuff I did to get in shape for lacrosse in college).  I would also intermittently fast (up to 24 hours a time) and vary my protein intake greatly every day (I also quit drinking a “recovery shake” 30 minutes after every workout), all the while still eating a Paleo-ish diet (albeit, I wasn’t too strict about this).  To my surprise, I not only didn’t gain weight, I actually became leaner and stronger following this barbell strategy.

 +++

Sometimes we miss the most obvious things.  Until very recently, I missed two obvious places in which I should be implementing the barbell strategy in life.  It’s fair to say that I simply have not been critical enough of my own habits.  I’ve been blindly following “the expert’s” advice that an alcoholic drink or two a day (in other words, drinking in moderation) is better for your health than is binge drinking, which only naturally makes sense, right?

Well, it made sense until I read a profound thought in Antifragile that Taleb attributed to Rory Sutherland (another thinker I greatly admire). [3]  Sutherland suggested that the optimal policy for consuming alcohol would be to drink liberally a few days, coupled with several days of abstaining entirely.  Chronically consuming alcohol every day, even if it’s in moderation, is similar to chronic cardio in this respect.

This idea is dangerous, particularly because alcoholic drinks have an interesting property in that the amount of harm (or potential harm) they can cause doesn’t scale linearly (particularly with the hangover part).  For example, the eighth beer you drink in an evening is going to harm you (and make your hangover worse) much more than the seventh one.  Anyone who has been hung-over, I’m going to assume that means all readers of this blog, has intuitively understood this at some point in their life.

According to this line of logic, I’m going to suggest that drinking slightly beyond moderation (a healthy buzz, 3-4 glasses of wine or beers for me) is healthy if it is followed by several days of absolutely no drinking.  If this sounds like hormesis, it is. [4]

Anyway, after I read this section of the book, I quickly realized that if this were true of alcohol, it’s probably applicable to coffee consumption too.  Accordingly, I engaged Rory Sutherland on Twitter with the following question: Should one use a barbell strategy with coffee consumption too?  I’m sure you can guess what his response was. [5] 

Alas, since I love to drink coffee daily, I knew before I asked the question that I wasn’t going to like the answer.  However, not only do I not like the answer, but I greatly fear that it is true (perhaps ignorance is bliss).  Going a day without a coffee is tough (I’m slowly working my way up to several days), but the Stoics were right.  Nothing makes you appreciate something you enjoy like fasting from it for a while — nothing tastes better than that first cup of coffee after a day away from it.  Of course, I suspect there are some health benefits too.

Notes:

[1] I want to make the following point clear: while not applicable to everything, the barbell strategy is still a brilliant heuristic (i.e., a rule-of-thumb).

[2] I don’t necessarily mean to discourage anyone from triathlon as I certainly understand that there are psychological reasons for competing in grueling endurance sports too.  This reason is why, at least partially, I was drawn to the sport.

[3] Check out Rory Sutherland’s website here.

[4] See my post on “Why I Practice Hormetism”.

[5] Here is the Twitter conversation.

3 comments | posted in The Barbell Strategy

December 18, 2012

Antifragile

By Greg Linster

Have you ever wondered how an author puts the ideas for a book together?  I sure have, and over the past couple of years I’ve had the great pleasure to watch one of my intellectual heroes in action (even though I don’t agree with him on everything).  The author I’m referring to is Nassim Taleb, and the book is called Antifragile.  For many parts of the book, Nassim bounced ideas off those who follow his Facebook page, a page which he uses strictly for philosophical discussions. [1]

Anyway, I recently finished reading the book, and I can assure you that I savored it very slowly.  I can also assure you that I will reread it again in the very near future.  Since I have plans to submit an essay review of the book to some other publications, I will not be writing one here on Coffee Theory.  Rather, I’m hoping to find time in the near future to write a series of posts about ideas contained within the book (stay tuned).

What I love about Taleb is that he is as an independent thinker as a human being can possibly be.  He has no pressure to publish and his intellectual pursuits are freely chosen (this is true authenticity).  He has the courage to call people charlatans, frauds, and hucksters, a quality I greatly admire.  He also puts his money, both figuratively and literally, where his mouth is.  Some people, not surprisingly, despise him for what they perceive to arrogance.  I, however, can’t help but notice that only egomaniacs are offended by an egomaniac.

Anyway, here is the brief blurb I wrote for my Amazon review: “Antifragile is excellent, absolutely excellent — and this beautiful book contains ideas that, if properly digested and put into practice, will change your life. While reading Antifragile I had the (obvious) epiphany that the book itself is antifragile. Bravo Monsieur Taleb!” [2]

Needless to say, this is a book you won’t want to miss.

Notes:

[1] You can find Nassim Taleb’s Facebook page here.

[2] You can find my Amazon review here.

2 comments | posted in Antifragility

December 17, 2012

Why Gun Control Doesn’t Work

By Greg Linster

Gun control, not surprisingly, is a very contentious issue among the readers of both this blog and the other blog I write for, Rationally Speaking.  There were two interesting comments on my “The Gun as the Scapegoat” post (thanks for the thought provoking comments Bob and Alexander!).  Anyway, I want to address a couple of the points they brought up.

First off, the phrase “gun control” is nebulous, so I should have been more clear.  In this post I’ll make it crystal clear as to what I meant to take issue with in that last post, i.e., the claim that revoking the right to own a gun (of any type) is a solution to this cultural problem we Americans have been dealing with.

Here’s something that I think most of us will agree on: a psychopath with a gun can cause more damage than a psychopath with a knife.  However, a psychopath with bleach has the potential to create more damage than a psychopath with guns.  Right now bleach is legal, but I’m sure a psychopath could find a way to poison and kill a large number of people with it at a school cafeteria or something.  Should we take preventive measures and ban bleach too?  Like guns, I don’t regularly use bleach so I would only be opposed to banning it for reasons of principle.

What many people seem to forget is that simply making something illegal doesn’t necessarily mean it will remove it from society.  Drugs are the perfect example.  What reason do we have to believe that guns will be any different?  For what it’s worth, I have yet to hear a good answer to this question.

One of my main points is that imposing gun restrictions will only fatten the tails.  In other words, when you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns and they will be able to cause more harm with those guns.  Think about it this way: one psychopath on a train can cause much more harm when he is the only one with a gun than can one psychopath on a train in which everyone has a gun.

Economic logic tells us that increasing the cost of committing a crime will decrease the amount of crime we see.  That sounds simple enough, right?  Therefore when a criminal’s potential victims are armed the cost of committing a crime increases greatly (criminals, like the rest of us, don’t want to get shot).  However, many people aren’t persuaded by this logic (sadly) and claim that there is no evidence that guns actually reduce crime.  They are, however, mistaken.  The book More Guns, Less Crime is loaded with evidence showing that more guns actually cause less crime (by no means do I agree with everything in the book though.)

One of my main concerns with *all* of the empirical work on guns and gun control is this: Is it really possible to scientifically know if gun control laws (or the number of concealed weapon permits issued) reduce crime?  One can cherry pick the data to get whatever result they want (as people from both sides have done).  One problem for the anti-gun folks, though, is that it’s very difficult to capture every instance in which a gun prevented a crime — how do you measure such a thing?  When talking about guns and gun control, I think economic logic is more important than are dubious (at best) statistical analyses.  In other words, much of the evidence supporting the claim that more guns cause less crime is opaque to those doing the analysis.

There is also the issue of the relatively low amount of accidental deaths that occur from guns compared to bathtubs, etc that I brought up in my last post.  Many pro-gun control advocates claim this is an irrelevant point, which it is, unless of course the person is also making the claim that it’s a reason to ban guns (I’m amazed at how often I see this mistake).  If an individual takes the position that we should make illegal anything that accidentally kills people, as many pro-gun control advocates seem to be tacitly suggesting, then I’m going to suggest that they need to take that position to its logical conclusion (i.e, ban bathtubs too).  Here’s my take: something shouldn’t be banned simply because some small percentage of people accidentally die from it — there are costs and benefits to everything.

In the end, I think it’s important to remember that laws don’t stop evil people from doing evil things.  The only answer to this cultural problem I can come up with has a Nietzschean ring to it, i.e., we need to remove the evil people, or at least limit their ability to cause harm.  Hayek was right — top-down solutions, like gun control, don’t work.  Given the fundamental essence of human nature, I can’t help but believe that the best of all possible solutions to this problem will not also be a practical one.  Please correct me if you think I’m wrong.

6 comments | posted in Guns

December 15, 2012

The Gun as the Scapegoat

By Greg Linster

My condolences go out to all of those who were affected by the recent Connecticut tragedy, and the recent Chinese tragedy. Of course, most Americans (particularly the ones sharing their opinions about gun control on Facebook) will pay no mention to the latter tragedy (I apologize for being in a rather cynical mood this morning).

Anyway, here are several thoughts that I’ve had related to the two tragedies.

1) Heinous crimes happen even without guns. [1]

2) Accidents happen and gun accidents happen.  Accidental deaths, however, are a silly reason to ban something.  Fact: almost three times as many children drown in bathtubs than die from accidental gun deaths. Should we outlaw bathtubs too? [2]

3) Hypothesis: We’d save more lives in this country by getting rid of McDonalds than we would by getting rid of guns. (HT: Guru Anaerobic).

4) If legally registered guns are the problem, why do we see so few murders at shooting ranges? (Hint: Legal gun owners aren’t the problem.)

5) It appears the American killer was also autistic, are we going to blame guns and Autism, or just guns?

6) I wrote a piece called “Guns & Epistemology” on Rationally Speaking after the Aurora massacre that seems relevant to share. [3]

The commonality behind all massacres is that the individual committing the crime against humanity was mentally ill. It’s easy to blame guns for the problem, but we ought to focus on the real issue here which is how we deal with mentally ill people.  Of course, many people often use times of tragedy to create an emotional case for their irrational beliefs (there’s that cynicism thing again).

Notes:

[1] “Man slashes 22 children near China school”
[2] More Guns, Less Crime
[3] “Guns & Epistemology” 

4 comments | posted in Guns

November 20, 2012

An Open Letter To Generation Y

By Greg Linster

Dear Fellow Gen Y’ers,

With the possible exception of sleeping, most of us will spend more time working than we do any engaging in any other activity.  What should we expect from our work though?  Should we love it?  Should we, dare I say, be passionate about it?  Many amongst us have quixotic answers to these questions.  Unfortunately, our collective optimism towards work may be making us worse off though.

You’ve probably heard this advice at some point in your life: “follow your passion and the money will follow”.  This advice is not only a lie, it’s one of the most pernicious lies I know of.  In fact, I know plenty of people who followed their passion, and guess what — the money didn’t follow.  If you take the time to think about it, most of the swindlers who peddle this type of advice have a passion for helping lost souls find their passion.  It turns out that helping people find their passion is one of the most popular passions amongst us Gen Y’ers.

Until very recently, work was considered an unpleasant necessity — a curse endemic to human existence.  Times have changed and there is now a widespread belief (particularly amongst our peers) that we should be passionate about our work, or crazier yet, we believe that it should make us happy.  Think about this goofy belief for a moment and you’ll quickly realize that a world in which everyone followed their dreams would be a nightmare.  Our lives may not be perfect, but the economic progress that comes from working jobs we aren’t passionate about is what has ironically allowed us the luxury of worrying about finding a job we are passionate about.

Trying to find rewarding and fulfilling work is a noble pursuit, but sometimes there is an economic disconnect between the things we are passionate about and the things we can make money at (this is what hobbies and leisure time are for). What creates value for others doesn’t always generate money, and generating money doesn’t always make you happy.  The trick, I think, is to find some tolerable way of creating value for others that also allows you to get paid.  It may take some time to figure out exactly how to do this, but that is part of what makes life interesting.

So go ahead — follow your passion — but please don’t be disappointed as to where it takes you.  If you do what you love there is a good chance you won’t be compensated all that well.  If you’re okay with that, great, but please don’t complain about how you should be paid more to do something you love.  Also, please remember that nothing sucks the untainted joy out of something like trying to do it for a living.  If your hobby turns into your job you’ll have to find a new hobby and the cycle will continue ad infinitum.

Sincerely,
Greg Linster

P.S. Please read this article too.

 

Comments Off | posted in Work