Your Daily Tao

The models share three common characteristics: First, they simplify, stripping away unnecessary details, abstracting from reality, or creating anew from whole cloth. Second, they formalize, making precise definitions. Models use mathematics, not words. A model might represent beliefs as probability distributions over states of the world or preferences as rankings of alternatives. By simplifying and making precise, they create tractable spaces within which we can work through logic, generate hypotheses, design solutions, and fit data. Models create structures within which we can think logically. As Wittgenstein wrote in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.” The logic will help to explain, predict, communicate, and design. But the logic comes at a cost, which leads to their third characteristic: all models are wrong, as George Box noted. That is true of all models; even the sublime creations of Newton that we refer to as laws hold only at certain scales. Models are wrong because they simplify. They omit details. By considering many models, we can overcome the narrowing of rigor by crisscrossing the landscape of the possible. To rely on a single model is hubris. It invites disaster. To believe that a single equation can explain or predict complex real-world phenomena is to fall prey to the charisma of clean, spare mathematical forms. We should not expect any one model to produce exact numerical predictions of sea levels in 10,000 years or of unemployment rates in 10 months. We need many models to make sense of complex systems. Complex systems like politics, the economy, international relations, or the brain exhibit ever-changing emergent structures and patterns that lie between ordered and random. By definition, complex phenomena are difficult to explain, evolve, or predict.

I’ll be covering some of the interesting excerpts I found in this book. This is a book that mainly covers certain general concepts that we can use when interpreting data, though (from my often faulty memory), don’t really contain anything too specific. Some of the concepts are pretty interesting, and are things that should practice regardless of whether its just about interpreting data or just trying to make sense of what goes on around us.

In this 1st passage, what I think we can takeaway is that like models, we should never let any 1 line of reasoning dominate our thoughts. For instance, having a thought that “You have to be born rich to be rich”. In general, we can always find examples in life that feeds our confirmation bias. For any situation, we’ll only be able to see it in the lens of our original thought (wealth inequality). That is why we need multiple models to assess problems, and be able to see things from different perspectives to avoid falling into the trap of hubris.

In essence, your body knows better than the experts how much salt it needs—and telling someone to restrict their salt intake is akin to telling someone to restrict their water intake when they are thirsty. It just makes no biological sense. So how did this myth get started? Some experts used population data to suggest that salt intake will increase when it is introduced to societies that do not use a lot of salt. Norman K. Hollenberg of Harvard Medical School termed it a “habituation” that can develop with salt intake, similar to what happens with alcohol, tobacco, and coffee, all of which are habit-forming. However, this increased intake does not mean salt is habit-forming—it’s actually evidence that if enough salt is available, people will consume more, but only up to a physiologically determined set point, one that provides ideal health and longevity. Indeed, when salt is freely accessible, people across numerous populations tend to eat an amount that stays within a remarkably narrow range, generally between 3 and 4 grams of sodium per day. When salt is freely available, even animals consume an amount almost exactly proportional to humans’ instinctive intake. This consistency supports the idea of an evolutionary “salt set point” that resides in both humans and animals. Our salt intake is unconsciously controlled by our internal salt thermostat. What may look from the outside like salt “addiction” may actually be a reflection of the flux in salt storage. Interestingly, salt can be stored in the skin—similar to the way a camel stores fat in its hump, but distributed widely and invisibly—via a mechanism that appears to be controlled by certain hormones that are produced within the body. Some have proposed that aldosterone increases those salt stores in the skin, whereas cortisol may deplete those stores. (Recall that aldosterone also helps the body retain salt during salt depletion.) When we aren’t eating enough salt, aldosterone increases, which in turn stores salt in the skin. People who have consumed low-salt diets their entire lives, such as those in primitive societies, automatically switch over to eating more salt once it’s introduced, and the higher salt intake may cause the body to lose some of its salt stores in the skin. The reduced amount of salt in the skin may be a signal to continue to eat the salt in the range of 8 to 10 grams per day. In essence, the fact that certain low-salt-eating people begin to consume more salt once it’s introduced may have nothing to do with salt being addictive—and everything to do with human physiology. They’re simply eating more because those hidden salt stores in the body have gone down because of the increased salt supply in their environment. Also, don’t forget that compared to a low-salt diet, a normal-salt diet seems to place less stress on the body—so instead of the body continuously trying to retain more salt through the chronic activation of salt-retaining hormones (which requires a lot of energy), it can simply get the salt it needs through the diet and not worry about having to reabsorb as much at the kidneys. And let’s face it, why would the body choose to take in less salt if doing so puts more stress on its organs? Indeed, our internal salt thermostat seems to drive us to consume an amount of salt that places the least stress on our body.

The last excerpt from this book. Unlike other substances (like sugar), salt is not something that we can get addicted to. Generally, we tend to consume the amount that is just right for the body. While low-salt populations might increase their salt intake when faced with salt, they generally tend to stop a certain level, indicating that our bodies do have a way to regulate the amount of salt we need.

Eighteen studies, including around four hundred patients, have looked at the effects of sodium restriction on fasting plasma insulin concentrations. In one study of 147 people with normal weight and blood pressure, salt restriction caused increases in insulin, uric acid, LDL, and total cholesterol levels. Fasting insulin was higher in twenty-two of the twenty-seven groups (thirteen statistically significant), unchanged in two, and lower in three (not statistically significant). Egan and colleagues found that low-salt diets increase both fasting and postglucose insulin by about 25 percent compared to high-salt diets, an effect that has been duplicated and confirmed—that is, proven—in many later studies and meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials. Even those few people whose blood pressure might go down on low-salt diets—the “salt-sensitive” among us—experience significant increases in insulin. One of the mechanisms that could be at work here is salt’s ability to actually improve our cells’ ability to use glucose. Animal studies indicate that salt restriction worsens the body’s ability to use glucose correctly while also increasing body weight, body fat, and fatty acid levels. A high salt intake likely increases the glucose transporter GLUT4 in insulin-sensitive tissues and thus allows greater glucose disposal. Indeed, high-salt diets have been found to increase GLUT4 protein in both fat tissue and muscle. This is a good thing, because it allows your body to pull more glucose out of the bloodstream, reducing insulin levels and minimizing the damage that high glucose levels would have on the blood vessels. While a low-salt diet has been shown to impair insulin signaling, a high-salt diet has been proven to enhance insulin signaling. Salt-restriction studies in humans have found adverse effects on glucose and lipid metabolism. One animal study even found that a low-salt diet increased body weight, belly fat, and blood glucose and plasma insulin levels, while it induced insulin resistance in the liver and muscle tissue. Low-salt diets have also been found to increase liver fatty acid synthesis, which can contribute to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), commonly known as “fatty liver,” as well as organ fat storage, compared to a normal salt intake. Researchers found that the activity of brown adipose tissue—the “good fat” that burns calories—was reduced on a low-salt diet, indicating that low-salt diets may lower our basal metabolic rate, and possibly contribute to accelerated aging. Worse, many obese patients begin their weight-loss programs by trying to cut their carbohydrate intake. Cutting carbs causes you to become a “salt waster,” excreting more salt than you would on a more balanced diet, especially when you hit ketosis (near 50 grams of carbohydrates per day or less). Thus, if you are going to cut your carbohydrate intake, you want to increase your salt intake to match the additional salt loss by the kidneys and to help prevent the subsequent rise in insulin levels to compensate for this loss. Sadly, most doctors will pair recommendations to lose weight with recommendations to reduce salt at the same time. But it appears that most people need an additional 2 grams of sodium per day compared to their normal sodium intake during the first week of carbohydrate restriction, and around an additional 1 gram of sodium per day during the second week to match increased salt losses.

In this excerpt, the author talks about how pairing our weight loss efforts by eating clean meals might actually make it harder for ourselves if we intake less salt than we actually need. In fact, your body will require more salt especially if you are taking a low carbs diet (as popular now with fads like the keto diet).

Strangely enough, the first edition of the 1977 Dietary Goals did recommend that we limit our consumption of added sugars to just 15 percent of our total calories, and the second edition trimmed this down further, to just 10 percent of our total caloric intake, for refined and processed sugars. Oh, how many lives might we have saved if that recommendation had resonated more loudly! However, over the subsequent years, the media mainly focused on salt (which hit the cover of TIME in 1982122), cholesterol (TIME, 1984123), and saturated fat (which had already hit TIME magazine in 1961124), and no one was taking the limits on the intake of sugar seriously. Indeed, over the next twenty years, from 1980 until 2000,the Dietary Guidelines for Americans told us that sugar did not cause diabetes or heart disease, despite clear evidence to the contrary. In 1979, a study found that swapping the same number of calories of wheat starch with those of sugar was found to increase fasting insulin and insulin responses to a sugar load. Then, in 1981, Reiser and colleagues published another study showing that when wheat starch was replaced with sugar, even when calories were kept the same, more people eventually developed diabetes/prediabetes. Yet four years after this data was published, the 1985 Dietary Guidelines for Americans stated that “contrary to widespread belief, too much sugar in your diet does not cause diabetes.” This was a direct contradiction to the scientific literature. I’ll be blunt: we were lied to. The sugar industry had other strategies to keep the public naive to the harms of sugar. In the Supplemental Views to the 1977 Dietary Goals, the sugar industry stated, “It should be noted that sucrose (sugar)…does not displace other foods, but rather promotes their consumption. Though often referred to as empty calories, it is really Pure Calories with No Fat and No Cholesterol; it is an ideal energy source as an additive to other protein and nutrient providing foods [emphasis added].” That’s one Jedi-level mind trick right there. By getting people to think of sugar as pure energy, the sugar industry helped create the general notion among the public that sugar was not inherently harmful. All we had to do was burn off the sugar calories, and we could consume as much as we wanted—and it was an appealing story to believe. But, of course, the delusion that sugar calories are not harmful is simply not true: a sugar calorie is harmful, even more harmful than other carbohydrate calories, because of the way the sweet stuff affects insulin levels, brain chemistry, the immune system, inflammation, and many other physiological variables. Fortunately, more and more scientists are beginning to see through the obfuscation and are becoming convinced that sugar is a factor in the development of heart disease and other types of chronic disease. But back then, besides influencing the media and public perception regarding the harms of sugar, the sugar industry was undoubtedly also significantly swaying the scientific literature.

Interesting how that there was a time when the official dietary guidelines of America did not discourage sugar consumption when it is almost universally accepted now that sugar is bad for you. Also, this is a good example of how corporate interests and corporate backed research can influence public perception of what is good for them, even if it wasn’t based on fact.

The stringent low-salt guidelines were based on a guess: we essentially gambled that the small benefits to blood pressure that we see in some patients would extend to large benefits for the whole population. And while taking that gamble, we glossed over the most important point: why salt may increase blood pressure in some people but not in others. Had we focused on that, we would’ve realized that fixing the underlying issue—which has nothing to do with eating too much salt—completely fixes one’s “salt sensitivity.” We also presumed that blood pressure, a fleeting measurement known to fluctuate depending on many health factors, was always impacted by salt. And because of that baseless certainty, we presumed that overconsumption of salt would logically result in dire health outcomes, such as strokes and heart attacks. Our mistake came from taking such a small sample of people—unethically small!—and wildly extrapolating their benefits from low-salt eating without ever mentioning the risks. Instead, we focused on those extremely minuscule reductions in blood pressure, completely disregarding the numerous other health risks caused by low salt intake—including several side effects that actually magnify our risk of heart disease—such as increased heart rate; compromised kidney function and adrenal insufficiency; hypothyroidism; higher triglyceride, cholesterol, and insulin levels; and, ultimately, insulin resistance, obesity, and type 2 diabetes. Perhaps most illustrative of this willful disregard for risk is the case of heart rate. Heart rate is proven to increase on a low-salt diet. This harmful effect occurs in nearly everyone who restricts his or her salt intake. Although this effect is documented more thoroughly in the medical literature, no food ad or dietary guideline says, “A low-salt diet can increase your risk of elevated heart rate.” And what has a bigger impact on your health: a one-point reduction in blood pressure or a four-beat-per-minute increase in heart rate? (In chapter 4, I’ll take a closer look at what these metrics mean and I’ll let you decide.) If our bodies allowed us to isolate each of these risks, we might be able to say for certain that one or another is most important. But when you combine all of the known dangers of salt restriction, it’s easy to see that the harms far outweigh any possible benefits. In other words, we’ve focused on just one metric that might change with a low-salt diet—blood pressure—but completely disregarded all the other harmful effects in the process.

One of the more contentious books in recent times that goes against the grain of what is conventional wisdom. Essentially, the main premise of this book is that salt is not as bad as we think it is for our health, and that sugar does way more harm. There has been many back-and-forth between health experts on this book on online forums and proves how complex nutrition is, and how each of us can react to nutrition in different ways.

In this excerpt, the main idea that the author is trying to convey is that demonisation of salt mainly came from a rather tenuous effect, on how reducing sodium lead to small decreases in blood pressure. The conclusion that salt is bad for you was drawn based on this, and other factors were ignored.

On these and many other issues, we think student protesters are on the “right side of history,” and we support their goals. But if activists embrace the equal-outcomes form of social justice—if they interpret all deviations from population norms as evidence of systemic bias—then they will get drawn into endless and counterproductive campaigns, even against people who share their goals. Along the way, they will reinforce the bad mental habits that we have described throughout the book. Instead, we urge students to treat deviations from population norms as invitations to investigate further. Is the deviation present in the pipeline or applicant pool for the job? If so, then look at the beginning of the pipeline more than at the end of it, and be willing to entertain the possibility that people of different genders and people from different cultures may have different preferences. Focus as much on procedural justice as on distributive: Are people in all identity groups treated with equal dignity? The answer to that question might be no in an organization that has achieved statistical equality, and it might be yes in an organization in which some groups are underrepresented. Be clear about what end states matter and why. As long as activists keep their eyes on the two components of intuitive justice that all of us carry in our minds—distributive and procedural—they will apply their efforts where they are likely to do the most good, and they will win more widespread support along the way.

The final excerpt I’ll be sharing from this book. An interesting thing for me was the call on to focus as much on procedural justice as on distributive. Sometimes, fair procedures can lead to unequal outcomes. Other times, unfair procedures can lead to equal outcomes. Is one necessarily more “right” than the other? But its important for us to consider both aspects and take a more extensive view on the process for social justice.

For example, a study of 7,500 German households found that people who had sex more than four times a week earned 3.2% more than people who had sex only once a week. Sexual frequency and paycheck are correlated (slightly), but why? What’s the causal path? An article about the study that was published at Gawker.com featured this headline: MORE BUCK FOR YOUR BANG: PEOPLE WHO HAVE MORE SEX MAKE THE MOST MONEY. The headline suggested that A (sex) causes B (money), which is surely the best causal path to choose if your goal is to entice people to click on your article. But any social scientist presented with that correlation would instantly wonder about reverse causation (does having more money cause people to have more sex?) and would then move on to a third-variable explanation, which in this case seems to be the correct one. The Gawker story itself noted that people who are more extraverted have more sex and also make more money. In this case, a third variable, C (extraversion, or high sociability) may cause both A (more sex) and B (more money). Social scientists analyze correlations like this constantly (to the great annoyance of friends and family). They are self-appointed conversation referees, throwing a yellow penalty flag when anyone tries to interpret a correlation as evidence of causation. But a funny thing has been happening in recent years on campus. Nowadays, when someone points to an outcome gap and makes the claim (implicitly or explicitly) that the gap itself is evidence of systemic injustice, social scientists often just nod along with everyone else in the room. An outcome gap is a kind of correlation. But if someone quotes from a study or otherwise asserts that one group is overrepresented in a job category or that there is a gap in pay, often the implication is that being a member of one group caused members of that group to be preferentially hired or to be paid more. It would indeed be evidence of improper or illegal discrimination if there were no other reason for the outcome gap aside from group membership. For example, if someone notes that computer programmers at elite tech firms are mostly male, often the implication is that being male caused those employees to be more likely to be hired or promoted, which is obviously unjust if there are no other differences between male and female computer programmers. But are there other differences? Are there other causal pathways? If you suggest an alternative explanation for the gap, others may take you to be saying that the problem is not as severe as the speaker believes it is—and if anyone in the room is displeased by that suggestion, then you may be accused of committing a microaggression (specifically a “micro-invalidation”). If your alternative hypothesis includes the speculation that there could be differences in some underlying factor, some input that is relevant to the outcome (for example, a sex difference in how much men or women enjoy sports or computer programming), then you may be violating a serious taboo. In an article titled “The Psychology of the Unthinkable,” social psychologist Philip Tetlock calls this the use of “forbidden base rates.” But if this kind of thinking is forbidden and social scientists don’t work as hard to challenge the theories that are politically favored, then “institutionalized disconfirmation,” the process of challenging and testing ideas, breaks down. If professors and students are hesitant to raise alternative explanations for outcome gaps, then theories about those gaps may harden into orthodoxy. Ideas may be accepted not because they are true but because the politically dominant group wants them to be true in order to promote its preferred narrative and preferred set of remedies.At that point, backed by the passion and certainty of activists, flawed academic theories may get carried out of the academy and be applied in high schools, corporations, and other organizations. Unfortunately, when reformers try to intervene in complex institutions using theories that are based on a flawed or incomplete understanding of the causal forces at work, their reform efforts are unlikely to do any good—and might even make things worse.

Headlines asserting correlations as causation will end up only confounding the issue and mislead the conversation about how to actually solve issues. In this excerpt, the authors state that one of the biggest issues is how it the environment in campuses and schools might make it difficult for alternative theories to be proposed. And while we all might want to do good, we need to be able to take a critical eye to explore all alternative theories to illuminate the path for better outcomes.

Citizens of a democracy don’t suddenly develop this art on their eighteenth birthday. It takes many years to cultivate these skills, which overlap with the ones that Peter Gray maintains are learned during free play. Of greatest importance in free play is that it is always voluntary; anyone can quit at any time and disrupt the activity, so children must pay close attention to the needs and concerns of others if they want to keep the game going. They must work out conflicts over fairness on their own; no adult can be called upon to side with one child against another. Horwitz points out that when adult-supervised activities crowd out free play, children are less likely to develop the art of association: Denying children the freedom to explore on their own takes away important learning opportunities that help them to develop not just independence and responsibility, but a whole variety of social skills that are central to living with others in a free society. If this argument is correct, parenting strategies and laws that make it harder for kids to play on their own pose a serious threat to liberal societies by flipping our default setting from “figure out how to solve this conflict on your own” to “invoke force and/or third parties whenever conflict arises.” This is one of the “vulnerabilities of democracies” noted by Vincent Ostrom. The consequences for democracies could be dire, particularly for a democracy such as the United States, which is already suffering from ever-rising cross-party hostility and declining trust in institutions. Here is what Horwitz fears could be in store: A society that weakens children’s ability to learn these skills denies them what they need to smooth social interaction. The coarsening of social interaction that will result will create a world of more conflict and violence, and one in which people’s first instinct will be increasingly to invoke coercion by other parties to solve problems they ought to be able to solve themselves.

The benefits of free play. The central idea on how unsupervised, free play can be favourable to a child’s development is that it mimics our real life social and workplace situations to a certain degree. Kids will need to learn how to resolve conflicts on their own, dealing with inclusiveness and just knowing how to be amicable in general. As we all know, smooth social skills brings you much further along rather than just only being competent at your job.

Of special importance, the combination of helicopter parenting, fears for children’s safety, and the allure of screens means that members of iGen spend much less time than previous generations did going out with friends while unsupervised by an adult. The bottom line is that when members of iGen arrived on campus, beginning in the fall of 2013, they had accumulated less unsupervised time and fewer offline life experiences than had any previous generation. As Twenge puts it, “18-year-olds now act like 15-year-olds used to, and 13-year-olds like 10-year-olds. Teens are physically safer than ever, yet they are more mentally vulnerable.” Most of these trends are showing up across social classes, races, and ethnicities. Members of iGen, therefore, may not (on average) be as ready for college as were eighteen-year-olds of previous generations. This might explain why college students are suddenly asking for more protection and adult intervention in their affairs and interpersonal conflicts. The second major generational change is a rapid rise in rates of anxiety and depression. We created three graphs below using the same data that Twenge reports in iGen. The graphs are straightforward and tell a shocking story.

Studies of mental illness have long shown that girls have higher rates of depression and anxiety than boys do. The differences are small or nonexistent before puberty, but they increase at the start of puberty. The gap between adolescent girls and boys was fairly steady in the early 2000s, but beginning around 2011, it widened as the rate for girls grew rapidly. By 2016, as you can see in Figure 7.1, roughly one out of every five girls reported symptoms that met the criteria for having experienced a major depressive episode in the previous year. The rate for boys went up, too, but more slowly (from 4.5% in 2011 to 6.4% in 2016). Have things really changed so much for teenagers just in the last seven years? Maybe Figure 7.1 merely reflects changes in diagnostic criteria? Perhaps the bar has been lowered for giving out diagnoses of depression, and maybe that’s a good thing, if more people now get help? Perhaps, but lowering the bar for diagnosis and encouraging more people to use the language of therapy and mental illness are likely to have some negative effects, too. Applying labels to people can create what is called a looping effect: it can change the behavior of the person being labeled and become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is part of why labeling is such a powerful cognitive distortion. If depression becomes part of your identity, then over time you’ll develop corresponding schemas about yourself and your prospects (I’m no good and my future is hopeless). These schemas will make it harder for you to marshal the energy and focus to take on challenges that, if you were to master them, would weaken the grip of depression. We are not denying the reality of depression. We would never tell depressed people to just “toughen up” and get over it—Greg knows firsthand how unhelpful that would be. Rather, we are saying that lowering the bar (or encouraging “concept creep”) in applying mental health labels may increase the number of people who suffer.

Depression rates and mental disorders in teenagers have increased. In this book, the author(s) speculate, based on the correlation, that a lot of this increase can be attributed to both helicopter parenting + the increase in use of mobile devices for our children. The lack of unsupervised experiences when young might cause a generation to be unprepared and inadequate when dealing with the social issues when they get into college and the workforce.

Morgan is certainly right that it was mostly white males who set up the educational system and founded nearly all the universities in the United States. Most of those schools once excluded women and people of color. But does that mean that women and people of color should think of themselves as “colonized populations” today? Would doing so empower them, or would it encourage an external locus of control? Would it make them more or less likely to engage with their teachers and readings, work hard, and benefit from their time in school? More generally, what will happen to the thinking of students who are trained to see everything in terms of intersecting bipolar axes where one end of each axis is marked “privilege” and the other is “oppression”? Since “privilege” is defined as the “power to dominate” and to cause “oppression,” these axes are inherently moral dimensions. The people on top are bad, and the people below the line are good. This sort of teaching seems likely to encode the Untruth of Us Versus Them directly into students’ cognitive schemas: Life is a battle between good people and evil people. Furthermore, there is no escaping the conclusion as to who the evil people are. The main axes of oppression usually point to one intersectional address: straight white males. An illustration of this way of thinking happened at Brown University in November of 2015, when students stormed the president’s office and presented their list of demands to her and the provost (the chief academic officer, generally considered the second-highest post). At one point in the video of the confrontation, the provost, a white man, says, “Can we just have a conversation about—?” but he is interrupted by shouts of “No!” and students’ finger snaps. One protester offers this explanation for cutting him off: “The problem they are having is that heterosexual white males have always dominated the space.” The provost then points out that he himself is gay. The student stutters a bit but continues on, undeterred by the fact that Brown University was led by a woman and a gay man: “Well, homosexual . . . it doesn’t matter . . . white males are at the top of the hierarchy.” In short, as a result of our long evolution for tribal competition, the human mind readily does dichotomous, us-versus-them thinking. If we want to create welcoming, inclusive communities, we should be doing everything we can to turn down the tribalism and turn up the sense of common humanity. Instead, some theoretical approaches used in universities today may be hyperactivating our ancient tribal tendencies, even if that was not the intention of the professor. Of course, some individuals truly are racist, sexist, or homophobic, and some institutions are, too, even when the people who run them mean well, if they end up being less welcoming to members of some groups. We favor teaching students to recognize a variety of kinds of bigotry and bias as an essential step toward reducing them. Intersectionality can be taught skillfully, as Crenshaw does in her TED Talk. It can be used to promote compassion and reveal injustices not previously seen. Yet somehow, many college students today seem to be adopting a different version of intersectional thinking and are embracing the Untruth of Us Versus Them.

Humans are generally drawn to tribalism, and drawing arbitrary lines between us vs them. Its one of the explanation for how we have survived, as people whom are willing to sacrifice and bond in their group identities were able to outlast those whom were not. With that natural instinct, we have to be careful not to accept dichotomous thinking too readily.