September 20 Homework #6: Read Jason Brennan’s “Can epistocracy, or knowledge-based voting, fix democracy?” and write a 3-paragraph essay that identifies possible objections to Brennan’s thesis.
September 25 Peer Edit for Essay #2.
September 27 Essay #2 is due on turnitin.
Homework Check for #4 and #5
Homework #4: Read “This Is Your Brain on Gluten” by James Hamblin and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains why author David Perlmutter is engaging in false claims to promote his ideas and bestselling books. Homework #5: Read Alexandra Sifferlin's "The Weight Loss Trap" and explain why it is so difficult to lose weight and keep it off. We will also read Harriet Brown's "The Weight of the Evidence."
Essay #2 Due 9-27-18
Minimum of 2 sources for your MLA Works Cited page.
Option A
In the context of the Netflix documentary Dirty Money, Episode #2, "Payday," write an argumentative essay that answers the question: Were Scott Tucker and his associates fairly prosecuted or did the government overreach its powers and exact unjust punishment on these allegedly greedy businessmen? Be sure to have a counterargument section. For your sources, you can use the documentary, the Vulture review, and the Atlantic review.
Option B
In the context of James Hamblin’s “This Is Your Brain on Gluten,” write an essay that addresses the claim that David Perlmutter is engaging in flawed critical thinking to persuade his readers to follow overreaching promises about his nutrition regiment.
Option C
In the context of Alexandra Sifferlin's "The Weight Loss Trap" and Harriet Brown's "The Weight of the Evidence," develop a thesis that addresses the claim that going on a diet is too futile and harmful and that we should give up on the idea of dieting altogether.
Option D
In the context of Jason Brennan’s “Can epistocracy, or knowledge-based voting, fix democracy?”, support, defend, or complicate the claim that an epistocracy is superior to democracy as we currently know it.
Option E
Addressing the complexities and moral contradictions contained in Larissa MacFarquhar’s YouTube presentation “Understanding Extreme Altruism” ( a thumbnail sketch of her book Strangers Drowning), develop an argumentative thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates Peter Singer’s Drowning Child Moral Imperative as he lays it out in “The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle. ” Singer’s Drowning Child analogy is also used in his essay “What Should a Billionaire Give--and What Should You?”
Schedule to Essay 2
September 13 Essay #1 is due on turnitin. No hard copy required. No homework today. We will read Peter Singer's essay "The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle" and watch a Larissa MacFarquhar video "Understanding Extreme Altruism" for the following essay option:
Addressing the complexities and moral contradictions contained in Larissa MacFarquhar’s YouTube presentation “Understanding Extreme Altruism” ( a thumbnail sketch of her book Strangers Drowning), develop an argumentative thesis that supports, refutes, or complicates Peter Singer’s Drowning Child Moral Imperative as he lays it out in “The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle. ” Singer’s Drowning Child analogy is also used in his essay “What Should a Billionaire Give--and What Should You?”
You can also watch Netflix documentary Dirty Money, Episode #2, “Payday.” You have two homework assignments, numbers 4 and 5, due on the next class because there is no homework today.
September 18 Homework #4: Read “This Is Your Brain on Gluten” by James Hamblin and write a 3-paragraph essay that explains why author David Perlmutter is engaging in false claims to promote his ideas and bestselling books. Homework #5: Read Alexandra Sifferlin's "The Weight Loss Trap" and explain why it is so difficult to lose weight and keep it off. We will also read Harriet Brown's "The Weight of the Evidence."
September 20 Homework #6: Read Jason Brennan’s “Can epistocracy, or knowledge-based voting, fix democracy?” and write a 3-paragraph essay that identifies possible objections to Brennan’s thesis.
September 25 Peer Edit for Essay #2.
Ethos, Logos, Pathos: The 3 Pillars of Argument
Adapted from Diana Hacker's Rules for Writers, Eighth Edition (99)
Ethos
Ethos is an ethical appeal based on writer's character, knowledge, authority, savvy, book smarts, and streets smarts. The latter is evidenced by author's savvy in using appropriate, not pretentious language to appeal to her readers.
Ethos is further achieved through confidence, humility, and command of language and subject.
Confidence without humility is not confidence; it is bluster, bombast, and braggadocio, elements that diminish logos.
Real confidence is mastery, detailed, granular, in-depth knowledge of the topic at hand and acknowledgment of possible limitations and errors in one's conclusions.
Ethos is further established by using credible sources that are peer-reviewed.
Logos
Logos is establishing a reasonable, logical argument, appealing to reader's sense of logic, relying on credible evidence, using inductive and deductive reasoning, and exposing logical fallacies.
Logos is further achieved by using sources that are timely, up to date, current, and relevant.
To strengthen logos, the writer considers opposing views, concedes where those opposing views might diminish the claim, and make appropriate rebuttals to counterarguments.
Pathos
Pathos is achieved by appealing to reader's emotions, moral sense, and moral beliefs.
Pathos gets away from the brain and toward the gut. It makes a visceral appeal.
Appropriate pathos uses emotion in a way that supports and reinforces the evidence. It does not manipulate and use smokescreens that depart from the evidence.
Option B
In the context of James Hamblin’s “This Is Your Brain on Gluten,” write an essay that addresses the claim that David Perlmutter is engaging in flawed critical thinking to persuade his readers to follow overreaching promises about his nutrition regiment.
Option C
In the context of Alexandra Sifferlin's "The Weight Loss Trap" and Harriet Brown's "The Weight of the Evidence," develop a thesis that addresses the claim that going on a diet is too futile and harmful and that we should give up on the idea of dieting altogether.
Excerpt from "This Is Your Brain on Gluten" by James Hamblin
The link appears in my inbox. The sender is David, sans title or surname.
“You write about not just Alzheimer’s, but also anxiety, depression, chronic headaches, ADHD, etc. How do you see carbs and gluten fitting into so many different pathologies?”
“The biggest issue by far is that carbohydrates are absolutely at the cornerstone of all of our major degenerative conditions,” he says. “That includes things like Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and even cancers. What we know is that even mild elevations in blood sugar are strongly related to developing Alzheimer’s disease. That was published August 8, 2013, in the New England Journal of Medicine. Even mild elevations in blood sugar compromise brain structure and lead to shrinkage of the brain. That’s what our most well-respected, peer-reviewed journals are telling us.”
The New England Journal of Medicine article appears in my inbox, in which researchers conclude, “Our results suggest that higher glucose levels may be a risk factor for dementia, even among persons without diabetes.”
“So, we control our blood sugar based on, oddly enough, our food choices,” Perlmutter says. “Who knew? We need a low-carbohydrate diet that decreases your risk for diabetes, which will double your risk for Alzheimer’s. It’s really very straightforward. The empowering part of that is this is what our most well-respected science is telling us. It’s been kept from us. We’ve been basically told, do whatever in the heck you want. Eat whatever you like. Then you’ll have a magic pill that we’re going to develop for you to treat all of your maladies. That doesn’t exist for Alzheimer’s disease.”
I was getting twinges of conspiracy. Who is keeping this from us? I asked him if everyone should be off gluten.
The link appears in my inbox. The sender is David, sans title or surname.
“You write about not just Alzheimer’s, but also anxiety, depression, chronic headaches, ADHD, etc. How do you see carbs and gluten fitting into so many different pathologies?”
“The biggest issue by far is that carbohydrates are absolutely at the cornerstone of all of our major degenerative conditions,” he says. “That includes things like Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and even cancers. What we know is that even mild elevations in blood sugar are strongly related to developing Alzheimer’s disease. That was published August 8, 2013, in the New England Journal of Medicine. Even mild elevations in blood sugar compromise brain structure and lead to shrinkage of the brain. That’s what our most well-respected, peer-reviewed journals are telling us.”
The New England Journal of Medicine article appears in my inbox, in which researchers conclude, “Our results suggest that higher glucose levels may be a risk factor for dementia, even among persons without diabetes.”
“So, we control our blood sugar based on, oddly enough, our food choices,” Perlmutter says. “Who knew? We need a low-carbohydrate diet that decreases your risk for diabetes, which will double your risk for Alzheimer’s. It’s really very straightforward. The empowering part of that is this is what our most well-respected science is telling us. It’s been kept from us. We’ve been basically told, do whatever in the heck you want. Eat whatever you like. Then you’ll have a magic pill that we’re going to develop for you to treat all of your maladies. That doesn’t exist for Alzheimer’s disease.”
I was getting twinges of conspiracy. Who is keeping this from us? I asked him if everyone should be off gluten.
That study didn’t appear in my inbox. I asked him for it later, and he promptly sent me a 2006 case series that identified 13 patients in a review of Mayo Clinic records from January 1, 1970, to December 31, 2005. That is an interesting correlation—the study’s authors called it a “possible association”—but is far from well-established causation that gluten is a mechanism for dementia in people with celiac disease, much less all people.
“So, we have data from celiac disease patients that gluten is the mechanism for dementia?”
“We have absolute data from Dr. Hadjivassiliou that I’ve just sent to you that indicates, as a matter of fact, definite cognitive issues in patients who do not have celiac disease, but simply have gluten sensitivity. That information is well established in the literature and has been there for a long time.”
Hadjivassiliou has documented correlations between neurologic symptoms and the presence of gluten antibody patterns “similar to those seen in celiac disease.” He also wrote in a “Personal View” published in The Lancet Neurologyin 2010, “Celiac disease, or gluten-sensitive enteropathy, is only one aspect of a range of possible manifestations of gluten sensitivity.” He believes neurologic symptoms are a largely unrecognized manifestation.
“If all of this has been around for such a long time and is well established in the literature,” I say, “Why again do you think we’re seeing this massive interest in your book?”
“I’m sure many other books have hinted around it. I think Dr. William Davis’ wonderful book Wheat Belly kind of mentioned the brain a little. This is the first book that has really put it all together specifically in terms of brain issues.”
Conspiracy
A November appearance on Fox & Friends is emblematic of the tonality of much of Perlmutter’s press tour. It begins with incredulity from the host: “We have been lied to.”
“People have been fed this notion that they can do whatever they want,” Perlmutter told me. “Live their lives come what may, and then suddenly when you find yourself walking into a room and you can’t remember why, or you lost your keys or forgot your WiFi password or whatever that there’s going to be some kind of pharmaceutical fix for that. It doesn’t exist. It’s not even anywhere close. The traction of this book is because people are learning that, and they want to get a second chance. You can grow back your memory center. You can get new cells in your brain. It’s a revolutionary idea. The book tells you exactly how to grow new brain cells.”
Who wouldn’t want to grow new brain cells? The study he sent me to substantiate this claim was published in Neurology, the specialty’s preeminent journal. The Berlin-based researchers concluded that even in people without diabetes, “chronically higher blood glucose levels exert a negative influence on cognition, possibly mediated by structural changes in learning-relevant brain areas. Therefore, strategies aimed at lowering glucose levels even in the normal range may beneficially influence cognition in the older population.” They assess this appropriately as “a hypothesis to be examined in future interventional trials.”
“This isn’t just for the elderly,” Perlmutter continued seamlessly. “There are 6.5 million children in America carrying a diagnosis of ADHD. Two-thirds of them are receiving mind-altering medications, the long-term consequences of which we do not understand. Yet we fully understand that dietary choices have a huge role to play in how the brain works. Specifically in terms of risk for ADHD. That’s the kind of stuff that no one is willing to talk about. People are desperate for the other side of the story.”
“I find the whole thing a little bit sad, to be honest with you,” Katz told me. “In several ways. Beginning with the fact that I actually like Dr. Perlmutter. He does some really interesting and innovative work in the area of neurodegenerative diseases. He’s cutting edge and is doing stuff that’s a little bit out there. But he generally does this carefully and has actually provided some useful guidance we’ve applied in my own clinic; and I have a longstanding relationship with him—or at least his clinic—and we’ve corresponded and I generally think very highly of him. So I find it sad to be in a position to say that I think so much of his book is a whole bunch of nonsense.”
Katz paused.
“Now, he’s absolutely right that we eat too much sugar and white bread. The rest of the story, though, is one just completely made up to support a hypothesis. And that’s not a good way to do science.”
This launches the discussion of what science is—the critical point that confronts every mainstream media health and science writer. Most recently and famously we have heard about it in criticism of the works of Malcolm Gladwell and Jonah Lehrer (outside of the latter’s self-plagiarism debacle). The law of good science is that you can’t say “I’ve got an idea and I’m going to fall in love with it and selectively cite evidence to support it.”
“You’re only being a good scientist,” Katz said, “if you say, ‘I’m going to try to read the literature in as unbiased a manner as I possibly can, see where it leads me, and then offer the advice that I have based on that view from an altitude.’ I don’t see that going on here, and again, I think it’s kind of sad because I think the public is being misled.”
“I also find it sad that because his book is filled with a whole bunch of nonsense, that’s why it’s a bestseller; that’s why we’re talking. Because that’s how you get on the bestseller list. You promise the moon and stars, you say everything you heard before was wrong, and you blame everything on one thing. You get a scapegoat; it’s classic. Atkins made a fortune with that formula. We’ve got Rob Lustig saying it’s all fructose; we’ve got T. Colin Campbell [author of The China Study, a formerly bestselling book] saying it’s all animal food; we now have Perlmutter saying it’s all grain. There’s either a scapegoat or a silver bullet in almost every bestselling diet book.”
The recurring formula is apparent: Tell readers it’s not their fault. Blame an agency; typically the pharmaceutical industry or U.S. government, but also possibly the medical establishment. Alluding to the conspiracy vaguely will suffice. Offer a simple solution. Cite science and mainstream research when applicable; demonize it when it is not.
“It makes me sad that somebody like you is going to reach out to me, so you can get what I’d like to think are sensible comments about a silly book. If you write a sensible book, which I did—it’s called Disease Proof , and it’s about what it really takes to be healthy, brain and body—nobody wants to talk about that. It has much less sex appeal. The whole thing is sad.”
The Worst That Could Happen
Perlmutter is not new to practicing medicine. He talks again and again about experiences seeing patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, or fielding questions from children of patients about what they can do to protect themselves. Years of saying, “I fix this” and conceding there’s little that can be done—that prospect was the reason many of my classmates did not go into neurology. At the end of our interview, Perlmutter mentioned that his elderly father has Alzheimer’s disease.
“5.4 million of us [in the U.S.] have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. That turns out to be a lot of influence on the rest of us. Our parents, our loved ones are getting this more and more frequently, and people are so concerned that they’re going to end up like mom or dad. You know, I’m dealing with this every single day. Virtually every day, children of a patient will say “I don’t want to end up like that. What can I do? Now the book provides those answers.”
Having talked to all of these people and read their work, here is how I walk away from this. Oxidative stress will increasingly be the target of medical treatments and preventive diets. We’ll hear more about the role of blood sugar in Alzheimer’s and continue to focus on moderating intake of refined carbohydrates. The consensus remains that too much LDL is bad for you. We do not have reason to believe that gluten is bad for most people. It does cause reactive symptoms in some people. Peanuts can kill some people, but that does not mean they are bad for everyone. I agree with Katz that the diets consistently shown to have good long-term health outcomes—both mental and physical—include whole grains and fruits, and are not nearly as high in fat as what Perlmutter proposes.
I hope people don’t give up on nutrition science because there is a sense that no one agrees on anything. An outlier comes shouting along every year with a new diet bent on changing our entire perspective, and it’s all the talk. That can leave us with a sense that no one is to be believed. The scientific community on the whole is not as capricious as the bestseller list might make it seem.
When a person advocates radical change on the order of eliminating one of the three macronutrient groups from our diets, the burden of proof should be enormous. Everything you know is not wrong. Perlmutter has interesting ideas that I would love to believe. I’d love it if a diet could deliver all that he promises. There is value in belief. It's what the Empowering Neurologist literally markets. His narrative comes with the certainty that you are doing something to save yourself from cognitive decline and mental illness, which are probably the most unsettling of disease prospects.
With that belief can also come guilt and blame; an idea that something simple could’ve been done to prevent a mental illness, when actually it was bigger than us. To think that every time you eat any kind of carb or gluten, you are putting your mental health and cognitive faculties at risk is, to me, less empowering than paralyzing.
Empowerment comes in many forms. It is important to believe you’re doing what’s right.
"Why Diets Fail" on Netflix
See Netflix Explained: Why Diets Fail and linked to Vox.
Sample Essay That Responds to Option C
The High Failure Rate of Dieting Is No Excuse
Stuck at 220 pounds for nearly four weeks, my Inner Fat Man was whispering in my ear, “Give up, dude. Game over. Your metabolism is adapting to your sugar- and gluten-deprived diet. Your metabolism is essentially shutting down. It’s a protest, dude. Don’t you see? Your body is telling you and your diet to go to hell. But no need to feel ashamed. Over ninety-five percent of dieters regain all their weight and get even fatter. Just surrender and admit you’re in the Fat Man Club.”
My Inner Fat Man had a point. The odds were against me. All the research showed that my body would eventually rebel and make my Fat Man triumph over my attempt at gaining control of my tendency toward fatness with all of its related health catastrophes.
Writing for Time, Alexandra Sifferlin in her article “The Weight Loss Trap: Why Your Diet Isn’t Working” describes the findings of scientist Kevin Hall, who doing research for the National Institute of Health, studied the reality-show The Biggest Loser to see if the contestants’ successful weight loss could be studied to help the population at large. Their weight loss was dramatic. Hall observed that on average they lost 127 pounds each, about 64% of their bodyweight. But Hall soon discovered that transferring the rigid training and dieting to the real world was not a realistic proposition. Sifferlin writes:
What he didn’t expect to learn was that even when the conditions for weight loss are TV-perfect–with a tough but motivating trainer, telegenic doctors, strict meal plans and killer workouts–the body will, in the long run, fight like hell to get that fat back. Over time, 13 of the 14 contestants Hall studied gained, on average, 66% of the weight they’d lost on the show, and four were heavier than they were before the competition.
Like other studies I’ve read, people who go on weight-loss programs do indeed lose the weight, but they always gain it back and even get heavier. But worse, after they soar to an even fatter version of themselves before they went on a diet, their metabolism is set at a lower speed, so they’re worse off than before. As Sifferlin explains Kevin Hall’s research,
As demoralizing as his initial findings were, they weren’t altogether surprising: more than 80% of people with obesity who lose weight gain it back. That’s because when you lose weight, your resting metabolism (how much energy your body uses when at rest) slows down–possibly an evolutionary holdover from the days when food scarcity was common.
With research like this, we can see why any reasonable person would conclude that dieting is not only futile but self-destructive. Driving this point home, Syracuse University journalism professor Harriet Brown in her Slate article “The Weight of the Evidence,” beseeches the 45 million Americans who go on a diet every year to not do so. She warns: “You’ll likely lose weight in the short term, but your chance of keeping if off for five years or more is about the same as your chance of surviving metastatic lung cancer: 5 percent. And when you do gain back the weight, everyone will blame you. Including you.”
In agreement with Harriet Brown is Sandra Aamodt, author of Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession with Weight Loss. Aamodt cites studies that show the overwhelming majority of dieters get fatter and mess up their metabolism, making them even more vulnerable to obesity. All one can do is let go of society’s unrealistic body images, eat sensibly, exercise, stop weighing oneself, and let the chips fall where they may.
I will concede that these intelligent writers make a strong case for not dieting and for not embarking on a fool’s errand to aspire to society’s unrealistic slender body images.
However, I find their arguments that we are doomed to fail to lose and keep our weight off ultimately unconvincing. High failure rates of anything don’t impress me because I am a disciple of Sturgeon’s Law, the belief that over 90% of everything is crap.
Sturgeon’s Law dictates that over 90% of aspiring novelists write crappy novels. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to discourage one of my brilliant students from becoming a novelist.
Sturgeon’s Law dictates that 90% of books that are published today aren’t even real books. They’re just gussied-up, padded short stories and essays masquerading as books. But that doesn’t mean I don’t search for literary gems.
Sturgeon’s Law dictates that if you’re part of the dating scene, over 90% of the people you’re dating are emotional dumpster fires, unctuous charlatans, and incorrigible sociopaths. But that doesn’t you can’t eventually find through dating a legit human being for whom you find true love.
Sturgeon’s Law dictates that over 90% of marriages are cesspools of misery, toxicity, and dysfunction. But that doesn’t mean that I would discourage two people who are both well-grounded with strong moral convictions, sincere motivations, and a realistic grasp of what is in store for them to not marry each other.
Sturgeon’s Law dictates that most home-improvement contractors are hacks, fugitives, pathological liars, and snake-tongued mountebanks. But that doesn’t mean you don’t bust your butt looking for a solid referral to find a credible contractor who will redo your kitchen.
I could go on. The point is that if you are looking to do something that is exceptional and long-lasting, you are going to have to commit yourself to hard study and hard work. You’re also going to have to endure a lot of trial and error. Since Sturgeon’s Law dictates that over 90% of people don’t do the necessary groundwork for embarking on any project in a worthwhile manner, then you’re not surprisingly going to have a high failure rate in the realm of dieting.
What we must do to be successful is not point to the high failure rate as an excuse for our own failures, as our Inner Fat Person is want to do. What we must do is study the small amount of successful people and analyze their methods of excellence. There are powerful, life-changing books on this subject. One helpful example is Malcolm Gladwell’s The Outliers: The Story of Success, which propounds the 10,000 Hour Rule, the principle that you need a minimum of 10,000 hours of concentrated work to achieve a base level of competence in your craft. Other books that help us study the methods of success come from Georgetown computer science professor Cal Newport. He has written Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World and So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love. In both both books, Newport advocates a “craftsman mindset,” in which you achieving mastery in a craft through “deep work.” This mastery is rare and therefore highly marketable and valuable. But only people who have the fortitude, commitment, and proper habits of “deep work,” performing long chunks of focused work on their craft, rise to the top. Newport argues that this kind of achievement is exceptional and therefore highly prized.
Of course it is. Sturgeon’s Law dictates that this be so.
When we look at everything through the prism of Sturgeon’s Law, we see we have no excuses for our failures, including our diet failures.
Studying failures is not an excuse for failure. Studying failures is a warning for us not to follow the footsteps of those who fail. Once we’ve examined the don’ts of the failures, then we must study the dos of the successes.
To find how to be successful at killing our Inner Fat Person, we can return to Alexandra Sifferlin’s essay “The Weight Loss Trap.” Sifferlin points out that there are some people, over 10,000 in fact, who successfully lose their weight. Their success is recorded in The National Weight Control Registry, headed by Brown University professor Rena Wing and obesity researcher James O. Hill from the University of Colorado. To be a member of the registry, one has to have lost 30 pounds and have kept it off for at least a year. Registry members don’t all stick to one diet. They have different diets, but the one common denominator is that whatever diet they’re on, the new diet is making them mindful of what they’re putting in their mouth. They also exercise regularly. So against the odds, thousands of people are losing and keeping their weight off.
What separates the successful dieters from the failures is consistency, mindfulness of what they’re eating, and a realistic approach so that they don’t get discouraged and burned out over the long-haul.
Another success factor is to find a reliable mentor, either a person you know or an author whose realistic dieting goals can stick with you for a lifetime.
I have an exceptional mentor, Max Penfold, who embodies the “craftsman mindset” described by Cal Newport.
Max Penfold is a United States powerlifting champion, former Navy Seal, and executive chef for arguably the most disruptive tech company in the world.
Also Max Penfold has lost 70 pounds, and he has kept if off for seven years. That qualifies him for membership in The National Weight Control Registry.
If I lose just five more pounds and keep it off for a year, I too can enter the realm of success.
I say the hell with failure.
The hell with the doomsday prophets who say failure is inevitable.
And the hell with my Inner Fat Man.
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