4-23-19 If we have time, we will see an essay topic from Hasan Minhaj. 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." See Netflix Explained on this subject of weight loss. Homework #11: Read David Freedman’s “The War on Stupid People,” and in 3 paragraphs support, refute, or complicate Freedman’s contention that we marginalize average people at our own peril, socially, pragmatically, morally, and otherwise.
4-25 “The War on Stupid People,” and we will read The Conversation essay “It’s been hot before” and see Netflix documentary on global warming creating world-wide drought. Homework #12: 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.
4-30 We will examine fallacies in Brennan’s epistocracy argument. To complement Brennan’s argument, we will study Jeffrey Rosen’s Atlantic essay “America Is Living James Madison’s Nightmare.” Homework #13: Read Yuval Noah Harari’s essay “Why Technology Favors Tyranny” and explain in 3 paragraphs how A.I. could compromise human freedom and democracy.
5-2 5-7 We will study “Why Technology Favors Tyranny” and complement the essay with video “Artificial Intelligence: It Will Kill Us All.”
5-9 Peer Edit for Essay 4
5-14 Essay #4 Due.
Essay 4 Due 5-14-18
Option A
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 B
In the context of the Netflix documentary The Magic Pill, write an argumentative thesis about the alleged benefits of the ketogenic diet.
Option C
Take an issue not yet covered by Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act and develop an argumentative essay.
Option D
In the context of David Freedman’s “The War on Stupid People,” support, refute, or complicate Freedman’s contention that we marginalize average people at our own peril, socially, pragmatically, morally, and otherwise.
Option E
Read the online essay "It's been hot before" and write an argumentative essay about the role logical fallacies in the dangerous denial of global warming and global drought. For another source, you can use Netflix Explained, "The World's Water Crisis." For another source, you may consult Ibram X. Keni's essay "What the Believers Are Denying."
Option F
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 G
Read Yuval Noah Harari’s essay “Why Technology Favors Tyranny” and see Ted Talk video “Artificial Intelligence: It Will Kill Us All” and develop an argumentative thesis that addresses the warnings of A.I.
Read Alexandra Sifferlin's "The Weight Loss Trap" and explain why it is so difficult to lose weight and keep it off.
"Why Diets Fail" on Netflix
See Netflix Explained: Why Diets Fail and linked to Vox.
Reasons for Making Claim That Diets Don't Work
One. 80-97% of dieters gain all their weight back and more.
Two. We have an unrealistic notion of a good skinny body.
Three. Skinny=healthy=good person
Four. Maintaining weight loss is a full-time job; it's just too hard.
Five. Curing obesity is a money-driven industry, so a lot of claims about who's obese are inflated.
Six. Obesity=lazy=bad person.
Seven. Biggest Loser Failure Argument
Eight. No one diet works for everyone
Nine. Eating Western Diet (sugar and processed foods) is cheaper than eating healthy diet.
Ten. We have a Set Point.
Eleven. There is no Magic Bullet. We don't want to know the boring truth: Cut down on sugar and exercise more.
Success Factors for Weight Loss
One. You have a health need.
Two. You did research or due diligence.
Three. You desire change.
Four. You like your new diet enough.
Five. You have healthy outlets so you don't rely on junk food as your exclusive drug.
Risk Factors that Make Weight Loss Unlikely
One. You have stress.
Two. You live in poverty.
Three. You suffer from depression.
Four. You suffer from learned depression.
Five. Your diet was triggered by an act of caprice, whim, or compulsion and therefore lacked due diligence.
Six. You lack basic food education so that you don't know difference between whole food and processed food.
Seven. Peer pressure doesn't give you support you need to eat well.
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.
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.
Recognizing Logical Fallacies
Begging the Question
Begging the question assumes that a statement is self-evident when it actually requires proof.
Major Premise: Fulfilling all my major desires is the only way I can be happy.
Minor Premise: I can’t afford when of my greatest desires in life, a Lexus GS350.
Conclusion: Therefore, I can never be happy.
Circular Reasoning
Circular reasoning occurs when we support a statement by restating it in different terms.
Stealing is wrong because it is illegal.
Admitting women into the men’s club is wrong because it’s an invalid policy.
Your essay is woeful because of its egregious construction.
Your boyfriend is hideous because of his heinous characteristics.
I have to sell my car because I’m ready to sell it.
I can’t spend time with my kids because it’s too time-consuming.
I need to spend more money on my presents than my family’s presents because I need bigger and better presents.
I’m a great father because I’m the best father my children have ever had.
Weak Analogy or Faulty Comparison
Analogies are never perfect but they can be powerful. The question is do they have a degree of validity to make them worth the effort.
A toxic relationship is like cancer that gets worse and worse (fine).
Sugar is high-octane fuel to use before your workout (weak because there is nothing high-octane about a substance that causes you to crash and converts into fat and creates other problems)
Free education is a great flame and the masses are moths flying into the flames of destruction. (horribly false analogy)
Ad Hominem Fallacy (Personal Attack)
“Who are you to be a marriage counselor? You’ve been divorced six times?”
A lot of people give great advice and present sound arguments even if they don’t apply their principles to their lives, so we should focus on the argument, not a personal attack.
“So you believe in universal health care, do you? I suppose you’re a communist and you hate America as well.”
Making someone you disagree with an American-hating communist is invalid and doesn’t address the actual argument.
“What do you mean you don’t believe in marriage? What are you, a crazed nihilist, an unrepentant anarchist, an immoral misanthrope, a craven miscreant?”
Straw Man Fallacy
You twist and misconstrue your opponent’s argument to make it look weaker than it is when you refute it. Instead of attacking the real issue, you aim for a weaker issue based on your deliberate misinterpretation of your opponent’s argument.
“Those who are against universal health care are heartless. They obviously don’t care if innocent children die.”
Hasty Generalization (Jumping to a Conclusion)
“I’ve had three English instructors who are middle-aged bald men. Therefore, all English instructors are middle-aged bald men.”
“I’ve met three Americans with false British accents and they were all annoying. Therefore, all Americans, such as Madonna, who contrive British accents are annoying.” Perhaps some Americans do so ironically and as a result are more funny than annoying.
Either/Or Fallacy
There are only two choices to an issue is an over simplification and an either/or fallacy.
“Either you be my girlfriend or you don’t like real men.”
“Either you be my boyfriend or you’re not a real American.”
“Either you play football for me or you’re not a real man.”
“Either you’re for us or against us.” (The enemy of our enemy is our friend is everyday foreign policy.)
“Either you agree with me about increasing the minimum wage, or you’re okay with letting children starve to death.”
“Either you get a 4.0 and get admitted into USC, or you’re only half a man.”
Equivocation
Equivocation occurs when you deliberately twist the meaning of something in order to justify your position.
“You told me the used car you just sold me was in ‘good working condition.’”
“I said ‘good,’ not perfect.”
The seller is equivocating.
“I told you to be in bed by ten.”
“I thought you meant to be home by ten.”
“You told me you were going to pay me the money you owe me on Friday.”
“I didn’t know you meant the whole sum.”
“You told me you were going to take me out on my birthday.”
“Technically speaking, the picnic I made for us in the backyard was a form of ‘going out.’”
Red Herring Fallacy
This fallacy is to throw a distraction in your opponent’s face because you know a distraction may help you win the argument.
“Barack Obama wants us to support him but his father was a Muslim. How can we trust the President on the war against terrorism when he has terrorist ties?”
“You said you were going to pay me my thousand dollars today. Where is it?”
“Dear friend, I’ve been diagnosed with a very serious medical condition. Can we talk about our money issue some other time?”
Slippery Slope Fallacy
We go down a rabbit hole of exaggerated consequences to make our point sound convincing.
“If we allow gay marriage, we’ll have to allow people to marry gorillas.”
“If we allow gay marriage, my marriage to my wife will be disrespected and dishonored.”
Appeal to Authority
Using a celebrity to promote an energy drink doesn’t make this drink effective in increasing performance.
Listening to an actor play a doctor on TV doesn’t make the pharmaceutical he’s promoting safe or effective.
Tradition Fallacy
“We’ve never allowed women into our country club. Why should we start now?”
“Women have always served men. That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it always should be.”
Misuse of Statistics
Using stats to show causality when it’s a condition of correlation or omitting other facts.
“Ninety-nine percent of people who take this remedy see their cold go away in ten days.” (Colds go away on their own).
“Violent crime from home intruders goes down twenty percent in a home equipped with guns.” (more people in those homes die of accidental shootings or suicides)
Post Hoc, Confusing Causality with Correlation
Taking cold medicine makes your cold go away. Really?
The rooster crows and makes the sun go up. Really?
You drink on a Thursday night and on Friday morning you get an A on your calculus exam. Really?
You stop drinking milk and you feel stronger. Really? (or is it a placebo effect?)
Non Sequitur (It Does Not Follow)
The conclusion in an argument is not relevant to the premises.
Megan drives a BMW, so she must be rich.
McMahon understands the difference between a phrase and a dependent clause; therefore, he must be a genius.
Whenever I eat chocolate cake, I feel good. Therefore, chocolate cake must be good for me.
Bandwagon Fallacy
Because everyone believes something, it must be right.
“You can steal a little at work. Everyone else does.”
“In Paris, ninety-nine percent of all husbands have a secret mistress. Therefore adultery is not immoral.”
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