Critical Thinker

What Is the Point of Critical Thinking?

Yesterday in my Critical Thinking class, we answered the question: What is the point of critical thinking? I argued that “critical thinking” is a playbook with rules of engagement. We don’t lie, cheat, misrepresent, obfuscate, omit, manipulate, mythologize, or demagogue, and there are principles to help us avoid these deliberate or unwitting traps. A strong society is built on this playbook. By adhering to “the rules” of critical thinking, we are fair players or good actors, and that is what makes society strong and free. In contrast, there are the ghoulish trolls who have ascended in various social media platforms over the last decade. They have a reckless disregard for any playbook. They inundate us with conspiracies to create chaos, wear us out, confuse us, and make us give up in despair; they have no moral bottom and will gleefully exact cruelty on anyone who doesn’t belong to their tribe, they are disdainful of peer-reviewed evidence and embrace the revisionist fairy tales from grifters from which they build their identities. Such trolls were marginalized decades ago, but now they have risen in media and politics, and they serve as accelerants to chaos and polarization. My students agreed that they would rather live in a society of fair players who follow the rules of engagement, that they choose friends and romantic partners whose personalities lean toward being critical thinkers rather than trolls, but that they worry the trolls are winning. They see chaos all around them and they hope that by furthering their education they can find some level of protection for themselves. 

The Game Changers Lesson #1 (Save Raw Deal for Lesson #2)

Critical Thinking Should be Essential for All Citizens

What is critical thinking and why is it essential for society? Consult Alan Jacobs’ book How to Think in which he talks about the moral foundation. Also, read Jonathan Rauch’s The Constitution of Knowledge in which he talks about the standards for creating a shared epistemic reality. 

We need to be fair players or good actors in “The Game.” We can have a critical thinking society or a troll society. The former is built on a shared moral code, shared epistemic standards, and shared rules. The ladder is built on epistemic tricks, gaslighting, nihilism, racial tribalism, and moral depravity. 

An example of a society run by bad actors is in Billy Ball’s autobiographical essay “My 6-Year-Old Son Died. Then the Anti-vaxxers Found Out.” 

Ball’s child died from cerebral-swelling as a result of a freak accident. 

The trolls came out to use the father’s pain as an occasion to flex their anti-vaxxer muscle, an immoral act that was not logically connected to the subject at hand. In critical thinking, that’s called a non sequitur. 

Trolls celebrate in cruelty and sadism, taking pleasure in other people’s grief. White tribalists did the same to slaves, telling the slaves they were “happy” being subjected to white rule. “Slavery is the best thing that ever happened to you,” they said and say to this day.

The medical community dismissed the Covid vaccine as playing any role in the boy’s death, but the trolls rolled out a bunch of conspiracies. 

In Troll World, unleashing thousands of conspiracies fatigues the public and they reach a point of despair: “Nothing can be true.”

The South did the same in their fake explanation of the Civil War, not caused by slavery but by “Northern aggression” and “state rights.”

The trolls took the father’s son’s photos and “wrote vile things” on them. In Troll World, there is no moral bottom. 

The trolls lectured the father: They accused him of failing to protect his child, an accusation based on shrill emotion and zero evidence, another quality of Troll World.

Ball refers to these bad actors as “the strange ghouls on the Internet.” History has always had strange ghouls, including the white supremacists who shamelessly defended slavery with their conspiracy theories, but in free democracies, those ghouls have been small in number and have lived in the margins.

Much to our terror, we live in a country where these ghouls have multiplied in numbers, ascended to media and political power and threaten the very democracy we have taken for granted. 

While not as flagrant as the case of the trolls that attacked writer Billy Ball, The Game Changers uses deception and engages in “bad acting” to get their message across. This is a shame because by compromising their credibility and integrity, the movie makers have made the plant-based diet less appealing, not more so. Had they been honest about the nutritional and other challenges of a vegan diet, they could have won more sympathy for a cause that has some noble aspirations like healthier eating, sparing animals the merciless cruelty of livestock production, and saving the planet. 

 

Building Block #1 Due March 25

The Assignment: Your first paragraph

In a paragraph of about 200 words, explain why someone watching The Game Changers with an uncritical eye might be seduced by its message. In what ways does the documentary appeal to us? How is the documentary effective in pressing our emotional buttons and making us "want to drink the Kool-Aid"? 

Building Block #2: Due March 29

The Assignment: Develop a Thesis for Paragraph 2 of Your Essay

In a paragraph of about 200 words, develop a claim that explains how persuasive the Netflix documentary The Game Changers is in terms of ethos, logos, and pathos. Be sure your thesis statement is followed by mapping components that will direct your body paragraphs. 

Study of Men’s Health Article That Critiques The Game Changers

“This New Documentary Says Meat Will Kill You. Here’s Why It’s Wrong”

By Paul Kita, Published September 16, 2019

Commentary Based on Summary, Paragraph, and Direct Quotations

Plant-Based has replaced the ugly word vegan. The latter represents joyless, pinch-faced eating. On the other hand, plant-based evokes natural, organic, healthy, and joyful. 

The Netflix documentary The Game Changers “pushes” the plant-based lifestyle. Produced by James Cameron, the film argues that “eating any animal products--including meat, fish, eggs, and dairy--can hinder athletic performance, wreak havoc on your heart, impair sexual function, and lead to an early death.”

The film’s through-line or narrative arc is watching MMA fighter James Wilks convert from an omnivore to a plant-based diet. 

Paul Kita’s verdict on the film can be contained in the following:

“Except that The Game Changers presents only one side of the facts, often via controversial sourcesLinks to an external site., grand extrapolations from small studies, and statements that are flat-out misleading.”

• One-sided facts
• Dubious or less-than-credible sources
• Exaggerated claims from small studies
• Misleading and deceptive statements

Kita explains how there is insufficient research on claims about the benefits of a plant-based diet. 

The first “study” is no study at all but a short narrative. As Kita writes:

Wilks begins the movie, and builds its entire concept around, a study he came across that reported Roman gladiators didn’t eat meat.

Except that the study isn’t actually a study.

It’s a short narrativeLinks to an external site. by Andrew Curry, a contributing writer to Archaeology, a publication of the Archaeological Institute of America.

Curry recounts a visit to the Medical University of Vienna where he held a gladiator skull and remarks upon how gladiators ate “a vegetarian diet rich in carbohydrates, with the occasional calcium supplement.”

There does exist researchLinks to an external site. on gladiators following non-meat diets, some of which is later cited in the film, but Wilks still calls a narrative a “study” when it is not a study.*

Yes, this is a minor point, but it's indicative of the often misleading portrayal of "research" to come.

***

Death of Ethos

In other words, Kita observes that the film begins with a loss of credibility. In a critical thinking class, we call credibility an important part of establishing a persuasive argument--ethos. 

From the very beginning, The Game Changers has problems with ethos. 

Flashy "Research" > Ethos

Perhaps to compensate for its lack of ethos and credible studies, the film tries to razzle-dazzle us with flashy research. As Kita writes:

And The Game Changers is filled with research. Studies flash upon the screen at a wild rate—sometimes three or four in a row. Medical experts offer long explanations of scientific conclusions in lab-coat speak. The amount of data is daunting, with the implication being: Look at all the science! How can veganism be wrong?!

The problem is that the study findings are often twisted and presented to the viewer without giving them a full understanding of the research.

In one instance where Wilks does cite actual peer-reviewed researchLinks to an external site., he narrates: “And when it comes to gaining strength and muscle mass, research comparing plant and animal protein has shown that as long as the proper amount of amino acids are consumed the source is irrelevant.”

Crucial Omission

What Wilks doesn’t call out is that the same study states this: “as a group, vegetarians have lower mean muscle creatine concentrations than do omnivores, and this may affect supramaximal exercise performance.”

Elsewhere in The Game Changers, Wilks name-checks studies that feature small sample sizes and then extrapolates broad generalizations.

***

Cherry-Picking Facts

In other words, even when credible studies are given, the principals cherry-pick the facts to paint a distorted picture. Again, such cherry-picking diminishes the film’s ethos. 

In addition to ethos, we must use another important factor to be persuasive in our argumentation--logos. The word logos in this context refers to the logic and reasoning that is used. We see a lapse of both ethos and logos in the misinterpretation of a 2010 study. 

As the writer observes:

The most glaring instance of this is when Wilks claims that cow’s milk can increase estrogen and lower testosterone in men.

The 2010 study he referencesLinks to an external site., published in the journal Pediatrics International, was conducted using the milk of pregnant cows. The scientists pulled from a pool of 18 people (seven men, six children, and five women), and found that milk reduced testosterone secretions—not overall testosterone—temporarily.

***

It is not logical to take a study of seven men who have temporary testosterone reduction and make the claim that cow’s milk “can increase estrogen and lower testosterone in men.”

***

The Avocado "Study"

The author makes a concession that Wilks is correct to criticize the biased beef industry for its fake and biased research, but then in the same breath, Wilks cites an avocado study that makes grand claims about avocados:

One of the studies The Game Changers cites repeatedly throughout the film is “Hass Avocado Modulates Postprandial Vascular Reactivity and Postprandial Inflammatory Responses To a Hamburger Meal In Healthy Volunteers.Links to an external site.”

Wilks uses this study to support his argument that meat impairs blood flow and increases inflammation. Except, that as you can probably guess, the study is “supported by the Hass Avocado Board.”

***

Bombard the Senses with Scientific Language

Another factor in argumentation is pathos--developing an emotional connection to your argument. The film tries to impress us with lots of scientific language, but it doesn’t add to much and too often the case, the scientific mumbo-jumbo is misleading. As the writer points out:

Numerous times throughout the documentary, The Game Changers bombards you with the scientific terms TMAO, hetereocyclic amines, heme iron, neu5gc (a doozy!), endotoxins, and AGEs.

Here, again, Wilks presents claims that these compounds, unique to animal products, increase the risk of inflammation, which can lead to a host of nasty diseases, particularly cancer.

Except that the scientific understanding of these compounds is far less studied than The Game Changers leads the viewer to believe. And the results of emerging studies are not nearly as concrete as those done on cigarettes, as the film later implies.

***

Exaggerated Claims

Another failure in ethos and logos is the exaggerated claims based on misinterpreted studies. Take the connection between processed meats and colorectal cancer. Kita writes:

“A person's lifetime absolute risk of developing colorectal cancer is about 5 percent. We also know that eating processed meats increases the risk of developing colorectal cancer,” says Brian St. Pierre., M.S., R.D., C.S.C.S., Director of Performance Nutrition at Precision NutritionLinks to an external site., a nutrition coaching company that has worked with the San Antonio Spurs, the Carolina Panthers, and thousands of non-athlete clients.

“In fact, eating 50 grams of processed meat daily (about one hot dog) increases the risk of developing colorectal cancer by 17 percent. Sounds scary. However, this increased risk is relative,” St. Pierre says.

In reality, actual risk goes up by about 1 percent total, to a new absolute risk of about 6 percent.

Sure, any increase in a risk of cancer isn’t good. But it’s not as bad as disinformation efforts can make it seem.

"These kind of misunderstandings (or intentional misleadings) make it easy for folks to be confused, or to misinterpret or misunderstand actual changes to risk," St. Pierre says. "It's not wrong, it's just often out of context."

"So, while it's true that the 'strength of the evidence' for the carcinogenicity of smoking is the same as processed meat. The 'degree of risk' is not even in the same sport, let alone the same ballpark," he says.

"What The Game Changers fails to mention is that though hetereocyclic amines seem to cause cancer, and the overall risk may be small, you can mitigate potential damage by marinating your meat with spices and acidic marinades (such as yogurt or vinegar-based marinades)," St. Pierre says.

"And by eating your meat with fruits and vegetables, all of which can significantly reduce your risk of HCAs.”

You could even go so far as to say "virtually eliminate your risk", as they can decrease HCA formation by up to 99 percent, says St. Pierre.

***

High-Performing Athletes Could Have Been Carnivores (Cherry-picking)

Kita points out that the film does an excellent job of creating pathos or emotional connection. They use “high-performing athletes” who are now eating a plant-based diet. But these anecdotal stories are not substitutes for real studies. 

Plant-based eating is not the cause of their athleticism and fitness. It is correlated. These are genetic specimens who are mindful of what they eat and who train regularly. They could be just as impressive on a keto or some other diet.

We must distinguish causation from correlation. 

Either/Or Fallacy: "You must make a choice"

Another problem is what’s called the Either/Or fallacy. Kita observes that you don’t have to be plant-based or meat-eater. You could be both, but the movie wants you to “make a choice.” In the words of Kita:

“Either you eat animal products and suffer the consequences or avoid animal products and thrive, the movie argues.

Except that there’s another choice: Eat more vegetables.

This is the choice that has vast and well-established scientific benefits.

This is the choice that qualified and experienced registered dietitians (of which none are featured in The Game Changers, by the way) urge their clients, professional athletes and regular people alike, to adopt.

This is a choice of inclusion, rather than exclusionLinks to an external site..

Around the half-hour mark, The Game Changers makes this claim: “Even iceberg lettuce has more antioxidants than salmon or eggs.”

It’s a statement that is so face-smackingly stupid, and it typifies the dangers of either/or eating.

By over-valuing one nutrient (antioxidants in iceberg lettuce), you devalue the host of beneficial nutrients in the other (heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids in salmon, brain-aiding choline in eggs—just to name two).

“Ultimately, it's not that getting people to eat plants is a bad thing. It's generally a great thing. But you don't have to do so by erroneously telling people that meat is killing them, and they need to go to an all-plant diet. That is a false dichotomy,” says St. Pierre.

“Instead, teach them the benefits of adding more wholesome plant foods to their meat intake. And then teach them to eat higher-quality meat options. Maybe even to consider swapping some meat for a plant-based protein (such as tempeh, tofu, or seitan). There's a progression, and a happy middle ground for most.”

***

 

 

 

 

Study of Layne Norton’s “The Game Changers Review--A Scientific Analysis (Updated)”

Layne Norton begins by explaining that he was skeptical about seeing The Game Changers because he’s seen several food documentaries that have been a pile of propaganda and BS. 

He goes on to write that real documentaries--that is, credible ones--are science-based, examine opinions on both sides, and don’t twist and cherry-pick information to promote preconceived ideas.

Norton makes it clear early on that he’s no fan of The Game Changers. He says he won’t refer to it as a documentary but as a film because clearly, it doesn’t adhere to credible critical thinking principles to deserve being called a documentary.  

The film would rather be “sexy” and scintillating than credible. 

Another issue Norton has is that one of the producers, the great Arnold Schwarzenegger, ate a lot of meat during his bodybuilding years and then turns around “to espouse the virtues of a vegan diet.” 

After being scolded by the vegan community for his skepticism, Norton decided to see the film. Here is the critique that follows:

Unlike the filmmakers, Norton discloses his biases: He’s not a vegan. His research in graduate school was sponsored by the Egg and Dairy Councils. He also points out that he is equally critical of meat-eating “low-carb zealots.” 

The filmmakers do not disclose their conflicts of interest. They are either vegan or have money invested in vegan companies. Or both. 

Furthermore, all the “experts” whose “studies” are used in the film sell vegan products. 

Norton is skeptical that the film’s narrator MMA fighter James Wilks read 1,000 hours of studies about nutrition. 

 

The Same Scholar Said Vegetarian Diets Can Make You Fat

The first “study” about gladiators is no study at all but a short article. Worse, the article is cherry-picked so that one scholar is ignored. This is the scholar who said that gladiators who ate a vegetarian high-carb diet were either fat or coated with a lot of adipose tissue. Being fat on a vegetarian diet is an inconvenient truth that doesn’t promote the film’s propaganda. 

No One Said Protein Is Fuel

Then the film refutes the idea that protein is fuel for exercise, yet Norton points out that everyone stopped making this erroneous claim many years ago, so to bring it up is a Straw Man argument. 

Bias Confirmation

The filmmakers seek out high-performance vegan athletes to confirm their bias when in fact there are far more omnivore athletes. The filmmakers are merely cherry-picking athletes to promote their propaganda.

What Is Bioavailable?

Norton continues to criticize the film’s false claim that plant protein and animal protein are the same. “That is a flat-out misrepresentation of scientific data,” Norton writes. 

Plant proteins are less bioavailable, which means we don’t digest as high a percentage of plant protein as we do meat protein. They are only 10-40% as digestible as animal protein and they lack essential amino acids for optimal health and performance. You can combine plant proteins to improve the amino acid profile but you’re still getting less bioavailable protein. 

Terrible Math

There are lame claims like a peanut butter sandwich at 8 grams of protein having as much protein as 3 eggs, 18 grams, or a 3-oz steak, which has 21 grams. Why even make the false claim?

Full Truth of Patrick Baboumian Not Disclosed

The film follows this lame claim by showing off powerlifter and strongman Patrick Baboumian. They don’t question if whether or not he’s on steroids or PEDs. Nor do they tell you he drinks 4 vegan protein shakes a day for 410 grams of protein. The film should disclose that if you’re going to get protein from a vegan diet, you will need to use vegan protein supplements to eat over 400 grams of protein when most people eat about 100 grams of protein a day. 

Being a vegan would be less desirable if you were told you would have to eat 200-400 grams of protein a day to make sure you were digesting enough protein. The filmmakers hide this information.

Norton goes on to show the misleading representations of the Burrito and Beet Juice studies. I won’t go into the weeds here. Both studies were full of false and exaggerated claims and the claim that avocados improve endothelial function was funded by Hass Avocado Brand. Of course, the filmmakers didn’t disclose that.

The filmmakers blame meat for increased inflammation when in fact the true cause is obesity. They don’t show the link between obesity and inflammation because that would detract from their attempt to demonize meat.

Yet another aspect of propaganda is when the wife of a vegan NFL player makes “healthy” vegan dishes: chicken wings, mac and cheese, burgers, and cheesecake. These foods are calorie-dense, processed, full of canola oils, and agreed upon by the scientific community to be bad for you. In fact, vegan mac and cheese cause more inflammation than real cheese, but such truth would not promote the film’s propaganda.

Let’s Stop for a Moment

Let’s stop for a moment and say this: There is nothing wrong with promoting a plant-based diet based on the truth that you will need to take a lot of protein and other supplements to get adequate nutrition and you won’t be able to eat the “fun,” oil-larded processed vegan foods but rather eat whole foods. The point here isn’t to bash a plant-based diet. The point is to bash the dishonesty of propaganda that informs this film. 

Let’s get back to the critique.

***

Norton then takes on the film’s claim that meat causes more CVD (cardiovascular disease) and cancer. Lean meat doesn’t do this and fatty fish lowers your CVD. The film doesn’t disclose this.

Faulty Comparison (another logical fallacy)

Norton then points out that the film makes a faulty comparison between humans and “vegan” gorillas. Our digestive tracts are different. Gorillas can absorb more vegan protein so the comparison is false, misleading, and dangerous.

Does a vegan diet help save the planet? Norton writes the following:

This might be the one compelling argument to limit meat consumption insofar as raising meat takes a disproportionate amount of land and water, but here again, the filmmakers misrepresent the truth about the impact of meat production on the environment. They claim that the emissions from meat are more than all of the total forms of transportation in the world combined. This is quite simply not true. Meat production accounts for about 3% of the USA’s greenhouse emissions (13-18% in less developed countries), while the energy industry at large is 80% of the greenhouse gases from the USA (64% worldwide). [63] Moreover,

Animal agriculture is responsible for 13–18% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and less in developed countries (e.g. 3% in the USA). Fossil fuel combustion for energy and transportation is responsible for approximately 64% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions globally, and more in developed countries (e.g. 80% in the USA)…The burning of fossil fuels for energy and animal agriculture are two of the biggest contributors to global warming, along with deforestation. Globally, fossil fuel-based energy is responsible for about 64% of human greenhouse gas emissions, with deforestation at about 18%, and animal agriculture between 13% and 18%. [64]

So before you admonish someone for eating meat and how bad it is for the environment, if you drive a muscle car but admonish others for eating meat because of how bad it is for the environment, you might want to look in the mirror.

Norton concludes:

In this case, the film used strawman, false dichotomies, cherry-picking, and a whole host of other logical fallacies in an attempt to demonize animal products and make a vegan diet the solution to the world’s problems. To be clear, I think a diet that is heavy in plants and fiber is great. I also have no problem with those who choose to not eat meat for their own ethical reasons, it’s not my job to judge your ethics. All I ask is that we are honest about what the science says. If you don’t want to eat meat because you don’t want to intentionally harm animals, that’s great. But do not twist scientific research and retroactively attempt to contort data so that it fits your bias.

I continue to be utterly disgusted by food ‘documentaries.’ As of yet, I have not seen one food film that is anything other than a steaming pile of ****. These are not documentaries. A documentary gives you experts from BOTH sides and then lets you draw your own conclusions. This film would be closest to a comedy, because it’s a joke. I didn’t even address all the ludicrous claims in the video, I simply picked out the most egregious claims. I would have needed to hire extra staff to fully debunk this steaming pile of dung. It helps no one and does not move veganism forward and will do nothing but further confuse the average person through misrepresentation of science and fear-mongering.

F-, we are all dumber for having watched this, and may God have mercy on your souls.

 

***

Thesis Samples for The Game Changers

Characteristics of an Effective Thesis

• Argumentative and debatable, not factual or obvious
• Generates reasons or mapping components, which outline the body paragraphs
• Sufficient specificity
• Presents a challenging inquiry
• Wow Factor
• Purpose
• Relevance

Examples

The Game Changers is bogus. 

The Game Changers changed my life.

The Game Changers is amazing.

The Game Changers persuaded me to become a vegan.

The Game Changers is for fools. 

The Game Changers is a mess. 

I’m a big fan of The Game Changers. 

Everyone should see The Game Changers.

The use of deception and manipulation in The Game Changers is justified because humans are too selfish and lazy to change through the powers of reason, humans need their vanity catered to by Alpha Male Bro Fantasies and we need to save animals from large-scale suffering. 

While I concede that there is a level of deception and manipulation in the movie that diminishes its credibility, I defend its propaganda because the average person is so morally indifferent to the plight of animals and their own health that without the movie’s razzle-dazzle and phony emotional appeal, they would otherwise never develop an interest in something as undesirable and repellant as the thought of going on a vegan diet. 

While I love The Game Changers’ message of good health, a robust environment, and mercy to the animals, the movie's flaws in terms of cherry-picked evidence, deliberate misinterpretations of data, faulty causation, conflicts of interest, and false claims about the supposed superiority of the vegan diet make the film a contemptible and laughable piece of third-rate propaganda. 

McMahon made us watch a stupid movie called The Game Changers. 

While I will concede that the vegan diet can be outright dangerous and create nutritional challenges that we do not face on an omnivore diet, The Game Changers has persuaded me to become a vegan in order to lessen my chances of suffering from arteriosclerosis, to be more mindful of eating whole foods and taking supplementation, to contribute to helping the planet, and to show mercy on the unspeakable suffering that animals face in order that we eat them.

I want to be like the healthy, athletic stars featured in The Game Changers, so I’ve decided to become a vegan.  

***

Comma Splice Review

Comma Splices

A comma splice is joining two sentences with a comma when you should separate them with a period or a semicolon. 

Incorrect

People love Facebook, however, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy. 

Corrected

People love Facebook. However, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy. 

Corrected

Though people love Facebook, they fail to realize Facebook is sucking all their energy. 

Incorrect

Patience is difficult to cultivate, it grows steadily only if we make it a priority. 

Corrected

Patience is difficult to cultivate. It grows steadily only if we make it a priority. 

Corrected

Because patience grows within us so slowly, patience is extremely difficult to cultivate. 

You can use a comma between two complete sentences when you join them with a FANBOYS word or coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).

Correct

People love Facebook, but they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy. 

Student Comma Splices Part One (the second sentence feels like a continuation of thought from the first sentence, which it is, but it still requires a period before it) 

1. My department decided to set up another office for me to do my work, I was no longer sitting out front like the permanent receptionist.
2. The permanent receptionist never spoke to anyone in the offices, he just answered phones.
3. He said, “You have a few choices, they need a coordinator at the new jobsite or working the business side as a coordinator.”
4. I was lucky, many opportunities came to me and now I had the required experience to get the job I wanted.
5. There was no stopping me, all my achievements were completed on my own.
6. I was promoted quickly, I went from coordinator to senior executive within a few months.
7. The drug dealing lifestyle was insatiable to Jeff Henderson, he believed he could elude the feds.
8. Our methods paralleled, my method was legal, his was illegal.
9. Jeff Henderson rose to the top of his game, he had established his fortune.

10. Jeff Henderson had no choice, it was either work or stay confined in his prison cell.

11. She was going to marry her high school sweetheart, what better way to spend the rest of your life in bliss?

12. He asked me to marry him, he was a Marine after all stationed in Japan.

13. Her life was finally beginning, she could leave Los Angeles.

14. This was her life, she did what she wanted.

15. Now she had nothing, she had given up her job to move overseas.

16. Life was too much of a challenge, she accepted that fact. 

To Avoid Comma Splices, Know the Difference Between Coordinating Conjunctions (FANBOYS) and Conjunctive Adverbs  

Examples

Jerry ate ten pizzas a week. Nonetheless, he remained skinny. 

Jerry ate ten pizzas a week, but he remained skinny. 

Barbara didn't buy the BMW. Instead, she bought the Acura. 

Barbara didn't buy the BMW, yet she did buy the Acura. 

Steve wasn't interested in college. Moreover, he didn't want to work full-time. 

Steve wasn't interested in college, and he didn't want to work full-time.

I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me. However, I do want you to help me do my taxes. 

I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do want you to help me do my taxes. 

I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do, however, want you to help me do my taxes. 

I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid. Consequently, I think we should break up. 

I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid, so I think we should break up. 

Students hate reading. Therefore, they must be tested with closed-book reading exams. 

Students hate reading, so they must be tested with closed-book reading exams. 

Avoiding Comma Splices and Run-Ons 

Fused (run-on) sentence

Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.

She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.

A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.

Comma Splice

I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.

We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.

A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.

After each sentence, put a “C” for Correct or a “CS” for Comma Splice. If the sentence is a comma splice, rewrite it so that it is correct. 

One. Bailey used to eat ten pizzas a day, now he eats a spinach salad for lunch and dinner. 

Two. Marco no longer runs on the treadmill, instead he opts for the less injury-causing elliptical trainer. 

Three. Running can cause shin splints, which can cause excruciating pain. 

Four. Running in the incorrect form can wreak havoc on the knees, slowing down can often correct the problem. 

Five. While we live in a society where 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers are on the rise, the reading of books, sad to say, is on the decline. 

Six. Facebook is a haven for narcissists, it encourages showing off with selfies and other mundane activities that are ways of showing how great and amazing our lives our, what a sham. 

Seven. We live in a society where more and more Americans are consuming 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers, however, those same Americans are reading less and less books. 

Eight. Love is a virus from outer space, it tends to become most contagious during April and May. 

Nine. The tarantula causes horror in many people, moreover there is a species of tarantula in Brazil, the wandering banana spider, that is the most venomous spider in the world. 

Ten. Even though spiders cause many people to recoil with horror, most species are harmless. 

Eleven. The high repair costs of European luxury vehicles repelled Amanda from buying such a car, instead she opted for a Japanese-made Lexus. 

Twelve. Amanda got a job at the Lexus dealership, now she’s trying to get me a job in the same office. 

Thirteen. While consuming several cinnamon buns, a twelve-egg cheese omelet, ten slices of French toast slathered in maple syrup, and a tray of Swedish loganberry crepes topped with a dollop of blueberry jam, I contemplated the very grave possibility that I might be eating my way to a heart attack. 

Fourteen. Even though I rank marijuana far less dangerous than most pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and other commonly used intoxicants, I find marijuana unappealing for a host of reasons, not the least of which is its potential for radically degrading brain cells, its enormous effect on stimulating the appetite, resulting in obesity, and its capacity for over-relaxing many people so that they lose significant motivation to achieve their primary goals, opting instead for a life of sloth and intractable indolence.

Identify the Comma Splices Below:

It’s not a question of will there be chaos or will there be destruction, it’s a question of how much?

MySpace was disruptive in its time, however, it’s a dated platform and to simply mention it is to make people laugh with a certain derision surely it’s a platform that has seen its time, another example is the meal replacement Soylent, its creator made a drink that says, “You’re too busy to eat,” so drinking this pancake batter-like concoction gives tech people street. I may laugh at its stupidity, instead I should admire it since the product has made millions for its creator. It’s proven to be somewhat disruptive.

To be sure, though, Facebook redefines the word disruptive, it has rapidly accrued over 3 billion users and will soon have half the planet plugged into its site, that is the apotheosis of a greedy person’s fantasy, imagine controlling half the planet on a platform that mines private information and targets ads toward specific personality profiles.  

One of the scary disruptions of Facebook is that billions of people have lost their personal agency, what that means that people have unknowingly been manipulated by Facebook’s puppeteers to the point that many Facebook users suffer from social media addiction, moreover, these same users prefer the fake life they curate on social media to the real life they once had, in fact, their previous real life is just a puff of smoke that has faded into the distance, many people no longer even know what it means to be “real” anymore, having lost their agency, having succumbed to their Facebook addiction, they have become zombies waiting for their next rush of social media-fueled dopamine, what a sad state of affairs. 

Food Lesson #3: 3-15-23: Review of Harriet Brown's Flaws and Fallacies

Review Essay Outline for Dieting Is a Fool’s Errand Essay 

Paragraph 1: Either outline Brown’s essay or write a personal anecdote about you or someone you know who went on a weight-loss quest. 

Paragraph 2: Write a thesis that defends, refutes, or complicates the claim (made by both Harriet Brown and Sandra Aamodt) that dieting is a fool’s errand. Make sure your thesis can be supported by 3 or 4 reasons because these reasons will be in your body paragraphs.  

Paragraphs 3-6 will be your supporting paragraphs.

Paragraphs 7 and 8 will be your counterargument and rebuttal paragraphs. It’s important to let your reader know you battle-tested your claim by considering your opponents’ strongest counterarguments.

Paragraph 9 is your conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis.

Your final page is an MLA-formated Works Cited with a minimum of 4 sources, which would include the essays of Harriet Brown, Sandra Aamodt, and at least 2 others. 

Review Flaws and Strengths of Harriet Brown’s Essay

Let us review the flaws. 

Flaw #1 Oversimplifying Our Concern with Weight

Brown’s first flaw is that she oversimplifies our weight-consciousness as cosmetic-driven beginning in the 1910s when in fact, post World War II, an abundance of calorie-dense foods did indeed cause a spike in weight:

As Brown writes:

Weight inched its way into the American consciousness around the turn of the 20th century. “I would sooner die than be fat,” declared Amelia Summerville, author of the 1916 volume Why Be Fat? Rules for Weight-Reduction and the Preservation of Youth and Health. (She also wrote, with a giddy glee that likely derived from malnutrition, “I possibly eat more lettuce and pineapple than any other woman on earth!”) As scales became more accurate and affordable, doctors began routinely recording patients’ height and weight at every visit.  Weight-loss drugs hit the mainstream in the 1920s, when doctors started prescribing thyroid medications to healthy people to make them slimmer. In the 1930s, 2,4-dinitrophenol came along, sold as DNP, followed by amphetamines, diuretics, laxatives, and diet pills like fen-phen, all of which caused side effects ranging from the annoying to the fatal.

The national obsession with weight got a boost in 1942, when the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company crunched age, weight, and mortality numbers from policy holders to create “desirable” height and weight charts. For the first time, people (and their doctors) could compare themselves to a standardized notion of what they “should” weigh. And compare they did, in language that shifted from words like chubby and plump to the more clinical-sounding adipose, overweight, and obese. The word overweight, for example, suggests you’re over the “right” weight. The word obese, from the Latin obesus, or “having eaten until fat,” conveys both a clinical and a moral judgment.

***

Flaw #2: Oversimplifying and Downplaying the Health Effects of Being Overweight

Brown’s second flaw is oversimplifying the effects of being overweight. To a degree, being “overweight” is not a risk factor, but Brown doesn’t address morbid levels of obesity that make people at risk. She cherry-picks some evidence but ignores a whole body of other evidence.

Brown writes:

Higher BMIs have been linked to a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and certain cancers, especially esophageal, pancreatic, and breast cancers. But weight loss is not necessarily linked to lower levels of disease. The only study to follow subjects for more than five years, the 2013 Look AHEAD study, found that people with type 2 diabetes who lost weight had just as many heart attacks, strokes, and deaths as those who didn’t.

Not only that, since 2002, study after study has turned up what researchers call the “obesity paradox”: Obese patients with heart disease, heart failure, diabetes, kidney disease, pneumonia, and many other chronic diseases fare better and live longer than those of normal weight.

***

Brown conveniently ignores the billions of health care costs that obesity places on Americans. Granted, she wrote her essay pre-Pandemic, but overweight people are at the highest risk for fatality from Covid-19.

Flaw #3: Unlike Aamodt, Brown fails to look at the real factors of high-risk lifestyles. 

Unlike Harriet Brown, Sandra Aamodt gives us a clear picture of someone who is at high risk. This person has the following characteristics:

• Lives in a food desert
• Has low income
• Lives in a high-stress environment
• Suffers from loneliness
• Doesn’t eat whole foods and several servings of fruits and vegetables a day
• Doesn’t exercise every day

Because Brown fails to see the whole picture, she offers no Exit Strategy. 

Flaw #4: Brown’s essay as a whole is bitter, hopeless, and needlessly fails to provide an Exit Strategy or a viable solution. 

Whereas Sandra Aamodt encourages us to eat wholesome foods, listen to our hunger cues, exercise regularly, and take on a reasonable attitude in life, Brown’s essay suffers from despair and nutritional nihilism, the idea that we should just give up. 

Can we provide an honest and persuasive defense of Harriet Brown?

Let us now look at some defenses of Harriet Brown in the form of a counterargument and rebuttal. 

My opponents and supporters of Harriet Brown’s essay will make the claim that Brown does a powerful, cogent, and persuasive job of showing that dieting is a fool’s errand because dieting is both harmful and futile. Brown provides specific evidence to show that beauty standards are contrived by the media, advertising, and health insurance companies; she shows that the diet industry stands to make billions by believing the chicanery or BS that diets work effectively, and she does an outstanding job showing that drugs and surgeries to address obesity have large failure rates and present high risk to the patients. I will concede with defenders of Harriet Brown that Brown’s points are irrefutable, demonstrable, and persuasive. However, her essay is a failure when we consider she conveniently doesn’t address the need to make healthy lifestyle changes, she doesn’t address, as Sandra Aamodt does, the real high-risk conditions that people confuse with the generic term “obesity,” and her failure to give us an Exit Strategy from the Diet Hell that society imposes on us.  

Sample Thesis:

While Harriet Brown’s essay is larded with too many flaws to be considered a successful essay, I agree with those who make the claim that both Harriet Brown and Sandra Aamodt in her essay “Why You Can’t Lose Weight on a Diet” champion the idea that trying to lose weight is a fool’s errand. Dieting is doomed to fail, it is doomed to inflict chaos on our metabolism, it is bound to inflict us with stress, anxiety, and shame, and it is bound to force us to spend an enormous amount of time, money, and energy on a futile quest for weight loss. The Wise Errand is seeking to eat whole, healthy foods, exercise, make a decent living, and establish healthy social connections. 

 

Review of Harriet Brown Fallacies:

Dietary Nihilism

Brown suggests giving up in paragraph 1 yet offers no alternatives. Giving up with no solutions to weight-related problems is what I call Dietary Nihilism, an unacceptable position for someone who wants to live a long, healthy life. 

Telling people to give up dieting while offering no alternatives strikes me as bitter and irresponsible. Such a position compromises the writer’s ethos (credibility) and pathos (my emotional connection to the writing). 

Cherry-Picking Based on Cognitive Bias

There is an abundance of credible studies showing how being overweight has deleterious effects on our health, but Brown conveniently ignores those studies and focuses on studies that show that the contrary is true: There is no connection between high BMI and having bad health in terms of heart disease, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome, diabetes 2, inflammation, higher risk for cancer, stroke, and cardiac arrest; shortened lifespan. 

If I want to eat to my heart’s content, then my cognitive bias is going to point me in the direction to “research” that gives me the Green Light to eat pizza, donuts, and ice cream. 

Cherry-picking evidence based on cognitive biases does not help Brown in terms of credibility, reasoning, or emotional power: ethos, logos, and pathos.

 

“It’s All So Confusing!” Fallacy

Brown complains that there are so many kinds of diets making health claims: keto, vegan, raw, organic, high-protein, low-fat, etc. She just doesn’t know what to believe anymore. 

When an important topic is confusing or difficult, should we shrug our shoulders and scream, “I just don’t know what to do!”

Of course, weight management is difficult and so is healthy eating, but Brown says nothing about nutritional literacy and how such literacy will make great strides in improving our health.

What is nutritional literacy?

• It’s knowing the difference between whole and processed foods and where to find whole foods in the grocery store and how to avoid processed foods in the grocery store.
• It’s learning how to cook at least half a dozen healthy meals that you enjoy eating so that you are both healthy and self-reliant. 
• It’s learning how to avoid sugar and find foods that satisfy you without eating sugar.
• It’s learning how to achieve satiety (fullness) by eating sufficient protein.
• It’s learning how to steam vegetables and season them and make high-protein salads that you enjoy eating.
• It’s learning to replace alcohol, sugar, and processed foods with healthy foods that you actually like. 

Brown’s failure to address food literacy and her cry of learned helplessness because “eating is just so confusing” compromises her credibility (ethos). 

Failure to Acknowledge That Two Things Can Both be True: Either/Or Fallacy

Brown does a good job of showing that a skinny body aesthetic was artificially imposed upon us starting around the 1920s. For the last 100 years, there has been a money-making conspiracy to make us ashamed of our bodies:

• Advertising
• Consumerism
• Media giving us unrealistic body aesthetic
• Diet pills
• Insurance companies
• Unrealistic BMI levels
• Bariatric surgeries
• Variety of pharmaceuticals 
• Ever-changing dietary advice from the medical community and the government

While all of this is true, it can at the same time be true that being overweight is unhealthy. 

Either the quest for a healthy body is legit or there is a conspiracy to give us an unrealistic expectation of the ideal body. 

Brown commits an either/or fallacy: It’s possible that there is a profit-driven diet industry AND that being overweight is a health risk at the same time.

Her either/or fallacy compromises her credibility and reasoning (ethos and logos). 

Failure to Acknowledge Self-Empowerment Through Knowledge and Reasonable Expectations

Life is a cruel place. Once we’re 18, we’re out on our own. We have to fend for ourselves. There are many confusing things we have to deal with: health, diet, relationships, education, career, politics, civil responsibilities, and developing an appropriate philosophy of life.

Telling you that dieting is too confusing, that being skinny is nothing more than a profit-driven conspiracy, and that it’s too much work to eat right is the Gospel of Despair, Helplessness, and Victimization. 

Brown’s Gospel of Despair has no business in my class and it has no business infecting my students. 

I would rather tell my students that you should fight to find a job that gives you a good living, find people to love in your life so that you have enough self-worth to work on having a long healthy life for your sake and your loved one’s sake, make a good living so you can afford to eat healthy because healthy whole foods are expensive, but that’s the situation. Empower yourself. Develop food literacy. Develop knowledge about health because knowledge is power and you’re responsible for gaining that power.

Harriet Brown’s sob story won’t give it to you. 

Learning to eat healthy foods may not give you a hot Instagram bod, but you’ll be vastly healthier than if you give up and go on an Eat- Everything Diet.  

See Netflix Explained: Why Diets Fail and linked to Vox. 

Review of "Why Diets Fail":

One. Our body has a skinny rebel, the hormone leptin. 

Two. Snack industry brainwashed us into snacking so that we constantly have elevated insulin, resulting in obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, etc.

Three. Food industry has us addicted to processed foods, which are higher profit than whole foods.

Four. After World War II, calories became "low-hanging fruit," easy pickings.

Five. "Normal" is eating in excess of 3,000 calories a day when, from an evolutionary level, we're more suited to under 2,000. 

Six. Diets may or may not work. It doesn't matter because most of us don't stick to them in the long term.

Seven. Related to Six, most people don't stick to diets because weight-loss management is a full-time job not suited to people who have to work, go to school, parent, etc. If you're rich and have the whole day to focus on your navel and hire a personal trainer and have an Instagram account showing off your Hot Bod, then perhaps you will be a string bean. But that's not most of us.

Eight. The only people who tend to manage their weight find a way to enjoy eating whole foods for their lifetime.

Sample Thesis Statements

Defining a thesis:

A thesis is a meaningful claim or argument that is the central focus of your essay, that you can defend with credible information, that will outline an essay of 1,200 words or more, that is challenging enough to be appropriate for college-level writing, that has high stakes, and that defies simple analysis. 

• The thesis or claim is the central focus of your essay. It is the reason you are writing your essay. To stray from your thesis is to betray your original intention. 
• The thesis is based on an informed opinion based on credible research. Your research has been peer reviewed and is rooted in reality. To look to “research” based on a fever swamp of unproven conspiracies and misinformation is to present an essay that is disconnected from reality. We live in an age where even facts and reality itself are disputed. This is a very specific crisis called the epistemic crisis. You can read about this crisis in Jonathan Rauch’s book The Constitution of Knowledge. 
• A strong thesis may have reasons contained in the sentence. These reasons are also called mapping components. They outline your essay’s body paragraphs. Observe the following example: Working from the home is more viable for most companies because working from the home saves your workers from commute time, doesn’t expose workers to illnesses resulting in lost work time, reduces work theft opportunities, reduces company expenses such as heat, AC, lighting, etc., and takes advantage of the technology that’s cheaply available to make your employees’ home office an efficient business office. 
• The thesis can generate an essay that is 1,200 words or more means the thesis is demonstrable: You can defend the thesis with reasoning, logic, examples, and research. 
• Your thesis has high stakes. You present an argument and the listener or reader doesn’t feel compelled to say “So what?” Rather, you have chosen a topic that is relevant, vital, and urgent to the human condition. 
• Your thesis defies simple analysis. You are avoiding the obvious and factual such as “What the world needs now is love.” Rather, you are focusing on debatable topics. 

Sample Thesis Statements

Sample #1 offers no mapping components and may or may not be demonstrable:

Suppose your Western Diet, an endless buffet of sugar, processed food, and sodium, is presenting you with various health afflictions that are so extreme that you have a variety of morbidity factors. In that case, you have to push Harriet Brown’s pessimism aside and manipulate your eating environment and recalibrate your eating habits in such a way that your diet is not a fool’s errand but a necessary step in saving your life. 

Sample #2 with mapping components

If you’re discouraged by your lackluster build and pudgy contours and aspire to look like a chiseled Instagram model, you will most likely find that your austere dietary program will give you short-term results, but in the long run, your diet will be a fool’s errand because willpower can only last so long, environmental and social pressures to indulge will break you, high-density-calorie foods are in abundance, and sugary, fatty foods are an irresistible drug that provides an escape from the stresses of modern life.  

Sample #3 with mapping components

While it’s true that long-term adherence to a proper diet is difficult and that sugary, fatty foods can indeed become an irresistible drug from the stresses of modern life, I propose that a healthy whole food diet over the long haul is more viable than the self-destructive Western Diet because a healthy whole food diet can be adopted through habit, economic wellbeing and prove to be necessary for the fight against depression, diabetes, and other comorbidity factors. 

Sample #4 with mapping components

While Harriet Brown in “The Weight of the Evidence” makes many compelling and persuasive points, her essay suffers from a lack of persuasion because of problems in ethos, logos, and pathos.

Sample #5 without mapping components is probably demonstrable. 

While Harriet Brown’s “The Weight of the Evidence” suffers problems in ethos, logos, and pathos, her main argument about the futility of dieting remains insightful, compelling, and persuasive.

Sample #6 with mapping components 

While Harriet Brown’s tone is a bit glum and some of her studies seem cherry-picked, she nonetheless demonstrates persuasively that dieting is a fool’s errand because of unrealistic societal expectations, money-driven skinny aesthetics of a fraudulent dieting industry, the inevitable failure of willpower, and biological impediments. 

Sample #7 with mapping components

While Harriet Brown makes many insightful and irrefutable points, I find her essay offensive and harmful because she cherry-picks studies to support her claim that being fat is not a health risk, she doesn’t leave nuance in the realm of healthy eating as an alternative to throwing care to the wind and eating “whatever,” she doesn’t offer any success stories to provide a counterbalance to her doom and gloom, and she offers no encouragement for at least eating healthy whole foods so that as a whole her essay leaves a sour and putrid taste in my mouth. 

Sample Counterarguments and Rebuttals for Dieting Is a Fool’s Errand Essay

Typically, when we write argumentation essays, we devote a section of our essay, usually before our conclusion, that addresses our opponents’ disagreement with our central argument or the way we anticipate how our opponents will object to our essay’s claim. 

We want to make a clear presentation of how and why our imagined opponents might disagree with us. This is called the counterargument. 

We then examine the counterargument and offer a rebuttal or refutation of that counterargument. 

Here are some examples for the essay that addresses the claim that losing weight is such a futile endeavor that dieting surely is a fool’s errand. 

Example of a Counterargument and Rebuttal for Essay That Supports Idea That Dieting Is a Fool’s Errand

I can anticipate my opponents taking my claim that dieting is a fool’s errand as bait for accusing me of “dietary nihilism,” the notion that we should throw care to the wind and engage in reckless disregard when it comes to our bodies, indulging in gluttony, and being both beholden and addicted to the food industry’s myriad of fat-, salt-, and sugar-laden foods. On the contrary, I am no dietary nihilist. I am a dietary realist or pragmatist. My approach is not to focus on weight loss but on health by cultivating a love for cooking whole foods, avoiding processed foods, and having the food literacy to know the difference. 

Example of a Counterargument and Rebuttal for Essay That Refutes Idea That Dieting Is a Fool’s Errand

I am a staunch defender of the idea that we should not let the majority of dieters, doomed to fail for a myriad of reasons too many to list here, be an excuse for our own individual aspirations to manage our weight and live a healthy lifestyle. My opponents will point out, correctly, that many lack the time and resources to buy and prepare healthy foods. I concede their point. For many hard-working Americans, time and budget constraints impede them from devoting the kind of time and resources necessary for a permanent weight-loss plan. But my fellow Americans’ dietary failures, however legitimate, do not excuse me for taking personal responsibility for my own dietary success. The truth of the matter is I have the familial, financial, and environmental support to succeed at my dietary goals, and my particular situation is such that dieting is not a fool’s errand. Rather, dieting and keeping excess weight off is a moral imperative. 

Example of Counterargument and Rebuttal for Essay That Supports Idea That Dieting Is a Fool’s Errand

Since the overwhelming majority of Americans lack the time and resources to devote to full-time dieting, I stand by my argument that dieting for the most part is a fool’s errand. My opponents will point out that there are some Americans who enjoy enough financial comfort and discretionary time to devote to their weight-loss plan. But this amount of Americans is too minuscule to make a drop in the bucket, so to speak, when it comes to successful dieting because we cannot really talk about dieting as a fool’s errand, or not unless we talk about viability and sustainability for most people. If we can’t scale successful dieting for the masses, then dieting indeed is a fool’s errand with the exception of a very elite and specialized class of people who can meet all the caveats and conditions for succeeding at permanent weight loss. And I would remind the elite class that even they have a strong probability of failing, so my contention that dieting is a fool’s errand stands. 

Authorial Presence

After 35 years of teaching college writing, I am convinced that the highest compliment I can put on students’ essays is that they wrote with authorial presence, which I would define as a confident writing voice that curates the argument, narrative, or any other kind of exposition with a distinctive point of view. This point of view rests on five major pillars: The student writes from a philosophical position that developing an essay as an academic exercise is morally repugnant; rather, writing an essay attempts to create a greater understanding of a murky issue that is relevant to the human condition. 

Secondly, the authorial presence is generated from an informed opinion in which the writer did her due diligence, studying credible sources, and exploring opposite sides of a position before reaching her conclusion. Third, her authorial presence, or writing voice, makes it clear that living in the world of ideas is not an austere, boring place but rather one of the highest realms of human existence, the privilege of being engaged in the Cafe Society of the Mind. This Cafe Society of the Mind is not a place for smug complacency and mutual praise. Rather, we challenge each other. As such, we arrive at the fourth pillar of authorial presence: The writer disrupts our assumptions about life and ourselves by challenging us with contrarian ideas, or to use  Kafka’s words, her writing “is the ax that breaks the frozen ocean.” 

Finally, over time her authorial presence melds with her personality so that her speaking persona and her writing persona both come from the core of her being. In other words, her intellectual life has replaced the embryonic person she was before starting her intellectual journey. Her authorial presence reflects the different person she has become and this different person, unlike her previous iteration, is strongly defined, distinctive, and stamps her signature in everything she does. 

The strength of her persona reminds us of Oscar Wilde’s famous, often misinterpreted adage. “The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second one is, no one has yet discovered.” I would argue this “pose” is an authorial presence. But it is not the hollow pose of a dandy. Rather, it is a distinctive persona built with blood, sweat, and tears. 

In Your Thesis, Be Sure to Address One of the Assigned Readings with a Signal Phrase

A lot of you are writing that dieting can be done with hard work and professional guidance (a sound, demonstrable thesis) and a lot of you are writing that dieting can often be a fool’s errand because of the physical and mental problems that result (also a sound, demonstrable thesis), but your thesis doesn’t have sufficient context nor does it address the assignment unless you use a signal phrase in which you respond to one of the authors in our assignment. Let me give you two examples:

Example of a Student Using a Signal Phrase to Disagree with One of the Authors

While Harriet Brown makes many compelling points in her essay “The Weight of the Evidence,” I would counter her point that dieting is a futile quest because a healthy approach to dieting can work if we take the focus off the Hot Instagram Bod and instead strive for health, if we increase our protein to stave off our appetites, if we develop a baseline of nutritional literacy, and if we can enjoy the health benefits from our weight loss. 

Example of a Student Using a Signal Phrase to Agree with One of the Authors

While I’ll concede that a healthy approach to dieting can work for some people, I find that Harriet Brown makes a convincing case in “The Weight of the Evidence” that dieting is rooted in an unrealistic body image, fueled by the greedy weight-loss industry, doomed to wreak disappointment, failure, and low self-esteem on us, and to be responsible for an array of metabolic and hormonal disruptions so that we’re worse off than before our dieting quests. 

Do You Want to be a Brawler or a Peacemaker in Your Argumentative Tone?

In argumentation, we decide upon a rhetorical voice. We can be aggressive brawlers who take no prisoners in our argumentation or we can be peacemakers who try to arrive at a point of common understanding. One style is not better than the other.

They are different, and both have good and bad points. The aggressive style can come off as brash and arrogant, but it is very powerful writing when done well. The more polite style can show more decorum and show humility, but it may come across as being too tepid and boring. 

Example of a Counterargument-Rebuttal That Is Aggressive and Forceful

Striving to eat a clean diet of whole foods, mostly plant-based, while eating 150 grams of protein a day and abstaining from sugar and alcohol is by no means a fool’s errand. Such a nutritional regimen could very well save one’s life. Opponents of my call for healthy eating are too focused on the folly and self-destruction of what I call Social Media Fad Dieters, those misguided souls who starve themselves, look for gimmicks and silver bullets and get hustled into buying supplements they don’t need, and gaining all their weight back after finding they cannot adhere to their crash course in weight loss. But these nay-sayers such as Harriet Brown make the fatal mistake of making the claim that just because 95% of aspiring dieters don’t do their due diligence and find a way to enjoy healthy eating that we should surrender a life of good health and happiness and resign ourselves to a life of slovenliness and gluttony. Harriet Brown and her ilk seem to be making the logical fallacy of Two Rights Make a Wrong: Since crash dieters are wrong in their approach and fail miserably, then it’s somehow okay to give up on a healthy approach to eating. Harriet Brown can give us several reasons for why diets fail, but she doesn’t give a hint at eating healthy. To be sure, I agree with her that unrealistic expectations and crash diets are bad, but there are joys, pleasures, and good health that we can enjoy when we can learn to eat clean whole foods rather than sob and feast on the pity party of learned helplessness. 

Counterargument-Rebuttal with a Peace-Maker Tone

I would like to first make it clear that I agree with my opponents such as Harriet Brown that fad dieting doesn’t work and that the diet industry makes profits by pounding us over the head with messages that we are never skinny enough. I would also like to make it clear that I agree with my opponents that losing weight and keeping it off permanently on any kind of diet is most likely futile and what could be called a “fool’s errand.” Where I’d like to differ with my opponents, though, is that I don’t think we should throw away the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. What is the baby? Healthy eating. And what is healthy eating? Consuming whole foods, 150 grams of protein a day, and abstaining from sugar and alcohol. Will such a regimen guarantee the kind of weight loss that will make us worthy of being Instagram models? Likely not. But will such a dietary regimen make us look and feel better? Indeed, it will, which is why I am not so mired in despair as my adversaries who seem so discouraged by the fad diets that they may have been over-eager to dismiss the healthy-eating diets as well. 

For the last few semesters, my critical thinking students have been grappling with the argument: Is losing weight a fool’s errand? 

What Students Have Taught Me:

• Most students themselves have dieted or they know friends and family who have dieted for the purposes of gaining self-esteem, conforming to an unrealistic body aesthetic, improving their health, or taking orders from a doctor who has warned them that they are dangerously obese.
• Many students have horrid tales of aspiring dieters getting exploited and manipulated by the profiteering diet industry, which promises fast, unrealistic results and tries to make their clients dependent on their products.
• Most students know someone who tried the Single Food diet: eating nothing but bananas, potatoes, cabbage soup, etc., which surely is not sustainable.
• Most students find the losing-weight quest to be a Shame and Anxiety Dungeon where failure to adhere to some Strict Eating Orthodoxy banishes them to a life of shame and misery so acute that the diet cannot be sustained for long before people suffer a nervous breakdown.
• Some students have identified a Pathological Diet Culture based on neurosis, paranoia, narcissism, and addiction. 
• Some students have smartly distinguished this Pathological Diet Culture from a Healthy Whole Foods Culture in which people emphasize eating whole foods over processed foods, but they don’t freak out when they have an occasional cheat meal.  
• Some students have smartly rejected both extremes of dieting: Strict Orthodox Dieting on one hand and Nihilistic Throw-Care-to-the-Wind Gluttony Diet on the other and in rejecting both extremes, these students have embraced a common sense emphasis on whole and healthy foods with more emphasis on health than body weight. 

Recognizing Logical Fallacies

Begging the Question

Begging the question assumes that a statement is self-evident when it actually requires proof.

Major Premise Based on a False Assumption: Fulfilling all my major desires is the only way I can be happy (false assumption).

Minor Premise: I can’t afford when of my greatest desires in life, a Rolex Deepsea Dweller wristwatch.

Conclusion: Therefore, I can never be happy.

Major Premise Based on a False Assumption: I need to go on a diet because staying on a diet will exercise my willpower, increase my self-esteem, and make me healthier. 

Minor Premise: Every time I go on a diet, I fail after a few months.

Conclusion: I must have lousy willpower, lousy self-esteem, and lousy health. 

Circular Reasoning

Circular reasoning occurs when we support a statement by restating it in different terms.

Going on a diet is good for you because diets make you lose weight, and losing weight is a good thing.

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.

Finding the right diet is like finding your perfect soul mate.

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)

You attack the person but not the argument.

Harriet Brown looks like a bitter person so we shouldn’t believe what she writes about dieting.

“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, distort, 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.”

“I told you to go off Twitter because it’s toxic and feeds your addiction, not because I’m jealous of your popularity on Twitter. Don’t twist my words.”

“Don’t accuse me of hating my country when I criticize it. I criticize my country because I have high expectations for it. The day I stop criticizing my country is the day I’ve given up on it.”

Hasty Generalization (Jumping to a Conclusion)

You base a generality on an insufficient sample.

“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 American celebrities with fake British accents and they were all annoying. Therefore, all American celebrities, such as Madonna, have fake British accents.”

“Every vegan I’ve ever met is preachy, judgmental, and looks anemic and undernourished.”

“Every guy I’ve met who is obsessed with the band Rush is middle-aged, chain smokes, underemployed, and still lives with his parents.”

Either/Or Fallacy

There are only two choices to an issue makes an oversimplification 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, then what’s next? We’ll have to allow people to marry turtles.”

“If we allow gay marriage, my marriage to my wife will be disrespected and dishonored. I will not allow you to disrespect my marriage.”

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. That is the basis of a successful marriage. Look at divorce today. It’s because we’ve forgotten our traditional roles.”

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.”

 

 

 

Diet Essay, Lesson #2, Thesis, Counterarguments, Brawler and the Peace-Maker

Is Thinking About Food a Waste of Time?

Some people might object to writing an essay about food and what we eat. Why should I care about what I eat? What I eat is a product of habit, circumstance, and environment. Thinking about eating is a waste of time because no thoughts will change the habits that have been instilled inside of me all of my life. Thinking about eating is also a waste of time because what I eat bears no relevance to the quality of my life. 

While I concede it’s possible to spend too much time thinking about what we eat to the point that overthinking eating, like overthinking anything, can be a self-destructive neurosis, I disagree with the claim that thinking about eating is a waste of time.

Critical thinking means questioning habits rather than mindlessly accepting the habits and routines we engage in that define our existence. If we are eating inferior food, we are likely suffering in terms of mental and physical performance, success goals, and personal identity. A life of fast food, Funyuns, and Fanta is a life of depression, destitution, and crapulence. 

To blindly succumb to mindless eating and to “get punk fed” is a form of debasement and humiliation. 

In contrast, to question one’s eating habits and replace any bad habits by embracing food literacy is to fight back against the current of mindless eating. 

Fighting back with the knowledge of food literacy is a form of self-preservation and self-agency that is a predictor of success and high self-confidence. 

Resisting food nihilism, the belief that it doesn’t matter what we eat because we’re all doomed to being imprisoned by our Set-Point, is to express the kind of critical thinking that we don’t just merely apply to eating but to all endeavors. Therefore, to reject mindless eating and to critically think about what kind of food we put into our bodies is a crucial part of a healthy self-identity, success, and confidence.

 

 

Is the following sample essay, which takes some rather strident aim at Harriet Brown, fair?

Selective Despair

Harriet Brown laments that dieting is so confusing with so many conflicting theories from supposed experts and that the human body is inclined to not lose weight but rebel against all weight-loss programs. Further, she complains that the diet and medical industry are rife with grifters and charlatans who are profit-centered and could care less about our health. To add to our despair, Brown includes a diatribe on unrealistic media images of the human body, which inevitably lead to low self-esteem and body dysmorphia. Brown’s lamentation is, I’m sad to say, a smokescreen for learned helplessness and dietary nihilism. In fact, living a strong, healthy life requires hard work, getting the right facts, and having realistic expectations. Rather than point us in the direction of common sense and struggling for our health, Brown pushes us toward dietary despair. 

Just as Chris Rock points out the inconsistency of cowardly anger in his Netflix comedy special “Selective Outrage,” I would like to point out Harriet Brown’s inconsistency in an essay titled “Selective Despair.” Why would anyone choose to despair when it comes to dieting? Is not such despair a rationale for throwing care to the wind and eating everything? It seems Brown is doing just that. However, Brown doesn’t choose despair in other areas of her life. She has a college degree. Yet going to college is fraught with challenges--the cost, the lack of certainty of majoring in the “right” major; the lack of any certainty that the college graduate will land a job that will pay for the student debt. Nevertheless, in spite of these obstacles, Brown did not despair. She struggled through college and found success as a journalism professor and as a magazine writer.

Take marriage. Brown is married, yet the statistics for divorce are terrifying. Almost half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce, which eviscerates people emotionally and financially. The risk is so high. The cost is even higher. Yet Brown forged ahead and got married and seems to be doing fine. 

The point is that Brown worked hard in college to make her education give her rewards. The same is true of her marriage. She works at making her marriage work and by all accounts, she and her husband are in a loving functional marriage. 

Why does she reserve “being confused,” lost, and overwhelmed when it comes to dieting but not when it comes to education and marriage? Could it be that she chooses to be confused and overwhelmed by dieting because she doesn’t want eating boundaries, yet she is content exercising discipline and free agency in her career and marriage? 

It seems we play the Despair Card when we want to play it. If our agenda is to eat as we please, then perhaps we’ll argue that dieting in pursuit of health is a fool’s errand. But the real fool’s errand is selective despair. 

 

 

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 the writer's character, knowledge, authority, savvy, book smarts, and street smarts. The latter is evidenced by the 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 the 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 the 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. 

Common signal phrases

We read in Author X’s essay that:

We read in Corbin Smith’s essay “Alan Ritchson’s ‘Reacher” Is a Gigantic, Unstoppable Force” that Jack Reacher embodies “The four virtues of Stoicism.”

According to Author X, and As Author X writes: 

According to Corbin Smith, the Stoical Hero balances his passion with his powers of reason. As Smith writes: “You are passionate, but not completely driven by your baser instincts.” 

Author X argues that and As Author X observes:

Corbin Smith argues that Reacher’s appeal rests largely in the sheer physicality of its star Alan Ritchson. As Smith observes: Ritchson “is a slab of rock-hard marbled beef with an unnerving square jaw and blue eyes that cut holes through steel.”

When you write an argumentative essay, most likely you will be required to write a counterargument-rebuttal section in which you address your opponents’ objections to your argument. The following are templates for counterarguments followed by rebuttals:

• Some people may object to my point X, but they fail to see Y.
• Some people will take issue with my argument X, and I will concede their point to some degree. However, on balance, my argument X still stands because______________________________.  
• It is true as my opponents say that my argument fails to acknowledge the possibility that Y, but I would counter-argue by observing that ___________________. 
• I would be the first to agree with my opponents that my argument can lead to some dangerous conclusions such as X. But we can neutralize these misgivings when we consider __________________________. 

My personal analysis:

Dietary Nihilism

Brown suggests giving up in paragraph 1. Giving up with no solutions to weight-related problems is what I call Dietary Nihilism, an unacceptable position for someone who wants to live a long, healthy life. 

Telling people to give up dieting while offering no alternatives strikes me as bitter and irresponsible. Such a position compromises the writer’s ethos (credibility) and pathos (my emotional connection to the writing). 

Cherry-Picking Based on Cognitive Bias

There is an abundance of credible studies showing how being overweight has deleterious effects on our health, but Brown conveniently ignores those studies and focuses on studies that show that the contrary is true: There is no connection between high BMI and having bad health in terms of heart disease, high cholesterol, metabolic syndrome, diabetes 2, inflammation, higher risk for cancer, stroke, and cardiac arrest; shortened lifespan. 

If I want to eat to my heart’s content, then my cognitive bias is going to point me in the direction to “research” that gives me the Green Light to eat pizza, donuts, and ice cream. 

Cherry-picking evidence based on cognitive biases does not help Brown in terms of credibility, reasoning, or emotional power: ethos, logos, and pathos.

 

“It’s All So Confusing!” Fallacy

Brown complains that there are so many kinds of diets making health claims: keto, vegan, raw, organic, high-protein, low-fat, etc. She just doesn’t know what to believe anymore. 

When an important topic is confusing or difficult, should we shrug our shoulders and scream, “I just don’t know what to do!”

Of course, weight management is difficult and so is healthy eating, but Brown says nothing about nutritional literacy and how such literacy will make great strides in improving our health.

What is nutritional literacy?

• It’s knowing the difference between whole and processed foods and where to find whole foods in the grocery store and how to avoid processed foods in the grocery store.
• It’s learning how to cook at least half a dozen healthy meals that you enjoy eating so that you are both healthy and self-reliant. 
• It’s learning how to avoid sugar and find foods that satisfy you without eating sugar.
• It’s learning how to achieve satiety (fullness) by eating sufficient protein.
• It’s learning how to steam vegetables and season them and make high-protein salads that you enjoy eating.
• It’s learning to replace alcohol, sugar, and processed foods with healthy foods that you actually like. 

Brown’s failure to address food literacy and her cry of learned helplessness because “eating is just so confusing” compromises her credibility (ethos). 

Failure to Acknowledge That Two Things Can Both be True: Either/Or Fallacy

Brown does a good job of showing that a skinny body aesthetic was artificially imposed upon us starting around the 1920s. For the last 100 years, there has been a money-making conspiracy to make us ashamed of our bodies:

• Advertising
• Consumerism
• Media giving us unrealistic body aesthetic
• Diet pills
• Insurance companies
• Unrealistic BMI levels
• Bariatric surgeries
• Variety of pharmaceuticals 
• Ever-changing dietary advice from the medical community and the government

While all of this is true, it can at the same time be true that being overweight is unhealthy. 

Either the quest for a healthy body is legit or there is a conspiracy to give us an unrealistic expectation of the ideal body. 

Brown commits an either/or fallacy: It’s possible that there is a profit-driven diet industry AND that being overweight is a health risk at the same time.

Her either/or fallacy compromises her credibility and reasoning (ethos and logos). 

Failure to Acknowledge Self-Empowerment Through Knowledge and Reasonable Expectations

Life is a cruel place. Once we’re 18, we’re out on our own. We have to fend for ourselves. There are many confusing things we have to deal with: health, diet, relationships, education, career, politics, civil responsibilities, and developing an appropriate philosophy of life.

Telling you that dieting is too confusing, that being skinny is nothing more than a profit-driven conspiracy, and that it’s too much work to eat right is the Gospel of Despair, Helplessness, and Victimization. 

Brown’s Gospel of Despair has no business in my class and it has no business infecting my students. 

I would rather tell my students that you should fight to find a job that gives you a good living, find people to love in your life so that you have enough self-worth to work on having a long healthy life for your sake and your loved one’s sake, make a good living so you can afford to eat healthy because healthy whole foods are expensive, but that’s the situation. Empower yourself. Develop food literacy. Develop knowledge about health because knowledge is power and you’re responsible for gaining that power.

Harriet Brown’s sob story won’t give it to you. 

Learning to eat healthy foods may not give you a hot Instagram bod, but you’ll be vastly healthier than if you give up and go on an Eat- Everything Diet.  

See Netflix Explained: Why Diets Fail and linked to Vox. 

Review of "Why Diets Fail":

One. Our body has a skinny rebel, the hormone leptin. 

Two. Snack industry brainwashed us into snacking so that we constantly have elevated insulin, resulting in obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, etc.

Three. Food industry has us addicted to processed foods, which are higher profit than whole foods.

Four. After World War II, calories became "low-hanging fruit," easy pickings.

Five. "Normal" is eating in excess of 3,000 calories a day when, from an evolutionary level, we're more suited to under 2,000. 

Six. Diets may or may not work. It doesn't matter because most of us don't stick to them in the long term.

Seven. Related to Six, most people don't stick to diets because weight-loss management is a full-time job not suited to people who have to work, go to school, parent, etc. If you're rich and have the whole day to focus on your navel and hire a personal trainer and have an Instagram account showing off your Hot Bod, then perhaps you will be a string bean. But that's not most of us.

Eight. The only people who tend to manage their weight find a way to enjoy eating whole foods for their lifetime.

 

Sample Thesis Statements

Defining a thesis:

A thesis is a meaningful claim or argument that is the central focus of your essay, that you can defend with credible information, that will outline an essay of 1,200 words or more, that is challenging enough to be appropriate for college-level writing, that has high stakes, and that defies simple analysis. 

• The thesis or claim is the central focus of your essay. It is the reason you are writing your essay. To stray from your thesis is to betray your original intention. 
• The thesis is based on an informed opinion based on credible research. Your research has been peer reviewed and is rooted in reality. To look to “research” based on a fever swamp of unproven conspiracies and misinformation is to present an essay that is disconnected from reality. We live in an age where even facts and reality itself are disputed. This is a very specific crisis called the epistemic crisis. You can read about this crisis in Jonathan Rauch’s book The Constitution of Knowledge. 
• A strong thesis may have reasons contained in the sentence. These reasons are also called mapping components. They outline your essay’s body paragraphs. Observe the following example: Working from the home is more viable for most companies because working from the home saves your workers from commute time, doesn’t expose workers to illnesses resulting in lost work time, reduces work theft opportunities, reduces company expenses such as heat, AC, lighting, etc., and takes advantage of the technology that’s cheaply available to make your employees’ home office an efficient business office. 
• The thesis can generate an essay that is 1,200 words or more means the thesis is demonstrable: You can defend the thesis with reasoning, logic, examples, and research. 
• Your thesis has high stakes. You present an argument and the listener or reader doesn’t feel compelled to say “So what?” Rather, you have chosen a topic that is relevant, vital, and urgent to the human condition. 
• Your thesis defies simple analysis. You are avoiding the obvious and factual such as “What the world needs now is love.” Rather, you are focusing on debatable topics. 

Sample Thesis Statements

Sample #1 offers no mapping components and may or may not be demonstrable:

Suppose your Western Diet, an endless buffet of sugar, processed food, and sodium, is presenting you with various health afflictions that are so extreme that you have a variety of morbidity factors. In that case, you have to push Harriet Brown’s pessimism aside and manipulate your eating environment and recalibrate your eating habits in such a way that your diet is not a fool’s errand but a necessary step in saving your life. 

Sample #2 with mapping components

If you’re discouraged by your lackluster build and pudgy contours and aspire to look like a chiseled Instagram model, you will most likely find that your austere dietary program will give you short-term results, but in the long run, your diet will be a fool’s errand because willpower can only last so long, environmental and social pressures to indulge will break you, high-density-calorie foods are in abundance, and sugary, fatty foods are an irresistible drug that provides an escape from the stresses of modern life.  

Sample #3 with mapping components

While it’s true that long-term adherence to a proper diet is difficult and that sugary, fatty foods can indeed become an irresistible drug from the stresses of modern life, I propose that a healthy whole food diet over the long haul is more viable than the self-destructive Western Diet because a healthy whole food diet can be adopted through habit, economic wellbeing and prove to be necessary for the fight against depression, diabetes, and other comorbidity factors. 

Sample #4 with mapping components

While Harriet Brown in “The Weight of the Evidence” makes many compelling and persuasive points, her essay suffers from a lack of persuasion because of problems in ethos, logos, and pathos.

Sample #5 without mapping components is probably demonstrable. 

While Harriet Brown’s “The Weight of the Evidence” suffers problems in ethos, logos, and pathos, her main argument about the futility of dieting remains insightful, compelling, and persuasive.

Sample #6 with mapping components 

While Harriet Brown’s tone is a bit glum and some of her studies seem cherry-picked, she nonetheless demonstrates persuasively that dieting is a fool’s errand because of unrealistic societal expectations, money-driven skinny aesthetics of a fraudulent dieting industry, the inevitable failure of willpower, and biological impediments. 

Sample #7 with mapping components

While Harriet Brown makes many insightful and irrefutable points, I find her essay offensive and harmful because she cherry-picks studies to support her claim that being fat is not a health risk, she doesn’t leave nuance in the realm of healthy eating as an alternative to throwing care to the wind and eating “whatever,” she doesn’t offer any success stories to provide a counterbalance to her doom and gloom, and she offers no encouragement for at least eating healthy whole foods so that as a whole her essay leaves a sour and putrid taste in my mouth. 

Sample Counterarguments and Rebuttals for Dieting Is a Fool’s Errand Essay

Typically, when we write argumentation essays, we devote a section of our essay, usually before our conclusion, that addresses our opponents’ disagreement with our central argument or the way we anticipate how our opponents will object to our essay’s claim. 

We want to make a clear presentation of how and why our imagined opponents might disagree with us. This is called the counterargument. 

We then examine the counterargument and offer a rebuttal or refutation of that counterargument. 

Here are some examples for the essay that addresses the claim that losing weight is such a futile endeavor that dieting surely is a fool’s errand. 

Example of a Counterargument and Rebuttal for Essay That Supports Idea That Dieting Is a Fool’s Errand

I can anticipate my opponents taking my claim that dieting is a fool’s errand as bait for accusing me of “dietary nihilism,” the notion that we should throw care to the wind and engage in reckless disregard when it comes to our bodies, indulging in gluttony, and being both beholden and addicted to the food industry’s myriad of fat-, salt-, and sugar-laden foods. On the contrary, I am no dietary nihilist. I am a dietary realist or pragmatist. My approach is not to focus on weight loss but on health by cultivating a love for cooking whole foods, avoiding processed foods, and having the food literacy to know the difference. 

Example of a Counterargument and Rebuttal for Essay That Refutes Idea That Dieting Is a Fool’s Errand

I am a staunch defender of the idea that we should not let the majority of dieters, doomed to fail for a myriad of reasons too many to list here, be an excuse for our own individual aspirations to manage our weight and live a healthy lifestyle. My opponents will point out, correctly, that many lack the time and resources to buy and prepare healthy foods. I concede their point. For many hard-working Americans, time and budget constraints impede them from devoting the kind of time and resources necessary for a permanent weight-loss plan. But my fellow Americans’ dietary failures, however legitimate, do not excuse me for taking personal responsibility for my own dietary success. The truth of the matter is I have the familial, financial, and environmental support to succeed at my dietary goals, and my particular situation is such that dieting is not a fool’s errand. Rather, dieting and keeping excess weight off is a moral imperative. 

Example of Counterargument and Rebuttal for Essay That Supports Idea That Dieting Is a Fool’s Errand

Since the overwhelming majority of Americans lack the time and resources to devote to full-time dieting, I stand by my argument that dieting for the most part is a fool’s errand. My opponents will point out that there are some Americans who enjoy enough financial comfort and discretionary time to devote to their weight-loss plan. But this amount of Americans is too minuscule to make a drop in the bucket, so to speak, when it comes to successful dieting because we cannot really talk about dieting as a fool’s errand, or not unless we talk about viability and sustainability for most people. If we can’t scale successful dieting for the masses, then dieting indeed is a fool’s errand with the exception of a very elite and specialized class of people who can meet all the caveats and conditions for succeeding at permanent weight loss. And I would remind the elite class that even they have a strong probability of failing, so my contention that dieting is a fool’s errand stands. 

Authorial Presence

After 35 years of teaching college writing, I am convinced that the highest compliment I can put on students’ essays is that they wrote with authorial presence, which I would define as a confident writing voice that curates the argument, narrative, or any other kind of exposition with a distinctive point of view. This point of view rests on five major pillars: The student writes from a philosophical position that developing an essay as an academic exercise is morally repugnant; rather, writing an essay attempts to create a greater understanding of a murky issue that is relevant to the human condition. 

Secondly, the authorial presence is generated from an informed opinion in which the writer did her due diligence, studying credible sources, and exploring opposite sides of a position before reaching her conclusion. Third, her authorial presence, or writing voice, makes it clear that living in the world of ideas is not an austere, boring place but rather one of the highest realms of human existence, the privilege of being engaged in the Cafe Society of the Mind. This Cafe Society of the Mind is not a place for smug complacency and mutual praise. Rather, we challenge each other. As such, we arrive at the fourth pillar of authorial presence: The writer disrupts our assumptions about life and ourselves by challenging us with contrarian ideas, or to use  Kafka’s words, her writing “is the ax that breaks the frozen ocean.” 

Finally, over time her authorial presence melds with her personality so that her speaking persona and her writing persona both come from the core of her being. In other words, her intellectual life has replaced the embryonic person she was before starting her intellectual journey. Her authorial presence reflects the different person she has become and this different person, unlike her previous iteration, is strongly defined, distinctive, and stamps her signature in everything she does. 

The strength of her persona reminds us of Oscar Wilde’s famous, often misinterpreted adage. “The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second one is, no one has yet discovered.” I would argue this “pose” is an authorial presence. But it is not the hollow pose of a dandy. Rather, it is a distinctive persona built with blood, sweat, and tears. 

In Your Thesis, Be Sure to Address One of the Assigned Readings with a Signal Phrase

A lot of you are writing that dieting can be done with hard work and professional guidance (a sound, demonstrable thesis) and a lot of you are writing that dieting can often be a fool’s errand because of the physical and mental problems that result (also a sound, demonstrable thesis), but your thesis doesn’t have sufficient context nor does it address the assignment unless you use a signal phrase in which you respond to one of the authors in our assignment. Let me give you two examples:

Example of a Student Using a Signal Phrase to Disagree with One of the Authors

While Harriet Brown makes many compelling points in her essay “The Weight of the Evidence,” I would counter her point that dieting is a futile quest because a healthy approach to dieting can work if we take the focus off the Hot Instagram Bod and instead strive for health, if we increase our protein to stave off our appetites, if we develop a baseline of nutritional literacy, and if we can enjoy the health benefits from our weight loss. 

Example of a Student Using a Signal Phrase to Agree with One of the Authors

While I’ll concede that a healthy approach to dieting can work for some people, I find that Harriet Brown makes a convincing case in “The Weight of the Evidence” that dieting is rooted in an unrealistic body image, fueled by the greedy weight-loss industry, doomed to wreak disappointment, failure, and low self-esteem on us, and to be responsible for an array of metabolic and hormonal disruptions so that we’re worse off than before our dieting quests. 

What Students Have Taught Me

Do You Want to be a Brawler or a Peace-Maker in Your Argumentative Tone?

In argumentation, we decide upon a rhetorical voice. We can be aggressive brawlers who take no prisoners in our argumentation or we can be peace-makers who try to arrive at a point of common understanding. One style is not better than the other. They are different, and both have good and bad points. The aggressive style can come off as being brash and arrogant, but it is very powerful writing when done well. The more polite style can show more decorum and show humility, but it may come across as being too tepid and boring. 

Example of a Counterargument-Rebuttal That Is Aggressive and Forceful

Striving to eat a clean diet of whole foods, mostly plant-based, while eating 150 grams of protein a day and abstaining from sugar and alcohol is by no means a fool’s errand. Such a nutritional regimen could very well save one’s life. Opponents of my call for healthy eating are too focused on the folly and self-destruction of what I call Social Media Fad Dieters, those misguided souls who starve themselves, look for gimmicks and silver bullets and get hustled into buying supplements they don’t need, and gaining all their weight back after finding they cannot adhere to their crash course in weight loss. But these nay-sayers such as Harriet Brown make the fatal mistake of making the claim that just because 95% of aspiring dieters don’t do their due diligence and find a way to enjoy healthy eating that we should surrender a life of good health and happiness and resign ourselves to a life of slovenliness and gluttony. Harriet Brown and her ilk seem to be making the logical fallacy of Two Rights Make a Wrong: Since crash dieters are wrong in their approach and fail miserably, then it’s somehow okay to give up on a healthy approach to eating. Harriet Brown can give us several reasons for why diets fail, but she doesn’t give a hint at eating healthy. To be sure, I agree with her that unrealistic expectations and crash diets are bad, but there are joys, pleasures, and good health that we can enjoy when we can learn to eat clean whole foods rather than sob and feast on the pity party of learned helplessness. 

Counterargument-Rebuttal with a Peace-Maker Tone

I would like to first make it clear that I agree with my opponents such as Harriet Brown that fad dieting doesn’t work and that the diet industry makes profits by pounding us over the head with messages that we are never skinny enough. I would also like to make it clear that I agree with my opponents that losing weight and keeping it off permanently on any kind of diet is most likely futile and what could be called a “fool’s errand.” Where I’d like to differ with my opponents, though, is that I don’t think we should throw away the baby with the bathwater, so to speak. What is the baby? Healthy eating. And what is healthy eating? Consuming whole foods, 150 grams of protein a day, and abstaining from sugar and alcohol. Will such a regimen guarantee the kind of weight loss that will make us worthy of being Instagram models? Likely not. But will such a dietary regimen make us look and feel better? Indeed, it will, which is why I am not so mired in despair as my adversaries who seem so discouraged by the fad diets that they may have been over-eager to dismiss the healthy-eating diets as well. 

For the last few semesters, my critical thinking students have been grappling with the argument: Is losing weight a fool’s errand? 

Here’s what I’ve learned:

• Most students themselves have dieted or they know friends and family who have dieted for the purposes of gaining self-esteem, conforming to an unrealistic body aesthetic, improving their health, or taking orders from a doctor who has warned them that they are dangerously obese.
• Many students have horrid tales of aspiring dieters getting exploited and manipulated by the profiteering diet industry, which promises fast, unrealistic results and tries to make their clients dependent on their products.
• Most students know someone who tried the Single Food diet: eating nothing but bananas, potatoes, cabbage soup, etc., which surely is not sustainable.
• Most students find the losing-weight quest to be a Shame and Anxiety Dungeon where failure to adhere to some Strict Eating Orthodoxy banishes them to a life of shame and misery so acute that the diet cannot be sustained for long before people suffer a nervous breakdown.
• Some students have identified a Pathological Diet Culture based on neurosis, paranoia, narcissism, and addiction. 
• Some students have smartly distinguished this Pathological Diet Culture from a Healthy Whole Foods Culture in which people emphasize eating whole foods over processed foods, but they don’t freak out when they have an occasional cheat meal.  
• Some students have smartly rejected both extremes of dieting: Strict Orthodox Dieting on one hand and Nihilistic Throw-Care-to-the-Wind Gluttony Diet on the other and in rejecting both extremes, these students have embraced a common sense emphasis on whole and healthy foods with more emphasis on health than body weight.