Frank Wilczek: Are We Living in a Simulated World?

Frank Wilczek’s answer to the question “Are We Living in a Simulated World?” is brief: We could be, but we probably aren’t. In his January 9, 2020 Wall Street Journal column shown above, he poses two different questions that I have put in bold, and answers each:

Could there be a richly experienced mental world that is not made of matter, as it appears to be, but of abstract data?

… pretty surely yes. In fact, humans occupy self-generated mind-worlds for an hour or two each day, when we dream during REM sleep. The objects we see in dreams are just patterns of electrical excitation in our brains.

Is the world we actually experience—the universe as described by the laws of physics and the facts of cosmology—such a world? …is our own perceived world manufactured, in fact, from such abstract data[?]

… the best answer is pretty surely no. …

… there are many aspects of physics in our world that do not look like the product of an efficient world-simulator. For example, our most accurate formulation of the laws of physics depends on the idea that space and time are smooth and continuous. When you work with continuous numbers, instead of 0s and 1s, it becomes much more difficult, in a simulation, to maintain precision.

More generally, our world contains a lot of hidden complexity. We can calculate a proton’s properties based on fundamental laws, but those calculations are extremely complicated. It would be a poor strategy to build a simulated world out of such hard-to-compute ingredients.

For me, it is delightful that Frank Wilczek is essentially using an economic argument for our not already living in a simulated world: if we were, whatever the computer we might be in is made of, and whatever the unknown-to-us laws of physics in the “real world” outside that computer, it is likely that resources in the “real world” would be scarce, so that a simulation would be done in a way that used those scarce resources efficiently.

Related Posts:

My Experiences with Clay Christensen

I am sad to hear of Clay Christensen’s passing. For those who don’t already know, Clay was one of the most famous business gurus in the world, and one whose work should be of special interest to economists. I have written many blog posts and one Quartz article related to Clay and his work:

Let me tell you how I became such a fan of Clay Christensen. Plane tickets used to be relatively more expensive than they are now. When I was headed to Harvard as a freshman in 1977, I wanted to save money by carpooling from Utah out to Cambridge, Massachusetts. My parents helped me connect with Clay Christensen, who was headed out his first year of the Harvard MBA program. Because the MBA program started a week or so before the Harvard College semester, and I couldn’t get into the dorm that early, I stayed at Clay’s apartment for that time after we got there. (That was when I first learned about decision trees and backwards programming: from the advance homework the MBA program had given Clay.)

Spending that time with Clay gave me a lasting impression. I filed Clay in my mind as one of the kindest human beings I have ever known.

After spending all that time with Clay, I had only passing interactions with him for many years, primarily saying “Hi” at multi-congregation Mormon Church events. Then, after I began blogging, I discovered Clay’s books (many of them coauthored) on disruptive innovation. As you can see above, that work has been a major influence on this blog.

I had an email exchange with Clay after I published “In Defense of Clay Christensen: Even the 'Nicest Man Ever to Lecture' at Harvard Can't Innovate Without Upsetting a Few People” in Quartz. He was a bit puzzled by the criticism I was addressing and disputed Jean-Louis Gassée’s factual claims.

My one other interaction with Clay was indirect: my daughter Diana took his class when she was a student at Harvard Business School. Her reports only reinforced what I had thought of Clay Christensen since 1977: one of the best people I have ever known.

The New England Journal of Medicine Review of the Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging and Disease

The New England Journal of Medicine allows anyone who signs up to read three free articles a month. Make Rafael de Cabo and Mark Mattson’s review article “Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging, and Disease” one of your three articles this month. It could add years to your life. “Intermittent fasting” means having periods of, say 18 hours or more without food, or with very little food. As Rafael and Mark write:

… the three most widely studied intermittent-fasting regimens are alternate-day fasting, 5:2 intermittent fasting (fasting 2 days each week), and daily time-restricted feeding.

Let me give a few other quotations to convince you to read Rafael and Mark’s article, with my labels in bold:

  • Humans, like other animals, have evolved to function well with intermittent fasting: Studies in animals and humans have shown that many of the health benefits of intermittent fasting are not simply the result of reduced free-radical production or weight loss. Instead, intermittent fasting elicits evolutionarily conserved, adaptive cellular responses that are integrated between and within organs in a manner that improves glucose regulation, increases stress resistance, and suppresses inflammation. 

  • Fasting between 12 and 24 hours has big effects on ketosis: During periods of fasting, triglycerides are broken down to fatty acids and glycerol, which are used for energy. The liver converts fatty acids to ketone bodies, which provide a major source of energy for many tissues, especially the brain, during fasting (Figure 2). In the fed state, blood levels of ketone bodies are low, and in humans, they rise within 8 to 12 hours after the onset of fasting, reaching levels as high as 2 to 5 mM by 24 hours. … The timing of this response gives some indication of the appropriate periods for fasting in intermittent-fasting regimens.

  • Ketones are powerful signaling molecules: Ketone bodies are not just fuel used during periods of fasting; they are potent signaling molecules with major effects on cell and organ functions.

  • We are not evolved for a sedentary life with 3 meals a day: In contrast to people today, our human ancestors did not consume three regularly spaced, large meals, plus snacks, every day, nor did they live a sedentary life. 

  • Fasting is a time for repair and refurbishing of cells: Cells respond to intermittent fasting by engaging in a coordinated adaptive stress response that leads to increased expression of antioxidant defenses, DNA repair, protein quality control, mitochondrial biogenesis and autophagy, and down-regulation of inflammation (Figure 3). These adaptive responses to fasting and feeding are conserved across taxa.

  • Fasting not only leads to weight loss, it augments the benefits from weight loss: In humans, intermittent-fasting interventions ameliorate obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and inflammation. Intermittent fasting seems to confer health benefits to a greater extent than can be attributed just to a reduction in caloric intake. In one trial, 16 healthy participants assigned to a regimen of alternate-day fasting for 22 days lost 2.5% of their initial weight and 4% of fat mass, with a 57% decrease in fasting insulin levels. In two other trials, overweight women (approximately 100 women in each trial) were assigned to either a 5:2 intermittent-fasting regimen or a 25% reduction in daily caloric intake. The women in the two groups lost the same amount of weight during the 6-month period, but those in the group assigned to 5:2 intermittent fasting had a greater increase in insulin sensitivity and a larger reduction in waist circumference.

  • Fasting improves athletic performance in mice and doesn’t lead to any loss of muscle mass if you work out: In animals and humans, physical function is improved with intermittent fasting. For example, despite having similar body weight, mice maintained on alternate-day fasting have better running endurance than mice that have unlimited access to food. Balance and coordination are also improved in animals on daily time-restricted feeding or alternate-day fasting regimens. Young men who fast daily for 16 hours lose fat while maintaining muscle mass during 2 months of resistance training.

  • Fasting is anti-cancer: … numerous studies in animals have shown that daily caloric restriction or alternate-day fasting reduces the occurrence of spontaneous tumors during normal aging in rodents and suppresses the growth of many types of induced tumors while increasing their sensitivity to chemotherapy and irradiation. Similarly, intermittent fasting is thought to impair energy metabolism in cancer cells, inhibiting their growth and rendering them susceptible to clinical treatments.

  • Fasting looks like it is anti-Alzheimer’s and anti-Parkinson’s: There is strong preclinical evidence that alternate-day fasting can delay the onset and progression of the disease processes in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Intermittent fasting increases neuronal stress resistance through multiple mechanisms, including bolstering mitochondrial function and stimulating autophagy, neurotrophic-factor production, antioxidant defenses, and DNA repair.

  • Fasting reduces autoimmune problems: Two recent pilot studies showed that patients with multiple sclerosis who adhere to intermittent-fasting regimens have reduced symptoms in as short a period as 2 months. Because it reduces inflammation, intermittent fasting would also be expected to be beneficial in rheumatoid arthritis, and indeed, there is evidence supporting its use in patients with arthritis.

  • Fasting looks like it might reduce the harm from concussion: Intermittent fasting after injury was also effective in ameliorating cognitive deficits in a mouse model of traumatic brain injury.

These quotations speak for themselves. But I do want to comment on these two paragraphs:

Despite the evidence for the health benefits of intermittent fasting and its applicability to many diseases, there are impediments to the widespread adoption of these eating patterns in the community and by patients. First, a diet of three meals with snacks every day is so ingrained in our culture that a change in this eating pattern will rarely be contemplated by patients or doctors. The abundance of food and extensive marketing in developed nations are also major hurdles to be overcome.

Second, on switching to an intermittent-fasting regimen, many people will experience hunger, irritability, and a reduced ability to concentrate during periods of food restriction. However, these initial side effects usually disappear within 1 month, and patients should be advised of this fact.

To me, the great secret is that switching to a low insulin-index diet first (see “Forget Calorie Counting; It's the Insulin Index, Stupid”) makes fasting much easier, even at the beginning. On the sequencing I recommend, see:

The Federalist Papers #5: Unless United, the States Will Be at Each Others' Throats

In the Federalist Papers #5, John Jay has one point: if the 13 states were divided up into several different nations (“confederacies”), those nations would soon be at odds with one another and tearing one another down. Later events backed up his claim on two occasions. First, the Civil war followed swiftly upon the secession of the Confederacy from the Union. Those same states, despite their different views, conducted their rivalry in elections and in legislative votes while they were all still part of the union. (Of course, there were some wars within states over slavery—and over religion in the case of Missouri’s Mormon War—prior to the Civil War between states.) Second, the division between the US and Canada was conducive to the War of 1812. Even if Canada had been independent from the United Kingdom, rivalries between Canada and the United States in the early 19th century could easily have led to war.

This paragraph succinctly states John Jay’s views of the likely relationship between different American nations of the states were divided:

Should the people of America divide themselves into three or four nations, would not the same thing happen? Would not similar jealousies arise, and be in like manner cherished? Instead of their being "joined in affection" and free from all apprehension of different "interests," envy and jealousy would soon extinguish confidence and affection, and the partial interests of each confederacy, instead of the general interests of all America, would be the only objects of their policy and pursuits. Hence, like most other BORDERING nations, they would always be either involved in disputes and war, or live in the constant apprehension of them.

Here are some of John Jay’s key arguments for that view in his own words:

  • Historically there was a lot of bad feeling between different parts of Great Britain until they were united.

  • Historically there has been a lot of bad feeling between a large share of all bordering nations.

  • It is unlikely that neighboring nations would remain equal in strength; inequality in strength leads to jealousy and distrust that in turn lead to intrigue and counter-intrigue.

  • Different American nations would be likely to fall into different foreign alliances. This could cause trouble between the American nations when their respective allies were at war.

  • Rivalrous American nations might make the mistake of fearing each other so much that they don’t fear their foreign “allies” enough.

Below is the full text of the Federalist #5, with the point above relevant to a give passage above that passage added in bold italics within square brackets. The very beginning of the Federalist #5 simply argues that unity brings strength, giving extra emotional oomph to that claim by saying other nations don’t want the states to be united.

|| Federalist No. 5 || 

The Same Subject Continued: Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence
For the Independent Journal.

Author: John Jay

To the People of the State of New York:

QUEEN ANNE, in her letter of the 1st July, 1706, to the Scotch Parliament, makes some observations on the importance of the UNION then forming between England and Scotland, which merit our attention. I shall present the public with one or two extracts from it: "An entire and perfect union will be the solid foundation of lasting peace: It will secure your religion, liberty, and property; remove the animosities amongst yourselves, and the jealousies and differences betwixt our two kingdoms. It must increase your strength, riches, and trade; and by this union the whole island, being joined in affection and free from all apprehensions of different interest, will be ENABLED TO RESIST ALL ITS ENEMIES." "We most earnestly recommend to you calmness and unanimity in this great and weighty affair, that the union may be brought to a happy conclusion, being the only EFFECTUAL way to secure our present and future happiness, and disappoint the designs of our and your enemies, who will doubtless, on this occasion, USE THEIR UTMOST ENDEAVORS TO PREVENT OR DELAY THIS UNION."

It was remarked in the preceding paper, that weakness and divisions at home would invite dangers from abroad; and that nothing would tend more to secure us from them than union, strength, and good government within ourselves. This subject is copious and cannot easily be exhausted.

[Historically there was a lot of bad feeling between different parts of Great Britain until they were united.] The history of Great Britain is the one with which we are in general the best acquainted, and it gives us many useful lessons. We may profit by their experience without paying the price which it cost them. Although it seems obvious to common sense that the people of such an island should be but one nation, yet we find that they were for ages divided into three, and that those three were almost constantly embroiled in quarrels and wars with one another. Notwithstanding their true interest with respect to the continental nations was really the same, yet by the arts and policy and practices of those nations, their mutual jealousies were perpetually kept inflamed, and for a long series of years they were far more inconvenient and troublesome than they were useful and assisting to each other.

[Historically there has been a lot of bad feeling between a large share of all bordering nations.] Should the people of America divide themselves into three or four nations, would not the same thing happen? Would not similar jealousies arise, and be in like manner cherished? Instead of their being "joined in affection" and free from all apprehension of different "interests," envy and jealousy would soon extinguish confidence and affection, and the partial interests of each confederacy, instead of the general interests of all America, would be the only objects of their policy and pursuits. Hence, like most other BORDERING nations, they would always be either involved in disputes and war, or live in the constant apprehension of them.

[It is unlikely that neighboring nations would remain equal in strength; inequality in strength leads to jealousy and distrust that in turn lead to intrigue and counter-intrigue.] The most sanguine advocates for three or four confederacies cannot reasonably suppose that they would long remain exactly on an equal footing in point of strength, even if it was possible to form them so at first; but, admitting that to be practicable, yet what human contrivance can secure the continuance of such equality? Independent of those local circumstances which tend to beget and increase power in one part and to impede its progress in another, we must advert to the effects of that superior policy and good management which would probably distinguish the government of one above the rest, and by which their relative equality in strength and consideration would be destroyed. For it cannot be presumed that the same degree of sound policy, prudence, and foresight would uniformly be observed by each of these confederacies for a long succession of years.

Whenever, and from whatever causes, it might happen, and happen it would, that any one of these nations or confederacies should rise on the scale of political importance much above the degree of her neighbors, that moment would those neighbors behold her with envy and with fear. Both those passions would lead them to countenance, if not to promote, whatever might promise to diminish her importance; and would also restrain them from measures calculated to advance or even to secure her prosperity. Much time would not be necessary to enable her to discern these unfriendly dispositions. She would soon begin, not only to lose confidence in her neighbors, but also to feel a disposition equally unfavorable to them. Distrust naturally creates distrust, and by nothing is good-will and kind conduct more speedily changed than by invidious jealousies and uncandid imputations, whether expressed or implied.

The North is generally the region of strength, and many local circumstances render it probable that the most Northern of the proposed confederacies would, at a period not very distant, be unquestionably more formidable than any of the others. No sooner would this become evident than the NORTHERN HIVE would excite the same ideas and sensations in the more southern parts of America which it formerly did in the southern parts of Europe. Nor does it appear to be a rash conjecture that its young swarms might often be tempted to gather honey in the more blooming fields and milder air of their luxurious and more delicate neighbors.

[Historically there has been a lot of bad feeling between a large share of all bordering nations.] They who well consider the history of similar divisions and confederacies will find abundant reason to apprehend that those in contemplation would in no other sense be neighbors than as they would be borderers; that they would neither love nor trust one another, but on the contrary would be a prey to discord, jealousy, and mutual injuries; in short, that they would place us exactly in the situations in which some nations doubtless wish to see us, viz., FORMIDABLE ONLY TO EACH OTHER.

From these considerations it appears that those gentlemen are greatly mistaken who suppose that alliances offensive and defensive might be formed between these confederacies, and would produce that combination and union of wills of arms and of resources, which would be necessary to put and keep them in a formidable state of defense against foreign enemies.

[Different American nations would be likely to fall into different foreign alliances. This could cause trouble between the American nations when their respective allies were at war.] When did the independent states, into which Britain and Spain were formerly divided, combine in such alliance, or unite their forces against a foreign enemy? The proposed confederacies will be DISTINCT NATIONS. Each of them would have its commerce with foreigners to regulate by distinct treaties; and as their productions and commodities are different and proper for different markets, so would those treaties be essentially different. Different commercial concerns must create different interests, and of course different degrees of political attachment to and connection with different foreign nations. Hence it might and probably would happen that the foreign nation with whom the SOUTHERN confederacy might be at war would be the one with whom the NORTHERN confederacy would be the most desirous of preserving peace and friendship. An alliance so contrary to their immediate interest would not therefore be easy to form, nor, if formed, would it be observed and fulfilled with perfect good faith.

[Rivalrous American nations might make the mistake of fearing each other so much that they don’t fear their foreign “allies” enough.] Nay, it is far more probable that in America, as in Europe, neighboring nations, acting under the impulse of opposite interests and unfriendly passions, would frequently be found taking different sides. Considering our distance from Europe, it would be more natural for these confederacies to apprehend danger from one another than from distant nations, and therefore that each of them should be more desirous to guard against the others by the aid of foreign alliances, than to guard against foreign dangers by alliances between themselves. And here let us not forget how much more easy it is to receive foreign fleets into our ports, and foreign armies into our country, than it is to persuade or compel them to depart. How many conquests did the Romans and others make in the characters of allies, and what innovations did they under the same character introduce into the governments of those whom they pretended to protect.

Let candid men judge, then, whether the division of America into any given number of independent sovereignties would tend to secure us against the hostilities and improper interference of foreign nations.

Here are links to my other posts on The Federalist Papers so far:

Michael Lind: College-Educated vs. Not is the New Class War

Michael Lind’s teaser for his new book The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite makes a basic point about our current political and cultural situation: the big political and cultural divide in the United States and other advanced countries is now between those who have gone to college and those who haven’t. As Michael writes:

The deepest cleavage in Western democracies yawns between college-educated managers and professionals—a third of the population, at most—and the majority who lack college educations.

More precisely, he writes that recent populist insurgencies in the US, UK and France are:

… the revolt of alienated, mostly but not exclusively native and white working-class voters against post-national metropolitan elites.

That is, the college-educated have allied with minorities and immigrants.

There is also a geographical dimension to the divide. In addition to pointing to the kinds of forces discussed in “Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg on Immobility in America,” Michael points out:

… it is a snobbish mistake to assume that people in “left behind” regions should simply “move to opportunity.” Why should members of the working class move? The jobs that are being created in the greatest numbers in the U.S., including home health aide, retail clerk and restaurant worker, do not require college degrees and can be done almost everywhere.

That is, the wage premium from moving to a city that used to be there for those with low levels of education is no longer there.

Rather than mindless bigotry, Michael argues that those without a college education have a genuine fear (whether well-founded or not) of the economic consequences to them of immigration:

Unwilling to admit that the center-left has been largely captured by the managerial elite, many pundits and academics on the left insist that mindless bigotry, rather than class interests, explains the attraction of many working-class voters to populist parties that promise to restrict trade and immigration. But it is just as rational for workers to prefer a seller’s market in labor as it is for employers to prefer a buyer’s market in labor. Blue-collar workers who have abandoned center-left parties for populist movements bring with them the historic suspicion of large-scale immigration that was typical of organized labor for generations.

Cultural and political conflicts come together over key issues. As Michael puts it:

From its citadels in a few big cities, this oligarchy periodically notifies the working-class majority what values and opinions about sex, immigration and other topics it must immediately adopt without debate, on pain of being blacklisted by the private sector, prosecuted by the government or censored or erased by the media.

Michael points out the flip-side of meritocracy: the implication that those who don’t succeed are failures.

… today’s managerial elite is different. The pretense that it springs solely from “merit”—from individual talent and hard work—creates a false sense of superiority for its members, stoking resentment among their fellow citizens, who are defined as failures in fair competition.

The struggle between the educated+allies and the non-college-educated whites extends to a fight over the rules of the game in which the educated are highly skilled. The educated and allies look to the courts and international institutions staffed by well-educated people to weigh in on their side. Non-college-educated whites sometimes win at the polls, but with the decline of local political machines, private-sector unions and greater separation of church and state have few standing institutions to advocate for their interests. (Michael uses the interesting metaphor of a “tribune” for a standing institution to advocate for non-college-educated whites; the Roman Republic evolved the powerful office of tribune to make sure those below the upper classes had a continuing political say.)

Michael argues the need for new “mass membership organizations accountable to working-class people” and new substitutes for unions that are organized by the government: “bargaining among representatives of all firms and employees in particular industries, occupation-specific wage boards or labor representation on corporate boards.”

Less plausibly, Michael argues for tolerance of cultural differences. I think this unlikely because the key cultural differences are about treatment of women and minorities and about sexuality. The educated and their allies will not compromise on these. And the young have come to accept gay rights so much that they are becoming detached from churches that preach that homosexuality is a sin and look down on gay marriage. (See “That Baby Born in Bethlehem Should Inspire Society to Keep Redeeming Itself.”)

The educated and their allies can come to an economic accommodation with non-college-educated whites, but they aim to win the cultural war. In my view, they have a good chance at doing so.

Related posts:

Hope in Returning to the Road Not Taken in Psychiatry

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I have just begun listening to Peter Attia’s podcasts in his podcast series “The Drive.” So far, they seem very much in the same spirit as what I have been writing in my diet and health posts.

I first listened to Peter’s interview of Matthew Walker. That makes me look forward to reading Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep. The basic message is: “Respect sleep. If you don’t, you will pay.”

Peter’s very first podcast interviewing Tim Ferris is also powerful. Therapy using psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin, MDMA (a pure form of “ecstasy”) and mescaline shows great promise. Two reasons psychedelics can help is (1) they can loosen the hold of longstanding top-level brain patterns, allowing a psychological “reboot” and (2) they can induce a temporary suspension of our normal intense awareness of the self-other distinction, allowing new, less self-centered perspectives to get in. I have zero personal experience with psychedelics, but I suspect that meditation and spiritual practices such as extended free-form personal prayer of the sort I used to do when I was a Mormon can induce similarly profound changes in brain activity.

A thumbnail history is that psychedelic therapy got derailed by government restrictions and cultural opprobrium in oppositional overreaction to the counterculture’s embrace of psychedelics in the 1960s. As a result, we may have lost the use of powerful therapies for many psychiatric ills for more than half a century.

I wonder, in particular, if my son Spencer’s suicide could have been averted with the help of psychelic therapy. (On that sad event, see my wife Gail’s guest post “The Shards of My Heart.”)

There is hope. Approval of MDMA to treat PTSD has been fast-tracked and it is possible it will be available for routine use by psychiatrists as early as 2021.

The way things work, as soon as a drug has been approved for one use, the system trusts medical doctors (including psychiatrists) to use it off-label. So demonstrating conclusively the value of one use case opens up the possibility of other legal therapeutic uses by medical doctors without going through the full (and expensive) drug approval process.

One example of an off-label use of a drug is the use of ketamine—which is approved for use as a anesthetic—to treat depression. I had a friend who was treated with a small dose of ketamine for serious depression that didn’t response to other treatments. It worked remarkably well. Ketamine is not a psychedelic but seems to have similar underutilized psychiatric potential.

Let me insert here a warning that (a) street drugs are often impure and (b) proper psychedelic therapy involves a lot of expert supervision. You could be in for a very bad trip or worse if you try to wing it. But in the hands of psychiatrists trained in their use, psychedelics have the advantage of being “anti-addictive” in the words of the podcast. Unlike opiates, where the benefit is upfront and the harm comes later, psychedelic experiences are often unpleasant while under the influence of the drug, but then leave lasting benefits.

I honor those who have been and are now pursuing research into the psychiatric potential of psychedelics. There is real hope that some of our most intractable psychiatric problems can be blunted.

I can’t fail to mention two relevant books. Reading my friend Randolph Nesse’s book Good Reasons for Bad Feelings: Insights from the Frontier of Evolutionary Psychiatry gave me an acute sense of how bad the current state of psychiatry and psychiatric treatment is. Breakthroughs are desperately needed. From reviews, Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (which I haven’t read yet, but want to), has a message similar to the message of Peter Attia’s interview of Tim Ferris.

For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:

Respect Intuition

Most of you, my loyal readers, are very articulate. Having things articulated clearly is a huge help to intellectual work. It not only allows us to communicate with others, but also to understand things better ourselves.

But I have learned an important lesson in my career and in my life: there is great value in respecting intuitions and feelings that have not yet been clearly articulated. There can be genuine insight that arrives in an inarticulate form.

I have learned to respect intuition that cannot yet be fully articulated both when it is my own intuition and when it the intuition of another. In both cases, the one with the intuition needs to be given the time and the space needed to figure out how to articulate it better. Dissing the intuition saying something like “If you can’t back up your feeling with a good argument, you don’t have a leg to stand on” shuts off a channel of insight and can easily block the path to greater understanding or lead to a decision-making mistake.

Intuitions are far from foolproof. Sometimes they are off track. Sometimes they are wrong but lead to something that is right. And sometimes they represent with remarkable accuracy the understanding one has after working hard to articulate the intuition.

Respecting intuition also allows those who are less articulate but have important insights to help. Putting too much of a premium on things that are already articulated not only underrates certain ideas, it underrates certain people.

The problems, challenges and tasks we face are great enough that we need to take advantage of every tool we have to best them. Intuition is one of those tools.

How to Create Successful Fake News—And How Not To Be One of the People Snookered by It

The underlying scientific results should be taken with a grain of salt because of the reproducibility crisis in psychology, Gary Marcus’s and Annie Duke’s Wall Street Journal article “The Problem with Believing What We’re Told” are otherwise a fascinating rundown of indications that people are often quite sloppy about deciding whether something is true or false.

On that grain of salt, as I discuss in “Let's Set Half a Percent as the Standard for Statistical Significance," the article "Redefine Statistical Significance" on Psyarchive notes that—of results in psychology that according to the author’s statements, supposedly had only between 1/2 % and 5% of being due to chance, only 24% could be replicated in a follow-up study designed to verify those results.

But with that grain of salt, following are the suggestive results of psychological research on discernment of true/false as summarized by Gary Marcus and Annie Duke. I have added bullets to their words to separate different passages:

  • The simple act of repeating a lie can make it seem like truth … Test subjects became more likely to believe things as they were repeated, regardless of whether they were true or false. The third time they heard a false statement, they were just as likely to believe it as a true statement that they heard once.

  • When pictures were attached, people were more likely to believe the statements, including the fake ones.

  • … the presence of moral and emotional words like “hate,” “destroy” or “blame” acted like an accelerant, increasing the chance that a message would spread by about 20% for each additional emotional word. The study also found that most of the sharing was done within political parties rather than across political divides, creating an echo-chamber effect.

  • Savvy propagandists have long exploited the tendency of the human brain to take shortcuts. But social networks make it far easier, because they feed on a further human vulnerability: our need for approval, affection and positive feedback.

  • When first asked to assess the believability of true and false headlines posted on social media, the 68 participants—a mix of Democrats, Republicans and independents—were more likely to believe stories that confirmed their own prior views. But a simple intervention had an effect: asking participants to rate the truthfulness of the headlines. That tiny bit of critical reflection mattered, and it even extended to other articles that the participants hadn’t been asked to rate. The results suggest that just asking yourself, “Is what I just learned true?” could be a valuable habit.

  • … prompting people to consider why their beliefs might not be true leads them to think more accurately.

If borne out, this set of results provides a road map for creating successful fake news—and a road map for not being one of the people who is snookered.

BJ Fogg's Tips for New Year's Resolutions

Last January, I posted “3 Achievable Resolutions for Weight Loss.” So I was interested to read the Wall Street Journal op-ed BJ Fogg wrote to promote his new book Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything. (I haven’t read the book itself.) I have some hope that his approach may help you in implementing some of the things I have recommended in my diet and health posts—such as going off sugar. (On that, also see “Letting Go of Sugar.”)

Here is the claim BJ Fogg makes for his approach:

It isn’t primarily repetition over a long period that creates habits; it’s the emotion that you attach to them from the start. Data from the most recent 5,200 people to complete a five-day course of our program showed that more than half were able to instill habits in five days or less.

He lays out the basics of his approach as follows. All of the following that is indented are BJ Fogg’s words; I have rearranged and added indentation, bullets and bolding:

It turns out that there is a formula for any successful shift in behavior. … To instill a habit,

1. the first thing you need is motivation: Pick a behavior that you want to do rather than one you merely feel obligated to do.

  • … don’t think you have to create motivation. Choose habits that you already are eager to adopt.

2. Second, you need to be able to do it: Make the change simple and small at first.

  • a busy mom named Amy, who needed to manage distractions and stay focused on essential tasks. The habit she initially designed with our help was just to write one must-do task on a Post-it Note and stick it on her car dashboard, prompted by each day’s kindergarten drop-off. She didn’t even have to do the task itself at first; the initial habit was all about setting priorities. 

  • One of my favorite projects was at a research hospital where the challenge was to tackle the problem of nurse burnout, a large and growing issue in health care. …

    I heard firsthand just how difficult it was for them to do basic things like drink enough water, eat regularly, and even get a full night’s sleep. So we worked together on creating healthy habits like “After I open my computer, I will take a sip of water,” or “After I answer the call light, I will take a deep breath.”

3. Third, you need a personal prompt: Identify a way to reliably trigger the behavior.

  • The best way to prompt a new habit is to anchor it to an existing routine in your life, whether it’s flushing the toilet, turning on the coffee pot in the morning or buckling your seat belt.

  • … every time he brushed his teeth, he would do two push-ups, then hold a “plank’’ position for just five seconds.

4. Finally, you need to celebrate your new habit, so that your brain associates it with positive feelings.

  • As you try each new habit, celebrate immediately. Cause yourself to feel good in that exact moment, whether it’s an inward “Good job!” or an outward fist pump.

If your goal is going off of sugar, an example of starting small would be to stop drinking sugary drinks such as soft drinks or juice; you could replace them with coffee or tea or flavored sparkling water. (See “In Praise of Flavored Sparkling Water.” On the trouble with juice, see “Forget Calorie Counting; It's the Insulin Index, Stupid.” On why not to substitute soft drinks with nonsugar sweeteners, see “Which Nonsugar Sweeteners are OK? An Insulin-Index Perspective.”)

An even easier goal to get you started toward better health would be to eat an avocado a day, one way or another, except on days when you are fasting. (See “In Praise of Avocados.”)

For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see: