How Economists Can Enhance Their Scientific Creativity, Engagement and Impact
Miles as a young boy, with lion
I have always thought of my blog’s target audience as economists who are still curious and open to changing their minds. For economists who meet that test, I am offering a six-week program (on Zoom) to enhance your personal scientific creativity, engagement and impact in economics. This post lays out that offer.
Why? I believe that economists, as a group, make a huge difference in the world, and that how economists approach their work matters not only for their success, but for the world. I want to help economists do their work at a higher level.
I have a lifelong interest in meta-skills and general-purpose skills that can enhance almost any other skill. (I always wanted to be smarter—and reasoned that figuring out general-purpose skills that enhanced many other skills would help.) You can see some of this interest in what I have written about the importance of a dynamic growth mindset for gaining skill at math (see “There's One Key Difference Between Kids Who Excel at Math and Those Who Don't” with Noah Smith and “How to Turn Every Child into a 'Math Person’”) and memory (see “The Most Effective Memory Methods are Difficult—and That's Why They Work”).
In 2020, I gained a fuller appreciation for another type of general-purpose skill that can be called “mental fitness.” Without training, our minds are all over the place. And even successful academics typically only have partial command of their own minds. We live far below our potential. Mental fitness is the skill of putting your brain in the optimal brain-state for what you are trying to do.
If you want creativity, engagement and impact, getting to an optimal brain state is crucial. Creativity requires holding the intensely critical side of you at least temporarily at bay so that ultimately promising ideas are not prematurely killed. Engagement—having the work you do flow and feel surprisingly low-effort—requires silencing or at least quieting distracting, self-destructive mind-chatter. Impact requires being in touch with what really matters—both what matters to you and what matters for the world.
I believe most economists went into economics—as opposed to earning more on Wall Street or in the business world—because they wanted to make a positive difference in the world. But the process of getting a PhD, getting a job and getting tenure (or getting to a certain rank in a non-academic job) can narrow down the professional objectives of economists to something like “publishing papers in top journals” or perhaps “surviving the next semester.” Mental fitness can help you get back in touch with the reason you got into economics in the first place rather than the narrow games the sociology of economics pulls you into. And it can even help you in the narrow games of publishing papers in top journals and surviving the next semester.
What? Mental fitness involves developing the skill of noticing what your mind is doing and the skill of getting your mind to go in the direction you want it to go. Done right, “mindfulness” is a synonym of “mental fitness.” I have become very impressed with Shirzad Chamine’s “Positive Intelligence” as an intensive program for learning a diversified set of key mental-fitness skills. It systematizes things I have been trying to do all of my life but only managed to do in part. You could spend years studying different approaches to mindfulness and not learn what you can learn after six weeks of “Positive Intelligence”—six weeks in which you are continuing with your regular life. What is “intensive” about the program is applying the principles and techniques in your life as soon as you learn them. (For more on the Positive Intelligence approach, see my post “On Human Potential.”)
I am one of the few economists in the world (I’d love to hear of others) who has been trained as a Positive Intelligence Coach, in addition to being a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach. Therefore, I think of training economists in mental fitness using the Positive Intelligence approach as my comparative advantage for service to the discipline of economics.
You can see the webpage for the six-week Positive Intelligence training program here. I’ll put some screenshots of that page at the bottom of this post to pique your curiosity. You can see from this webpage that, commercially, enrolling in this six-week program would cost you $995. Many other Positive Intelligence Coaches who have been trained as I have are charging at least a substantial fraction of that for leading the program.
I am offering Positive Intelligence training to economists without charge as a service to a discipline I love. Using as a metaphor the NSF fellowships we all wish we had gotten (or were grateful that we did) if you qualify, I am offering you a “fellowship” for this training.
One reason I am excited about leading Positive Intelligence training is that since I continue to work full time as an economics professor, I don’t have the time to coach many people one-on-one. By coaching groups of economists through the six-week Positive Intelligence program, I can reach a lot more economists. And for those who, through the Positive Intelligence work, see that they want to try some one-on-one Co-Active Coaching, I am happy to serve as matchmaker. Coaches offer free sample sessions, so it is easy to get a taste of coaching and what it is like with a particular coach. I write about Co-Active Coaching here:
I am pleased to co-lead this program with my wife Gail, who is also a highly-trained, experienced coach. In particular, Gail has coached many economists. (Gail has two guest posts on this blog: “Marriage—Not for the Faint of Heart” and “The Shards of My Heart.” We recently celebrated our 37th anniversary.)
How? First, you must be an economist—or be the family member of an economist who is going to do the program at the same time. “Being an economist” means having an economics or finance PhD, being in or being admitted to an economics or finance PhD program, or if you are at earlier stage, convincing me that you are destined to get an economics or finance PhD.
Second, you must be committed to do the work:
Attending a 1-hour weekly training meeting (on Zoom) of our Positive Intelligence Circle each week during the six-week program (see below for the timing)
Doing 15 minutes per day of short exercises using an app for your phone. (These exercises are spread out over the day and can easily fit into your schedule.)
Reading the first eight chapters of the book Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine.
Watching a 1-hour video by Shirzad Chamine each week.
Sharing your experiences along the way using Positive Intelligence principles with others in your circle.
Third, you need to pass the modest intelligence test of somehow finding one of my two university email addresses in order to send me an email expressing your interest. (I still use my University of Michigan email address as well as my University of Colorado Boulder email address.)
Fourth, each Positive Intelligence Circle is limited to 9—or at most 10—participants at a time. If rationing is required, many considerations will play a role, but other things equal, the sooner you send me an email, the more likely I will be to fit you into the circle. I’ll automatically put you on a waiting list for later circles if there isn’t room, but when you come off the waiting list is entirely at my discretion.
Update April 20, 2021: Our Positive Intelligence Circles have been so successful that we plan to keep doing them indefinitely. Send me an email to get on the waiting list as soon as possible! Over a longer time horizon, if demand continues at the present level, I hope to recruit other coaches (including hoping to persuade other economists to get coaching training) so that we can expand to running several Positive Intelligence Circles at once.
Our modal time for the seven weekly meetings is Tuesday at 6 PM Eastern Time, but we regularly do variations on that weekly meeting time to accommodate time constraints people have (including being in non-US time zones).
There is one delicate matter I have thought through. To keep my load manageable, I feel I need to set a rule that unless I have another preexisting connection with you, I won’t write a recommendation for you or otherwise do an official evaluation of you simply because you have done the Positive Intelligence work with me. However, if you complete the program, I can provide you with a pdf file in the form of a letter on letterhead describing this Positive Intelligence training and saying that you completed it. Other than altering it, you can then do anything you want with that.
Final Thoughts: I led with the benefits of having command over your own mind for productivity (“creativity, engagement and impact”). But being at choice about your brain state has in many ways even bigger benefits for your happiness and for your relationships. When I did the same six-week Positive Intelligence training, I estimated that the amount of time I felt unhappy was cut to a third of what it was. The reason I am including family members (including anyone you live with and a significant other in a long-distance relationship) in this offer is that I have seen the good this Positive Intelligence training can do for relationships. It will help your relationships even if only you learn these skills, but obviously it is even more powerful if both people in a relationship learn the skills. If you are old enough to have a child or children 15 or older (or you convince me you have a kid who is especially mature), your children are also included in this offer. But you, the economist, need to be doing it at the same time as a family member; you can’t just send them off to do it!
The picture of me with the lion at the top of this post is shorthand for the kind of sage-like, full-of-possibility brain state that can be at your beck and call. I had many unhappy moments in my childhood, but this was a good one. Good moments can be endogenous for you—at your command.
For accounts of others’ experiences in this program, see “Reactions to Miles’s Program For Enhancing Economists’ Scientific Creativity, Engagement and Impact.”
Screenshots of the webpage for the commercial version of the six-week Positive Intelligence training program—to entice you to click on this link and see the real thing, where the type is big enough to actually read. The commercial version is like taking a large class. The Positive Intelligence Circles I will lead will be like taking a small class with the same basic material, taught by an economist.
Journal of the American College of Cardiology State-of-the-Art Review on Saturated Fats
If you think saturated fats are unhealthy, you should read “Saturated Fats and Health: A Reassessment and Proposal for Food-Based Recommendations: JACC State-of-the-Art Review.”
Introduction. I’ll just pull out some quotations that give the highlights. (All quotations are from this paper.) First, from the abstract:
The recommendation to limit dietary saturated fatty acid (SFA) intake has persisted despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Most recent meta-analyses of randomized trials and observational studies found no beneficial effects of reducing SFA intake on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and total mortality, and instead found protective effects against stroke.
But what about the effect of saturated fat on LDL (low-density lipoprotein)? The key thing to know here, which not everyone knows is LDL particle number is the right test for heart disease and stroke danger, not the more commonly given test for the quantity of cholesterol in LDL particles. For the LDL particle numbers, which are the right measure to predict disease risk, saturated fat doesn’t have an adverse effect. Continuing in the abstract, this is how the authors of the paper above explain that:
Although SFAs increase low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, in most individuals, this is not due to increasing levels of small, dense LDL particles, but rather larger LDL particles, which are much less strongly related to CVD risk.
A little lower down, here is a summary statement about the effects of saturated fats on the hard outcomes of disease and mortality:
Some meta-analyses find no evidence that reduction in saturated fat consumption may reduce CVD incidence or mortality (3–6), whereas others report a significant—albeit mild—beneficial effect (7,8).
Where the Idea that Saturated Fat is Bad Came From. In assessing the scientific evidence that saturated fats are unhealthy, one should be aware that this became the “status quo” notion back in the 1950s, long before there was solid scientific evidence one way or another. Ideational inertia since then has given the idea that saturated fats are unhealthy an unfair advantage:
In the 1950s, with the increase in coronary heart disease (CHD) in Western countries, research on nutrition and health focused on a range of “diet-heart” hypotheses. These included the putative harmful effects of dietary fats (particularly saturated fat) and the lower risk associated with the Mediterranean diet to explain why individuals in the United States, Northern Europe, and the United Kingdom were more prone to CHD. In contrast, those in European countries around the Mediterranean had a lower risk. These ideas were fueled by ecologic studies such as the Seven Countries Study.
Evidence on the Effects of Saturated Fat. What do better studies indicate? I have added bullets to separate distinct passages answering this question:
A few large and well-designed prospective cohort studies, which used validated questionnaires to assess diet and recorded endpoints in a systematic manner, were initiated recently. They demonstrated that replacement of fat with carbohydrate was not associated with lower risk of CHD [coronary heart disease], and may even be associated with increased total mortality (29–31). Furthermore, a number of systematic reviews of cohort studies have shown no significant association between saturated fat intake and coronary artery disease or mortality, and some even suggested a lower risk of stroke with higher consumption of saturated fat (3,6,32,33).
… biomarkers of very long-chain SFA (20:0, 22:0, 24:0) were not associated with total CHD (associations for fatal and nonfatal CHD were similar), and if anything, levels in plasma or serum (but not phospholipids) may be inversely associated with CHD (34).
… increased consumption of all types of fat (saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated) was associated with lower risk of death and had a neutral association with CVD. By contrast, a diet high in carbohydrate was associated with higher risk of death but not with risk of CVD.
… the quintile with the highest saturated fat intake (about ∼14% of total daily calories) had lower risk of stroke, consistent with the results from meta-analyses of previous cohort studies (36).
… the substitution of polyunsaturated for saturated fat was associated with higher CVD risk.
The PREDIMED (Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea) trial compared a standard low-fat diet with a Mediterranean diet supplemented with nuts or olive oil. Despite an increase in total fat intake by 4.5% of total energy (including slightly higher saturated fat consumption), major cardiovascular events and death were significantly reduced compared with the control group (40).
Although there was also a positive relation of saturated fat intake with all-cause mortality, this became significant only with intakes well above average consumption (37).
The Key Test to See If It is Safe or Not for You to Consume a Lot of Saturated Fat. Let me comment on the immediately previous bullet point. I am very high on Peter Attia and highly recommend his podcast The Drive. Overall, his views are very similar to mine, and when I discover his views differ, I start modifying mine toward his, believing him to know more than I do. (However, I still have some useful role in the diet-and-health-education ecosystem, since his podcast is often at a considerably more technical level than my posts on diet and health.) In relation to saturated fat, I take seriously Peter Attia’s sense from his clinical experience that when people go on a diet so high in fat that one can stay in ketogenesis even without fasting, that doing that with a lot of saturated fat leads to a seriously elevated LDL cholesterol particle number for a subgroup of about 5% to 20% of patients. Note how limited this danger is: it is for a very large amount of saturated fat, and still only affects a minority of individuals, though given that kind of diet for those individuals it is a serious concern. The bottom line there is that anyone who is going on a diet primarily focusing on saturated fat should make sure to twist their doctor’s arm so they can get an LDL particle number test to see if they are one of those who can tolerate quite a large amount of saturated fat without ill effects or if a large amount of saturated fat is a problem for them. To emphasize again: elevated LDL cholesterol quantity doesn’t by itself mean you should worry. It just means that you really, really need that LDL cholesterol particle number test to know if you are OK with that very-high-saturated-fat diet or not. (Note: everything I said in this paragraph is just repeating what I thought I heard from Peter Attia. I have no other independent knowledge of this issue.)
Diet-by-Gene Interactions. Further down in the article, the authors discuss diet-by-gene interactions. Let me advise that genetics is moving so fast in improved methods and larger sample sizes that anything said about these genetics is likely to be contradicted and outclassed by results coming five years from now.
Particular Foods. Then comes a useful discussion of evidence about health risk from particular foods. Again, I’ll add bullets to distinguish passages:
… despite its high content of SFAs [saturated fatty acids], dairy fat does not promote atherogenesis (89). The ability of adult humans to digest the sugar unique to milk, lactose, evolved separately numerous times (90,91), demonstrating unequivocally that the ancestors of many modern humans required continuous dairy consumption for survival to reproductive age. Bovine (92), goat (93), and sheep (94) domestication started around the same time, about 10,000 years ago, coinciding with the emergence of lactase persistence (i.e., the ability to digest lactose). The saturated fat of the meat of these species was likely a major contributor to human diets, along with fruit oils—where available—such as olive, avocado, and palm, all low in polyunsaturated fat, with the latter also being high in saturated fat. Coconut fat would have been the only abundant lipid-rich seed, and that too is highly saturated. … These historical facts demonstrate that saturated fats were an abundant, key part of the ancient human diet.
By the 1970s, many experimental studies in animal models were conducted with dietary coconut oil of unspecified origin, which reliably caused dramatic increases in hepatic and blood cholesterol in rodents; this was taken as evidence that dietary SFAs are inherently atherogenic (95,96). However, coconut oils of the era were usually highly processed and often fully hydrogenated. Recent gentle preparation methods yield “virgin” coconut oils (97) that do not raise LDL cholesterol compared with customary diets and have similar effects compared with olive oil in humans (98). Studies in rodents demonstrated that while highly processed (“refined-bleached-deodorized”) coconut oil raises serum cholesterol, virgin coconut oil does not (99,100).
Human studies that assume all foods high in saturated fats are similarly atherogenic come, in many cases, from an era prior to the recognition of process contaminants.
Dark chocolate contains stearic acid (C18:0), which has a neutral effect on CVD risk. However, chocolate contains other nutrients that may be more important for CVD and type 2 diabetes than its SFA content. Experimental and observational studies suggest that dark chocolate has multiple beneficial health effects, including potential antioxidative, antihypertensive, anti-inflammatory, antiatherogenic, and antithrombotic properties, as well as preventive effects against CVD and type 2 diabetes (118–120).
Although intake of processed meat has been associated with increased risk of CHD, intake of unprocessed red meat is not, which indicates that the SFA content of meat is unlikely to be responsible for this association (121).
The dietary recommendation to reduce intake of SFAs without considering specific fatty acids and food sources is not aligned with the current evidence base. As such, it may distract from other more effective food-based recommendations, and may also cause a reduction in the intake of nutrient-dense foods (e.g., dairy, unprocessed meat) that may help decrease not only the risk of CVD, type 2 diabetes, and other noncommunicable diseases, but also malnutrition, deficiency diseases, and frailty, particularly among “at-risk” groups. Furthermore, based on several decades of experience, a focus on total SFAs has had the unintended effect of misleadingly guiding governments, consumers, and industry toward foods low in SFAs but rich in refined starch and sugar.
Conclusion: Overall, the main drift of the article is to recommend unprocessed food—without worrying much about whether that unprocessed food is rich in saturated fat or not.
Conversely, avoid food that that says it is “low in saturated fat” or simply “low-fat” that comes from a package or can with a complex nutritional label, because it is likely to be highly processed. And if you think it is innocent despite being highly processed, read the ingredient list carefully and with high probability you will see there is a lot of sugar in it, not to mention other additives.
The kind of label you would want as an indication of food quality is something like “unprocessed.” But foods that are genuinely unprocessed often are not required to have a label at all! Another way to think of the distinction between processed and unprocessed food (not original with me) is to realize that unprocessed food, because it tends to have a shorter shelf-life, is often around the periphery of the grocery store, closer to the loading dock or the back room. Processed food is often in the middle of the grocery store. The only staples I get from the center of the grocery store are (a) chocolate (see “Intense Dark Chocolate: A Review”) and (b) flavored sparkling water (see “In Praise of Flavored Sparkling Water”).
For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:
The Federalist Papers #16: Authority of the Federal Government Directly over Individuals Means States Can Only Thwart the Federal Government by Active and Obvious Resistance—Alexander Hamilton
The Federalist Papers #16 is easiest to understand in reverse order, starting from the last paragraph. In that last paragraph, Alexander Hamilton argues that if a large share of individuals are violently opposed to a Federal government and its policies, there is no structure of government that can avoid a civil war. And indeed, the Constitution of 1787 did not enable the nation to avoid the Civil War of 1860-1865. On the other hand, a Federal government has enough resources that even quite sizable insurrections can be put down if they involve only a small fraction of the nation’s population.
The three paragraphs before that argue that if the Federal government has legal power over individuals, states can only obstruct the directives of the Federal government through active and obvious means. And because the active and obvious obstruction in any given instance is localized, a particular state (more generally, large sub-jurisdiction) can be identified as the constitutional violator in that particular instance without other states being immediately worried that they are in trouble. Thus, the Federal government typically has a bright-line situation where its authority is being ignored and can act decisively with some real hope that the other states will stand by as mere spectators while the Federal government exerts its power over the obstructing state. And there is also hope that some important fraction of the power in that state will be on the side of the Federal government. In a particular instance.
The first seven paragraphs of the Federalist Papers #16 make at great length the persuasive point that if the Federal government has constitutional authority only over states (large sub-jurisdictions), it is very difficult to punish a state without sending in an army. This would be a mess.
One could imagine a Federal government that had access to some large source of revenue, such as natural-resource-based revenue, land-sale revenue, or tariff revenue, and then got compliance from states by threatening to cut off its largesse to them in spending or transferring money. But under the Articles of Confederation, the national government was in a bad way in regard to revenue; thus, this possibility of the national government gaining compliance through the power of the purse was not one that Alexander Hamilton even discussed. It may have deserved more discussion than Alexander Hamilton gave it. (Note that in our day, the Federal government powerful ability to get compliance by the power of the purse depends in important measure on the Federal government’s authority over individuals in regard to income taxation—an authority it did not have under the Articles of Confederation, or indeed until the 20th century.)
I credit Alexander Hamilton with a lot of depth in the Federalist Papers #16. Here is the full text:
FEDERALIST NO. 16
The Same Subject Continued: The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union
From the New York Packet
Tuesday, December 4, 1787.
Author: Alexander Hamilton
To the People of the State of New York:
THE tendency of the principle of legislation for States, or communities, in their political capacities, as it has been exemplified by the experiment we have made of it, is equally attested by the events which have befallen all other governments of the confederate kind, of which we have any account, in exact proportion to its prevalence in those systems. The confirmations of this fact will be worthy of a distinct and particular examination. I shall content myself with barely observing here, that of all the confederacies of antiquity, which history has handed down to us, the Lycian and Achaean leagues, as far as there remain vestiges of them, appear to have been most free from the fetters of that mistaken principle, and were accordingly those which have best deserved, and have most liberally received, the applauding suffrages of political writers.
This exceptionable principle may, as truly as emphatically, be styled the parent of anarchy: It has been seen that delinquencies in the members of the Union are its natural and necessary offspring; and that whenever they happen, the only constitutional remedy is force, and the immediate effect of the use of it, civil war.
It remains to inquire how far so odious an engine of government, in its application to us, would even be capable of answering its end. If there should not be a large army constantly at the disposal of the national government it would either not be able to employ force at all, or, when this could be done, it would amount to a war between parts of the Confederacy concerning the infractions of a league, in which the strongest combination would be most likely to prevail, whether it consisted of those who supported or of those who resisted the general authority. It would rarely happen that the delinquency to be redressed would be confined to a single member, and if there were more than one who had neglected their duty, similarity of situation would induce them to unite for common defense. Independent of this motive of sympathy, if a large and influential State should happen to be the aggressing member, it would commonly have weight enough with its neighbors to win over some of them as associates to its cause. Specious arguments of danger to the common liberty could easily be contrived; plausible excuses for the deficiencies of the party could, without difficulty, be invented to alarm the apprehensions, inflame the passions, and conciliate the good-will, even of those States which were not chargeable with any violation or omission of duty. This would be the more likely to take place, as the delinquencies of the larger members might be expected sometimes to proceed from an ambitious premeditation in their rulers, with a view to getting rid of all external control upon their designs of personal aggrandizement; the better to effect which it is presumable they would tamper beforehand with leading individuals in the adjacent States. If associates could not be found at home, recourse would be had to the aid of foreign powers, who would seldom be disinclined to encouraging the dissensions of a Confederacy, from the firm union of which they had so much to fear. When the sword is once drawn, the passions of men observe no bounds of moderation. The suggestions of wounded pride, the instigations of irritated resentment, would be apt to carry the States against which the arms of the Union were exerted, to any extremes necessary to avenge the affront or to avoid the disgrace of submission. The first war of this kind would probably terminate in a dissolution of the Union.
This may be considered as the violent death of the Confederacy. Its more natural death is what we now seem to be on the point of experiencing, if the federal system be not speedily renovated in a more substantial form. It is not probable, considering the genius of this country, that the complying States would often be inclined to support the authority of the Union by engaging in a war against the non-complying States. They would always be more ready to pursue the milder course of putting themselves upon an equal footing with the delinquent members by an imitation of their example. And the guilt of all would thus become the security of all. Our past experience has exhibited the operation of this spirit in its full light. There would, in fact, be an insuperable difficulty in ascertaining when force could with propriety be employed. In the article of pecuniary contribution, which would be the most usual source of delinquency, it would often be impossible to decide whether it had proceeded from disinclination or inability. The pretense of the latter would always be at hand. And the case must be very flagrant in which its fallacy could be detected with sufficient certainty to justify the harsh expedient of compulsion. It is easy to see that this problem alone, as often as it should occur, would open a wide field for the exercise of factious views, of partiality, and of oppression, in the majority that happened to prevail in the national council.
It seems to require no pains to prove that the States ought not to prefer a national Constitution which could only be kept in motion by the instrumentality of a large army continually on foot to execute the ordinary requisitions or decrees of the government. And yet this is the plain alternative involved by those who wish to deny it the power of extending its operations to individuals. Such a scheme, if practicable at all, would instantly degenerate into a military despotism; but it will be found in every light impracticable. The resources of the Union would not be equal to the maintenance of an army considerable enough to confine the larger States within the limits of their duty; nor would the means ever be furnished of forming such an army in the first instance. Whoever considers the populousness and strength of several of these States singly at the present juncture, and looks forward to what they will become, even at the distance of half a century, will at once dismiss as idle and visionary any scheme which aims at regulating their movements by laws to operate upon them in their collective capacities, and to be executed by a coercion applicable to them in the same capacities. A project of this kind is little less romantic than the monster-taming spirit which is attributed to the fabulous heroes and demi-gods of antiquity.
Even in those confederacies which have been composed of members smaller than many of our counties, the principle of legislation for sovereign States, supported by military coercion, has never been found effectual. It has rarely been attempted to be employed, but against the weaker members; and in most instances attempts to coerce the refractory and disobedient have been the signals of bloody wars, in which one half of the confederacy has displayed its banners against the other half.
The result of these observations to an intelligent mind must be clearly this, that if it be possible at any rate to construct a federal government capable of regulating the common concerns and preserving the general tranquillity, it must be founded, as to the objects committed to its care, upon the reverse of the principle contended for by the opponents of the proposed Constitution. It must carry its agency to the persons of the citizens. It must stand in need of no intermediate legislations; but must itself be empowered to employ the arm of the ordinary magistrate to execute its own resolutions. The majesty of the national authority must be manifested through the medium of the courts of justice. The government of the Union, like that of each State, must be able to address itself immediately to the hopes and fears of individuals; and to attract to its support those passions which have the strongest influence upon the human heart. It must, in short, possess all the means, and have aright to resort to all the methods, of executing the powers with which it is intrusted, that are possessed and exercised by the government of the particular States.
To this reasoning it may perhaps be objected, that if any State should be disaffected to the authority of the Union, it could at any time obstruct the execution of its laws, and bring the matter to the same issue of force, with the necessity of which the opposite scheme is reproached.
The pausibility of this objection will vanish the moment we advert to the essential difference between a mere NON-COMPLIANCE and a DIRECT and ACTIVE RESISTANCE. If the interposition of the State legislatures be necessary to give effect to a measure of the Union, they have only NOT TO ACT, or to ACT EVASIVELY, and the measure is defeated. This neglect of duty may be disguised under affected but unsubstantial provisions, so as not to appear, and of course not to excite any alarm in the people for the safety of the Constitution. The State leaders may even make a merit of their surreptitious invasions of it on the ground of some temporary convenience, exemption, or advantage.
But if the execution of the laws of the national government should not require the intervention of the State legislatures, if they were to pass into immediate operation upon the citizens themselves, the particular governments could not interrupt their progress without an open and violent exertion of an unconstitutional power. No omissions nor evasions would answer the end. They would be obliged to act, and in such a manner as would leave no doubt that they had encroached on the national rights. An experiment of this nature would always be hazardous in the face of a constitution in any degree competent to its own defense, and of a people enlightened enough to distinguish between a legal exercise and an illegal usurpation of authority. The success of it would require not merely a factious majority in the legislature, but the concurrence of the courts of justice and of the body of the people. If the judges were not embarked in a conspiracy with the legislature, they would pronounce the resolutions of such a majority to be contrary to the supreme law of the land, unconstitutional, and void. If the people were not tainted with the spirit of their State representatives, they, as the natural guardians of the Constitution, would throw their weight into the national scale and give it a decided preponderancy in the contest. Attempts of this kind would not often be made with levity or rashness, because they could seldom be made without danger to the authors, unless in cases of a tyrannical exercise of the federal authority.
If opposition to the national government should arise from the disorderly conduct of refractory or seditious individuals, it could be overcome by the same means which are daily employed against the same evil under the State governments. The magistracy, being equally the ministers of the law of the land, from whatever source it might emanate, would doubtless be as ready to guard the national as the local regulations from the inroads of private licentiousness. As to those partial commotions and insurrections, which sometimes disquiet society, from the intrigues of an inconsiderable faction, or from sudden or occasional illhumors that do not infect the great body of the community the general government could command more extensive resources for the suppression of disturbances of that kind than would be in the power of any single member. And as to those mortal feuds which, in certain conjunctures, spread a conflagration through a whole nation, or through a very large proportion of it, proceeding either from weighty causes of discontent given by the government or from the contagion of some violent popular paroxysm, they do not fall within any ordinary rules of calculation. When they happen, they commonly amount to revolutions and dismemberments of empire. No form of government can always either avoid or control them. It is in vain to hope to guard against events too mighty for human foresight or precaution, and it would be idle to object to a government because it could not perform impossibilities.
PUBLIUS.
Here are links to my other posts on The Federalist Papers so far:
The Federalist Papers #1: Alexander Hamilton's Plea for Reasoned Debate
The Federalist Papers #3: United, the 13 States are Less Likely to Stumble into War
The Federalist Papers #4 B: National Defense Will Be Stronger if the States are United
The Federalist Papers #5: Unless United, the States Will Be at Each Others' Throats
The Federalist Papers #6 A: Alexander Hamilton on the Many Human Motives for War
The Federalist Papers #11 A: United, the States Can Get a Better Trade Deal—Alexander Hamilton
The Federalist Papers #12: Union Makes it Much Easier to Get Tariff Revenue—Alexander Hamilton
The Federalist Papers #13: Alexander Hamilton on Increasing Returns to Scale in National Government
The Federalist Papers #14: A Republic Can Be Geographically Large—James Madison
Indoors is Very Dangerous for COVID-19 Transmission, Especially When Ventilation is Bad
Reading the news, I have been struck by how important “viral load” seems to be for the novel coronavirus. Being exposed to a large quantity of the virus seems to be much more dangerous than being exposed to a small quantity of the virus. The two big consequences of this are (a) how long one is near other people matters a lot and (b) it matters whether one has good ventilation—as is typical outdoors—or bad ventilation—as is typical indoors. To put a point on it: if you can help it, don’t spend a lot of time indoors with other people from outside your bubble; and if you have to, use a mask, distance yourself and make efforts to get better ventilation. For example, if you have to fly, you can put the air vent on at full blast and point it straight at yourself. (Airplanes tend to have high quality HEPA air filters.)
Caitlin McCabe, in the article shown above, “Key to Preventing Covid-19 Indoors: Ventilation,” lays out some key details. (All the quotations below are from that article.) Experts are beginning to emphasize the importance of good ventilation:
After urging steps like handwashing, masking and social distancing, researchers say proper ventilation indoors should join the list of necessary measures.
Contrary to the way many people are acting, being far away from someone isn’t good enough if you are with them indoors with bad ventilation for a long time:
Driving the thinking is mounting evidence that the new coronavirus is transmitted through the air among people with prolonged exposure to the pathogen. Especially troublesome, epidemiologists and other scientists say, is evidence from numerous indoor outbreaks suggesting the virus’s ability to spread to others even when close contact is avoided.
What counts as good ventilation? Turning over the air in a room something like six times every hour:
Ideally, they say, public spaces like a standard classroom should aim to have air replaced with clean air between four to six times an hour to dilute Covid-19 particles that might accumulate.
Common-sense measures can improve ventilation:
[Increasing the rate of air turnover] can be done, aerosol scientists and building engineers say, through strategies that introduce outdoor air and filter indoor contaminants. Those include opening windows and doors, installing window fans, using portable air purifiers with high-efficiency particulate air, or HEPA, filters and upgrading heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems …
Unfortunately, many school rooms, for example, have air turnover only about once or twice an hour.
Note also that because indoor restaurants and bars are a hard place to use masks as well as often having quite poor ventilation, and often being quite crowded, they are a perfect storm for Covid-19 transmission. And indoor parties are often a lot like indoor restaurants and bars. If you are going to do a party during this pandemic, do an outdoor party!
Vitamin D Seems to Help If You Have Non-Alcoholic Liver Disease
Eating high-insulin-index food can do a number on your liver, even if you don’t drink much alcohol. (On which foods are high on the insulin index, see “Forget Calorie Counting; It's the Insulin Index, Stupid.” Many will be foods you already know are bad. Others may be a surprise.) But Vitamin D deficiency also seems to play a role in worsening non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. “Vitamin D for treatment of non‐alcoholic fatty liver disease detected by transient elastography: A randomized, double‐blind, placebo‐controlled trial” in the journal Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism reports results from a randomized trial on 311 non-alcoholic-fatty-liver-disease patients. The graph below shows the interquartile ranges for the Vitamin D and placebo groups. The study was reasonably well powered to demonstrate that these differences were unlikely to be due to chance.
This result adds to the evidence that Vitamin D deficiency is a serious issue that you should worry about. One reason Vitamin D deficiency is a problem is that the recommended daily allowance for Vitamin D was set at the wrong value. See:
Another possible contributing factor behind Vitamin D deficiency is that milk can interfere with the workings of Vitamin D. See:
In addition to helping reduce the severity of the symptoms of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, there are some hints that Vitamin D can help reduce one’s vulnerability to Covid-19. See:
In addition to a regular multivitamin, I take an additional 5000 IU (=125 micrograms) of Vitamin D each day (except when I am fasting the whole day). What I know of the appropriate dose is from “Carola Binder—Why You Should Get More Vitamin D: The Recommended Daily Allowance for Vitamin D Was Underestimated Due to Statistical Illiteracy.” It seems an easy way to avoid what may end up being an even longer list of bad things that happen as a result of Vitamin D deficiency.
For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:
Technological Innovation and Fidelity in Copying in Areas Where Scientific Theory is Murky: The Case of Tom Bowen, Ossie Rentsch and Graham Pennington
Miles Kimball receiving his certificate for the highest level of training in the Bowen Technique. To his left: Elaine and Ossie Rentsch.
I hate being pigeonholed. It tickles me that in addition to a PhD in Economics, I have a Master’s degree in Linguistics (see “Miles's Linguistics Master's Thesis: The Later Wittgenstein, Roman Jakobson and Charles Saunders Peirce”), I am a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (see “On Human Potential”) and I am a fully trained practicioner of a particular type of bodywork: Bowenwork (see “Tom Bowen's Gift to Humanity: A Powerful Australian Technology”).
One of the interesting aspects of learning Bowenwork was the quasi-religious aspect. Tom Bowen, who invented the type of bodywork named after him, is treated by the biggest Bowenwork teaching organization (from which I received my training) as if he were a prophet who received divine revelation. Elaine and Ossie Rentsch—whom you can see in the picture above when I completed my advanced Bowenwork training—then claim Ossie as an immediate disciple of Tom Bowen who then has been continuing on the one true form of Bowenwork. But there are other variant interpretation of Bowenwork that Elaine and Ossie consider heresies (though Ossie is much more laid back than Elaine). One prominent alternative interpretation is that of Graham Pennington, who has a 2012 book (which has become quite scarce).
Some of the disputes about lines of authoritative descent that I became aware of from Elaine and Ossie and from Graham’s book make sense only if one thinks of Bowenwork in a quasi-religious way. From a scientific point of view, what matters is what works, whether or not a procedure is the same as what Tom Bowen would have done.
I am an enthusiast for Bowenwork. In particular, I like the fact that I can do most of the procedures on myself pretty easily; I do that for myself about once a month. And like most organizations that (unlike universities) have to teach well in order to survive and grow, I thought that Ossie and Elaine’s organization did a great job teaching Bowenwork to me. But unlike Ossie and Elaine, I think it is OK to tinker with the Bowen procedures and see what happens—even if that tinkering departs from what Tom Bowen originally did.
I find it intriguing how the religious impulse—complete with arguments about orthodoxy and heresy—crops up in other contexts that aren’t obviously religious.
The Cost of Variance Around a Mean of Statistically Discriminating Beliefs
Many models of statistical discrimination assume rational expectations. Consider instead a model in which expectations about strangers of a given race or other salient characteristic have a random error around rational expectations. Unlike the case for stock market expectations where mean-zero idiosyncrasies to beliefs around a rational expectations mean reduce the welfare of the investor holding inaccurate beliefs, but have no direct effect on prices, variance in beliefs about strangers of a given race or other salient characteristic are likely to have a systematic negative effect on groups that are in low esteem on average, simply because key actions are non-linear in perceptions. The example I have in mind is calling the police on an African-American individual because one perceives them as suspicious. Variance around the mean is likely to push more observers into beliefs based on circumstances plus skin color that are negative enough to lead them to call 911 and ask the police to check things out.
In the video above (which I have highlighted on this blog before), Baratunde Thurston is eloquent about the many different innocent activities that, when interacted with negative enough beliefs about a race, lead to someone calling the police.
All of this is to argue that while statistical discrimination plus random error in beliefs might, to some readers, sound relatively innocent, it is far from innocent in its effects.
I have a couple of other blog posts that are closely related to this one. “The Right Amount of Wokeness” pursues the theme of variance in a different way. “Enablers of White Supremacy” pursues the theme of statistical discrimination in a different way.
Michael Pollan on the Costs as Well as Benefits of Caffeine →
For annotated links to other posts on diet and health, see:
The University of Colorado Boulder Deals with a Free Speech Issue
I found this in my email inbox this morning, which I thought might be of interest to many of you. I am proud to part of a university that defends free speech—even when that speech is understandably objectionable to many.
Dear CU Boulder faculty,
Professor John Eastman, one of our visiting scholars in conservative thought and policy, recently published an op-ed that questioned whether Senator Kamala Harris is eligible to serve as vice president, even though she was born in the United States. This op-ed has both served as a lightning rod nationally for those who wish to delegitimize Senator Harris’s candidacy and has inflamed tensions on a campus that is confronting how it must acknowledge and overcome racism. Many scholars in our community and beyond have criticized the op-ed’s substance as promoting a rejected constitutional theory, and many within our community have reached out to me to express their outrage that a member of our community’s scholarship is being used by others across the country to promote a racist agenda.
I read Professor Eastman’s op-ed, and I found it neither compelling nor consistent with my understanding of who is eligible to hold our highest elected offices. I also condemn the way his work has been used to promote a racist agenda against the historic candidacy of Senator Harris, the daughter of a Jamaican-born father and an Indian-born mother. Never before has a woman of color been a candidate for the vice presidency. Even if he did not intend it, Professor Eastman’s op-ed has marginalized members of our CU Boulder community and sown doubts in our commitment to anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion. I am grateful to all who have expressed concerns that his work runs counter to our values as a campus. It undoubtedly damages our efforts to build trust with our communities of color at a critical time when we are working to build a more inclusive campus culture.
Without minimizing those harms, and recognizing that we must repair that trust, I must speak to those who have asked whether I will rescind Professor Eastman’s appointment or silence him. I will not, for doing so would falsely feed a narrative that our university suppresses speech it does not like and would undermine the principles of freedom of expression and academic freedom that make it possible for us to fulfill our mission.
Academic freedom includes the rights and responsibilities afforded to faculty members to create and disseminate knowledge and seek truth as the individual understands it, subject to the standards of their disciplines and the rational methods by which truth is established. Even legal scholars who reject Professor Eastman’s constitutional arguments recognize his theories are debatable.
If I would deny Professor Eastman these rights, it would weaken our ability to defend our entire faculty’s pursuit and dissemination of scholarship without fear of censorship or retaliation, even when it offends the sensibilities of others and makes people uncomfortable. However, I do encourage all of us—our visiting scholars included—to remember that while we as faculty have the privilege of academic freedom, that privilege comes with significant collective and individual responsibilities.
As stated in the American Association of University Professors 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, “College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence, they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.”
People can, and do, judge our institution by what we say. We must never forget that what we do and say as scholars has real impact, and that upholding the principles that enable our mission and support our democracy is more important now than ever—particularly as we seek to build a more inclusive climate within our campus and our country.
Last year, the Office of Faculty Affairs initiated a campus-wide discussion to enable a clearer understanding of academic freedom and its vital importance on our campus. In that spirit, Provost Moore and I, in coordination with the Office of Faculty Affairs, will host panel discussions this fall and spring that will include a range of representatives and perspectives. Our discussions will include a panel on how scholarship can impact our community’s Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), can be weaponized and has the potential to marginalize.
I hope you will join us in these important and necessary conversations, and I am grateful for your tireless work and commitment to our mission during this difficult time.
Best regards,
Philip P. DiStefano
Chancellor
In case you thought I was still at the University of Michigan, take a look at
and my blog bio.