Thinking about the 'Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping'

There is little question that Donald Trump (perhaps following the advice of others) has declared war on individuals who do a certain type of diversity training. The heart of the 'Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping' is this passage (where I have replaced small letters with bullets):

1. The contractor shall not use any workplace training that inculcates in its employees any form of race or sex stereotyping or any form of race or sex scapegoating, including the concepts that

  • one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;

  • an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously;

  • an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex;

  • members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex;

  • an individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex;

  • an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;

  • any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; or

  • meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race.

The term “race or sex stereotyping” means ascribing character traits, values, moral and ethical codes, privileges, status, or beliefs to a race or sex, or to an individual because of his or her race or sex, and the term “race or sex scapegoating” means assigning fault, blame, or bias to a race or sex, or to members of a race or sex because of their race or sex.

My reaction is that, although this prohibits federal contractors and recipients of federal money (including colleges and universities) from one type of antiracism training, there are many other forms of antiracist training that are still fully allowed.

First, I think there are many documentaries and movies that people could be assigned to watch that would clue them in to the sad history of racism in the United States and in other countries. And current maltreatment of African Americans and other minorities by the police can be addressed.

Second, it is my view that a lot of the racist incidents that should concern us the most are not caused by racism alone, but by racism combined with someone being a jerk. Training that has the effect of making people not act like jerks can reduce serious racist incidents as well as having many other benefits, even if it didn’t reduce racism itself. I wouldn’t suggest this if I didn’t believe there is a program that can, in fact, help people to act less like jerks than they otherwise would—and hopefully have less tolerance for bad behavior by that fraction of people whose propensity to act like a jerk is unfortunately unaffected. I talk about Positive Intelligence in “On Human Potential” and am myself being trained as a Positive Intelligence coach as well already being a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach. (I confess that I am personally using these skills to help out people who, by selection into the program, are already nicer than average. See “How Economists Can Enhance Their Scientific Creativity, Engagement and Impact.” But the principles have been shown to work in corporate contexts where those who—at least initially—are jerks abound.)

In short, even though the intent of the 'Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping' is what one of my tweeps, Andrew Burton called “a naked salvo in the culture war,” I am not alarmed about its practical effects in the way that, for example, the President and Provost of the University of Michigan are. (See also the September 24, 2020 Chronicle of Higher Education article “Trump Bars Federal Grants for ‘Divisive and Harmful’ Racial-Sensitivity Training” by Katherine Mangan.) I think there a workarounds for antiracism training.

The September 28, 2020 Wall Street Journal article “Why Are There Still So Few Black CEOs?” by Te-Ping Chen, provides some useful perspective on diversity training in the corporate context (which should be relevant to diversity training at colleges and universities).

Here are some key quotations from that article (with bullets added to distinguish passages):

  • Many companies tend to emphasize diversity in recruitment but overlook retention and advancement, researchers and executives say. And while companies have long talked about the importance of diversity—spending billions a year on such efforts—money has often been devoted to flawed programs such as diversity training, which show only mixed evidence of effectiveness.

    “It’s as though we pay for effort, but we’re not paying for results. We’re spending money without really investing in the activities that increase diversity,” says Mr. Williams.

    Instead, companies have seen better results from longer-term diversity programs that are focused on retaining and advancing staff. Executives also cite benefits from having mentors, and working for companies where leaders are personally invested in the issue, especially the CEO.

  • Companies have tended to rely on short-term diversity training, which data show often is ineffective or backfires, says Alexandra Kalev, a sociology professor at Tel Aviv University who has studied the effectiveness of diversity programs. Her research on 830 U.S. companies’ diversity efforts, conducted with Harvard professor Frank Dobbin, found such mandatory training can spark manager backlash, and actually coincided with declines in the number of Black women in management.

    She says her research shows initiatives such as mentorship programs and hiring diversity officers or creating diversity task forces are more effective.

  • The study found that when Black employees are elevated to the C-suite, they are frequently given roles with less advancement potential, such as chief human resources officer, chief sales officer or chief administration executive: Black people hold 13%, 20% and 43% of such roles in the Fortune 100, respectively.

  • The experience of being second-guessed or being subject to racial comments adds up. Black professionals are more likely to leave their jobs; 35% say they intend to leave their company within the next two years, with many mentioning isolation and workplace hostility, compared with 27% of their white peers, according to Coqual, a think tank formerly known as the Center for Talent Innovation focused on workplace diversity.

Potential Protective Mechanisms of Ketosis in Migraine Prevention

I don’t get migraines, but some of my friends do. I feel for them and have tried to come up with worthwhile advice. Some advice is straightforward: good sleep hygiene and stress reduction techniques such as meditation or Positive Intelligence. (For a description of the Positive Intelligence approach, see “On Human Potential” and “How Economists Can Enhance Their Scientific Creativity, Engagement and Impact”). Two other recommendations I have made are

  • acupuncture—which the Wikipedia article “Migraine” says there is a little evidence for and seems to me unlikely to have much of a downside, and

  • the combination of a low-insulin-index diet and fasting that is a mainstay of my diet-and-health posts. (See “Miles Kimball on Diet and Health: A Reader's Guide.”

A low-insulin-index diet combined with fasting puts the body in fat-burning mode, or ketosis, a fair share of the time. When the body is in fat-burning mode, fasting (going without food but drinking water) is easy. This is dramatically different from fasting when in sugar-burning mode, which is extremely unpleasant, as the Minnesota starvation experiments showed. (The experimental subjects consumed two small high-carb meals a day—just enough to keep them out of fat-burning mode, but too few calories to let them feel OK without smooth fat burning.)

Going without food when in sugar-burning mode leads to low blood sugar, which can trigger a migraine. By contrast, in fat-burning mode, the brain will be able to get plenty of energy from the ketone bodies that are produced when in fat-burning mode.

To emphasize: the trouble with eating sugar and easily-digested starches and with eating all the time is that it leads to a lot of moments of subjective starvation caused by low blood sugar. Moments of intense subjective starvation tend to point to low blood sugar, which can make migraines more likely.

In a seeming paradox, as long as you are eating low on the insulin index, eating nothing is less likely to lead to moments of intense subjective starvation because the cells in your body are well-fed as long as you are (a) in fat burning mode and (b) still have body fat left to burn.

Though full-scale clinical trials remain to be done for the effect of ketosis on migraines, there is decent evidence that ketosis is indeed helpful in reducing migraines. Let me give you a few quotations (with bullets added to separate quotations) from the recent paper “Potential Protective Mechanisms of Ketone Bodies in Migraine Prevention”:

  • Despite migraine’s primary pathogenic mechanisms being still largely unknown [8], accumulating evidence suggests that migraines could be—at least partially—an energy deficit syndrome of the brain …

  • Mimicking this state of fasting, the ketogenic diet (KD) promotes the hepatic production of KBs with a high fat, low carbohydrate and moderate protein content. It was developed about 100 years ago after the observation that prolonged fasting has anticonvulsive properties [11]. Within recent years, the KD has received renewed interest, in particular since KBs might be beneficial for a variety of other neurological disorders [12,13,14]. All brain cells have the capacity to use KBs [ketone bodies] as respiratory substrates [10].

  • Several case studies have demonstrated the potentially migraine protective effects of ketosis [22,33,34,35,36,37]. A one-month observational study of KD in 96 migraine patients as part of a weight loss program found a reduction of up to 80% in migraine frequency, severity and acute medication use [37]. The same intervention in 18 episodic migraineurs induced a 62.5% reduction in migraine days …

In an area such as migraine prevention, sufferers can quickly gather a substantial amount of individual-specific time-series evidence. In saying this, I speak as a macroeconomist: in studying the behavior of GDP, we often have much, much less evidence than a migraine sufferer could gather within a single year from keeping careful track of their own experience about whether a low-insulin-index diet combined with fasting reduced the frequency of migraines.

It is well-established that being in fat-burning mode as opposed to sugar-burning mode puts the brain in a substantially different state. Therefore, a low-insulin-index diet combined with fasting is likely to be a substantial intervention. What evidence there is suggest it is more likely to be in the desired direction of reducing migraines than the opposite. But it is straightforward to find out in one’s own individual case.

Let me caution that one should do the low-insulin-index diet for a while (say six weeks) before trying to skip meals. A good path here is quite similar to what one would do if the objective were to lose weight. See

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

'Everything Happens for a Reason' for Nonsupernaturalists

One of the great boons of religion comes from the good effects of the idea that “Everything happens for a reason.” As usually interpreted, this idea leads believers to look for the silver lining in clouds—the good that can be made out of shocks that seem bad.

Fortunately for us nonsupernaturalists, it is not necessary to believe in a benevolent supernatural being or power arranging things in order to search for the silver lining in clouds—and benefit from that search. First, one can approach a tough situation as if there were a benevolent supernatural being or power without actually believing in that power. Metaphors don’t have to be literally true to be useful.

Let me give a homely example of what I find to be a useful metaphor that I definitely don’t take as literally true. Inanimate objects sometimes get lost in my house. After a diligent, but still unsuccessful search, there has been selection against easy hiding places that I would have found it in immediately. So at that point, it helps me to ask “If it were trying to hide from me, where would it hide?” I don’t believe for a minute that the inanimate object can intentionally hide; but after the selection against the most originally most likely answers to “Where is it?” thinking as if it were intentionally hiding often yields the right kind of creative thought in order to find it.

A second nonsupernaturalist “translation” of “Everything happens for a reason” is Shirzad Chamine’s translation of it in Positive Intelligence. (See “On Human Potential” and “How Economists Can Enhance Their Scientific Creativity, Engagement and Impact.”) Shirzad defines what he calls the “Sage Perspective” as the idea that everything—including things that seem very bad—can be turned into a gift and opportunity.

In a quotation send to me from Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic, the brilliant writer Jorge Luis Borges says the same idea beautifully:

A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

Ryan Holiday then extends this beyond art to life:

To decide to use this as raw material? To learn from it? To transform it? To find an opportunity within it? Yes, that remains in our power. Everything is material. We can use it all.

“Everything happens for a reason” works as well as it does for a good reason. Relative to the ancestral environment within human beings evolved, our current environment is a very nice one. (For improvements in recent history, see “Things are Getting Better: 3 Videos.") Quite literally, our instincts are to expect things to be worse and more difficult than they really are. “Optimism” is not a virtue in all circumstances, but it is a virtue in the current circumstances almost all of you enjoy; any situation better than the environment of evolutionary adaptation requires some counterweight to our inherited pessimism which was so appropriate back then, but is not so appropriate now.

  • Everything happens for a reason.

  • It is as if everything happens for a reason.

  • Everything can be turned into a gift and opportunity.

  • All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art [and life].

Any of these ideas can sprinkle some stardust on your life and help make your life, not only bearable, but joyous.

Addendum 1: As another expression of the supernaturalist version of “Everything happens for a reason,” see this lyric video of Riley Clemmon’s song “For the Good,” based on Romans 8:28:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Addendum 2: Here is another succinct definition of the attitude I am talking about in this post, and a name for it: amor fati—loving your fate.

Amor fati is a mindset that you take on for making the best out of anything that happens: Treating each and every moment—no matter how challenging—as something to be embraced, not avoided. To not only be okay with it, but love it and be better for it. So that like oxygen to a fire, obstacles and adversity become fuel for your potential.

Eric Lonergan and Megan Greene: Dual Interest Rates Give Central Banks Limitless Firepower

In my post “Helicopter Drops of Money Are Not the Answer,” I argue against indiscriminate scattershot helicopter drops. There are better policies than that. But measures that are equivalent to tightly targeted helicopter drops to support the banking system and neutralize objections to negative interest rates can be very helpful.

Such targeted helicopter drops are not some pie-in-the-sky notion, they are current policy for many of the central banks that have implemented negative rates: both tiered interest on reserves and below-market lending rates offered by the central bank are examples of such “helicopter drops”—or the economic equivalent—targeted to support the banking system.

Concerns about the banking system are the main theoretical reason to doubt the effectiveness of negative interest rates. But targeted helicopter drops to the banking system such as through tiered interest on reserves or below-market lending rates fully neutralize these concerns. See ““Markus Brunnermeier and Yann Koby's ‘Reversal Interest Rate’” for a discussion of both the concern and its solution.

In “Dual interest rates give central banks limitless fire power” on the VoxEU blog, Eric Lonergan and Megan Greene give an enthusiastic thumbs up to such helicopter drops targeted to the banking system associated with a negative rate policy. They are somewhat less concerned about the cost of such targeted helicopter drops to the central bank’s balance sheet than I am. But what is true is that whatever cost there is to the central bank’s balance sheet, there is a long time deal with that cost. A central bank that can print the kind of money its obligations are denominated in will never face a liquidity crisis. It might not have enough other assets to sell to mop up money and reduce the monetary base, but if it is allowed to pay interest on reserves as high as it wants, it can guarantee that a large fraction of the monetary base stays on the sidelines as excess reserves at the cost of gradually increasing that monetary base by the payment of that interest. Eventually, the central bank might need recapitalization from the fiscal authority, but it can afford to wait for recapitalization through several administrations that choose to ignore the central bank’s being underwater according to the usual accounting schemes for central banks. (Note that the usual accounting schemes for central banks neglect what for any private company would be counted a huge asset: the right to print money.) On this issue of how much in the way of targeted helicopter drops to the banking system a central bank can afford, see my post “Why Central Banks Can Afford to Subsidize the Provision of Zero Rates to Small Household Checking and Savings Accounts.”

Ruchir Agarwal feature a particular version of what I am here calling “targeted helicopter drops to the banking system” in our two IMF Working Papers:

In general, wealth effects are not a problem for the effectiveness of negative interest rate policy, because lower rates shift the balance of power to borrowers in each borrower-lender relationship; and it is quite rare for the marginal propensity to spend of lender to be higher than the marginal propensity to spend of a borrower. To have a positive effect on aggregate demand it is not necessary for everyone to spend more; it is only necessary for those who spend more to outweigh those that spend less. Thinking about this borrower-lender relationship by borrower-lender relationship, almost all of these pairings will raise spending when the spending of the borrower and lender in the relationship is added together.

There may, however, be a few borrower-lender relationships where the marginal propensity to spend of the lender is greater than the marginal propensity to spend of the borrower. In addition to targeted helicopter drops to support the banking system, these few odd borrower-lender relationships could be candidates for a targeted helicopter drop. What I am emphasizing is that of the few rational (as opposed to irrational freak-out) and principled (as opposed to narrowly self-interested) objections to negative interest rates, most have to do with some kind of wealth effect. Almost all of these wealth effect issues can be addressed by appropriately targeted helicopter drops.

Take a look at In “Dual interest rates give central banks limitless fire power” in the light of what I say here. It is important to understand the potential here.

For related posts, see “How and Why to Eliminate the Zero Lower Bound: A Reader’s Guide.”

Hypotheses about Salt and Blood Pressure

There is a lot we don’t know about salt and blood pressure. There seems to be a positive correlation between salt consumption and high blood pressure, but a lot of that evidence could be explained by the importance of processed food as a source of salt. Processed food tends to have a lot of sugar as well as a lot of salt; if sugar raises blood pressure, that could get falsely blamed on salt.

Because some of the relevant environments of evolutionary adaptation for human beings were on the seashore and so probably had a lot of salt, one would suspect that within some reasonable range, our bodies are able to get rid of excess sodium. So unless salt consumption is very high, I don’t see why we would have a vulnerability to excess salt.

It should be noted, however, that the standard mechanism for getting rid of excess salt might involve sweating it away or otherwise using water to help get rid of salt. So those who don’t drink enough water might well be harmed by excess salt in a way that those who drink plenty of water are not.

Now think of interventions to lower salt consumption, these might lower blood pressure without salt having been the cause of the high blood pressure in the first place.

Let me describe an analogy. Warfarin acts to as a blood thinner (that is, to reduce the danger of blood clots) by blocking the action of Vitamin K. For the Warfarin to remain effective, the one being treated needs to avoid eating too much Vitamin K or needs to raise the Warfarin dose to compensate for Vitamin K consumed. So Vitamin K can frustrate Warfarin without adjusting the dose. But although less Vitamin K can reduce blood clotting, extra Vitamin K doesn’t increase blood clotting beyond a certain point. The excess would just be ignored or reprocessed by the body.

In the case of sodium, if one has a sodium deficiency then the body might need to reduce the quantity of blood so the sodium concentration doesn’t get too low. That would reduce blood pressure. If blood pressure is too high for some reason other than salt consumption, this sodium deficiency lowering blood pressure might have some beneficial effect.

Note that while it is strange if the body can’t get rid of excess sodium, if there is a sodium deficiency there are fewer ways to get the sodium levels up, mainly conservation and making someone crave salt. If, for medical reasons, the individual doesn’t given in to a salt craving, the body can’t remedy the sodium deficiency that way and has to reduce blood pressure to keep sodium concentrations up, once available avenues of conservation of sodium are exhausted.

I may be totally wrong, but what does this predict? First, that most of the correlation between salt and blood pressure is about the confound of the sugar that tends to come along with salt. This accounts for most of the relationship between salt and is probably a linear relationship accounting for the linear relationship between salt and blood pressure that meets the eye in a scatter plot. Second, intervention evidence that gets the causal effect of salt on blood pressure is mostly about reducing the amount of salt and could work through sodium deficiency reducing blood pressure even if it is easy for the body to get rid of excess sodium. Third, there is a prediction that an experiment that probably wouldn’t pass human subjects review—feeding people extra salt (while making sure they drink plenty of water)—would not cause a rise in blood pressure.

I am not wedded to these hypotheses; I’d be glad to hear a refutation. I am interested. And I also realize I might be wrong about Vitamin K.

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

Simon Denyer on How Japan Has Handled Covid-19 →

It has been surprising that Japan has kept its Covid-19 burden as low as it has given that it hasn’t done broad lockdowns or done a lot of testing. This article gives some insight into how it has done as well as it has.

One thing I can say from my time in Japan is that masks during any hint of illness have been a part of Japanese culture for a long, long time—long before Covid-19. That surely helped. And the Japanese custom of bowing rather than giving a handshake is likely to help a little. But those aren’t the only things.

Hat tip to Gail Kimball.

The Federalist Papers #17: Three Levels of Federal Power

Link to the Wikipedia page 1838 “Mormon War

Link to the Wikipedia page 1838 “Mormon War

In the Federalist Papers #17, Alexander Hamilton has trouble imagining a Federal government that horned in on a large share of the internal powers of states. In part, he thought that the Federal government would not be adequately staffed to do such a thing, not conceiving of the rise of the administrative state and its large agencies. (For example, the current version of the Wikipedia article for “United States Environmental Protection Agency” says the EPA has 13,758 employees.)

Alexander Hamilton also did not imagine the 14th amendment, which after much evolution of constitutional law makes the Bill of Rights apply against states, along with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, which make the Federal government a key enforcer of constitutional rights when a state violates or jeopardizes those rights.

However, Alexander Hamilton’s view that the Federal government would lose most disputes with states over their internal affairs was a good description of the situation until the Civil War, and after the end of Reconstruction returned to being a good description of the situation until the Civil Rights revolution of the 1960s.

Conceptually, there are three levels of federal power:

  1. Having authority only over subjurisdictions—and that only if the a subjurisdiction did not object—as was true in the Articles of Confederation

  2. Having direct authority over individuals as well as that kind of very limited authority over subjurisdictions. At this level, Federal law prevailed in cases involving individuals, but the Federal government had very little ability to order a state to do something beyond that influence on the court system. This is what the 1787 Constitution established.

  3. Having the authority to prevent a state government from treating the states own citizens in ways the Federal government prohibits, and the ability to order a state to do many things, in addition to direct authority over individuals.

To make the difference between 2 and 3 vivid, let me give two examples from Mormon history. In 1838, Mormons were driven out of Missouri, with the support of the governor of Missouri for driving them out. When the Mormons appealed to the Federal government, President Martin Van Buren said

Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you.

Martin Van Buren was saying he had very little power to tell Missouri what to do.

In 1846, the main body of Mormons was driven out of Illinois. The only reason it took that long was that the murder of Mormon founder Joseph Smith mollified those in Illinois who hated Mormons for a while. In 1846 Brigham Young, whom the majority of Mormons chose to follow after Joseph Smith’s death, led Mormons from Illinois to the Great Basin—and founded Salt Lake City among many other cities.

In 1838, President James Buchanan sent an army to the Great Basin in order to get the Mormons to be more obedient to federal appointees. The 1838 “Utah War” or “Mormon Rebellion” ended in a tactical standoff. The Mormons retained considerable autonomy for quite a while afterward.

After the Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882 the Federal government sent federal marshals to catch and imprison polygamists. Though they did in fact imprison many polygamists, they were not very successful in stamping out polygamy. Two things allowed the Federal government to eventually enforce its anti-polygamy views relatively well: a stick and a carrot. The stick was that the Federal government did not have to act against the state government in this, but could act against the Mormon Church. The Federal government threatened to confiscate all of the Mormon Church’s property. The carrot was that the Mormon Church desperately wanted statehood to gain more autonomy than a territory could afford; they were willing to promise to end polygamy to get statehood (though officially-sanctioned polygamy continued in secret and in Canada and Mexico for some time after that).

Although the Federal government was not entirely toothless in its interaction with the Mormon Church dominating Utah, it had only partial success in enforcing its will.

Until almost my lifetime (I was born in 1960), the main example of the Federal government enforcing its will against states was the Civil War and Reconstruction. Having to go to war to enforce Federal authority is not a sign of a strong Federal government. Indeed, in the Federalist papers #15, Alexander Hamilton argues that the theoretical authority over the states given by the Articles of Confederation was flawed because it would take war to enforce that authority over a state. (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.”) However, Reconstruction did involve genuine federal authority over the states brought to heel by the Civil War.

Some of the state-level passion that Alexander Hamilton writes of in the Federalist Papers #17, with the wrinkle of whites successfully making themselves much more politically potent than blacks, was behind the end of Reconstruction.

On the whole, Alexander Hamilton has good insights in the Federalist Papers #17 about the wellsprings of state power vis a vis federal power. And his contention that federal power would be quite limited was true for a long time. But his imagination failed to see all the wellsprings of federal power that would arise in the following two-and-a-fraction centuries.

With everything above as a frame, take a look at the details of what Alexander Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers #17:

FEDERALIST NO. 17

The Same Subject Continued: The Insufficiency of the Present Confederation to Preserve the Union

For the Independent Journal
Tuesday, December 4, 1787.

Author: Alexander Hamilton

To the People of the State of New York:

AN OBJECTION, of a nature different from that which has been stated and answered, in my last address, may perhaps be likewise urged against the principle of legislation for the individual citizens of America. It may be said that it would tend to render the government of the Union too powerful, and to enable it to absorb those residuary authorities, which it might be judged proper to leave with the States for local purposes. Allowing the utmost latitude to the love of power which any reasonable man can require, I confess I am at a loss to discover what temptation the persons intrusted with the administration of the general government could ever feel to divest the States of the authorities of that description. The regulation of the mere domestic police of a State appears to me to hold out slender allurements to ambition. Commerce, finance, negotiation, and war seem to comprehend all the objects which have charms for minds governed by that passion; and all the powers necessary to those objects ought, in the first instance, to be lodged in the national depository. The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same State, the supervision of agriculture and of other concerns of a similar nature, all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction. It is therefore improbable that there should exist a disposition in the federal councils to usurp the powers with which they are connected; because the attempt to exercise those powers would be as troublesome as it would be nugatory; and the possession of them, for that reason, would contribute nothing to the dignity, to the importance, or to the splendor of the national government.

But let it be admitted, for argument's sake, that mere wantonness and lust of domination would be sufficient to beget that disposition; still it may be safely affirmed, that the sense of the constituent body of the national representatives, or, in other words, the people of the several States, would control the indulgence of so extravagant an appetite. It will always be far more easy for the State governments to encroach upon the national authorities than for the national government to encroach upon the State authorities. The proof of this proposition turns upon the greater degree of influence which the State governments if they administer their affairs with uprightness and prudence, will generally possess over the people; a circumstance which at the same time teaches us that there is an inherent and intrinsic weakness in all federal constitutions; and that too much pains cannot be taken in their organization, to give them all the force which is compatible with the principles of liberty.

The superiority of influence in favor of the particular governments would result partly from the diffusive construction of the national government, but chiefly from the nature of the objects to which the attention of the State administrations would be directed.

It is a known fact in human nature, that its affections are commonly weak in proportion to the distance or diffusiveness of the object. Upon the same principle that a man is more attached to his family than to his neighborhood, to his neighborhood than to the community at large, the people of each State would be apt to feel a stronger bias towards their local governments than towards the government of the Union; unless the force of that principle should be destroyed by a much better administration of the latter.

This strong propensity of the human heart would find powerful auxiliaries in the objects of State regulation.

The variety of more minute interests, which will necessarily fall under the superintendence of the local administrations, and which will form so many rivulets of influence, running through every part of the society, cannot be particularized, without involving a detail too tedious and uninteresting to compensate for the instruction it might afford.

There is one transcendant advantage belonging to the province of the State governments, which alone suffices to place the matter in a clear and satisfactory light,--I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice. This, of all others, is the most powerful, most universal, and most attractive source of popular obedience and attachment. It is that which, being the immediate and visible guardian of life and property, having its benefits and its terrors in constant activity before the public eye, regulating all those personal interests and familiar concerns to which the sensibility of individuals is more immediately awake, contributes, more than any other circumstance, to impressing upon the minds of the people, affection, esteem, and reverence towards the government. This great cement of society, which will diffuse itself almost wholly through the channels of the particular governments, independent of all other causes of influence, would insure them so decided an empire over their respective citizens as to render them at all times a complete counterpoise, and, not unfrequently, dangerous rivals to the power of the Union.

The operations of the national government, on the other hand, falling less immediately under the observation of the mass of the citizens, the benefits derived from it will chiefly be perceived and attended to by speculative men. Relating to more general interests, they will be less apt to come home to the feelings of the people; and, in proportion, less likely to inspire an habitual sense of obligation, and an active sentiment of attachment.

The reasoning on this head has been abundantly exemplified by the experience of all federal constitutions with which we are acquainted, and of all others which have borne the least analogy to them.

Though the ancient feudal systems were not, strictly speaking, confederacies, yet they partook of the nature of that species of association. There was a common head, chieftain, or sovereign, whose authority extended over the whole nation; and a number of subordinate vassals, or feudatories, who had large portions of land allotted to them, and numerous trains of INFERIOR vassals or retainers, who occupied and cultivated that land upon the tenure of fealty or obedience, to the persons of whom they held it. Each principal vassal was a kind of sovereign, within his particular demesnes. The consequences of this situation were a continual opposition to authority of the sovereign, and frequent wars between the great barons or chief feudatories themselves. The power of the head of the nation was commonly too weak, either to preserve the public peace, or to protect the people against the oppressions of their immediate lords. This period of European affairs is emphatically styled by historians, the times of feudal anarchy.

When the sovereign happened to be a man of vigorous and warlike temper and of superior abilities, he would acquire a personal weight and influence, which answered, for the time, the purpose of a more regular authority. But in general, the power of the barons triumphed over that of the prince; and in many instances his dominion was entirely thrown off, and the great fiefs were erected into independent principalities or States. In those instances in which the monarch finally prevailed over his vassals, his success was chiefly owing to the tyranny of those vassals over their dependents. The barons, or nobles, equally the enemies of the sovereign and the oppressors of the common people, were dreaded and detested by both; till mutual danger and mutual interest effected a union between them fatal to the power of the aristocracy. Had the nobles, by a conduct of clemency and justice, preserved the fidelity and devotion of their retainers and followers, the contests between them and the prince must almost always have ended in their favor, and in the abridgment or subversion of the royal authority.

This is not an assertion founded merely in speculation or conjecture. Among other illustrations of its truth which might be cited, Scotland will furnish a cogent example. The spirit of clanship which was, at an early day, introduced into that kingdom, uniting the nobles and their dependants by ties equivalent to those of kindred, rendered the aristocracy a constant overmatch for the power of the monarch, till the incorporation with England subdued its fierce and ungovernable spirit, and reduced it within those rules of subordination which a more rational and more energetic system of civil polity had previously established in the latter kingdom.

The separate governments in a confederacy may aptly be compared with the feudal baronies; with this advantage in their favor, that from the reasons already explained, they will generally possess the confidence and good-will of the people, and with so important a support, will be able effectually to oppose all encroachments of the national government. It will be well if they are not able to counteract its legitimate and necessary authority. The points of similitude consist in the rivalship of power, applicable to both, and in the CONCENTRATION of large portions of the strength of the community into particular DEPOSITS, in one case at the disposal of individuals, in the other case at the disposal of political bodies.

A concise review of the events that have attended confederate governments will further illustrate this important doctrine; an inattention to which has been the great source of our political mistakes, and has given our jealousy a direction to the wrong side. This review shall form the subject of some ensuing papers.

PUBLIUS.

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

Scott Cunningham on Losing a Child →

Scott’s thread is about what it is like to be the parent of a child who dies or almost dies. My wife—Gail Deann Cozzens Kimball—and I lost a son to suicide: Spencer Miles Kimball. Gail writes about that in “The Shards of My Heart.” Gail and I also lost two daughters in infancy due to a very rare condition in which they were born with small lungs—presumably a genetic condition because it was similar in both daughters who died. They were named Marianne Camilla Kimball and Laura Beth Kimball.

Our remaining two children, Diana Gail Kimball Berlin and Jordan Matthew Kimball, are doing great.

Getting the Best from Wokeness by Having the Right Mean, Reducing the Variance and Mitigating the Losses from Extreme Values

In “The Right Amount of Wokeness” I talk about getting the right mean of wokeness using the following graphs:

too little wokeness.png

In each graph, the bell curve is is the density function for wokeness and the quadratic function below it is the loss function. If one can only control the mean of wokeness, the optimum is to have the mean of the wokeness distribution at the point where the loss is minimized. And given the symmetry of the two functions, one can tell whether one has too much or too little wokeness by whether (a) there are worse horrors coming from too little wokeness than from too much wokeness or (b) there are worse horrors coming from too much wokeness. Without at all minimizing the horrors from too much wokeness (see for example “John McWhorter on Professors Worrying about the Consequences If They Sound Less Than Totally Woke”), I argue that the horrors from too little wokeness are currently worse.

But this simple model points clearly to two other ways to minimize losses: reducing the variance of wokeness and mitigating losses in any given situation (making the loss function less tightly curved).

A start toward reducing the variance of wokeness is criticizing and educating people with a level of wokeness either higher or lower than the vertex of the loss function. Even if it doesn’t change average beliefs, giving people the facts about statistically discriminating beliefs should be able to reduce the variance of “wokeness.” (My post “The Cost of Variance Around a Mean of Statistically Discriminating Beliefs” is related, but has a somewhat different model.) At any rate, we should try to collectively express strong social disapproval for those at either extreme of the wokeness distribution—obviously with more disapproval expressed on one end if the mean of wokeness is not at the vertex of the loss function. Currently that means more expression of social disapproval for too little wokeness, but there will be some people with enough too much wokeness that they deserve strong expression of social disapproval.

Reducing the losses from any given situation affected by high or low wokeness is often a matter of common sense that too often gets blocked in its application by partisanship of those with quite high or quite low wokeness. Those of us nearer the level of wokeness at the vertex of the loss function (a group in which I optimistically put myself :) need to support common sense measures. What do I mean?

  1. Send in the police to stop looting when folks with too much wokeness—while not doing any looting themselves—are too willing to tolerate looting.

  2. Hold the police to account when they mistreat people.

  3. Call out coded racist statements.

  4. Don’t let people hide behind saying they aren’t racist, they are just statistically discriminating. Because of hysteresis or slow convergence, to get to the right equilibrium in a reasonable time frame, we need to do more than just get rid of out-and-out racism. (See “Enablers of White Supremacy.”)

Quite importantly, note that someone is not a racist for opposing too much wokeness. They are only supporting racism if they promote too little wokeness. The distribution of wokeness has a large enough variance that it would be unlikely indeed that there aren’t some people out there with too much wokeness. So there ought to be some criticism of people for too much wokeness; it would be a bad sign if there weren’t. Those who criticize too much wokeness when it is genuinely left of the vertex are heroes, not racists. But those with too much wokeness will fight back, so those who criticize people for too much wokeness need to be tough heroes.

But given the current mean of wokeness, we need many more heroes to attack too little wokeness than the number of heroes we need to attack too much wokeness. I am heartened to see the number of people taking up the cause of antiracism with vigor. It makes me proud of our country.

Fasting Tips

I am in the middle of “My Annual Anti-Cancer Fast,” so my thoughts are turning toward things that make fasting a little easier. Before getting into fasting tips, let me say that I have copied out a set of cautions about fasting from earlier blog posts that you should read if you haven’t seen it already. I label it “Appendix.” From here on in this post I will assume you have read it.

I am a big fan of Jason Fung in the area of fasting for health, as you can see from “Obesity Is Always and Everywhere an Insulin Phenomenon” and “Five Books That Have Changed My Life.” Recently, my wife Gail obtained a fasting coach associated with Jason Fung and has had a very good experience with that fasting coach. The picture and link thefastingmethod.com at the top of this post are for getting a fasting coach in that group. I’ll separate out the fasting tips by how I learned them.

Miles’s fasting tips:

  • One of the biggest aids to a multiple day fast is the rapidly rising number of flavors of sparkling water. (See “In Praise of Flavored Sparkling Water.”)

  • Stay busy while fasting. Distraction is your friend: it helps you forget the mild psychological hunger you shouldn’t be paying attention to. Many of us have no problem staying busy catching up on work. But if you have time, do something fun, like marathoning an especially fun TV series, going on a hike, or playing your favorite video game.

  • To avoid constipation while fasting and in the days right after I start eating again, during the fast I cut back on my regular vitamins and add two psyllium pills each day while fasting (psyllium husks are the active ingredient in Metamucil). I do take one medication and one vitamin that are idiosyncratic to me, and one pill that I recommend to anyone fasting: a “buffered electrolyte salts” pill. Right now, I am using this brand, but have no special allegiance to any particular brand.

  • During the fast, as long as you are eating very low on the insulin index (see “Forget Calorie Counting; It's the Insulin Index, Stupid”) you will continue burning fat; the only thing you have to worry about is that the calories you eat will displace calories burned. (See “Maintaining Weight Loss” and “How Low Insulin Opens a Way to Escape Dieting Hell”)

  • Gail often eats a bit of almond or macadamia butter during her extended fasts if she feels uncomfortably hungry or worries that hunger might disrupt her sleep.

Tips from Gail’s fasting coach:

  • One thing I didn’t realize at all, but makes sense to me on hearing it is that while eating processed food (which includes almost all food in cans or boxes) may give you more salt than you need, when fasting, you might be getting too little sodium. One “buffered electrolyte salts” pill a day probably gives you enough magnesium and potassium, but not enough sodium if you are fasting. If you get too little sodium, it can make you feel weak or faint. Once you realize this, the solution is easy: early in the day put a teaspoon and a half of regular table salt in a small bowl; take pinches of the salt and put them under your tongue. Wash down with water. Repeat, until the teaspoon and a half is all consumed. Try to get this done before 2 PM each day that you are fasting. You will feel better. (I have found a small variant on this works well for me: put a larger amount of salt in a small bowl along with the half-teaspoon measure; put half a teaspoon under my tongue and wash it down fast with several gulps of water; after the first few gulps, swish the water around, then rinse one more time; do three times in the day.)

    Update January 19, 2021: I realized that taking sodium chloride pills was a lot more pleasant than eating table salt straight. Same effect, more pleasant going down. I take 2 one-gram sodium chloride pills a day while doing hardcore fasting (no food) and 1 a day while doing modified fasting, because I salt the radishes I eat. (See “My Modified Fast” on that). Here is the Amazon page for the sodium chloride pills I bought.

    This is a reevaluation of the right dosage: a half teaspoon corresponds to 2.5 to 3 pills of one-gram of sodium chloride each. Steven Gundry’s Your Health magazine says that we need .5 grams of sodium a day, the average American gets about 3.6 grams of sodium and the recommended limit is 2.3 grams a day of sodium if you don’t have high blood pressure and 1.5 grams of sodium a day if you do have high blood pressure. Translating that into grams of sodium chloride, that is 1.3 one-gram pills minimum per day, the equivalent of 9.3 one-gram pills for the average American each day, and a recommended maximum of 5.9 grams of sodium chloride if you don’t have high blood pressure and 3.9 grams if you do have high blood pressure. Hence my idea that 2 one-gram sodium chloride pills is about right during a hardcore fast and 1 one-gram sodium-chloride pill during a modified fast.

  • I have emphasized how eating low on the insulin index makes fasting easy. If you are going into a long fast, you can make the transition into fasting even easier by going extra low on the insulin index. If you like eating meat, choose the fattiest cuts you can find. For beef, that’s ribeye steak. For pork, ribs also seem especially fatty, and bacon is usually quite fatty. For chicken, dark meat is fattier than light meat.

  • I knew Jason Fung recommended green tea as something that helps make your hunger go away during fasting, but Gail’s fasting coach also recommends vinegar. In particular, said it’s OK to eat sugar-free dill pickles during a fast and even recommends drinking the pickle juice.

  • Testing devices that tell you how deeply you are into fat burning (ketosis) can be motivating. Gail likes the Biosense Ketone Breath Analyzer because it is easy to use, doesn’t need blood, and has an almost zero marginal cost (though the initial purchase cost is substantial). Keto Mojo strips have a significant marginal cost and require pricking your finger to get a blood sample. But it is somewhat more accurate than the ketone breath analyzer and provides a blood sugar level as well as a ketone level. It’s not like you necessarily need all that innovation, but it might provide the crucial motivation to keep going.

Finally, one bottom line: fasting is easy if you are eating low on the insulin index. And if the food is low enough on the insulin index, you can even eat it during a fast and you will still get the health benefits of the fast; you will simply have somewhat slower weight loss. But if you try to fast or eat only a few calories a day while eating high-carb or otherwise high on the insulin index, you will be in the territory of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which was hellish for the experimental subjects. Eating low on the insulin index makes all the difference for how easy fasting is. As long as you still have body fat to burn, fasting isn’t starvation; it can be relatively easy.

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

Appendix: Cautions about Fasting.

Before I dive into the technical details, let me repeat some cautions about fasting. I am not going to get into any trouble for telling people to cut out added sugar from their diet, but there are some legitimate worries about fasting. Here are my cautions in “Don't Tar Fasting by those of Normal or High Weight with the Brush of Anorexia”:

  • If your body-mass-index is below 18.5, quit fasting! Here is a link to a BMI calculator.

  • Definitely people should not do fasting for more than 48 hours without first reading Jason Fung’s two books The Obesity Code (see “Obesity Is Always and Everywhere an Insulin Phenomenon” and “Five Books That Have Changed My Life”) and The Complete Guide to Fasting.

  • Those under 20, pregnant or seriously ill should indeed consult a doctor before trying to do any big amount of fasting.

  • Those on medication need to consult their doctor before doing much fasting. My personal nightmare as someone recommending fasting is that a reader who is already under the care of a doctor who is prescribing medicine might fail to consult their doctor about adjusting the dosage of that medicine in view of the fasting they are doing. Please, please, please, if you want to try fasting and are on medication, you must tell your doctor. That may involve the burden of educating your doctor about fasting. But it could save your life from a medication overdose.

  • Those who find fasting extremely difficult should not do lengthy fasts.

  • But, quoting again from “4 Propositions on Weight Loss”: “For healthy, nonpregnant, nonanorexic adults who find it relatively easy, fasting for up to 48 hours is not dangerous—as long as the dosage of any medication they are taking is adjusted for the fact that they are fasting.”

Let me add to these cautions: If you read The Complete Guide to Fasting you will learn that fasting more than two weeks (which I have never done and never intend to do) can lead to discomfort in readjusting to eating food when the fast is over. Also, for extended fasts, you need to take in some minerals/electrolytes. If not, you might get some muscle cramps. These are not that dangerous but are very unpleasant. What I do is simply take one SaltStick capsule each day.

John McWhorter on Professors Worrying about the Consequences If They Sound Less Than Totally Woke →

Read the essay at the link above in conjunction with my post “The Right Amount of Wokeness.” It is possible to think that a shift toward a higher mean of wokeness is a good thing and still think that (a) the variance of wokeness should be reduced and (b) the bad consequences coming from realizations with too much wokeness should be mitigated. I plan to write a full length blog post of my own on this math.

Embodiment

I listened to Philip Shepherd’s book Radical Wholeness on Audible while making my giant salad. I was annoyed by his aggressive supernaturalism and the way he attacked rich folks in a tendentious way and then denied that he was attacking them. But he had a good point about the importance of connecting to our bodies.

Because Philip Shepherd was focusing on consciousness and the subconscious, the kind of “connecting to our bodies” he was really talking about was connecting fully to the full, comprehensive representation of one’s body in one’s brain. But crucially, our brain is not just in our head. The large collection of neurons in your gut has been called “The Second Brain.” And humans have other collections of neurons that are larger than the brains of some animals.

Let me illustrate the importance of this fact in a science-fictiony way. The first five links at the bottom of this post demonstrate my interest in Robin Hanson’s book The Age of Em. Suppose you wanted to be frozen when you die with the view that, with some positive probability, your frozen brain would get scanned and you would be able to have a second life as a software human (a brain emulation that Robin Hanson nicknames an “em”). I would strongly advise that you get your whole body frozen, not just your head. I think you will have a better experience as a software human (or at any rate, the software human who thinks they are you will have a better experience) if not only your brain in your head gets scanned and converted to software, but also the brain in your gut and the smaller brains in other parts of your body.

Link to the Amazon Page for The Age of Em, m(Annoyingly—and ironically—there doesn’t seem to be a Kindle version available in the US, so I had to get a paper-and-ink book about digital humans.)

Link to the Amazon Page for The Age of Em, by Robin Hansonm

(Annoyingly—and ironically—there doesn’t seem to be a Kindle version available in the US, so I had to get a paper-and-ink book about digital humans.)

I have no doubt that Philip Shepherd would be aghast at the idea of becoming a software human without a literal body. But the body that counts for one’s experience is the full, comprehensive brain representation of your body including your entire nervous system, plus as full a representation as possible of the rest of the body systems to the level of detail that your brain experiences them. (Particularly important here is the hormonal system, which has a big effect on brain parameters.) As inputs to the brain emulation proper, you need not only the world-facing senses, but also all dimensions of interoception: all aspects of body state as communicated to the brain. And to get interoception right, you need to have a reasonable model of the body systems outside the extended brain.

Update: Robin Hanson gives these comments on Twitter:

I agree that ems will want to include models of the parts of our "brain" outside our heads. However, it is less obvious to me that we can't usefully substitute a generic version of that for any one person, if only their head was frozen.

That is, I'm pretty sure we need your particular head to make a model of you, but less sure we need your particular body to make a creature who remembers being you and enjoys their body.

I respond:

There is some risk aversion in what I wrote. As you say, it might be OK to just have the head, but it might not be.

Robin replies:

Sure, but people are pretty price sensitive here, and head only can be a lot cheaper.


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