Sanjay Gupta's Five Pillars of Brain Health: Move, Discover, Relax, Nourish, Connect

January 11, 2022 by Miles Kimball

*Image source: Wikipedia article for “Pantheon, Rome”*

Sanjay Gupta’s book Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age is all about improving cognitive functioning. Early in the book, Sanjay points to five pillars of brain health. As a teaser for the book, let me quote a bit on each of these five pillars, adding :

Move. … Exercise, both aerobic and nonaerobic (strength training), is not only good for the body; it’s even better for the brain. … Physical exertion, in fact, has thus far been the only thing we’ve scientifically documented to improve brain health and function. … the connection between physical fitness and brain fitness is clear, direct, and powerful. Movement can increase your brainpower by helping to increase, repair, and maintain brain cells, and it makes you more productive and more alert throughout the day. … it’s stunning.

Discover. … picking up a new hobby, like painting or digital photography, or even learning a new piece of software or language can strengthen the brain. Doing something new can even be seeing a 3D movie, joining a new club, or even using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth.

Relax. … Scores of well-designed studies … routinely show that poor sleep can lead to impaired memory and that chronic stress can impair your ability to learn and adapt to new situations. … multitasking can slow your thinking. Stress is particularly subversive. … find ways to unwind …

Nourish. … we finally have evidence to show that consuming certain foods (e.g., cold-water fish, whole grains, extra virgin olive oil, nuts and seeds, fibrous whole fruits and vegetables) while limiting certain other foods (those high in sugar, saturated fat, and trans-fatty acids) can help avoid memory and brain decline, protect the brain against disease, and maximize its performance. … This conversation extends to the health of our microbial partners as well. The human gut microbiome—the trillions of bacteria that make their home inside our intestines—have a profound role in the health and functioning of our brains …

Connect. … A 2015 study, among many others, tells us that having a diverse social network can improve our brain’s plasticity and help preserve our cognitive abilities. Interacting with others not only helps reduce stress and boosts our immune system; it can also decrease our risk of cognitive decline.

On connect and discover, see:

On nourish see:

On all five, see:

Hints About What Can Be Done to Reduce Alzheimer's Risk

Final Thoughts: I think we are a ways away from a technology that can prevent us from eventually dying of multiple organ failure if we don’t die of something else first. But the more I learn the more things people typically think of as part of aging look like slow degenerative diseases from failure to care for our bodies well. For many people, progressively worse backaches can be prevented by seeing a chiropractor before things get too bad. Regular exercise and fasting and essentially no sugar better replicate what our bodies were designed for in the environment of evolutionary adaptation. Even having a continuing highly interactive role in society as one gets older is likely to better match the environment of evolutionary adaptation, since when old folks were scarce and writing hadn’t been invented, their memories were a crucial source of accumulated knowledge. And before electric lights, most humans, on many nights, had nothing better to do when it got dark than sleep and have sex. And many would have followed the instinct we still have to take an afternoon nap in the heat of the day. So they probably got more sleep than we do. Going contrary to the design parameters of our bodies is likely to make them go on the fritz. Then we blame it on aging, when aging is only a part of what is going.

There is a lot more to be said about how to live a healthier life, not just for your brain but for everything else. Take a look at my bibliographic post “Miles Kimball on Diet and Health: A Reader's Guide.”

Noah Smith on the Triumphs of Renewable Energy Technology →

January 10, 2022 by Miles Kimball

Make sure to click through to Ramez Naam’s full set of pictures here (pdf).

The Federalist Papers #46: Cities and States Have a Strong Position in Struggles with the Federal Government—James Madison

January 09, 2022 by Miles Kimball

*image source;* *Wikipedia article “Sanctuary city”*
*link to full text of The Federalist Papers #46*

Because of the Civil War, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, the Great Depression and the great wars of the 20th century, the US federal government is much stronger now than it was between the ratification of the US Constitution and the US Civil War. Yet state and local governments still have a fighting chance in many battles with the federal government. People often deplore the governments of other states and localities resisting the federal government, but support the government of their state or locality resisting the federal government. On the one hand, Republican-dominated states have gone to court to see which bits of Obamacare they could get away with skipping. On the other hand, Democrat-dominated states and cities have gone to court to see how much more welcoming they could be to undocumented immigrants than the spirit of federal immigration law indicates.

In the Federalist Papers #46, James Madison points to some of the wellsprings of popular support for state and local governments in their struggles with the federal government. He writes:

I proceed to inquire whether the federal government or the State governments will have the advantage with regard to the predilection and support of the people.

First, the source of the authority of state and local governments is every bit as lofty as the source of federal government authority. In both cases, their authority derives from the people:

The federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes. … the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other.

Seeing federal, state and local government all as agents for the people predicts that the levels of government that promote the policies people like best will have an advantage in the intergovernmental contest for power. To the extent different parts of the country want different things, the ability of state and local governments to tailor the policies they promote to the desires of those in a given area gives them an advantage. To the extent people in a large part of the country want to compel those in a small part of the country to do things a certain way (often because of what is seen as a moral issue), the federal government will have an advantage. More generally, different levels of government may at any given time be more in tune with the people. James Madison says this about what he saw historically and what might happen in the future:

It was, nevertheless, invariably found, after the transient enthusiasm for the early Congresses was over, that the attention and attachment of the people were turned anew to their own particular governments; that the federal council was at no time the idol of popular favor; and that opposition to proposed enlargements of its powers and importance was the side usually taken by the men who wished to build their political consequence on the prepossessions of their fellow-citizens. If, therefore, as has been elsewhere remarked, the people should in future become more partial to the federal than to the State governments, the change can only result from such manifest and irresistible proofs of a better administration, as will overcome all their antecedent propensities. And in that case, the people ought not surely to be precluded from giving most of their confidence where they may discover it to be most due …

Second, state and local governments employ more people. (In 2020, the federal government employed 2.93 million people. State and local governments employed 19.77 million people.) This means that professionally, more people have the interests of state and local governments at heart than the number who professionally have the interests of the federal government at heart. And those who professionally have the interest of a given government at heart are likely to influence their family, friends and acquaintances:

Into the administration of these [the state and local governments] a greater number of individuals will expect to rise. From the gift of these a greater number of offices and emoluments will flow. By the superintending care of these, all the more domestic and personal interests of the people will be regulated and provided for. With the affairs of these, the people will be more familiarly and minutely conversant. And with the members of these, will a greater proportion of the people have the ties of personal acquaintance and friendship, and of family and party attachments; on the side of these, therefore, the popular bias may well be expected most strongly to incline.

Third, there are some things that are simply difficult for the federal government to do—in part because of the larger number of employees of state and local governments than of the federal government:

… it is only within a certain sphere that the federal power can, in the nature of things, be advantageously administered. … members of the federal will be more dependent on the members of the State governments, than the latter will be on the former.

When thinking of other countries where the national government seems to take over many of the jobs that in the US are done by state and local governments, it is important to realize that many other countries only have the population of a US state.

Fourth, a great deal of evidence shows that people who belong to a smaller and a larger group often identify more with the interests of the smaller group. I have spent many hours in meetings demonstrating that academic economists care more about the interests of their Economics department than about the interests of the university as a whole—though they also tend to believe that the interests of the university as a whole would be best served by what the Economics department as a body wants. And typically the economists in each field care more about the interests of their field interests than the interests of the Economics department. James Madison describes this tendency to identify with the local in this way:

A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress, than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States. Every one knows that a great proportion of the errors committed by the State legislatures proceeds from the disposition of the members to sacrifice the comprehensive and permanent interest of the State, to the particular and separate views of the counties or districts in which they reside. And if they do not sufficiently enlarge their policy to embrace the collective welfare of their particular State, how can it be imagined that they will make the aggregate prosperity of the Union, and the dignity and respectability of its government, the objects of their affections and consultations? For the same reason that the members of the State legislatures will be unlikely to attach themselves sufficiently to national objects, the members of the federal legislature will be likely to attach themselves too much to local objects. The States will be to the latter what counties and towns are to the former. … members have but too frequently displayed the character, rather of partisans of their respective States, than of impartial guardians of a common interest; that where on one occasion improper sacrifices have been made of local considerations, to the aggrandizement of the federal government, the great interests of the nation have suffered on a hundred, from an undue attention to the local prejudices, interests, and views of the particular States.

James Madison goes so far as to use the word “defalcation,” meaning “misappropriate of funds,” to describe how strong an influence state interests can have in federal congressional deliberations:

The motives on the part of the State governments, to augment their prerogatives by defalcations from the federal government, will be overruled by no reciprocal predispositions in the members.

This is the well-known phenomenon of pork-barrel spending.

By contrast, the interests of the national government are no strongly represented in state legislatures and executives. James Madison writes:

If an act of a particular State, though unfriendly to the national government, be generally popular in that State and should not too grossly violate the oaths of the State officers, it is executed immediately and, of course, by means on the spot and depending on the State alone. The opposition of the federal government, or the interposition of federal officers, would but inflame the zeal of all parties on the side of the State, and the evil could not be prevented or repaired, if at all, without the employment of means which must always be resorted to with reluctance and difficulty.

Fifth, states have many levers of power to resist a measure of the federal government:

… should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter.

Sixth, if the federal government tried to go against not just the interests of the people in one state, or several, but the interests of the people in almost all the states, the states combined could put up a very strong resistance to the federal government. James Madison explores this case at length. Here are some highlights of that long discussion:

A few representatives of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the side of the latter. The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. …

To back up James Madison’s argument, imagine the Civil War if twice or almost twice as many states as the Confederacy had arrayed themselves against the federal government. Even now it is hard to see the federal government defeating a coalition of 40 states in armed conflict given how many in the federally-controlled armed forces would desert to the coalition of 40 states.

Some might lament the strength of state and local governments to resist the federal government. But that strength is real, even now.

Below is the full text of the Federalist Papers #46 to provide the context for each quotation above:

FEDERALIST NO. 46

The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared

From the New York Packet
Tuesday, January 29, 1788.

Author: James Madison

To the People of the State of New York:

RESUMING the subject of the last paper, I proceed to inquire whether the federal government or the State governments will have the advantage with regard to the predilection and support of the people. Notwithstanding the different modes in which they are appointed, we must consider both of them as substantially dependent on the great body of the citizens of the United States.

I assume this position here as it respects the first, reserving the proofs for another place. The federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes. The adversaries of the Constitution seem to have lost sight of the people altogether in their reasonings on this subject; and to have viewed these different establishments, not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be reminded of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other. Truth, no less than decency, requires that the event in every case should be supposed to depend on the sentiments and sanction of their common constituents. Many considerations, besides those suggested on a former occasion, seem to place it beyond doubt that the first and most natural attachment of the people will be to the governments of their respective States.

Into the administration of these a greater number of individuals will expect to rise. From the gift of these a greater number of offices and emoluments will flow. By the superintending care of these, all the more domestic and personal interests of the people will be regulated and provided for. With the affairs of these, the people will be more familiarly and minutely conversant. And with the members of these, will a greater proportion of the people have the ties of personal acquaintance and friendship, and of family and party attachments; on the side of these, therefore, the popular bias may well be expected most strongly to incline. Experience speaks the same language in this case. The federal administration, though hitherto very defective in comparison with what may be hoped under a better system, had, during the war, and particularly whilst the independent fund of paper emissions was in credit, an activity and importance as great as it can well have in any future circumstances whatever.

It was engaged, too, in a course of measures which had for their object the protection of everything that was dear, and the acquisition of everything that could be desirable to the people at large. It was, nevertheless, invariably found, after the transient enthusiasm for the early Congresses was over, that the attention and attachment of the people were turned anew to their own particular governments; that the federal council was at no time the idol of popular favor; and that opposition to proposed enlargements of its powers and importance was the side usually taken by the men who wished to build their political consequence on the prepossessions of their fellow-citizens. If, therefore, as has been elsewhere remarked, the people should in future become more partial to the federal than to the State governments, the change can only result from such manifest and irresistible proofs of a better administration, as will overcome all their antecedent propensities. And in that case, the people ought not surely to be precluded from giving most of their confidence where they may discover it to be most due; but even in that case the State governments could have little to apprehend, because it is only within a certain sphere that the federal power can, in the nature of things, be advantageously administered. The remaining points on which I propose to compare the federal and State governments, are the disposition and the faculty they may respectively possess, to resist and frustrate the measures of each other. It has been already proved that the members of the federal will be more dependent on the members of the State governments, than the latter will be on the former. It has appeared also, that the prepossessions of the people, on whom both will depend, will be more on the side of the State governments, than of the federal government. So far as the disposition of each towards the other may be influenced by these causes, the State governments must clearly have the advantage.

But in a distinct and very important point of view, the advantage will lie on the same side. The prepossessions, which the members themselves will carry into the federal government, will generally be favorable to the States; whilst it will rarely happen, that the members of the State governments will carry into the public councils a bias in favor of the general government. A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress, than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States. Every one knows that a great proportion of the errors committed by the State legislatures proceeds from the disposition of the members to sacrifice the comprehensive and permanent interest of the State, to the particular and separate views of the counties or districts in which they reside. And if they do not sufficiently enlarge their policy to embrace the collective welfare of their particular State, how can it be imagined that they will make the aggregate prosperity of the Union, and the dignity and respectability of its government, the objects of their affections and consultations? For the same reason that the members of the State legislatures will be unlikely to attach themselves sufficiently to national objects, the members of the federal legislature will be likely to attach themselves too much to local objects. The States will be to the latter what counties and towns are to the former. Measures will too often be decided according to their probable effect, not on the national prosperity and happiness, but on the prejudices, interests, and pursuits of the governments and people of the individual States. What is the spirit that has in general characterized the proceedings of Congress? A perusal of their journals, as well as the candid acknowledgments of such as have had a seat in that assembly, will inform us, that the members have but too frequently displayed the character, rather of partisans of their respective States, than of impartial guardians of a common interest; that where on one occasion improper sacrifices have been made of local considerations, to the aggrandizement of the federal government, the great interests of the nation have suffered on a hundred, from an undue attention to the local prejudices, interests, and views of the particular States. I mean not by these reflections to insinuate, that the new federal government will not embrace a more enlarged plan of policy than the existing government may have pursued; much less, that its views will be as confined as those of the State legislatures; but only that it will partake sufficiently of the spirit of both, to be disinclined to invade the rights of the individual States, or the prerogatives of their governments. The motives on the part of the State governments, to augment their prerogatives by defalcations from the federal government, will be overruled by no reciprocal predispositions in the members. Were it admitted, however, that the Federal government may feel an equal disposition with the State governments to extend its power beyond the due limits, the latter would still have the advantage in the means of defeating such encroachments. If an act of a particular State, though unfriendly to the national government, be generally popular in that State and should not too grossly violate the oaths of the State officers, it is executed immediately and, of course, by means on the spot and depending on the State alone. The opposition of the federal government, or the interposition of federal officers, would but inflame the zeal of all parties on the side of the State, and the evil could not be prevented or repaired, if at all, without the employment of means which must always be resorted to with reluctance and difficulty.

On the other hand, should an unwarrantable measure of the federal government be unpopular in particular States, which would seldom fail to be the case, or even a warrantable measure be so, which may sometimes be the case, the means of opposition to it are powerful and at hand. The disquietude of the people; their repugnance and, perhaps, refusal to co-operate with the officers of the Union; the frowns of the executive magistracy of the State; the embarrassments created by legislative devices, which would often be added on such occasions, would oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised; would form, in a large State, very serious impediments; and where the sentiments of several adjoining States happened to be in unison, would present obstructions which the federal government would hardly be willing to encounter. But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause. A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted. One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would be made in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. In the contest with Great Britain, one part of the empire was employed against the other.

The more numerous part invaded the rights of the less numerous part. The attempt was unjust and unwise; but it was not in speculation absolutely chimerical. But what would be the contest in the case we are supposing? Who would be the parties? A few representatives of the people would be opposed to the people themselves; or rather one set of representatives would be contending against thirteen sets of representatives, with the whole body of their common constituents on the side of the latter. The only refuge left for those who prophesy the downfall of the State governments is the visionary supposition that the federal government may previously accumulate a military force for the projects of ambition. The reasonings contained in these papers must have been employed to little purpose indeed, if it could be necessary now to disprove the reality of this danger. That the people and the States should, for a sufficient period of time, elect an uninterupted succession of men ready to betray both; that the traitors should, throughout this period, uniformly and systematically pursue some fixed plan for the extension of the military establishment; that the governments and the people of the States should silently and patiently behold the gathering storm, and continue to supply the materials, until it should be prepared to burst on their own heads, must appear to every one more like the incoherent dreams of a delirious jealousy, or the misjudged exaggerations of a counterfeit zeal, than like the sober apprehensions of genuine patriotism.

Extravagant as the supposition is, let it however be made. Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of. Notwithstanding the military establishments in the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. And it is not certain, that with this aid alone they would not be able to shake off their yokes. But were the people to possess the additional advantages of local governments chosen by themselves, who could collect the national will and direct the national force, and of officers appointed out of the militia, by these governments, and attached both to them and to the militia, it may be affirmed with the greatest assurance, that the throne of every tyranny in Europe would be speedily overturned in spite of the legions which surround it. Let us not insult the free and gallant citizens of America with the suspicion, that they would be less able to defend the rights of which they would be in actual possession, than the debased subjects of arbitrary power would be to rescue theirs from the hands of their oppressors. Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it. The argument under the present head may be put into a very concise form, which appears altogether conclusive. Either the mode in which the federal government is to be constructed will render it sufficiently dependent on the people, or it will not. On the first supposition, it will be restrained by that dependence from forming schemes obnoxious to their constituents. On the other supposition, it will not possess the confidence of the people, and its schemes of usurpation will be easily defeated by the State governments, who will be supported by the people. On summing up the considerations stated in this and the last paper, they seem to amount to the most convincing evidence, that the powers proposed to be lodged in the federal government are as little formidable to those reserved to the individual States, as they are indispensably necessary to accomplish the purposes of the Union; and that all those alarms which have been sounded, of a meditated and consequential annihilation of the State governments, must, on the most favorable interpretation, be ascribed to the chimerical fears of the authors of them.

PUBLIUS.

Links to my other posts on The Federalist Papers so far:

2021's Most Popular Posts

January 06, 2022 by Miles Kimball

The "Key Posts" link in navigation at the top of my blog lists all important posts through the end of 2016. Along with "2017's Most Popular Posts," “2018's Most Popular Posts,” “2019's Most Popular Posts,” and “2020's Most Popular Posts,” this is intended as a complement to that list. (Also, my most popular storified Twitter discussions are here, and you can see other recent posts by clicking on the Archive link at the top of my blog.) Continuing this tradition, I give links to the most popular posts in the 2021 below into six groups: popular new posts in 2021 on diet and health, popular new posts in 2021 on political philosophy, popular new posts in 2021 on other topics, and popular older posts in those three categories. I provide the pageviews in 2021 for each post as counted when someone went specifically to that post.

I am pleased to be able to report 556,084 Google Analytics pageviews in 2021—more than a half a million. Of these, 33,222 were pageviews for my blog homepage. One thing that stands out from the data is how well my back catalog does because of Google search.

Note: This post is still under construction. Numbers at or above 485 are for the whole year. Numbers at below 485 are only for the first half of the year.

New Posts in 2021 on Diet and Health

New Posts in 2021 on Political Philosophy

New Posts in 2021 on Other Topics

Older Posts with Continuing Popularity on Diet and Health

Older Posts with Continuing Popularity on Political Philosophy

Older Posts with Continuing Popularity on Other Topics

New Year's Gratitude on the Occasion of the Marshall Fire

January 01, 2022 by Miles Kimball

It is said that, on average, Olympic winners of a bronze medal feel happier than winners of a silver medal. For a bronze medal, the salient alternative is no medal at all, while for a silver medal, the salient alternative is a gold medal.

Our house in Superior is in the subdivision just south of the southeast end of the Marshall Fire that has raged in Superior and Louisville Colorado the last few days. Valiant efforts of firefighters to contain the fire mostly kept it from reaching as far as our house. And finally snow has put an end to the fire. My heart goes out to all the people who did lose their homes. And I know that we could easily have been among them had the wind pushed the fire a little further south to our home instead of pushing the fire almost due east.

We have felt no grumpiness at all about having to evacuate to a comfortable Hampton Inn in Lakewood (west of Denver and east of Golden, quite a bit south of the fire), because we feel so lucky that our house is still standing and intact, unlike the houses of so many of our fellow citizens of Superior and its twin city of Louisville.

Because the snow would have made driving dangerous from our distance, we have not yet seen our house again. Our wonderful next-door neighbor Bob went in to turn the water off and run what was then left in the pipes out in order to avoid frozen pipes.

Our son Jordan and his fiancee evacuated with us to Lakewood. We are enjoying their company here instead of in Superior. It is mostly safe to go back, but we might hold off a while from concern over all the exotic chemicals that burning buildings would have put into the air.

I usually read the news rather than watching it, but yesterday morning and the night before that I spent a lot of time watching the news trying to learn exactly how far the fire would go. One scene memorable to me had the Safeway we shop at on Coalton road in the foreground with giant flames a few blocks behind. In the end, the fire came right up to the strip mall that Safeway is in. Now I am grateful to be worrying about what other places we usually shop at still stand or how soon they can be repaired instead of worrying about all the many idiosyncratic useful things about our house or things in our house.

For the community as a whole, there is great reason to be grateful that no one lost their life as a result of this fire. With a few horrible exceptions, insurance will spread out the financial losses over tens of millions of people around the country who have an ownership interest in insurance companies (often the policy-holders themselves). But a lot of the emotional and time burden of rebuilding and replacing what was lost falls on the residents of the destroyed houses and workers in the destroyed commercial buildings. That is a heavy burden my wife Gail and I had reason to contemplate, but are spared. We will try to be conscious of that burden on others in our town that we interact with in the coming months and years. We will be reminded of that burden for a long time by the long tail of visible effects of the fire.

Update, January 3, 2022: The fire began on Thursday, January 30. On Friday, January 31, our neighbor turned off our water to avoid ice damage to the pipes and in the process verified our house was fine. On Saturday, New Year’s Day, Gail and I returned to a cold house because we knew we had to be present to let the natural gas people in to restart our gas. Fortunately, we did have electricity and could use electric heaters. I took a walk as far as Coalton road and saw the destroyed houses in the front row facing Coalton from the north. Our neighborhood south of Coalton was spared. On Sunday, January 2, we did get our gas restored and learned that it would be a loooooong time before those who have intact houses in blasted neighborhoods will be able to have gas restored because of the damage to the gas infrastructure in those neighborhoods. Today, Monday, January 3, we had internet access restored. (Before that, cellular was iffy enough we mostly couldn’t get phone-based wifi hotspots to work.) We are very grateful that personally we now only face a “boil water” advisory and wondering which of the businesses we patronize are now gone or how long they will be offline for repairs. The more relieved we are about our personal situation, the sadder we feel for everyone who has suffered more grievous harm.

Today was a beautiful sunny day. I went on a walk and saw neighbors talking to each other on the street—something I haven’t seen on my many previous walks. Those who have been through a tragedy together can bond over that tragedy.

Update, January 6, 2022: Our tap water was declared safe without boiling today. Maps have come out showing where homes were destroyed or damaged. It is saddening.

A Megastudy Finds that Reward Points Beat Out Other Interventions in Getting People to the Gym →

December 31, 2021 by Miles Kimball

Ugly Economists

December 30, 2021 by Miles Kimball

In many professions, it is a huge advantage to be good-looking. In economics, one can be quite ugly and still honored—just look at a lot of photographs of Nobel laureates in economics sometime. As other professions draw in the especially good-looking folks because being good-looking is an advantage there, one can predict that economics will be left, at all levels, with folks who are less good-looking than other professionals. There is some evidence for this among academics, shown above. A nice blog post on “hotness” across disciplines can be found a few years back at crookedtimber.org.

To me, it is a credit to economics—or at least a blessing of economics—that it is the sort of discipline in which one can be successful despite being ugly. It points to an ability to determine reasonably well whether someone is doing good work, rather than have the quality of someone’s work often so unclear that one is tempted to rely on looks as a proxy for the quality of the work. Looking at the data, that certainly is not the only factor affecting the average hotness of those in a discipline, but it accounts for the data on quite a few disciplines, and then other interesting explanations come to mind for disciplines for which this doesn’t explain the data. (Look for particularly large advantages that good looks would give one in a discipline on the one hand, and an ability to blunt the negative effects of bad looks on the other hand.)

Ruchir Agarwal and Markus Brunnermeier Debate Negative Interest Rate Policy

December 30, 2021 by Miles Kimball

Ruchir starts at the 4 minute mark. Markus does a good job of discussing what some of the key issues are. None of those issues is deadly to negative interest rate policy.

Here is a link to this video on the Peterson Institute website.

2 Minute Video Facts: If 100 People Lived on Earth

December 29, 2021 by Miles Kimball

H/t Steve Stewart-Williams and Jordan Peterson

Christmas Dinner at the Kimballs', Anno Domini 2021

December 28, 2021 by Miles Kimball

My son Jordan and his fiancee Caroline are visiting us for the holidays. Caroline put together the wonderful feast you can see above. You can see what Caroline did 3 years ago in “Christmas Dinner 2018 with the Kimballs in Colorado.” And a few days ago we did full-scale hot pot.

I am enjoying the feasting fully. I simply balance out the feasting with fasting before and after. See “Fasting Before Feasting.”

One nice thing is that by avoiding sugar and other easily digested carbs except on rare occasions, I have reduced the size of the insulin kick when on those rare occasions I do eat sugar—as in the pie and the eggnog—or other easily digested carbs—as in the rolls and the pastry clothing the Beef Wellington, as well as the pasta in the soup. (Note that this isn’t overall going halfway towards eliminating sugar. It is going more than 95% of the way towards eliminating sugar.)

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

Miles Kimball on Diet and Health: A Reader's Guide

Negative Brainstorming: Gary Klein, Tim Koller, and Dan Lovallo on Premortems →

December 27, 2021 by Miles Kimball

The Gods of Science and of Speculation

December 26, 2021 by Miles Kimball

Soon after I began attending the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Ann Arbor in 2000, I took Ken Phifer’s “Building Your Own Theology Course.” One product of that class was a talk I gave that Fall that I posted two weeks ago: “Miles Kimball: Leaving Mormonism.” Another product is the document that you see below, entitled “The Gods of Science and Speculation,” dated November 18, 2000.

I believe that the truth is very big---much bigger than any human conception of it. Through the progress of science, I expect the coming centuries to bring astounding revelations about the nature of the Universe, and through the progress of the human spirit, I expect the coming centuries to bring astounding freely chosen visions of the place we will take in the Universe.

Despite the limitations of current knowledge, I want to make meaning out of the best of current science and to speculate about things that might be true given current science.

I take my view of current science from Isaac Asimov, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Randy Nesse, Jared Diamond, E.O. Wilson, Alan Guth, Carl Sagan, John Lewis, Stephen Drury and Julian Barbour, among others---and recently, also from my reading of The Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

While science tells us something about the way things are, our attitude towards those things is up to us. Despite all of its pain and imperfection, I think it is a wonderful Universe. If the Universe is empty and meaningless, I see that as an opportunity for us to freely create our own meanings, individually and collectively.

At some risk of misunderstanding, I will use the word “god” and “gods” freely to talk about certain wondrous aspects of the Universe and to talk about any being who attains a high enough level of intelligence, wisdom and goodness. All of the “gods” I will talk about now are either part of the fabric of the Universe or are located squarely within the Universe.

Traditional Christian theology attempts to unite in one God the Creator, God Who Speaks To Us, and the God of Perfection. I believe these are separate aspects of the Universe. I will call these aspects of the Universe the gods of the past, the gods of the present and the gods of the future.

The gods of the past are the creative principles of the universe. Science has come upon at least three incredibly powerful creative principles. The best documented is evolution---the power of life itself to replicate itself, with inevitable variation and selection of those patterns that replicate best. Carbon-based life on our planet is now in the process of begetting silicon-based life, with likely momentous consequences, for either good or ill. But in the long-run of billions of years, I believe that evolution will inevitably create love, because I believe love is stronger than the absence of love and so will ultimately flourish once it gets a good start. I believe that love of that which is different from oneself is higher than love of that which is identical to oneself. Other-oriented love is hard to come by initially, but it is very strong once it arises.

The second creative principle is the intricacy of quantum mechanics. I believe in the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which says that each possible outcome of quantum branching exists. Because of its quantum-mechanical aspect, the Universe has an extraordinary fecundity. The multiplication of different possible worlds, side by side as coexistent, almost-entirely-non-interacting components of the wave function, means it was inevitable that life would arise somewhere in the universe on some branch of the quantum tree. This indeed is the tree of life.

The third creative principle is eternal inflation. In his book The Inflationary Universe, Alan Guth describes the principle of cosmic inflation that he co-discovered. Cosmic inflation helps to explain why the galaxies we can see through our telescopes look so similar in all directions. Inflation allows a patch of space smaller than a pinhead to expand to a sphere billions of light-years across in a fraction of a second. False vacuum is the name of the magical substance that can create more and more of itself from nothing at the speed of dark, then decay into the cauldron of energy that we later see as the start of the Big Bang. Something can come from nothing despite the law of conservation of energy because inside the false vacuum, the pressure of space itself has enough negative energy to balance out the positive energy that is the source of all of the matter and energy we see around us. Eternal inflation is the idea that the false vacuum generates more of itself faster than it decays into ordinary vacuum plus ordinary energy. As a result, the true Universe is an infinite sea of false vacuum with an infinite sprinkling of islands that look like the visible Universe we see in our telescopes, (plus, perhaps other, stranger types of islands). Most of the Universe is invisible, simply because with the false vacuum expanding at the speed of dark, trillions of times faster than the speed of light, there has not been time for light to reach us from more than an infinitesimal fraction of the Universe. Even were it not for the fecundity of quantum branching, the vastness of the Universe created by eternal inflation makes it inevitable that life would arise somewhere.

The god of the present is the god within. When we pray, or meditate, perform rituals, or do good deeds, every once in a while at least, we get in touch with an inner wisdom that is so much greater than our ordinary level of wisdom that many humans down through the millennia have exclaimed that this wisdom must come from a source beyond themselves. For many years, I thought my own spiritual experiences of this type pointed to a God beyond myself who heard and answered prayers. Now, based on my understanding of science, I find it hard to locate the source of my experienced inspiration outside of my own brain and emotional processing systems, but I remain awed by the contrast with my usual level of intellectual and emotional processing. Sometimes I wonder if those experiences of inspiration looked so remarkable not because they were anything remarkable in the context of human experience in general, but only because my normal level of functioning is emotionally stunted in crucial ways. Even if this is so, I feel a great deal of gratitude that I have been able to access that higher level of functioning through prayer, long before that future day when I may have a more straightforward access to that higher level. Looking beyond my own experience, I believe that prayer, meditation, rituals and good deeds are important ways to access our higher selves—the god within. I believe even more firmly that all people should respect the power of spiritual experience as a human fact, even if we cannot agree on where that power comes from. This fact deserves more scientific study as well as respect.

The god of the future is our hopes and dreams and intentions, and the possibilities to which those hopes and dreams and intentions point. We collectively create the future.

For myself, as my part in that collective creation of the future, I choose to be one of those who represent the possibility of all people being joined together in discover and wonder.

Five elements of my picture of all people being joined together in discover and wonder are (1) fun, (2) adventure into the unknown, (3) all people being empowered by tools of understanding, (4) human connection and justice and welfare, and (5) profound relationship. Also, I believe that groups of interacting full-scale human beings, each fulfilling human potential, can be as much more intelligent and greater than an individual human being as the whole brain is more intelligent and greater than an individual neuron. Full freedom and deep community are both necessary for this great thing we cannot fully comprehend to come to pass. Sometimes, when a conversation takes on a life of its own, I think I begin to glimpse what can be.

I have tried to be relatively sober in what I have said so far. Let me now be more speculative. If there is anything that could conceivably be distinct from the Universe that deserves to be called God, it is Consciousness itself. Scientists have no trouble imagining how people could appear to have consciousness when looked at from the outside—this is the “easy problem of consciousness.” The hard problem of consciousness, discussed by Colin McGuinn in his book ``The Mysterious Flame,’’ is how I appear to myself to be conscious, seen from the inside. I like the idea that there is a single Consciousness---one light of Brahman shining through the many windows of individual selves. In his book, The End of Time, Julian Barbour conceives of a timeless Universe of all possible configurations of matter and energy with a mist of quantum probability hovering over it. It is the mist of quantum probability that creates the perception of time. Could this mist of quantum probability be Consciousness itself? It would be consistent with the one light of Brahman shining through the many windows of individual selves. Among other things, this is a story I tell myself to quiet my fears of death.

Is there any room for a personal god outside myself in the Universe? I believe there is such a possibility, though it is not something I have any way of knowing to be true. Having grown up reading science fiction, I thrill to the recent discoveries of planets orbiting other stars. Our galaxy is large enough I think it likely intelligent life has arisen more than once in the Milky Way. If so, we are probably not the first, since our own sun and solar system is only about 5 billion years old, compared with a galaxy that is more than 10 billion years old. Our galaxy is small enough---about 100,000 light-years across, that even at a tenth the speed of light, intelligent aliens from anywhere in our galaxy could reach us in less than a million years. There need be no particular problem of finding us, since the power of replication mentioned above in connection with Evolution makes it easy for aliens to spread throughout the galaxy until they meet some other intelligent race. The fact that they have not destroyed us, and do not seem to have enslaved us, gives us some warrant to hope that they have good intentions toward us. One reason for these good intentions may be the very scarcity of intelligent life. If there are only a few intelligent species arising in each galaxy, each one would seem valuable to another that had been searching for thousands and thousands of years for other intelligent life.

The greatest objection to the idea of intelligent aliens in our galaxy has always been Enrico Fermi’s question ``Where are they?’’---meaning ``If they are there, why don’t we already know about them?’’ To me, the easiest answer to this question is that they are already here but they value our free development so much that are keeping themselves hidden. Traditional monotheistic religions all have reasons to tell why their version of God has not already appeared in the public square, obviating the need for faith. To the extent these reasons make any sense, they work just as well for beneficent intelligent aliens as for the one true God.

Going out on a limb with speculation, in a version of the theodicy, how could beneficent intelligent aliens ethically put up with all of horrors we visit upon each other on this planet and the horrors that come to us from disease and other disasters? First, they may avert some disasters, especially those that would utterly destroy all higher life on our world. They may even go so far as to act to foster freedom, by, say, helping the founders of our own nation in the series of unlikely events that allowed us to separate from England and form a new type of nation. Second, they may compensate for their hands-off policy by using high technology to save our memories and all that makes us individual egos into a cybernetic after-life. This is another story I tell myself sometimes to quiet my fear of death.

I do not know that these beneficent aliens exist. What I do know, is that if they don’t and if we do not destroy ourselves, human beings in some far future have the potential to become that kind of guardian angels toward other intelligent species that we find in this and other galaxies. The hardest part will be learning how to live in harmony with each other for the millions of years on end it will require to reach these others. So at the same time we reach out to establish ourselves throughout the solar system as the first step toward the stars, we must find it in ourselves to be good and just and peaceful. I believe that free religion that is consistent with reason and science, along with art, music, literature and the like, are necessary in the endeavor to raise humanity to the level that it will some day be appropriate in every sense---goodness and wisdom as well as knowledge and power---to call our descendants gods.

Don’t miss my 12 Unitarian-Universalist sermons:

Posts on Jesus:

Posts on Mormonism:

Other Posts on Religion:

Posts on Positive Mental Health and Maintaining One’s Moral Compass:

How the Historical Jesus Set the Oppressed Free

December 23, 2021 by Miles Kimball

*“Jesus Unrolls the Book in the Synagogue” by James Tissot.* *Brooklyn Museum.*

“Truly He taught us to love one another

His law is love and His gospel is peace

Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother

And in His name all oppression shall cease”

— 4th verse of "O Holy Night"

The accomplishments of many great religious figures become even more impressive if one is a nonsupernaturalist as I am. Many of them have made a big difference in the world, without, in my view, any supernatural aid.

The fourth chapter of Luke recounts how, after spending some time in the wilderness, Jesus came to preach in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth. Jesus read from the book of Isaiah these words (in accordance with the New International Version):

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Continuing, Luke writes:

Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

In the almost 2000 years since then, there has been a remarkable turn away from the institution of slavery, owing in extraordinary measure to the influence of Christianity. And even without supernatural aid, the historical Jesus was a wellspring for Christianity.

In 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson eloquently makes the case for the contribution of Christianity toward the abolition of slavery:

This is not to say that Christianity, even in its incompletely realized form, was a failure. Quite the contrary: Christianity achieved the well-nigh impossible. The Christian doctrine elevated the individual soul, placing slave and master and commoner and nobleman alike on the same metaphysical footing, rendering them equal before God and the law. Christianity insisted that even the king was only one among many. For something so contrary to all apparent evidence to find its footing, the idea that worldly power and prominence were indicators of God’s particular favor had to be radically de-emphasized. This was partly accomplished through the strange Christian insistence that salvation could not be obtained through effort or worth—through “works.” Whatever its limitations, the development of such doctrine prevented king, aristocrat and wealthy merchant alike from lording it morally over the commoner. In consequence, the metaphysical conception of the implicit transcendent worth of each and every soul established itself against impossible odds as the fundamental presupposition of Western law and society. That was not the case in the world of the past, and is not the case yet in most places in the world of the present. It is in fact nothing short of a miracle (and we should keep this fact firmly before our eyes) that the hierarchical slave-based societies of our ancestors reorganized themselves, under the sway of an ethical/religious revelation, such that the ownership and absolute domination of another person came to be viewed as wrong.

It would do us well to remember, as well, that the immediate utility of slavery is obvious, and that the argument that the strong should dominate the weak is compelling, convenient and eminently practical (at least for the strong). This means that a revolutionary critique of everything slave-owning societies valued was necessary before the practice could be even questioned, let alone halted (including the idea that wielding power and authority made the slave-owner noble; including the even more fundamental idea that the power wielded by the slave-owner was valid and even virtuous). Christianity made explicit the surprising claim that even the lowliest person had rights, genuine rights—and that sovereign and state were morally charged, at a fundamental level, to recognize those rights. Christianity put forward, explicitly, the even more incomprehensible idea that the act of human ownership degraded the slaver (previously viewed as admirable nobility) as much or even more than the slave. We fail to understand how difficult such an idea is to grasp. We forget that the opposite was self-evident throughout most of human history. We think that it is the desire to enslave and dominate that requires explanation. We have it backwards, yet again.

Steven Pinker points out how violence in general has declined over time in The Better Angels of our Nature. This too, in my view, owes importantly to the work of Jesus.

*Link to the Amazon page for* The Better Angels of Our Nature

This Christmastime, I want to loudly proclaim Jesus as a hero for nonsupernaturalists as well as for those who believe in him as a supernatural being. We have a lot to celebrate.

Related posts:

Facebook Roundtable on Making Housing More Affordable →

December 22, 2021 by Miles Kimball

Brain Plasticity: Neurons that Fire Together Wire Together

December 21, 2021 by Miles Kimball

*Link to the Wikipedia article “Donald O. Hebb”*
*Link to the Wikipedia article “Hebbian theory”*

“Neurons that fire together wire together” is a typical way of summarizing the now very well-supported Hebbian theory that (in the words of the current version of the Wikipedia article “Hebbian theory”) can be described more precisely as

… an increase in synaptic efficacy arises from a presynaptic cell's repeated and persistent stimulation of a postsynaptic cell.

The more often the firing of one neuron stimulates another to fire, the stronger and more efficient that causal connection becomes. Conversely, if a neuronal pathway isn’t used very often, that pathway becomes weaker. The upshot is that our brains are changing all the time. Otherwise we would never learn anything.

In Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at any Age, Sanjay Gupta lays out brain plasticity in some detail. Each bullet below is a quotation from that useful book (the bullet is added).

Remarkably, sometimes the changes in our brains from learning are big enough to be seen by the crude instruments we now have to look at neurons from outside those neurons:

… in William James’s 1890 book The Principles of Psychology, in which the Harvard University psychologist writes: “Organic matter, especially nervous tissue, seems endowed with a very extraordinary degree of plasticity,” but only in my lifetime have we begun to measure and visualize this phenomenon with technology. And with tools like fMRI, we can see the brain changes in response to certain stimulation. We can also see parts of the brain that are not in use being pruned away. The brain constantly and dynamically shapes and reshapes itself in response to experiences, learning, or even an injury. What’s more, what you choose to focus your attention on rewires the brain from a structural and functional perspective.

After a certain point, the key changes in the brain are not about size but about connections and function:

A newborn’s brain triples in size in the first year of life; after that, the rate of physical growth slows as we learn and pack more into our roughly 3.3-pound brains. What continues to develop, allowing this tremendous ability to process more and more information, is the complexity of the networks of neurons as they go through a process of pruning, whereby certain synapses that are not being used are trimmed to make room for new ones.
You know that as an adult, adding more information to your brain doesn’t increase the size of it (and imagine what people would look like if brain size increased with learning new information). But what does grow larger is the number of neurons—nerve cells—and the complexity of their network through ongoing and active pruning and “growth.”

The rewiring of the brain after an injury shows just how much potential there is for rewiring. The dramatic improvements in skills that are possible through practice are also testament to the potential for rewiring:

The brain remains plastic throughout life and can rewire itself in response to your experiences. It can also generate new brain cells under the right circumstances. Take, for example, what blind people experience, as parts of their brain that normally process sight may instead be devoted to exceptional hearing. Someone practicing a new skill, like learning to play the violin, “rewires” parts of the brain that are responsible for fine motor control. People who’ve suffered brain injuries can recruit other parts of their brain to compensate for the lost or damaged tissue. Intelligence is not fixed either.
If people who have suffered a devastating stroke can learn to speak again and those born with partial brains or who lose significant brain tissue to disease or surgical removal can propel their brains’ rewiring to work as a whole, think of the possibilities for those of us who just hope to preserve our mental faculties as we age. Even people who’ve had an entire hemisphere removed in childhood to treat rare neurological conditions such as intractable epilepsy or brain cancer can go on to function in adulthood. Their brains reorganize and various networks pick up the slack.

However, rewiring is not always an improvement. Both “Use it or lose it” and “You can get good at being dysfunctional” are genuine concerns:

It’s important to note that brain plasticity is a two-way street. In other words, it’s almost as easy to drive changes that impair memory and physical and mental abilities as it is to improve these things. I love how Dr. Michael Merzenich, a leading pioneer in brain plasticity research and professor emeritus at the University of California at San Francisco, puts it: “Older people are absolute masters at encouraging plastic brain change in the wrong direction.” You can change your brain for the better or worse through behaviors and even ways of thinking. Bad habits have neural maps that reinforce those bad habits. Negative plasticity, for example, causes changes in neural connections that can be harmful. Negative thoughts and constant worrying can promote changes in the brain that are associated with depression and anxiety. Repeated mental states, where you focus your attention, what you experience, and how you respond to situations indeed become neural traits. One of Dr. Merzenich’s often-cited quotes is the following: “The patterns of activity of neurons in sensory areas can be altered by patterns of attention. Experience coupled with attention leads to physical changes in the structure and future functioning of the nervous system.

On this point, also see

Mental Retirement: Use It or Lose It—Susann Rohwedder and Robert Willis

In many ways, the growing accumulation of different kinds of evidence for brain plasticity is simply a reminder of what we knew all along (and culturally almost caused ourselves to forget): that the capacity for human learning is powerful and doesn’t suddenly disappear when one becomes an adult.

On the dramatic potential for learnings, see:

There's One Key Difference Between Kids Who Excel at Math and Those Who Don't

How to Turn Every Child into a 'Math Person'

The Most Effective Memory Methods are Difficult—and That's Why They Work

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

Miles Kimball on Diet and Health: A Reader's Guide

Noah Smith: Smarten Math Education Up, Don't Dumb It Down →

December 20, 2021 by Miles Kimball

The Federalist Papers #45: James Madison Predicts a Small Federal Government

December 19, 2021 by Miles Kimball

*Lee’s letter to Winfield Scott, explaining his resignation from the US Army, saying he needed to defend his native state of Virginia*
*link to full text of The Federalist Papers #45*

In the Federalist Papers #45, James Madison answers the charge that the proposed Constitution will reduce the power of the states by arguing:

That if reduced state power had to follow unavoidably from the necessary powers of the federal government laid out in the proposed constitution, then so be it—the welfare of the people mattered more than the status of the states.
That the federal government would, in fact, be relatively small.
That history showed that people tended to have more loyalty to governments nearer to them.
Because state legislatures choose the senators and the electors who choose the president, the states have a lot of influence over the federal government.
The Articles of Confederation gave the national government most of the powers that the proposed Constitution would—but for real, not just on paper. So if the states meant what they said when they adopted the Articles of Confederation, then that any reduction in state power is something the states already promised.

The fifth argument is an exhortation to people to tell the truth: anyone who admits that a power is necessary should be OK with what it takes to make that power operative for real, or they don’t mean what they say.

The fourth argument was true for quite a while, but there was a conscious change much later to reduce state power. The 17th amendment to the Constitution provided for the direct election of senators; but it was not adopted until 1913. The choice of electors by popular vote also reduced state power, but not by a constitutional change. This is a matter of state choice. A state, if it so chooses, can revert to choosing electors by vote of its legislature. The main limitation is that a state legislature has to decide how it will choose its electors before election day. There is currently a move to reassert more state power over the choice of electors. In any case, if a state legislature goes the other way, as almost all did in the past, and chooses to reduce its own power by providing that presidential electors be chosen by popular vote, one should not cry about that voluntary reduction in state power.

The force of the third argument was shown by the US Civil War. For example, Robert E. Lee famously felt a greater duty toward the state of Virginia than he did toward the United States.

On the second argument, the victory of the North in the Civil War under the slogan that the Union must be preserved, followed by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution greatly strengthened federal power and correspondingly weakened state power. In the 20th century, the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War greatly strengthened federal power. but for many decades after the US Constitution was ratified, James Madison’s prediction of a relatively small federal government held true.

The first argument, that the welfare of the people matters more than preserving state power continues just as valid today. Civil rights have been enforced by an exertion of federal power against certain states. So much the better for federal power. James Madison writes eloquently:

… the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object.

On the margin, whether we should cheer for greater federal power or greater state power depends on which level of government is most likely to advance the “real welfare of the great body of the people,” without inappropriately privileging some people above others.

Below is the full text of the Federalist Papers #45.

FEDERALIST NO. 45

The Alleged Danger From the Powers of the Union to the State Governments Considered

For the Independent Journal.

Author: James Madison

To the People of the State of New York:

HAVING shown that no one of the powers transferred to the federal government is unnecessary or improper, the next question to be considered is, whether the whole mass of them will be dangerous to the portion of authority left in the several States. The adversaries to the plan of the convention, instead of considering in the first place what degree of power was absolutely necessary for the purposes of the federal government, have exhausted themselves in a secondary inquiry into the possible consequences of the proposed degree of power to the governments of the particular States. But if the Union, as has been shown, be essential to the security of the people of America against foreign danger; if it be essential to their security against contentions and wars among the different States; if it be essential to guard them against those violent and oppressive factions which embitter the blessings of liberty, and against those military establishments which must gradually poison its very fountain; if, in a word, the Union be essential to the happiness of the people of America, is it not preposterous, to urge as an objection to a government, without which the objects of the Union cannot be attained, that such a government may derogate from the importance of the governments of the individual States? Was, then, the American Revolution effected, was the American Confederacy formed, was the precious blood of thousands spilt, and the hard-earned substance of millions lavished, not that the people of America should enjoy peace, liberty, and safety, but that the government of the individual States, that particular municipal establishments, might enjoy a certain extent of power, and be arrayed with certain dignities and attributes of sovereignty? We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old World, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the New, in another shape that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form? It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object. Were the plan of the convention adverse to the public happiness, my voice would be, Reject the plan. Were the Union itself inconsistent with the public happiness, it would be, Abolish the Union. In like manner, as far as the sovereignty of the States cannot be reconciled to the happiness of the people, the voice of every good citizen must be,

Let the former be sacrificed to the latter. How far the sacrifice is necessary, has been shown. How far the unsacrificed residue will be endangered, is the question before us. Several important considerations have been touched in the course of these papers, which discountenance the supposition that the operation of the federal government will by degrees prove fatal to the State governments. The more I revolve the subject, the more fully I am persuaded that the balance is much more likely to be disturbed by the preponderancy of the last than of the first scale. We have seen, in all the examples of ancient and modern confederacies, the strongest tendency continually betraying itself in the members, to despoil the general government of its authorities, with a very ineffectual capacity in the latter to defend itself against the encroachments. Although, in most of these examples, the system has been so dissimilar from that under consideration as greatly to weaken any inference concerning the latter from the fate of the former, yet, as the States will retain, under the proposed Constitution, a very extensive portion of active sovereignty, the inference ought not to be wholly disregarded. In the Achaean league it is probable that the federal head had a degree and species of power, which gave it a considerable likeness to the government framed by the convention. The Lycian Confederacy, as far as its principles and form are transmitted, must have borne a still greater analogy to it. Yet history does not inform us that either of them ever degenerated, or tended to degenerate, into one consolidated government. On the contrary, we know that the ruin of one of them proceeded from the incapacity of the federal authority to prevent the dissensions, and finally the disunion, of the subordinate authorities. These cases are the more worthy of our attention, as the external causes by which the component parts were pressed together were much more numerous and powerful than in our case; and consequently less powerful ligaments within would be sufficient to bind the members to the head, and to each other. In the feudal system, we have seen a similar propensity exemplified. Notwithstanding the want of proper sympathy in every instance between the local sovereigns and the people, and the sympathy in some instances between the general sovereign and the latter, it usually happened that the local sovereigns prevailed in the rivalship for encroachments.

Had no external dangers enforced internal harmony and subordination, and particularly, had the local sovereigns possessed the affections of the people, the great kingdoms in Europe would at this time consist of as many independent princes as there were formerly feudatory barons. The State government will have the advantage of the Federal government, whether we compare them in respect to the immediate dependence of the one on the other; to the weight of personal influence which each side will possess; to the powers respectively vested in them; to the predilection and probable support of the people; to the disposition and faculty of resisting and frustrating the measures of each other. The State governments may be regarded as constituent and essential parts of the federal government; whilst the latter is nowise essential to the operation or organization of the former. Without the intervention of the State legislatures, the President of the United States cannot be elected at all. They must in all cases have a great share in his appointment, and will, perhaps, in most cases, of themselves determine it. The Senate will be elected absolutely and exclusively by the State legislatures. Even the House of Representatives, though drawn immediately from the people, will be chosen very much under the influence of that class of men, whose influence over the people obtains for themselves an election into the State legislatures. Thus, each of the principal branches of the federal government will owe its existence more or less to the favor of the State governments, and must consequently feel a dependence, which is much more likely to beget a disposition too obsequious than too overbearing towards them. On the other side, the component parts of the State governments will in no instance be indebted for their appointment to the direct agency of the federal government, and very little, if at all, to the local influence of its members. The number of individuals employed under the Constitution of the United States will be much smaller than the number employed under the particular States.

There will consequently be less of personal influence on the side of the former than of the latter. The members of the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments of thirteen and more States, the justices of peace, officers of militia, ministerial officers of justice, with all the county, corporation, and town officers, for three millions and more of people, intermixed, and having particular acquaintance with every class and circle of people, must exceed, beyond all proportion, both in number and influence, those of every description who will be employed in the administration of the federal system. Compare the members of the three great departments of the thirteen States, excluding from the judiciary department the justices of peace, with the members of the corresponding departments of the single government of the Union; compare the militia officers of three millions of people with the military and marine officers of any establishment which is within the compass of probability, or, I may add, of possibility, and in this view alone, we may pronounce the advantage of the States to be decisive. If the federal government is to have collectors of revenue, the State governments will have theirs also. And as those of the former will be principally on the seacoast, and not very numerous, whilst those of the latter will be spread over the face of the country, and will be very numerous, the advantage in this view also lies on the same side.

It is true, that the Confederacy is to possess, and may exercise, the power of collecting internal as well as external taxes throughout the States; but it is probable that this power will not be resorted to, except for supplemental purposes of revenue; that an option will then be given to the States to supply their quotas by previous collections of their own; and that the eventual collection, under the immediate authority of the Union, will generally be made by the officers, and according to the rules, appointed by the several States. Indeed it is extremely probable, that in other instances, particularly in the organization of the judicial power, the officers of the States will be clothed with the correspondent authority of the Union.

Should it happen, however, that separate collectors of internal revenue should be appointed under the federal government, the influence of the whole number would not bear a comparison with that of the multitude of State officers in the opposite scale.

Within every district to which a federal collector would be allotted, there would not be less than thirty or forty, or even more, officers of different descriptions, and many of them persons of character and weight, whose influence would lie on the side of the State. The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State. The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security. As the former periods will probably bear a small proportion to the latter, the State governments will here enjoy another advantage over the federal government. The more adequate, indeed, the federal powers may be rendered to the national defense, the less frequent will be those scenes of danger which might favor their ascendancy over the governments of the particular States. If the new Constitution be examined with accuracy and candor, it will be found that the change which it proposes consists much less in the addition of NEW POWERS to the Union, than in the invigoration of its ORIGINAL POWERS. The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to be an addition which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained. The powers relating to war and peace, armies and fleets, treaties and finance, with the other more considerable powers, are all vested in the existing Congress by the articles of Confederation. The proposed change does not enlarge these powers; it only substitutes a more effectual mode of administering them. The change relating to taxation may be regarded as the most important; and yet the present Congress have as complete authority to REQUIRE of the States indefinite supplies of money for the common defense and general welfare, as the future Congress will have to require them of individual citizens; and the latter will be no more bound than the States themselves have been, to pay the quotas respectively taxed on them. Had the States complied punctually with the articles of Confederation, or could their compliance have been enforced by as peaceable means as may be used with success towards single persons, our past experience is very far from countenancing an opinion, that the State governments would have lost their constitutional powers, and have gradually undergone an entire consolidation. To maintain that such an event would have ensued, would be to say at once, that the existence of the State governments is incompatible with any system whatever that accomplishes the essential purposes of the Union.

PUBLIUS.

Links to my other posts on The Federalist Papers so far:

Adnan Ab: What and Where are Extra Dimensions? →

December 18, 2021 by Miles Kimball

What I like best in this article is the picture representing a tesseract (a 4-dimensional hypercube).

The Zeigarnik Effect: The Information for Unfinished Tasks Gets Rehearsed More and So Remembered More →

December 17, 2021 by Miles Kimball

Hat tip to Mark Brooks. This is related to my Quartz column “The Most Effective Memory Methods are Difficult—and That's Why They Work.”

Podcast: Miles Kimball on the Potential of a National Well-Being Index

December 16, 2021 by Miles Kimball

*Link to the podcast shown above, on its IMF website*

I thought the podcast shown above turned out really well. Try it out!

The podcast adds a lot to our (Dan Benjamin, Kristen Cooper, Ori Heffetz and my) Finance and Development paper “Measuring the Essence of the Good Life” that I mirrored on my blog last week. (You can see other articles in Finance and Development here.)

Aside from the IMF website shown above at https://www.imf.org/en/News/Podcasts/All-Podcasts/2021/11/30/miles-kimball-wellbeing, you can also find the podcast at:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4wAHCOCLovDGmuIoWQTPZA?si=7c15c74d76e64d2a
Libsyn: https://imfpodcast.libsyn.com/miles-kimball-on-measuring-national-well-being
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/imf-podcasts/miles-kimball-on-measuring
Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3DgfCpB