Friday, January 5, 2018

Placing Bets: Gary Taubes on Diet

This is another article  by Gary Taubes. I've read a couple of his books ("Good Calories, Bad Calories" & "How We Get Fat and Why"; I will read "The Case Against Sugar"), and I read most of his articles that I can find. Why? As a science journalist, he exhibits two traits that I find crucial: he explores and understands the history of science (a human endeavor), and he cares by the means of science, which includes both what we might call "the philosophy of science" (e.g., Popper and falsification) & the protocols for obtaining scientific knowledge (e.g., observation, hypothesis testing, statistical analysis, etc.). In short, this means that he's very careful about reaching conclusions. But he also has to eat, and he has to make--as all of us a do--a choice about what to eat. In this article, he explains what bets he places and why. He doesn't claim to know the outcome of his bet, but I find his reasoning quite persuasive, and I will (to the limits of my fallible self) follow his betting pattern. Anyway, it's food for thought.







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