On vegetable prescriptions

An article in the Washington Post highlights a study that supposedly shows doctors should prescribe vegetables to address cardiovascular conditions, like high blood pressure and what not. (The link, it's probably paywalled but not worth paying for if you're not already a subscriber.) 

You can say the usual thing about media reporting on scientific studies. Namely, the conclusion stated or implied in the headline oversells what the study, on closer inspection, actually tells us. The study had no control group. The good health outcomes may have been from eating vegetables, but also may have been from alleviating food insecurity because the study's subjects were poorer people who were given vouchers for farmers' markets. And the doctors interviewed make the unsurprising claim that vegetables are probably good for you but we need more research (and more money for more research) in order to explore precisely why and how that's the case.

In that way, it's an unremarkable article. But I clicked on it and read it because the "vegetable prescription" seems to have worked for me. 

About two and a half years ago, I was diagnosed with high blood pressure. My doctor advised me to eat more vegetables. I did. My blood pressure seems to have improved, all without medication.

I'll knock on wood and maybe throw a hefty dose of salt over my shoulder. I should focus on the "seems" when I say my blood pressure improved. My home monitoring device says it's improved, but it doesn't usually seem to be all that better when I visit the doctor. I also distrust that device and my ability not to influence its score. (I'm not sure how I might influence it, but I'm just putting it out there that I might be affecting the outcome by how I measure it.) Also, I read somewhere (I forget the exact title, but it was actually a book and not a website) that even though diet can improve the blood pressure score, it doesn't fix blood pressure in the way that medication can and that therefore hypertensive people should probably still take medication.

Still, the vegetables seem to have helped. To be clear, I've also cut my sodium intake quite dramatically. And before I was diagnosed, I ate almost no vegetables. Now, I try to force feed myself 3 to 4 servings a day, along with whole grains and fruit.

I realize I'm only an N of 1, and a very privileged N at that. I've never known food insecurity and feel I don't have the standing to lecture poorer people on their dietary choices. But it all seems, so far, to work for me.

Jonathan Zimmerman has an AI policy

There's a certain kind of argument academics-qua-instructors use, where they boldly announce a policy and then act in contradiction to that policy. In this blog post, I'll relate one example.

In a recent (August 29, 2023) Washington Post column, Jonathan Zimmerman, a college professor, announces he has no AI policy for his students [pay walled, probably]. His university--i.e., his employer--requires him to make a policy, and his response: 

So here's my AI policy: I don't have one.

Instead, he offers his student a version of the "if you cheat, you're only cheating yourselves" argument. An excerpt of what he tells his students:

I want you to be intelligent. I want you to stare at a blank page or screen for hours, trying to decide how to start. I want to you to write draft after draft and develop a stronger version of your own ideas. I want you to be proud of what you accomplished, not ashamed that you cut corners.

After writing a bit more on this theme, he finishes with the assertion that AI 

will never do: make you into a fully autonomous human being, with your own ideas, feelings and goals. I want that to be your ambition.

And if that’s what you want, too, then avoid the bots.

As far as "reasons not to cheat with AI" goes, his argument is pretty good. I do suspect that something like AI has crept into the way we (the royal we) have been thinking and writing about things for a long time, and that even Mr. Zimmerman relies on it sometimes. But he's right, and good for him.

But I'd bet a small, yet undisclosed amount of money that he actually does have an AI policy. Some students will use some AI programs to write their papers, and a subset of those will be so embarrassingly and obviously AI-produced that Mr. Zimmerman will report those situation to whoever is the academic honesty czar at his college and the student will be appropriately punished.

In that, I suspect AI will be a lot like student plagiarism. Some students, when they plagiarize, might lift a phrase here or there form Wikiepedia or the class-assigned textbook and fail to attribute it. (I personally don't think that practice should entail the intense opprobrium and swift and sure punishment it commands when discovered, but most university policies and plagiarism hunters I've seen seem to disagree.) There are some edge examples, where we know the student probably plagiarized, but we can't prove it. And then there are the obvious examples, where the student uses an entire paper or encyclopedia article or whatever that is very easy to find.

I bring up that distinction because when I was a TA and adjunct, I knew a lot of people who claimed that they didn't worry about plagiarism, because plagiarized papers were so bad that grading on the merits would be punishment enough for the student. But even those instructors would "bust" the student for obvious plagiarism.

Back to Mr. Zimmerman. He'll almost definitely punish the obvious examples. I suspect his college requires it. Maybe he has tenure and can therefore write columns explaining how he is defying the work rules his employer sets. And remember: professors cannot fail, they can only be failed. But there is almost definitely a "shall be punished" (not "may be punished") policy at his college, and if he openly defies that policy, even tenure might not protect him.

So yes, he can give the "don't cheat yourselves" lecture without sanction. But a student would be foolish to take that lecture at face value and go about AI'ing on the assumption that they're only cheating themselves.

Random thoughts on ending affirmative action in college admissions

Concerning the recent Supreme Court cases that are reputed to end most race-based affirmative action programs for higher education, I mostly agree with Freddie DeBoer at this link (substack, so probably pay walled). But I have a few other thoughts.

(I should disclose that I have only now started reading the court decision. I may think differently after reading it.)

Thought #1: I'm surprised (though again, I haven't read the decision) that the admissions practices of a private institution like Harvard can be subject to this federal lawsuit. I understand that Harvard, like most so-called "private" universities, are subsidized in many, many ways by state and federal governments. But I'm still a bit surprised they don't (apparently) have more leeway to make race-based decisions.

Thought #2: This decision seems to address only admissions and not financial aid. I don't know how it will affect any race-based financial supports. If this decision significantly curtails those, too, then, right or wrong, it is very unfortunate. 

Thought #3: I understand that the more wealthy top-tier schools make a point to financially support poorer students at close to 100% of costs. I suspect that such financial support is not all it's cracked up to be, but curtailing admissions at those places probably, in its own way, curtails some financial supports a la thought #2 above.

Thought #4: I don't shed a lot of tears for someone who doesn't get into Harvard or Yale and instead has to go to a "lesser" ivy league or go to one of the many other top-tier undergraduate schools.

Thought #5: Notwithstanding thought #4, I'm not convinced we're talking only of top-tier schools. If we're talking about a selective enrollment, local private school that offers robust financial supports and a easy-to-win-admission local public school that offers almost none--in that case, someone not admitted under an affirmative action policy may find they'll end up at an institution where they have to pay much more, maybe prohibitively much more, than they would have at the private one.

Thought #6: The retort that "white males have had affirmative action for 100 years" is glibly dismissive of many well-reasoned, sincere concerns about race-based affirmative action. It's especially unhelpful when offered as the only response to any and all objections: it's a way to shout down someone who disagrees with you.

Thought #7: Notwithstanding thought #6, that retort has more than a kernel of truth. Those, like me, who have benefited from the system need to acknowledge that truth.

Thought #8: In the world as I would like it to be, a college degree would not be nearly as much of a requirement for employment as it seems to be now. But the world isn't as I'd like it to be, so that default requirement suggests, to me, that we need some way to help others meet this requirement.

When a layperson reads Trump's indictment

I've read over the federal indictment against Mr. Trump, and I fear the case isn't quite as strong as some commentators claim it is. I can see how a non-biased juror (if such an animal exists) can find reasonable doubt not to convict Mr. Trump. I also believe that the indictment makes certain arguments for public consumption that in my view are overwrought and borderline irrelevant to the case at hand.

So....this blog post, like Gaul, will be divided into three parts. In part 1, I'll state that I'm not a lawyer and don't have much legal training. I'll also make the usual claim that I really really truly truly believe that Mr. Trump is a bad person and really really truly truly probably committed the crime and really really truly truly deserves to go to jail. In part 2, I'll raise what I see as the political and legal weaknesses of the indictment. In part 3, I'll repeat my disclosures from part 1, and that won't matter because if anyone actual reads this (long) blog post, they'll accuse me of being a Trump apologist anyway. So it goes.

Law and order isn't a "civil right"

The "law and order" candidate for mayor in my city says that law and order is a "civil right." I've already explained that I'm voting for that candidate in part because of his "law and order" position, but I disagree with him. Law and order isn't a civil right.

I see a civil right is a claim we as individuals have against the state. It's not a claim on the state. That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't make claims on the state, but that making such a claim isn't claiming a civil right.

We could probably dispute why states exist and what purposes the do serve and ought to serve. But any such discussion will have to contemplate the state's responsibility to promote public order as a good for all people to enjoy. There are a lot of value-laden words in that last sentence: "public," "order," "a good," and "all people" all require extensive discussion. But waiving that discussion, I do think I can say a state should promote public order as a good for all people to enjoy.

A civil right is something an individual can invoke against the state as the state seeks to provide that "good."

I have probably, in the past, described certain things as a "right" or as a "civil right" that go against the definition I'm using in this blog post. I almost definitely described state-assured health care as a right. I say now that I was wrong to do so. That doesn't mean I oppose state-assured health care. I support it and wish the state assurance were more robust than it is. But I no longer see it as a "right."

Now, that candidate isn't really trying to summon a philosophical debate on the nature of "rights" and the obligations of government. He's trying to win votes and to do so in a way designed to appeal to two groups. The first is poorer people, especially persons of color, who see, and are often right to see, appeals to "law and order" as code for terrorizing and targeting black and brown persons. The candidate wants to argue that law and order is a good thing from which those very persons can and deserve to benefit. The second group includes relatively affluent, liberal-leaning people like me. His rhetoric assures us that we can support law and order without being racist or being against poor people.

I think he's right on the merits. poorer people stand to benefit greatly from a system that secures public safety. If someone isn't safe on the street or on mass transit, they can't do the other things that make life livable or worth living. 

But even so, we need to recognize that the law and order position, which I'm inclined to support this time around, comes with real costs. Those costs are curbs against civil liberties along some margin. I hope that margin is very slim, but it exists. Calling law and order a civil rights obfuscates the tradeoff, and we shouldn't do that.

Law and Order: a good thing but also a siren call

Two people are running for mayor in my city. One is the "law and order" candidate and the other isn't. I plan to vote for the law and order candidate and largely because he's the law and order candidate.*

Of course, both candidates claim to want to make my city safer. Each, when pressed, will probably say he supports the "rule of law." But the "law and order" candidate is much more likely to promote aggressive enforcement and much more likely to strengthen the prerogatives of the police department and its officers. If he's successful, we just might see fewer carjackings and fewer muggings. I actually might feel safer.

The other candidate claims to want to address crime "holistically," 

The word you say is causing you to speak

I get the point behind this Washington Post article (paywall, probably) by Robin Stern and Marc Brackett. People use words like trauma, gaslighting, narcissism, and depressed in ways that don't match what mental health professionals (MHP's) mean by them. When people do that, they're usually exaggerating the severity of whatever situation or person they are facing. That causes harm because it ignores and in some ways even trivializes the challenges faced by people who do suffer from according-to-Hoyle trauma, gaslighting, narcissism, and depression.

I have two problems with Stern and Brackett's argument.