Patri's Journal: Current

This is Patri's current journal. It is kept on LiveJournal as patrissimo, but you are reading the archived copy on patrifriedman.com.

various controversies: guns, low-carb (comment on this entry at LiveJournal)

Entry Date: 2004-06-23 13:49:00 Logged: 2004-06-23 13:52:00
Current Mood: exhausted Current Music: Alanis Morissette-Jagged Little Pill-All I Really Want
I'm feeling much better after 11 hours of sleep, and being a Friedman energy implies argumentativeness,
had an interesting post on how carrying a gun makes you much more interested in defusing situations, since the costs of escalation are so high. replied with the argument that "despite all of the rational arguments, I still believe that guns are an enabler. When alchohol is in the system or people just aren't as disciplined, having a gun at the ready in a provacative situation can, and all too frequently, does lead to very destructive situations. While Robb may be able to handle his gun successfully and use it as a pilar of strength, I do not believe that most people are like Robb 100% of the time."

My response was "We have to weigh the pros against the cons. The person with a gun may end up using it stupidly. But the person with the gun can also better defend themselves if someone else is drunk or stupid. The question is, which happens more often? I think the statistical evidence suggests that legal carrying has a net positive effect.

Also remember that we aren't comparing a world with legal gun carrying to a world where a magic spell makes it impossible to carry guns. We are comparing a world where it is legal to carry guns to one where it is illegal to carry guns. Surely making carrying illegal is most likely to stop honest people like Robb from carrying, and least likely to stop the dangerous and stupid. This certainly doesn't prove that carrying should be legal, since its possible the net effect of illegality is still positive. But I believe this adverse selection bias has a profound effect on the good to harm ratio of the effects of a ban."

also sent me this CNN article on a new group formed to oppose low-carb diets.

I responded "Its mostly a strawman. They say "Eating vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans, which are all predominantly carbohydrate, is linked to a reduced risk of cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and a range of other chronic diseases." Well, Atkins encourages eating vegetables and fruits (except the few high GI fruits, like bananas). And other low-carb diets like South Beach encourage eating low GI carbs like beans.

They also criticize ketosis. Having researched the subject, I'm a little sketchy myself, and think that its probably healthiest to eat enough carbs to be out of ketosis. But its not horrible for you - after all, they give epileptic kids ketogenic diets because it has less side effects than anti-seizure medications."

Reading their website, while they do have some valid criticisms, their view appears noticeably biased to me, and they are sometimes just wrong. For example, they claim "Moreover, nutrition authorities are unanimous in stating that for weight loss, calories count, not the glycemic index. Although it may sound old-fashioned, the simple fact is that the key to successful weight loss is a combination of a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity -- nothing more."

But this claim is just plain wrong. Several studies have shown that on isocaloric diets, low-carb causes significantly more weight loss than low-fat. People eating exactly the same number of calories are losing pounds more on low-carb than low-fat, which debunks the "calories are all that matter" orthodoxy. Calories certainly do matter, but so does calorie composition.
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