[extropy-chat] Failure of low-fat diet

[Robin Hanson]

At 05:57 AM 2/24/2006, Samantha Atkins wrote:
> >> But you didn't answer my question. What do you think stopped people
> >> dying of those diseases, if it wasn't the vaccines?
> >
> > There are lots of logical possibilities, and my state of belief is
> > that I am very uncertain about which one it might be.
>
>Which is most consistent with the sum of our scientific knowledge
>about the the causes of various diseases?  That should be a useful
>criteria for sorting among hypotheses.  It is standard practice to
>choose those hypothesis most consistent with things we already have
>pretty good certainty on.  Would you proceed using some other
>metric?  If not then please show why alternative explanations are
>preferable starting from what or incorporating and perhaps more
>fruitfully explaining the phenomenon in question.

Here is one explanation that has a plausible mechanism and isn't clearly
contradicted by the data.   Mammals invoke the stress response in situations
they consider stressful, which helps the devote energy to their muscles
at the expense of other systems such as the immune system.   This reduces
long term health.   As humans become richer they interpret fewer events as
being stressful and invoke the stress response less often, and so are 
healthier.
There is a multiplier effect for contagious diseases, so that healthier people
living near each other benefit each other.   So a theory is that our increasing
health is caused by our feeling less stress as we have gotten richer.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323