Logical Fallacies and more thoughts on paleo

Consistency and habit

I am sorry that this blog has been quiet recently, but I've just not been finding things to post: either items that I wanted to highlight here or things that I wanted to write.  I've been distracted by other things - like climbing hills in the sunshine and snow - but also I have been aware of the fact that sometimes there is not really much to say.  In recent posts I've pointed to the idea that consistency and habit, patience and persistence trump most things when it comes to fitness and health.  There is only so many times that you can say this before it gets boring.

Logical Fallacies

When I have been thinking about "fitness" issues I've actually been reflecting a lot on how limited my outlook has been for so long and how this might have been affecting my results.  A lifetime ago - or so it seems - I did a degree in Philosophy.  I did three years worth of formal logic, which was one of the parts of the course that I really enjoyed - the analysis, the equations into which arguments were broken down and expressed.

Recently I've been thinking about logical fallacies - errors in reasoning, arguments that might look valid at first but which on deeper consideration are actually invalid:  the conclusion does not flow from the premises.  There are lots of lists of such fallacies but Your Logical Fallacy Is...  sets out a good few.

For example:

personal incredulity

Because you found something difficult to understand, or are unaware of how it works, you made out like it's probably not true.

or

the idea of an argument from silence:  the absence of evidence is not the evidence or absence.....


Your exercise routine / diet is based on an invalid argument

Anyway, I suppose this gets me to some more thoughts on Paleo.  The Paleo backlash is now underway with videos like this:



or Marlene Zuk's Paleofantasy (interviewed here)

I actually think the best analysis was done - with a good sense of humour - by Matt Stone in

12 Paleo Myths: Eat Better Than A Caveman 

Reading that and thinking through the arguments a lot I came to realise that a lot of the dogma was just wrong.  In terms of the logical fallacies we were so often at:

appeal to nature

You argued that because something is 'natural' it is therefore valid, justified, inevitable, good or ideal.

The whole grok thing, spinning an ideal of how we were intended to live.....it sounds good, it sounds romantic but either there is nothing to it or else it is just banal obvious statements.

Common Sense

I was trapped in a paradigm for a while there, seeing everything through the "primal" lens.  Now I am realising that I was being stupid to be so limited in outlook.