The above question was prompted by a strange dream I had last night. I was in the front passenger seat of a car that supposedly had self-driving capabilities. The owner of the car was in the driver’s seat and at one point got out to do something or other. The car started off without him and proceeded to go somewhere unknown to me. In the dream, I was wondering how to bring the car to a halt but had no idea what to do. In my dream, I looked for the steering wheel and brake pedal and other standard control features of ordinary cars but since I have never been in a self-driving vehicle, my dream did not have that specific information.
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I have written before about how people seeking healthy lifestyle choices can be whipsawed by advice that can veer wildly, with things that are supposed to be good for you one day becoming demonized the next. This happens with diets as well as physical activity.

The latest reversal deals with ‘standing desks’, desks at which you must stand in order to work. These were meant to combat the supposed ill-effects of being seated all day at our desks, something that office workers are prone to do. I know several people who have them in their offices and even in their homes.

Now new research suggest that standing all day may also be bad for you.
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Hurricanes are extremely volatile events, highly sensitive to local conditions. They form quickly, their strengths can rise and fall rapidly, and their paths are can veer abruptly. Given all that, it is quite remarkable how weather scientists are able to predict things about them as much as they can. But because of their volatility, these predictions necessarily lack absolute certainty and contain margins of error. Unfortunately, many people do not appreciate this fact and when events turn out differently from what was announced, they tend to feel that either the forecasters were incompetent or that they were deliberately misled. (In my book The Great Paradox of Science, I spend considerable time making the case that teaching students and adults about the uncertainty inherent in almost all scientific measurements is an important element in understanding the nature of science. But unfortunately, very little time is spent on it.)
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I was astonished to read of yet another new dietary fad that seems to have attracted adherents. They call themselves ‘carnivores’ and that label alone should give you some idea about what their diet consists of. I expected a variation of the high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets (such as Atkins) that were in vogue some decades back. But I was not quite prepared for how much more limited and extreme this diet was. It consists almost exclusively of beef, bacon, butter, and eggs. Just reading it made me feel queasy, even though I eat each of the items. It was the thought of eating almost only those four things that made me feel sick.

For some reason that I cannot quite fathom, there are people who are drawn to the idea that what most of us think is a good nutrition habit of eating balanced diets that avoid highly processed foods (food writer Michael Pollan memorably encapsulated the idea in just seven words: “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.”) is a myth foisted upon us by government and scientists and the food industry, and that they have discovered an alternative healthy way of eating that only they know about and now wish to promote. There seems to be something appealing about seeing oneself as part of a small community of people who have special knowledge that the vast majority of people are unaware of. It seems to be even more appealing if the ideas are so extreme that ordinary people would never have thought of it.
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