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Seth Roberts has died

blog.sethroberts.net

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Re: Seth Roberts has died

#11

Post by zorbo »

influx wrote: post #5
geuis wrote: post #2

For those of us who don't know who Seth Roberts is, who is Seth Roberts?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Roberts He was well known for self experimentation and writing the book, "The Shangri-La Diet".

Forgive me, but I'm having trouble understanding why his death is significant for a crowd such as Hacker news? I didn't know about him, and I don't mean to talk ill of the dead, but from a quick google it would seem he's mostly just a dietary quack? Even if he wasn't a quack, I still don't really get his relevance.

Re: Seth Roberts has died

#14

Post by pbreit »

zorbo wrote: post #11
influx wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Roberts He was well known for self experimentation and writing the book, "The Shangri-La Diet".

Forgive me, but I'm having trouble understanding why his death is significant for a crowd such as Hacker news? I didn't know about him, and I don't mean to talk ill of the dead, but from a quick google it would seem he's mostly just a dietary quack? Even if he wasn't a quack, I still don't really get his relevance.

It sounds to me like he was a bit of a food hacker. Probably a slight stretch but I can see the relevance.

Re: Seth Roberts has died

#15

Post by jordanb »

zorbo wrote: post #11
influx wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Roberts He was well known for self experimentation and writing the book, "The Shangri-La Diet".

Forgive me, but I'm having trouble understanding why his death is significant for a crowd such as Hacker news? I didn't know about him, and I don't mean to talk ill of the dead, but from a quick google it would seem he's mostly just a dietary quack? Even if he wasn't a quack, I still don't really get his relevance.

I guess a lot of people around here subscribe to various "life extension" diet regimes. There are many related posts in any case. I think the OP may be a critic of Mr. Robert's regime posting in a moment of schadenfreude.

Re: Seth Roberts has died

#16

Post by 001sky »

zorbo wrote: post #11
influx wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Roberts He was well known for self experimentation and writing the book, "The Shangri-La Diet".

Forgive me, but I'm having trouble understanding why his death is significant for a crowd such as Hacker news? I didn't know about him, and I don't mean to talk ill of the dead, but from a quick google it would seem he's mostly just a dietary quack? Even if he wasn't a quack, I still don't really get his relevance.

There are some odd comments on his blog. See, eg:

I know this is a rough time, but I’d like to ask: if you don’t already know for certain, please preserve any evidence, digital and physical, that might indicate why he died. If it was the result of one of his self-experiments, then I think he would want us to know.

Re: Seth Roberts has died

#17

Post by zorbo »

pbreit wrote: post #14
zorbo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me, but I'm having trouble understanding why his death is significant for a crowd such as Hacker news? I didn't know about him, and I don't mean to talk ill of the dead, but from a quick google it would seem he's mostly just a dietary quack? Even if he wasn't a quack, I still don't really get his relevance.

It sounds to me like he was a bit of a food hacker. Probably a slight stretch but I can see the relevance.

That could be it. His blog is also full of all kinds of harmful medical advice not backed by any kind of knowledge of the subjects much less any kind of science. Generally not the kind of of crowd hacker news "associates" with.

Re: Seth Roberts has died

#19

Post by ekianjo »

qwerty_asdf wrote: post #12

According to a Scientific American article [1], he was aged 54 in early 2008, so that puts him at roughly 60 years old, depending on his precise date of birth... [1] http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=self-experimenter-free-f...

Any idea why his year of birth does not seem to be publicly known ?

Re: Seth Roberts has died

#20

Post by xiaoma »

geuis wrote: post #2

For those of us who don't know who Seth Roberts is, who is Seth Roberts?

He was basically "the quantified self guy". He's done all kinds of crazy experiments on himself that he called "n=1 studies". In fact, the first thing I wondered when I saw this headline is whether or not it was related to some new experiment he was doing on himself.

Like the other commenters here, I will miss Seth's writing. He shared so much and influenced so many others. He had both the curiosity and the courage to try crazy things and shared what he learned with the world. RIP, Seth.

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