Live data from Hacker News

Richard Feynman: Do We Live in A Cargo Cult Society?

calteches.library.caltech.edu

31–40 of 43 posts

Re: Richard Feynman: Do We Live in A Cargo Cult Society?

#31
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do widely present allergies to pea- and other nuts, peas, carrots, tomatoes, citrus fruit, fish or shellfish (among others) tell us?

Don't forget eggs, bananas, peaches (and relatives), onions, carrots, etc. (include most foods, yes I've known people with fantastically, life threatening, sensitive allergies to these foods). One of my favorites is the genetic differences over perception of the herb coriander. Some percentage of people hate it because it tastes like soap. While the rest don't taste any soapy taste at all and find it to be a pleasant…

Celiac disease makes up a tiny fraction of the cases of gluten intolerance, which as much as 20% of the population of, say, the USA may have. (Source: Dangerous Grains, by James Braly and Ron Hoggan) Then add in actual wheat allergies. That's a lot of people.

So yes, people can have allergies to all sorts of things. I've been there (long story; currently it's only cow's milk I have to avoid) and it's not fun.

Re: Richard Feynman: Do We Live in A Cargo Cult Society?

#32
post #29
post #25

There's one paragraph I don't get: "I tried to find a principle for discovering more of these kinds of things, and came up with the following system. Any time you find yourself in a conversation at a cocktail party in which you do not feel uncomfortable that the hostess might come around and say, "Why are you fellows talking shop?" or that your wife will come around and say "Why are you flirting again?"--then you can…

He meant that if you ever catch yourself in a conversation where no one knows anything about the subject matter, you should end the conversation.

I think he's saying that certain topics allow everyone to participate because no one knows anything. If specialists were in the conversation, it would become shop talk.

Re: Richard Feynman: Do We Live in A Cargo Cult Society?

#33
post #2

Absolutely. The biggest offenders in software engineering are the things people integrate into their identity (i.e. "I'm an Agile manager", "I'm a Java architect", "I'm a Lisp hacker"). Another red flag is when there are no clear ways of testing a hypothesis (i.e. "NoSQL databases are better for this task", "This management methodology is best for our organization", "Outsourcing is great if you do so-and-so"). Most,…

Be careful. Software Engineering is not a science. Computer science is a science but, as it is explained so well in the SICP videos I watched, compsci's relations with computers is the same as astronomy's with telescopes.

Software engineering can - and should - use scientific method, but it has more to do with carpentry than with physics.

And I, personally, regard medicine as the biggest offender. Homeopathy should be a criminal offense.

Re: Richard Feynman: Do We Live in A Cargo Cult Society?

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you have to downgrade from induction to deduction. given the environment humans evolved in and what we know about primate digestive systems, what is unlikely to do me harm? answer: fruit, nuts, eggs. what is the biggest thing we do that monkeys don't? eat tons of processed grains. simple answer: decrease processed carb intake, replace with fruit (primate diets are often 50% fruit). since eating no grains isn't an opt…

Not to be rude, but did you read the f king article? What your are describing is pseudoscience. It is entirely possible to use your random, naive, and quasi-accurate observations to generate a hypothesis. To come to your "simple answer" is the type of overly simplistic thinking that Feynman is criticizing. "Science: It works, bitches." -- xkcd

Actually, you discarding his hypothesis without testing is the kind of thinking Feynman is criticizing.

He has a hypothesis. Let's try to break it.

If we fail, good for him ;-)

Re: Richard Feynman: Do We Live in A Cargo Cult Society?

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also the reason that fields like nutrition science aren't generally all that useful if what you want to do something like offer diet advice. There are just too many shifting pieces to offer a systematic explanation of what's going on, at least with the experimental limits we have right now. You can only track so many variables at once.

>systematic explanation Yes. Too many scientists aren't trying to explain things; rather they wander around looking for new correlations. There's an abundant supply of correlations wherever one looks.

And the number of correlations grows exponentially with the already exponential growth of the amount of data they can analyze.

It's been highlighted before we need better standards for what's meaningful and what's noise.

Re: Richard Feynman: Do We Live in A Cargo Cult Society?

#36
I just finished reading this: http://www.nthposition.com/thelastcargo.php

Very interesting. I especially liked the term "cargo prophets."

The article paints cargo cultists as performing, with fervor and rigor, a "magical repetition" of an "inexplicable complex of delusions."

And the cargo prophets, being the messengers, expound new canon to the "John Frum" myth which further glorifies and necessitates this "inexplicable complex of delusions," or rituals and methods.

The methods and rituals these cargo prophets ask followers to perform are NOT reason or integrity.

I could go on with my thoughts on this, but basically yes. I do see a very clear parallel.

Re: Richard Feynman: Do We Live in A Cargo Cult Society?

#37
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also the reason that fields like nutrition science aren't generally all that useful if what you want to do something like offer diet advice. There are just too many shifting pieces to offer a systematic explanation of what's going on, at least with the experimental limits we have right now. You can only track so many variables at once.

This is absolutely incorrect. We know way more about good diet and the effect of nutrition than we used to. We do not know everything, but claiming that nutrition science is not useful is horribly wrong and misleading. If you are offering diet advice, you should absolutely make use of all that we do know: and that knowledge comes from nutrition science.

If our end goal is to offer everyday guides on what foods to eat, nutrition science has a really hard time offering anything useful.

The predictions are necessarily minutely targeted at particular nutrients in isolated trials. It's really not possible to come up with a diet plan that replicates those isolated trials. I guess what I'm saying is that we don't (currently) have the capabilities to run studies big enough to examine the whole system in all its intricate pieces.

You can do surveys - and I think they are probably the most broadly-useful current nutrition studies, because they give recommendations like "food-related disease is significantly lower in people who eat a mediterranean diet". That's an actionable prediction.

As another counter-point to my argument, isolated experiments seem to work well in providing recommendations like suggesting to stay away from carcinogenic foods, etc...

Re: Richard Feynman: Do We Live in A Cargo Cult Society?

#38
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget eggs, bananas, peaches (and relatives), onions, carrots, etc. (include most foods, yes I've known people with fantastically, life threatening, sensitive allergies to these foods). One of my favorites is the genetic differences over perception of the herb coriander. Some percentage of people hate it because it tastes like soap. While the rest don't taste any soapy taste at all and find it to be a pleasant…

Celiac disease makes up a tiny fraction of the cases of gluten intolerance, which as much as 20% of the population of, say, the USA may have. (Source: Dangerous Grains, by James Braly and Ron Hoggan) Then add in actual wheat allergies. That's a lot of people. So yes, people can have allergies to all sorts of things. I've been there (long story; currently it's only cow's milk I have to avoid) and it's not fun.

I'm going to have to partially dispute you. I'll get to the point, but first let's define clearly, what is an allergy, an intolerance and what's coeliac disease.

Some raw numbers, wheat (gluten) allergies affect less than 1% of the population (it's something like .48%). It's not something you can hide, you either swell up and stop breathing when you come in contact with it or you don't. It's actually hard to find in adults as most people grow out of it when they enter puberty. If you don't die within a short time from eating wheat (without treatment) due to an IgE antibody surge, you aren't allergic -- full stop. (yes, there are emergent allergies that occur later in life, gluten allergies are generally not considered to be in the class of those types of allergies). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IgE

Wheat (gluten) intolerance is more prevalent. But so are most food intolerances. For example, it's generally considered that 3/4 of the adult population of the U.S. has a dairy intolerance. Intolerance != allergy. You can eat foods you are intolerant to. It might give you an upset stomach or bad gas or some such, maybe diarrhea and a really bad headache. But by those symptoms most of us are intolerant of high fiber diets, coffee and all forms of strong alcohol. It might be worse, like dizziness or some such, but if you don't have IgE antibodies in your system after contact with the suspect food it's not an allergy. In other words, probably 100% of the population is intolerant of some food some of the time. People often mistake "allergic" with "intolerant". Allergies are far more severe and critical than intolerance. Intolerance comes from a lack of an ability to process a given external agent due to some genetic predisposition -- like how many East Asians can't process alcohol properly or MSG makes my Aunt get a headache.

Coeliac disease occurs in about .75% of the population (as identified so far). It is a distinct and different disease from gluten allergies and gluten intolerances. Coeliac disease is an autoimmune disorder where the body destroys the lining (the villi) of the intestine as a response to the presence of the byproduct of gluten after it's been improperly modified by a faulty enzyme causing an IgA antibody flareup in the gut. It's only now really being diagnosed as it is easily confused with other bowel diseases prior (like IBS or Ulcerative colitis or granulomatous among others). Recent IgA antibody tests do a pretty good job of positively identifying the disease (but you have to be on a gluten rich diet for it to work, otherwise you'll have no antibodies to test for!). The number may grow, but probably not much, even wildly high estimates put it at under 3% of very localized, genetically predisposed populations. Whatever the case, it presents as a chronic disease, not an allergy. You don't eat wheat, then blow up, stop breathing and die. Your intestine slowly rots away, you become malnourished and your feces turns white.

Likewise, food intolerance != Coeliac disease != food allergy. The three things are different. You may as well bundle people with sun allergies and who have dry skin from harsh soap into your numbers if you are going to do that. The only common factor is that the causative agent is the same -- wheat. But even if you add up all the numbers of people with wheat allergies and people with coeliac disease, you likely end up with something less than 3-4% of the general population.

"Dangerous Grains" is an interesting book. But if all you look for is a duck, suddenly everything starts to look like a duck. I'd caution anyone from self-diagnosing based on descriptions of layman oriented symptoms from a book written to popularize an interesting theory. Many things cause precisely the same symptoms as gluten intolerance (and visa-versa). Dangerous Grains, while an great way to popularize recent science with the layman, is not the same as medical science.

Re: Richard Feynman: Do We Live in A Cargo Cult Society?

#39
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be rude, but did you read the f king article? What your are describing is pseudoscience. It is entirely possible to use your random, naive, and quasi-accurate observations to generate a hypothesis. To come to your "simple answer" is the type of overly simplistic thinking that Feynman is criticizing. "Science: It works, bitches." -- xkcd

Actually, you discarding his hypothesis without testing is the kind of thinking Feynman is criticizing. He has a hypothesis. Let's try to break it. If we fail, good for him ;-)

yeah, I don't normally talk about nutrition because I don't want to get into a huge debate over edge cases that everyone seems to love (oh look it happened in this thread too). in an absence of empirical data we have to use deduction or induction to arrive at a reasonable hypothesis that we then test.

I recommend good calories, bad calories.

Re: Richard Feynman: Do We Live in A Cargo Cult Society?

#40
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Celiac disease makes up a tiny fraction of the cases of gluten intolerance, which as much as 20% of the population of, say, the USA may have. (Source: Dangerous Grains, by James Braly and Ron Hoggan) Then add in actual wheat allergies. That's a lot of people. So yes, people can have allergies to all sorts of things. I've been there (long story; currently it's only cow's milk I have to avoid) and it's not fun.

I'm going to have to partially dispute you. I'll get to the point, but first let's define clearly, what is an allergy, an intolerance and what's coeliac disease. Some raw numbers, wheat (gluten) allergies affect less than 1% of the population (it's something like .48%). It's not something you can hide, you either swell up and stop breathing when you come in contact with it or you don't. It's actually hard to find in…

"If you don't die within a short time from eating wheat (without treatment) due to an IgE antibody surge, you aren't allergic -- full stop."

What? With all due respect, this is a ridiculous definition of "allergic" and not at all the standard one. Are all the people with, say, pollen allergies not really allergic if all they get is a runny nose? I feel lousy when I eat anything containing cow's milk, and I have high IgE antibody levels for it, but I don't die. Nonetheless, that is an allergy.

I'm well aware of the difference between an allergy and an intolerance, as I thought I made clear by mentioning gluten intolerance as well as wheat allergy.

Dangerous Grains makes and cites plenty of references to the published literature, so it's hardly your average pop-sci book. A major point of it was that celiac disease is only one way in which gluten intolerance, that is, inability to properly digest gluten, can manifest.

Post reply on HN