51–60 of 134 posts
I've been following his Shangri-La diet for over four years now. Here's a page about my results, although it's a bit out of date:
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Seth Roberts wasn't a hacker, but he was friends with Aaron Swartz: http://blog.sethroberts.net/2011/07/22/google-yes-wikipedia-... Swartz also wrote about Roberts' Shangri-La Diet on his blog, claiming that through it "losing weight has to be one of the easiest things I’ve ever done": http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/losingweight
I think Seth Roberts was the very definition of a hacker. Not computer hacker. Hacker.
I started the diet about 5 weeks ago. The oil drinking helped to make my cravings tolerable. I quit after 2 weeks because I didn't seem to need the oil any more. My cravings have been under control since without the oil. (I've lost about 3 inches of waist. I've not measured my weight because I don't care about that. I'm feeling lighter and better than I have in about 4 years.)
I think there's value to his theory of set-points, and to the use of unflavored oil as something that breaks the brain's flavor-calorie connection. Nevertheless, I'd be severely concerned by this news if I were still on the diet, or if I were on the diet long-term.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There is a well known separation between the theorist and the experimentalist mindset. He was one of the best of the experimentalists. A "soft science" guy with the math and computing skills to teach the "hard science" guys a lesson or two, despite the poor reputation of soft science guys in that area. My possibly mistaken observation is you're trying to apply theoretician morality (consensus building, rabid conformity, name dropping) to a guy who was nearly the cultural archetype of the ideal ultimate experimentalist.
Not surprisingly all his posts began with "So I temporarily doubled my daily butter intake while taking standardized psych intelligence tests before, during, and after the dietary change and the results were ..." and practically none of his blog posts began with "Like everyone else, I agree with Dr Phil's strategies for weight loss and anyone who doesn't agree with everyone else, all of the time, is inherently wrong ..."
Your judgment of his work is accurate and correct if you use theoretician criteria on his work. But he was focused on the near exact opposite, in experimentalism. And if you use the more appropriate experimentalist criteria on his experiments, he was Awesome for a soft sciences guy and could teach the supposedly elite math/CS skilled hard science guys, a thing or two about data analysis and presentation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Harmful? No - you can't state that with any quantitative facts, what you've stated is pure postulation. The first thing I thought when I read this is that Seth's work and studies will be used as a scape goat to discredit the high cholesterol / high fat intake perspective on diet unfortunately.
"Generally not the kind of of crowd hacker news "associates" with." - It seems you haven't been here long.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
my bad, i just glanced over his page and info and figured he was a proponent of a healthy lifestyle.
He was, but he had no idea what is was, and tried to discover a new kind of healthy lifestyle.
In that, he was like us all. Unlike many of us, he was open minded and brave enough to experiment.
Report of the death of a genuinely good scientist, is a cruddy way to start a day. We should have a site rule that this kind of thing is only permissible after 5pm or something.
I'd be really interested in knowing his cause of death. He has had extremely high fat intake due to all his experimentation: http://blog.sethroberts.net/2011/11/25/butter-and-arithmetic...
It happens all the time up here in Canada when people shovel snow.
Slightly offtopic - The logic around weight "set-points" seems plausible. Has anyone ever had any luck with the Shangri La Diet?
Then I increased cardio, stopped the diet (why? I don't recall), and proceeded to gain it back (while doing 3+ hours/week of cardio). I've tried various things with limited success and been meaning to try Shangri La again.
Personal anecdote, post hoc ergo propter hoc, etc.
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 t…
Well, there are "rumors" of links between eating too much fat and cardiovascular diseases, and he was abusing butter as of late...