ridiculously valuable material, if true
Yeah, well... a lot of things are like that, trouble is you cannot tell if they are or not. Certainly the justification for the 4HB claims is grossly inadequate, and you, of all people, should have been able to tell that.
My opinion of the book (I read about 40%, cbb with the rest): 80% common sense, 10% stupid advice, 10% - who knows, but chances of it being good are low (a bit like religious texts, heheh). It's main value is that it is somewhat entertaining, and it might inspire some people to do some exercise.
I've just read the Four-Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss. It seems on the face of it like ridiculously valuable material, if true - like what the completed version of Michael Vassar's proposed reboot of dietary science would look like at the finish point if dieting turned out to be more susceptible to Munchkinism than in my wildest dreams. Ferriss also talks the rationalist talk quite well in this book, much more so than in Four-Hour Workweek; he cites the experiments and occasionally says things like "I spent a lot of money on this and I expected it to work and it didn't work at all" or "I tried this and it seemed to work and I have no idea why it worked and I think it was probably a placebo effect."
Does the LessWrong hivemind have an opinion about 4HB? Has anyone tried it and found that it doesn't work, or that it does work, or that it works but not as well as Ferriss thinks it should work?