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William_Quixote comments on Critiquing Gary Taubes, Part 4: What Causes Obesity? - Less Wrong
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So, I’ve liked this series (and upvoted it), but I’ve had mixed feelings about the most recent post. It feels like this is verging dangerously close to “someone is wrong on the internet” (1) territory.
In particular, something that seems to me like a major failing is that I’m now 4 posts into a series on nutrition and I don’t know the right answer. I don’t even know your best guess as to the right answer. Without an executive summary on “the right answer to nutrition” this series has no actionable take away points. Its clear to me that a lot of research was done to write this series. The series would be more valuable if you shared the fruits of that research.
Actionability aside, not stating a view on what someone ought to conclude makes it hard to see just how wrong Taubes is or isn’t. Will following his advice kill me? (Taubes is a dangerous madman). Will following his advice cause me to gain weight or fail to lose weight? (Someone is wrong on the internet). Is Taubes directionally correct such that following his advice will cause me to lose weight but he overstates his case while taking rhetorical cheap shots at strawmen? (Someone is technically incorrect on the internet).
1: http://xkcd.com/386/
I completely agree with this post. A big issue that I have with it is that Taubes's (and Atkins) advice really does work for a lot of people. Evidently, Atkins and Taubes discovered something that worked, and tried to justify it with cherry picked science. They are salesmen, not scientists, so it isn't really surprising that their claims aren't rigorous. (EDIT: This summary of meta analyses on low carb diets backs up the efficacy of their diets)
I'd like for ChrisHallquist to have investigated why low carb diets work so well for so many people, despite the fact that the evidence isn't all there.
As for your questions, I'd say that following Taubes' advice won't kill you, will very likely result in weight loss, and that his methodology is more-or-less correct but his justification is lacking.
I do plan on writing a series of posts on nutrition, exercise, and general health that are actionable with good recommendations.
Don't expect it to generate any less controversy. I think it was Dennett who said that everyone thinks they're experts on consciousness because it's such a constant part of their lives, which makes it difficult for them to respect an expert philosopher on the topic. Well, everyone's an expert on moving their bodies and stuffing food in their mouth and gaining or losing weight too. Giving them advice is a violation of their expertise, unless they're looking for advice.
Gravity is also a part of everyone's lives. Yet people respect Newton.
Very special conditions have to exist for conversion of time spent into greater correctness. These conditions do exist for physics or physiology, but they do not seem to exist for philosophy of consciousness.
I think respect was a poor choice of words to begin with. Perhaps people here don't like Dennett, I don't care much about him either.
If physicists tell laypeople something that contradicts their experience of gravity, like gravity affecting passage of time, some of them will have hard time accepting it. For laypeople, nutrition isn't about physiology, and if their experience of weight loss for example contradicts expert advice, again they will have difficulty accepting it.
Change philosophy of consciousness to study of consciousness, and people would probably dismiss philosophers as well as neuroscientists if their findings didn't fit their experience. I think many philosophers of consciousness cite neuroscientists, so their conditions are pretty special too.
This is such a weird, non-LW-type response compared to what I've become accustomed to.
It seems irrelevant whether or not Atkins "works" if the reason it works has nothing (or little) to do with the reasons being given.
In my experience, the fitness community is full of noise -- people who are sure their fitness plans "work" because "look at the great results!" But their justification is so bad that the advice is essentially meaningless.
Or people will swear that X supplement changed their life because they started taking it and presto! 90 days later they had lost 30 pounds, increased muscle tone, and doubled their energy level! Oh...and by the way, they had also concurrently started eating a clean diet, working out 5 times a week, meditating and sleeping more consistently during that 90 days.
As you said, it is important to figure out why the Atkins diet works (when it does). But simply concluding that it is good to follow Taubes advice since it can't kill you and it seems to work for some people is akin to saying you should give horoscopes a try because they are kinda fun and strangely accurate (when they are). You haven't gotten any closer to an accurate map.
That's a strange sentiment. There are people who care about losing weight. It might be surprising but those people do exist. If you give them a working solution they are happy, even if your theoretical underpinnings are off.
I agree. falenas108 is completely correct that this is an instrumental vs epistemological rationality thing. Taubes and Atkins are both epistemologically suspect because they're salesmen, not scientists. Going too far into the specifics on why their arguments are bad seems like a waste of time to me, given that you wouldn't expect truth seeking out of salesmen in the first place.
This is fascinating to me.
I think the issue with bad epistemology in regard to nutrition is, for one, the potential for long term harm. Any principle that is epistemologically sound would account for that. Bad nutrition advice does not need to.
Giving people a pass because they are not scientists is fine to the extent you don't then apply their ideas to your nutrition and your body. Taubes, or many other pieces of bad nutrition advice might not kill you... at least not right away.
Now, I don't think Atkins or anything Taubes says is that detrimental to long term health. But I think there are plenty of cases where salesmen and scientists end up promoting bad nutrition ideas that do have negative long-term effects.
Anyway, it is just interesting to me that anyone from LW takes Atkins seriously at all.
From my wiki-research, the 1st phase is two weeks and involves eating up to 1680 calories per day. From my recall, this is about 1000 less than the average American male's intake.
That is a 14,000 calorie deficit over the course of two weeks, which is a ~4lb loss. Add to that the following considerations:
1680 calories is the target, with only 20 grams coming from carbs. 100 grams comes from fat; 150 grams comes from protein. It can be very challenging to find ways to consume 150 grams of daily protein consistently given the other types of food restrictions that Atkins has. I suspect most people don't do it, so, as long as they keep to the 20 grams of carbs and 100 grams of fat, consume even fewer that 1680 cals per day.
Many people (as evidenced by the fact the gym will be packed tomorrow) begin an exercise regiment concurrently with their diet.
Of course, given these data, you are gonna see some results! Atkins seems to make it so many people will eat substantially less. And many of those people will start to exercise more, just 'cuz they are trying to be more active along with their diet. And that is great!
What I'm hearing in the discussions on this series is that the Eat Less, Exercise More conventional wisdom of weight loss is too obvious, too simple, not true, & downright offensive for many people on here.
It leaves me a bit confused.
Postcyincism FTW!
That's a question of instrumental vs. epistemological help.
It works -> instrumental. Here's why it works ->epistemological.
Both are useful, and both are important for LW.
I don't think that's what he's saying, I think he's saying "there really appears to be some sort of effect there, so I'd really appreciate if somebody would try to support it with proper research."
The main problem with Taubes, I think, is that he fails to cleanly separate the two issues in question:
These are very different problems.
Why have people been gaining weight, on average? The reasons are complicated and Taubes gives important insights (even though, as OP said, his criticism of mainsteam nutrition is unfair).
How to lose weight, though, is a different matter. Every source I consult seems to agree that the reason the Atkins diet works is mainly because it makes it easier to eat less, by severely restricting the types of foods you can eat and also possibly reducing hunger pangs. I have yet to see any study consistent with the idea that a Atkins-type diet inherently makes you lose more weight than a conventional diet from mainstream nutritionists (if you match the number of consumed calories). I'd love to be proven wrong, but it seems that if Atkins works for you, other types of caloric restriction diets will also work, long-term.
Following his advice can result in chronic ketosis, read the article yourself to draw your conclusions.
Furthermore, there's a wealth of contradictory data which he fails to report or distorts. For instance, Japanese eat high-carb low-fat diet (calories coming largely from white rice) and have very, very low prevalence of obesity, colon cancer, etc. Even more relevantly for Caucasians, obesity rates in Europe used to be very low fairly recently (and are still significantly lower than in the US), without being particularly low in carbohydrates - and the changes are very easily observable (fast food, soft drinks).
As for whenever his diets are effective for losing weight, that is a very complicated issue, largely psychological in nature. Perhaps some people can be more motivated when they follow unusual / non-mainstream advice, where success proves them right and their boring doctor (who recommends cutting fats) wrong.
edit: and as for whenever his advice would kill you... cancer risks associated with red meat are of interest.
Given this, you might like my next (and final) post about weight loss more.
One other point I should make: this isn't just about "someone" being wrong. It's about an author frequently cited by people in the LessWrong community on an important issue being wrong.
Indeed, I'm not sure I'd know about Taubes at all if not for the LessWrong community.
I've already mentioned Eliezer's "Correct Contrarian Cluster" as an example in another thread, but perhaps it would be helpful to mention other examples:
So Taubes was someone I could expect to see cited in the future when the issue of expert consensus gets discussed on LessWrong. In spite of all the people who didn't like these posts, I think I may have accomplished the goal of getting people to stop citing Taubes.
Not experts on the topic of diet. I associated with members of the Calorie Restriction Society some time ago. Many of them were experts on diet. IIRC, Taubes was generally treated as a low-grade crackpot by those folk: barely better than Atkins.
I think people would react to your posts better if they included some of this at the top. You need to remind people why they should care
Really? Most of the negative reactions have been explicitly about finding the posts unconvincing. I doubt those people will stop citing Taubes.
It started out that way, but over time it seemed like over time the response morphed into, "okay, Taubes is wrong about thee things but so what?" Jack even made the argument that Taubes isn't a rationalist so it's unfair to hold him to that standard.
Not "unfair" just not relevant to whether or not he is essentially right.
Taubes is now involved in an initiative with the Arnold Foundation doing randomized nutrition trials. It would be interesting to make predictions about some of those.
If they do stop citing Taubes, I predict they start recommending the Perfect Health Diet. I think the correct response would be to suggest they write a summary, not write a series of articles rebuking the diet, so that we can question them and not the other way around. Make the people with novel advice do most of the work.
I concur with your criticism.
I wish people went to greater lengths in explaining themselves whenever they give contrarian advice here, maybe write a post of their own if the issue is important enough. That would make these kinds of posts obsolete.
Often I see some superficially weird off topic statement with upvotes indicating many people agree, although no actual discussion has taken place here regarding the issue, and I have no idea why I should believe it. Engaging those comments is rarely fruitful, but that could be my bad, and of course I probably make weird statements too, since I have little in common with a typical lesswrongian.
I only regret that I have but one upvote to give for this comment.
There seems to be pretty strong reason to think the right answer is "we don't know the right answer yet."
If you check out Guyenet's post (linked here, ChrisHallquist has linked it twice), he leads off with (paraphrased) "carb-free diets have worked for a lot of people, and that's great, but Taubes is wrong about the carbohydrate-insulin-hypothesis."
This article series began because the heuristic of "trust the expert consensus" was called into question, and Taubes came up as an opponent of the nutritional consensus, but it turns out that Taubes is mischaracterizing the expert consensus, even if he's not mischaracterizing the layman consensus (which, as you'd expect for laymen, is pretty bad). So that Taubes gets the expert consensus wrong is relevant to the meta-point of "trust the expert consensus."
That's something that should take less than 4 posts to spell out :)