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ChrisHallquist 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/
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.
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.
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.
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
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.