
Singularity U, or Singularity Woo? - tokenadult
http://www.skepticblog.org/2012/07/05/singularity-u-or-singularity-woo/
======
jere
I really wouldn't expect this from Singularity U. I wonder if it a single
rogue woo supporter or if Kurzweil has intentionally brought those kind of
people in.

Personally I think Kurzweil is the poster child for plausible sounding woo.
Consider this. Kurzweil thinks he's going to be able to live forever and
essentially reconstruct his dead father. He takes 150 (previously 250)
supplements and 10 glasses of alkaline water per day. He wrote a nutrition
book about avoiding fat, particularly butter, organ meats, and eggs. If you've
read anything about nutrition in the last decade, you'll probably be aware
these are some of the healthiest foods on the planet and the campaign against
dietary fat was always lacking evidence. To be fair, he did backpedal on this
point in a later book, but then again why would a computer scientist write two
nutrition books in the first place?

His predictions have always seemed rather silly to me too (turing test passed
in 17 years) but they are a bit more debatable at least.

~~~
psykotic
Kurzweil's second nutrition-oriented book was coauthored with Terry Grossman,
a licensed homeopath. It does make you raise your eyebrows.

~~~
mtrimpe
I never understood the hate for homeopathy from highly educated people.

I won't touch it with a ten-foot pole myself, but homeopathy _does get people
the placebo effect_ and that's "A Good Thing" (tm).

That our analytical skills have correctly identified that homeopathy can't
really do anything and we thus have to resort to beliefs in the mind-body
relationship and e.g. meditation to achieve similar benefits is actually too
bad for us.... just popping some pills would've been a lot easier.

~~~
rmc
Homeopaths market and sell their products for serious life threatening
diseases. Homeopaths don't tell people it's the placebo effect, they tell very
sick people that they can cure them, and charge them for the pleasure.

Homeopaths (and other pseduo science peddlers) make money out of people who
are at their most desparate state by selling them lies.

~~~
psykotic
Homeopathy is woo-woo at its worst. But it seems plausible that the majority
of practitioners believe as much in its efficacy as do patients. When you say
they are selling lies, you ascribe malice where self-deceit may be the more
likely explanation. Of course, no manner of good intentions will help those
desperately ill people who would have been better served by conventional
medicine.

~~~
rmc
Oh yes, I believe ignorance and self-delusion is more common then malice.
However that doesn't excuse them totally. When it's _literally_ a matter of
life and death for someone else, you have a moral duty to ensure you're giving
the right advice.

Homeopaths are careless and other people die.

~~~
psykotic
But they are not careless from their own point of view. I daresay they are
more intensely passionate in seeking out the latest knowledge in their own
field than your average family physician. Breaking out of an inculcated
intellectual and epistemological framework is an almost impossible feat.

I would make an analogy to veganism. Vegans as a whole are more intensely
interested and passionate about their health and what they eat than your
average healthy omnivore. For that reason, they're also more likely to
proselytize and promote their ways to others. It's my belief that in doing so
they potentially bring harm to themselves and to others. Do I think they
should be engaged in vigorous debate and their arguments refuted to the best
of scientific knowledge? Yes, absolutely. But I don't think treating them as
idiots or malefactors is well-deserved or productive.

------
blackjack160
Disclosure: SU Alumnus here.

Being from India, it is not unusual for all natural remedies (Neem leaves to
soothe burns) to be classified as "Homeopathic".

More Examples Here:

<http://hpathy.com/materia-medica/indian-homeopathic-drugs/>

Note: I am not saying everything in the URL is gospel, just that there are
some natural remedies that work.

Hanhemann's description of Homeopathy is:

"based on the hypothesis that a substance that causes the symptoms of a
disease in healthy people will cure that disease in sick people." (Wikipedia)

This theory is nonsense and proven to be quackery.

In summary: I suspect that Professor Wadhwa's interpretation of Homeopathy was
culturally biased. There is nothing wrong or revolutionary with giving natural
cures a closer look, just not under the Woo of Homeopathy. If Wadhwa was
advocating Hanhemann's Homeopathy then that is indeed disappointing given
prevalent evidence.

~~~
spitx
Is it fair to call it quackery or should it be more fairly called a placebo-
based remedy system?

Can it be slotted in the same league as naturopathy?

After all naturopathic formulations don't always have the same efficacy in
controlled trials. Do they?

~~~
nodemaker
It is fair to call it quackery because placebo is not what the homeopaths
claim their medicines are working on. They claim some BS around "Law of the
simlars" and "Like cures like".

~~~
rbanffy
But wouldn't the placebo effect disappear if they called it what it is? ;-)

------
dmix
The main issue seems to be Vivek Wadhwa (not the whole University) for sending
out one poorly thought out mass-email that is vaguely in support of
homeopathy.

If I remember correctly, Vivek Wadhwa also authored quite a few articles (on
Techcrunch and elsewhere) that demonstrated a poor understanding of
stats/science.

For example:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2831195>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2495012>

~~~
demachina
Wadhwa keeps putting out immigration studies, like this one,
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1348616> "Americas Loss is
the World's Gain: America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs" on why immigrant
entrepreneurs and skilled tech workers are leaving the U.S. to return home,
decrying the brain drain, and that it is devestating the U.S. economy.

The studies consistently show visa issues are almost never the primary reason
they are returning to their home countries. Many are going back to India and
China because their economies are or at least were booming offering more
opportunities, they are more comfortable in their homeland, nearer family and
friends, less culture shock, etc.

He will then immediately whipsaw around and insist its urgent the U.S. pass
Startup Visa and increase H1-B quotas to somehow solve the pressing visa
problem… which isn't actually the problem per his own studies.

So if the guy is willing to ignore the results from his own study because its
inconvenient to the agenda he is pushing, this latest episode surprises me not
at all. Once he latches on to something he seems to stick to it, regardless of
what the data says. His long running primary agenda seems to be he wants the
U.S. to throw the doors open to all Indian engineers and entrepeneurs who want
to come. This also happens to be a popular agenda with a lot of big tech
companies and VC's which contributes to his popularity among certain circles.

~~~
nodemaker
>The studies consistently show visa issues are almost never the primary reason
they are returning to their home countries.

Personally in my case, Visa issues were the no.1 reason that I moved back to
India.

It seemed unfair that while all other developers in the US could happily do
indie and freelance work in their free time and even start their own company,
while I had to be an H1-B slave and work for pretty much the same company for
6-8 years before I could even get permanent residency.

Also even working for startups and getting equity is mostly out of question as
most startups typically dont do H1-Bs until they are large enough. Your only
choice is to work for a shitty megacorp and get confined to your cubicle and a
mediocre pay for 6-8 years. Also make sure you are nice H1-B slave coz if you
get fired you have to leave in 30 days.

Seriously fuck that!

------
jacoblyles
All universities should have a "defense against the dark arts" class where
students learn how to weigh evidence, arguments, and logic. Outside of that, I
believe class _should_ be opinionated and biased.

If that were the case, then quacks would find themselves without an audience.

I do worry that by casting quacks out of polite society, we will also cast out
iconoclasts and free thinkers.

~~~
Eliezer
The Singularity _Institute_ is working on it (or rather, the spinning-off
Center for Applied Rationality is working on it); and indeed, we have
literally been known to refer to it as "Defense Against the Dark Arts".

~~~
rdl
Is there any relationship between Singularity Institute and Singularity
University?

~~~
Eliezer
Not at the moment.

~~~
akkartik
Holy crap, I totally missed the difference in names. I hope this isn't causing
adverse publicity to you guys.

------
evincarofautumn
“Do you know what they call ‘alternative medicine’ that’s been proved to work?
‘Medicine’.” — Tim Minchin

~~~
ippisl
There's a huge economic imbalance between the economic resources and
motivations given to prove and market traditional medicine and alternative
medicine. Sometimes this leads to a situations that non-fully proven
alternative treatments can offer better results with less side effects than
current medicine practice. And since risk for many alternative medicines is
low it makes sense to try them.

This of course doesn't apply to homeopathy.

~~~
tatsuke95
> _"Sometimes this leads to a situations that non-fully proven alternative
> treatments can offer better results with less side effects than current
> medicine practice."_

Maybe you're right. Care to point to some specific cases?

~~~
lmm
St John's Wort for depression is the poster child; it's in the process of
gradually becoming ordinary medicine as more studies are performed, but it's
not yet something your doctor would prescribe you.

We err far too much on the side of not approving new treatments (it's like we
think harming someone by giving them bad medicine is thousands of times worse
than doing the same harm by not giving them good medicine), particularly when
there are no patents so no drug company profit motive to push them through
trials.

~~~
tatsuke95
I'm in the pharmacy business, so this is of obvious interest to me.

> _"but it's not yet something your doctor would prescribe you."_

Because it doesn't require a prescription. There is nearly unlimited
information on the product (including efficacy), and I can go into any
pharmacy in North America and buy it off the shelf, no questions asked.

> _"particularly when there are no patents"_

The idea that you can't make money without owning the patent on something
flies in the face of everything done in the hacker world, doesn't it? I don't
buy into that theory, but can't really back up my opinion. The world is filled
with companies who sell commodity products at a mark up, though.

------
nickpinkston
I'll echo the sentiment of others here in saying that this isn't representive
of anyone I know at SU. I'd say it's quite a rational crowd and while Kurzweil
and others are a bit on the edge of reason in some of their work on
Singularity stuff - it's vastly not blatant wrong facts a la homeopathy. It's
at most overoptimism in the factors of exponential growth and supporting tech
like cryogenics being more useful than is likely. The Newton reference below
is apt - let's judge people on their best contributions - and let only heinous
stuff (if Newton ended up a violent dictator) count against them.

~~~
akiselev
Newton's dablings in the occult SHOULD be considered and count against him.
The thing is, we've confirmed calculus and universal gravitation through
centuries of experimentation. Whadwha's situation is different. He is alive, a
PROFESSOR AT STANFORD, and the VP of academics at SU. His contributions of the
past should not be muddied by his current stances, especially if others have
corroborated his work (although I don't know if Whadwha does real research).
However, if he chooses to believe in homeopathy, something which has been
shown time and time again to be as effective as a placebo, it shows a certain
lack of intellectual integrity that is not acceptable of a practitioner of
higher education.

Some of the greatest scientists in the world have been corrupted by their
personal biases and if people like Einstein can waste decades in a hunt for
something that doesn't exist (i.e., his denial of Bell's theorem and search
for a deterministic hidden variable) then surely Whadwha too can fall prey to
his biases (which he seems to have shown today). The difference is that
Einstein did research that could be corroborated, while Whadwha teaches, which
can impact the intellectual integrity of his students.

~~~
abecedarius
Einstein died before Bell discovered his theorem. Careful with the rants about
integrity.

------
realize
Wow, I've always enjoyed Vivek Wadhwa's articles, but he just lost all
credibility with me. This is the same level as finding out he is a
scientologist.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I honestly don't understand this. Do you not evaluate each of his points on
their own merit, or have you been relying on reputation alone?

~~~
gwern
It's very difficult to weigh each point on its 'own merit'; for example, if
someone is writing an article on diet, it's relatively easy for them to
construct a very impressive looking article, each citation of which is genuine
and does indeed match the description, and which is logical - but also
completely wrong because they cherrypicked the few dozen results which
supported the thesis and ignored all the other studies and meta-analyses which
reveal the thesis is complete bullshit.

For example, take dual n-back. Just with the materials in
<http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ> I could construct a case that dual n-back is
a fantastic intervention which will boost children's grades, help cure ADHD,
help addicts kick drugs, increase your IQ, etc - or I could construct a case
that it's a statistical artifact contributed to by financially compromised
researchers which has failed replication and ought to be kicked to the
trashheap of history.

 _Both_ would be true if you 'evaluate of my points on their own merit'.

When someone says that him believing in pseudoscience X reduces their
confidence in any of the articles on topics Y or Z, they are quite correct.
They have learned reasons to think that he left evidence out, or twisted it,
or didn't look for counter-evidence, or engaged in any of the myriads of sins
of omission or commission that lead a reader to falsehood.

------
sgt101
"First, the idea of false balance, suggesting that there are two sides to the
current state of our knowledge on a scientific theory. No, the scientific
method produces our best understanding of a subject to date. It does not
produce both that and its antithesis."

Well - no, science produces falsifiable hypothesis. Here is my hypothesis, you
(or me) could falsify it by showing x. x could be shown, but I can't show it -
can you?

That's science.

In this debate the homeopaths are asked time and again to show x, they never
do, so the hypothesis that we have is that it's utter bunk. If some homeopath
can show that their shit really works (with a double blind randomized trial
with controls) then booooo yahhhh! it works!

It's not about debates, it's not about who is right. It's about what can be
shown to be true, or not.

~~~
drcode
OP is saying that in science a hypothesis needs to be taken off the table once
has been falsified. (Unless new evidence comes along saying otherwise.)

Homeopathy deserves to be removed from the table.

~~~
sgt101
It's an interesting debate as to when things should come off the table. My
usual metric is that respected people start to refuse to talk about it - at
some point topics just stop being interesting to them and that's the point
that it generally means that it's over. If for no other reason than because
you know no one is going to be generating new evidence as they sure ain't
going to be getting any grants!

Crank science is different. I guess that The Media and capitalism are the
problem. Homeopaths are probably never going to go away because there is money
to be made, and The Media are probably going to keep reporting on it because
it sells.

Perhaps there will come a point (like with UFO's) where interest will simply
dissipate and it'll stop being a story.

Until then we have a problem - the process is the story, just like for AGW.
Why aren't there grants for this? Why do wise professors simply dismiss it?
What on earth are we doing supporting these massive drug companies with their
expensive and somewhat poor therapies? We need to be aware that the processes
of science (everyone I know thinks this is just uninteresting, therefore there
is every reason to believe that anyone working on it is wasting there time -
unless I have reason to think otherwise - so mehh) doesn't have the effect
that we anticipate it to; so lots of careful, calm, open minded rebuttal based
on cast iron facts and offers of changes of opinion if things can be proved
other wise would be good.

------
bfrs
Richard Dawkins made an excellent documentary, _The Enemies of Reason_ , which
covers homeopathy. Parts of the it can be found on youtube:

[http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dawkins%20homeop...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dawkins%20homeopathy)

------
Alex3917
James Randi's explanation of homeopathy is incredibly intellectually
dishonest. In the video Randi says that homeopathy involves extreme dilution
to the point where virtually none of the original substance is left. But this
isn't true. There were two schools of homeopathy, high dilutionists and low
dilutionists. Only one school of homeopathy believed in dilution like this.

It was homeopathy that pioneered evidence-based medicine, which is why
mainstream medicine eventually merged with low dilution homeopathy and began
to use its methods. But Randi doesn't mention that either.

~~~
MartinCron
Note: I don't want to be the [citation needed] asshole here, but this is the
first time I've heard of the distinct schools of homeopathy and I'm skeptical
(of course).

Can you point me to an article about this history?

~~~
Alex3917
From JAMA: <http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=202602>

"19th-century homeopaths pioneered systematic drug-testing research,
challenged the dangerously depleting procedures of mainstream physicians at
that time, established rigorous professional standards, and valued advanced
education at least as highly as their mainstream counterparts did. It was not
without reason that homeopaths considered the bases of their approach to
medical problems to be more logical and more promising than the inherited
tradition of the ancients, upon which mainstream physicians still based their
practices. [...]

This book will be useful primarily to scholars looking for specific
information about particular people, events, and developments within the
homeopathic movement during the period covered. Among other things, readers
will find the names—and often the opinions—of hundreds of previously invisible
homeopathic practitioners, publicists, and professors; they will follow fierce
debates between the so-called high-dilutionists (whose therapeutic commitment
to infinitesimally small doses of supposedly energized substances verged on
spiritualism) and the low-dilutionists (who ultimately merged with mainstream
physicians in the early decades of the 20th century); they will explore the
founding and fate of homeopathic medical schools; they will listen to well-
intentioned homeopaths defend themselves against attacks from the American
Medical Association; and they will learn about regional variations in the
character, reception, and legal standing of homeopathy around the country."

Anyway not to defend homeopathy, but I just find it sad that so many people
view James Randi as a credible source despite the fact that he can rarely go
five minutes without lying about something.

~~~
MartinCron
Thank you!

It seems a stretch to say that James Randi is lying when he doesn't include a
disclaimer that _the same word happened to also be used for something more
scientific around 80 years ago_.

Everything Randi talks about is perfectly true if you use the contemporary
understanding of the word "homeopathy"

~~~
Alex3917
"Everything Randi talks about is perfectly true if you use the contemporary
understanding of the word 'homeopathy'.

Which he wasn't. He was specifically talking about homeopathy in the period
when it was invented and when it came to the US in the mid 19th century. In
fact he even talks about 'the proving', which as a far as I know isn't even
actively done anymore in modern homeopathy. (I'm pretty sure the modern
manufacturers are just reusing old formulas and not actually doing new
'research'.)

~~~
zargon
He gave some historical background but also brought it around to how
homeopathic preparations are presently made, with the examples of actual
products using 30x and 1500x dilutions. There are lots of specifics we could
be pedantic about, but I agree with the grandparent that for a 15 minute
summary of homeopathy it's on target.

------
jaekwon
Fallacy.

Vivek Wadhwa has the better perspective on the matter. The author is assuming
that "because people who believe in homeopathy are believing in something that
does not follow from our scientific models, homeopathy must not work." But
this is fallacious.

We all know about the placebo effect. Do we know the efficacy of homeopathy in
the realm of the placebo effect? Perhaps a pill with a bogus (but plausible to
the naive) reason has more power than a sugarpill with no explanation at all
as to why it works. If so, by some definitions of efficacy (say, "works better
than a sugarpill"), you would have to conclude that homeopathy works (albiet
in the context of our world, where many are scientifically illiterate).

The universe does not follow our scientific model. Rather, it is always(1) the
model that follows the universe. There will always(2) be inexplicable (and
apparently scientifically impossible) phenomena, and the purpose of science is
to find them.

(and also to simplify the axioms. Wolfram might be disappointed with the LHC
outcome, but I'm hopeful that somebody will find a new model -- equivalent to
the standard model, or at least one that leads to the standard model in other
scales of physics -- that I can actually understand ;) )

(1) Well, never say neither always nor never, and mileage may vary based on
unexpected factors.

(2) This I've concluded from Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, but then again I
don't actually buy that 100% either. I don't buy that (X implies X) implies (X
is true), which I think is assumed in GIT. Input appreciated.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
You're quite right. If you actually read the Shang et al 2006 paper you'll
discover that homeopathy was discovered to be better than placebo but less
good than the best conventional treatment. The PR and media coverage around
the paper missed this entirely. The Ernst paper mentioned by the article also
could not determine if homeopathy was entirely due to placebo. Its worth
noting that this is the current state of scientific knowledge regarding
homeopathy. It appears to be somewhat better than placebo judging from meta
analysis.

Now, this doesn't mean its real (or fake), it just means we need more
research. Its also worth noting that the trials of homeopathy in the Shang
2006 article were rated as higher quality than those of conventional treatment
(but there were less of them).

~~~
maxerickson
When there was more than one conventional treatment trial matching a
homeopathic trial, they randomly selected the conventional treatment trial.
They did not inject any notion of 'best' conventional treatment.

(or I read the wrong paper...)

------
paulsutter
Seems like Singularity U needs something like Hacker News as a platform for
discussions. Email proclamations to successively larger mailing lists are not
exactly an efficient approach.

Should they just use Hacker News itself? Build their own? Or can Hacker News
sprout channels? I'd be fascinated by the topics they cover.

~~~
olalonde
<http://www.lesswrong.com> is probably what comes closer to what you are
describing.

------
justsaying99
wrt to his nutritional /supplemental writings in his latest books Kurzweil
provides evidence in form of studies etc, or if not available or study was
limited in relevance etc, he plainly acknowledges this. I thought it was
obvious he was trying to fill gaps with what was available. He also
acknowledges he is choosing to reinterpret some findings, and gives his
rationale for this too. He also rejects a raft of homeopathic and modern
medical treatment with same rationalization. He never claims to be a
scientist, rather he says he is just a guy doing his best to leverage science
from an engineer and inventor perspective for his own personal health benefit,
and sharing it with the rest of us.

------
technotony
Disclosure Singularity U alumnus here.

My hypothesis here is that Vivek was trying to open a debate, to challenge the
students to accept the possibility of alternative views, rather than pushing
those alternative views. This is strongly aligned with his role as VP of
Academics where he is trying to encourage the students to consider alternative
possibilities and that there are different perspectives, this is within his
role remit. Not to defend homoeopathy but it's when you examine and challenge
existing hearsay that you can make great strides of innovation.

------
rfurlan
I am a SU alumnus and I can assure everyone this is not representative of
Singularity University in any way.

------
localhost3000
can someone explain the 'woo' reference? k thx.

~~~
choxi
is "woo" a well known concept? I feel like this post would be much more
popular if it didn't use such an obscure word in its title

~~~
zargon
It's well-known to the people reading skepticblog.

