
Seth Roberts has died - martharotter
http://blog.sethroberts.net/2014/04/27/seth/
======
geuis
For those of us who don't know who Seth Roberts is, who is Seth Roberts?

~~~
influx
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Roberts](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Roberts)

He was well known for self experimentation and writing the book, "The Shangri-
La Diet".

~~~
zorbo
Forgive me, but I'm having trouble understanding why his death is significant
for a crowd such as Hacker news? I didn't know about him, and I don't mean to
talk ill of the dead, but from a quick google it would seem he's mostly just a
dietary quack? Even if he wasn't a quack, I still don't really get his
relevance.

~~~
jordanb
I guess a lot of people around here subscribe to various "life extension" diet
regimes. There are many related posts in any case. I think the OP may be a
critic of Mr. Robert's regime posting in a moment of schadenfreude.

~~~
jnbiche
I think it's very bad form to hypothesize on the OP's motives, when it's
entirely possible s/he is just someone who lost a friend.

------
pella
Seth Roberts: "The unreasonable effectiveness of my self-experimentation"

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964443/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964443/)

Seth Roberts: "The Growth of Personal Science: Implications for Statistics"
(pdf)

[http://media.sethroberts.net/blog/pdf/2012-09-24-The-
Growth-...](http://media.sethroberts.net/blog/pdf/2012-09-24-The-Growth-of-
Personal-Science-Implications-For-Statistics.pdf)

------
me2i81
When I first met Seth he was an assistant professor of psychology at UC
Berkeley. At the time he wrote all his code in APL, and couldn't figure out
why anyone would use anything else. More recently he used R. To everyone
calling him "not a hacker," he was hacking on code before a lot of you were
born, though his code was mostly for his own purposes.

~~~
gwern
I'm a decent R user, have done many self-experiments myself, and read &
commented on Roberts's blog for years; I have no idea about APL, but I think
you overestimate how much hacking on R code Roberts was able to do - he had a
lot of trouble programming the reaction-time code for his Buttermind
experiments and I don't recall him ever reporting more complex analyses than a
linear model.

------
pretz
Looks like the blog is down now, the linked to post says simply "Hello, this
is Seth’s sister, Amy, with the sad news that Seth died on Saturday, April 26,
2014. He collapsed while hiking near his home in Berkeley, CA. He had asked
that any memorial gifts be made to Amnesty International. Thank you to all for
following and sharing Seth’s work."

\--
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.sethroberts.net/2014/04/27/seth/)

I had the pleasure of knowing Seth personally and am deeply saddened to hear
this news.

------
ryanholiday
I was fortunate enough to publish Seth's final column this morning.

[http://betabeat.com/2014/04/seth-roberts-final-column-
butter...](http://betabeat.com/2014/04/seth-roberts-final-column-butter-makes-
me-smarter/)

~~~
maj0rhn
You owe it to your readers to say that Seth's death is a warning to those who
would flaunt conventional medical wisdom, as he clearly did.

Anyone who stakes their life on a single published meta-analysis is unwise.
Anyone who puts faith in a single assessor of cardiac risk, coronary CT, is
unwise. It is ironic that the most apt assessment of Seth's life and death
comes from a margarine commercial popular in the 1970s: "It's not nice to fool
Mother Nature."

~~~
drewblaisdell
> You owe it to your readers to say that Seth's death is a warning to those
> who would flaunt conventional medical wisdom, as he clearly did.

Your comments in this thread are inappropriate and untimely. We do not yet
know what caused Seth's collapse, and to jump to blame his experiments because
you disagree with his methods is shortsighted.

~~~
maj0rhn
They are completely appropriate and very timely. "Collapsed while hiking." The
only way that can happen is with an interruption in blood flow, which means a
clot or a bleed. If you want, I can go into details, but with his butter and
his omega habits, he was putting himself at risk for both, contradictory as
that may sound.

~~~
trhway
> "Collapsed while hiking." The only way that can happen is with an
> interruption in blood flow, which means a clot or a bleed.

or just due to plain old heatstroke and/or going beyond your physical limit
(on that given day and for you given overall condition for that day). You
should at least have mentioned whether you know this hills. I hike a lot in
the East Bay, and if i remember the Sat was pretty sunny.

~~~
mamoswined
I met Seth a few times and I remember one time he asked to go hiking in a
fairly unsafe area when it was getting dark.

------
userbinator
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...](http://blog.sethroberts.net/2011/11/25/butter-and-arithmetic-
how-much-butter/)

~~~
GigabyteCoin
Collapsing during strenuous activity is typically heart failure in my
experience.

It happens all the time up here in Canada when people shovel snow.

~~~
maj0rhn
Almost. I think you're confusing "heart failure" with "myocardial infarction."
They are two different diseases. Collapse during exertion can happen in either
one, but in Seth's case myocardial infarction is more likely, because people
with heart failure generally don't go hiking (their exercise tolerance is too
limited).

~~~
GigabyteCoin
I may very well have confused the two as I am not an expert in the topic.
Thank you for the clarification.

------
qwerty_asdf
According to a Scientific American article [1], he was aged 54 in early 2008,
so that puts him at roughly 60 years old, depending on his precise date of
birth...

[1] [http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=self-experimenter-
free-f...](http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=self-experimenter-free-from-
insomnia)

~~~
ekianjo
Any idea why his year of birth does not seem to be publicly known ?

~~~
judk
Because no one posted that trivial detail, and he didn't share it on Facebook?

------
chernavsky
Seth Roberts was an innovator, a teacher, an original thinker -- and he was an
inspiration to me. I'm reminded of the Grateful Dead t-shirt that says, "They
aren't the best at what they do. They're the only ones who do it".

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:

[http://www.astrocyte-design.com/shangri-la-diet/](http://www.astrocyte-
design.com/shangri-la-diet/)

------
colechristensen
One can't help but wonder if a man so dedicated to self-experimentation was a
victim of his own studies. Beware extremes.

------
gadders
Slightly offtopic - The logic around weight "set-points" seems plausible. Has
anyone ever had any luck with the Shangri La Diet?

~~~
kbutler
I lost about 20 lbs in 6 months doing it a few years ago. I did find that I
had less inclination to snack or eat large meals.

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.

~~~
gadders
Thanks. Always good to hear a first hand account.

------
pella
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: _" We are considering a memorial a-la-Seth: A memorial
one-day conference for all his friends and admirers, organized by his pals:
John Durant, Tim Ferris, Tucker Max, Gary Taubes, and other members of that
independent thinking clique who connected socially through Seth"_
[https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1015217680...](https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10152176803438375&id=13012333374&stream_ref=1)

------
Mz
RIP.

I am sad to see this. I only recently learned of the site. I have done my own
personal health experiments and had hoped to make contact and what not, but
did not get around to it. I imagine a lot of people will say his experiments
killed him or believe it even if they don't say it.

I increasingly think there is no point to trying to share such info. If you
die under a doctor's care, they say your condition did you in. If you die
doing alternative stuff, they say the alternative stuff did you in. It seems
pretty no win, in that regard.

I never knew him, yet it feels like a personal loss for me.

~~~
abecedarius
I regret not introducing you two. I didn't know either of you but I liked your
webpages. His offered some ideas that helped with issues that had been
impervious to doctors; yours didn't directly matter to me beyond the
encouragement of seeing someone tackling their problems themselves, but that's
something. Thanks for sharing them.

~~~
Mz
Thank you for replying. I am curious why you say mine didn't matter to you. I
mean why think it was not relevant to you at all.

I get a lot of feedback from people about all kinds of projects that my work
is "too niche" and only serves a tiny population. I don't think that's true at
all and I am trying to figure out what I am doing wrong.

~~~
abecedarius
Your CF treatment didn't seem to have any direct bearing on my own health
problems, but I was encouraged by the example. Possibly I was wrong and e.g. I
should be more concerned about pH -- I've made this mistake before. (I ruled
out a big effect of wheat on me because I hadn't given its removal enough of a
chance.)

------
jpgvm
This is incredibly sad. Such a curious and bright mind.

------
ElmerPaldritch
Seth Roberts wasn't a hacker, but he was friends with Aaron Swartz:

[http://blog.sethroberts.net/2011/07/22/google-yes-
wikipedia-...](http://blog.sethroberts.net/2011/07/22/google-yes-wikipedia-
yes-aaron-swartz-no/)

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](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/losingweight)

~~~
hackaflocka
So that's at least N=2, the number of people on the Shangri La diet who have
died prematurely.

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.

~~~
atom-morgan
> So that's at least N=2, the number of people on the Shangri La diet who have
> died prematurely.

I won't say that diet _can 't_ lead to suicide but...it was suicide for
Swartz, right?

~~~
hackaflocka
Correct. It was suicide.

I didn't mean to imply he died because of the diet (just like we shouldn't
infer that Seth died because of the diet). Apologies if it seemed I implied
that.

Nevertheless, it's possible that the diet messed with Aaron's brain.

Personally, I've benefited from the diet. So I'm firmly in Seth's camp. But
his death does raise questions.

~~~
atom-morgan
I didn't think so. I just wanted some clarification.

------
jongraehl
Andrew Gelman posts a eulogy: [http://andrewgelman.com/2014/04/30/seth-
roberts/](http://andrewgelman.com/2014/04/30/seth-roberts/)

------
systematical
What happens to our blogs when we die? I've always thought about this and
would like to keep my blog running even in death.

------
tsbardella2
He will be in a book by Mary Roach soon..

------
Asparagirl
Forget the part about chugging olive oil, how about that entire sub-category
of his blog dedicated to the belief that pre-natal ultrasounds somehow cause
autism? Or the hand-waving away the multiple studies that show that GFCF diets
have no proven positive effect on autism symptoms? Or using the word "cure"
offhand, based on an n=1 self-report of another diet?

 _nope.gif_

I don't even care about the weight loss and cardiac shit, I think I've seen
enough here.

~~~
hackaflocka
It's common for innovators to be mocked for their unconventional ideas.

~~~
Asparagirl
It's not "innovation" if it's just crap you spew on a blog.

Double-blind peer-reviewed replicable studies or GTFO.

~~~
hackaflocka
Yep, those double blind peer-reviewed studies sure worked out for the Wright
Brothers.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
You appear to be confused as to the difference between science and
engineering.

~~~
hackaflocka
You seem to be confused about the point I'm making, about innovation through
self-experimentation.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
No, you're still not grasping the difference between those situations. Double-
blind trials are required in situations where the results are subtle enough to
be colored by personal expectations and biases. Large-scale trials are
required when reasonably different conditions (e.g., different human test
subjects) could produce radically different results, when it's impossible to
tell whether a single test subject is an average or an outlier.

Neither of these conditions apply to the question "Can this airplane fly or
not?" There is no subtlety there, no biochemical variations. The plane either
flies or it doesn't, and either result is perfectly clear to even the most
ignorant layman.

As for peer review, the Wright Brothers had plenty of it: their peers showed
up, looked at the plane in flight, and said "Yep, uh-huh, that's flying all
right."

------
kayoone
Tragic and shows that no matter how healthy your lifestyle, life can still end
in unexpected ways much too early.

~~~
greenmountin
I can't tell if you're being serious or not, so I will note for other readers
that there is a lot of irony in saying this about Seth. His most public
experiments were the ingestion of large quantities of olive oil for appetite
control and daily butter consumption to aid sleep. A more appropriate
sentiment might be to salute Seth for his radical health experiments, and the
great risks he assumed in performing them on himself.

~~~
msandford
The science is not overwhelming that fat is what kills you. The lipid
hypothesis may not be correct.
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18615352](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18615352)

~~~
mertd
On the other hand, there is little doubt that overwhelming ingestion of
anything will kill you. I'm not sure if it is too much or how long he kept it
up, but 60g of butter sounds a lot to me.

~~~
msandford
So the traditional wisdom from what I remember is 20% fat, 30% protein and 50%
carbs. 1000 calories a day from carbs means 250 grams of carbs a day. That
sounds like a lot too.

------
bby
For a second I thought this was someone affiliated with Soylent...

------
maj0rhn
Collapsed while hiking. That is a cardiovascular death until proven otherwise.
In a guy who ate a half a stick of butter every day ... quelle surprise.

Listen to a cardiologist trying to talk Seth out of his course, at around 11
minutes in this 2008 video:

[http://vimeo.com/14281896](http://vimeo.com/14281896)

~~~
ellyagg
Dr. Mel Siff was a famous scholar in sport science. He hosted a mailing list
for a decade that everyone in the field subscribed to. He wrote a
comprehensive text on the subject of sport science, Supertraining:

[http://www.amazon.com/Supertraining-Paperback-Yuri-
Verkhosha...](http://www.amazon.com/Supertraining-Paperback-Yuri-
Verkhoshansky/dp/8890403802)

A fitness buff throughout his life, so never straying far from a
conventionally healthy diet in the first place, he famously doubled down on
conventional wisdom and went on a low fat, vegetarian diet after suffering a
heart attack at a young age. He did everything right, according to
establishment wisdom. After a few years, at only 58, he died from a heart
attack or stroke. Those of us who are skeptical of the diet-heart hypothesis
were not surprised.

The point is, it's very easy to support a side with your favorite anecdote.

After decades of motivated science, the support for the diet-heart hypothesis
is poor. Stephan Guyenet, a Ph.D. neurobiologist who studies obesity for a
living, has a blog where he examines the evidence in detail. Here's a sample:

[http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/07/diet-heart-
hyp...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/07/diet-heart-hypothesis-
stuck-at-starting.html)

If you disagree, I'm sure Stephan would welcome you opening a dialogue with
him in the comments on his blog. I'd be interested in that.

~~~
lena
Mel Siff died in 2003. "Established wisdom" at that time did not recommend a
low-fat diet at all. He apparently wrote in one of his books that "nutritional
scientists" recommend a diet of 10% fat, but that was never the recommendation
of major health organizations or "conventional wisdom". The IOM recommended in
2002 20-35% of calories from fat, for example. In 1990 the recommendation was
30% or less.

It seems that Mel Siff didn't follow a low fat vegetarian diet himself, based
on his response to a critical article about him: (full response here:
[http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6558](http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6558)
)

 _Interestingly, I cannot recall anyone by the name of Glassman ever staying
in the Siff household or studying me in the laboratory to examine my eating
habits, so I am intrigued to know where he found this inside information. The
abbreviated tale of my cardiac rehab programme
([http://www.worldfitness.org/drmelsiff.html](http://www.worldfitness.org/drmelsiff.html))
certainly said nothing about my specific breakdown of macronutrients in my
diet.

Had he read a little more carefully what I wrote, he would have noticed that
my diet comprises something like 50-60% lipids (no fried foods, no transfats,
no animal fat, plenty of fish) and under 30% carbohydrates (no refined carbs)
and hasn't deviated much from that sort of balance for many years - I have
never been a lover of high carb diets and have eaten little or no sugar (other
than about 1-2 tablespoons of honey or a few servings of fruit a day). Where
on earth does he obtain that nonsense from about my diet? _

So, he says there he ate about 50-60% fat. It's strange though that he says
"no animal fat" but plenty of fish, which is of course animal fat.

