Seth’s blog

Herodotus on Babylon:

They have no physicians, but when a man is ill, they lay him in the public square, and the passers-by come up to him, and if they have ever had his disease themselves or have known any one who has suffered from it, they give him advice, recommending him to do whatever they found good in their own case, or in the case known to them; and no one is allowed to pass the sick man in silence without asking him what his ailment is.

Suroweicki’s book, like this example, was actually about the wisdom of passers-by (unconnected individuals) rather than crowds.

Thanks to David Cramer.

Yesterday I heard Mitch “Lotus 1-2-3″ Kapor give the third of three talks at the UC Berkeley I-School on “Disruptive Innovations I have Known and Loved” (podcast). This talk was about Second Life; the first two were about the PC and the Internet. It was a very nice talk I would have enjoyed more if I hadn’t had a cold. Even with a cold I was pleased by two things:

1. A graph of on-line Second Life activity. It was increasing at roughly the same rate as SLD-forums activity.

2. A comment that the short-term effect of similar technologies is less than expected; the long-term effect is far greater than expected. One long-term effect Kapor predicted is virtual meetings. I knew someone who was head of design for a very large powerful company — supposedly a dream job. But he had to travel all over the world to meet with his subordinates. Incredibly exhausting. So it wasn’t a dream job, and he gave it up.

I knew about the “disruptive technologies” idea from my work on variation in rat bar-pressing, which led me to read Clayton Christensen’s excellent The Innovator’s Dilemma. Disruptive technologies can be as simple as hydraulic power, which caused several steam-shovel companies to fold.

I had not thought of SLD as a technology; but I realized that’s what it is: A weight-loss technology. Disruptive, who knows, although Aaron Swartz was optimistic quite early. And today in the SLD forums I read this:

I’ve lost 85 lbs. and I have 25 lbs. to go and I just. Can’t. Quite. Process that idea. . . I’m at a new job where no one knows that I used to be incredibly heavy and there’s even a really cute fellow faculty member who seems to like me. He smiles at me. A lot. It’s nice. Everything is so . . . fantastic. I’m so happy I’m practically beside myself. . . . Almost every morning . . . I catch sight of myself in the full-length mirror out of the corner of my eye and the first thought is still “Is that me?”. And I have to stop. And look. And wrap my arms around my tummy - my much, much smaller tummy - and think “Oh that’s right. That IS me.” It always makes me laugh.

Podcasts of his earlier talks here (PC) and here (Internet).

In this video Malcolm Kendrick, a Scottish doctor, points out the lack of cross-country correlation between cholesterol levels and heart disease rates.

In this video Kendrick explains why he believes that extreme stress — often caused by emigration — is a big reason for high rates of heart disease.

This view is supported by research by Michael Marmot and others on the social gradient: People higher in occupational level have better health than those below them. This seems to be because lower jobs are more stressful. The lower your job, the less control you have. Lack of control is the problem.

Kendrick’s view calls into question the usual interpretation of migrant studies. When persons emigrate across countries — from Japan to America, from India to England — they usually have higher heart disease rates in the new country This is often attributed to differences in diet — the old-country diet is presumed healthier than the new-country diet. Kendrick lays the blame elsewhere. He also makes an interesting point about Finland. Finland used to have a very high rate of heart disease. Kendrick points out that in the early 1950s, about 700,000 persons of Finnish descent were pushed by the Soviet government out of the Soviet Union and into Finland. Kendrick also mentions Roseto, Pennsylvania, a town created by emigration en masse from Roseto Italy. The old customs and social networks survived the move intact and the people of Roseto Pennsylvania were. for many years, remarkably healthy.

Previous posts on heart disease: Omega-3 and heart attacks (also here). The Framingham Study.

Thanks to Dave Lull.

Addendum: Kendrick on “The Great Cholesterol Myth.”

In the latest New Yorker, an article by Bill Buford begins:

Meat-eaters . . . have more recently had to accept that their diet is probably the source of much of the world’s . . . obesity.

Gary Taubes’ new book Good Calories, Bad Calories argues the opposite. Even if the fact checkers hadn’t read Taubes, surely they knew of the Atkins diet?

Addendum: Buford also blames heart disease on meat. In this talk Malcolm Kendrick notes an inverse correlation between saturated fat consumption and heart disease. Thanks to Dave Lull.

From the abstract of a new paper on the question:

The 1-year case fatality rate was approximately 1% and nearly 6% at 5 years. . . .There was a substantial excess of deaths owing to suicide and coronary heart disease.

Six percent chance of dying within 5 years . . . Your chance of survival is probably better if you are posted to Iraq. On the other hand, another study found a 6% death rate within 5 years for matched obese persons who didn’t have the operation.