Seth’s blog

1. foreign-aid experts
2. medical doctors
3. book writers
4. clinical trials
5. psychotherapists
6. psychotherapists again
7. education experts
8. spiritual experts
9. clinical trials again
10. book reviewers
11. journalists
12. expert vs math models
13. ICU doctors
14. fugu processors
15. surgeons
16. opticians

Among the community of psychotherapists, according to Dr. Marion Arom, a psychotherapist friend of mine, “it is common knowledge that in many traditional therapies, if the therapy fails — if the desired change doesn’t occur — it’s due to client resistance or lack of motivation to change or unconscious motivation. The role or skill of the therapist is not examined, ever.”

Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs has a chapter about the failure of highly-respected professions to police themselves.

Directory of Twilight of Expertise posts.

In The Starfish and the Spider (2006), a book about decentralized organizations, one of the examples is Alcoholics Anonymous, started in 1935, in which local chapters are almost entirely autonomous from headquarters. Of course AA led to many similar programs: Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, and so on. All of these twelve-step programs offer therapy without therapists — for free. A little like the Protestant Reformation, which I mentioned earlier.

At a recent party I met a woman who runs an outpatient program for persons with mental disorders, including major depression. She asked me what I would suggest. Based on my faces research, I suggested early morning face-to-face meetings, especially for persons with depression. Very interesting, she said, AA folk wisdom is that morning meetings have the best success rates.

If you want to attend an early morning meeting (non-twelve-step), and you live in San Francisco, you may have a communal breakfast ($5 plus tax, served 8:30-9:30 am) at OneTaste (1074 Folsom at 7th St.), an “Urban Retreat Center”. If you can do this, I’m jealous. OneTaste is a group of 50 people who live and work together. They appear to support themselves by teaching yoga and giving other classes. They have been at their SF location for two years; before that they were at many different locations. The receptionist told me it was a “sensual community.” What’s that? I asked. “We try to activate our sensuality” etc., she said. I didn’t know what she meant. Is this on the website? I asked. Yes, she said, so I didn’t bother to take careful notes. I wish I had. The website puts it more bluntly: “Our purpose at OneTaste is to return to connection by researching our relationship to orgasm.” A recruitment video, to prepare for breakfast.

I was interviewed today by a writer for Wired Online. She said the Shangri-La Diet forums resembled open-source software. It’s a good point; at the SLD forums, a large number of people from all over the place are slowly but surely improving the diet (which is essentially an engineering problem). Because of their improvements, the paperback is about 10% different from the hardback. I’m not a weight-control expert; the people who contribute to the SLD forums are even less so.

The SLD forums can also be compared to a clinical trial of the diet. A large chunk of SLD forum posts are about how well the diet is working, which is what clinical trials are about. A clinical trial of the Shangri-La Diet (or almost anything) requires experts. Only weight-control experts could raise the money (hundreds of thousands of dollars) and have access to the necessary facilities. Anyone can start a forum.

Which is better? In two ways, a clinical trial is better than forums evaluation: 1. (major) You keep track of everyone who starts the trial. 2. (minor) Better measures. More accurate scales, blood tests, standardized food tracking. In six ways, forums evaluation is better than a clinical trial. 1. (major) More realistic. For example: the diet is more flexible, each dieter uses his or her own brain power to figure out what to do. 2. (major) Better reporting of side effects (both positive and negative). With forums, more brainpower goes into their detection. 3. (major). More transparent. Anyone can read the forums to find out what happened. Raw data from clinical trials is almost never available. 4. (major) Speed. Forums are much faster. 5. (major) Cost. Forums are much cheaper. 6. (major) Openness. Anyone can report his/her results on the SLD forums. Clinical trials, on the other hand, are closed to almost everyone.

I use both Firefox (open source) and Internet Explorer (not open source). But I use Firefox far more.

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.

Do you need to be an expert on Topic X to write a serious (i.e., non-celebrity) well-paid well-publicized book about it? Less and less. As I said earlier, I am not a weight-control expert. Mickey DeLorenzo, a Philadelphia “multi-media developer” (website designer?) is even less of a weight-control expert. However, he used his Wii to lose 9 pounds in six weeks (story and data) and is working with an agent from a well-respected agency to write a book about it. The publicity started with digg.

You already knew you no longer have to be an expert on Topic X to write a well-read encyclopedia article about it.

Part 1. Part 2.

Thanks to Elaine Smith.