Singularity U, or Singularity Woo?

http://www.skepticblog.org/2012/07/05/singularity-u-or-singularity-woo/

by tokenadult • 14 years ago

109 106 14 years ago

dmix• 14 years ago

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

drcode4• 14 years ago

That's disappointing though. Nobody is going to give credence to the crazy-sounding core tenets of Singularity U if they allow pseudo scientists on their staff.

If I were in charge of Singularity U I would view this as immediate grounds for firing Mr. Wadhwa.

aroberge• 14 years ago

When a VP Academic makes a statement, this statement is supposed to reflect the view of the entire institution. When a VP Academic makes such public statements demonstrating gross misunderstanding of science (which I would describe as incompetence), (s)he can normally expect to be fired if (s)he works for a reputable institution.

demachina• 14 years ago

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.

nodemaker3• 14 years ago

>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!

jere3• 14 years ago

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.

drcode4• 14 years ago

I'm ambivalent about Kurzweil because he has been a great early popularizer of empirically/scientifically-founded futurism.

But at this point he is probably doing more harm than good, for the reasons you describe.

jere3• 14 years ago

Sure. Even Isaac Newton had some crazy beliefs ("wrote more on Biblical hermeneutics and occult studies than on science and mathematics" according to wikipedia).

psykotic3• 14 years ago

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

natedsaint2• 14 years ago

I'm finding this stuff out a lot, lately. Especially about Kurzweil. Is it fair to say that the futurist movement is less about cynicism/skepticism and more about idealism and optimism for the future, or is this just the case for Kurzweil? Are there other members of the futurist movement who would disagree with this endorsement by the homeopathic community?

rmc3• 14 years ago

a licensed homeopath

Henriette, the late pet cat of Ben Goldacre, a UK anti-pseudoscience writer, is a licenced nutritionist. Poor old Hettie was able to get the certificate after she died.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/sep/30/badscience.res...

JonnieCache• 14 years ago

>Terry Grossman, a licensed homeopath

I am a fully licensed archmage. Anyone who wishes to get their journeyman warlocking certification should send 25 BTC to the address in my profile.

mtrimpe• 14 years ago

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.

sgt1012• 14 years ago

"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.

drcode4• 14 years ago

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.

sgt1012• 14 years ago

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.

rpbertp13• 14 years ago

It's not contradictory to say that the scientific method produces our best understanding of a subject to date and that its statements are falsifiable. In fact, it is because of the standard of falsifiability that scientific knowledge reflects, in all likelihood, the actual facts much more accurately than say, religious dogma.

rfurlan• 14 years ago

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

localhost3000• 14 years ago

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

drcode4• 14 years ago

aka bullshit

natedsaint2• 14 years ago

Skeptic's dictionary has a pretty good definition: http://www.skepdic.com/woowoo.html

prodigal_erik• 14 years ago

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Woo

http://www.skepdic.com/woowoo.html

It's the non-denominational version of making stuff up while untroubled by complete lack of evidence. Also the sound effect that goes along with handwaving.

choxi• 14 years ago

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

zargon2• 14 years ago

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

unimpressive2• 14 years ago

Yes.

I had to pause a second to search my mental vocabulary database to make sure it was what I thought it was, but yeah. I wouldn't say it's the most common word used to describe the concept, but I would think that it would be well known.

evincarofautumn• 14 years ago

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

ippisl3• 14 years ago

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.

tatsuke952• 14 years ago

>"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?

freshhawk5• 14 years ago

> 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 is a strange sentence. So this hypothetical alternative treatment has been shown to work better and with less side effects and also that it's risk is low, but is only "non-fully proven".

If you showed low risk and better efficacy and less side effects then that's pretty much fully proven. What's left?

DaveChild• 14 years ago

> less side effects

Well, yes. Less effects of all sorts naturally means less side effects as well.

cjensen• 14 years ago

Do you know what they call 'alternative medicine' that's been proved to be useless? "Alternative Medicine"

blackjack160• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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?

jaekwon3• 14 years ago

it blows my mind that this got downvoted.

nodemaker3• 14 years ago

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".

Mystitat• 14 years ago

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

That's unfortunate that in this day and age, there are people who can't distinguish between scientifically proven natural remedies and homeopathy. Natural remedies work because they contain chemicals that have an effect on the body. For example, willow bark contains salicylic acid. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aspirin

Science, people!

rms• 14 years ago

Agreed! When homeopathy works, it's because people call active formulations of herbal medicines homeopathic, even when they have way more than homeopathic doses in them.

nodemaker3• 14 years ago

Yeah it makes me mad that complete BS medicine with no active ingredient gets mixed up with actually effective herbal remedies.

realize2• 14 years ago

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.

waterlesscloud2• 14 years ago

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?

MartinCron4• 14 years ago

Credibility isn't exactly the same thing as reputation.

Some authors have more credibility than others. If someone positions themselves in the realm of the incredible (which is what homeopathy is), they lose credibility, as they should.

realize2• 14 years ago

Of course I evaluate each of his points on its merit, and may continue to do so. But part of how much mental "weighting" to put on his points is based on how much I respect how his thinking process goes, and how it lines up to mine. That weighting just got significantly reduced.

gwern2• 14 years ago

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.

rdl2• 14 years ago

Didn't he also attack 20 under 20 or anyone leaving the formalized educational system?

Alex39178• 14 years ago

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.

MartinCron4• 14 years ago

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?

Alex39178• 14 years ago

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.

ippisl3• 14 years ago

citation needed.

nickpinkston• 14 years ago

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.

akiselev2• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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

jacoblyles• 14 years ago

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.

eavc• 14 years ago

>weigh evidence, arguments, and logic

Philosophy 101

Jach• 14 years ago

What school even just mentions Bayes' theorem in Philosophy 101?

Eliezer2• 14 years ago

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".

TeMPOraL• 14 years ago

jacoblyles most likely got that phrase from your writings :).

rdl2• 14 years ago

Is there any relationship between Singularity Institute and Singularity University?

paulsutter• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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

bfrs• 14 years ago

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...

technotony• 14 years ago

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.

justsaying99• 14 years ago

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.

jaekwon3• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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).

jaekwon3• 14 years ago

My faith in humanity has been restored. This calls for a beer if you or any true skeptics are around the bay area.

maxerickson• 14 years ago

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...)

chris_wot• 14 years ago

If x, then x. x can be true or false! It is true that if false, then false. It is also true that if true, then true.

Singularity U, or Singularity Woo?

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