Hi, apologies for the delayed response; took a while to find the time to
write a carefully constructed e-mail.

First, as a general point please don't take my reluctance to draw
conclusions from Prof de Vany personally as anything other scientific
skepticism. My job is researching computer vision algorithms and I've
often come up with algorithms that I believed were really effective and
shown them to colleagues on the test data I used to develop them only for
the more detatched colleague to point out that the data I'm using really
isn't testing the algorithm. When I've retried them on more testing data,
sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. The point is not that
looking at results on unrepresentative underlying data (e.g., Art) means
they're automatically wrong but just that you really can't tell.

On Sat, 28 Apr 2001, K M Ma wrote:

> I think there is a tendency to idealize the achievement of other people and
> assign the difference between them and ourselves to something that we can't
> control, eg luck, genetics, etc.  The greater you idealize and overlook the
> method of accomplishment, the more likely you are to think it is luck or
> genetics.

This is true; indeed in any individual there are effects of both the
methods of accomplishment and genetics. Basically I'm saying that the
sheer magnitude of Art's physical condition makes it difficult to believe
that there's not a significant genetic contribution there, so that
figuring out what the division between the two is is problematic in his
case.

> In regards to D. Tweed's post, if you look carefully at Art's previous
> posts on his athleticism, he's mentioned only once how well he finished in
> a competition:
>
> "I take up a new sport now and then or go back to an old one.  I =
> just did my first Grand Prix motorcycle race in years this =
> weekend; it's a combination of motocross, desert, and pavement =
> racing.  I'm still stiff today, but I had a great time.  Didn't =
> win, even though I bet I was the most fit in the over 60 class.  =
> Adaptation is highly specific and the few guys who finished ahead =
> of me do it every weekend.  It is a skill and fitness sport and my =
> skills are rusty and my fitness too general."
>
> In fact, it's the only time he's mentioned competition.  I don't get the
> impression that Art can compete well against any one in any sport of any
> age.  He does say that he can participate (paraphrased) comfortably in
> whatever he chooses to take up.

I was going from memory and used the word `competition' wrongly. He talks
about:

* Jogging comfortably with a group of fit friends, then `burning them off'
in a late sprint.

* Despite not being a regular player or liking golf, having a much better
drive than the people he was playing against.

* My memory says he also talked about significantly better speed and
agility on the racquetball court than the people he plays
against. However I can't find this one in the archives so I may be
misattributing.

> So if I were to ask you (D. Tweed) to be more specific about what makes Art
> an outlier, what would you say?

Again from memory of stuff from the archives, things which may me
unwilling to take the position that Art's physical condition
__definitely doesn't have a significant genetic component__ are:

* When all the rest of his family go down ill he says he doesn't get ill

* When he has a scan the doctor running it points out that the lack of
plaque-type constrictions on one of the major blood pathways into his
brain (carotid artery) is one of the best he's seen in people of any age.

* When he cites his HDL : LDL ratios on the list, several people who
appear knowledgable about such things say `I didn't know a ratio that
good was physically possible' and `Dr xxx would conclude that Art is
inherently immune from all heart disease'. (Quotes only approximate.)

* His surgeon says he has an incredibly low level of scarring after a
major operation (attributes possibly to anti-oxidants).

Now, again I'm not definitively saying that such things aren't primarily
attributable to his ev-fit lifestyle and the anti-oxidants/supplements
he's taking but particularly since I don't know of any evidence that he's
ever been otherwise I'm unwilling to try and draw conclusions from
him. (`Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence', with
`claims' not in any way being used pejoratively.)

> To bring in Keith's email, I would say that following a rigorous physical
> regime for 50 years, whatever the program, is a hallmark of an outlier.
>
> And perhaps the genetics is in having the drive and disclipine to keep up
> the program and the mental makeup that allows him to devise one that is
> unique, substantive, and perhaps the ability to resist the cravings of
> unhealthy foods.
>
> I have friends who are addicted to alcohol, cigarettes, or sweets, and I
> count my ability to resist them as a blessing.  I am sure that neurological
> differences at some level that account for this.  I don't know how I earned
> mental gifts, or faults for that matter.
>
> This kind of reminds me of those esoteric debates about free will or the
> inevitability of Microsoft's dominance in the view of Brian Arthur's path
> dependence theory.
>
> I doubt Art found Evolutionary Fitness as we know it overnight.  It seems
> to be a body of thinking that he has evolved over time given his personal
> interests, values, experience and feedback. The returns from following the
> program, and the costs of deviating from it, is a calculus unique to him.
> How many hours has Art spent studying disease and longevity?  How long
> would it take for us to accumulate the same knowledge or the same
> background to interpret it?

That's a very good point. In a sense, the reason that I'm so interested in
evidence so that I can believe it from my scientific viewpoint is partly
a sort of placebo effect: if I truly believe it's an effective thing to do
then
I find it easier to accept the things I find inconvenient about living
it. Unfortunately the scientific part of my brain won't let me `pretend to
believe it' so that I get this placebo effect; I have to be positively
convinced that `Ev fit is a significantly better approach to acheiving the
health and fitness goals I want' is better supported than the null
hypothesis `there's no significant difference between ev-fit and more
conventional "healthy eating" for my health and fitness goals'.

> I am sympathetic to D. Tweed, who follows "75%" of EvFit and wonders about
> the cost of deviating because following it completely is a hassle.  Right
> now, I'm 32, 147 lbs, 12% fat.  I'm relatively healthy by appearance.  For
> the first six months, I lifted regularly and watched very carefully what I
> ate, virtually eliminating modern high glycemic carbs from the diet.  Now,
> I've altered my lifting and have added things like rice and bread back into
> the diet because now with the warmer months, I'm dining out with friends
> more, which makes it very hard to eat EvFit and be sated at the same time.
>
> That's a trade-off that I knowingly make even though I don't know precisely
> the cost.  There's a ton of research out there that I could do without
> waiting for Art's book, but I implicitly choose not to by electing to spend
> my free time in other ways.  The uncertainy in the cost is intrinsic to my
> decision to be ignorant or lazy in this area.
>
> I do wish that we could have better access to our metabolic state, like
> blood chemistry.  Perhaps, within a reasonable amount of time, technology
> will enable this.
>
> Right now, my immediate goal is to see a significant increase in lean body
> mass.  Part of that motivation is sheer impatience, part of it is wanting
> feedback to know whether my workout program is indeed efficacious.  What I
> am learning from Art, and the other great thinkers like Warren Buffet, is
> the importance of being consistent and patient over the long term.
> Sometimes we want to achieve something so quickly that we risk harming
> ourselves and achieving nothing in the short term--or the long term.
>
> D. Tweed, and anybody else, what are you doing and how does it affect you
> or make you feel?

I'm basically trying to do `Neanderthin modulated by Art's off the cuff
remark that he cuts down the meat and substitutes the non-carb portions of
a mediterranean style diet' and trying to exercise with sprints,
weight-lifting and general physical activities randomly but following a
power law.

<whinge mode=on>
__At the moment__ I find that I'm eating more meat than I would if I
was eating on the basis of my taste. (As with everything in this
paragraph, there may well be an unconscious influence from
`conventional' healthy eating ideas such as meat should be relatively
minimal.) I also find that the food I tend to cook is bland and lacks
variety: boiled cauliflower very closely approximates boiled spinach
very closely approximates boiled courgettes; salads equally all taste
basically the same to me. I'm very much missing the variety of tastes and
textures in my old diet: spaghetti =/= pizza =/= chilli con carne =/= ...
Equally as you mentioned its a bit of a pain finding suitable food that
you didn't cook yourself, e.g, restaurants.

The physical side I'm better at, but it's still a bit of a struggle to not
allow myself to settle down into a comfortable rhythm of exercise events,
e.g., it's Tuesday evening so `I'm going down the gym and I'll be there
for 1 hour as I always do', but to stay random, e.g, `I last did an
hour-long-gym-session roughly three weeks ago so it'd be suitable for me
to go to the gym to do one tonight'.
<whinge mode=off>

These aren't really big problems, but they're there and to help me accept
them I'd just like to be more convinced about the ev-fit approach.

Many thanks for reading this far :-)

___cheers,_dave________________________________________________________
www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~tweed/pi.htm|tweed's law:  however many computers
email: [log in to unmask]     |    you have, half your time is spent
work tel: (0117) 954-5250      |    waiting for compilations to finish.