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I would be honestly curious to understand what people object to in this comment.

by xevb3k 8y ago

tcj_phx 8y ago
I didn't vote your comment down, but I would suspect it was this line: > Because we’re starting to see a break down in trust in the western world too (for example with the anti-vaccination movement). This sentence is borderline-sympathetic with the anti-vaccination crowd. The most down-voted comment I've ever posted at HN was somewhat anti-vaccination: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17059316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17059316 (I had chickenpox. Once. It was a very mild case. If the medical scientists cared about science, they'd try to figure out why children have varying levels of severity in their immunity-building experiences of chickenpox. But vaccines are perfectly safe (except for the children who definitely can't have them), so the official medical standard of care calls for vaccinating against everything as soon as possible.)
- xevb3k 8y ago
  Oh, it wasn’t meant to be sympathetic at all. I guess I didn’t clearly express myself. I was trying to point out that belief in pseudo-science comes about through a loss of trust in societies institutions. Why people lose trust is another discussion, but I don’t think it’s through an entirely rational process...
  - tcj_phx 8y ago
    > Why people lose trust is another discussion, but I don’t think it’s through an entirely rational process... I think "losing trust" is entirely a rational process. 20th century medical science suffered from single-causism [0] and frequently jumped to conclusions [1]. Institutions built treatment programs based around simplistic assumptions which were later shown to be false (cardiology/cholesterol, psychiatry/chemical-imbalance, cancer/genetics, etc), but never corrected course. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_to_conclusions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_to_conclusions I believe the so-called 'obesity Epidemic' is mostly a simple case of mass-poisoning with polyunsaturated oils. The experts interpreted preliminary science to decide that saturated fat was unhealthy, told us that polyunsaturated fats were safer, and the public's health has suffered ever since. Modern medicine is great when it works, or at least helps a little. The failures of modern medicine deserve more discussion.

I would be honestly curious to understand what people object to in this comment.

by xevb3k 8y ago

I would be honestly curious to understand what people object to in this comment.

I didn't vote your comment down, but I would suspect it was this line: > Because we’re starting to see a break down in trust in the western world too (for example with the anti-vaccination movement). This sentence is borderline-sympathetic with the anti-vaccination crowd. The most down-voted comment I've ever posted at HN was somewhat anti-vaccination: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17059316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17059316 (I had chickenpox. Once. It was a very mild case. If the medical scientists cared about science, they'd try to figure out why children have varying levels of severity in their immunity-building experiences of chickenpox. But vaccines are perfectly safe (except for the children who definitely can't have them), so the official medical standard of care calls for vaccinating against everything as soon as possible.)

xevb3k 8y ago
Oh, it wasn’t meant to be sympathetic at all. I guess I didn’t clearly express myself. I was trying to point out that belief in pseudo-science comes about through a loss of trust in societies institutions. Why people lose trust is another discussion, but I don’t think it’s through an entirely rational process...
- tcj_phx 8y ago
  > Why people lose trust is another discussion, but I don’t think it’s through an entirely rational process... I think "losing trust" is entirely a rational process. 20th century medical science suffered from single-causism [0] and frequently jumped to conclusions [1]. Institutions built treatment programs based around simplistic assumptions which were later shown to be false (cardiology/cholesterol, psychiatry/chemical-imbalance, cancer/genetics, etc), but never corrected course. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_to_conclusions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_to_conclusions I believe the so-called 'obesity Epidemic' is mostly a simple case of mass-poisoning with polyunsaturated oils. The experts interpreted preliminary science to decide that saturated fat was unhealthy, told us that polyunsaturated fats were safer, and the public's health has suffered ever since. Modern medicine is great when it works, or at least helps a little. The failures of modern medicine deserve more discussion.