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Given "it's good that they're donating to mental health organisations" and "healing crystals are bullshit but profitable", it seems plausible to me that it's ne
by rgoulter 7y ago
Given "it's good that they're donating to mental health organisations" and "healing crystals are bullshit but profitable",
it seems plausible to me that it's net-good to sell healing crystals if it leads to more money donated to mental health organisations.
- fastbeef 7y agoWhat if it’s mental health organizations that treat mental issues with crystals?
- rgoulter 7y agoThen the premise of "it's good that they donate to mental health organisations" presumably wouldn't hold. "That the website does one shady thing makes me suspect other things they're doing are shady" makes sense to me, though.
- DangitBobby 7y agoThis take feels like an incarnation of the broken window fallacy to me.
- rgoulter 7y ago"Broken Window Fallacy" is something like "Breaking Windows is actually good for the economy, because money is spent on repairing windows when it otherwise wouldn't be". (The 'fallacy' is not considering the wider negative impacts). Sure. "if the negative impact of selling healing crystals outweighs the positive impact of donating to mental health organisations, then it's bad" makes sense to me.
- Scarblac 7y agoNo, the fallacy is that money being spent is good for the economy by itself. It's a neutral action. Creation of value is good, and breaking a window just to replace it doesn't. GDP counts money being spent, of course.
- Yhippa 7y agoLet's just hope that nobody is forgoing real science-based treatment for these healing crystals, otherwise, we're back to it being a net-negative.
- naraga 7y agosorry, but no mercy for this kind of pseudoscience nonsense.
- raquo 7y agoSo you take into account the positive effects of mental health donations but not the negative effects of the promotion of healing crystals. No shit you'll come out ahead. Promoting bullshit has real costs associated with it. Those bullshit crystals cost people money and don't do anything. People get dumber being convinced to buy them, and will use that dumbness in other parts of life. Promoting a market for delusion and false hope is the last thing anyone needs. It might be hard to put a precise dollar value on second order effects like these, let alone on things like moral integrity, but that doesn't mean this value isn't there. There is no shortage of people who will do whatever bullshitting it takes to earn more money, and that's not something to be celebrated regardless of whether it comes with mental health donations or another trendy atonement mechanism.
- rgoulter 7y ago"So you take into account the positive effects of mental health donations but not the negative effects of the promotion of healing crystals. No shit you'll come out ahead." Ah, I see how my comment can be read like that. I don't mean to say "only consider the positives of one and not the negatives of the other". And "the existence of negatives means the thing is negative" would also be a bad way of thinking about it. The approach ought to be "The benefits should be weighed against the costs".
- raquo 7y agoYes well everyone has a different idea of what to include in the costs, that's all fluffy and can be twisted to suit whatever result one wants. Which is why some people choose moral principles that are more rigid. And well scamming people into buying useless rocks is on the wrong side of mine, no matter what moral kickback it's artificially bundled with.
- piokoch 7y agoI would not say it is net-good. Spreading misinformation, pseudoscience is really, really harmful for the society (global warming is being questioned on the base of various "healing crystals"-like arguments, similarly nuclear energy was (and still is) fought using unscientific arguments leading to the unfortunate situation we have now).
- saintbelford 7y agoHi rgoulter, I'm Tom, the Co Founder of Saint Belford. We don't actually sell the crystals, this is merely a guest blog post from a local business who do.