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Placebo can provide actual benefit to an individual. Easing suffering, thus reducing stress levels, which in turn help body to function better. But you are qui

by fsloth 6y ago

Placebo can provide actual benefit to an individual. Easing suffering, thus reducing stress levels, which in turn help body to function better. But you are quite right, individuals with strong confirmation bias and a large social media following are harmfull. Still, that does not mean individuals should not perform harmless experiments. Individuals should experiment. But they should not claim their findings as universal truths.

ekianjo 6y ago
> Placebo can provide actual benefit to an individual. It depends what you refer to when you talk about a placebo. What people call the "placebo effect" is in practice "regression to the mean" in most cases, which is the fact that you would get better over time even if you did absolutely nothing. You will notice that placebo 'effect' works best in contexts where the illness has a psychological component (mental illnesses and the like), but absolutely fail to show any effect at all in other contexts like viral infections. > Individuals should experiment. But they should not claim their findings as universal truths. I agree, but how can you prevent people from claiming that something worked for them if they are absolutely convinced of it. It's an unsolvable problem.
- fsloth 6y ago
  "how can you prevent people from claiming..." Do I understand correctly that you oppose people searching holistic remedies to their ills because they might accidentally get better, and a percentage of these might accidentally turn into snake oil salespeople?
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    > that you oppose people searching holistic remedies to their ills Nope, I am for individual freedoms as long as it happens in their private sphere. > a percentage of these might accidentally turn into snake oil salespeople the problem is that bullshit takes a lot more time to debunk that it takes to spread. So you end up with hoaxes, false claims, rumors, confirmation bias spreading through other people's minds with extreme speed because of how we communicate right now. And my point is that as long as you can't make people understand that "anecdotal evidence" means absolutely nothing, you can't stop this from happening: it means you will end up with bullshit spreading everywhere and good Science being ignored or simply drowned in a torrent of unfounded claims.
  - cattlefarmer 6y ago
    I used to be of the opinion that it doesn't affect me directly so I don't care. But as more of us don't care, it becomes more common place, and then our (more gullible) relatives start taking in this information and will not listen to you because everyones knows it works! Whatever "it" is. So no, I believe that we must actively fight false information. Not "we" in an individual sense, but "we" as a society, and that means regulation.
kilroy_jones 6y ago
Hard to determine if a certain practice is harmless or not.

by fsloth 6y ago

ekianjo 6y ago

> Placebo can provide actual benefit to an individual. It depends what you refer to when you talk about a placebo. What people call the "placebo effect" is in practice "regression to the mean" in most cases, which is the fact that you would get better over time even if you did absolutely nothing. You will notice that placebo 'effect' works best in contexts where the illness has a psychological component (mental illnesses and the like), but absolutely fail to show any effect at all in other contexts like viral infections. > Individuals should experiment. But they should not claim their findings as universal truths. I agree, but how can you prevent people from claiming that something worked for them if they are absolutely convinced of it. It's an unsolvable problem.

fsloth 6y ago
"how can you prevent people from claiming..." Do I understand correctly that you oppose people searching holistic remedies to their ills because they might accidentally get better, and a percentage of these might accidentally turn into snake oil salespeople?
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > that you oppose people searching holistic remedies to their ills Nope, I am for individual freedoms as long as it happens in their private sphere. > a percentage of these might accidentally turn into snake oil salespeople the problem is that bullshit takes a lot more time to debunk that it takes to spread. So you end up with hoaxes, false claims, rumors, confirmation bias spreading through other people's minds with extreme speed because of how we communicate right now. And my point is that as long as you can't make people understand that "anecdotal evidence" means absolutely nothing, you can't stop this from happening: it means you will end up with bullshit spreading everywhere and good Science being ignored or simply drowned in a torrent of unfounded claims.
- cattlefarmer 6y ago
  I used to be of the opinion that it doesn't affect me directly so I don't care. But as more of us don't care, it becomes more common place, and then our (more gullible) relatives start taking in this information and will not listen to you because everyones knows it works! Whatever "it" is. So no, I believe that we must actively fight false information. Not "we" in an individual sense, but "we" as a society, and that means regulation.

kilroy_jones 6y ago

Hard to determine if a certain practice is harmless or not.