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> It's not even necessarily the case that going outside is healthy, but that healthy people tend to go outside more. This is a departure from the discussion of

> It's not even necessarily the case that going outside is healthy, but that healthy people tend to go outside more. This is a departure from the discussion of supplementing vitamin D though, isn't it? I guess the treatment "go out and do sports" is a very different one compared to "X amount of vitamin D per day as a supplement" and the former may indeed be healthy, while the latter may not be, even though they both result in higher levels of vitamin D.

fuckyah 6y ago
The point is, you can’t just supplement everything and just eat starch and sit before the computer all day. It’s a healthy balanced lifestyle that matters.
scott_s 6y ago
> This is a departure from the discussion of supplementing vitamin D though, isn't it? I don't think so, no. If my hypothesis is correct, the problem is not that they didn't go outside and play sports. The problem is that they are sick, and sick people don't go outside as much. Forget Vitamin D for a moment. Imagine that every time you were outside for an hour, the Outside Fairy granted you one Outside Token. Over the course of a month, it's reasonable to assume that healthy people would have more Outside Tokens than sick people. But these Outside Tokens obviously would have no causal effect on whether or not people are sick. Giving sick people Outside Tokens would obviously not help them - their problem is that they are sick. They have less Outside Tokens because being sick makes it more difficult to be outside for an hour. In other words, the arrow of causation is being sick -> less Outside Tokens, and not being sick -> more Outside Tokens. If that's the case, then Outside Tokens are irrelevant to treating the sick people. If, say, they have cancer, you should ignore the Outside Tokens and treat the cancer with all of the standard means we have of treating cancer. They hypothesis is that "low levels of Vitamin D" are just those Outside Tokens. (Yes, when Vitamin D levels are low enough, that can cause other kinds of health problems. But this hypothesis is that what we're measuring as "low" is still within the healthy range. How do we know when it's not in the healthy range? When it tends to cause the kinds of problems we are more confident are directly linked to low levels of Vitamin D.)
- nradov 6y ago
  Perhaps sick people should be going outside more? There doesn't appear to be any reliable clinical evidence of better outcomes for respiratory disease patients who stay inside. Someone ought to run a clinical trial on that.
- dnh44 6y ago
  That’s very true, but Outside Tokens are really cheap and are low risk so encouraging people to buy them seems like a reasonable hedge to make until the hypothesis can be proven.
  - cortic 6y ago
    So long as it doesn't supplant other real treatments, which it inevitably will within the framework of a recommendation to potentially very ill/desperate people.

fuckyah 6y ago

The point is, you can’t just supplement everything and just eat starch and sit before the computer all day. It’s a healthy balanced lifestyle that matters.

scott_s 6y ago

> This is a departure from the discussion of supplementing vitamin D though, isn't it? I don't think so, no. If my hypothesis is correct, the problem is not that they didn't go outside and play sports. The problem is that they are sick, and sick people don't go outside as much. Forget Vitamin D for a moment. Imagine that every time you were outside for an hour, the Outside Fairy granted you one Outside Token. Over the course of a month, it's reasonable to assume that healthy people would have more Outside Tokens than sick people. But these Outside Tokens obviously would have no causal effect on whether or not people are sick. Giving sick people Outside Tokens would obviously not help them - their problem is that they are sick. They have less Outside Tokens because being sick makes it more difficult to be outside for an hour. In other words, the arrow of causation is being sick -> less Outside Tokens, and not being sick -> more Outside Tokens. If that's the case, then Outside Tokens are irrelevant to treating the sick people. If, say, they have cancer, you should ignore the Outside Tokens and treat the cancer with all of the standard means we have of treating cancer. They hypothesis is that "low levels of Vitamin D" are just those Outside Tokens. (Yes, when Vitamin D levels are low enough, that can cause other kinds of health problems. But this hypothesis is that what we're measuring as "low" is still within the healthy range. How do we know when it's not in the healthy range? When it tends to cause the kinds of problems we are more confident are directly linked to low levels of Vitamin D.)

nradov 6y ago
Perhaps sick people should be going outside more? There doesn't appear to be any reliable clinical evidence of better outcomes for respiratory disease patients who stay inside. Someone ought to run a clinical trial on that.
dnh44 6y ago
That’s very true, but Outside Tokens are really cheap and are low risk so encouraging people to buy them seems like a reasonable hedge to make until the hypothesis can be proven.
- cortic 6y ago
  So long as it doesn't supplant other real treatments, which it inevitably will within the framework of a recommendation to potentially very ill/desperate people.