2 ms·

There are two ways to be in bed with an ache: lying and turning. If you had an undiagnosable chronic illness with flareups, would you content yourself with your

There are two ways to be in bed with an ache: lying and turning. If you had an undiagnosable chronic illness with flareups, would you content yourself with your life being essentially over, or would you keep trying to alter your environment until other people thought you had a weird lifestyle? I think pretty much all of the ambitious professionals on this forum would be wrapping themselves in tin foil like a baked potato long before they gave up on being alert and active enough to self-actualize. If you thought non-ionizing radiation only coupled to the human body thermally, it could instead be trying gluten-free, or notroopics, or buying a lot of air filters, and if your illness went into remission after starting you wouldn't want to switch back and forth twenty times to build up a statistical sample.

BJones12 2y ago
> If you thought non-ionizing radiation only coupled to the human body thermally, it could instead be trying gluten-free, or notroopics, or buying a lot of air filters, and if your illness went into remission after starting you wouldn't want to switch back and forth twenty times to build up a statistical sample. I think it's underappreciated that superstition is rational is when the cost of experimentation is high.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > I think it's underappreciated that superstition is rational is when the cost of experimentation is high. I believe your observation is underappreciated.
marcosdumay 2y ago
You'd need only 3 or 4 times for a very useful sample with basically the same applicability as 20. If it's a low cost change, sure, you may not even question if it's doing anything. But if it's a major change in lifestyle, I would absolutely try to check if it's working. Even more because if it's only incidentally working, it could stop working at any time and leave you knowing nothing useful right at the point where you are both sick again and paying the cost of that lifestyle change. Do that again and again and you are sure to destroy your life.
LorenPechtel 2y ago
You don't need a bunch of cycling back and forth. A few times is plenty. I have every-varying food sensitivities (mostly exposure causes sensitivity which will eventually fade if I leave the offender alone for long enough) and I've been around the loop of figuring out what is it now many, many times. (At least to the degree I can figure it out--more than once it's clearly been an impurity in an item. And you often don't know--I know "artificial flavors" is very likely to be a problem--but what exactly? I'm no chemophobe--second on my list of likely to be a problem is "natural flavors".) Rarely does it take me more than one repeat to be confident of what is bothering me.
nitwit005 2y ago
Since time is part of your data, you can often become extremely confident in a treatment with a very quick trial. I recently tried an allergy medication. Problem cleared up under an hour after I took a pill, re-appeared next day with no treatment, and then once again cleared up under an hour after taking pill. It's extremely unlikely my body decided to randomly get healthier after taking medication, and unhealthy when I stopped. A placebo effect is possible of course, but if it was actually eliminating the symptoms, that's still a good result for the individual.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  You're dealing with something that can change in an hour, but a sampling of general health issues (hangovers, susceptibility to viral infection, healing of muscles and soft tissues after normal wear and tear) shows that the time constant ranges from days to months.
  - nitwit005 2y ago
    The same principle applies, but you need more time for the trials, rather than 20 trials.

BJones12 2y ago

> If you thought non-ionizing radiation only coupled to the human body thermally, it could instead be trying gluten-free, or notroopics, or buying a lot of air filters, and if your illness went into remission after starting you wouldn't want to switch back and forth twenty times to build up a statistical sample. I think it's underappreciated that superstition is rational is when the cost of experimentation is high.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
> I think it's underappreciated that superstition is rational is when the cost of experimentation is high. I believe your observation is underappreciated.

marcosdumay 2y ago

You'd need only 3 or 4 times for a very useful sample with basically the same applicability as 20. If it's a low cost change, sure, you may not even question if it's doing anything. But if it's a major change in lifestyle, I would absolutely try to check if it's working. Even more because if it's only incidentally working, it could stop working at any time and leave you knowing nothing useful right at the point where you are both sick again and paying the cost of that lifestyle change. Do that again and again and you are sure to destroy your life.

LorenPechtel 2y ago

You don't need a bunch of cycling back and forth. A few times is plenty. I have every-varying food sensitivities (mostly exposure causes sensitivity which will eventually fade if I leave the offender alone for long enough) and I've been around the loop of figuring out what is it now many, many times. (At least to the degree I can figure it out--more than once it's clearly been an impurity in an item. And you often don't know--I know "artificial flavors" is very likely to be a problem--but what exactly? I'm no chemophobe--second on my list of likely to be a problem is "natural flavors".) Rarely does it take me more than one repeat to be confident of what is bothering me.

nitwit005 2y ago

Since time is part of your data, you can often become extremely confident in a treatment with a very quick trial. I recently tried an allergy medication. Problem cleared up under an hour after I took a pill, re-appeared next day with no treatment, and then once again cleared up under an hour after taking pill. It's extremely unlikely my body decided to randomly get healthier after taking medication, and unhealthy when I stopped. A placebo effect is possible of course, but if it was actually eliminating the symptoms, that's still a good result for the individual.

whatshisface 2y ago
You're dealing with something that can change in an hour, but a sampling of general health issues (hangovers, susceptibility to viral infection, healing of muscles and soft tissues after normal wear and tear) shows that the time constant ranges from days to months.
- nitwit005 2y ago
  The same principle applies, but you need more time for the trials, rather than 20 trials.