3 ms·

I feel many commentators here are overly dismissive of TCM to the point of intellectual laziness and even geopolitically-motivated paranoia. Yes, there are plen

I feel many commentators here are overly dismissive of TCM to the point of intellectual laziness and even geopolitically-motivated paranoia. Yes, there are plenty of things in TCM to be skeptical about, but skepticism shouldn't be about dismissal but about improving tangible outcomes. Regular/western medicine (however you want to call it in contrast to TCM) can treat many big things but I'm sure many of you have had experience with small, vague, chronic things (like "stomach discomfort problems") that doctors have had absolutely no idea how to deal with, and they just send you away with a "take paracetamol for a few weeks and come back when you're nearly dying lol" attitude. In the mean time TCM can treat many of those cases even if you don't believe in their theories. The current medical paradigm has blind spots, and we should be humble enough to acknowledge that alternative perspectives, even if they're not as rigorous as we'd like, can give us chances to improve patient outcomes. Wholesale dismissal to the point of labeling TCM as "govt propaganda" is forsaking improved patient outcomes for the purpose of winning an argument based on intellectual purity.

freen 1y ago
It is several orders of magnitude cheaper to produce bullshit than it is to produce truth and/or invalidate bullshit. The truth value/prediction value for the knowledge system as a whole produced by the invalidation of bullshit is orders of magnitude less valuable than the creation of truth. Note: the production of bullshit can be VERY economically/socially valuable for the specific producer of bullshit, but emphatically not valuable for the entire knowledge system. Tolerance of bullshit in a field decreases the likelihood of robust invalidation by others due to the above. It is a plague on intellectual pursuits, and why we are well aware of several famous “bullshit artists” in the western medical tradition: they are famous because bullshitting is rare, unacceptable, and career destroying. If that is not true of a knowledge system, you have a culture, not a science. Culture is great by the way! Awesome! Important! Culture is not meant to be predictive! Not science though. Great way to tell if you have a science on your hands or a culture: are extremely large quantities of money dependent upon accuracy of predictions? If so, you’ve likely got a science! If not, well, might be a culture.

freen 1y ago

It is several orders of magnitude cheaper to produce bullshit than it is to produce truth and/or invalidate bullshit. The truth value/prediction value for the knowledge system as a whole produced by the invalidation of bullshit is orders of magnitude less valuable than the creation of truth. Note: the production of bullshit can be VERY economically/socially valuable for the specific producer of bullshit, but emphatically not valuable for the entire knowledge system. Tolerance of bullshit in a field decreases the likelihood of robust invalidation by others due to the above. It is a plague on intellectual pursuits, and why we are well aware of several famous “bullshit artists” in the western medical tradition: they are famous because bullshitting is rare, unacceptable, and career destroying. If that is not true of a knowledge system, you have a culture, not a science. Culture is great by the way! Awesome! Important! Culture is not meant to be predictive! Not science though. Great way to tell if you have a science on your hands or a culture: are extremely large quantities of money dependent upon accuracy of predictions? If so, you’ve likely got a science! If not, well, might be a culture.