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Anyone with a half rational brain should be alarmed by this statement. I'm much more alarmed by that statement. I'm not here to debate the efficacy of TCM or

Anyone with a half rational brain should be alarmed by this statement. I'm much more alarmed by that statement. I'm not here to debate the efficacy of TCM or homeopathy, that's a waste of everyone's time. But the guy has clearly done a huge amount of research and drawn on whatever expertise he could determine might contribute to his quest to save his life, and he deserves better than this kind of middlebrow dismissal. (See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692794 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4692794)

jsaxton86 14y ago
To be fair to the original poster, you didn't post his entire statement. If you look at the entire statement, he made several intelligent points about TCM, any one of which could have been the starting point for an intelligent conversation if you disagreed with what he had to say. Lots of comments on HN could be considered a "middlebrow dismissal," but this is not one of them. On another note, the original statement in question kind of reminds me of a Steve Jobs quote: "I really didn't want them to open up my body, so I tried to see if a few other things would work."
- tomhoward 14y ago
  He didn't make several intelligent points about TCM - he made a single dogmatic one, which was patronising and contemptuous to anyone who's actually interested in the substance of the original post.
robbiep 14y ago
My point is that this man is searching for a cure. His form of cure is a beautiful, inclusive, democratic thing (I mean that with no sarcasm) including art, doctors, other patients, support from other run of the mill humans, and the treatment opinions and recommendations of people that are formally or informally trained in treatments that are not scientifically valid. Your suggestion that I am undertaking 'middlebrow dismissal' of this man's work and passion misses the point of my post entirely. Which I will reiterate for you, is not that I disagree with this man's idea, or the general principle, but that there is no filter or adjustment in place to take treatment suggestions and approximate a 'better treatment' A deeper point you raise is, does every point of view have merits, and should it be given the same airtime as all other views. This is particularly important when someone's views begin attracting a lot of attention: The good, or valid, ideas should be supported, and the invalid suggestions should be weeded out by discourse. I believe that any patient has the rights to make their own treatment choices, and they should not be judged as a result of those choices (Unless they are a parent deciding for an incompetent child, however there are many legal cases that establish when this should be possible) But this patient is influential; what he says will influence other patients with his condition; I have 2 issues here: 1) It breeds 'back door' legitimacy for fraudulent treatments 2) Some alternative-inclined patients may choose to opt solely for those treatments, which will kill them. So this error with his model should be pointed out, that a more perfect use of modern communications technologies can be used to enhance the patient's quality of life and treatment.
- JabavuAdams 14y ago
  > Some alternative-inclined patients may choose to opt solely for those treatments, which will kill them. This kind of negative feedback loop is not a bad thing.
  - taybin 14y ago
    Why would that be? Surely you're not suggesting that people who make poor medical choices deserve to die...
    - tomhoward 14y ago
      Yeah. Surely not...
    - JabavuAdams 14y ago
      People who make poor decisions will by definition have poor outcomes. But maybe they don't have the same metric. What seems like a poor decision to us may make them perfectly happy until they die in a way that's consistent with their (incorrect-to-us) beliefs. The best we can do is to make information available, to debunk scams and de-incentivize scamming, and to continue to learn more about human cognitive biases.
- tomhoward 14y ago
  Does every point of view have merits, and should it be given the same airtime as all other views. He doesn't need you to point out what has merits and what should be given airtime. His approach is designed to determine what will work, based on evidence. He should be entitled to include absolutely anything he chooses as something that may have the slimmest possible hope of being in some way beneficial. If his open-source approach is valid, anything that is ineffective will be shown to be so. there is no filter or adjustment in place to take treatment suggestions and approximate a 'better treatment' The whole open-source process is the filter. The point is that his process, if it works, will find a far better outcome than a dogmatic approach represented by such a sentiment as "anyone with a half rational brain should be alarmed by this statement".
cmccabe 14y ago
Doing research is no guarantee that you'll come to the correct conclusion. For thousands of years, people treated serious illnesses with leeches, bloodletting, branding, ingestion of liquid mercury, and so forth. These treatments did not do any good, and in fact they did harm. If people stop being skeptical and calling out bullshit for what it is, then those days will return. The mainstream media have been very irresponsible in this regard, reporting on a lot of highly questionable studies on small numbers of people as if they were incontrovertible truth.

jsaxton86 14y ago

To be fair to the original poster, you didn't post his entire statement. If you look at the entire statement, he made several intelligent points about TCM, any one of which could have been the starting point for an intelligent conversation if you disagreed with what he had to say. Lots of comments on HN could be considered a "middlebrow dismissal," but this is not one of them. On another note, the original statement in question kind of reminds me of a Steve Jobs quote: "I really didn't want them to open up my body, so I tried to see if a few other things would work."

tomhoward 14y ago
He didn't make several intelligent points about TCM - he made a single dogmatic one, which was patronising and contemptuous to anyone who's actually interested in the substance of the original post.

robbiep 14y ago

My point is that this man is searching for a cure. His form of cure is a beautiful, inclusive, democratic thing (I mean that with no sarcasm) including art, doctors, other patients, support from other run of the mill humans, and the treatment opinions and recommendations of people that are formally or informally trained in treatments that are not scientifically valid. Your suggestion that I am undertaking 'middlebrow dismissal' of this man's work and passion misses the point of my post entirely. Which I will reiterate for you, is not that I disagree with this man's idea, or the general principle, but that there is no filter or adjustment in place to take treatment suggestions and approximate a 'better treatment' A deeper point you raise is, does every point of view have merits, and should it be given the same airtime as all other views. This is particularly important when someone's views begin attracting a lot of attention: The good, or valid, ideas should be supported, and the invalid suggestions should be weeded out by discourse. I believe that any patient has the rights to make their own treatment choices, and they should not be judged as a result of those choices (Unless they are a parent deciding for an incompetent child, however there are many legal cases that establish when this should be possible) But this patient is influential; what he says will influence other patients with his condition; I have 2 issues here: 1) It breeds 'back door' legitimacy for fraudulent treatments 2) Some alternative-inclined patients may choose to opt solely for those treatments, which will kill them. So this error with his model should be pointed out, that a more perfect use of modern communications technologies can be used to enhance the patient's quality of life and treatment.

JabavuAdams 14y ago
> Some alternative-inclined patients may choose to opt solely for those treatments, which will kill them. This kind of negative feedback loop is not a bad thing.
- taybin 14y ago
  Why would that be? Surely you're not suggesting that people who make poor medical choices deserve to die...
  - tomhoward 14y ago
    Yeah. Surely not...
  - JabavuAdams 14y ago
    People who make poor decisions will by definition have poor outcomes. But maybe they don't have the same metric. What seems like a poor decision to us may make them perfectly happy until they die in a way that's consistent with their (incorrect-to-us) beliefs. The best we can do is to make information available, to debunk scams and de-incentivize scamming, and to continue to learn more about human cognitive biases.
tomhoward 14y ago
Does every point of view have merits, and should it be given the same airtime as all other views. He doesn't need you to point out what has merits and what should be given airtime. His approach is designed to determine what will work, based on evidence. He should be entitled to include absolutely anything he chooses as something that may have the slimmest possible hope of being in some way beneficial. If his open-source approach is valid, anything that is ineffective will be shown to be so. there is no filter or adjustment in place to take treatment suggestions and approximate a 'better treatment' The whole open-source process is the filter. The point is that his process, if it works, will find a far better outcome than a dogmatic approach represented by such a sentiment as "anyone with a half rational brain should be alarmed by this statement".

cmccabe 14y ago

Doing research is no guarantee that you'll come to the correct conclusion. For thousands of years, people treated serious illnesses with leeches, bloodletting, branding, ingestion of liquid mercury, and so forth. These treatments did not do any good, and in fact they did harm. If people stop being skeptical and calling out bullshit for what it is, then those days will return. The mainstream media have been very irresponsible in this regard, reporting on a lot of highly questionable studies on small numbers of people as if they were incontrovertible truth.