Senal
@Senal@programming.dev
- Comment on Brought to you by RFK Jr. 5 days ago:
Are those designations mutually exclusive?
- Comment on She's just defending her country 1 week ago:
Indeed, and is the image posted supposed to be about the character “wonder woman” or gal gadot in a wonder woman costume?
Hint: look at the text
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
i think the miscommunication was mutual, but started with me, apologies.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
An important distinction.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
- I asked about the placebo effect, by name.
- You recited the placebo effect to me like i didn’t just mention it directly.
- I recited it back with extra detail , to make clear that i know what it means.
- You recited it again, with additional detail, and asked me if i misunderstood your reply containing the definition of the thing i was asking about, by name ?
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
You believe a layman is still able to discover something in medicine. We’ll see.
I think the belief that “the only place innovation can come from is trained scientists” is arrogant and unscientific, even in specialised fields.
Im not suggesting people will be producing testable medical end- products on the weekends.
Just that some things are worth testing/looking into, even if its suggested by someone not wearing a white coat.
If anything, the lack of low hanging fruit in the current common knowledge base should be an incentive to look in unorthodox places.
In addition there’s a wealth of historical information that is siloed by culture, language and accessibility (among other things).
That includes dusty old tomes in buried cities but also folk remedies passed down among small villages or families and everything in-between.
Various new snake oils (ivermectin or urine for cancer , COVID and whatnot) sure aren’t it.
Absolutely agree.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
All low hanging fruits we know of.
This is one of those unknown unknown situations where there are things were don’t even know to be looking for.
Like microbes, yes we posited something like them, but the full implications the confirmation weren’t understood until after.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
It’s known to potentially have an effect , even if the actual treatment administered was known(by third parties) to be inert and the effect wasnt the one originally planned.
Thats not the same as not working at all.
This is a core part of blind tests, the whole reason you test using a placebo is to isolate the effects that can’t be attributed to the actual medicine.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
that’s the exact opposite of what i was saying.
Nowadays we can potentially evaluate what is considered “alternative” for actual benefit, and if found then elevate it to actual medical science.
If it’s not considered beneficial we can discard (for now), perhaps a fresh look later when our tooling and understanding has improved.
That way we can try to gain benefit where possible, and definitively ( for the current level of technology and resource ) suggest people kindly not overdose on de-wormer because we’ve scientifically determined it’s stupid and potentially lethal.
- Comment on Just everywhere 1 week ago:
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
Agreed,
Pretty sure anesthesia is similar, (in the not fully understanding the underlying mechanism)
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
ah, that makes sense.
Does that still apply if the underlying mechanism isn’t understood?
I know examples of this exist already , I’m wondering if “proof of effectiveness” really means just the effectiveness in this context.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
I was also going to use aspirin as an example, but I’m also going to post a response i made to a comment further up.
Also psychedelics as a treatment for various psychological ailments.
I need to be more specific in how I mean “alternative” here.
What I mean is “not of the current scientific consensus” , which I realise isn’t exactly the same wording as the wikipedia definition
Thats my bad.
I also failed to mention that it also works the other way as well, where current science is discredited(fully or partially) , due to flaws in it’s methodology, reproducibility or some other reason.
In generalities i was thinking more of how certain branches or offshoots of what was considered to be mainstream ( or mainstream adjacent ) science were later found to be scientifically provable.
An example of this is microbes.
They were posited over the years in varied forms by multiple independent people, but they weren’t really fully accepted until the invention of a way of actually observing them.
This is largely what medicine was prior to the current , formal scientific method, local “medicine people” would have salves, cures, potions and other such concoctions passed down to apprentices, they might have some knowledge of how it works, but most of that knowledge would be in the practical application and treatment using said concoctions.
That’s not to dismiss this practice, the years of experience and experimentation (of a kind) was, in some cases, essential a precursor to modern scientific method.
There are ways of analysing effects and positing theories without fully understanding how the underlying mechanism works.
Sometimes that leads to legitimate data around the effects of a medicine or treatment being dismissed as “alternative”, at least until formal experimentation is done and verified
As i said in another reply, I’m not saying it’s common, all i was saying was that it’s a possibility.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
Agreed,
I was positing the possibility of a move from “alternative” to “scientifically recognised”, not that it was likely to happen.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
Indeed, though I’d argue that’s an issue with modern academia as an industry rather than the scientific method itself.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
That’s certainly a definition.
How dos that definition account for the placebo effect ?
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
Yeah, I saw it after I’d posted.
I need to be more specific in how I mean “alternative” here.
What I mean is “not of the current scientific consensus” , which I realise isn’t exactly the same wording as the wikipedia definition
Thats my bad.
I also failed to mention that it also works the other way as well, where current science is discredited(fully or partially) , due to flaws in it’s methodology, reproducibility or some other reason.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
Medical science is just that, medicine that follows the scientific method. (Or at least it’s supposed to).
The scientific method is basically testing guesses (sometimes educated ones) and seeing what happens.
There’s a whole lot of structure and guidelines, but testing guesses(hypotheses) is where it’s at mostly.
The current state of any science is usually “the best theory we have right now, given the data and resources available to us”
Some people hear that and think “look, they’re just guessing, why should I listen to them?” and thats absolutely valid.
Where that falls down is that they then go on to assume all guesses are equal and ignore the time and resources that went in to that current scientific best guess.
Is it always correct? no, is it more likely to be beneficial than a random social media post by an influencer with no medical expertise? Generally yes.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
Im all on the “listen to the medical experts” train.
There are however some medicines and treatments that legitimately started as “alternative”.
A lot of it is horseshit though.
Also modern medicine isn’t infallible(nor the people that practice it).
Statistically though, it’s fucking high magic compared to most internet sourced diagnoses.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
Sure, is that what happened here?
- Comment on 500,000 households cancel TV licence putting BBC future in jeopardy 2 weeks ago:
yeah, It’s not the numbers specifically , it’d be the collection methodology used to obtain those numbers that’d be interesting.
- Comment on 500,000 households cancel TV licence putting BBC future in jeopardy 2 weeks ago:
I’d be interested to see where that number comes from because im fully sceptical of their ability to determine that.
- Comment on Michigan Republicans vote to strip child labor protections 2 weeks ago:
they don’t care about the children before or after it’s about fear and control.
- Comment on Too Little Too Late 🕛 2 weeks ago:
in some places you can.
mein-mmo.de/…/she-inherited-her-husbands-gaming-a…
she had to sue, but it seems precedent was set perhaps ?
china also, thought it sounds like you’d have to sue there :
- Comment on definitely not recording! 2 weeks ago:
Sure, but they’d only regulate the recording of cops
- Comment on It's always for your safety 3 weeks ago:
Motorcyclists are so much more likely to
hurt/kill themselvesbe hurt or killed in any accident, regardless of fault. - Comment on Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50% 3 weeks ago:
Other than this hot take
Ivy League college students are, by definition, intelligent.
It’s an interesting read.
- Comment on Finally an explanation 5 weeks ago:
The argument they were making is poor.
However, moral conviction has no bearing on objective correctness.
I’d address the other point but It doesn’t sound like you’re open to viewpoints that are not your own.
- Comment on Finally an explanation 5 weeks ago:
“One persons terrorist is another persons freedom fighter” is a concise way that the goodness or badness of an actions or outcomes is filtered through the subjective lens of the whoever happens to be considering the topic.
On an individual level, “don’t be a dick” is a pretty useful guideline , but even that is subject to what each person thinks constitutes dickish behaviour.
We’re social creatures, we have to live in societies, and it’s not difficult to determine pro social vs anti social behaviors.
Even that is subjective, think about what is socially acceptable in Finland?, how about Russia?, Morocco? France?
Do they all have the same idea of socially acceptable behaviours?
How about now vs 50 years ago? 100 years ago? 200 years in the future?.
Sure, there are some that are fairly common, but i wouldn’t consider those to be of a sufficient percentage of the whole that i could disregard behvaioural subjectivity, but that’s just my opinion.
- Comment on Finally an explanation 5 weeks ago:
The problem with most things that use good and bad as a foundation is that they never account for perspective.
Good and bad are made up and subjective.
If you don’t account for that in your positions then you’re setting yourself up for fundamentalism.