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On 03/26/10 01:28, Warp wrote:
> I have hard time understanding the psychological phenomenon that many
> people are eager to believe in some things based solely on what other
> people *claim*, without any actual convincing evidence, or with just some
> flimsy circumstancial evidence of eyewitness testimony, and *keep believing*
> in it even after an enormously more comprehensive and accurate testing shows
> that the thing is bogus.
Finland must be an awesome place to live.
Seriously? You find it hard to believe? I suspect that if I want to
make big money in marketing, I'll have poor competitors where you are
(although perhaps you just limit your own exposure to ads).
Don't separate evidence with claims completely. For most people, the
evidence they know for anything (including legitimate science) is via
claims.
> Someone might believe that something works because someone claims that it
> worked on 10 people. Even if a scientifically accurate study is then performed
> repeatedly on 1000 people, and this test shows that it doesn't actually work,
> these people will *still* believe it works.
How many of these people have been told about its failure on the 1000
people by *someone they trust*?
> Why do so many people think like this? What is the psychological phenomenon
> behind this kind of thinking?
Scientific rigor is abnormal. It's not innate. It needs to be taught,
and reinforced. Most people may learn it in school, but few apply what
they learn in school to their lives out of school.
--
Mary had a little lamb, a little beef, and a little ham.
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On 03/25/10 01:08, scott wrote:
>>> accept that fact and try another medicine. For someone to be using
>>> something on a child in the first place that has never been proven
>>> better than placebo, and then to refuse to try something else when it's
>>> not working, *that* is criminal.
>>
>> See my question to Stephen: How do you propose enforcing it?
>
> Same way as any other child neglect crimes. It either gets reported
> through family/friends/school to the authorities who investigate, or in
> the worst case the death of the child triggers the investigation. Then
> you search for evidence they didn't search for appropriate medical care
> (very easy if they admit to it!), then it's up to a judge/jury to decide
> a punishment.
I think you're missing my point. So what should the concerned
neighbors/friends report? That some parent is using a treatment that is
not certified by the FDA (in the US)? If so, you've suddenly
criminalized all herbal treatments, and any other treatment that may be
common elsewhere.
The point being that it's hard to criminalize _just_ homeopathic
medicine. If you want to criminalize everything that is not approved by
some government body, I'd be dead set against it. There are too many
things that would get banned.
--
Mary had a little lamb, a little beef, and a little ham.
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On 03/25/10 06:45, scott wrote:
>> MDs don't know everything. Sometimes they disagree. Sometimes it is
>> like a game of chance -
>
> Sure, but I don't think any of those cases you mentioned are similar to
> the original story.
Yes. So my question is: How do you draft the regulations to catch what
was in the original story and not what TC is describing?
It's not irrelevant. He's describing a case where a parent opted no
treatment whatsoever for a condition the medical field seemed to think
warranted treatment. Should his father have been tried for it?
--
Mary had a little lamb, a little beef, and a little ham.
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On 03/25/10 06:05, Warp wrote:
> The danger with homeopathy is that it's an ideology which rides on
> people's tendency to mistrust authority and herd behavior. It's an ideology
You could simply go a step further and blame a lot of authorities for
giving good reasons to mistrust them.
--
Mary had a little lamb, a little beef, and a little ham.
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Neeum Zawan wrote:
> Point being that a lot of other factors dictate the effectiveness of a
> placebo. Some of those may be the reason for what you're describing.
Yep. I'd even guess that the fact that real medicine has become more
effective can increase the placebo effect. It's much easier to believe that
something can be cured nowadays than even 20 years ago, let alone 100.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Yes, we're traveling togeher,
but to different destinations.
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Warp wrote:
> scott <sco### [at] scott com> wrote:
>>> Why do so many people think like this? What is the psychological
>>> phenomenon
>>> behind this kind of thinking?
>
>> In most cases I suspect it is because the person just can't been bothered to
>> research it, they have more important things in their life to worry about
>> than whether some cool-sounding fad medicine is scientifically proven to
>> work or not. Hey they might not even realise there is such a thing as a
>> scientific test.
>
> I specifically talked about people who keep believing in it even *after*
> they have been told about the better tests. In other words, they refuse to
> believe in the accuracy of the scientifical tests.
>
Information weighting, though I don't know what the psychological term
for it is.
For the same reason someone who thinks scientifically holds 10 studies
of 1000 people each in higher regard to 10 studies of 10 people total,
some people hold a study that is physically closer to them to be
important. 1000 people they do not know is not as important to them as
the one person it does work for. Or they do not not understand the math
involved once the sample size gets past a certain point.
There is also the fact that people have not evolved to think of every
other human on the same level. They consider their friends and family
more than someone they do not know; see Dunbar and any other
evolutionary psychology. So, 2 people they know had this medicine work.
10,000 people they do not know or never met did not. Since they weight
there friends and family over several thousands or millions of
strangers, the balance tilts towards believing in this stuff.
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Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
> Dan Ariely got an Ig Noble Prize for showing that expensive placebos
> are more effective than cheap ones.
Also the authority of the person who gives the placebo to the patient has
an effect. It's much more effective if the placebo is given by the chief
physician of the hospital rather than a nurse.
--
- Warp
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Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
> On 03/26/10 01:28, Warp wrote:
> > I have hard time understanding the psychological phenomenon that many
> > people are eager to believe in some things based solely on what other
> > people *claim*, without any actual convincing evidence, or with just some
> > flimsy circumstancial evidence of eyewitness testimony, and *keep believing*
> > in it even after an enormously more comprehensive and accurate testing shows
> > that the thing is bogus.
> Finland must be an awesome place to live.
> Seriously? You find it hard to believe?
No, I find it hard to *understand*. Different thing.
--
- Warp
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Neeum Zawan <m.n### [at] ieeeorg> wrote:
> On 03/25/10 06:05, Warp wrote:
> > The danger with homeopathy is that it's an ideology which rides on
> > people's tendency to mistrust authority and herd behavior. It's an ideology
> You could simply go a step further and blame a lot of authorities for
> giving good reasons to mistrust them.
In this case "authority" would be regular, official medical practice. What
have they done to earn people's mistrust? Why is quackery more trustworthy
in the eyes of many people?
--
- Warp
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On 03/26/10 21:11, Darren New wrote:
> Yep. I'd even guess that the fact that real medicine has become more
> effective can increase the placebo effect. It's much easier to believe
> that something can be cured nowadays than even 20 years ago, let alone 100.
Good point.
--
"Hex Dump" - Where Witches put used Curses?
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