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AndrewHickey comments on Proposal: Anti-Akrasia Alliance - Less Wrong
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Comments (34)
Alcoholics Anonymous does no better than placebo. Can't find the original source where I saw this, but http://www.astrocyte-design.com/pseudoscience/ has some links to various sources.
I am skeptical of this, particularly without a definition of "placebo," as I've seen studies breaking down the various significant parts of AA membership (sponsoring someone else was the most significant), so the whole deal being placebo would be odd.
Wikipedia has an article about the efficacy of AA. I gather it's just really hard to pin down because it's so informal and participation is hugely variable. I'm sure it works for the people it works for.
For me, the problem with the AA model, even if it works, is that many of their particular brand of "mind hacks" seem opposed to the rationalist approach, perhaps a bit cultish. Not a good fit for Less Wrong.
Presumably being a sponsor requires you to have had some previous success at not-drinking so that isn't really evidence that AA causes people to keep sober.
Very possible- I don't have the study on hand, so I can't check how careful they were with their statistical analysis. (Ideally, you would have enough information to separate out the successful people who sponsored and the successful people who didn't, then compare them, but assuming a study is ideal is rarely a good idea.)
I do consider it likely that having someone depend on you makes people more likely to stay sober, but causality the other direction is also strongly likely.