There is little evidence that LW can do better on factual questions than mainstream medicine or dietology. I believe that there are few posters who are significantly better than an average doctor, but there are also others who are worse and the readers have not much data to decide who is which. Given that the LW advisors have little or no chance to examine the patient the way normal doctors can and thus are basing their diagnoses solely on verbal communication with the patient, the most rational advice would be "go and see your doctor". Since there are a lot of different answers under that post, I wonder whether the future readers would benefit from that at all, rather than being harmed.
More generally, learning well settled fields is in many respects preferable to pondering difficult unsolved problems. At least you get a definite answer.
There is little evidence that LW can do better on factual questions than mainstream medicine or dietology.
To collect evidence (whichever way it might point) we should encourage factual questions on these topics. I'm interested in such evidence because some LWers have indeed claimed that a rational approach such as a good LWer might be capable of should indeed do significantly better than mainstream experts.
...Since there are a lot of different answers under that post, I wonder whether the future readers would benefit from that at all, rather than being
There's probably a better place to ask this question, but I don't know what it is. That being said...
Which will go further if a batter manages to hit it with a baseball bat: a baseball thrown to the batter at 90 miles per hour or one thrown at 60 miles per hour?