Comment author: ChristianKl 10 November 2014 12:30:12AM 0 points [-]

Are you seriously claiming the medical opposition to chiropractic is a big pharma conspiracy?

I make a claim that's more complex than that.

Conspiracy assumes not being open. It has nothing to do with a university rather funding research that produces patents that a pharma company can use than the university doing research that's beneficial for individuals doing various kind of manual therapy.

As far as real conspiracy goes, there plenty of evidence of pharma companies having to pay huge fines because they bribe doctors in various ways to do what's good for the pharma company.

If a doctor gives his patients a drug from a big pharma company that company invites him to a fancy all-costs payed luxury vacation conference. It's not as bad as it used to be, but it was bad over decades and that made certain memes win memetic competition.

Chiropractors don't have similar systems for paying doctors who refer clients kickbacks.

In the 20st century big corporations very often won conflicts because the have more power than a bunch of individual practitioners.

It also seems to me more and more silly to believe that the blind man sees more and that blinding in general is the key to knowledge gathering. It's one of those things, were a kid in a hundred years will have a hard time understanding history because the idea is just so silly. Just like we today have a hard time understanding what people in the middle ages used to believe.

It's also interesting that the ideal of blindness is so strong in the medical field and not as strong in any other domain.

A medical professor usually teaches the "evidence-based method" with teaching methods for which he as no evidence that they work. Somehow they succeed to do this without feeling weird. It's quite remarkable. I don't think you can solve the puzzle of why that double standard exists without acknowledging that well-funded parties have an interest in things being that way.

Nobody makes money based on a platform of "evidence-based teaching" so we don't have it in our society but we do have "evidence-based medicine" because a coalition lead by big pharma payed to establish that meme.

I think it's a defensible position to argue that everything should be evidence-based but I see no intellectual reason to have it concentrated into one domain. The best way to explain the status quo is through analyzing the interests of those in power for meme generation.

Comment author: David_Gerard 10 November 2014 10:12:23PM -5 points [-]

As far as real conspiracy goes, there plenty of evidence of pharma companies having to pay huge fines because they bribe doctors in various ways to do what's good for the pharma company.

Your fallacy is: tu quoque.

You've made a claim and aren't supplying evidence for it, formal or even non-negligible Bayesian.

Comment author: hyporational 08 November 2014 12:45:01PM *  0 points [-]

Your arguments against doing science in this case seem fully general to me. They could be used by anyone promoting their brand of alternative medicine no matter how bizarre their claims would be.

What are your suggestions for how to most reliably evaluate anecdotal data? Would it be possible to do some sort of meta-science on this topic? How would you evaluate placebo effects? (Note that I think utilizing placebo too is important.)

I understand many medical treatments aren't RCT based either but the fact that many are kind of makes me trust the mindset of health care professionals more.

Comment author: David_Gerard 09 November 2014 11:15:20PM 2 points [-]

Your arguments against doing science in this case seem fully general to me. They could be used by anyone promoting their brand of alternative medicine no matter how bizarre their claims would be.

And indeed it turns out they are: this is a pretty standard part of the alternative medicine anti-rationalist toolkit.

Comment author: ChristianKl 07 November 2014 11:25:43AM 2 points [-]

Am I delusional or am I correct in thinking chiropractors are practitioners of something a little above blood letting and way below actual modern medicine?

The latest Cochrane review indicates that chiropractors do as well as conventional treatment for lower back pain.

It's a bit odd as the first choice of treatment but trying a bunch of different treatments till one solves an issue like this is useful.

Modern opposition to chiropractics is based on the foundation that chiropractors diagnose patients based on what they feel when they touch the patients and not based on X-ray. It's quite easy to do objective science based on X-rays. The moment where you diagnose based on subjective perception it becomes harder to do science.

Guesses about what Palmer, the founder of chiropractics thought he was doing turned out to be wrong and it took the chiropractic association till 1996 to update their definition of subluxation.

Big pharma also has a business model where they can outspend chiropractors by a huge margin when it comes to lobbying and PR to establish memes in society.

The fact that some chiropractors claim to be able to treat every disease while they probably can't also doesn't help.

Comment author: David_Gerard 09 November 2014 11:13:53PM 0 points [-]

Big pharma also has a business model where they can outspend chiropractors by a huge margin when it comes to lobbying and PR to establish memes in society.

Big pharma versus big placebo: one of these is constrained by expectations of evidence, the other to people opposed to joined-up thinking.

Are you seriously claiming the medical opposition to chiropractic is a big pharma conspiracy? If so, do you have actual evidence rather than merely asserting it's possible?

Comment author: advancedatheist 30 October 2014 04:21:25AM 9 points [-]

I'd like to see a Wikipedia article from the 24th Century about the Enlightenment which reverses the usual judgments now about the heroes versus the villains in the culture war of the 18th Century.

Comment author: David_Gerard 30 October 2014 10:51:56PM 2 points [-]
In response to Weird Alliances
Comment author: David_Gerard 25 October 2014 01:58:22PM *  7 points [-]

The health store phenomenon you observe (weird alliances) is called "crank magnetism". People who believe one weird thing tend to believe other weird things. (This particularly applies to conspiracy theorists.) Alternative medicine advocates are highly supportive of other alternative therapies that directly contradict their own, because they're of a subculture that defines itself oppositionally. The money flows in to support this weird alliance.

LW's interests do indeed not necessarily hang together, except being things advanced by the transhumanist subculture. Friendly AI doesn't go naturally with cryonics or nanotechnology as interests, for example (even if those things might plausibly have synergies).

I submit that promoting LW as material for crank magnets may not work well and will just end up infuriating those capable of joined-up thinking.

Comment author: DataPacRat 07 October 2014 07:25:18PM 15 points [-]

I've passed 200,000 words in the story I started writing at the end of May, and as far as I can tell, I'm still on track to keep writing daily and bring it to a finish, instead of just trailing off into... well... not. That's pretty close to four NaNoWriMos in a row, with more to come. And the next story I write will be that much better for the work I've done on this one; and if I can manage my motivation so as to keep it up, I just might be able to consider myself "a writer" instead of "someone who writes".

"On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow." -- Nietzsche

Tsuyoku naritai!

Comment author: David_Gerard 07 October 2014 08:47:03PM 3 points [-]

It's a really good original story and everyone should read it.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 October 2014 03:24:36PM 1 point [-]

There is substantial evidence that a giant whale dumped $9m worth of coins at $300. Now that the sell wall is gone, the price is back up.

Otherwise, just the typical accretion phase of a boom-bust cycle.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Open thread, Oct. 6 - Oct. 12, 2014
Comment author: David_Gerard 06 October 2014 07:06:13PM *  4 points [-]

Evidence or speculation? I saw the $300 sell wall, but that does not account for the previous week's dip, which is when the "bearwhale" speculation started. I did see plenty of speculation to this end ... but humans, particularly bagholders in a bubble, will grasp for any explanation that is not "we were foolish".

Really, everything is based on the assumption of conspiracy:

  • December - Just a small market correction after bubble, soon we go up!
  • February - Price dropped because Mark Karpeles is an incompetent thief. (This one I'll give them.)
  • May - China dropped the price, now all Chinese is priced in, we go up!
  • August - Wall Street dropping the price because they want to enter cheap. Hold and we'll go up!
  • October - The bearwhale dropped the price, cheap coins that will go up!

It's a cliche for good reason that everything and its opposite is "great news for Bitcoin!"

The ridiculously inflated prices peaking in December 2013 are almost completely explained by Mt. Gox's blatant fraud and the Willy and Marcus bots. A decline from that would be the expectation.

So what was the solid evidence for (and against) conspiracy, as opposed to the null hypothesis that this is just one week in a bubble on its way down?

In response to comment by [deleted] on Open thread, Oct. 6 - Oct. 12, 2014
Comment author: James_Miller 06 October 2014 01:03:23PM 6 points [-]

The price of bitcoin is determined exactly like stock prices

Stock prices are anchored to the expected discounted present value of firms' profits. Bitcoins have no anchor. Think of it this way: If the market went crazy and valued Apple at zero you would do very well to buy the entire company for $1000. But if the market decided to value Bitcoins at zero, you would not want to buy them all up for $1000.

Comment author: David_Gerard 06 October 2014 02:12:16PM 6 points [-]

At least with tulip bulbs you can, like, grow tulips.

Comment author: [deleted] 06 October 2014 11:30:44AM 2 points [-]

I don't know why someone would believe it couldn't happen. The price of bitcoin is determined exactly like stock prices and subject to the same variations based on the same reasons.

The growth of the bitcoin market is below expectations so people sell their bitcoins to monetize their earnings so the price drops. That's economics 101.

In response to comment by [deleted] on Open thread, Oct. 6 - Oct. 12, 2014
Comment author: David_Gerard 06 October 2014 02:11:11PM *  1 point [-]

There are (or were) many, many Bitcoin advocates in the world who can't see it being anything other than deflationary (as there is a limited supply), it does interesting things, etc. Then the world turns around and sends Bitcoins inflationary for this whole year. Empiricism beats praxeology (again).

Comment author: David_Gerard 06 October 2014 11:06:51AM 5 points [-]

[tangential] The price of Bitcoin has been dropping significantly in the past few weeks, and dropped below $300 yesterday. I've read many theories as to how this can't happen, but it is. What's going on?

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