[extropy-chat] Re: Robin Hanson on Cynicism

[Brett Paatsch]

Robin Hanson wrote:

> At 05:00 AM 9/23/2005, Brett Paatsch wrote:
>>>...  And the situation is much worse on topics where there are 
>>>certain positions that ordinary people typically *want* to believe 
>>>(such as the health effectiveness of medicine).
>>
>>You have grounds for thinking ordinary people are mistaken
>>as to the health effectiveness of medicine?
> 
> I know that you responded to a thread in the last month which started
> from my posting this link: http://hanson.gmu.edu/feardie.pdf,
> wherein I outline my grounds for so thinking.

In your essay you say

"fear of death makes us spend  15% of our income on medicine from
which we get little or no health benefit, while we neglect things like
exercise which offer large health benefits".

But I can't see where you answer the basic question what does Robin
mean by medicine? You seem to assume that *everyone* just knows
what medicine is. I think that is not a valid assumption. Your essay
surveys work done by others but it is not clear that *they* have defined 
medicine the same way as you or indeed as each other.  

At one point you say "eight (note NOT 80 but just 8) percent of heart
surgery patients were not willing to pay 50 dollars for local hospitals
mortality rates, information that should have been worth tens of 
thousands of dollars to them"

Well what about the other 92 percent?  Eight percent is hardly great
evidence of anything yet you give it as an "example".

I'm obviously missing something here Robin.  I can't see any real 
substance in the essay. To me you just don't cut down to anything
substantive. 

Brett Paatsch