[extropy-chat] Failure of low-fat diet

[Robin Hanson]

At 10:31 PM 2/22/2006, Russell Wallace wrote:
>As a matter of fact, medicine is one of those topics on which people are
>pretty far from rational.   Apparently, the social functions of 
>medical beliefs
>dominated the material functions among our ancestors.   See:
><http://hanson.gmu.edu/feardie.pdf>http://hanson.gmu.edu/feardie.pdf
>
>Good article! Much of it sounds right, particularly the parts about 
>underuse of hard data and the uselessness of marginal increases in 
>medical care.
>The blanket conclusion about the uselessness of all medical care, 
>including things like closed sewers, pest eradication, 
>disinfectants, vaccines and antibiotics... I'm afraid my reaction to 
>that is the same as it would be if the article claimed that the 
>improvement in lifespan was due to psychic waves from Zeta Reticuli: 
>extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Pestilence is one 
>of the Four Horsemen for good reason: infectious disease used to be 
>the main cause of death. We stopped it, with the above methods. 
>Lifespan shot up as a result. There's no mystery there.

The "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" heuristic is 
reasonable when "extraordinary claims" are taken to be those with a 
mountain of evidence supporting them.   If, however, any claim that 
goes contrary to your expectations counts as an "extraordinary 
claim", this becomes a recipe for just always preserving your expectations.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323