1. It would be really _cool_ tho if Socrates rode a unicorn. Isn’t that what’s most important here?
2. I love the physics class example.
3. A lot of Big Pharma products do work, especially the old stuff like antibiotics, pain meds, antipsychotics, vaccines, and as you mentioned insulin. I think too, though, that part of the reason people are so mistrustful of Big Pharma is because they hawk a lot of expensive crap that doesn’t work. Statins and antidepressants are a couple of big ones. (Statins maybe bump down your numbers a bit but there’s evidence they do sometimes more harm than good and that most people simply don’t need them. Antidepressants, they usually make people feel “something different” which makes a placebo effect pretty likely —it’s working!— but also, most depression goes away episodically, so you could give people lima beans and their depression would go away after a while.)
I don’t disagree with your point that many drugs work. I’m just adding that it’s no surprise that the “trust problem” we have extends to Big Pharma. If you look at the effect sizes of the new drugs, they’re pretty weak. I saw one recently, a new migraine drug that would cost thousands per month and decrease 1 migraine day per month. Meh. But the market for a new migraine drug is huge.
4. Not eating arsenic has its health benefits, but eating arsenic would totally pwn the CDC.
5. Nobody types “pwn” anymore and that makes me sad. Damn you, autocorrect!
For #3, that's true, I didn't mean to say they all work. Still, I think the anger towards big pharma comes from the pricing. A lot of stuff "small pharma" stuff doesn't work, like supplements, chiropractics, dental X-rays, diet programs, mindfulness, etc, but we don't get as angry at them because they're not price gouging us out of literal necessities.
Grocery profits are pretty slim and the industry is pretty competitive. I think that's supply/demand driven, not the IP monopoly fuckery we see in drugs.
Also food prices are really volatile so they can go down as well.
I think framing the source of this as a theory of truth is in itself a bit overly-provocative. Surely what the edgy among us are after is not the truth so much as attention. Of course, they can sustain that attention better if they believe or successfully pretend to believe their edgy conclusions. Put simply, there's usually less percentage in defending conventional wisdom because believers in conventional wisdom are, by definition, not in short supply. There's much less competition over defending the wacky and outre, and there is definitely a market for the contrarian: people love both the opportunity to mark themselves as superior to the commoner by subscribing to some heterodoxy or to take up the righteous position of an inquisitor of common sense. If you're any good at it, there's a name to be made: philosophers still study Hume and Berkeley and mostly neglect Thomas Reid, even though Hume and Berkeley are mostly wrong and Reid mostly right.
"If I’m permitted a bit of armchair psychoanalysis, I think part of it [appeal of contrarianism] stems from the frustration of finding the truth."
That seems eminently reasonable.
Some other parts, perhaps?
Pleasure in play and inventiveness? Many people do find "tinkering and inspiration and joy in making things" to be "addictive," or at least highly compelling? To that end, coming up with alternative, contrarian – and yes, at times far-out or edgy – explanations for observed events may be one form of intrinsically-rewarded creativity.
Ego and intelligence may also play some role in acceptance of contrarian explanations, as well?
"As a man of science, I was smugly delighted that creationists seized on the Neanderthal tuba but dismayed that zoologists and other scientists also believed our fakes. Magicians often say scientists make the best audience because they think they’re too smart and observant not to trust what they see with their own eyes. Ricky Jay, the sleight-of-hand master, told 60 minutes that “the ideal audience would be Nobel Prize winners....They often have an ego with them that says, ‘I am really smart so I can’t be fooled.’ No one is easier to fool.”
"I told the magician Penn Jillette about the ice borers. “Smart people learn to believe things that are counterintuitive,” he said. “Black holes, string theory, germs, trips to the moon, radio waves—they’ve had practice believing crazy s--t.” Penn was right, of course. Is a bowling-ball-size fundamental particle any less plausible than 26-dimensional string theory? Or smog-clearing bellows any less harebrained than, say, BP’s plan to plug its oil geyser with golf balls? We live in interesting times. Modern physics is incomprehensible, and cowboy engineering schemes—private companies racing to get to the moon or to sequence our genomes cheaply—are commonplace and may be our salvation."
That's true too. I think Orwell had a quite to the effect of "there's some ideas so ridiculous that only an intellectual could believe them." I think that's how we end up with a lot of bad psychology, eg power poses.
And this, on a child's naive perceptions of the sky – first "no color," then "white," and only thereafter, "blue," followed by a mention of an early scale attempting to quantify human visual perceptions of shades of "blueness" – Horace-Bénédict de Saussure's ""cyanometer"—a kind of modified color wheel that contained every shade of blue that could be seen in the sky."
1. It would be really _cool_ tho if Socrates rode a unicorn. Isn’t that what’s most important here?
2. I love the physics class example.
3. A lot of Big Pharma products do work, especially the old stuff like antibiotics, pain meds, antipsychotics, vaccines, and as you mentioned insulin. I think too, though, that part of the reason people are so mistrustful of Big Pharma is because they hawk a lot of expensive crap that doesn’t work. Statins and antidepressants are a couple of big ones. (Statins maybe bump down your numbers a bit but there’s evidence they do sometimes more harm than good and that most people simply don’t need them. Antidepressants, they usually make people feel “something different” which makes a placebo effect pretty likely —it’s working!— but also, most depression goes away episodically, so you could give people lima beans and their depression would go away after a while.)
I don’t disagree with your point that many drugs work. I’m just adding that it’s no surprise that the “trust problem” we have extends to Big Pharma. If you look at the effect sizes of the new drugs, they’re pretty weak. I saw one recently, a new migraine drug that would cost thousands per month and decrease 1 migraine day per month. Meh. But the market for a new migraine drug is huge.
4. Not eating arsenic has its health benefits, but eating arsenic would totally pwn the CDC.
5. Nobody types “pwn” anymore and that makes me sad. Damn you, autocorrect!
PS thanks for the link….
For #3, that's true, I didn't mean to say they all work. Still, I think the anger towards big pharma comes from the pricing. A lot of stuff "small pharma" stuff doesn't work, like supplements, chiropractics, dental X-rays, diet programs, mindfulness, etc, but we don't get as angry at them because they're not price gouging us out of literal necessities.
Yeah. I see your point.
I’m waiting to the see the anger over grocery pricing though. The shelves are empty and prices are insane.
Grocery profits are pretty slim and the industry is pretty competitive. I think that's supply/demand driven, not the IP monopoly fuckery we see in drugs.
Also food prices are really volatile so they can go down as well.
I think framing the source of this as a theory of truth is in itself a bit overly-provocative. Surely what the edgy among us are after is not the truth so much as attention. Of course, they can sustain that attention better if they believe or successfully pretend to believe their edgy conclusions. Put simply, there's usually less percentage in defending conventional wisdom because believers in conventional wisdom are, by definition, not in short supply. There's much less competition over defending the wacky and outre, and there is definitely a market for the contrarian: people love both the opportunity to mark themselves as superior to the commoner by subscribing to some heterodoxy or to take up the righteous position of an inquisitor of common sense. If you're any good at it, there's a name to be made: philosophers still study Hume and Berkeley and mostly neglect Thomas Reid, even though Hume and Berkeley are mostly wrong and Reid mostly right.
Appreciate the feedback. I haven't heard of Thomas Reid, but I'll look him up.
"If I’m permitted a bit of armchair psychoanalysis, I think part of it [appeal of contrarianism] stems from the frustration of finding the truth."
That seems eminently reasonable.
Some other parts, perhaps?
Pleasure in play and inventiveness? Many people do find "tinkering and inspiration and joy in making things" to be "addictive," or at least highly compelling? To that end, coming up with alternative, contrarian – and yes, at times far-out or edgy – explanations for observed events may be one form of intrinsically-rewarded creativity.
https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2016/spring/pagan-kennedy-human-inventiveness/
There are likely physiological processes which reward novelty-seeking:
https://lifehacker.com/novelty-and-the-brain-why-new-things-make-us-feel-so-g-508983802
Ego and intelligence may also play some role in acceptance of contrarian explanations, as well?
"As a man of science, I was smugly delighted that creationists seized on the Neanderthal tuba but dismayed that zoologists and other scientists also believed our fakes. Magicians often say scientists make the best audience because they think they’re too smart and observant not to trust what they see with their own eyes. Ricky Jay, the sleight-of-hand master, told 60 minutes that “the ideal audience would be Nobel Prize winners....They often have an ego with them that says, ‘I am really smart so I can’t be fooled.’ No one is easier to fool.”
"I told the magician Penn Jillette about the ice borers. “Smart people learn to believe things that are counterintuitive,” he said. “Black holes, string theory, germs, trips to the moon, radio waves—they’ve had practice believing crazy s--t.” Penn was right, of course. Is a bowling-ball-size fundamental particle any less plausible than 26-dimensional string theory? Or smog-clearing bellows any less harebrained than, say, BP’s plan to plug its oil geyser with golf balls? We live in interesting times. Modern physics is incomprehensible, and cowboy engineering schemes—private companies racing to get to the moon or to sequence our genomes cheaply—are commonplace and may be our salvation."
https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/why-are-smart-people-some-of-the-most-gullible-people-around
That's true too. I think Orwell had a quite to the effect of "there's some ideas so ridiculous that only an intellectual could believe them." I think that's how we end up with a lot of bad psychology, eg power poses.
"It’s true that the sky is blue if and only if the sky is, in fact, blue."
Am getting waaaay too stuck on this! :)
Perhaps this, by Brian Koberlein, an astrophysicist and science writer with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory?
"... our sky is violet, but it appears blue because of the way our eyes work."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2017/01/11/earths-skies-are-violet-we-just-see-them-as-blue/?sh=4a60f49735f3
And this, on a child's naive perceptions of the sky – first "no color," then "white," and only thereafter, "blue," followed by a mention of an early scale attempting to quantify human visual perceptions of shades of "blueness" – Horace-Bénédict de Saussure's ""cyanometer"—a kind of modified color wheel that contained every shade of blue that could be seen in the sky."
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/this-is-how-people-once-measured-the-blueness-of-the-sky/370821/