Philosophically Aware Real Science vs. Dogmatic Pop Science: Destiny vs. Dan

[Carl-Richard]

It's time for my bimonthly Destiny post:

The context is Dan critiquing Dr. K's affiliation with Ayurveda (which he equates to homeopathy, which is a mistake in itself, but not the biggest one). The big mistake is when Dan critiques homeopathy by mixing theoretical claims with empirical claims, and Destiny does a decent job at pushing back.

His argument is essentially "homeopathy is 100% bullshit, because it's not supported by current theories of pharmacology". Even though current theories of pharmacology don't jibe well with homeopathy, that doesn't mean we can't find significant effects in a study or that we can't get new theories in the future.

38:23 - 50:03

 

Notice how he later capitulates to "I trust the experts" when he gets cornered (I know it's a funny "jab" at one of Destiny's arguments for supporting COVID vaccines, but at the same time, it seems like he meant it). That's the dogmatism. The problem is that no expert would agree with what he just said.

There were also some factual errors about the placebo effect (it doesn't just affect pain, but all kinds of psychological and physical conditions) and probably some other things (Destiny misdefining the Nocebo effect was hilarious). As if it needs to be said, I would be careful taking medical or scientific advice from these guys.

Edited April 20 by Carl-Richard

[zurew]

There is no rigor or intellectual honestly to how he approaches the topic.

His claim about "mostly what we are seeing here is either placebo or open placebo" is also a thing that he can't substantiate - he just assumes it to be true. 

Also his comment about there shouldn't be alternative medicine research is also based in a thoughtprocess that is not really as rational as he thinks it is and Destiny pointed out perfectly why. Dan would have said 30 years ago, that doing research about meditation would just be a waste of time and a waste of money. So if we would have gone with his way of thinking, we would have missed out on all the research and knowledge that we scientifically know about meditation right now.  So there is an obvious bullet that he should have bitten there, which is that his framework will miss out on a certain set of things that works (including alternative methods and alternative medicine) , because he just assumes that they are wrong or that they won't work.

Dan was also being unclear or slimy with jumping between empirical and theoretical critiques. There is a big difference between saying this x alternative medicine won't work, because of the current theories we know about medicine right now  vs actually doing empirical research about said alternative medicine and being able to demonstrate that it actually doesn't work. 

Its true, that because of the lack of resources and money, researchers can't just freely research everything - so there is an interesting discussion that could be had there about whats the best  way of choosing. For a theoretical critique to be actually valuable , one would need to be very well-versed in that specific area of research, because the probability you can sign to a claim like "this x alternative medicine won't work because of this y set of reasons" - that probability will be completely depended on the quality of that y set  - and if you have a lack of knowledge and if the quality of knowledge you have is bad or unclear how bad it is, then whatever probability you come up with won't give a clear picture about anything.

 

Also, words like can and can't and possible and impossible are all modal claims. So regarding Dan's theoretical critique, I don't think he could showcase or spell out why something is impossible regarding the alternative methods or alternative medicine.   Does he mean logically impossible (like can he point to any law  of logic violation) or physically impossible (Can he specifically point out which law of phyiscs is being violated by which alternative medicine or method), because if no the answer to all of that, then he either needs to stop using the word impossible or he needs to tell us what he means by impossible other than the things I mentioned.

[undeather]

I really tried to watch it - but i just couldn't make it through...

[Carl-Richard]

33 minutes ago, undeather said:

I really tried to watch it - but i just couldn't make it through...

I was so close to stopping the video because of too much cringe, but I somehow persisted. At some point, it just becomes self-harm, like intentionally ingesting poision (like homeopathy) 😆

Edited April 20 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

I already somewhat touched on it with how no expert would agree with what he just said, but another mistake (which also goes back to mixing theoretical claims with empirical claims) is when Dan implicitly equates Destiny appealing to experts for evaluating the empirical state of COVID vaccines with Dan appealing to theoretical claims of experts when he should actually be appealing to their evaluation of the empirical research. Those are two different things. One involves admitting the limitations of one's knowledge, the other involves fundamentally misunderstanding the scientific process.

Edited April 20 by Carl-Richard

[zurew]

@Carl-Richard Do you have any thoughts about the original debate (the Dr K vs Dr Mike one) ?

[Carl-Richard]

18 minutes ago, zurew said:

@Carl-Richard Do you have any thoughts about the original debate (the Dr K vs Dr Mike one) ?

I didn't watch it yet. Maybe I'll do that today.