> The ambiguity is intentional; the statement is intended to capture all of those cases, because the differences between them don’t matter in practice.
If an alternative remedy is effective, in fact, it matters to people who could benefit from the usage, but have been told, or led to believe (through dishonest, vague, weasel language that "covers" or "captures" more informative descriptions) by doctors or acquaintances who lack skills in logic or epistemology.
> No studies, only one good studies, one hundred bad studies: they’re all conditions where the right response is “don’t rely on this as evidence until you’ve done more studies.”
Tell that to doctors and half-educated iamverysmart people who confidently assert that an "alternative" treatment does not work, full stop, as opposed to "has not been found to work in clinical studies".
> You can’t prove a negative
Correct. And therefore, you shouldn't speak as if you have.
> you have to treat a negative the same as an absence of evidence.
Incorrect. You could simply state what is factually correct, for example: "Herb X has not been found to successfully treat ailment Y in clinical studies. This should not necessarily be treated as conclusive proof that it does not, but at this time scientific studies have not found any evidence of effectiveness. Be wary of anyone who states otherwise, whether for or against the treatment - anyone who claims to have conclusive evidence either way is mistaken."
> That’s because doctors don’t use their own judgement. Doctors are embodiments of a system mapping a symptom-recognition model (mostly random, gets better with experience; this is the part humans are better at currently) to a fixed, explicit expert system of guidelines built by panels who study meta-analyses to reach recommendations.
Doctors (and the general public) should be informed of the difference between guidelines resulting from our current, incomplete understanding, and absolute facts. Very few people, including doctors, seem to realize there even is such a difference.
> Doctors don’t need to know why the DSM recommends what it recommends to be right by making recommendations using it
A recommendation and a statement of "fact" (without actual evidence to support the fact) are two very different things.
> In both cases, the commander giving the orders has better “line of sight” on the problem than the person on the ground does.
You have no way of knowing whether an individual patient may happen to have a factually superior understanding of a particular ailment than their doctor. This is a fine example of a lack of understanding of epistemology.
> And, in both cases, usually information-retaining expert consensus techniques are used to allow the commander+advisors system to actually have a greater-than-1.0xhuman level of rationality.
This statement is better, in that it expresses uncertainty via usage of the word "usually".
If an alternative remedy is effective, in fact, it matters to people who could benefit from the usage, but have been told, or led to believe (through dishonest, vague, weasel language that "covers" or "captures" more informative descriptions) by doctors or acquaintances who lack skills in logic or epistemology.
> No studies, only one good studies, one hundred bad studies: they’re all conditions where the right response is “don’t rely on this as evidence until you’ve done more studies.”
Tell that to doctors and half-educated iamverysmart people who confidently assert that an "alternative" treatment does not work, full stop, as opposed to "has not been found to work in clinical studies".
> You can’t prove a negative
Correct. And therefore, you shouldn't speak as if you have.
> you have to treat a negative the same as an absence of evidence.
Incorrect. You could simply state what is factually correct, for example: "Herb X has not been found to successfully treat ailment Y in clinical studies. This should not necessarily be treated as conclusive proof that it does not, but at this time scientific studies have not found any evidence of effectiveness. Be wary of anyone who states otherwise, whether for or against the treatment - anyone who claims to have conclusive evidence either way is mistaken."
> That’s because doctors don’t use their own judgement. Doctors are embodiments of a system mapping a symptom-recognition model (mostly random, gets better with experience; this is the part humans are better at currently) to a fixed, explicit expert system of guidelines built by panels who study meta-analyses to reach recommendations.
Doctors (and the general public) should be informed of the difference between guidelines resulting from our current, incomplete understanding, and absolute facts. Very few people, including doctors, seem to realize there even is such a difference.
> Doctors don’t need to know why the DSM recommends what it recommends to be right by making recommendations using it
A recommendation and a statement of "fact" (without actual evidence to support the fact) are two very different things.
> In both cases, the commander giving the orders has better “line of sight” on the problem than the person on the ground does.
You have no way of knowing whether an individual patient may happen to have a factually superior understanding of a particular ailment than their doctor. This is a fine example of a lack of understanding of epistemology.
> And, in both cases, usually information-retaining expert consensus techniques are used to allow the commander+advisors system to actually have a greater-than-1.0xhuman level of rationality.
This statement is better, in that it expresses uncertainty via usage of the word "usually".