You dismissed the area of research as unscientific self-serving wishful-thinking pseudoscience, which is demonstrably incorrect
I dismiss the health benefits notion. Did you read that BEIR link? How come they aren’t convinced? Of course they stay polite and don’t call anyone self serving. That’s not their job to look into motives.
and sits poorly with me as devaluing the meaning of terms like pseudoscience which should be reserved for pernicious things like homeopathy.
Pseudo-science is something that looks like science to careless contemporary observers, okay? That’s the original meaning of the word. Phrenology looked like science to contemporaries. Freudian psychoanalysis did. Bloodletting did. And so on. None of those topics were readily recognized as cranky by contemporary average person (even though the scientists generally dismissed them as unscientific, non-testable, and non-predictive)
Homeopathy barely looks like science to anyone any more. It’s a non-science, and much of the followers cherish the notion that it is non-science (they say, we ain’t trusting scientists).
I, instead, find that restriction of notion of pseudoscience only to cases plain obvious to most careless contemporary observers (us), devalues the notion. The pseudoscience is something that can fool you, or that can fool me. It can’t fool most scientists, hence the BEIR very briefly dismisses all of it [rad. hormesis]. It can fool average person, hence wiki doesn’t do the same.
If nothing else, the other areas of hormesis mean that it is more plausible that radiation hormesis would also exist and looking for it may not be privileging the hypothesis. If no one had ever found any kind of hormesis, that makes radiation hormesis especially unlikely! and so by symmetry, finding other sorts of hormesis make radiation hormesis a little more likely.
See the original post of mine that started this giant controversy. I explained why, exactly, one shouldn’t do precisely this, the other way—conclude negative effect of low doses of poisons, from the negative effects of low doses of carcinogens. The physics here is not symmetrical.
I was going to continue this, but then I noticed that almost all my karma is gone (!) and most of my comments in this thread are at −2; your comments are also doing pretty poorly. (Not my doing. I try not to downvote any comment I am replying to.)
If I keep this up, I won’t be able to post and my commenting will be rate-limited (which I hate), and the fact that we’re both getting downvoted indicates LW in general finds this a worse-than-worthless discussion, so… I’m going to bow out, as much as I dislike not having the final word.
EDIT: and this gets upvoted almost immediately! You know guys, you could just leave a comment like ‘I don’t think this discussion is very productive, maybe you should stop’ and not rely on the karma system with its crude numbers to convey your desires.
they are afraid of karma system, what if we both downvote them together. Also they are still reading, implying some sort of interest in the issue. My karma loss is mostly from posting something controversial in main for 7 downvotes, 70 points.
edit: btw if someone’s coming in consistently to downvote, that person doesn’t want discussion to stop as easy way is to stop coming in, it’s not like this expands all the way. edit: could even be worse. downvoting so we think we are downvoting each other, hence get pissed off more.
What does follow, is you making fairly strong evidence of you coming here just to vote, for many pages, until a post is made that gets you to post. Don’t like it, don’t read it, and don’t talk here of the people who just click on the list of recent posts, that would fluctuate wildly.
I dismiss the health benefits notion. Did you read that BEIR link? How come they aren’t convinced? Of course they stay polite and don’t call anyone self serving. That’s not their job to look into motives.
Pseudo-science is something that looks like science to careless contemporary observers, okay? That’s the original meaning of the word. Phrenology looked like science to contemporaries. Freudian psychoanalysis did. Bloodletting did. And so on. None of those topics were readily recognized as cranky by contemporary average person (even though the scientists generally dismissed them as unscientific, non-testable, and non-predictive)
Homeopathy barely looks like science to anyone any more. It’s a non-science, and much of the followers cherish the notion that it is non-science (they say, we ain’t trusting scientists).
I, instead, find that restriction of notion of pseudoscience only to cases plain obvious to most careless contemporary observers (us), devalues the notion. The pseudoscience is something that can fool you, or that can fool me. It can’t fool most scientists, hence the BEIR very briefly dismisses all of it [rad. hormesis]. It can fool average person, hence wiki doesn’t do the same.
See the original post of mine that started this giant controversy. I explained why, exactly, one shouldn’t do precisely this, the other way—conclude negative effect of low doses of poisons, from the negative effects of low doses of carcinogens. The physics here is not symmetrical.
I was going to continue this, but then I noticed that almost all my karma is gone (!) and most of my comments in this thread are at −2; your comments are also doing pretty poorly. (Not my doing. I try not to downvote any comment I am replying to.)
If I keep this up, I won’t be able to post and my commenting will be rate-limited (which I hate), and the fact that we’re both getting downvoted indicates LW in general finds this a worse-than-worthless discussion, so… I’m going to bow out, as much as I dislike not having the final word.
EDIT: and this gets upvoted almost immediately! You know guys, you could just leave a comment like ‘I don’t think this discussion is very productive, maybe you should stop’ and not rely on the karma system with its crude numbers to convey your desires.
I agree with you on hormesis being plausible. But the two of you generated some fairly low-quality discussion. The downvotes are understandable.
People are giving you karma because they don’t actually want you to suffer real harm (rate limiting).
Most people would steer clear of interfering in a street brawl. An anonymous downvote is like calling the cops :)
“real harm”?!?
Ok, that was funny. I just meant to indicate that it seemed a heartfelt and direct plea by Rhwawn, a person acting in good faith.
they are afraid of karma system, what if we both downvote them together. Also they are still reading, implying some sort of interest in the issue. My karma loss is mostly from posting something controversial in main for 7 downvotes, 70 points.
edit: btw if someone’s coming in consistently to downvote, that person doesn’t want discussion to stop as easy way is to stop coming in, it’s not like this expands all the way. edit: could even be worse. downvoting so we think we are downvoting each other, hence get pissed off more.
This does not follow. People who prefer a conversation to stop most certainly can be expected to downvote comments in that conversation. It works.
(In case Rhwawn was wondering, this does not suggest that I am the one who downvoted them. I don’t recall doing so in any near context.)
What does follow, is you making fairly strong evidence of you coming here just to vote, for many pages, until a post is made that gets you to post. Don’t like it, don’t read it, and don’t talk here of the people who just click on the list of recent posts, that would fluctuate wildly.
How dare you insinuate that I read the recent comments thread, vote as I deem appropriate and then sometimes comment myself!
Oh, no, wait. That’s more or less accurate. Yet somehow you seem to be using it as a vile accusation.
Yea, and the first one to comment being the one i disagreed on the evo psych about, totally doesn’t propagate anywhere.