Hmm, fairies and trolls are not at all like a “vitamin X”. There are plenty of supplements that are known to have real positive effect in many cases. And we still know so little about human body and mind that there could be still plenty of low-hanging fruit waiting to be plucked. As for fairies and trolls, we know that these are artifacts of the human tendency to anthropomorphize everything, and there is not a single member of the reference class “not human but human-like in appearance and intelligence”. We also understand enough of evolution to exclude, with high confidence, species like that. (Including humanoid aliens, whether in appearance or in a way of thinking.) But we cannot convincingly state that some extract of an exotic plant or animal from the depth of the rainforest or the ocean would not prove to have, say, a health boost on a human. The odds are not good, but immeasurably better than those of finding another intelligence, on this planet or elsewhere.
Of course, I didn’t mean to group fairies and vitamin X in the same category and convey that their odds were comparable (the odds of the existence of fairies are surely many times lower than the odds of vitamin X being effective). I rather meant to showcase the heuristic by which I tend to group fairies and trolls into “artifacts of the human tendency to anthropomorphize everything” to dismiss them as imaginary, which I think is the same heuristic by which I tend to group vitamin X and Y into “sounds like bogus” to dismiss them as ineffective. Grouping these into “sounds like bogus” might be done with a lower level of confidence, but I think it still stands. If there were a line of people, each holding a branch of one of every exotic plant on Earth, waiting to ask me “should I try this? (without any further justification),” I would say no to all of them, even if there’s a good chance that one of them could provide a health boost.
Right, that makes sense. One reference class is “does not exist except in a fantasy” and the other “do not try it on yourself until there is reliable published research”.
Hmm, fairies and trolls are not at all like a “vitamin X”. There are plenty of supplements that are known to have real positive effect in many cases. And we still know so little about human body and mind that there could be still plenty of low-hanging fruit waiting to be plucked. As for fairies and trolls, we know that these are artifacts of the human tendency to anthropomorphize everything, and there is not a single member of the reference class “not human but human-like in appearance and intelligence”. We also understand enough of evolution to exclude, with high confidence, species like that. (Including humanoid aliens, whether in appearance or in a way of thinking.) But we cannot convincingly state that some extract of an exotic plant or animal from the depth of the rainforest or the ocean would not prove to have, say, a health boost on a human. The odds are not good, but immeasurably better than those of finding another intelligence, on this planet or elsewhere.
Of course, I didn’t mean to group fairies and vitamin X in the same category and convey that their odds were comparable (the odds of the existence of fairies are surely many times lower than the odds of vitamin X being effective). I rather meant to showcase the heuristic by which I tend to group fairies and trolls into “artifacts of the human tendency to anthropomorphize everything” to dismiss them as imaginary, which I think is the same heuristic by which I tend to group vitamin X and Y into “sounds like bogus” to dismiss them as ineffective. Grouping these into “sounds like bogus” might be done with a lower level of confidence, but I think it still stands. If there were a line of people, each holding a branch of one of every exotic plant on Earth, waiting to ask me “should I try this? (without any further justification),” I would say no to all of them, even if there’s a good chance that one of them could provide a health boost.
Right, that makes sense. One reference class is “does not exist except in a fantasy” and the other “do not try it on yourself until there is reliable published research”.