There’s a lot of fuss in your comment, and a lot of quibbling. But the point you make at the end is a good one. I agree that medicine seems to be a counterexample to this.
To explore this in hopefully a more direct way:
Options for medical treatment:
“Western” Medicine—most popular, has many effective treatments, expensive
Doing Nothing—about as effective as SWM for many things but not all, free
Homeopathy—better than DN because of placebo effect, costs low (?)
“Chinese” Medicine—I don’t really know what the health effects of acupuncture are.
Actually, looking more closely the way I see it is this:
Standard medical practice is often ineffective or overly expensive (at least in the US)--doing less or using ONLY the placebo effect may be a significantly more cost-effective way to treat yourself.
If we think about homeopathy as a way to capture the placebo effects for minor ailments without having to pay for “real” medicine, I think it does seem like “Western” medicine is not strictly superior.
There’s a lot of fuss in your comment, and a lot of quibbling. But the point you make at the end is a good one. I agree that medicine seems to be a counterexample to this.
To explore this in hopefully a more direct way:
Options for medical treatment:
“Western” Medicine—most popular, has many effective treatments, expensive
Doing Nothing—about as effective as SWM for many things but not all, free
Homeopathy—better than DN because of placebo effect, costs low (?)
“Chinese” Medicine—I don’t really know what the health effects of acupuncture are.
Actually, looking more closely the way I see it is this: Standard medical practice is often ineffective or overly expensive (at least in the US)--doing less or using ONLY the placebo effect may be a significantly more cost-effective way to treat yourself.
If we think about homeopathy as a way to capture the placebo effects for minor ailments without having to pay for “real” medicine, I think it does seem like “Western” medicine is not strictly superior.