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Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

doyourownresearch.substack.com

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Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#31

Post by Izkata »

From the original article they're responding to:

> This is still just a possibility. Maybe I’m over-focusing too hard on a couple positive results and this will all turn out to be nothing. Or who knows, maybe ivermectin does work against COVID a little - although it would have to be very little, fading to not at all in temperate worm-free countries. But this theory feels right to me.

> It feels right to me because it’s the most troll-ish possible solution. Everybody was wrong!

Actually, if it does pan out, score 1 for the conspiracy theorists. If you actually asked them by what mechanism they thought Ivermectin worked, they really had only two answers, and "alleviating strain on your immune system by killing parasites you didn't know you had" was one of them, from very early on.

Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#32

Post by toolz »

DonHopkins wrote: post #9
toolz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Quoted post unavailable.

What point are you trying to make? That I'm misrepresenting the usage of Ivermectin by cherry picking facts? Wouldn't you be inclined to show I'm wrong then instead of just imply I'm misleading people?

Here you can find a long list of countries that use it nationwide as recommended at the national level (which is why I used countries to begin with) https://ivmstatus.com/

Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#34

Post by dekhn »

dragonwriter wrote: post #27
toolz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know Scott was the first person to suggest the "worm theory" (parasites) and no study has shown that to be the case. Unless some new body of Ivermectin research has come out that I'm unaware of, then you're misrepresenting current medical opinion by a long shot.

> As far as I know Scott was the first person to suggest the "worm theory" (parasites) and no study has shown that to be the case. I don't know if he is the first person to suggest it, but you are incorrect that there is no published research supporting it. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle... .

Doctors were discussing the idea in Grand Rounds at UCSF a couple years ago. I can't find the recording right now.

Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#35

Post by astrange »

pasabagi wrote: post #6

I guess 'rationalism', as a name, calls a certain kind of person out of the ether: 1. They like rationality, and feel it's opposed by 'irrationality'. 2. They want to be part of some 'rational group'. 3. They're ignorant enough not to know the name is already taken. 4. They're ignorant enough not to know that the name means pretty much the opposite of what they believe. (A real rationalist, for instance, probably wou…

I think the use of "rationalism" follows modern philosophy trends and isn't a reinvention. They are "actually" empiricists as opposed to rationalists, yes, but most of those rationalist ideas[0] moved to continental philosophy and are now part of the modern rationalists' enemies, humanities people who read French theory.

"Rationalism" descends from analytic philosophy/logical positivism/scientific method types, so they're into experiments now. This is good, because their main program of logical positivism doesn't actually work, so it's kind of a problem that they're still trying to do it.

[0] the world doesn't exist, there's only sense data causing you to imagine a shared world, thinking about things logically is better than trying them out

Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#36

Post by adamisom »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #11
topgun77 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Quoted post unavailable.

It’s more Spock-like than rationalist-culture-like. It’s clearly poor rhetoric and doesn’t jibe with anything I personally associate with the rationalist sphere. This really seems representative to you? If so I had no idea their image problem was so bad with so many HNers.

Re: Scott Alexander's correction on ivermectin and its meaning for the rationalists

#38

Post by reducesuffering »

robonerd wrote: post #7

Pursuit of rationality can be paradoxical in a sense, insofar as believing yourself capable attaining rationality is fundamentally irrational. You aren't a Vulcan, you're a Human. To err is human. All humans are irrational some of the time and if you believe yourself capable of being better than that, you're only proving yourself wrong with that very belief. Rationality done right is the pursuit of an unobtainable go…

This is what rationalists like to refer to as a strawman. Show me any example of one claiming to eventually be without err or irrationality. The claims are simply that most people have many implicit biases and illogical means, and that there are some ways of bettering your thinking methods.
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