I think some nuance here is needed. My understanding of "natural" primarily comes from an understanding of evolutionary history. If humans have been doing something for millions of years, it is likely to be more "natural" and therefore not cause harm compared to recently invented things. But it is not a black and white thing, but rather a spectrum.
Some examples:
Trans fats were invented because they thought saturated fat, which was consumed by humans for a long time, were not healthy, and this new thing was supposed to be better. Then it was found to cause all kinds of problems and are now banned in many places. Here I think it was pretty cut and dry.
An anecdote I've found others corroborate: I used to have foot pain. Some people suggested orthotic insoles, but I also found the barefoot shoe proponents saying that shoes without any padding at all (more "natural") work better. Five years later I never have any foot pain. The Vivobarefoot or Vibram Fivefingers shoes are definitely not something that was around a million years ago, but the principle is the same.
In healthcare, an example in the book is how many people are prescribed statin drugs if their cholesterol is too high, even if there is no other visibly problematic symptoms. Taleb would argue the far better solution is to improve the person's diet, or just wait and see if something happens, than to start taking a drug that isn't.
The author once strained his back lifting weights. The doctor suggested an expensive and invasive surgery. Instead he just rested for a while and the problem went away. On the other hand, my mom recently had neck surgery to replace several vertebrae. She'd been in pain for years and nothing could fix it. So in this case I think Taleb would agree that the risk of a dangerous surgery might be worth it in that case.
An extreme example from the book: in the early 20th century children were given doses of radiation to treat acne. We obviously look at this and scoff, but it is the same idea.
> Why on earth would you conflate the profit motives of healthcare middlemen to imply that the science behind medicine isn't credible?
I'm looking at the profit motives to see where I should be cautious. I feel like this very site is where I've read many articles about how scientific studies had bias because of funding from the companies invested in a certain answer. From what I can see, if you follow the money, you can explain a great deal of the behavior of large institutions.
So I'm not at all advocating ludditeism or against science. Rather I'm against scientism (I think the word he uses in the book) - the belief that science has all the answers and that newer things are inherently better than older things just because they are. They may in fact be better, but not always. Sometimes atheists I meet are just as close-minded as the religious.
A good hypothesis can be used to make predictions. I'm just saying with my foot issues that the heuristic of "subtractive medicine is better than additive medicine" was able to predict that removing padding from my shoes would make my problem go away. And it did. That does not prove anything but it worked here.
Say that the padding had worked, you might have rationalised it to to be that it's unnatural to walk on hard surfaces ("our ancestors never walked on concrete").
There are also probably many instances in your life where this hasn't worked, but you've cherry picked the example that does.
It's very likely that your body healed itself regardless of the padding. You might have just needed time. You've figured that it's removing the padding but it might not be a factor. It's why studies need decent sample sizes to make strong conclusions.
That's fair enough, but also why I looked for other people who had similar experiences. I'm definitely not always right, that is true. I am not a doctor, lawyer, or accountant.
I'm pretty sure the early hydrogenated oils were created (Crisco, 1911) because they had similar and in some cases superior properties to animal fats and butter, but were cheaper and had a longer shelf life. The idea they were healthier came later.
Some examples: Trans fats were invented because they thought saturated fat, which was consumed by humans for a long time, were not healthy, and this new thing was supposed to be better. Then it was found to cause all kinds of problems and are now banned in many places. Here I think it was pretty cut and dry.
An anecdote I've found others corroborate: I used to have foot pain. Some people suggested orthotic insoles, but I also found the barefoot shoe proponents saying that shoes without any padding at all (more "natural") work better. Five years later I never have any foot pain. The Vivobarefoot or Vibram Fivefingers shoes are definitely not something that was around a million years ago, but the principle is the same.
In healthcare, an example in the book is how many people are prescribed statin drugs if their cholesterol is too high, even if there is no other visibly problematic symptoms. Taleb would argue the far better solution is to improve the person's diet, or just wait and see if something happens, than to start taking a drug that isn't.
The author once strained his back lifting weights. The doctor suggested an expensive and invasive surgery. Instead he just rested for a while and the problem went away. On the other hand, my mom recently had neck surgery to replace several vertebrae. She'd been in pain for years and nothing could fix it. So in this case I think Taleb would agree that the risk of a dangerous surgery might be worth it in that case.
An extreme example from the book: in the early 20th century children were given doses of radiation to treat acne. We obviously look at this and scoff, but it is the same idea.
> Why on earth would you conflate the profit motives of healthcare middlemen to imply that the science behind medicine isn't credible?
I'm looking at the profit motives to see where I should be cautious. I feel like this very site is where I've read many articles about how scientific studies had bias because of funding from the companies invested in a certain answer. From what I can see, if you follow the money, you can explain a great deal of the behavior of large institutions.
So I'm not at all advocating ludditeism or against science. Rather I'm against scientism (I think the word he uses in the book) - the belief that science has all the answers and that newer things are inherently better than older things just because they are. They may in fact be better, but not always. Sometimes atheists I meet are just as close-minded as the religious.