From Nassim Taleb:
I truly believe that it was rational to resort to prayers in place of doctors: consider the track record. The risk of death effectively increased after a visit to the doctor. Sadly, this continued well into our era: the break-even did not come until early in the 20th Century. Which effectively means that going to the priest, to Lourdes, Fatima, or (in Syria), Saydnaya, aside from the mental benefits, provided a protection against the risks of exposure to the expert problem. Religion was at least neutral –and it could only be beneficial if it got you away from the doctor.
This gives placebo effect a whole new meaning. And it defends religion in a new and reasonable way.
A belief similar to Taleb’s is why I began the long-lasting self-experimentation that led to my paper “ Self-experimentation as a source of new ideas“: I didn’t want to see a doctor about my sleep problem (I awoke too early in the morning and couldn’t fall back asleep). I was sure that what the doctor would prescribe (sleeping pills) would do more harm than good.
Here I am working against a deadline, and I’ve just spent an hour on Nassim Taleb’s blog, without regret. That fellow is erudite.
FWIW, I remember hearing or reading someone saying that Christian Science — loony as it may seem to many now — made good sense back in the days when it was invented. Sleep a lot, pray, be nice, work hard, eat wholesome … You’d almost certainly have done a lot better following those tips than you’d have done seeing doctors back in 1880.
Someone else (Roy Porter, maybe, the historian of medicine) wrote somewhere that until the 20th century doctors did on balance far more harm than they did benefit. Lucky us to be living in the 21st century, when doctors can be of some use.
I have said this in the past, and possibly to you Michael.
Not many people know it, but while doctors *can* be of net use through the use of medicals science, if they care to use it
https://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande
in practice it still seems, at least anywhere near the margins, not to be
https://sciencethatmatters.com/archives/category/medicine
In Medical Nemesis, Ivan Illich estimated the crossover year (when doctors began to save more people than they killed) at 1910. Thinking about Michael’s recent postings about the (growing?) incompetence of our institutions is starting me thinking about Illich; I must dig out some of his books.
Chris, which Michael?