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Comment by bmelton | Hacker News Reader

A completely rational explanation that may or may not be the answer.

If my car disappears from my garage, it may be because it was stolen, or maybe because it was transported to an alien planet by extra-terrestrial life forms.

My assertion that it was E.T. does not mean that your counter-assertion that it was stolen is true. Maybe I lent it to a friend and forgot, or my wife took it to be pimped out on Overhaulin', or that it was repossessed due to some bank error.

It's quite appropriate to raise additional possible explanations. It's quite inappropriate to tell someone that their treatment is in no way causative to the amelioration of symptoms, especially when they cannot know for certain that they were not.

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I'm note sure I follow your logic. Are you saying that if you can't give specific, alternative explanations for the missing car, we must consider aliens a plausible explanation?

I'm saying that if you, a person who is probably not privy to the medical details of another random internet poster, cannot factually assert that dietary changes had nothing to do with his hay fever, then it is inappropriate to assert that it had nothing to do with his hay fever as fact.

We know that there are foods that have medical benefit. There are foods that contain anti-histamine capabilities, for example, or decongestant capabilities that could have been positively impactful on hay fever. These may have been a part of OP's dietary supplements.

Without knowing what the supplements were, we cannot dismiss that they might possibly have been of aid.

I never said it was the correct answer, but if you say the car was captured by aliens and I say it may have just been towed. The rational thing is to consider things in order of probability vs. risk not necessarily go with aliens every time.

I mean sure it could have been stolen, or towed, or aliens, etc. But, the point is when what happens can have reasonable explanations it's not evidence for ET.

The OP I'm responding to said, specifically "The snake-oil has done nothing," which they cannot know for certain, especially given that the dietary supplements were not even listed.

Which OP said that? Can you link/quote them?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14787849

sorry, this is reply, posted to wrong place..

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14792139

Would you take 1:1,000 odds that it did something? If not saying it did nothing is perfectly reasonable. I mean sure the sun might go out tomorrow, but reasonable assumptions are reasonable. Further logically he said it may have been this, but clearly the magic beans where worthless. Which is different than saying it defiantly was this and therefore the magic beans are worthless.

PS: And no I would not take those odds even though it may have helped, there are odds vastly below 1%.

Fair enough - though this was what your analogy was about? Not the rational explanation provided?

Nonsense. One's personal experiences are worthless as evidence, and all theories are subject to Occam's Razor. That you dislike these principles being applied to some subject is your own problem.

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