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Comment by lordCarbonFiber | Hacker News Reader

That line of thinking is so alien to me. Does it apply to any time you go looking for goods or services? Do you go online for advice in complying with tax codes because your accountant wants you to get audited and need their services, do you make all your own food because the restaurant chefs want you to leave hungry so you have to order another serving, do you avoid the doctor since if you get better you won't come back into the office?

I think this just speaks the the modern trend of anti-intellectualism. Distrust of an expert because of phantom biases and the regression toward getting advice from your "tribe".

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Does it apply to any time you go looking for goods or services?

No, of course not. I eat at restaurants all the time. People will be hungry again shortly, even if fed wonderfully well. There are other things to worry about more, like if they are meeting food safety codes, which some don't.

I did therapy with a military chaplain. I had a really positive experience there. He wasn't being paid by me to deal with me. He was on salary. If I got better, that had no bearing on how much he made.

Some of the best hospitals in the US put their doctors on salary a long time ago. How many tests they order has no bearing on their income the way it can for a lot of private practice.

I have serious health issues and have gotten healthier via alternative approaches. I've thought a lot about what's wrong with modern medicine and I do think the way it gets paid for in the US is part of the problem. That doesn't mean I would never go to a doctor.

I've had lots of medical care and I would have died without it a long time ago, but I also was told at some point "People like you don't get well." When I didn't like that answer, I was scheduled fewer appointments and the rest of the world has since decided to malign me as a nutcase who "refuses" to see a doctor, which isn't the case.

I'm not an anti-intellectual by any stretch of the imagination. Nor do I think you should never seek expert advice. I'm just saying that advice free from conflict of interest is actually very valuable and one of the things offered by things like advice columns.

Example scenario:

If you are crying on the shoulder of some woman friend about your marital problems, you ultimately get divorced and end up with her, you have to wonder if she was really giving you advice designed to enhance your life or designed to enhance hers. You have to wonder if you can really trust her. It's a situation where she probably should have recused herself and told you "I'm not the person to get advice from on this matter. Sorry." But that's often not how it goes.

I don't want to invalidate your experience, but, jeez, I really feel awful for anyone that has to live in a world where they're constantly wondering if their friends are trying to take advantage of them. Most situations in life aren't zero sum, what's good for them may very well be what's good for you. Even less situations are zero sum and material; one patient's business is not likely to make or break a psychiatry practice so why not give good advice (misery loves company after all, healthy outcomes probably exponentially generates new customers).

This is especially apparent when the alternative is often some faceless person(s) on the internet who may very well bring their own (unknowable to you) biases to the table.

I've had the following college classes: Intro to Psychology; Social Psychology; Negotiation and Conflict Management. I had a corporate job for over five years. Part of that job was looking for "red flags" and referring it to the fraud department if it looked fishy enough. I also was taught proper procedure for how to handle a file where I had conflict of interest in order to protect the company legally (Answer: You don't. You leave note and send it back to the queues and let someone else handle the file.)

Framing this as opinion based on "my experience" is basically hanging an awful lot of baggage on me and acting like I've simply had a sucktastic life surrounded by people I can't trust, etc. It's a pretty ugly suggestion and not only serves to invalidate me, it invalidates the point entirely by presuming it has no real basis other than "Wow, that woman must have the worst life ever. Sucks to be her, I guess." And that's really not a good faith means to engage the point.

This exchange is a wonderful example of why amateur/anonymous advice shouldn't be automatically taken as better than professional advice! You are both filling in the blanks with your own experience and biases.

I never said it was automatically better. Where are you getting this nonsense? I only indicated that there are situations where one might want to hear from an uninvolved outsider for perspective and this is one reason why "amateur advice" in newspaper columns can have genuine value for some people.

Anyway, I'm done here. This entire discussion is completely off the rails from my perspective.

>I did therapy with a military chaplain. I had a really positive experience there. He wasn't being paid by me to deal with me. He was on salary. If I got better, that had no bearing on how much he made.

Actually, military chaplains do have a conflict of interest. They have to be endorsed by a religious organization, and said endorsement must be maintained throughout the chaplain's military service and can be withdrawn at any time for religious or disciplinary reasons. If they're not consistent with the teachings of their denomination, they stand to lose their military benefits and a pension.

If an accountant screws up, you're not likely to hire the same accountant again.

You might come back to a restaurant if you enjoyed your experience. The incentive is to give you as good a meal as possible. If you're hungry, you won't come back.

Doctors have a more concrete job to do. There's plenty of malpractice in the medical industry, by the way.

Psychiatry? It's much less concrete what a patient's needs are than other forms of business. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to bring up a potential conflict of interest there.

Equating things at random which don't make logical sense doesn't invalidate the point someone is trying to make.

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