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Comment by collyw | Hacker News Reader

Homoeopathy comes to mind.

I am in two minds about it. On the one hand it would appear pretty ridiculous and there is no way that it should be paid for. On the other hand if it works via the placebo effect in a cost effective manner, is that a bad thing?

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The placebo effect isnt bad, lying about the effects (homeopathy) charging much more than the cure is worth (homeopathy), and outright selling poison to people (homeopathy) is not ok.

But isn't the lying necessary to be a placebo?

And what is the cure worth? How do you measure that?

Not necessary apparently, https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/placebo-can-work-even-kn...

How is it supposed to work as a placebo if you're told "hey, this is a glass of fresh water: drink it. And by the way, it's free'.

In other words the lie is integral to the working of the placebo. This is the whole source of the issue.

It does work even without deception, which makes it all the weirder. It's covered in the article.

What's interesting is that it seems to depend on which truth you tell. To oversimplify, "take this, it's not medicine" doesn't help. "Take this, it's not medicine but it will help you anyway" does.

The weird thing about homeopathy is that it's advertised as selling poison, but actually isn't. One of the ridiculous premises is that "like cures like", so it should be poison, but then there's the other ridiculous premise of diluting it to make it more powerful.

except when it is selling dangerous levels of poison:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2017/01/28/fda-toxic-b...

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