Hacker News Reader

Comment by haswell | Hacker News Reader

The psychiatric classification of homosexuality is not relevant to the anecdote.

That said, scientific endeavors revise themselves when they learn that they are wrong, as was the case with the removal of homosexuality from the DSM.

The many fields of science and medicine went through periods of growth during which they’d be laughed off as “not scientific” or “not medicine” by today’s standards. The mind is a lot harder to measure. There are often answers in principle but not in practice. This gap doesn’t make the entire thing unscientific, but in need of more progress.

How would you classify drugs that are proven to work for a given issue, but for which we have a limited or non-existent understanding of the mechanism of effect? Are these not medicines?

View on HN

> scientific endeavors revise themselves when they learn that they are wrong

Exactly. And scripture is notably not revised when it is found to be wrong. I ask, which worldview should you trust more based on this observation?

I felt that the article is written is a style typical of conspiratorial literature, i.e.: presenting lots and lots of evidence for a false or straw-man claim.

The true message of the article seems to be buried in the subtext. they mention the cost of therapy (to the individual and to society) and they mention churches too.

To me it reads like this: I don't want to pay for your expensive psychotherapy through my insurance. Go to church instead (where, depending on the church, we might also get a chance to fill your mind with our regressive version of christian values.)

> Exactly. And scripture is notably not revised when it is found to be wrong. I ask, which worldview should you trust more based on this observation?

Clearly the scientific one. I think we're in complete agreement here, and that's why I highlighted that part of the article. My point was that it seems laughable to raise issues with therapy while presenting church as an alternative.

The sentence you quoted was directed at the other commenter's seeming implication that homosexuality's removal from the DSM is somehow an indictment of the psychiatric discipline (maybe I'm misreading them, hoping I am).

> The sentence you quoted was directed at the other commenter's seeming implication that homosexuality's removal from the DSM is somehow an indictment of the psychiatric discipline

There must be some logical fallacy named for this. I've often seen this critique in terms of pandemic policy. ("Why should you believe what you're saying, when you've changed your mind before...")

Reply on news.ycombinator.com