Hacker News Reader

Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about anybody else but if $lowcostbehavior has a small chance of leading to $goodoutcome I still wouldn't mind hearing about it.

I've tried multiple things he mentioned which haven't worked which also didn't cost me anything.

View on HN

>I don't know about anybody else but if $lowcostbehavior has a small chance of leading to $goodoutcome I still wouldn't mind hearing about it

This has traditionally been the excuse of quacks

>I've tried multiple things he mentioned which haven't worked which also didn't cost me anything.

And this is "throw things on a wall and see what sticks".

It's ok if you're doing research (even there though it should be tamed as an approach) but it's not OK when giving medical and health lifestyle advice.

>This has traditionally been the excuse of quacks

Not really. Quacks usually try to sell you profitable remedies that have no chance of working and only cite scientific research in order to be misleading.

This made me realize: What if you listening to his talks/podcasts/videos is the thing he's selling you?

What if his product/remedie is just the "content" he produces. Not much different to a quack then.

He seems to get paid for promoting stuff like blood tests and some supplement company. I tend to ignore that stuff as I ignore all adverts but I would be reluctant to assume that he's selling quack medicine this way.

Some people do seem to assume that since he's getting paid to promote supplements, that those supplements are basically another herbalife. I haven't seen anybody give any evidence for this though.

That's exactly the thing he's selling.

That's their regular selling tactic. But their excuse when they're called for selling snakeoil and bullshit health regimens. Then it's: "it works for some", "doesn't hurt to try", "better that not taking anything", "at least it gives people hope".

In this case he doesn't sell snakeoil directly: he sells talking about remedies and regimens for YT eyeballs and popularity (which can be turned into money indirectly).

>That's their regular selling tactic. But their excuse when they're called for selling snakeoil and bullshit health regimens. Then it's: "it works for some", "doesn't hurt to try", "better that not taking anything", "at least it gives people hope".

I seem to recall listening to a podcast where he cited a study that wasn't very conclusive and he said that it wasn't very conclusive.

So no. No it is not.

>In this case he doesn't sell snakeoil directly

If I had a dollar for every person who told me that he's selling snake oil without giving a clear example I'd be able to set up my own version of herbalife.

I really find it weird how many people despise him for really vague reasons. Like, why? He's pushing scientific studies. There is nuance. Not everything is expected to work. Not every study that shows something interesting has a high p value. He says all this. Quacks dont.

On an individual basis, there's nothing wrong with "throw things on a wall and see what sticks" as long as those things are low cost and low risk. For a lot of this stuff there is no high-quality research available (and probably never will be) so you just have to do your own informal n=1 experiments to see what works for you: not truly scientific but good enough. Andrew Huberman has always been clear about which protocols are actually supported by high-quality evidence and which are just speculative.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com