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Comment by 0xDEADFED5 | Hacker News Reader

if you learn things from therapy that improve your life then i guess it has worked.

i imagine success stories tend to self-select as well. if you go to therapy in the first place it means you're admitting a need and willingness to change.

if a person thinks they know everything and can't benefit from therapy then they're probably unlikely to gain anything from the experience.

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> if you learn things from therapy that improve your life then i guess it has worked.

To give a very "Hacker-Newish" snappy remark:

So, if the therapy teaches you programming, and you thus get a much better job improving your life, you'd claim that "learn to program" is a suitable therapy? ;-)

I'd add the caveat that therapy is supposed to be meta (teach you about yourself).

Learning to program isn't therapy. Learning how to learn to program might be.

> I'd add the caveat that therapy is supposed to be meta (teach you about yourself).

Then learning to program is therapy. :-D

I am serious: Learning (very abstract) mathematics, and programming, taught me an insane amount about myself:

- how I attempt to model and structure the world

- how better models of very diverse phenomena look like

- what such insights mean for my life

- ...

>> I'd add the caveat that therapy is supposed to be meta (teach you about yourself).

> Then learning to program is therapy.

Are you trying to say that learning to program is not learning logic?

In the sense that you learned to reprogram your mind.

> if you learn things from therapy that improve your life then i guess it has worked.

But this is true of things that we already know don't work - aromatherapy, homeopathy, acupuncture.

The evidence for therapy is neither more nor less than the "evidence" for things we already know fails double-blind studies.

For CBT therapy, the evidence strongly suggests that it does help in the vast majority (but not all cases). More research is still needed to your point, and we can acknowledge the research done so far has provided evidence in favor.

"The effect's associated prediction interval −0.05 to 0.50 suggested CBT will remain effective in conditions for which we do not currently have available evidence. While there remain some gaps in the completeness of the evidence base, we need to recognise the consistent evidence for the general benefit which CBT offers." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7856415/

"Eleven studies compared response rates between CBT and other treatments or control conditions. CBT showed higher response rates than the comparison conditions in 7 of these reviews and only one review reported that CBT had lower response rates than comparison treatments. In general, the evidence-base of CBT is very strong. However, additional research is needed to examine the efficacy of CBT for randomized-controlled studies." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3584580/

How would one double blind a traial of one or more therapeutic methods?

Honestly, I don't think it's possible.

Correct! And even if it was, what's the active ingredient of therapy?

We know how aromatherapy, homeopathy and acupuncture works, it's called the placebo effect. Now maybe you meant to say: we don't know how the placebo effect works.

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