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Comment by icey | Hacker News Reader

Let me get this straight. He has tens of thousands of pages of potential material [1], but he is soliciting tips and help from people who have some actual credulity in the field?

Forgive me if I'm a little suspicious of this one.

    [1] "I’ll spare you the 10,000 pages of literature on a
 given topic and give you the one unusual 1-2-3 method that
 produced unbelievable results."

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I think, what he is saying is... since he has done most of the reading and experiments, that actually save us having to go through the same amount of literature.

I know personally, when i do those type of reading, they all give a very conflicting opinion. Example: Vitamin C. Some say 250mg, another say you need 3000mg/day (or even as far as 20000mg/day). Almost every piece of medical advice that i read always have counter-argument. It's so hard to know which one is working without experiment. Even then, i'm not sure how long u need to carry the experiment.

I strongly agree with your second paragraph. It just seems like a disconnect to me where he spends 3/4s of his post talking about how much he knows about this topic; and then follows it up with a solicitation for people who know about this topic.

> Almost every piece of medical advice that i read always have counter-argument. It's so hard to know which one is working without experiment.

Medical advice based off peer reviewed studies and expert analysis or advice from some quack promising to increase your strength by 30% in 48 hours?

Regarding your second paragraph, that is perhaps because different experiments give different results. When it comes to such things no experiment can be perfect because it is so hard to isolate completely the dependent variable. So in most cases is probabilities. It is safe to suggest say 250mg if the majority of experiments get roughly that results.

Considering the above and considering that scientists do not seem to agree because the experiments do not seem to give the same results, what made Tim Ferris the arbiter?

He's asking for contributions from other people so that you don't have to just believe him. Maybe you won't believe Tim Ferriss but you might believe an NBA trainer or track and field star.

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