Comments on: Scientific Freud

By: Random stuff « Econstudentlog

Random stuff « Econstudentlog — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 09:42:10 +0000

[…] Scientific Freud. Seemed like a relevant link to post now – I have an appointment with a shrink next week. I […]

By: John Salvatier

John Salvatier — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 18:56:01 +0000

I think part of the point here is not that the effects of CBT are not real, but that the effects of PDT are *also* real and that their success is probably not attributable to their theory of mind (since that differs between them), but something that they share.

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By: MugaSofer

MugaSofer — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 02:11:01 +0000

Immediately after reading this post, I went to a seminar/lecture thingy that rather pointedly namedropped CBT and made some use of (simplified?) CBT techniques. Afterward, I ended up mentioning that I had just heard it was found to be, well, not real.

He said someone had told him that at all his previous speeches as well.

Nice to see the effect this sort of data has…

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By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 14 Nov 2013 00:28:46 +0000

Pointing out flaws is a lot more visible than taking some information away from the remainder of the post, especially on a GUI with upvote buttons and within a culture where me-tooing is discouraged, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

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By: MugaSofer

MugaSofer — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 16:55:58 +0000

Are you a troll, or do you seriously think pointing out that “they help control mental illnesses that would otherwise reach the point where someone else would commit the person to a hospital” is the same as “it is a valid state function to lock criminally innocent, cognitively functional (not perception- or thought-impaired) people up against their will merely to protect them from their own choices”?

Judging by your other comments here, I’m leaning towards “engaging in bad faith, but honestly”.

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By: Phil Goetz

Phil Goetz — Sat, 05 Oct 2013 14:51:39 +0000

People who enjoy thinking of themselves as smart get a thrill out of saying “Here is this thing that many people were taken in by, but not me.” Saying “No, really there is something to this point of view” is less satisfying. I relate this to the “attack culture” on LessWrong, where people would much rather point out the one flaw they found in one tangential part of a post than see what they can take away from the remainder of the post.

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By: Evan Gaensbauer

Evan Gaensbauer — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 23:22:10 +0000

Scott: thank you. Thanks go to Deiseach and Vassar for their clarifications and suggestions as well. Therapy has been and is going well, and I expect it to continue to do so. Note that I haven’t had a depressive episode for several months now, and at the time I made the comment I was succumbing to a (somewhat irrational?) fear of my current therapy session of being unable to prevent a relapse. However, I’m feeling great these days.

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By: Eric Rall

Eric Rall — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 21:02:40 +0000

Taking your off-the-cuff examples literally, that suggests that stage actors would make a good control group against which to measure the performance of psychotherapists.

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By: Jack

Jack — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 09:52:00 +0000

“Skepticism and metaskepticism seem to be two largely separate skills.”

Hm. I’m not sure if I like this terminology. It might be more like, “it’s easy to glom onto a rationalist community and believe everything they say, and if you do, you’re likely to be right a lot more often” and “but even if you’re better at it than average, it’s still hard to spot that something plausible-sounding doesn’t prove it’s not bunkum”. The first _looks_ like skepticism, and spotting flaws in skeptical thinking is arguably meta-skepticism, but I’d prefer to say, spotting flaws in ANY thinking IS skepticism, and believing skeptic-signalling things is (while possibly good) “being part of skeptic culture” rather than “thinking skeptically”?

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By: anon1

anon1 — Mon, 23 Sep 2013 08:02:22 +0000

One would hope that lack of caring about efficacy was evidence of lack of efficacy. Unfortunately in this field maybe it isn’t.

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