The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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It does sound vaguely plausible, though my priors for "I cured myself with this one weird trick" claims are pretty low so I wouldn't put too much stock in it.
My priors for "I cured myself with this one weird trick" are pretty high, in that I think most of those reports are honest, and many are even directly causal. My priors for "I cured myself with this one weird trick and you can also cure yourself with that same trick" are low.
Could a simple dietary supplement cure malaise, gum disease, rough skin, bruising, shortness of breath, and emotional changes? Yes! All that's required is that you're suffering from scurvy and the chosen supplement is Vitamin C. Can a physical therapist instantly and permanently cure your chronic issues? Yes! At least if they are the first one to target the simple problem you have.
You can easily get a massive improvement in wellbeing only if you have a major but simple problem and select the correct treatment. Unfortunately, the underlying conditions are either a different simple problem or else more complex in many cases.
See also: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/fFY2HeC9i2Tx8FEnK/luck-based-medicine-my-resentful-story-of-becoming-a-medical
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Yes, but you can also get a massive improvement via the placebo effect, or just via coincidence, and there will be a huge reporting bias where "one weird tricks" that seem to work will be overreported. So while the phenomenon you describe is also possible, I think the most common situation is simply a mistake on the part of the person reporting their experiences.
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