Author Topic: Colloidal silver  (Read 5416 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Askold

  • Definitely not hiding a dark secret.
  • Global Moderator
  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 8358
  • Gender: Male
Re: Colloidal silver
« Reply #15 on: July 02, 2013, 01:01:06 am »
Earths magnetic field extends pretty far. Wearing shoes is not enough to insulate you from it.
No matter what happens, no matter what my last words may end up being, I want everyone to claim that they were:
"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
Aww, you guys rock. :)  I feel the love... and the pitchforks and torches.  Tingly!

Offline chitoryu12

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 4009
  • Gender: Male
  • Tax-Payer Rhino
Re: Colloidal silver
« Reply #16 on: July 02, 2013, 01:42:48 am »
Earths magnetic field extends pretty far. Wearing shoes is not enough to insulate you from it.

Do you REALLY expect to make sense to a woman who thinks small magnets have any curative powers?
Still can't think of a signature a year later.

Offline Askold

  • Definitely not hiding a dark secret.
  • Global Moderator
  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 8358
  • Gender: Male
Re: Colloidal silver
« Reply #17 on: July 02, 2013, 01:53:41 am »
I wish they would just stick with completely mystic/religious things rather than pseudoscience. Why claim that magnets or colloidal silver work when it is easy to disprove? Why sell stuff that is poisonous and actually harms people?

All those nonsensical explanations hurt my head, at least prayer healing or homeopathy and the like don't have a chance of poisoning and killing the user... And at least I don't feel like screaming "MAGNETS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!" to someone who does faith healing or such.

Although using those and not going to real doctor at all is also harmful, but using them alongside real prescription medicine is not that bad.
No matter what happens, no matter what my last words may end up being, I want everyone to claim that they were:
"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
Aww, you guys rock. :)  I feel the love... and the pitchforks and torches.  Tingly!

Offline Witchyjoshy

  • SHITLORD THUNDERBASTARD!!
  • Kakarot
  • ******
  • Posts: 9044
  • Gender: Male
  • Thinks he's a bard
Re: Colloidal silver
« Reply #18 on: July 02, 2013, 01:54:33 am »
Uh...

I understand walking barefoot in grass and dirt to almost-literally connect with nature, but...

Considering I believe the whole "magnet therapy" is proven to be a load of bullshit I just want her to stay far away from my hypothetical children.
Mockery of ideas you don't comprehend or understand is the surest mark of unintelligence.

Even the worst union is better than the best Walmart.

Caladur's Active Character Sheet

Offline chitoryu12

  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 4009
  • Gender: Male
  • Tax-Payer Rhino
Re: Colloidal silver
« Reply #19 on: July 02, 2013, 03:28:21 am »
I wish they would just stick with completely mystic/religious things rather than pseudoscience. Why claim that magnets or colloidal silver work when it is easy to disprove? Why sell stuff that is poisonous and actually harms people?

All those nonsensical explanations hurt my head, at least prayer healing or homeopathy and the like don't have a chance of poisoning and killing the user... And at least I don't feel like screaming "MAGNETS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!" to someone who does faith healing or such.

Although using those and not going to real doctor at all is also harmful, but using them alongside real prescription medicine is not that bad.

Rationalwiki has some good articles on homeopathy (including scientific explanations for why it's bullshit), as well as reasons for why people continue to stick with it.

Generally homeopathic and pseudoscientific methods have a lot of manipulative anecdotal accounts, and rely on vague personal feelings when determining symptoms and improvement rather than actual measurable changes. Just about anything good can be applied to them, while anything bad can be waved off as something unrelated.

One other way homeopathy tries to avoid any scientific scrutiny is to make bullshit claims about how exact a process has to be (especially their "succusion" to mix up the stuff right, which has intentionally vague instructions to let anyone decide whether or not it's working based on whether or not it's convenient to claim that it was done improperly), or how it has to be tailored to the individual. Their thinking is that if a medicine has to be specifically tailored to the person and situation, they can brush off any actual objective claims of effectiveness by saying that it wasn't "done right."
Still can't think of a signature a year later.

Offline Sigmaleph

  • Ungodlike
  • Administrator
  • The Beast
  • *****
  • Posts: 3615
    • sigmaleph on tumblr
Re: Colloidal silver
« Reply #20 on: July 02, 2013, 06:53:25 pm »
I wish they would just stick with completely mystic/religious things rather than pseudoscience. Why claim that magnets or colloidal silver work when it is easy to disprove? Why sell stuff that is poisonous and actually harms people?

Pseudoscience is a cheap way of making your bullshit seem legitimate, because it draws on the fact that most people accept that science is the way we know things about the world, but many of them can't tell the difference between actual science and science-flavoured woo.

Magnets are easy to use for this because they already seem almost magic, and they have a shitload of legitimate applications. If you don't know any better, it's not hard to think "magical healing powers" is a perfectly reasonable addition to the list.

As for why people end up selling actively harmful stuff as woo, well, law of large numbers. If you sell bullshit without caring what it actually does, then there's a non-negligible probability that it will do harm*. Enough people selling bullshit, some of it will be poison. And then there's the opportunity cost, which makes things much worse.

*Conversely, there's a non-zero probability that it will help, but it's much smaller. In general, any random change in a complex system with multiple interdependent parts is far more likely to break it than to improve it.
Σא