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Criticisms of “The Body Keeps the Score”

(josepheverettwil.substack.com)
250 points adityaathalye | 1 comments | 22 Oct 25 18:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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jamestimmins ◴[22 Oct 25 19:23 UTC] No.45673919[source]▶
I've been playing with the hypothesis that if information is controversial/surprising and targeted at laypeople, it is almost guaranteed to be misleading or outright false.

The only way to convincingly make the case for new information is with pretty rigorous technical arguments, which is fundamentally at odds with a lay audience. If someone has those rigorous technical arguments, they'd be making them in journals to a technical audience, and the results would slowly become consensus.

Obvi there are counter-examples, but as a general rule I think this is far more true than not. Which is why if you learn from Forbes that someone is close to cracking AGI, you can almost outright assume this is untrue.

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1. vharuck ◴[22 Oct 25 20:30 UTC] No.45674759[source]▶
>I've been playing with the hypothesis that if information is controversial/surprising and targeted at laypeople, it is almost guaranteed to be misleading or outright false.

Don't forget the red flag of "Makes me feel better about myself or my situation." Especially if it implies one's superiority over others.

I've often had the experience of reading an article and thinking, "This says people with quality X are, against common sense, actually better at Y. Hey, I have quality X! Aw, rats. This is probably bunk and I'm too flattered to see the errors."