What a great essay - I learned a lot from it. We are indeed in a data fetish period, just like we are in an information overload fetish period. We don't know what to do with and how to process either, I think simply because there's too much of it. Too much data that we collect, and too much information at our fingertips.
Thank you, Monica. The information overload is a great point. Because we want more more more, we rarely take stock of what all this data and information actually add to our lives. Both data and information have their uses (I have to admit I like a lot of information at my fingertips), but, as you point out, here too quality trumps quantity and sometimes that seems to get lost.
Also, the book is old enough to be free online, so if you don't mind reading on an e-reader, there are epubs and pdfs to be found somewhere in the internet's information overload ;).
I feel this. I used to track all my health metrics, now I only track what’s necessary. We’ve embraced Apollonianism in the West, to borrow a Nietzschean term, at the expense of our Dionysian; we worship order at the expense of everything from content joy to orgiastic ecstasy.
I can relate. Part of me wants to track *all the things*, but I know I'd go overboard with it and just end up stressed out (even more). To be honest, I could use some more Dionysus in my life ;).
It took going to Greece, a decidedly different culture, to help me see it. In Greece, life was much simpler. People lived instead of counting. Now, I let the technology passively track and only look at it when a problem comes up.
The nocebo effect is freaky. I was stunned reading the COVID vaccine studies and finding out that people in the control group had slightly worse outcomes, even with severe reactions like myocarditis—from saline water.
Totally. I once wrote about it during the height of the pandemic and came to the conclusion that we should really rethink our concept of informed consent. After all, if informing the patients of possible side effects not only helps fuel disinformation and conspiracy theories, but might actually cause the unwanted effects in some of those people, perhaps it’s not the flawless moral system we think it is? I sense you’ll appreciate this piece.
There's a lot of untapped potential in improving our understanding of placebo/nocebo effects (even in genetic testing, which is pretty interesting, check this one out: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30932047/).
What a great essay - I learned a lot from it. We are indeed in a data fetish period, just like we are in an information overload fetish period. We don't know what to do with and how to process either, I think simply because there's too much of it. Too much data that we collect, and too much information at our fingertips.
Also, that book We sounds so very interesting.
Thank you, Monica. The information overload is a great point. Because we want more more more, we rarely take stock of what all this data and information actually add to our lives. Both data and information have their uses (I have to admit I like a lot of information at my fingertips), but, as you point out, here too quality trumps quantity and sometimes that seems to get lost.
Also, the book is old enough to be free online, so if you don't mind reading on an e-reader, there are epubs and pdfs to be found somewhere in the internet's information overload ;).
Hahaha touché! I will take advantage of the info overload to search online for the book. :) But I dislike reading on a screen...
Here's a (sorry, screen-bound) version - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61963.
I understand the dislike; I've started reading on an e-reader recently (saves book shelf space) and it's not as terrible as I feared...
Thanks!
I feel this. I used to track all my health metrics, now I only track what’s necessary. We’ve embraced Apollonianism in the West, to borrow a Nietzschean term, at the expense of our Dionysian; we worship order at the expense of everything from content joy to orgiastic ecstasy.
I can relate. Part of me wants to track *all the things*, but I know I'd go overboard with it and just end up stressed out (even more). To be honest, I could use some more Dionysus in my life ;).
It took going to Greece, a decidedly different culture, to help me see it. In Greece, life was much simpler. People lived instead of counting. Now, I let the technology passively track and only look at it when a problem comes up.
The nocebo effect is freaky. I was stunned reading the COVID vaccine studies and finding out that people in the control group had slightly worse outcomes, even with severe reactions like myocarditis—from saline water.
Yeah, nocebo adds a whole dimension to the harms of misinformation...
Totally. I once wrote about it during the height of the pandemic and came to the conclusion that we should really rethink our concept of informed consent. After all, if informing the patients of possible side effects not only helps fuel disinformation and conspiracy theories, but might actually cause the unwanted effects in some of those people, perhaps it’s not the flawless moral system we think it is? I sense you’ll appreciate this piece.
https://medium.com/microbial-instincts/the-bizarre-phenomenon-of-the-nocebo-effect-in-covid-19-vaccines-b5f687262a99
Nice one!
There's a lot of untapped potential in improving our understanding of placebo/nocebo effects (even in genetic testing, which is pretty interesting, check this one out: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30932047/).
Oh wowwwww. This is incredible.