Re:Ask HN: How did you fix your narcissism?
by serf on Thursday February 06, 2020 @07:02PM
(#22261803)
>When someone says "A therapist really helped me." then their opinion carries its own evidence.
that's only true for individuals which you do not believe to be affected by choice-supportive bias[0], which is , more-or-less, non-existent as far as humanity is concerned.
If someone buys therapy, and they feel as if their quality of life has been improved by the purchase, great, but that's not a quantifiable justification of much without normalizing out inherent bias in the decision making process; a process that isn't as simple as 'an opinion as evidence'.
Re:Ask HN: How did you fix your narcissism?
by munificent on Friday February 07, 2020 @01:39PM
(#22269154)
If the goal of therapy is a subjective increase in quality of life, then whether it comes from bias or objective change doesn't really matter. If the happy pills make you happy, it's sort of an implementation detail as to whether or not they are actually just a placebo. Perception is reality when the goal itself is subjective.
This is a valid opinion, but it would be better presented with some evidence to support it.
When someone says "A therapist really helped me." then their opinion carries its own evidence. They are a living evidential proof of their claim. (At least, to the degree that you accept that the commenter is honest and able to correctly measure their own quality of life.)
But when you say "therapists are a waste of money", your claim shows only absence of evidence, not evidence of absense. It may be that therapists aren't good for you, or that you haven't had a good one, or simply that you have no experience with them at all.