The only way to fix my ankle arthritis is to have the joint replaced, which is not ideal nor a consideration. Anything otherwise is not good, nor reliable information. It's kind of like me saying to you, "Hey, your advice is stupid, maybe you should go take some smart pills so you don't infect others" in seriousness, instead of as an off-hand reply gifting you with information graciously.

(With the disclaimer that I still think that unsolicited medical advice is kind of rude.)

If someone is giving you advice which worked for an unrelated condition, you're still ignoring useful information which may help someone you know if you actually bother to pay attention and remember it.

If someone is giving you advice for the same condition you have been diagnosed, you're taking information from authority figures (licensed doctors) over information from someone who is actually in the same boat as you, which seems foolish to me. Certainly un-hacker-like.

By the way, if you look at actual studies, results of surgery done for pain are not very encouraging -- less than half result in pain actually going away.

Signal to noise, mate. This isn't like chat with coworkers over lunch, "have you taken thermal expansion of the turboencabulator into account?" where there's a high potential for novelty. Nay, 90% of these comments are:

Did you try (increasing exercise/water intake/sleep/just not sucking)? How about (decreasing gluten/carbs/aspartame/"toxins"/bogons)? it's just low-hanging fruit.

You just saw somebody saying they've had too much advice, too many opinions from strangers on how to handle situations those strangers know nothing about. What made you think the best response was to assume you understand their situation and offer them advice?