cover of episode Contra Hanson On Medical Effectiveness

Contra Hanson On Medical Effectiveness

2024/5/3
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Astral Codex Ten Podcast

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Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias) more or less believes medicine doesn’t work [EDIT: see his response here,) where he says this is an inaccurate summary of his position. Further chain of responses here) and here)]

This is a strong claim. It would be easy to round Hanson’s position off to something weaker, like “extra health care isn’t valuable on the margin”. This is how most people interpret the studies he cites. Still, I think his current, actual position is that medicine doesn’t work. For example, he writes):

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-hanson-on-medical-effectiveness