In the medical world, I notice that most people are either "conventional" (skeptical/condemnatory of most putative innovations, pro-regulation, expect little progress) or "unconventional" (credulous of putative innovations, anti-regulation, *also* expect little progress.)
The "unconventional" are the kinds of people who tend to believe in alternative medicine or diet/supplement "aging treatments."
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It's as though people think their options are being "strict" or "open-minded."
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People who disagree with conventional wisdom wind up being assumed to be in the "open-minded" bucket, but they're really not. Ray Kurtzweil is an "open-minded" life-extensionist; Aubrey de Grey is not. Almost nobody gets this.
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Aubrey de Grey is an extreme *skeptic* with very *strict* standards for credulity -- stricter than the rest of the biogerontology field. He doubts that their solutions will work. That's why he tries to invent novel ones.
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If you're looking for big effect sizes, if your guiding obsession is "what can we do that makes a BIG difference?", then you will be strict and skeptical (disbelieving in most medicine and almost all alt-med) but also unconventional (curious about unknown & new treatments).
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Likewise, there are reasons to prefer looser regulation that are compatible with believing that most non-FDA-approved treatments are terrible. You can adhere strictly to libertarian principles, or you can believe that a few good innovations will outweigh the many bad ones.
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In any gathering of nonconformists you're going to find a lot of people who are looser (and wronger) thinkers than average, and a few who are much more careful thinkers than average.
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End of conversation
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