Re: The Noodle Compound
The thing is that all of these things cost money. None of these things are free or people wouldn't do them. Charging someone money for something that isn't real while telling them it is (whether they tell them it is directly or allow the customer to assume it is, it's still lying) is fraud. There are cases where people honestly believe they can speak to the dead or are a palm reader or whatever, but this is ignorance and rarely do these people change their mind even if evidence is placed before them that they are lying (sucha s failing the million dollar challenge).
What's worse than the money issue is the issue of ignorance, though. I don't just mean ignorance to the truth for the person providing the service... I especially mean the ignorance of the customer. An ignorant customer may accept homeopathy as a treatment and as a result forego other real treatments. This happens all the time and people die because of it. Sure the placebo effect is fine and all but a world that is less ignorant could receive placebo effects from other, less expensive things, or when applicable (always?) receive some kind of real treatment.
/rant
I never meant - as I hope you read - any alternative to replace real medicin. But in my experience doctors don't listen and don't give a **** about how you feel with whatever you're having. Decent alternative healers don't charge a lot.
Maybe it's different over here, I don't know.
Also there's so much fraud and people with bad intentions that it also does away with the ones who really only want to help and sometimes do - like a helpline people phone when in need. For some people, this works and while I think you should protect the feebleminded and desperate (they're not necessarily the same category) from fraud and your money being taken away for nothing, if you pay for someone for his time, what it boils down to as someone really listening, and there just happens to be a lot of decorum around it but it makes someone feel better (and it doesn't stop this person from getting real medicin!), then you only patronize people telling them what is good for them. And my ego's not so big that I can decide that.
I will always point out flaws, fraud, dubious theories. But I've found that if often boils to someone really listening, even when paid for, and that that helps. It wouldn't be for me.
Also, where's the line? With my complaints the doctors ran out of ideas and I was running out of money simultanously. One of my gp's suggested using highly concentrated ginger tablets. It kinda helps, not always but sometimes it does. Sometimes the line between herbal remedies and "real medicins" is thin.
And how about this one. We all know you can't talk to the death.
But what if someone genuinly believes he or she can?
And what if someone is shocked and traumatized by the loss of a loved one, and believes in people being able to talk to the death?
In an ideal situation this person will once hear that the loved one says all is well now, he is in a happy place, and wants the person to move on. You only need to hear that once, and that can give closure.
A fraud will try to get a second visit out of this person, which serves no purpose of reassurance.
