Homeopathic Potency
Homeopathic PotencyMention of 10X, 20X, etc. productivity on DevelopersWithHighProductivityTenxHundredxThousandx makes me chuckle. Why? I am reminded of the potency designations in homeopathic medicine, of all things. In homeopathy, a substance is diluted in water by powers of ten. 1X means 1 part substance has been diluted in 10 parts water. 2X, if I remember correctly, means the process has been repeated: 1 part of a 1X dilution has been diluted in 10 parts water (i.e., 1 part substance has been diluted in 10**2 parts water.) 6X would be 1 part substance in 10**6 parts water. And so on. There is also the C designation which means that the substance has been diluted by powers of 100, not 10. So a 1C concoction is 1 part substance in 100 parts water, 20C is 1 part substance in 100**20 parts water. You get the picture. Of course, Avogadro's number is only so big and one can imagine that a dose of a given homeopathic dilution might contain no substance whatsoever. Yet the action of a more diluted solution is considered stronger, more powerful. -- ElizabethWiethoff
6.022 * 10^23, to be specific. That's about 12C if I figured right.
By analogy, if there is one high-productivity programmer in a large team of low-productivity bodies, does that team as a whole have zero productivity? Think about it.
Also, is there any literature on why homeopathy works yet? Does anybody know? Being very much a Western-science, reductionist kinda guy, I tend to be skeptical on a lot of alternative medicines. But neither do I dismiss them out-of-hand, at least till I've got more information. -- JonathanTang
:Kind of admirable. Funnily the statement "I am cynical but open minded" is one of the famous list which the vast majority of people think apply particularly to them :o). I think the knack of being a successful scientist is knowing what of established wisdom to accept and what to reject. Personally on homeopathy I am totally cynical because there is much good fun to be had reading some of the explanations etc that way (the stuff on the resonant effective of chemicals when there was zero chance of a single molecule remaining is particularly entertaining) but other alternative stuff I quite believe. At least I know I am bound to be wrong about many things :-o --AndrewCates
I have a good background on all kinds of alternative practices (well, I used to; I tried to investigate everything long ago, but may have forgotten things over the years), and I can assure you it's quite clear that homeopathy in general does not work, other than of course the placebo effect -- which is limited; there's only so much it can do.
The history on this is that it started out as a form of Sympathetic Magic. To cure a fever, you use something that induces a fever (herbs, chemical poisons, whatever), but of course diluted, since you're using something nasty.
Don't dismiss it [as magic] so readily - this is the same principle on which vaccines work, if you haven't discovered bacteria or viruses yet. --MikeAnderson
In the late 1800s this was a big fad. A lot of people died. Homeopathy switched over to a new system, one where the poison was diluted to the point where literally not even one molecule of the poison remained in the "medicine".
This was then, naturally enough, considered safe enough that they stopped getting charged with murder (or lynched), and that's continued to this day.
It's perfectly reasonable to have an open mind about alternative practices like acupuncture, reflexology, hypnotism, chinese herbalism, etc, because who knows what western medicine may have overlooked?
On the other hand, I hope it's clear that, if you dilute something until there is literally nothing left, it cannot work -- unless you believe in magic, in particular that these medicines have an "essence" that never goes away via dilution, an essence that is unrelated to molecules. -- dm
But not all homeopathic tinctures are diluted to that extent. You can't dismiss all of homeopathy on that basis; to do so is unscientific. -- MikeAnderson (not a homeopath or a user of homeopathic products)
Well, obviously you begin with a purification ceremony; get some sage, sweet grass, and red willow bark, and...oh, you mean, in a chemical sense. :-)
They're not generally concerned about the purity of the water, although I believe that many do start with distilled water; lots of followers of homeopathy are perfectly happy drinking tap water. That is an orthogonal issue to the sympathetic magic effect involving the essence of the poison.
Although come to think of it, this sounds like an issue that might have created splinter groups that care a lot about it. Magical practices generate splinter groups fairly rapidly, in general. I don't know.
I was completely skeptical and uninterested in homeopathy. One winter's day I and my family were simultaneously laid up at LimpinwoodTeahouse with fevers. One of the downsides of running a teahouse is the stream of virii that come in with the customers, and we were all feeling thoroughly wretched.
I called VictoriaPierce?, who runs a few dozen horses and dogs down in the valley and used to come serve tea for me sometimes, and asked her to stop into town at the pharmacy and get us something to bring our temperatures down. Silly me, naturally Vickie comes back with a pack of homeopathic lollipops called "Kids Cold".
I thank her kindly, crawl back to the family sickbed, and moan pitifully. Wife and child are asleep thankfully, but I ache all over and can't get settled. Oh well, maybe a lollipop wouldn't taste bad even if it is just dextrose.
15 minutes later I have no fever. In fact I have no symptoms of any description. I'm not healthy, mind you, but I get up and make a meal. Feels good to get back in bed ... but still no symptoms.
I pop "Kid's Cold" suckers into Riley and Gigi's mouths. Same effect - 15 minutes later they're fever-free - up and feeling not all that bad. Okay, thinks I, dextrose + the placebo effect is just what we needed.
4 hours later symptoms return. Ugh, thinks I, I guess the placebo effect only gets you so far ... but I pop in another sucker. Symptoms gone. And so it goes.
I have no idea how these things work. I imagine the body has some ways of responding to poisons that get triggered by minute doses, and that's the trick. I'm aware there are tinctures in which there is no poison at all - I don't know if Kid's Cold is one of them. And I'm happy for you to dismiss this stuff out of hand. But for now we keep a pack of "Kid's Cold" in the cabinet next to the aspirin. --PeterMerel
Despite my comment above, actually, the placebo effect can sometimes be exceedingly powerful, and you're talking about personal experience, which means anecdotal, not e.g. a statistically meaninfully-large double-blind set of groups. :-) Anecdotal experience is sort of inherently meaningful to those involved; the problem is merely that there are issues with reproducibility by others. Since the stuff worked (for 4 hours, anyway), that seems reason enough to consider trying it again in the future. But note recent negative side-effects found with popular zinc remedies (see google).
Two side issues: the "homeopathic" suckers may have had other ingredients, such as herbs, zinc, etc, which conceivably might have helped. Also, FYI the negative effects (poisoning up to and including deaths) arising from the original school of homeopathy caused it to be outlawed in the western world in the 1800s, which is when they switched to the approach of diluting things to the point that the poison didn't exist anymore -- chemists and medical doctors could hardly find something dangerous about *that*, and so homeopathy survived. In other words, unless it's about purely herbal poisons (a funny category under the laws of multiple countries), you probably did not ingest a poison. -- Doug
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