Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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One of the nice things about the internet is being able to draw upon the experiences of others. If you're afflicted with something that someone else has had, then there is absolutely the chance that you can get some helpful advice. At the very least, if none of that works, you can then tell your doctor what you tried to narrow things down. After all, an important step in diagnosing is to match symptoms with the underlying condition. Provided that the advice isn't harmful, it doesn't hurt to try and may save you time and money.
And that is the key problem: The stupid internet has no idea what will be harmful in a special case and what not.
That's true, but there's a wide range of things that can be tried before dipping into harmful territory. We should be cultivating an environment of critical thinking. If the reaction is to always immediately defer to experts then you get issues of people taking up healthcare resources for the tiniest issues. Additionally, if you can't trust people to have a bit of sense when applying remedies, then what makes you think they'll choose the correct "experts" to listen to?
Problem is that most people don't know about how far this range goes.
Indeed we should, but keep in mind that when you among people, half of them has an IQ of <100.
People tend to ask medical questions in places like this usually because googling has not helped so far. I think at this stage the problem is far off the beaten track that random information from random strangers is not going to cut it.
I cannot make them listen to voices that tell them "go see a doctor". I can only hope that when they see a wall of similar responses a small spark of common sense makes a difference. A determined idiot can still scroll down past all those messages to find the fellow idiot who recommends dewormer to cure cancer and everything.