Comment · Mon, March 21, 2016 · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
The dark side of internet forums
Original post in this thread
rrtrda · 161 points
While these and other health forums contain a wealth of incredibly helpful information and inspiration, I believe their darker sides are often ignored. As people here generally tend to be keen to debate, I think certain issues should be addressed. Let’s see which ones you’ve encountered yourself:
Prejudice: Many people just don’t come here to find neutral information about a certain nootropic/drug. They want to get their preset opinion confirmed. And if nobody tells them what they want to hear, they google further, or dispute what others are saying. The longer you google, the more likely you will stumble across the correlation you were looking for. But how relevant is it?
Misinformation: Yes, there are some people out here that deserve respect. With their profound knowledge they enrich discussions and create value for the community. But they not only check sample size and Pearson’s r. Those people spot methodological flaws and inaccuracies in studies. And can assess their meaningfulness. But let’s be honest about it: those people are rare and most people don’t have the skill nor the time to do that. I myself would love to be one of those able to truly judge. Unfortunatel…
What they were answering
DeltruS · 20 points
The main problem is that people come here seeking ways to improve their thinking problems.
However the majority of thinking problems come from disease. Pretty much every drug here would be a bandaid fix to these diseases.
That is why I've mostly stopped posting here. The entire community is too focused on how they respond to drugs that have a very precise and focused mechanism of action, instead of understanding the metabolic process as a whole. They try to understand one small mechanism without the context of the whole system that needs fixing.
Posts and people who actually have perspective are too rare, and new users will get very confused. They will be led into noots that fine tune the brain, when their problems are larger, and this will lead to useless reports. Couple that with placebo, selection bias, etc, and most drug reports are useless.
It is still really fun and interesting to browse here tho.
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic & Nootropics Depot
Well that is really the crux of the issue. We have had some very knowledgeable and well-spoken Redditors post here over the years. However, they seem to get annoyed at things after a while, and stop posting. This leads to a constant drain of good informative posts, which are replaced by an endless stream of new people asking basic questions, or anecdotes that really are not useful. If people continue not sticking around, and stop posting here, the issue will only get worse. There needs to be a balance of good scientific discussion to balance out the rest. If everyone that has something good to say stops posting because they think quality is dropping, it becomes an endless feedback loop.