• 0 Posts
  • 33 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: August 2nd, 2023
  • Echrichor@feddit.uktomemes@lemmy.world•Chemists are lying to you
    3·
    9 months ago

    Yes. If you give two sets of people sugar pills and tell one set they are sugar pills, and the other that they’re eg painkillers, the latter group will report (on average) a reduction in pain related issues while taking them.

    This is why alternative treatments that don’t medicinally do anything, like homeopathy, can appear to be effective - people believe they work and so they do, but if they just believed a cheap sugar pill they would help them, it would do for much cheaper. Even better get real meds that you believe in, and you get actual medicinal effect with a placebo boost.

    Good Pharmaceutical trials are generally “blind” for this reason, ie there will be a control group getting a placebo to compare the effect of the medicine to that, rather than to nothing as comparing to nothing would make most things appear effective. Even better is “double blind” where the researcher doesn’t know until after either, so that their interactions or behaviour don’t give anything away, and that they don’t bias their analysis.

  • Echrichor@feddit.uktoMemes@lemmy.ml•Google “search”
    6·
    10 months ago

    Agree.

    I think people’s ability to effectively Google varies though. There are people who will write full questions in, or fail to iteratively improve their search terms based on the results, and ignoring the fact that bard is actually pretty good if they start using that, googling is much more effective if you stick to relevant keywords and search using operators.

  • Echrichor@feddit.uktoMemes@lemmy.ml•6÷2(1+2)
    1·
    10 months ago

    Americans use PEMDAS, in the UK we use BODMAS, and I assume other English speaking countries use one or the other, but there is no difference between them in terms of order of operations, because it’s:

    1. brackets (parenthesis)

    2. orders (exponentials)

    3. division & multiplication (multiplication & division), performed left to right

    4. addition & subtraction, performed left to right

    People who choose to divide or multiply first because of the acronym have just forgotten that they go together left to right.

  • Echrichor@feddit.uktolinuxmemes@lemmy.world•A repost from r/linuxmemes - Because I saw the original comic
    24·
    11 months ago

    Because it’s easier, and is more likely to “just work” using only the GUI. That makes it more accessible to people new to it, and as it is perfectly capable once you’re no longer new to it there isn’t much incentive to move away.

    Same reason many people choose iPhones, they can just turn it on and use it without thinking or needing to configure it. Meanwhile those with more knowledge who might actively be looking for customisation may prefer another option.