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Originally Posted by twistedmosaic
I was about to link my mother (a firm believer in homeopathic healing, but an otherwise extremely intelligent woman) to some James Randi youtubes about homeopathy, and I ran into a conundrum: Is the benefit of reducing someone's ignorance (and wasted money on sugar pills) worth the cost of destroying their faith in a placebo?
She only uses homeopathy for nuisance remedies (colds, allergies, etc), not as a replacement for modern medicine, and in this capacity, she seems pleased in their 'effectiveness'. Should I rob her of that in the name of enlightenment?
edit: For the purpose of this thread, plz assume that it is proven that homeopathy is placebo only. I do not wish to debate water vibration memory.
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I had this come up here a while back and I left the thread rather then making it clear to someone that what they think was so good was total bullshit.
I've written two replies to this one to tell her and one not to, and deleted both.
The obviously easy one is to not tell her, and let her feel better because she took her magic pill.
The other is to tell her because she is being ripped off. They are selling snake oil and she is buying it. If your mother was being sold a service she thought she needed but they weren't really doing anything for her you would tell her and this is the same thing.
So I'd say it comes down to the kind of person your mother is, and how she reacts to this kind of knowledge. I personally would tell her, no reason to spend money on perpetuating the snake oil industry.