Yet Consumer Reports stays in business, and pessimists like Ehrenreich (or my favorite crochety curmudgeon, John Derbyshire) get their books published (and appear to make at least a modest living from them), so there’s at least some money in telling people their deluded. Likewise, many forms of psychotherapy (not to mention some forms of mysticism (!), like Buddhism) are based on telling people that they are deluded and getting them to face reality- and therapists tend to make a fairly tidy living. Though they could simply be feeding them the delusion that freedom from delusion is possible (or even desirable).

I’m a keen reader of this blog, but passages like that make me see why a lot of people find you overrated.

In case there are any doubts, yes of course the recent panel advice to reduce breast cancer testing is right, and yes this bodes ill for US med spending.

Why does this bode ill? Because the backlash is indicative of what will happen in the future if the government tries to cut back on unnecessary procedures?

What’s going on in this set of sentences? I don’t see the direction connection between optimism leading to “the current financial mess” and using optimism ” as a sap to those facing layoffs, … as a spur to better performance by those workers who remain”.

Messy logic here, in my opinion.