Pascalian Medicine

Explores 'Pascalian medicine': since many cheap safe compounds each have a small (~5%) chance of working against COVID, expected-value reasoning suggests taking all ~20 of them (and generalizing to every condition). Marshals the case (fluvoxamine started as one of these and panned out) and the counterarguments: nothing is truly safe (the loa-loa-encephalopathy caveat; Algernon's Law says unknown unknowns skew negative), trust-erosion and the 'patients already skip a quarter of prescriptions' problem, and -- the counterargument that bothers him most -- the onion-farmer money-pump: our weak scientific method gives ANY studied chemical ~this much positive buzz, so if a 5% credence can be manufactured by onion farmers funding studies, you can be money-pumped; this violates Conservation of Expected Evidence, exposing the unresolved Inside-vs-Outside-View tension (the Outside View says just use your 0.1% prior).

Quality 74 · Strong. Strong (upper): a genuinely illuminating exploration with portable framings (the onion-farmer money-pump; Conservation-of-Expected-Evidence applied to weak medical evidence; the honest inside-vs-outside-view tension); near the top of Strong.

Claude’s paradigm shift 52 · Moderate. Notable: 'Pascalian medicine' as a named frame plus the onion-farmer money-pump are fresh, sharp contributions to reasoning-under-uncertainty.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. Minor/within-discourse: a decision-theory-of-medicine essay with no direct material footprint.