This is the normal story for someone who claims to suffer from MSG sensitivity. People claim they experience the most extraordinary symptoms, with perfect specificity and reproducibility. Perhaps they experienced symptoms after eating a meal and only learned after the fact that it contained MSG. Perhaps, upon learning that Parmesan cheese and tomatoes contain MSG, they remembered that Italian food had always made them sick. Perhaps they tested their symptoms in a poorly-designed experiment. All of this is expected even if the condition is psychosomatic.
Your wife is part of a large minority that tells stories like these, yet we have proven that at most a tiny minority can have a physical condition. The majority of people with self-reported MSG sensitivity cannot demonstrate it in a laboratory. These symptoms are curiously unheard of in Asia. The huge majority of people who claim MSG sensitivity are wrong.
Maybe your wife is the rare on who is right. Science can't easily prove that MSG sensitivity doesn't exist. But she is making an extraordinary claim with only ordinary evidence.
This mashes a few different ideas together that don't really fit. Cargo-cult thinking means emulating something's appearance without understanding how it works. This is a specific kind of irrationality. Removing gall bladders en masse is also irrational, but it's not a cargo cult. The beliefs of a cargo cult may be unfalsifiable, but that doesn't mean all unfalsifiable beliefs are like a cargo cult.
It may be perfectly reasonable to be unable to imagine a belief being falsified. For instance, what would it take to convince you that you remembered your own name wrong and that you've been called something different for your entire life?
Global heating has been thought to be occurring for longer than anyone has been alive. It's been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt for over forty years. There is no way for a disinterested person to look at the evidence and conclude this is anything other than a man-made crisis. Problem is a whole lot of the public doesn't care about the truth.
I don't know how a democratic society can deal with half its population living in a fantasy world. My guess is it cannot.
I got settlement offers of $500 and $1000, the amounts of the advertised prizes, before going to court. In the first case I got the offer as soon as the consumer protection agency e-mailed the dealership. In the second case I got the offer as soon as they received formal notice of suit. Filing the reports took me about fifteen minutes. Filling out the notice of suit took me about an hour, most of which was research.
I took them to court because the settlement offers contained clauses I didn't like. I could have recovered the money with less work. Going to court took an afternoon, most of which was spent sitting in a waiting room.
>This is just a form of “you may have already won!"
If someone contacts you claiming you have won a prize, and it appears to be from a real but shady business (e.g. a car dealership), consider falling for it. The scam is most likely illegal and you may be able to collect. Your local government should have a consumer protection agency that can help you do so. Just keep your cool and document everything.
I've taken two car dealerships to court for this. It was fun and profitable.
Also, it appears the scam is illegal at the federal level.
Our last president went on live TV and said we should try cleaning people's lungs with bleach. The leading American news channel regularly aired anti-vaccine propaganda. People at protests were calling for the execution of officials at the CDC, FDA, and NIAID. Meanwhile the "deep state" saved lives.
If you aren't aware of those things, you are ignorant of some of the most important events in recent history. Covid-19 killed a million Americans, more than any war. Being clueless doesn't put you above the fray.
I don't count ChromeOS or Android because they're even more locked down than Windows or the Macintosh. I don't care about the Linux desktop. I care about people using a system they can control.
If FreeBSD got substantial market share that would be a victory. ChromeOS gaining market share, and especially being used in education, is a defeat.
Fentanyl should definitely be Schedule 2, like it is right now. It has a wide variety of accepted medical uses and can be used safely with medical supervision.
Perhaps it is reasonable to solder parts to the motherboard. It's less reasonable to charge a massive markup on storage and memory. The margins on those upgrades are well over 100%.
>Having a software unlock for hardware you already have (but didn't pay for in the price). Fine.
Tolerable, perhaps, but pretty far from fine. It's pretty shocking to me that people in our society build things and then deliberately break them so they can make more money. Is this really the best system we can come up with?
We have built a society where what is plainly crazy is rational.
I think you know why: efficiency and safety. Driving fast greatly increases fuel consumption and wear on tires. It makes crashes more likely and more serious.
Why do people need to drive fast? The gains are minimal even if you stay exclusively on a lightly-trafficked freeway. In more realistic scenarios, the gains are almost nothing. You'll just be the first one to the light or traffic jam.
Bad example. Porsche's performance numbers are famously conservative. Most reviewers easily exceed what is advertised.
Take the 911 GT3, a car I picked at random. Car and Driver testing found the following:
>The GT3 offers both a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic (a.k.a. PDK) or a six-speed manual. ... At our test track, the automatic managed a 2.7-second 60-mph time while the six-speed manual test vehicle snapped off an impressive 3.3-second run to 60 mph.
1. Tesla's estimates are not "highly accurate". They are alleged to use a deliberately optimistic estimate when the battery is near full, then gradually switch to a more realistic estimate as the battery drains. In particular they are alleged to incorrectly account for the weather. This means the car will always display nearly the advertised number at full charge (and on a test drive). Supposedly Tesla used to use a more accurate estimate but then got orders from on high to fudge the numbers.
2. For other car manufacturers, the range estimates are not terribly inflated. The report from Edmunds claim that most EV models meet or exceed their range estimates, and cars that miss their estimates don't miss by anywhere near as much as Teslas.
Your wife is part of a large minority that tells stories like these, yet we have proven that at most a tiny minority can have a physical condition. The majority of people with self-reported MSG sensitivity cannot demonstrate it in a laboratory. These symptoms are curiously unheard of in Asia. The huge majority of people who claim MSG sensitivity are wrong.
Maybe your wife is the rare on who is right. Science can't easily prove that MSG sensitivity doesn't exist. But she is making an extraordinary claim with only ordinary evidence.