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Comment by passivate | Hacker News Reader

The best proof of any kind of methodology is in its application and results. I'd be impressed if some data were to be presented showing its effectiveness.

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You don’t get proof from Bayesian reasoning (data). That’s not how science is done. The best proof of any idea is whether it is a good logical explanation that stands up to criticism.

Take Newton’s ideas about gravity and the motion of bodies for example. The day before Einstein came up with general relativity, Newton’s ideas had the most possible data which confirmed they were true. In other words, they were as wrong as they ever had been.

Relativity predicted the warping of spacetime, which was shown to be real in a single experiment. It’s not like more data is needed to make it more true.

Back to the original topic: If this ACT stuff is a good explanation for your behavior, and if it works for you, what more data is needed?

Einstein’s theories being confirmed is one of the best examples of the relationship between the theoretical and empirical. AFAIK, there’s no equivalent for ACT.

> If this ACT stuff is a good explanation for your behavior, and if it works for you, what more data is needed?

I’m wrong like all the time, so I only lean on my own judgement about explanations so much. And how would I really know something is working for me? Sometimes there are confounds and there are definitely measurement errors.

ACT is pretty well established scientifically at this point. There are controversies but not more than other things and they tend to be focused on the novelty of ACT concepts.

As to any particular implementation, that's a different issue.

Its my own ignorance, but can you please link to data showing effectiveness?

So it's interesting. Looking at the meta-analyses more closely than I have in the past raises more questions about ACT than I thought based on the way it's discussed in the literature. However, in general, the pattern is that it shows efficacy relative to controls but not greater than other treatments (although this is a common pattern in the psychotherapy literature that applies to almost every type of treatment):

https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/365764

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016503271...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000579671...

Interesting, thank you for replying!

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