studies show that marginal spending on medicine has zero net effect
That study is quite outdated compared to modern impact evaluation approaches, and some newer studies actually contradict its results. This is a very bold claim and presenting this as a possible absurdity bias may achieve building a new bias of over-considering absurdity. The language of the article is very pedantic taking the results of the study as the most obvious and smart thing “If you remember only one medical study, it should be the RAND health insurance experiment”. Extraordinary claims still need extraordinary evidence. “How useful is medicine, to the average person, wondering if he should go to the doctor or skip it?” Who is the ‘average person’ someone from the US? What counts as ‘medicine’ here, and what is the actual intervention, a health insurance in the US?
Theres nothing wrong, but it’s an interesting choice, what do both things have in common? just the cheering? what’s the purpose of this example, is marching naked in a gay pride a cartoonishly ridiculous cheering? is this supposed to appeal to the readers feelings in some way?
Sometimes cheering can be an expression of tradition and identity and not be materially net harmful but the opposite for the individual. Is this instrumentally irrational? For me her pride and beliefs sound inspiring, how is sharing that feeling wrong? Was she trying to be right or just sharing something nice? Irrationality can serve many legitimate purposes, like having fun or curiosity. We only get one life and be may want experience more facets of it.
Also, i don’t see how “truth” can “destroy” anything. What does it mean? Does it have material significance? I find what I feel is the language of violence in many of these posts. If you were right, maybe it’s not a bad thing? But as many harmful and wrong ideas are selled with irrationality, there are a lot of wrong ideas that come as “the voice of rationality” with that very same language in politics. We need to be humble to not legitimize those strategies, even if that means selling less.