[SketchySeaBeast]

Not a great argument - I'm pretty sure you can diagnose literally every person on Earth with _something_ in the ICD (International Classification of Diseases) as well (kind of cheating because mental health stuff is in there too, but still, even if you exclude that section).

[flashback2199]

More seriously, I think you need to restrict your argument to a subset of medicine, otherwise your argument is actually just "there are other area(s) of medicine that also exhibit the same issue" which is not really a counterpoint to my original comment but instead an addition to it.

[SketchySeaBeast]

So we can discount psychology as a whole but need to pick and choose medicine? Why don't we consider the various areas of psychology as well instead of just throwing out the whole book?

[flashback2199]

I'm not sure, I just don't think that a textbook that can be used to diagnose everybody with a disease is very trustworthy. Kind of like how passing a law that can be used to arrest anybody is generally not a good idea, or something like that.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Which brings us back to my inital point - the ICD can be used to do the same thing, therefore medicine isn't very trustworthy.

[flashback2199]

I would be curious to know what percentage of the diseases in the DSM vs the ICD are based on empirical tests. Questionnaires are not empirical.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I don't think either of us know that, but I makes sense to start asking increasingly hard to answer question while you're pushing the goalpost around.

[flashback2199]

You can diagnose someone with 20/20 vision and no sign of any eye problems with an eye disease? Do tell :)

[SketchySeaBeast]

The ICD isn't limited to eye diseases.