A good hypothesis can be used to make predictions. I'm just saying with my foot issues that the heuristic of "subtractive medicine is better than additive medicine" was able to predict that removing padding from my shoes would make my problem go away. And it did. That does not prove anything but it worked here.

Say that the padding had worked, you might have rationalised it to to be that it's unnatural to walk on hard surfaces ("our ancestors never walked on concrete").

There are also probably many instances in your life where this hasn't worked, but you've cherry picked the example that does.

It's very likely that your body healed itself regardless of the padding. You might have just needed time. You've figured that it's removing the padding but it might not be a factor. It's why studies need decent sample sizes to make strong conclusions.

That's fair enough, but also why I looked for other people who had similar experiences. I'm definitely not always right, that is true. I am not a doctor, lawyer, or accountant.