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I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

theatlantic.com

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Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#131

Post by nyokodo »

bhickey wrote: post #118
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Like any other industry, 90% of medical “experts” are totally incompetent. Yeah, I've come to the same conclusion. When I was a kid it took 2 years to diagnose my, frankly quite textbook, hypothyroidism. Know who first diagnosed it? A friend of my mother's who worked the toll booth at the airport. Her dog had it, you see, so she recognized the symptoms. My mother had to go full Karen mode on a doctor to get them…

A few years back my father had a valve replacement due to childhood rheumatic fever. At ten days post op he woke up with an unstable heart rhythm and went to the hospital. They gave him drugs to get the rhythm under control, which failed. After two days, I get a call from my sister, a neurologist, telling me to get to the hospital immediately. When I arrived, he was short of breath and in a bad way. At the hospital m…

> if someone shows up with symptoms of a post op complication, don't start by trying to diagnose an unrelated malady.

Did they know he had the operation? Medical record sharing in many places, especially the United States, is atrocious even where it exists which is far from everywhere and causes a lot of problems.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#132

Post by nxc18 »

sakopov wrote: post #108
megablast wrote: post #9

Cars are so incredibly destructive to society, in so many ways. But most people are so blasé about them.

Most people are blasé? Most people don't have a choice because they don't live in San Francisco or New York where billions are spent on infrastructure and proper city planning which accommodates pedestrians and public transportation.

It’s not about driving or not, it’s about whether you take the risks of driving seriously.

Speeding around a motorcycle while going over a hill is a good example from the article. See also: distracted driving, DWI, driving while overtired, and all sorts of other behaviors that are super common.

So many collisions are preventable if people just took driving seriously. I don’t think people are as conscious of the risks and dangers as they should be.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#133

Post by wizzwizz4 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #64
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really very useful. Of course you exist! You share sufficiently many properties with other things that we would say “exist” that it is more useful to consider you extant than non-existent. What you mean might be a more useful, meaningful concept, but what you've said is kinda nonsense. If you don't exist, who wrote this comment? I'd be interested if you could elaborate.

> If you don't exist, who wrote this comment? The hands. Driven by the chemical phenomena taking place in the brain given the information it had been fed previously. Both the hands and the brain and the memories are mine but not me. The same way my finger is (I won't be less me if I loose it, neither I will if I loose a memory of something, even of my name) and my car is. I am merely the observer of all these but ok,…

> I am merely the observer of all these

Perhaps there is a mere observer, but you are not it. If you were a mere observer, then how did that observation reach your hands?

Things can exist without being fundamental components of reality. A Lego house is still a Lego house, even if it ceases to be when the bricks are separated, and has no identity separate from those bricks save for what we assign it. The identity, such that there truly is one (does “truly” even make sense here?), is partly in the arrangement, which is not a tangible thing.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#134

Post by bhickey »

nyokodo wrote: post #131
bhickey wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years back my father had a valve replacement due to childhood rheumatic fever. At ten days post op he woke up with an unstable heart rhythm and went to the hospital. They gave him drugs to get the rhythm under control, which failed. After two days, I get a call from my sister, a neurologist, telling me to get to the hospital immediately. When I arrived, he was short of breath and in a bad way. At the hospital m…

> if someone shows up with symptoms of a post op complication, don't start by trying to diagnose an unrelated malady. Did they know he had the operation? Medical record sharing in many places, especially the United States, is atrocious even where it exists which is far from everywhere and causes a lot of problems.

> Did they know he had the operation?

Yes and besides the big line of sutures down his sternum should've been a giveaway.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#135

Post by quickthrower2 »

ryandrake wrote: post #106
quickthrower2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With doctors, you are your own doctor and the doctors you see are subcontractors. First appointment is a job interview. That’s the best way to think of it IMO. I guess I’m privileged to have the money to do this. Google helps you know what it could be, but you need to do a fair bit of research and critical thinking. Unfortunately if you are sick this is the last thing you want to do!

I'm all for taking charge of your own health priorities, but don't go too far to the other side of the spectrum. Witness all the "shade tree epidemiologists" that came out of the woodwork last year. One or two Facebook conspiracy videos, and they were suddenly health care experts, confidently spouting off COVID-19 facts they picked up from the YouTube channels of Crystal Energy Lady or Vitality Supplement Guy. Doing…

Good point. Reader beware! There are sites that seem to give good evidenced based and well researched answers. Even then when you go to the doctor and say “I read about x can I get that tested” it might be “sure you can get a test but the information cannot guide treatment so it’s not worth it” so in that case maybe the doctor knows the details better than you could ever hope by searching the internet. But the internet is a good way (and not including avoiding YouTube!!) if building up an initial mental model, then you can suggest things to doctor and see how they respond.

I feel that if you go in blind you are at more risk of a lazy doctor doing the 3 things lazy doctors live to reach for as a snap judgement: antidepressants, antibiotics and a psychologist referral.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#136

Post by secnono »

throwaway205826 wrote: post #13

A few years ago I got some kind of brain illness. Doctors were unable to come up with a strong diagnosis, which is apparently quite common for such cases. One of the effects of the illness was that I essentially became stupid. I couldn’t focus on anything (even trivial activities like watching television), I couldn’t compose emails, I would get disoriented easily. It was absolutely terrifying not knowing whether or n…

>90% of medical “experts” are totally incompetent.

My wife had breast cancer, muliple lumps irregular shaped, the only answer was full mastectomy, except the oncologist wanted to do a biopsy before they did they surgery.

"Why?" I asked, "You already said that the safest option is to perform the mastectomy, right?"

The doctor replied, "Well, yes but we'd like to know what we are facing before we got in."

Me, "Will it change what you do?"

Doctor, "No"

Me, "Isn't bad to poke the tumor because can't that actually cause cells to migrate?"

Doctor, "yes"

Me, "So what's the benefit?"

Doctor, "We just want to know."

Me, "It seems like either you are padding the bill or you are just following some playbook because you actually don't know what you are doing."

Doctor, "We're done here."

After the surgery,

Doctor, "We discovered cancer cells in the lymph node, but that's probably just a side effect from the biop........" At that point he realized what he was saying and he also realized that I was ready to launch myself at him.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#137

Post by Arete314159 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #55
throwaway205826 wrote: post #13

A few years ago I got some kind of brain illness. Doctors were unable to come up with a strong diagnosis, which is apparently quite common for such cases. One of the effects of the illness was that I essentially became stupid. I couldn’t focus on anything (even trivial activities like watching television), I couldn’t compose emails, I would get disoriented easily. It was absolutely terrifying not knowing whether or n…

> 1. Like any other industry, 90% of medical “experts” are totally incompetent. Yeah, I've come to the same conclusion. When I was a kid it took 2 years to diagnose my, frankly quite textbook, hypothyroidism. Know who first diagnosed it? A friend of my mother's who worked the toll booth at the airport. Her dog had it, you see, so she recognized the symptoms. My mother had to go full Karen mode on a doctor to get them…

It took me 15 years before I learned I had a b-12 deficiency. The test is simple and cheap, the treatment is simple and cheap, and the symptoms have been known for decades.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#138

Post by Arete314159 »

ryandrake wrote: post #106
quickthrower2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With doctors, you are your own doctor and the doctors you see are subcontractors. First appointment is a job interview. That’s the best way to think of it IMO. I guess I’m privileged to have the money to do this. Google helps you know what it could be, but you need to do a fair bit of research and critical thinking. Unfortunately if you are sick this is the last thing you want to do!

I'm all for taking charge of your own health priorities, but don't go too far to the other side of the spectrum. Witness all the "shade tree epidemiologists" that came out of the woodwork last year. One or two Facebook conspiracy videos, and they were suddenly health care experts, confidently spouting off COVID-19 facts they picked up from the YouTube channels of Crystal Energy Lady or Vitality Supplement Guy. Doing…

Ok, but doing a little research on pubmed in March of 2020 allowed me to see all the research that had already been done on SARS, that showed spread within apartment complexes and indicated these sorts of diseases were almost certainly airborne rather than spread by droplets. And a lot of "outsider" aerosol experts were saying that all year. Still it took the CDC months and months to admit it.

When the experts start acting like experts, I'll be happy to hang up my shadetree epi role for good. But for now the WHO and CDC have been very political in their pronouncements and not as science-based as I would like.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#139

Post by refulgentis »

Arete314159 wrote: post #138
ryandrake wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for taking charge of your own health priorities, but don't go too far to the other side of the spectrum. Witness all the "shade tree epidemiologists" that came out of the woodwork last year. One or two Facebook conspiracy videos, and they were suddenly health care experts, confidently spouting off COVID-19 facts they picked up from the YouTube channels of Crystal Energy Lady or Vitality Supplement Guy. Doing…

Ok, but doing a little research on pubmed in March of 2020 allowed me to see all the research that had already been done on SARS, that showed spread within apartment complexes and indicated these sorts of diseases were almost certainly airborne rather than spread by droplets. And a lot of "outsider" aerosol experts were saying that all year. Still it took the CDC months and months to admit it. When the experts start…

Sadly, the bar, and duration required for the science you describe is higher than "a little research on pubmed...on SARS". I'm a little flummoxed by the description of not rushing science as political.

Re: I know the secret to the quiet mind but wish I’d never learned it

#140

Post by 7thaccount »

Arete314159 wrote: post #137
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Like any other industry, 90% of medical “experts” are totally incompetent. Yeah, I've come to the same conclusion. When I was a kid it took 2 years to diagnose my, frankly quite textbook, hypothyroidism. Know who first diagnosed it? A friend of my mother's who worked the toll booth at the airport. Her dog had it, you see, so she recognized the symptoms. My mother had to go full Karen mode on a doctor to get them…

It took me 15 years before I learned I had a b-12 deficiency. The test is simple and cheap, the treatment is simple and cheap, and the symptoms have been known for decades.

Vitamins?
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