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Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

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Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#181

Post by bsuvc »

the_only_law wrote: post #171
jnovek wrote: post #40

“ Medicine has become a three-way negotiation between you, your doctor, and The Algorithm.” This characterization makes it sound like a good thing. In reality, the doctor’s responsibility is being pushed to the patient because they are overbooked in the name of economic efficiency. As a patient with complex, non-specific medical condition, I can tell you how miserable this is. I can’t count on doctors _at all_ to mov…

At what point can I just purchase old medical machinery on eBay and run my own blood tests and stuff.

No need to buy the machinery, unless you really want to.

You can order your own tests right now from LabCorp and Quest, through sites like requestatest.

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#182

Post by wpietri »

matsemann wrote: post #12

Why are dentists so scammy? In Norway I've seen documentaries about them sending the same people to multiple dentists, and some of them receive wildly different advice. Some of that can be ascribed to some being in the school of pro-active, so they want to fix your teeth at the first glance of issues. But in the end, most of the things being quoted were unnecessary. They all seemed very intent on removing wisdom teet…

I think you'll see the same thing wherever people have complex problems and they consult people with an individual profit motive. Car repair, for example. Or alternative "medicine" things like chiropractors. Some of the people will be legit. Some will be frauds. And in the middle you have a bunch of people who don't intend to be frauds but that just hill-climb their way to good businesses but aren't skilled and disciplined enough to measure the value of their interventions.

I suspect the same is true of people getting contract development done. Given the number of horror stories I've heard and the number of terrible code bases I've had to clean up, I'd guess the custom-software industry is no better than dentistry or car repair.

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#183

Post by pueblito »

tlogan wrote: post #180

Internet was always full of spam. But somehow Google was able to correctly categorize it. Now it seems like Google is not keeping with it. It seems like that sites which might provide trusted information are not ranked well. It is interesting that these sites do not have Google Adsense (since they are mainly run by schools, public institutions, etc.) The same is happening with YouTube. I think it is definelly possibl…

My guess is that having to dig through the results increases engagement time and clicks, so they probably have their AI test how long you’re willing to dig for an answer before giving up and calibrate results accordingly

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#184

Post by merrywhether »

askonomm wrote: post #142
egberts1 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90-degree? Yeah, you should get those wisdom teeth out because general anesthesia at your advanced age would not be good for your longevity. That is, if your wisdom teeth were ever then to surface and rot.

General anesthesia? Here in Europe we don't do that. I had one wisdom tooth that got rotten and the injections did not help with the pain because of the infection, so the nurse held me down while the doctor pulled the tooth, me screaming in agony. Then they gave me a shot for the trauma so I would calm down. This is Northern Europe.

Holy smokes. It sounds like you weren’t given the option, but did you prefer that to the risks of GA?

(Honest question, no agenda. That sounds like something that would make me never go back to the dentist, but maybe that’s just me projecting popular dentist horror.)

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#185

Post by [deleted] »

vasco wrote: post #120
rightbyte wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care most about my car, house etc in the whole world too. The risk I guess is that being informed might make me want to overrule the experts. On a population scale the advice might be bad. Depends on how good the experts are.

So your opinion is that if research tells you that you should overrule a doctor's opinion, the right course of action is to not bring it up, not do the research in the first place, because the doctor "knows better"? In my opinion if you disagree or have doubts about treatment you should definitely bring those up with your doctor, see what they say about your reservations, and either get convinced or find some second…

[deleted]

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#186

Post by rhexs »

brimble wrote: post #129
jnovek wrote: post #40

“ Medicine has become a three-way negotiation between you, your doctor, and The Algorithm.” This characterization makes it sound like a good thing. In reality, the doctor’s responsibility is being pushed to the patient because they are overbooked in the name of economic efficiency. As a patient with complex, non-specific medical condition, I can tell you how miserable this is. I can’t count on doctors _at all_ to mov…

Can confirm. They paint people who google symptoms as kooks or as annoying, but you have to if you ever want to get an actual diagnosis and treatment, because doctors and hospitals are, quite often, worse than Google at figuring out WTF is wrong. Do your best not to end up in a hospital without an advocate (friend, relative) watching out for you. They'll fail to treat you at best, then discharge you with a shrug and…

The interesting part about this is that you'll also likely see a NP or physician's assistant, who, at best, "google" (uptodate) your symptoms if the case isn't obvious. Sometimes doctors will do the intake appointment and fail to tell you that any follow-ups are done with their "trained" NP.

And then be billed 400-800$. Such an incredible system!

I also gave up going to physicians with a chronic illness. They're in and out in five minutes, and just ramble off the top two treatments from uptodate. If it's a surgeon, they'll try to sell you on surgery or a diagnostic procedure to "re-validate" the diagnosis (conveniently to generate a trivial 10K for the hospital in a few hours). If you want anything beyond that or to have a discussion, good luck.

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#187

Post by FactualActuals »

I only use Google to learn more about procedures, not to convince me to get said procedure. When my coworker and I got into a conversation about LASIK vs PRK, I found a Hacker News thread on Google that had discussed SMILE surgery as an alternative to both. I'll defer to my optometrist when I speak to him later this year and see what he suggests and what he knows because I know I can't trust Google to give me the type of answers I am looking for.

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#188

Post by sgerenser »

the_only_law wrote: post #171
jnovek wrote: post #40

“ Medicine has become a three-way negotiation between you, your doctor, and The Algorithm.” This characterization makes it sound like a good thing. In reality, the doctor’s responsibility is being pushed to the patient because they are overbooked in the name of economic efficiency. As a patient with complex, non-specific medical condition, I can tell you how miserable this is. I can’t count on doctors _at all_ to mov…

At what point can I just purchase old medical machinery on eBay and run my own blood tests and stuff.

I hear you can get a good deal on "Edison" branded blood test machines. Questionable reliability though.

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#189

Post by vmception »

> So here's the bottom line: All ten search results are dental office marketing blogs and there isn't even a whiff of peer-reviewed evidence.

This is how all the alarm bells went off for me about VPNs as I was forming some OPSEC ideas.

My solution was to look up court cases.

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#190

Post by loup-vaillant »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #137
brimble wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. They paint people who google symptoms as kooks or as annoying, but you have to if you ever want to get an actual diagnosis and treatment, because doctors and hospitals are, quite often, worse than Google at figuring out WTF is wrong. Do your best not to end up in a hospital without an advocate (friend, relative) watching out for you. They'll fail to treat you at best, then discharge you with a shrug and…

I thought expert systems were supposed to replace diagnosis, like three decades ago.

In an April's fool story where Eliezer Yudkowsky was pretending to come from a rationalist parallel world (or outer planet), he suggested a medical system with a different way to specialize people.

Most notably, he suggested we separate diagnosticians and prognosticators from practicians. The former do their best to guess what you have, send you to the right kind of practician, and estimate your possible outcomes (with probability distribution and Bayesian goodness and all). Then whatever practician you chose do their best to treat you.

Separating prognosis from practice allows us to have a system where prognosticators are rewarded for their accuracy and calibration, and practicians are rewarded for their outcomes relative to prognosis. Being good doesn't mean having better outcomes, being good means having better outcomes than predicted.

I'm not sure how well this system would work in practice, and there may be a huge problem with eliminating the short feedback loops we can have between diagnosis and practice when they're the same person. What should be a nice separation of concern may turn into a communication nightmare.

Nevertheless, it is possible that specialised diagnosticians may be better than any expert system.

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