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Why the Fuck?

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: Why the Fuck?

#471

Post by brudgers »

charlieok wrote: post #380
brudgers wrote: post #378

My son doesn't trust my recommendations in books. It's justified. He'd been reading a fantasy series. I recommended Sword of Shanara . He thought it sucked. Fair. I thought it sucked when it came out. I was the same age. Yet, when I pulled Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy off the library last month, the title pulled him in. "Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground" is a hit in middle-school. But that's…

I assume the B-grade actor is Ronald Reagan, yes? The lawyer could be almost any politician and I'm drawing a blank on the other two...

Gorbachev, Havel, Walesa.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#472

Post by namdnay »

wamatt wrote: post #393
sukuriant wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think the parent's confusion is twofold. First, you're comma-splicing some of your sentences, making it harder to read what you're saying. Commas have rhymes and reasons to them; and, it is good to know when to use them and where. It also seems like you are too quick to begin a new paragraph. Concepts that connect to one another should be put into the same paragraph so a person knows where one idea (or sub…

> "The conceptual stream" is hard to follow. What conceptual stream? Do you mean you're having trouble articulating what you want to say? Then why not say that? "Conceptual stream" is not something usually said in conversational English A fair point. While some statements could be a somewhat unfamiliar/unusual, it only take a little more effort to process, if one just thinks about it. eg "conceptual stream" Take the…

I see what you're referring to, basically:

"Stream of Consciousness, focusing on the concepts that arise"

I know it's already been said, and English is obviously not your first language, but you should try to tone down the verbiage a bit:

", while for myself, for the most part am most comfortably naturally operating abstractly, conceptually, strategically and focusing on outcomes"

No need to repeat "most" "most comfortably" is redundant with "naturally" If you are focusing on concepts you can't be focusing on outcomes

Re: Why the Fuck?

#473

Post by fghh45sdfhr3 »

ramanujan wrote: post #191
raganwald wrote: post #102

My fellow HNers: It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." The simple truth is, I'm not smart enough, I don't work hard enough, and I've been napping when opportunity knocked a few times in my life. That being said, sometimes a man in a saloon has a few drinks and yells at the television, telling the coach of some footba…

2. There are regulatory obstacles for businesses. As someone in the biotech space, this is by far the biggest factor. When you are dealing with humans, crashes and bugs mean deaths. Deaths mean increased regulation, often under the mistaken assumption that more rules would prevent engineers from making bugs. Modern testing and build systems might, but regulators aren't keen to change their testing systems, many of wh…

Thank you for this post. It should be a Wikipedia page about regulation.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#474

Post by vacri »

nirvana wrote: post #442
vacri wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Shuffle is absolutely nothing new. We had a device that did everything the Shuffle does in the 80s, and it was widespread, and at around the same pricepoint. The only things it lacked was capacity (though you could change tapes) and on-the-fly shuffling of songs. Plenty of them had radios, so there's a function the Shuffle doesn't have. The Shuffle is not a 'computer', it's a 'portable media device'. An LCD does…

You're not even trying to understand my point, are you? I never the shuffle was anything like brave new world. I pointed out that it was an exercise in low cost mass manufacturing. Do you hate apple so much that you're going to claim that the walkman proves that they aren't innovative with the shuffle, when that isn't even the point of discussion?

Apple put a $50 computer in peoples hands- the iPod shuffle. Sure, it might not be as full featured as a laptop, but you have to walk before you can run.

Yes, it's me 'hating Apple' because I think you're missing your calling as a spin doctor. A patronising one at that ("your grandmother, bless her heart")

Re: Why the Fuck?

#475

Post by illuminate »

Mz wrote: post #152

Hey, dude, I will probably make money from a webcomic at some point. People like it when I am cute and funny. No one wants my "cure"* for cystic fibrosis. So I will likely pay the bills by making people laugh, then sereptitiously slip the health thingy under the door while folks aren't looking. Chill. Life is more convoluted than you seem to think. For example, fiction is how humankind dreams up the future. We collec…

"No one wants my "cure"* for cystic fibrosis.

* Not a cure, a means to be healthy in spite of the defect. Quibbling detail which everyone misses."

Your confidence in your anecdotes and bitterness that they're not taken as fact may be seen as offputting. Try understanding why people may listen to your experiences and not see them as an immediate path to follow.

Regardless of whether your "methods" are sound or not, there have been and are plenty of well-meaning and sincere quacks throughout history and certainly today, complaining that you are entitled to respect for having these hypotheses isn't going to swing anybody your way who doesn't already believe as you do.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#476

Post by illuminate »

freddealmeida wrote: post #392
jthol wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one was arguing that point. The FDA does good things. The FDA does bad things. The question is whether the FDA is more helpful than harmful. I for one am happy that the FDA inspects my food and medicine and holds them to a standard of safety. On the other hand they do make some medical devices and advances overly expensive to make and create a barrier to entry into the market.

I think you would be rather surprised what those standard really are. Far lower than you would expect.

Exactly, the solution is to fix those standards, not remove them. That's why I tend to not take Libertarian "certification bodies for safety, not 'regulation'" ideas seriously.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#477

Post by Mz »

illuminate wrote: post #475
Mz wrote: post #152

Hey, dude, I will probably make money from a webcomic at some point. People like it when I am cute and funny. No one wants my "cure"* for cystic fibrosis. So I will likely pay the bills by making people laugh, then sereptitiously slip the health thingy under the door while folks aren't looking. Chill. Life is more convoluted than you seem to think. For example, fiction is how humankind dreams up the future. We collec…

"No one wants my "cure"* for cystic fibrosis. * Not a cure, a means to be healthy in spite of the defect. Quibbling detail which everyone misses." Your confidence in your anecdotes and bitterness that they're not taken as fact may be seen as offputting. Try understanding why people may listen to your experiences and not see them as an immediate path to follow. Regardless of whether your "methods" are sound or not, th…

I am curious why you feel the need to hound me and repeatedly use terminology like "quack". That is generally not socially acceptable behavior. No one else on HN does this to me. I wish you would stop. It isn't likely to accomplish anything constructive.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#478

Post by jiggy2011 »

ihnorton wrote: post #269
jiggy2011 wrote: post #11

I don't have a degree in medical sciences so I have no idea where I would start.

Some suggestions: Help build better tools for researchers. * Julia (julialang.org) is very promising and could use talented developers to help build the ecosystem. * Numba ( http://numba.pydata.org/ ) looks amazing and should build on the existing strength of SciPy. Contribute to open-source projects related to medical research; a few favorites in the imaging space: * PLUS ( https://www.assembla.com/spaces/plus/wiki…

Those do indeed look like some incredible projects.

If I had more time (and judging by the docs better linear algebra skills) I might certainly be interested in these.

I hope that some smart hackers do take you up on this.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#479

Post by simonster »

ramanujan wrote: post #418
simonster wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 2. There are regulatory obstacles for businesses. > As someone in the biotech space, this is by far the biggest factor. When you are dealing with humans, crashes and bugs mean deaths. Deaths mean increased regulation, often under the mistaken assumption that more rules would prevent engineers from making bugs. Modern testing and build systems might, but regulators aren't keen to change their testing systems, many…

approved treatments in humans often lag 10 years or so behind what's known to work in animal models The reason for this is regulation and IRB. I direct you to Banting and Best (which I also linked below): http://www.nobelprize.org/educational/medicine/insulin/disco... Early in 1921, Banting took his idea to Professor John Macleod at the University of Toronto, who was a leading figure in the study of diabetes in Canad…

> Two years from idea to animal trials to safety trials (self-experimentation) to human trials to Nobel Prize. That was when pharma moved at the speed of software; that is what a landscape free for innovation can produce.

Well, we'd get new treatments a decade faster, but a lot of these treatments would not work and/or would kill people. But, as I said above, I don't think this would dramatically increase the speed of innovation, except for diseases where we don't have effective animal models. It's faster to run experiments on animals than people. For these diseases, removing regulations let people try treatments that worked on animals in humans faster. But the problem is really that there are many diseases we can't treat effectively in any organism, and letting people try any treatment they want in humans isn't going to fix this.

I think you are vastly overestimating what society has to gain by deregulating medicine. You'll get a one-time gain of 10 years of progress at the cost of an unknown number of lives.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#480

Post by illuminate »

Mz wrote: post #477
illuminate wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No one wants my "cure"* for cystic fibrosis. * Not a cure, a means to be healthy in spite of the defect. Quibbling detail which everyone misses." Your confidence in your anecdotes and bitterness that they're not taken as fact may be seen as offputting. Try understanding why people may listen to your experiences and not see them as an immediate path to follow. Regardless of whether your "methods" are sound or not, th…

I am curious why you feel the need to hound me and repeatedly use terminology like "quack". That is generally not socially acceptable behavior. No one else on HN does this to me. I wish you would stop. It isn't likely to accomplish anything constructive.

I'm saying that a change of tact is required if you're experiencing hostility from the communities you wish to draw readers from. Realizing and working around these preconceptions will be essential.

I use the phrase "quack" because these people exist in large number on the internet, and there certainly exist people who offer promises to the disabled community that they are not capable of delivering on. There's a very large burden of proof that many persons would wish to meet to take a hypothesis seriously. This isn't fanfiction, this isn't diet tips to swap, this, if real, would be a lot of promise to people. Sarcastic comments about the people who don't believe you implicitly are unnecessary, there are very real reasons why these barriers to belief exist.

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