Mathematics meets real life • Hacker News Board

Re: Mathematics meets real life

#11

Post by marshallp » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 1:10 AM UTC

mst wrote: post #9

marshallp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.fusfoundation.org/MRgFUS-Overview/about-focused-u... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_focused_ultrasou... http://bergcityuni.wordpress.com/projects/cardiac-ablation-u... (links to sites linking to university funded medical researchers) It doesn't take long to do a GOOGLE SEARCH. For a supposedly tech themed discussion site there's a lot of closed-minded and google-challenged folk on here.

If you write with sufficiently strong terms that you sound like you're blindly evangelising rather than rationally advocating, the average HN reader is going to go "eep" and adjust their prior expectation of your being right -way- down. This effect is, I'm afraid, largely independent of whether you're -actually- right or not - so assuming your goals include "maximise the number of readers of your comment who go on to…

I think you're making that mistake a lot of people in medicine make and what separates them from the tech industry. They're huge pessimists because they don't grok things like physics or computing and are trained/selected for their ability to pass tests out of a textbook. If you put your geekdom "crawl entire web/robot car/computers on every desk" hat on you'll realize you can run circles around the current medical industry.

edit: I get you're trying to give advice. If I make the claims less exciting no-one will bother. If too exciting, they think unfeasible. Getting the balance right seems hard.

Re: Mathematics meets real life

#12

Post by marshallp » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 1:16 AM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #8

marshallp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.fusfoundation.org/MRgFUS-Overview/about-focused-u... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_focused_ultrasou... http://bergcityuni.wordpress.com/projects/cardiac-ablation-u... (links to sites linking to university funded medical researchers) It doesn't take long to do a GOOGLE SEARCH. For a supposedly tech themed discussion site there's a lot of closed-minded and google-challenged folk on here.

"cure to a lot of ailments ... criminally underfunded ... potential immortality". I mean as a mechanism, "focused ultrasound" pretty much says it all. But how successful is it in trials? I think I took a quick look at some links (or googled) based on another one of your comments, but not being in the medical field, or currently needing any repairs that involve tissue ablation, I didn't spend too long investigating th…

I'm not saying it's available at your local walgreens. I'm just saying, like robot cars were a few years ago, it's an underinvested/underpromoted breakthrough sitting right under people's noses.

Re: Mathematics meets real life

#13

Post by DanBC » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 1:24 AM UTC

marshallp wrote: post #6

mindslight wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it interact with the colloidal silver I am taking? What about my magnetic wristbands? I'm also having problems getting to the clinic these days because big oil stole my car that runs on water. (Sorry, that's just how you're coming across.)

http://www.fusfoundation.org/MRgFUS-Overview/about-focused-u... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_focused_ultrasou... http://bergcityuni.wordpress.com/projects/cardiac-ablation-u... (links to sites linking to university funded medical researchers) It doesn't take long to do a GOOGLE SEARCH. For a supposedly tech themed discussion site there's a lot of closed-minded and google-challenged folk on here.

> It doesn't take long to do a GOOGLE SEARCH.

You made the claim; you are familiar with the subject. If you had made the search and presented links that would have been one person spending a few minutes doing a search.

By expecting everyone who reads your post to do the web searching your asking for many people to spend a few minutes each doing a search.

The inefficiency is sub-optimal, no?

Re: Mathematics meets real life

#14

Post by DanBC » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 1:28 AM UTC

The author is a mathematician, and thus used to thinking about percentages and numbers.

Gerd Gigerenzer has a nice book, Reckoning with Risk (or Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You in the US), in which he calls for people to stop using percentages and to use natural numbers numbers instead.

When you say that someone's risk has increased by 33% they usually have no idea what that means, but they think it's scary. But if the risk used to be 0.001% then a 33% increase isn't much to worry about.

The book has many examples from real world medicine of people having great disruption caused because they took medical treatment based on a faulty understanding of the numbers. It wasn't just lay people making the mistakes either; many doctors and consultants were getting the numbers wrong.

Re: Mathematics meets real life

#15

Post by marshallp » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 1:39 AM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #13

marshallp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.fusfoundation.org/MRgFUS-Overview/about-focused-u... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_focused_ultrasou... http://bergcityuni.wordpress.com/projects/cardiac-ablation-u... (links to sites linking to university funded medical researchers) It doesn't take long to do a GOOGLE SEARCH. For a supposedly tech themed discussion site there's a lot of closed-minded and google-challenged folk on here.

> It doesn't take long to do a GOOGLE SEARCH. You made the claim; you are familiar with the subject. If you had made the search and presented links that would have been one person spending a few minutes doing a search. By expecting everyone who reads your post to do the web searching your asking for many people to spend a few minutes each doing a search. The inefficiency is sub-optimal, no?

I've made couple posts about it - including links - over the past week, still got downvotes. People are not realizing the unthinkable is actually thinkable.

Re: Mathematics meets real life

#16

Post by mindslight » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 1:40 AM UTC

marshallp wrote: post #12

mindslight wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"cure to a lot of ailments ... criminally underfunded ... potential immortality". I mean as a mechanism, "focused ultrasound" pretty much says it all. But how successful is it in trials? I think I took a quick look at some links (or googled) based on another one of your comments, but not being in the medical field, or currently needing any repairs that involve tissue ablation, I didn't spend too long investigating th…

I'm not saying it's available at your local walgreens. I'm just saying, like robot cars were a few years ago, it's an underinvested/underpromoted breakthrough sitting right under people's noses.

So you're attempting to remedy that by generically promoting it as a cure all, even claiming it's capable of providing immortality? I don't really think you are making an attempt to understand what I, or anybody else here, is saying. You're defending yourself as if we are just blind naysayers, but in fact those people didn't even bother commenting. I swear I'd seen some insightful comments from you before, so I figured that you might be open to seeing wisdom. However at this point, I give up.

Re: Mathematics meets real life

#17

Post by lefthansolo » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 1:42 AM UTC

Hope it goes well. I don't think Romney winning or losing is as dire as dying, which you very likely will not do, Tim. :) Good luck.

Re: Mathematics meets real life

#18

Post by carbocation » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 1:55 AM UTC

marshallp wrote: post #10

derleth wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't take long to do a GOOGLE SEARCH And waste time wading through a bunch of patent nonsense put up by scammers in the often-vain hope that there is something , just one real item of legitimate information , lost in all the dross. You say 'closed-minded', I say 'wary of wasting time on yet another example of the alt-med scammer runaround'.

All it takes is a couple of clicks to get a huge list of researchers, including Harvard and John Hopkins http://www.fusfoundation.org/research/sites

I have personally spent time in the cath lab with one of the doctors mentioned on that site doing ablation therapy. By absolutely zero means whatsoever is it a cure all. More typically, it is a palliative modality.

Re: Mathematics meets real life

#19

Post by marshallp » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 2:08 AM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #16

marshallp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying it's available at your local walgreens. I'm just saying, like robot cars were a few years ago, it's an underinvested/underpromoted breakthrough sitting right under people's noses.

So you're attempting to remedy that by generically promoting it as a cure all, even claiming it's capable of providing immortality? I don't really think you are making an attempt to understand what I, or anybody else here, is saying. You're defending yourself as if we are just blind naysayers, but in fact those people didn't even bother commenting. I swear I'd seen some insightful comments from you before, so I figur…

Why such drastic measures like giving up. As I said in another comment, too low a claim and people think it's not worthwhile, too high and it's crackpotty. How do I get to the right balance?

Furthermore, I think the medical industry is full of unsystematic people. Every time you see a medical lab, it's a guy walking around physically moving petri dishes. That's why I'm trying to promote in the tech circles, they do overly ambitious things.

Rather than simply naysaying, people should give a concrete reason refuting the claim that focused ultrasound is potentially a cure-all. I can't think of any, and I've put thought into it.

Re: Mathematics meets real life

#20

Post by marshallp » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 2:12 AM UTC

carbocation wrote: post #18

marshallp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All it takes is a couple of clicks to get a huge list of researchers, including Harvard and John Hopkins http://www.fusfoundation.org/research/sites

I have personally spent time in the cath lab with one of the doctors mentioned on that site doing ablation therapy. By absolutely zero means whatsoever is it a cure all. More typically, it is a palliative modality.

Are you saying it will never potentially be a cure?

Maybe it isn't now, but with enough automated testing on mice or pigs etc. it will get to a mature point. This can also be parallelized, so maybe it can be done in a few months.