191–200 of 355 posts
Alzheimer's (like a gazillion other diseases) is a product of senescence, and senescence is a subject that faces strong ideological headwinds. That leaves the medical system in a situation where they want to treat the symptoms (the diseases) instead of the root cause, and treating the set of symptoms that we call Alzheimer's is going to be tough.
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> It's much like climate science today: any dissent at all, even just questioning the predictions of catastrophe, immediately brands you as a heretic. I think this is not a great example, as there’s a huge group of people that, in fact, does not agree with the consensus and would happily fund research that (tries to) prove otherwise. I fully agree with your point, though, just not the example.
That’s not true. If you want to have a job at a prestigious institution then the research committees are pretty consistent in their biases.
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> Problem was, the model was wrong. I thought despite the fraud, it's still the best model we have[1]? The fact there was fraud doesn't mean the model is immediately incorrect. At best, it means its foundations are shakier than we thought, but it's not a slam dunk repudiation. [1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-the-amyloid-h...
Pretty clearly not. It would seem that beta amyloids correlate with Alzheimer's, but do not cause it. The problem us "consensus science". You could get funding to research beta amyloids, but not to research any competing hypotheses. It's much like climate science today: any dissent at all, even just questioning the predictions of catastrophe, immediately brands you as a heretic.
I'm not sure I understand this. We've added hundreds of gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere. There's no mystery here, it's basic physics and chemistry that this will change things, and it's accepted that we don't know exactly _how_ things will change. The alternative: "adding gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere will _not_ change anything" is simply non-sensical. It goes against the basic rules of physics and causality. I'm happy to be proved wrong here, I just legitimately can't see how an alternative position makes any sense.
Edit: I see you specifically pointed out "predictions of catastrophe", which if that is true (and not just the position of radicals on Twitter) is indeed unfortunate.
Its done substantially better than more common diseases like ME/CFS which very few have even heard of let alone know the symptoms of and receives almost no funding at all. Alzheimer's received a further $100 million of NIH funding earlier this year ( https://www.alz.org/news/2026/100-million-dollar-alzheimers-... ). That is 6 times the total funding for ME/CFS federally which is currently just 15 million and planned…
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There is a LOT of causal data. Autopsies of brains of Alzheimer's patients were rife with amyloid. People with mutations that caused amyloid got Alzheimer's earlier than others. The hypothesis didn't come from nowhere. To contrast, look at how much trouble medicine has had treating brain tumors. It has taken a long time to get effective treatments for various reasons. And Alzheimer's is way less direct in cause/effec…
> Autopsies of brains of Alzheimer's patients were rife with amyloid Do you want think carefully about how this can possibly suggest this is a causal link? > People with mutations that caused amyloid got Alzheimer's earlier than others. People with mutations in those genes got a particular type of inherited alzheimers early, this says nothing about the cause of general Alzheimers.
And it's also not a good idea to suppose that you are dealing with unrelated effects without good reason. Mutations->more amyloid->earlier symptoms should be considered indicative of the disease pathway until sufficient evidence counteracts that, by Occam's razor.
"Do not attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence" and all of that, but... Alzheimer's (like a gazillion other diseases) is a product of senescence, and senescence is a subject that faces strong ideological headwinds. That leaves the medical system in a situation where they want to treat the symptoms (the diseases) instead of the root cause, and treating the set of symptoms that we call Alzheimer's i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Problem was, the model was wrong. I thought despite the fraud, it's still the best model we have[1]? The fact there was fraud doesn't mean the model is immediately incorrect. At best, it means its foundations are shakier than we thought, but it's not a slam dunk repudiation. [1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-the-amyloid-h...
>I am David Schneider-Joseph, an engineer formerly with SpaceX and Google, now working in AI safety. Alzheimer’s isn’t my field If anyone wants to know who wrote the article linked before wasting time reading it, there you go.
I, also a non-expert, spent six months studying what the experts are doing, concluded that they actually seem to know what they’re talking about, and shared my understanding of that with other non-experts.
If you’re going to dismiss me for saying the experts are right, since I’m not an expert, then shouldn’t you dismiss those who spent far less time than I to learn about the subject, who are saying the experts are wrong?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Problem was, the model was wrong. I thought despite the fraud, it's still the best model we have[1]? The fact there was fraud doesn't mean the model is immediately incorrect. At best, it means its foundations are shakier than we thought, but it's not a slam dunk repudiation. [1] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-the-amyloid-h...
Pretty clearly not. It would seem that beta amyloids correlate with Alzheimer's, but do not cause it. The problem us "consensus science". You could get funding to research beta amyloids, but not to research any competing hypotheses. It's much like climate science today: any dissent at all, even just questioning the predictions of catastrophe, immediately brands you as a heretic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every time I read about it and get jazzed I take it and feel awful. I’m guessing my brain chemistry is better without it.
Any side effect goes away if you reduce the dosage sufficiently. In the recent Harvard study the dose was very small when you convert it to a human equivalent dose.
...because Alzheimer is a dormant side effect of a virus, not of a messenger chemical. But that doesn't go well in studies and "self populism" of what funded research wanted to hear. If you study effects and not causes due to lack of measurements for reproducibility in any field of research, that's what comes out. Also check out how the new and promising correlation started by observing the Wales eligibility for mand…
Gee, that sure is a confident statement of fact. Or maybe virus activity is one way that a negative feedback loop involving protein aggregates can begin ...
but it’s still pretty vague once you’ve really dug in.