Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 361 posts

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#311

Post by Mawr »

fragmede wrote: post #309
Mawr wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but false. Accidents that you can do nothing about are vanishingly rare. Even the situation you bring up is not one of them. When stopped/stopping you should be checking your mirrors to make sure the car behind you is at least slowing down. On the other hand, the parent brings up a great example - following distance from the car in front. One of the most basic concepts of operating any vehicle and his wife is a…

It doesn't matter how rare the scenario is in reality, fear often isn't rational, but it makes us do things and we have no control over it. My point isn't that the fear is rational, it isn't. But unless you have a method to prevent people from assuaging their irrational fear by buying a certain vehicle, (or voting a certain way, for that matter), what is your proposal?

The method is obvious - adjusting the law so that such vehicles become way more expensive than the more reasonable ones. Don't ask me how to get that pushed through though.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#312

Post by d1sxeyes »

dinfinity wrote: post #308
d1sxeyes wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s difficult to give any accurate interpretation of, because it’s not a meaningful statistic. For example, every person hospitalised from COVID-19 had consumed water at some point in preceding months. It’s not evidence that water causes severe complications from COVID-19.

No, this is incorrect and misleading. It is a meaningful statistic when interpreted right. See sibling comment.

In and of itself own, as quoted by OP, it’s not meaningful.

Sibling comment is thoughtful and helpful but adds information not present in OP’s statement (base rate).

Edit: ah, you are OP. Just swap “OP” for “you” :)

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#313

Post by maxbond »

yunwal wrote: post #263
maxbond wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does it really have to prevent one of the most painful and expensive forms of cancer, not just for you but also your family, to justify $7/mo? Not very much, in my book.

Same comment as the one above. There are literally infinite things you can do to reduce your risk of mortality. This would have to be among the best options if those things.

If you have a radon test indicating there's a problem, then it is no longer theoretical. There aren't an infinite number of pressing and known risks.

I think it's a mistake to conflate an infinite number of hypothetical risks with a definite and known risk. It leads to analysis paralysis and FUD. It is not possible to know what, among all of the infinite hypothetical options, is the best to reduce your mortality. So let's focus on the concrete steps we can take and that we do know are effective.

For most people, that is not radon mitigation, because most people don't have a radon problem. If you find out that it is a problem for you, and you have the cash to solve it - just solve it. It's that simple.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#314

Post by maxbond »

yunwal wrote: post #261
maxbond wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally we'd model all relevant parameters, my main point is that presenting the cost as $2940 is misleading.

And their point was that it’s not. The price of electricity typically grows to offset inflation.

The time value of money is typically a more significant factor than inflation. If you believe that there will be massive inflation that outstrips the time value of money, then you should still feel this figure is misleading because it's too low.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#315

Post by thebigspacefuck »

kelnos wrote: post #231
dathinab wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and you can reduce it to basically 0% for little money. which is why I'm confused by people second questioning how bad it actually is in context of _fixing_ it (not in context of a national health scope) if there is something which is known to be quite unhealthy in a non small degree, and there is a cheap fix why wouldn't you just fix it. In the end if it's very bad, or slightly less bad or the 10th leading cause i…

Is radon mitigation affordable, though? Someone in another subthread said they got quotes between $1600 and $3000. Even the low end of that is a difficult amount to spend for a lot of people in the US. If they're going to spend it (if they even can ), they're going to want to know it's going to meaningfully decrease their risk of cancer. I'm not saying it's not worth it -- that's the point, I don't know -- but I agre…

Relatively cheap for people that own a house

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#316

Post by blueflow »

dinfinity wrote: post #307
Lex-2008 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's start with an extreme example: each day more people die in traffic accidents, than by falling from a 10-story building. But still, we all can agree that driving a car is safer than falling from a building. Why? Because driving a car you get more chance to get to your destination safely than falling from a building. ChatGPT estimates 0.01% chance to die in car accident per year, when driving every day, and 90-99…

Yep, pretty much this. More information found by searching for "base rate fallacy" or just the Wikipedia page for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

Cool. I didn't know the effect of the vaccine is so poor, that you now need to account for statistical biases to see its effect at all. That's less than what i was told, and I'm not happy.

Honestly what a shit vaccine. Measles and Tetanus vax did better.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#317

Post by zamadatix »

dgfitz wrote: post #110
zamadatix wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that depends how old you are when you install it and how long you plan to live but ~$7 per month is not at all an unrealistic electricity usage estimate for the system. 7*12*35 = $2,940. Edit: E.g. the numbers from this site suggest, for 15 out of the 16 listed fan models, the lifetime electricity cost is likely to be significantly larger than the install cost unless you are already much older at the time you…

This point always amuses me. Thats like, 1 starbucks coffee a month, or 1 trip to a fast food place a month, or one extra thing at the grocery store a month, or half a movie ticket a month, or half a streaming service a month, or less than half an LLM subscription a month, I could go on for a while. For the cost, preventing cancer seems like it's a wise investment. I say this as a cancer survivor.

It amuses me but maybe for the exact opposite reason: Phrase it to the median person as "for just a quarter per day" (queue sad music on a commercial) and we'll be worried about everything but the cost because it seems too low to think about. Say "For just 1 of less than 500 such choices you can afford to make in your lifetime" and suddenly we start wondering if it's something that makes the cut.

Of course that's median, most people on HN... probably should just get the system if the Radon levels are high.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#318

Post by QuercusMax »

kccqzy wrote: post #33
QuercusMax wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But she's making everyone else less safe by driving in her tank-mobile. Those are much more deadly to pedestrians, cyclists, and those in smaller vehicles.

Some people are selfish. It's not illegal to be selfish.

It can be morally wrong, however.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#319

Post by QuercusMax »

RajT88 wrote: post #49
potato3732842 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for every comment screeching about pedestrians and rollover safety there's another one screeching about occupant safety. You can't really fault people for picking the one that benefits them when confronted with roughly equal screeching in both directions.

Exactly what I was getting at. There are several ways to view the story. Another commenter mentioned failing to design cars for women (totally fair! Volvo famously had a botched attempt at this) What I have come to appreciate is how vulnerable women feel in the world. It is hard to appreciate how that plays into car choice if you are a man. Most men will never be able to understand, imo.

Why does designing cars for women mean we need to turn them into main battle tanks? That's a false dichotomy. Women in cars are just as vulnerable as men in cars, just as female pedestrians are just as vulnerable as male pedestrians.

Re: Many lung cancers are now in nonsmokers

#320

Post by zamadatix »

nic_wilson wrote: post #143
zamadatix wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 93% of people the only cost is the $15 test kit to verify "yep, don't need to even think about it". For the other 7% that then need to really do a cost-benefit the data is out there but you do need to go through your specific circumstances to get a meaningful number. The risk levels vary vastly (orders of magnitudes) between both the radon level and your life choices/situation, so it's relatively meaningless to s…

The EPA recommends home owners mitigate with radon levels of 4 pCi/L and above, and the EPA recommends home owners mitigate ”consider” mitigation at levels 2-4. Often you will see people post radon results in the 10+ or even 50+ range, which may lead you to think 4 pCi/L is not too bad, but in fact exposure to that level is the equivalent of 8 cigarettes a day or 200 chest X-rays/year.

The EPA already publishes the direct risk levels for a given pCi/L reading. Adding an intermediate step of how many cigarettes per day that is akin to is not giving you any new information (but is likely distracting you from just thinking about the risk level itself).
Post reply on HN