Hunting Down My Son's Killer • Hacker News Board

Re: Hunting Down My Son's Killer

#321

Post by tmeasday » Wed, May 30, 2012, 10:46 PM UTC

Domenic_S wrote: post #313

tmeasday wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that's, by definition, untrue. Unless people are never mis-diagnosed with rare conditions, which is patently false.

Your comment makes no sense. I didn't say never. Anyway, I found what I was looking for; I had read an excerpt of a book called How Doctors Think , where the author discusses the availability heuristic: In the theory, "availability" is defined as the tendency to judge the likelihood of explanation for an event by the ease with which relevant examples come to mind. In a clinical situation a diagnosis may be made becau…

Doctors are never going to be perfect; if you ask me following such a heuristic is probably going to work pretty well almost all of the time. As long as the doctor isn't a dick about it (with a god complex) and is willing to accept that they may be wrong..

In reference to my first comment: Mis-diagnosing "cool, rare diseases" as the flu by definition can only happen very rarely. Coupled with the fact that people are often mis-diagnosed with rare stuff, means that your original statement that "it is far more common..." is obviously untrue.

It must be frustrating if you are the person with the rare disease. But "not looking for zebras" serves the other 99.9% of people quite well..

Re: Hunting Down My Son's Killer

#322

Post by vacri » Wed, May 30, 2012, 11:47 PM UTC

run4yourlives wrote: post #109

yason wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marriage is about compromise. Children, however, afford no such privilege. No, marriage is having one heck of a good time living your life with your spouse. Being a single parent is better than a bad marriage. And marriage can only be good if the parents know and acknowledge that they together go first, kids come second. Period. Your spouse is the person you spend rest of your life (or at least decades, if you're luc…

I don't mean to be rude, but I think your comment illustrates the attitude prevalent in countries with 50% marriage failure rates. Your ideal is simply unsustainable and impossible. First: Are you married now (or have you been) and do you have kids? I'll assume you are married/committed but I'm not sure you are a parent, given your views. This is a tremendously important point to help frame this discussion. I fear yo…

A 50% divorce rate is not a 'failure' rate. People change and move on - in some cases a divorce is an overall win-win situation, not a failure. Slavishly staying together because of obligation is a failure.

Re: Hunting Down My Son's Killer

#323

Post by vacri » Wed, May 30, 2012, 11:55 PM UTC

mattdeboard wrote: post #258

gcheong wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true, it's kind of a strange word that I've mainly only seen used in the child-free communities, but is there a better word for the viewpoint that everyone should have kids? "Breeder mentality" just seems too harsh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalism

> a better word for the viewpoint that everyone should have kids I have a good one: "opinion". I have another great one for when someone won't leave you alone and insists that you hold their opinion or there's something wrong with you: "fanatic". See also: "jerk", "creep", "weirdo", "person I avoid". I really don't get these quasi-political categorizations. If someone's being a jerk about their opinion, they're a jer…

If you're complaining about namecalling, why would you resort to much coarser namecalling?

Re: Hunting Down My Son's Killer

#324

Post by goggles99 » Thu, May 31, 2012, 1:16 AM UTC

altrego99 wrote: post #20

jasonlotito wrote: post #9

As a father with a son with severe autism (not to suggest it's equivalent to Bertrand's condition), there is an important lesson here that might not be apparent at first read. Before you have children, understand that it's for the rest of your life. Really understand the impact. Your concerns are second, beyond anything you've ever understood. Marriage is about compromise. Children, however, afford no such privilege.…

Sorry, not worth it at all. Years 1-10 - you will loose all your time - cleaning diapers, making the child eat, making it study, teaching it values - waking up at night - and doing a lot of things for it. Yes you'll see it learn, smile, grow up and you're genetically conditioned to like it. But you will not be able to play your games, go to your parties - read book or contemplate on life, or code without expecting in…

"Sorry, not worth it at all."

Beware - selfishness feels great but is short lived. Traveling, working, partying, loafing around in your free time. These things get old and eventually you feel empty and Unfulfilled...

How can you predict what brings fulfillment to others anyway? Others may say to you that you will likely spend your latter years and die a miserable lonely recluse in a filthy nursing home. While they are cared for and having a happy existence with their children and grandchildren.

Re: Hunting Down My Son's Killer

#325

Post by Domenic_S » Thu, May 31, 2012, 2:02 AM UTC

tmeasday wrote: post #321

Domenic_S wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment makes no sense. I didn't say never. Anyway, I found what I was looking for; I had read an excerpt of a book called How Doctors Think , where the author discusses the availability heuristic: In the theory, "availability" is defined as the tendency to judge the likelihood of explanation for an event by the ease with which relevant examples come to mind. In a clinical situation a diagnosis may be made becau…

Doctors are never going to be perfect; if you ask me following such a heuristic is probably going to work pretty well almost all of the time. As long as the doctor isn't a dick about it (with a god complex) and is willing to accept that they may be wrong.. In reference to my first comment: Mis-diagnosing "cool, rare diseases" as the flu by definition can only happen very rarely. Coupled with the fact that people are…

You must be parsing my sentence differently than I am. Clarified:

It is far more common for a doctor to underdiagnose a patient that presents with flu systems but actually has the "cool, rare disease" [with the flu than it is to correctly diagnose them the first time].

In other words, within the ecosystem of "cool, rare diseases", it's far more likely to be mis- or under-diagnosed the first time than it is to be correctly diagnosed the first time. One reason for that is they're not common diseases (so the docs won't have a lot of experience diagnosing it), but another fascinating reason is that they have already sort of diagnosed you in their heads before getting into the data.

If you're interested in the topic, you should pick up the book I linked above. There's a fascinating study in there that tests this problem: the study takes two sets of identical x-rays with an obvious primary diagnosis like a cancerous tumor and in one set, they add another problem (blocked artery or torn heart valve or something else obviously serious and life-threatening). They give the x-rays to doctors, inform them of the primary diagnosis, have them look at the x-rays, and track their eye movements. Here's the crazy part: every one of the doctors lingered over that second, undisclosed problem, indicating they saw something wrong. Yet none of them reported the problem. (It's been a while so I might have gotten the specifics wrong, but the gist is there. It's really fascinating and I encourage you to read it on your own.)

On a personal note: take it easy with the "by definition" and "obviously untrue" stuff. I know this is the internet and all but it makes you seem hotheaded, especially when we might be misunderstanding each other.

Re: Hunting Down My Son's Killer

#326

Post by pyre » Thu, May 31, 2012, 3:20 AM UTC

e40 wrote: post #304

its_so_on wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like your tone. I have no horse in the race and am not a doctor, but doctors aren't Gods. They learn certain foundational things (names of bones and muscles; organic chemistry) then they learn thing related to the practice that doesn't necessarily rely on any of that stuff. (Diseases; drugs) For diseases, you should try reading through the Merck manual (available online). Everything from gynecology, oncology,…

I don't like your tone. Wow, I love it when people make an accusation and it's better leveled at them. It's your tone that I don't like. The original posted was expressing a well-formed opinion, one that is backed up by a lifetime of experience, his and mine. I can't claim to have an exotic or serious disease, but I do have a lot of chronic medical issues. I cannot tell you how many years I've wasted dealing with Dr'…

  > thought they knew what they were doing (YES, behaving
  > God like!),

In my book, there is a significant difference between 'playing like God' and 'thinking that you know what you are doing.' I'm thinking that you left out some detail here, otherwise this just comes off as bitterness because someone that thought they were doing the right thing turned out to be wrong.

Re: Hunting Down My Son's Killer

#327

Post by sunsu » Thu, May 31, 2012, 4:33 AM UTC

waffle_ss wrote: post #38

Thanks so much for the fascinating and emotionally stirring article. I will definitely be passing this on to others I know. The thing I kept thinking during the article is, "Is there something that I, as a programmer, can do to help people like Bertrand?" Is there some way that we programmers could use our talent to augment or advance existing technology in this area? I realize that the science involved here is non-t…

It seems like one of the biggest ways we can help is in trying to find more people with the same mutation.

Re: Hunting Down My Son's Killer

#328

Post by mattdeboard » Thu, May 31, 2012, 6:23 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #323

mattdeboard wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a better word for the viewpoint that everyone should have kids I have a good one: "opinion". I have another great one for when someone won't leave you alone and insists that you hold their opinion or there's something wrong with you: "fanatic". See also: "jerk", "creep", "weirdo", "person I avoid". I really don't get these quasi-political categorizations. If someone's being a jerk about their opinion, they're a jer…

If you're complaining about namecalling, why would you resort to much coarser namecalling?

I'm not complaining about namecalling, I'm complaining about quasi-political categorizations like "pronatalist" which sets up "pronatalists" in one camp and "antinatalists" in another. I object to the needless polarization.

Sometimes people are jerks, that's not polarization.

Re: Hunting Down My Son's Killer

#329

Post by bad_user » Thu, May 31, 2012, 7:23 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #322

run4yourlives wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to be rude, but I think your comment illustrates the attitude prevalent in countries with 50% marriage failure rates. Your ideal is simply unsustainable and impossible. First: Are you married now (or have you been) and do you have kids? I'll assume you are married/committed but I'm not sure you are a parent, given your views. This is a tremendously important point to help frame this discussion. I fear yo…

A 50% divorce rate is not a 'failure' rate. People change and move on - in some cases a divorce is an overall win-win situation, not a failure. Slavishly staying together because of obligation is a failure.

Divorce in itself is not failure, however in a culture with a 50% divorce rate I think this is a symptom of a much bigger problem: such a high divorce rate means that many people are not committed to their marriage or to the concept of family.

If you take a look at modern societies, such as the US, you'll notice that people are more and more disconnected from their families and their place of birth and their culture. Good friends and big families are increasingly rare occurrences. Incidentally this is why people give birth to fewer and fewer children: because they've got no family to rely on.

And really, life is hard and hollow that way.

Putting yourself first does not necessarily make you happier, while compromises done for the good of your family can make you happier in the long term ... not much different than how abstaining from sweets and soda will make you healthier and thinner. Really, don't be a self-centered jerk, as you'll regret it in the end.

Re: Hunting Down My Son's Killer

#330

Post by nitrogen » Thu, May 31, 2012, 7:28 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #296

nitrogen wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just so you are aware, your posts on this thread have probably gotten your account automatically banned for excessive downvotes and flags. You are probably being downvoted because you are giving potentially life-threateningly bad advice, not because "they" are trying to bury your post.

Once again, just to make sure you are aware of the outcome of your posts, your account is dead. I cannot reply to your response to this comment, because it is [dead]. If you try and succeed getting your account unbanned, please consider posting more supporting evidence when giving advice of the form "Eat poison...because medical industry conspiracy!"

  sevenstar 14 hours ago | link [dead]

  Give it up... what is your problem? Plain English... not
  banned. Stop lying, then read the link, please... (
  http://www.naturalnews.com/010038.html )

They say don't feed the trolls, yet here I am... Look, I'm giving this one last shot where most other people wouldn't, because you're a human being and I believe all human beings deserve to know the world as it really is. As your own HN profile says, "Every single child is entitled to a life full of possibilities."

I'm going to do what you haven't thus far, and provide hard evidence of my claims.

Point of evidence #1: the quoted post above, complete with "[dead]" at the end.

Point of evidence #2: this image, showing your [dead] posts: http://imgur.com/2Fkm6

Point of evidence #3: background information related to the art of the hellban: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbanning

Now, for your link, and the sort of hard evidence you would need to provide: I read through it and found the typical structure of an article promoting something unscientific to an uninformed audience. There's a bit of historic background provided to give an air of authority and authenticity, followed by non-sequiturs (e.g. the safety of topical silver use does not logically imply that silver is safe to ingest). Finally, there are scattered quotes from various people with abbreviations after their names. That is not how a rigorous scientific process works.

In science, reputation and storytelling are irrelevant -- only the double-blind studied, independently reproduced data truly matters. Reputation is merely an indicator of those scientists who are known to have conducted scientifically sound experiments in the past.

Absent the results from clinical trials (or at least a solid argument from biological first principles) showing 1. why it's okay to put silver in your body where it will never, ever leave and 2. why silver is better than antibiotics that the body will actually metabolize, telling people to ingest it is scarcely different from telling people to ingest any other poison.

Now, I'm giving you some very easy and entertaining homework. Your assignment is to read The Relativity of Wrong (http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm), a nonfiction story I discovered here on HN a long time ago, that serves as an excellent introduction to how science really works (and thus the laws of the universe).

I will no longer be following this thread, so I bid you good luck and farewell.