You're not arguing against "cost-effective", you're arguing against incompetence.
I'm actually, in this particular instance, arguing against OP's reductio ad absurdum of "See if it's really cost-effective to test for everything up front." The discussion has digressed from that point, as they so often do.
But yes, incompetence is the real issue of the day (regardless of the medical field), and from what I can tell it's pretty damn rampant among MDs. According to this article, almost every hospital has at least one surgeon referred to as "HODAD," or Hand Of Death And Destruction, and nobody's willing to call them out on it, lest they risk their careers. So not only do we have incompetent doctors performing procedures, we have entire hospitals full of staff covering for their, let's call it what it is, negligent homicides.
Sounds a lot like the Blue Wall of Silence we complain about with cops... but I'd bet cops don't kill 200,000 people every year.
There's also a real problem in the medical industry today with piling on 6 tests when 1-2 will do, either as a CYA or simply to ramp up costs - which is terrible, as it really inflates the cost of getting e.g. an MRI far beyond what it would cost without needless testing.
Which boils down to the same base issue that causes many doctors to be nothing more than legalized dope dealers - profitability.
Not surprising that legal drug dealers don't have trouble finding work, especially in this day and age where everyone is slowly being convinced that normal human behavior is actually a personality disorder requiring a prescription.
Sad today? There's a drug for that.
Happy drugs not working well enough? There's a drug for that.
Supplemental happy drugs make you too happy? There's a drug for that.
Body fatigued from all the chemical imbalance caused by too many drugs? There's a drug for that.
Hooked on prescription drugs? There's a drug for that, too!
Feeling homicidal because all the drugs we put you on totally fucked up your brain chemistry? Sorry, you're on your own, good luck with that.
Mind you, I'm not defending Osteopathy (barely even know what it is, anyway), but rather pointing out that inability/unwillingness to base conclusions on evidence isn't exclusive to that field, as I've experienced many, many medical doctors who basically guess at your symptoms and start throwing different pills at you until something works.
I've found it helps to actually talk through the "trouble-shooting process" if the first thing the doc shoves you out the door with doesn't work. If you come in with a set of symptoms, the doc is going to treat the most likely cause of those symptoms (assuming that treatment doesn't have significant side-effects), and likely won't want to spend much time on that first visit. Mostly, that actually works. But when it doesn't, it's important to follow up, and actually hold him to some diagnostic process
Have you ever tried to argue with a doctor's prognosis? I have, and in my experience it's usually met with a smart-ass "well, which one of us went to medical school?"
Again, in my experience, you're better off just doctor-shopping until you find one that isn't a pretentious, narcissistic jackass. Which might take some time.
Side note - if "cost-effectiveness" is the most important part of medical science to you, I pray you're not a big player in that industry
"Medical care" isn't something there's an infinite supply for. Demand in fact exceeds supply. Shouldn't the industry try to help as many people as efficiently as possible with the available resources? Or, in fewer words: cost-effectiveness.
I never said that cost-effectiveness shouldn't be a factor, I merely indicated that it shouldn't be the most important factor in an industry that requires people to take an oath of "first, do no harm." While no, it's probably not cost-effective to run every test under the sun for every person who reports any symptom of any ailment, it's equally not cost-effective to eschew all testing and evidence-based assessment in favor of hocking whatever new drug the cute pharmaceutical rep is selling this week. Just like in the world of automotive repair, there's a difference between a diagnostician and a parts-swapper; most "doctors" I've interacted with fall into the latter category, with rare exception.
Where did I say they should "test everything up front?" The argument is that medical doctors don't always use '"evidence-based medicine," occasionally preferring to just throw drugs at a wall and hope something sticks. Shit, I could do that, and I didn't bother with 12 years of medical school.
I did, however, suffer with gallbladder disease through 13 years, 10 different doctors, and about 50 different useless drugs (for other ailments), until I finally found an MD who gave enough of a shit about my personal health to actually, you know, talk to me, maybe run a test or two, rather than try and dope me up and kick me out the door because that's more profitable than actually curing disease. Of course, after changing jobs I can no longer go see this person (because he's no longer in my insurance network), so next time I have an issue it's back to the crap-shoot of, "will my next doc be good like him, or another drug-peddler like all the other ones?" Yay.
So, you know, my opinion might be a bit colored by personal experience. YMMV.
Side note - if "cost-effectiveness" is the most important part of medical science to you, I pray you're not a big player in that industry. I find the whole "first do no harm" bit to be a preferable first priority, myself.
the practice of osteopathy does not always adhere to evidence-based medicine
To be completely fair, it's been my experience that most medical doctors don't adhere to evidence-based medicine either.
"Oh, you have [Symptom]? Here take [Sponsored Drug]. No, we don't need to run any tests, if [Sponsored Drug] doesn't work we'll give you [other Sponsored Drug]. That usually works."
Yes, I have been given essentially that exact edict by several former doctors of mine. They were all wrong, BTW - no amount of Sponsored Drugs could fix my busted gallbladder. 'Course, had any of them bothered to run a test of any kind, they might have known that, but then, how would they have sold me their Sponsored Drugs?
Hmmm... if only there was some way to use sound as a data communications medium...
Around my area, the police will do the following:
First pull up behind you with their lights flashing.
If that doesn't work (ie. if you fail to pull over to the side, as required by law, when a police car/ambulance/fire truck comes behind you), they'll do a few quick bursts of that horn/siren hybrid.
Finally, if all else fails, they're use their siren.
I cannot see a driverless car knowing how to deal with the first two above points, by which time you'll be dealing with a very irate police officer.
You do realize that the lights on emergency vehicles (white strobe, in particular) flash at a particular, quantifiable frequency, right? That's how they make all the stoplights turn green. Just program the auto-car to react to said frequency pulses of red/blue light.
All neural nets try to predict, and predictions can be foiled.
People can be fooled by optical illusions, too.
The main difference being that optical illusions are designed to fool the human eye, and thus are intentional, whereas the computer in this case is being fooled by regular stuff, i.e. not intentional.
If the human brain failed to recall unique individuals because of slight changes in their appearance, I doubt we'd have progressed much beyond living in caves and hitting stuff with cudgels.
OK, I'm a pretty paranoid dude (enough so that I still question the official 9/11 story), and even I think that theory is nut-butter crazy. That should tell you something.
I'm guessing that if the feds knew of a plot beforehand, a more likely scenario is that they might have tried to, you know, stop it, rather than using their own children as human sacrifices to some still unknown end.
As much as I hate Facebook (and merely strongly dislike Google) why is this an issue?
In my experience, when a corporation makes up some outlandish BS like "trade secrets" to hide information, it's because there's something worth covering up.
Seems to be just about the same to me, save the Jetta; mine was a bit more (~$28,000), but that's because I sprung for every option except satnav. Seems the real problem is lack of options, unless you're a VW or Chevy fan.
diesel fuel is on average more expensive at the pump than 87 octane gasoline.
Yea, but you get almost-if-not-more-than twice the miles out of the same amount of fuel, so it ends up being a net win. I will concede that the sticker shock of diesel fuel does cause a lot of people's brains to shut off, and thus, not see the benefit.
Also driving slower, not driving full throttle and hard braking to a stop light/sign, etc.
Or you could just buy a diesel.
I used to have an 2008 MkV Jetta with the 2.5L gasoline engine. The government said I should be getting 21/29mpg city/highway. My best was 46 mpg driving from Sacramento to San Diego. Now I have a Prius V, and I get better gas mileage than that without even trying.
I bought my wife a 2012 Jetta TDI, and she regularly gets 45-50 MPG, even with her lead foot. But even our old gas Jetta was getting somewhere in the range of 25-35.
Remember a time when cellular carriers were trying to justify getting rid of unlimited data plans by claiming that the networks were becoming oversaturated?
Pepperidge Farms remembers. And we'll remember it when it happens again.
Ironically, the "debunking" in that Wiki page is almost as unscientific as the claim itself.
2. The tiny electromagnetic radiations from your neural activity diverge to background noise over tiny distances. That's reason EEGs are done with electrodes right on the skin rather than read from across the room. 3. The brain cannot parse electromagnetic radiations from the brain, which is why you can't just connect yourself to an EEG output and know what the other person was thinking.
Something something multiverse theory something something. I've heard some pretty out-there scientific explanations for stuff we have no way of ever being able to truly verify.
4. Even if you could directly wire every neuron in another person's brain to yours, it still wouldn't work because no two brains are structured in exactly the same way. The two brains could eventually learn each other, but without any sort of direct-connected training period, they are *not* in any form able to understand each other's signals.
See previous response.
5. Here we're just talking about connecting thoughts from two members of the same thinking species. But to do the sort of things people pray for, you're talking about even inanimate objects taking part.
"To do the sort of things people pray for..." LOT of assumption in that, which is interesting coming from someone who obviously does not pray themselves. How, precisely, do you know the nature and theme of every prayer ever uttered?
Note that I don't take one side or the other in this debate, I just can't stand it when "people of science" totally shit all over a concept because it doesn't fit their definition of science, and thus don't think that the topic deserves any attention whatsoever, from anyone.
The short of it... no. Saying "energy" does not equate to a hypothetical mechanism, it does not make it scientific.
Well, no shit.
Of course, in the same logic, saying "Math tells us this might have happened that way" doesn't really make a thing 'scientific' either. From what I understand, that can only be done by verifying the results of repetitious experimentation. Plus, we do occasionally get the math wrong.
Here's my attempt to further marginalize your opinion by claiming this is your "hypothesis":
FTFY.
1. I think of something. 2. There are "energies" in my brain 3.... 4. Magical things that I thought about happen far away from me!
Which is different from:
1. I think the universe started this way 2. there are invisible "energies" that I can't prove actually exist 3.... 4. The Big Bang TOTALLY HAPPENED!
How, exactly? Because somebody somewhere once wrote down a formula that kinda-sorta seems to verify the claim? Shit, give me a few million in the form of a research grant, and I'll give you some formulas that kinda-sorta verify whatever you want them to. "Kinda-sorta" is easy to pull off.
As for your "it doesn't hurt to try", it's a way for people to feel smug about themselves for "helping" when they're not doing jack squat.
Well, then, I'm sorry to hear that you have such hatred for people who have different beliefs than yourself. I presume this is what your motivation is, as it is unlikely that you've spoken to every person who prays, therefore making it impossible for you to know their motivations.
If you think of prayer as completely useless self-promotion, I can only assume you don't think too highly of things like the #BringOurGirlsBack campaign on Twitter. No, posting a tweet won't rescue sex slaves from Boko Harem, but it makes the powerless feel a bit less so, which has a
You'll never convince me that we currently understand everything there is to understand about the universe; just because something hasn't been discovered to have military potential (yet) doesn't mean it can't exist.
Besides, as I said before, prayer isn't hurting anyone, and is helping at least one person (the one doing the praying), so there's no good reason to bust people's balls for it.
Why does the concept of prayer have to be predicated on the existence and active attention of some omnipotent entity? Perhaps there is power in prayer, not sourced from some sky fairy, but rather from the way the energies we all receive and produce interact with one another.
Kinda like how, if two women live together long enough, their periods sync up. Besides, it doesn't hurt to try, and at least those praying are doing something, ineffective though it may be, rather than being bitches to other people for believing something they don't.
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You're not arguing against "cost-effective", you're arguing against incompetence.
I'm actually, in this particular instance, arguing against OP's reductio ad absurdum of "See if it's really cost-effective to test for everything up front." The discussion has digressed from that point, as they so often do.
But yes, incompetence is the real issue of the day (regardless of the medical field), and from what I can tell it's pretty damn rampant among MDs. According to this article, almost every hospital has at least one surgeon referred to as "HODAD," or Hand Of Death And Destruction, and nobody's willing to call them out on it, lest they risk their careers. So not only do we have incompetent doctors performing procedures, we have entire hospitals full of staff covering for their, let's call it what it is, negligent homicides.
Sounds a lot like the Blue Wall of Silence we complain about with cops... but I'd bet cops don't kill 200,000 people every year.
There's also a real problem in the medical industry today with piling on 6 tests when 1-2 will do, either as a CYA or simply to ramp up costs - which is terrible, as it really inflates the cost of getting e.g. an MRI far beyond what it would cost without needless testing.
Which boils down to the same base issue that causes many doctors to be nothing more than legalized dope dealers - profitability.
I was thinking of psychologists.
Not surprising that legal drug dealers don't have trouble finding work, especially in this day and age where everyone is slowly being convinced that normal human behavior is actually a personality disorder requiring a prescription.
Sad today? There's a drug for that.
Happy drugs not working well enough? There's a drug for that.
Supplemental happy drugs make you too happy? There's a drug for that.
Body fatigued from all the chemical imbalance caused by too many drugs? There's a drug for that.
Hooked on prescription drugs? There's a drug for that, too!
Feeling homicidal because all the drugs we put you on totally fucked up your brain chemistry? Sorry, you're on your own, good luck with that.
Mind you, I'm not defending Osteopathy (barely even know what it is, anyway), but rather pointing out that inability/unwillingness to base conclusions on evidence isn't exclusive to that field, as I've experienced many, many medical doctors who basically guess at your symptoms and start throwing different pills at you until something works.
TL;DR version - Bullshit prognosis based on faulty reasoning is a valid issue regardless of which particular medical field we're discussing. Not-So-Fun fact, MD's kill somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 million people every year through preventable medical errors.
I've found it helps to actually talk through the "trouble-shooting process" if the first thing the doc shoves you out the door with doesn't work. If you come in with a set of symptoms, the doc is going to treat the most likely cause of those symptoms (assuming that treatment doesn't have significant side-effects), and likely won't want to spend much time on that first visit. Mostly, that actually works. But when it doesn't, it's important to follow up, and actually hold him to some diagnostic process
Have you ever tried to argue with a doctor's prognosis? I have, and in my experience it's usually met with a smart-ass "well, which one of us went to medical school?"
Again, in my experience, you're better off just doctor-shopping until you find one that isn't a pretentious, narcissistic jackass. Which might take some time.
Side note - if "cost-effectiveness" is the most important part of medical science to you, I pray you're not a big player in that industry
"Medical care" isn't something there's an infinite supply for. Demand in fact exceeds supply. Shouldn't the industry try to help as many people as efficiently as possible with the available resources? Or, in fewer words: cost-effectiveness.
I never said that cost-effectiveness shouldn't be a factor, I merely indicated that it shouldn't be the most important factor in an industry that requires people to take an oath of "first, do no harm." While no, it's probably not cost-effective to run every test under the sun for every person who reports any symptom of any ailment, it's equally not cost-effective to eschew all testing and evidence-based assessment in favor of hocking whatever new drug the cute pharmaceutical rep is selling this week. Just like in the world of automotive repair, there's a difference between a diagnostician and a parts-swapper; most "doctors" I've interacted with fall into the latter category, with rare exception.
Where did I say they should "test everything up front?" The argument is that medical doctors don't always use '"evidence-based medicine," occasionally preferring to just throw drugs at a wall and hope something sticks. Shit, I could do that, and I didn't bother with 12 years of medical school.
I did, however, suffer with gallbladder disease through 13 years, 10 different doctors, and about 50 different useless drugs (for other ailments), until I finally found an MD who gave enough of a shit about my personal health to actually, you know, talk to me, maybe run a test or two, rather than try and dope me up and kick me out the door because that's more profitable than actually curing disease. Of course, after changing jobs I can no longer go see this person (because he's no longer in my insurance network), so next time I have an issue it's back to the crap-shoot of, "will my next doc be good like him, or another drug-peddler like all the other ones?" Yay.
So, you know, my opinion might be a bit colored by personal experience. YMMV.
Side note - if "cost-effectiveness" is the most important part of medical science to you, I pray you're not a big player in that industry. I find the whole "first do no harm" bit to be a preferable first priority, myself.
Never met one.
At least, not one that wasn't a full time employee at Steak N Shake.
It's even more difficult to take someone seriously when they ignore perfectly valid reasoning due to an obsession with mechanical pedantry.
OP makes some damn good points, in case you were too stuck on his lack of punctuation to notice.
Right? A group of people practicing what is basically a total scam are questioning a site that might threaten their scam publicly?
I suspect the real article they'd like to discredit on Wikipedia is this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
the practice of osteopathy does not always adhere to evidence-based medicine
To be completely fair, it's been my experience that most medical doctors don't adhere to evidence-based medicine either.
"Oh, you have [Symptom]? Here take [Sponsored Drug]. No, we don't need to run any tests, if [Sponsored Drug] doesn't work we'll give you [other Sponsored Drug]. That usually works."
Yes, I have been given essentially that exact edict by several former doctors of mine. They were all wrong, BTW - no amount of Sponsored Drugs could fix my busted gallbladder. 'Course, had any of them bothered to run a test of any kind, they might have known that, but then, how would they have sold me their Sponsored Drugs?
Familiarity is one thing, not recognizing Tom because he's wearing glasses today is something completely different.
Hmmm... if only there was some way to use sound as a data communications medium...
Around my area, the police will do the following:
I cannot see a driverless car knowing how to deal with the first two above points, by which time you'll be dealing with a very irate police officer.
You do realize that the lights on emergency vehicles (white strobe, in particular) flash at a particular, quantifiable frequency, right? That's how they make all the stoplights turn green. Just program the auto-car to react to said frequency pulses of red/blue light.
All neural nets try to predict, and predictions can be foiled.
People can be fooled by optical illusions, too.
The main difference being that optical illusions are designed to fool the human eye, and thus are intentional, whereas the computer in this case is being fooled by regular stuff, i.e. not intentional.
If the human brain failed to recall unique individuals because of slight changes in their appearance, I doubt we'd have progressed much beyond living in caves and hitting stuff with cudgels.
OK, I'm a pretty paranoid dude (enough so that I still question the official 9/11 story), and even I think that theory is nut-butter crazy. That should tell you something.
I'm guessing that if the feds knew of a plot beforehand, a more likely scenario is that they might have tried to, you know, stop it, rather than using their own children as human sacrifices to some still unknown end.
Yea, because the processes of mining rare-earth minerals and converting them into batteries is so clean and environmentally friendly.
As much as I hate Facebook (and merely strongly dislike Google) why is this an issue?
In my experience, when a corporation makes up some outlandish BS like "trade secrets" to hide information, it's because there's something worth covering up.
The problem with diesel cars in the USA is that they're more expensive than current hybrids (particularly the Prius)
The hell they are:
2014 Jetta TDI Value Edition: $21,295
2014 Beetle TDI: $24,595
2014 Chevy Cruze Diesel (no options): $24,310
2014 Prius Base Model: $24,200
Seems to be just about the same to me, save the Jetta; mine was a bit more (~$28,000), but that's because I sprung for every option except satnav. Seems the real problem is lack of options, unless you're a VW or Chevy fan.
diesel fuel is on average more expensive at the pump than 87 octane gasoline.
Yea, but you get almost-if-not-more-than twice the miles out of the same amount of fuel, so it ends up being a net win. I will concede that the sticker shock of diesel fuel does cause a lot of people's brains to shut off, and thus, not see the benefit.
Also driving slower, not driving full throttle and hard braking to a stop light/sign, etc.
Or you could just buy a diesel.
I used to have an 2008 MkV Jetta with the 2.5L gasoline engine. The government said I should be getting 21/29mpg city/highway. My best was 46 mpg driving from Sacramento to San Diego. Now I have a Prius V, and I get better gas mileage than that without even trying.
I bought my wife a 2012 Jetta TDI, and she regularly gets 45-50 MPG, even with her lead foot. But even our old gas Jetta was getting somewhere in the range of 25-35.
Per another post of mine, the first keyed starting mechanism was introduced by Cadillac in 1919, so yea, I'd guess that predates the law.
Remember a time when cellular carriers were trying to justify getting rid of unlimited data plans by claiming that the networks were becoming oversaturated?
Pepperidge Farms remembers. And we'll remember it when it happens again.
"But I've already got 220 hours in on this one!" lol.
Honestly, I think I've started about 50 different games of Oblivion, and finished maybe 1.
1. Menstrual synchronicity is most likely a myth.
Ironically, the "debunking" in that Wiki page is almost as unscientific as the claim itself.
2. The tiny electromagnetic radiations from your neural activity diverge to background noise over tiny distances. That's reason EEGs are done with electrodes right on the skin rather than read from across the room.
3. The brain cannot parse electromagnetic radiations from the brain, which is why you can't just connect yourself to an EEG output and know what the other person was thinking.
Something something multiverse theory something something. I've heard some pretty out-there scientific explanations for stuff we have no way of ever being able to truly verify.
4. Even if you could directly wire every neuron in another person's brain to yours, it still wouldn't work because no two brains are structured in exactly the same way. The two brains could eventually learn each other, but without any sort of direct-connected training period, they are *not* in any form able to understand each other's signals.
See previous response.
5. Here we're just talking about connecting thoughts from two members of the same thinking species. But to do the sort of things people pray for, you're talking about even inanimate objects taking part.
"To do the sort of things people pray for..." LOT of assumption in that, which is interesting coming from someone who obviously does not pray themselves. How, precisely, do you know the nature and theme of every prayer ever uttered?
Note that I don't take one side or the other in this debate, I just can't stand it when "people of science" totally shit all over a concept because it doesn't fit their definition of science, and thus don't think that the topic deserves any attention whatsoever, from anyone.
The short of it... no. Saying "energy" does not equate to a hypothetical mechanism, it does not make it scientific.
Well, no shit.
Of course, in the same logic, saying "Math tells us this might have happened that way" doesn't really make a thing 'scientific' either. From what I understand, that can only be done by verifying the results of repetitious experimentation. Plus, we do occasionally get the math wrong.
Here's my attempt to further marginalize your opinion by claiming this is your "hypothesis":
FTFY.
1. I think of something. ...
2. There are "energies" in my brain
3.
4. Magical things that I thought about happen far away from me!
Which is different from:
1. I think the universe started this way ...
2. there are invisible "energies" that I can't prove actually exist
3.
4. The Big Bang TOTALLY HAPPENED!
How, exactly? Because somebody somewhere once wrote down a formula that kinda-sorta seems to verify the claim? Shit, give me a few million in the form of a research grant, and I'll give you some formulas that kinda-sorta verify whatever you want them to. "Kinda-sorta" is easy to pull off.
As for your "it doesn't hurt to try", it's a way for people to feel smug about themselves for "helping" when they're not doing jack squat.
Well, then, I'm sorry to hear that you have such hatred for people who have different beliefs than yourself. I presume this is what your motivation is, as it is unlikely that you've spoken to every person who prays, therefore making it impossible for you to know their motivations.
If you think of prayer as completely useless self-promotion, I can only assume you don't think too highly of things like the #BringOurGirlsBack campaign on Twitter. No, posting a tweet won't rescue sex slaves from Boko Harem, but it makes the powerless feel a bit less so, which has a
You'll never convince me that we currently understand everything there is to understand about the universe; just because something hasn't been discovered to have military potential (yet) doesn't mean it can't exist.
Besides, as I said before, prayer isn't hurting anyone, and is helping at least one person (the one doing the praying), so there's no good reason to bust people's balls for it.
Obviously this guy isn't a fan of Bethesda games, if he thinks so highly of autosave.
Just wait until you lose an hour of progress because you didn't save before getting smoked by a high-level troll at the bottom of that dungeon.
Dude - it's a troll. They've been blanketing pretty much every article with "Dur dur fuck Republicans" nonsense.
DNFTT.
Why does the concept of prayer have to be predicated on the existence and active attention of some omnipotent entity? Perhaps there is power in prayer, not sourced from some sky fairy, but rather from the way the energies we all receive and produce interact with one another.
Kinda like how, if two women live together long enough, their periods sync up. Besides, it doesn't hurt to try, and at least those praying are doing something, ineffective though it may be, rather than being bitches to other people for believing something they don't.
Once we rid the world of fundamentalism, the world will be a better place.
FTFY.
Now stop being part of the goddamn problem, fundie. Live and let live.