It doesn't matter who is right or if its the best way or stupid or God or placebo effect.
If it is the placebo effect then by definition the treatment is ineffective. In principle I agree with you. It something works then keep with it. The problem is that there is very poor evidence supporting the effectiveness of AA or other twelve step programs. If someone can show me a study that *definitively* says "yep, AA helps 10% more people than a control group" or then I will say go ahead with AA and try to figure out who it helps best. I'm even willing to go along with AA continuing while they do such studies since it is mostly harmless from what I can tell. But if AA is shown to be no more effective than a placebo then by definition it is a pointless endeavor and we should look for alternatives. As things stand AA has a much better reputation than the available evidence supports. It's certainly not a proven means of achieving sobriety.
The difference is that an alcoholic would drink themselves to death despite pancreatitis.
NO. An alcoholic would WANT to continue drinking but whether or not they actually do so is a separate matter. Addiction is about the urge. Some can conquer the urge, some ultimately cannot.
You had a need to stop, you did stop. That proves you are not an alcoholic.
Which shows you do not understand addiction. If the person stops but the urge remains then they ARE an alcoholic whether or not they ever drink again. For some the urge is too difficult to overcome. I have an employee who is an alcoholic. A condition of his employment was that he stay sober but he always has the urge to drink. He's had a rough life due to his drinking - he was almost unemployable, lost his drivers license, lost a marriage, etc. Now to my knowledge he hasn't had a drink in several years (and has taken the tests to prove it) but the urge is always there. He IS an alcoholic whether or not he actually drinks another drop.
And they are all giving power to a higher power because the addicted can't stop themselves. So having an imaginary friend who's always there looking over your shoulder gives you some accountability when you'd otherwise have none.
All of which is fine in theory. In reality the scientific evidence is very thin regarding whether twelve step programs actually are effective. There has never been a study which conclusively proved that twelve step programs significantly increase sobriety. Admittedly it is a hard thing to study but what evidence there is indicates that "giving in to a higher power" isn't likely to be more effective than the alternatives available.
First of all, there's no (official) 'Christian' angle in 12-step programs. The higher power is nothing more than a technique for letting go of trying to control things yourself.
I refer you to steps 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 11 all of which explicitly invoke a diety of some kind. Claims that the twelve steps do not involve religion hard to swallow and frankly a bit disingenuous. It's pretty hard to buy the claim that those steps collectively are somehow independent of christian teachings. Those steps collectively are little different in function from confession in the christian tradition. Furthermore the founders of the twelve step programs themselves come from a christian tradition.
If 12 step programs clearly worked I would have little problem with that fact. If some prayer genuinely helps someone get their life together and stop drinking, who am I to judge? Anything that helps without harming others is fine with me. The problem is that it is not at all clear if they are actually effective. Some evidence points towards them being helpful for some people, much indicates that they provide little benefit and in occasional cases might have actually proved harmful. It's hard to study their effectiveness because the nature of twelve step programs tends to be secretive and there are other problems such as lack of a control group. The evidence supporting AA as an effective treatment is scientifically quite weak. Most evidence seems to show that at best it has a success rate barely better than those who do not take the program. I have a problem with the notion of prescribing religion as a treatment regimen in light of the fact that there is no compelling evidence that it actually has the desired outcome.
My thought is a system where the keys are generated by the email client itself
The problem isn't generating the keys. That's relatively manageable though not completely without risk. The problem is distributing the keys. How do you ensure that the recipient and only the recipient has the private key? Somehow you have to get the key to the recipient without it being compromised along the way. I cannot really conceive of a way to do an email service whereby you could truly trust the third party to handle the key distribution. What is to prevent the service from giving a copy of the key to the NSA or the FBI or someone else? Any such service is going to have to have both the public and private keys. Software publishers and network services have proven to be vulnerable to (il)legal pressure from governments.
Perhaps someone smarter than me can solve the problem but I just don't see a feasible way for it to work AND be simple. I can think of workable solutions and simple solutions but not one that is both.
If you don't have a job, you could lose your food and the roof you sleep under, both things which are provided in prison.
Wow, talk about a false equivalency... You can get another job and another roof to sleep under. If your life is so bad that prison seems like the attractive alternative then I truly do pity you.
So now Africa will have 600,000 more people a year to feed, house, and clothe, and they can't even do that now.
Your argument is badly flawed.
That's 600,000 more people that can work and contribute to society. Millions more who don't have to languish in hospitals instead of working or studying because they are sick. Countries that eliminate malaria have been shown to have a 5X increase in GDP per capita. Malaria is estimated to cost Africa $12 billion per year due to lost productivity, lost education, health care costs, reduced tourism, and reduced investment. Think that $12 billion per year might feed and clothe a few people? (That's $20,000 per person per year in a region where the average GDP per capita is presently around $1,900)
peer to peer encrypted email service where the exchange of keys was done automatically would be much more usable for everyday users, if it does not exist it might be an interesting project to pursue.
The problem is that the more automated you make it, the less secure it becomes because you necessarily have to trust third parties. The entire point of encryption is that (theoretically) only the sender and the receiver are able to decrypt the message. Once you automate key generation, key security and/or exchanges then it becomes very difficult to ensure the third parties involved are trustworthy. I'm not saying it can't be done but it is not a trivial problem and may very well be too difficult to ever be made truly simple. I'm hopeful but not very optimistic.
So firing 90% of their admins and pissing them all off, giving them no job to lose, is going to somehow *prevent* further leaks?
I'm pretty sure the threat of life imprisonment for revealing "secrets" was and is a bit more of a deterrent than the loss of wages ever could hope to be. If someone kicks you while holding a gun to your face are you worried about their foot or the gun?
I'm on the verge of installing this Enigmail addon for Thunderbird...
Enigmail is great but the problem with it is getting the other folks you communicate with using it as well. This necessarily requires remarkably tech savvy people on both ends. (Don't believe me? Try to explain public key encryption to your mom such that she could do it properly herself. Unless your mom is REALLY geeky you will fail miserably) You can encrypt your message all you want but if the people you are writing to aren't willing to go through the hassle with you then you simply cannot use the product.
why don't they instead find a way to get rid of the fscking mosquitoes ?
You think that idea hasn't occurred to anyone? They haven't done it because it is REALLY hard, and really expensive and given the political instability in parts of Africa as well as the geography not really feasible. We did it in the US in part through the use of DDT which turned out to be a pretty bad idea in the long run.
Why not? Do you feel that Africans are, on average, more rational than Europeans and Americans?
No but your average European or American is generally pretty rational. Furthermore malaria is an obvious enough problem in Africa that the risks of any side effect (real or imagined) will be very minor by comparison if the vaccine actually works. In some places in Africa the CDC reports that malaria accounts for close to half of all hospital admissions. It kills 600,000 people a year and sickens millions more. It's almost impossible to overstate how beneficial a cure for malaria would be to affected populations. I've seen some snarky comments in this thread but Africans mostly understand the problem quite well. Certainly better than most of the people posting here since I doubt more than a handful of slashdotters have actually observed the effects of malaria first hand.
Why Malaria? Because no one was doing it yet. Bragging rights.
Really? I'm sure these people will be very surprised to hear that.
I can think of a dozen better ways to spend that money...
I call bullshit on your claim that you can think of "a dozen better ways to spend that money" than on a cure for malaria. If you genuinely believe that then you have NO idea how big a problem malaria actually is. Malaria devastates entire economies and kills millions of people. In some places it is responsible for close to half of all hospital admissions. It is estimated to cost Africa around $12 billion each year, infects over 200 million people and kills over 600,000 each year. That is as worthy a cause as you will find anywhere in the world.
Not successfully. No where in the world do passenger trains operate profitably without subsidies.
Name me one location where automobiles operate profitably without subsidies. You think those roads were built with private money? Even the occasional toll road is only possible because it feeds into a network of publicly financed roads. You seriously think that automobiles and airplanes aren't heavily subsidized?
Seriously, your biggest argument is that a science fiction series isn't 100% accurate to currently known laws of physics?
I think you missed my point rather badly. The point is that using a science fiction show that GROSSLY misrepresents physics, economics, physiology and basic social interactions is probably not the best model of the consequences of a "post-scarcity" society. I have no problem with them taking some liberties with actual physics or ignoring some economic nuances. Academics do it all the time to illustrate a point and frankly a lot of the stories would be kind of boring if they didn't take those liberties. That doesn't however mean that we should pretend that any serious thought went into the consequences of the Star Trek "model" of economics. It's one thing to say "this model requires us to ignore these variables". It's quite another to not even acknowledge that those variables exist and not even be consistent in how they are ignored.
How far back in the past do you think we'd have to go before our technology would look like magic to them?
Yeah I'm aware of Arthur C Clarke's maxim. That quote does not apply to technology that completely ignores actual known laws of the universe. Nothing wrong with enjoying Star Trek but let's not pretend that it is a serious thought experiment into the consequences of behavioral economics without scarcity. Star Trek bears about as much resemblance to reality as Harry Potter's universe. While there are some interesting ideas here and there in Star Trek, I'm not about to give it more credibility than it really deserves.
Part of the star trek mythos is that those jobs are virtually unnecessary. No one needs to shovel shit or scrub bathrooms or mine coal.
Without any credible explanation as to how. Like I said, it's a magic based economy.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of the people ever shown on Star Trek are those that set off to do things that are potentially dangerous and unpleasant because they are also rewarding; things like exploration and research.
Sure they are rewarding if you systematically remove every inconvenient law of physics and economics. Off the top of my head Star Trek largely ignores or hand waves away relativity, inertia, combustion, gravity, sound in space, and linguistics. Worse, Star Trek writers aren't even consistent in how they go about ignoring physics.
Star Trek gets away with the no-money concept because it's a post-scarcity society where you can conjure up almost anything from your replicator or holodeck.
They don't really get away with it because Star Trek basically relies on magic. They just call their magic wands replicators and they conveniently ignore any bothersome laws of physics or economics if they get in the way. Space travel probably would be a lot easier if you could ignore relativity completely like Star Trek does. Star Trek's economy makes no more sense than the economy in the Harry Potter universe.
Even if we did have this technology today, people would still want to do something meaningful with their lives.
Some people would want to do something meaningful. Most would probably just prefer to be entertained and comfortable. I wish I shared your optimism that the number of the former would outweigh the number of the later but I very much doubt it.
I would think that on/. of all places, people would recognize that some people do just work for no reason (FOSS anyone?)
That doesn't mean people will in sufficient numbers work on necessary tasks for no reason, particularly if they are unpleasant, dangerous, overwhelming and/or boring. The good news is that there are always a few willing people but the bad news is that there are always just a few.
If everyone dictated, the noise in most offices would be unbearable.
That's not actually true. I've been in pathology labs where multiple doctors are dictating simultaneously. For the most part it works just fine. It's no noisier or more distracting than having a number of phone conversations going on which happens in lots of offices without problems.
Hell, if ONE person dictates all the time, it is unbearable.
That just tells me you've never really been around people dictating. It's not any more distracting than listening to one end of a phone call. If that amount of noise bothers you then you're going to have a very hard time in most offices.
If there's sufficient duplication that you don't need to think very much about the report, then you may be even faster with either a template system or an adaptive input device
Most doctors I've seen use autocomplete heavily in addition to dictation since certain reports or sections of them are more or less boilerplate. Plus the transcription software often has autocomplete word suggestions for technical words to speed things along further.
I did not mean to suggest it had no use cases, just that it was not going to replace keyboards in general.
Quite so. Keyboards are going to remain the dominant form of data entry for the foreseeable future. Dictation is for high volume data entry by very busy and/or very expensive people. It doesn't make much sense for most random data entry where you typically don't know in advance what you are going to say. Also dictation is hard to use in public places and takes a fair bit of training to use effectively.
If you have another human doing the typing then it is not really faster either.
You can have a human or a program doing the transcription. I've done both. You mostly need a human if the transcription has a lot of specialized words. Otherwise transcription software can often do an adequate (though rarely spectacular) job.
Maybe cheaper, but surely not faster. Since you have to wait for them to do that.
You're thinking of faster for just one report. Nobody dictates when they just have one document to create. When you have a huge pile of reports to generate dictation quickly becomes much faster. Trust me that plenty of companies have done the math on this. It's really a form of automation - higher upfront costs for improved productivity. Most hospitals employ a lot of transcriptionists precisely because they same money by saving time for high priced doctors. Dictation allows you to get more reports written in the same amount of time. You rarely just have one transcriptionist if you use a service and turnaround is typically a few minutes to a few hours. If you need something immediately there sometimes are cases where typing will get a report out sooner (at the expense of all reports that follow). I've watched people use transcription systems for years. Dictation doesn't make sense for a lot of cases but when it does make sense it is a big
I have some trouble believing this. Does she sound like the micromachines guy?
Listen to physicians dictate some time, particularly pathologists or radiologists who tend to do a lot of it. Yes, they often do speak very quickly - 200+ words per minute is not rare. Once they get good at it, they can easily rattle off a report in far less time than they could possibly type it no matter how quickly they type. Transcriptionists normally have to slow the recording down while typing to get what is being said. It's very easy to talk faster than anyone can type. Takes some practice to do so in a useful manner though. Helps too if there is some consistency in what is being said - like if you have to produce a consistent type of report. Lawyers and doctors very often use dictation systems to good effect and they do it 100% because it saves time, even for good typists.
The issue I have with believing this is not the forming complete sentences before speaking, but the simple fact that speech is slow and error prone.
Not once you are used to dictating. With a proper dictation system you can easily start, stop and record over what you've already done if you make an error. (People make a lot of errors typing too) Typically you get the report sent back to you for review and correction after transcription. However even including review it is still usually faster than typing it yourself.
how is it faster than typing on a proper keyboard? I cannot speak as quickly as I can type.
You probably can and do speak significantly quicker than you type unless you have some sort of speak impediment. Most people can comfortably speak at around 150 words per minute which is far faster than most can type. Dictating however does take some practice so you quite likely would be slower at first until you get comfortable dictating.
Dictation can be quicker than typing in the right circumstances. My wife dictates reports all the time for her job precisely because it is quicker and she is a very good typist. Dictation is however a learned skill (like typing) that takes some practice to become proficient. You have to be able to form complete coherent sentences prior to speaking.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't matter who is right or if its the best way or stupid or God or placebo effect.
If it is the placebo effect then by definition the treatment is ineffective. In principle I agree with you. It something works then keep with it. The problem is that there is very poor evidence supporting the effectiveness of AA or other twelve step programs. If someone can show me a study that *definitively* says "yep, AA helps 10% more people than a control group" or then I will say go ahead with AA and try to figure out who it helps best. I'm even willing to go along with AA continuing while they do such studies since it is mostly harmless from what I can tell. But if AA is shown to be no more effective than a placebo then by definition it is a pointless endeavor and we should look for alternatives. As things stand AA has a much better reputation than the available evidence supports. It's certainly not a proven means of achieving sobriety.
The difference is that an alcoholic would drink themselves to death despite pancreatitis.
NO. An alcoholic would WANT to continue drinking but whether or not they actually do so is a separate matter. Addiction is about the urge. Some can conquer the urge, some ultimately cannot.
You had a need to stop, you did stop. That proves you are not an alcoholic.
Which shows you do not understand addiction. If the person stops but the urge remains then they ARE an alcoholic whether or not they ever drink again. For some the urge is too difficult to overcome. I have an employee who is an alcoholic. A condition of his employment was that he stay sober but he always has the urge to drink. He's had a rough life due to his drinking - he was almost unemployable, lost his drivers license, lost a marriage, etc. Now to my knowledge he hasn't had a drink in several years (and has taken the tests to prove it) but the urge is always there. He IS an alcoholic whether or not he actually drinks another drop.
And they are all giving power to a higher power because the addicted can't stop themselves. So having an imaginary friend who's always there looking over your shoulder gives you some accountability when you'd otherwise have none.
All of which is fine in theory. In reality the scientific evidence is very thin regarding whether twelve step programs actually are effective. There has never been a study which conclusively proved that twelve step programs significantly increase sobriety. Admittedly it is a hard thing to study but what evidence there is indicates that "giving in to a higher power" isn't likely to be more effective than the alternatives available.
First of all, there's no (official) 'Christian' angle in 12-step programs. The higher power is nothing more than a technique for letting go of trying to control things yourself.
I refer you to steps 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 11 all of which explicitly invoke a diety of some kind. Claims that the twelve steps do not involve religion hard to swallow and frankly a bit disingenuous. It's pretty hard to buy the claim that those steps collectively are somehow independent of christian teachings. Those steps collectively are little different in function from confession in the christian tradition. Furthermore the founders of the twelve step programs themselves come from a christian tradition.
If 12 step programs clearly worked I would have little problem with that fact. If some prayer genuinely helps someone get their life together and stop drinking, who am I to judge? Anything that helps without harming others is fine with me. The problem is that it is not at all clear if they are actually effective. Some evidence points towards them being helpful for some people, much indicates that they provide little benefit and in occasional cases might have actually proved harmful. It's hard to study their effectiveness because the nature of twelve step programs tends to be secretive and there are other problems such as lack of a control group. The evidence supporting AA as an effective treatment is scientifically quite weak. Most evidence seems to show that at best it has a success rate barely better than those who do not take the program. I have a problem with the notion of prescribing religion as a treatment regimen in light of the fact that there is no compelling evidence that it actually has the desired outcome.
My thought is a system where the keys are generated by the email client itself
The problem isn't generating the keys. That's relatively manageable though not completely without risk. The problem is distributing the keys. How do you ensure that the recipient and only the recipient has the private key? Somehow you have to get the key to the recipient without it being compromised along the way. I cannot really conceive of a way to do an email service whereby you could truly trust the third party to handle the key distribution. What is to prevent the service from giving a copy of the key to the NSA or the FBI or someone else? Any such service is going to have to have both the public and private keys. Software publishers and network services have proven to be vulnerable to (il)legal pressure from governments.
Perhaps someone smarter than me can solve the problem but I just don't see a feasible way for it to work AND be simple. I can think of workable solutions and simple solutions but not one that is both.
If you don't have a job, you could lose your food and the roof you sleep under, both things which are provided in prison.
Wow, talk about a false equivalency... You can get another job and another roof to sleep under. If your life is so bad that prison seems like the attractive alternative then I truly do pity you.
So now Africa will have 600,000 more people a year to feed, house, and clothe, and they can't even do that now.
Your argument is badly flawed.
That's 600,000 more people that can work and contribute to society. Millions more who don't have to languish in hospitals instead of working or studying because they are sick. Countries that eliminate malaria have been shown to have a 5X increase in GDP per capita. Malaria is estimated to cost Africa $12 billion per year due to lost productivity, lost education, health care costs, reduced tourism, and reduced investment. Think that $12 billion per year might feed and clothe a few people? (That's $20,000 per person per year in a region where the average GDP per capita is presently around $1,900)
peer to peer encrypted email service where the exchange of keys was done automatically would be much more usable for everyday users, if it does not exist it might be an interesting project to pursue.
The problem is that the more automated you make it, the less secure it becomes because you necessarily have to trust third parties. The entire point of encryption is that (theoretically) only the sender and the receiver are able to decrypt the message. Once you automate key generation, key security and/or exchanges then it becomes very difficult to ensure the third parties involved are trustworthy. I'm not saying it can't be done but it is not a trivial problem and may very well be too difficult to ever be made truly simple. I'm hopeful but not very optimistic.
Don't worry, they've already got subcontractors in Hong Kong lined up for the job.
I think he's in Russia now...
So firing 90% of their admins and pissing them all off, giving them no job to lose, is going to somehow *prevent* further leaks?
I'm pretty sure the threat of life imprisonment for revealing "secrets" was and is a bit more of a deterrent than the loss of wages ever could hope to be. If someone kicks you while holding a gun to your face are you worried about their foot or the gun?
I'm on the verge of installing this Enigmail addon for Thunderbird...
Enigmail is great but the problem with it is getting the other folks you communicate with using it as well. This necessarily requires remarkably tech savvy people on both ends. (Don't believe me? Try to explain public key encryption to your mom such that she could do it properly herself. Unless your mom is REALLY geeky you will fail miserably) You can encrypt your message all you want but if the people you are writing to aren't willing to go through the hassle with you then you simply cannot use the product.
why don't they instead find a way to get rid of the fscking mosquitoes ?
You think that idea hasn't occurred to anyone? They haven't done it because it is REALLY hard, and really expensive and given the political instability in parts of Africa as well as the geography not really feasible. We did it in the US in part through the use of DDT which turned out to be a pretty bad idea in the long run.
Why not? Do you feel that Africans are, on average, more rational than Europeans and Americans?
No but your average European or American is generally pretty rational. Furthermore malaria is an obvious enough problem in Africa that the risks of any side effect (real or imagined) will be very minor by comparison if the vaccine actually works. In some places in Africa the CDC reports that malaria accounts for close to half of all hospital admissions. It kills 600,000 people a year and sickens millions more. It's almost impossible to overstate how beneficial a cure for malaria would be to affected populations. I've seen some snarky comments in this thread but Africans mostly understand the problem quite well. Certainly better than most of the people posting here since I doubt more than a handful of slashdotters have actually observed the effects of malaria first hand.
Until concerned parents boycott the vaccine because they think it causes autism.
I don't think that is going to be a big problem in Africa.
Why Malaria? Because no one was doing it yet. Bragging rights.
Really? I'm sure these people will be very surprised to hear that.
I can think of a dozen better ways to spend that money...
I call bullshit on your claim that you can think of "a dozen better ways to spend that money" than on a cure for malaria. If you genuinely believe that then you have NO idea how big a problem malaria actually is. Malaria devastates entire economies and kills millions of people. In some places it is responsible for close to half of all hospital admissions. It is estimated to cost Africa around $12 billion each year, infects over 200 million people and kills over 600,000 each year. That is as worthy a cause as you will find anywhere in the world.
Not successfully. No where in the world do passenger trains operate profitably without subsidies.
Name me one location where automobiles operate profitably without subsidies. You think those roads were built with private money? Even the occasional toll road is only possible because it feeds into a network of publicly financed roads. You seriously think that automobiles and airplanes aren't heavily subsidized?
Seriously, your biggest argument is that a science fiction series isn't 100% accurate to currently known laws of physics?
I think you missed my point rather badly. The point is that using a science fiction show that GROSSLY misrepresents physics, economics, physiology and basic social interactions is probably not the best model of the consequences of a "post-scarcity" society. I have no problem with them taking some liberties with actual physics or ignoring some economic nuances. Academics do it all the time to illustrate a point and frankly a lot of the stories would be kind of boring if they didn't take those liberties. That doesn't however mean that we should pretend that any serious thought went into the consequences of the Star Trek "model" of economics. It's one thing to say "this model requires us to ignore these variables". It's quite another to not even acknowledge that those variables exist and not even be consistent in how they are ignored.
How far back in the past do you think we'd have to go before our technology would look like magic to them?
Yeah I'm aware of Arthur C Clarke's maxim. That quote does not apply to technology that completely ignores actual known laws of the universe. Nothing wrong with enjoying Star Trek but let's not pretend that it is a serious thought experiment into the consequences of behavioral economics without scarcity. Star Trek bears about as much resemblance to reality as Harry Potter's universe. While there are some interesting ideas here and there in Star Trek, I'm not about to give it more credibility than it really deserves.
Part of the star trek mythos is that those jobs are virtually unnecessary. No one needs to shovel shit or scrub bathrooms or mine coal.
Without any credible explanation as to how. Like I said, it's a magic based economy.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of the people ever shown on Star Trek are those that set off to do things that are potentially dangerous and unpleasant because they are also rewarding; things like exploration and research.
Sure they are rewarding if you systematically remove every inconvenient law of physics and economics. Off the top of my head Star Trek largely ignores or hand waves away relativity, inertia, combustion, gravity, sound in space, and linguistics. Worse, Star Trek writers aren't even consistent in how they go about ignoring physics.
Star Trek gets away with the no-money concept because it's a post-scarcity society where you can conjure up almost anything from your replicator or holodeck.
They don't really get away with it because Star Trek basically relies on magic. They just call their magic wands replicators and they conveniently ignore any bothersome laws of physics or economics if they get in the way. Space travel probably would be a lot easier if you could ignore relativity completely like Star Trek does. Star Trek's economy makes no more sense than the economy in the Harry Potter universe.
Even if we did have this technology today, people would still want to do something meaningful with their lives.
Some people would want to do something meaningful. Most would probably just prefer to be entertained and comfortable. I wish I shared your optimism that the number of the former would outweigh the number of the later but I very much doubt it.
I would think that on /. of all places, people would recognize that some people do just work for no reason (FOSS anyone?)
That doesn't mean people will in sufficient numbers work on necessary tasks for no reason, particularly if they are unpleasant, dangerous, overwhelming and/or boring. The good news is that there are always a few willing people but the bad news is that there are always just a few.
If everyone dictated, the noise in most offices would be unbearable.
That's not actually true. I've been in pathology labs where multiple doctors are dictating simultaneously. For the most part it works just fine. It's no noisier or more distracting than having a number of phone conversations going on which happens in lots of offices without problems.
Hell, if ONE person dictates all the time, it is unbearable.
That just tells me you've never really been around people dictating. It's not any more distracting than listening to one end of a phone call. If that amount of noise bothers you then you're going to have a very hard time in most offices.
If there's sufficient duplication that you don't need to think very much about the report, then you may be even faster with either a template system or an adaptive input device
Most doctors I've seen use autocomplete heavily in addition to dictation since certain reports or sections of them are more or less boilerplate. Plus the transcription software often has autocomplete word suggestions for technical words to speed things along further.
I did not mean to suggest it had no use cases, just that it was not going to replace keyboards in general.
Quite so. Keyboards are going to remain the dominant form of data entry for the foreseeable future. Dictation is for high volume data entry by very busy and/or very expensive people. It doesn't make much sense for most random data entry where you typically don't know in advance what you are going to say. Also dictation is hard to use in public places and takes a fair bit of training to use effectively.
If you have another human doing the typing then it is not really faster either.
You can have a human or a program doing the transcription. I've done both. You mostly need a human if the transcription has a lot of specialized words. Otherwise transcription software can often do an adequate (though rarely spectacular) job.
Maybe cheaper, but surely not faster. Since you have to wait for them to do that.
You're thinking of faster for just one report. Nobody dictates when they just have one document to create. When you have a huge pile of reports to generate dictation quickly becomes much faster. Trust me that plenty of companies have done the math on this. It's really a form of automation - higher upfront costs for improved productivity. Most hospitals employ a lot of transcriptionists precisely because they same money by saving time for high priced doctors. Dictation allows you to get more reports written in the same amount of time. You rarely just have one transcriptionist if you use a service and turnaround is typically a few minutes to a few hours. If you need something immediately there sometimes are cases where typing will get a report out sooner (at the expense of all reports that follow). I've watched people use transcription systems for years. Dictation doesn't make sense for a lot of cases but when it does make sense it is a big
I have some trouble believing this. Does she sound like the micromachines guy?
Listen to physicians dictate some time, particularly pathologists or radiologists who tend to do a lot of it. Yes, they often do speak very quickly - 200+ words per minute is not rare. Once they get good at it, they can easily rattle off a report in far less time than they could possibly type it no matter how quickly they type. Transcriptionists normally have to slow the recording down while typing to get what is being said. It's very easy to talk faster than anyone can type. Takes some practice to do so in a useful manner though. Helps too if there is some consistency in what is being said - like if you have to produce a consistent type of report. Lawyers and doctors very often use dictation systems to good effect and they do it 100% because it saves time, even for good typists.
The issue I have with believing this is not the forming complete sentences before speaking, but the simple fact that speech is slow and error prone.
Not once you are used to dictating. With a proper dictation system you can easily start, stop and record over what you've already done if you make an error. (People make a lot of errors typing too) Typically you get the report sent back to you for review and correction after transcription. However even including review it is still usually faster than typing it yourself.
how is it faster than typing on a proper keyboard? I cannot speak as quickly as I can type.
You probably can and do speak significantly quicker than you type unless you have some sort of speak impediment. Most people can comfortably speak at around 150 words per minute which is far faster than most can type. Dictating however does take some practice so you quite likely would be slower at first until you get comfortable dictating.
Speaking is way slower than typing
Dictation can be quicker than typing in the right circumstances. My wife dictates reports all the time for her job precisely because it is quicker and she is a very good typist. Dictation is however a learned skill (like typing) that takes some practice to become proficient. You have to be able to form complete coherent sentences prior to speaking.