3 ms·

You are missing the point. The point is this: we do not have a cure for this dieases now. Therefore, we do not know where to look at all. Therefore the best

You are missing the point. The point is this: we do not have a cure for this dieases now. Therefore, we do not know where to look at all. Therefore the best approach is to look at everything possible, since we obviously have no idea where to look. If we knew where to look, we would have atleast a partial cure. But no cure works now, none.

twic 7y ago
> The point is this: we do not have a cure for this dieases now. > Therefore, we do not know where to look at all. This doesn't follow.
gus_massa 7y ago
There are too many possible alternatives that may lead to a cure. What about homeopathic cures? I think it is snake oil, but some people think it is useful. If you try everything possible, you should try it. But it would be a big waste of money and allocation of patients and medical doctors. And also, there are many homeopathic recipes, so which one(s) should you try? What about radiation? A huge amount of radiation may help or may he harmful. I think it's harmful, but at least it can cause a real effect. Should we include that in the list of everything possible? Antibiotics? I don't think it would work, but it solved stomach ulcers after year of traying other treatments. Which antibiotic? Exercise? There are some studies from time to time, but I think most of them have the causation link backwards. I think we should make less studies in this field, but nobody asked me. I can add more and more alternatives. Some are ridicules, like nuns prayers, some may be legit like CRISP9. There are more possibilities than the current level of funding and patients available for clinical studies, so someone has to choose the more promising alternatives and hope they made the correct guess.
jmilloy 7y ago
Resources are finite. A "depth-first" search is a poor choice because it takes a lot of resources fully test any given "cure". A "breadth-first" search (as you are suggesting) is a poor choice because there are simply too many things to try. It has to be something in between, and researchers use heuristics to decide which branches to pursue. Sometimes they focus too much on the wrong branch.

twic 7y ago

> The point is this: we do not have a cure for this dieases now. > Therefore, we do not know where to look at all. This doesn't follow.

gus_massa 7y ago

There are too many possible alternatives that may lead to a cure. What about homeopathic cures? I think it is snake oil, but some people think it is useful. If you try everything possible, you should try it. But it would be a big waste of money and allocation of patients and medical doctors. And also, there are many homeopathic recipes, so which one(s) should you try? What about radiation? A huge amount of radiation may help or may he harmful. I think it's harmful, but at least it can cause a real effect. Should we include that in the list of everything possible? Antibiotics? I don't think it would work, but it solved stomach ulcers after year of traying other treatments. Which antibiotic? Exercise? There are some studies from time to time, but I think most of them have the causation link backwards. I think we should make less studies in this field, but nobody asked me. I can add more and more alternatives. Some are ridicules, like nuns prayers, some may be legit like CRISP9. There are more possibilities than the current level of funding and patients available for clinical studies, so someone has to choose the more promising alternatives and hope they made the correct guess.

jmilloy 7y ago

Resources are finite. A "depth-first" search is a poor choice because it takes a lot of resources fully test any given "cure". A "breadth-first" search (as you are suggesting) is a poor choice because there are simply too many things to try. It has to be something in between, and researchers use heuristics to decide which branches to pursue. Sometimes they focus too much on the wrong branch.