5 ms·

A lot of people accept the practice of medicine in just the way that they experience it, rather than as it could be. It's just accepted that there are limits t

A lot of people accept the practice of medicine in just the way that they experience it, rather than as it could be. It's just accepted that there are limits to what medicine can do, and often times those limitations are devastating. This outlook makes sense for most people, because what else would they do? However, for every high-profile disease process that doesn't have a known and rigorously understood cause, medicine as a field of study has a major gap in it. These aren't just gaps. These are major gaps. They're high-profile. They cause endless suffering for families across the world, they kill people, they make beloved grandparents forget everything about themselves and their families as they slowly die. If we haven't been able to pinpoint the root causes of these things that are getting huge amounts of attention, imagine what else we're missing.

calvinmorrison 6y ago
And at the same time doctors have accepted a code of ethics and have used thier better knowledge to help the people they serve At some point science and the doctoral profession separates, you're unlikely to find a newton again. Our society exists on specialization and doctors serve patients and learn from scientists It's the same reasons random doctors don't inject unheard of drugs into patients, there's a process and with any process there are side effects.
xvector 6y ago
And the fundamental truth that we are too scared to accept: death is just another disease. Death is just another way to say we did not have the technology or ability to save a life. That the limits of modern medicine were, unfortunately, reached. We accept death as a “reality” today, because we have no choice. But tomorrow, humans will look back on our age with horror - that self-aware beings were doomed to an eternal abyss, barely having a chance to live to begin with! In the far future, I imagine that the unintentional loss of even a single self-aware sentience would be both newsworthy and devastating. I envy the children of tomorrow that will have a choice in the matter of their mortality, much as I would envy the luxuries of people of today were I to be born centuries ago. I envy their consciousnesses, distributed amongst computers scattered throughout space, operating on timescales that make our own lives look like a blink of an eye, able to live out whatever reality they desire for however long they wish to live, barring the heat death itself.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  Death is not a disease. It is part of life. What people should be scared of is not dying, which is just an inevitability - it is the failure to live while they are alive here on the most beautiful planet in the universe. The future you envy of "consciousness distributed amongst computers scattered throughout space" is not living in the way that we have available to us now here on earth. Look up at the sky. Feel the sun's rays. Visit a mountain and notice the wildlife in the treetops. Just watch those wildlife for a while, until their thoughts become yours. Talk to somebody you've never met before. Just smile and say, how about this weather! What they say will be worth more to you than any number of MIPS from a grid in space.
  - xvector 6y ago
    > Death is not a disease. It is part of life. Death as we know it is only a part of life because we have no other choice. I guarantee you that if tomorrow people could press a button and stave off death and aging for decades at a time, we would suddenly end the narrative that “death is part of life.” If tomorrow doctors could rejuvenate someone on their deathbed to relative youth with the press of a button, it would be done in the vast majority of cases. We are forced to accept death as “part of life” because of our current technological reality, just as we were forced to accept many diseases and a shorter lifespan in the past. But I think it’s clear as day, that if people had control over their mortality and youth, we would not look at death as an inevitability, a “part of life”, but rather a choice, perhaps even a failure on our part.
    - wombatmobile 6y ago
      I don’t think being 20 forever would be half as interesting as what happens now. Let’s talk about it in 30 years and see what you think. Just from a practical point of view, have you considered what your miracle elixir is going to do to housing prices and the environment?
    - wongarsu 6y ago
      Just because everyone wants immortality for themselves doesn't mean that it's a good thing for humanity. Political and social change is almost entirely achieved by old people retiring and eventually dying, and younger people with different worldviews taking over for them. Removing this process dooms a society to stagnation. Similarly our problems with wealth inequality will get much worse if rich people never die and just keep accumulating wealth forever. And what about population? We can't just keep adding children to a planet if people don't die in meaningful numbers. There are only so many resources to go around.
loceng 6y ago
And then there's the problem of indoctrination of knowledge, different paths of indoctrination with more or less regulatory and narrative capture, direction guiding on what gets researched and what gets suppressed by the different industrial complexes - stagnancy and bureaucracies.
m463 6y ago
I read the book: "King of Hearts: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery" and it was really amazing. Did you know the first open-heart surgeries were performed by stitching two people's circulatory systems together, to keep the person getting the operation from dying? Given that I think "getting things done" in the medical field will always be a huge challenge that regular people on the outside may never understand.

calvinmorrison 6y ago

And at the same time doctors have accepted a code of ethics and have used thier better knowledge to help the people they serve At some point science and the doctoral profession separates, you're unlikely to find a newton again. Our society exists on specialization and doctors serve patients and learn from scientists It's the same reasons random doctors don't inject unheard of drugs into patients, there's a process and with any process there are side effects.

xvector 6y ago

And the fundamental truth that we are too scared to accept: death is just another disease. Death is just another way to say we did not have the technology or ability to save a life. That the limits of modern medicine were, unfortunately, reached. We accept death as a “reality” today, because we have no choice. But tomorrow, humans will look back on our age with horror - that self-aware beings were doomed to an eternal abyss, barely having a chance to live to begin with! In the far future, I imagine that the unintentional loss of even a single self-aware sentience would be both newsworthy and devastating. I envy the children of tomorrow that will have a choice in the matter of their mortality, much as I would envy the luxuries of people of today were I to be born centuries ago. I envy their consciousnesses, distributed amongst computers scattered throughout space, operating on timescales that make our own lives look like a blink of an eye, able to live out whatever reality they desire for however long they wish to live, barring the heat death itself.

wombatmobile 6y ago
Death is not a disease. It is part of life. What people should be scared of is not dying, which is just an inevitability - it is the failure to live while they are alive here on the most beautiful planet in the universe. The future you envy of "consciousness distributed amongst computers scattered throughout space" is not living in the way that we have available to us now here on earth. Look up at the sky. Feel the sun's rays. Visit a mountain and notice the wildlife in the treetops. Just watch those wildlife for a while, until their thoughts become yours. Talk to somebody you've never met before. Just smile and say, how about this weather! What they say will be worth more to you than any number of MIPS from a grid in space.
- xvector 6y ago
  > Death is not a disease. It is part of life. Death as we know it is only a part of life because we have no other choice. I guarantee you that if tomorrow people could press a button and stave off death and aging for decades at a time, we would suddenly end the narrative that “death is part of life.” If tomorrow doctors could rejuvenate someone on their deathbed to relative youth with the press of a button, it would be done in the vast majority of cases. We are forced to accept death as “part of life” because of our current technological reality, just as we were forced to accept many diseases and a shorter lifespan in the past. But I think it’s clear as day, that if people had control over their mortality and youth, we would not look at death as an inevitability, a “part of life”, but rather a choice, perhaps even a failure on our part.
  - wombatmobile 6y ago
    I don’t think being 20 forever would be half as interesting as what happens now. Let’s talk about it in 30 years and see what you think. Just from a practical point of view, have you considered what your miracle elixir is going to do to housing prices and the environment?
  - wongarsu 6y ago
    Just because everyone wants immortality for themselves doesn't mean that it's a good thing for humanity. Political and social change is almost entirely achieved by old people retiring and eventually dying, and younger people with different worldviews taking over for them. Removing this process dooms a society to stagnation. Similarly our problems with wealth inequality will get much worse if rich people never die and just keep accumulating wealth forever. And what about population? We can't just keep adding children to a planet if people don't die in meaningful numbers. There are only so many resources to go around.

loceng 6y ago

And then there's the problem of indoctrination of knowledge, different paths of indoctrination with more or less regulatory and narrative capture, direction guiding on what gets researched and what gets suppressed by the different industrial complexes - stagnancy and bureaucracies.

m463 6y ago

I read the book: "King of Hearts: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery" and it was really amazing. Did you know the first open-heart surgeries were performed by stitching two people's circulatory systems together, to keep the person getting the operation from dying? Given that I think "getting things done" in the medical field will always be a huge challenge that regular people on the outside may never understand.