4 ms·

I have no experience of epilepsy, but I'd suggest (1) health conditions are not problems to be "solved", and (2) reducing complex systems to individual "soluble

I have no experience of epilepsy, but I'd suggest (1) health conditions are not problems to be "solved", and (2) reducing complex systems to individual "soluble" components emphasises those components at the expense of the whole. In other words, someone living with epilepsy might have a whole ton of stuff going on in relation to the epilepsy. Monitoring, alerting, etc etc are all (potentially) great, but they're at best necessary without being sufficient. Not to rag on Epilert. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction. The language in the submitted title just seems inappropriate. (In case it changes, it was: "This Startup is solving epilepsy with biosensors and AI").

bordercases 6y ago
The solving condition for epilepsy is: minimize the frequency, intensity and duration of epilepsy episodes for an arbitrary representative organism over its remaining lifetime. Some approaches partially solve the issue by satisficing on some subset of those objectives. And many health conditions can and have been considered "cured" if they've essentially satisfied all of those conditions together over a long enough period such that their values are all brought to zero. I don't think the language of "solving" is inappropriate here even if in practice the best we can do is manage for the outcomes.
derefr 6y ago
> health conditions are not problems to be "solved", What does this mean? Of course they are. Leprosy was a “health condition” — something millions of people lived with and managed — until the invention of effective antibiotics. Then it was suddenly just another treatable disease. Cataracts were another “health condition” to be managed — and then Intraocular Lens (IOL) implants were developed. Lactose intolerance is being solved right now with gene therapy. (Pretty easily, apparently.) I agree with you about the article’s title — that a management therapy is not the same thing as a solution, and that it’s editorial malfeasance for the article here to claim that its management-therapy tooling is part of a solution. But that doesn’t translate to this broader claim you’re making here, of certain conditions having some inherent property of insolubility, such that even considering finding permanent treatments or prophylactics for them would be wrong-headed somehow. “Health conditions” are just problems that don’t have any known approaches or promising avenues of research for “solving” them yet.
- austinjp 6y ago
  I didn't say they're insoluble, and I certainly didn't say we shouldn't attempt to treat and cure diseases. My issue is with seeing illness as an isolated "thing" almost as if it exists independently of the person. Obviously, this is heavily dependent on the situation. For example, there's the issue of fixing "problems" that are not seen as problems by the person living with them. A kinda health normalisation. Since you mention lactose intolerance, I can certainly imagine millions of people in Asia shrugging with indifference. Plenty would be unlikely to want to change their lifestyle. What would be the point? They've been lactose intolerant for thousands of years. If they don't see a problem, does a problem exist? (I'm sure some would want to eat dairy, of course.) Does this mean that a westerner in a dairy-consuming culture shouldn't see lactose intolerance as a problem? Nope, I know several who very much do. It's just context dependent, isn't it. People decline treatment all the time, for a huge variety of reasons. Even in situations where a cure is highly desirable and can be highly effective, it might not be straightforward. (I'm going to put aside religious objections, that's a whole other can of worms.) A cure might be extremely unpleasant, even disfiguring. Radical mastectomy is an obvious example. Describing illness as a problem requires defining that problem in order to define the cure. Radical mastectomy might effectively "cure" some breast cancer, but the definitions of the problem and the cure are very limited. So we should just move the goalposts, right? Solutions shouldn't result in severe scarring, lymphoedema, dysmorphia, depression, relationship difficulties... hmmm, moving those goalposts is starting to seem tricky. There's plenty I'm not saying. I'm not saying we shouldn't try. I'm not saying problems don't exist (quite the opposite) and I'm not saying that health conditions should be ignored. Health conditions are not just problems that don't yet have a solution. They can be deeply complex, involving issues of identity and ethics and more. Like I said, I certainly don't object to curing disease. I'm just pointing out that it can be complex.

bordercases 6y ago

The solving condition for epilepsy is: minimize the frequency, intensity and duration of epilepsy episodes for an arbitrary representative organism over its remaining lifetime. Some approaches partially solve the issue by satisficing on some subset of those objectives. And many health conditions can and have been considered "cured" if they've essentially satisfied all of those conditions together over a long enough period such that their values are all brought to zero. I don't think the language of "solving" is inappropriate here even if in practice the best we can do is manage for the outcomes.

derefr 6y ago

> health conditions are not problems to be "solved", What does this mean? Of course they are. Leprosy was a “health condition” — something millions of people lived with and managed — until the invention of effective antibiotics. Then it was suddenly just another treatable disease. Cataracts were another “health condition” to be managed — and then Intraocular Lens (IOL) implants were developed. Lactose intolerance is being solved right now with gene therapy. (Pretty easily, apparently.) I agree with you about the article’s title — that a management therapy is not the same thing as a solution, and that it’s editorial malfeasance for the article here to claim that its management-therapy tooling is part of a solution. But that doesn’t translate to this broader claim you’re making here, of certain conditions having some inherent property of insolubility, such that even considering finding permanent treatments or prophylactics for them would be wrong-headed somehow. “Health conditions” are just problems that don’t have any known approaches or promising avenues of research for “solving” them yet.

austinjp 6y ago
I didn't say they're insoluble, and I certainly didn't say we shouldn't attempt to treat and cure diseases. My issue is with seeing illness as an isolated "thing" almost as if it exists independently of the person. Obviously, this is heavily dependent on the situation. For example, there's the issue of fixing "problems" that are not seen as problems by the person living with them. A kinda health normalisation. Since you mention lactose intolerance, I can certainly imagine millions of people in Asia shrugging with indifference. Plenty would be unlikely to want to change their lifestyle. What would be the point? They've been lactose intolerant for thousands of years. If they don't see a problem, does a problem exist? (I'm sure some would want to eat dairy, of course.) Does this mean that a westerner in a dairy-consuming culture shouldn't see lactose intolerance as a problem? Nope, I know several who very much do. It's just context dependent, isn't it. People decline treatment all the time, for a huge variety of reasons. Even in situations where a cure is highly desirable and can be highly effective, it might not be straightforward. (I'm going to put aside religious objections, that's a whole other can of worms.) A cure might be extremely unpleasant, even disfiguring. Radical mastectomy is an obvious example. Describing illness as a problem requires defining that problem in order to define the cure. Radical mastectomy might effectively "cure" some breast cancer, but the definitions of the problem and the cure are very limited. So we should just move the goalposts, right? Solutions shouldn't result in severe scarring, lymphoedema, dysmorphia, depression, relationship difficulties... hmmm, moving those goalposts is starting to seem tricky. There's plenty I'm not saying. I'm not saying we shouldn't try. I'm not saying problems don't exist (quite the opposite) and I'm not saying that health conditions should be ignored. Health conditions are not just problems that don't yet have a solution. They can be deeply complex, involving issues of identity and ethics and more. Like I said, I certainly don't object to curing disease. I'm just pointing out that it can be complex.