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The way I think about cancer: Each and every one of us is playing Russian roulette daily with a revolver with a giant drum with tens of thousands of empty slots
by m12k 5y ago
The way I think about cancer: Each and every one of us is playing Russian roulette daily with a revolver with a giant drum with tens of thousands of empty slots and a single bullet. And some people load more bullets in the drum by smoking, drinking, getting sunburned, other risky behavior or just losing the genetic lottery.
At the end of the day, the outcome is still random. You'll still come across chain smokers that live to be 100 and people like Seema in the post, who get cancer despite doing everything "right". It doesn't seem fair - because it isn't, it's random. The best we can do is change the odds, not guarantee the outcome.
- Turfie 5y agoIt's never random. All is just a process of causes and conditions, albeit a very complex one. We just can't track all the variables.
- thombat 5y agoAt the root of medicine is biochemistry, and at the root of chemistry is quantum physics: the formation and breaking of chemical bonds is at core random events shaped by probabilities. We can only say how likely events are, not which ones will happen when.
- thisismyswamp 5y agoOr rather even if it is deterministic, it might as well be random to us.
- throwaway22032 5y agoSure, in the same sense that a roulette table or a deck of shuffled cards isn't actually random, it's just cause and effect.
- paraschopra 5y agoIt's random for all practical purposes if you can't figure out the causes.