4 ms·

Isn't that like saying someone who won the lottery wasn't lucky, we just don't understand the individual person's chances to win? Like in some way it makes sens

Isn't that like saying someone who won the lottery wasn't lucky, we just don't understand the individual person's chances to win? Like in some way it makes sense but for the purposes of actually deciding whether to recommend whether someone should buy a lottery ticket you can do quite well by looking at the broad trends.

Johnny555 4y ago
No, winning the lottery is the definition of luck, the lotteries spend a lot of money making sure that's true. There's nothing a person could do (besides play more) that increases their chance of winning. But I believe that long-lived people are more than just "lucky", there's some physiological difference (possibly coupled with environmental differences) that makes the difference between people that eat similar diets and have much different levels of health/longevity.
- srvmshr 4y ago
  Extrapolating this line of thought: Let us say, two identical twins are brought up the exact same way. Can we be certain they will have exact same longevity? Their genetic make up might be similar but there are trillions of stochastic processes happening every moment at the cellular, and each one is capable of a cascade effect in the long run. I think it would be reasonable to assume that scale of precise personalized prediction / recommendation will be a distant possibility, if ever it is even possible. We might get capable of creating extremely good probabilistic models however, with less than a quarter of the modeling resources by quantifying the different parameters of life taken statistically (e.g. average calorific intake, medicine dependence, exercise etc). That might actually get very close to examining the uncertainty about health & longevity.
AlchemistCamp 4y ago
It's closer to saying that someone's successful startup where they used X counter-intuitive strategy was "luck". Perhaps they were lucky but it's also possible that conventional wisdom on X is wrong.
- drekk 4y ago
  Yeah but the difference is we don't peer review large medical studies on successful startup strategies. We're talking about biomedical research and oncology, not "conventional wisdom"
  - AlchemistCamp 4y ago
    The controls and reproducibility of studies on human nutrition may not be as rock solid as you think they are. The conventional wisdom on nutrition has changed radically since many doctors, including one in my direct family went through medical school. There are also considerable distortions due to who is paying for the research.

Johnny555 4y ago

No, winning the lottery is the definition of luck, the lotteries spend a lot of money making sure that's true. There's nothing a person could do (besides play more) that increases their chance of winning. But I believe that long-lived people are more than just "lucky", there's some physiological difference (possibly coupled with environmental differences) that makes the difference between people that eat similar diets and have much different levels of health/longevity.

srvmshr 4y ago
Extrapolating this line of thought: Let us say, two identical twins are brought up the exact same way. Can we be certain they will have exact same longevity? Their genetic make up might be similar but there are trillions of stochastic processes happening every moment at the cellular, and each one is capable of a cascade effect in the long run. I think it would be reasonable to assume that scale of precise personalized prediction / recommendation will be a distant possibility, if ever it is even possible. We might get capable of creating extremely good probabilistic models however, with less than a quarter of the modeling resources by quantifying the different parameters of life taken statistically (e.g. average calorific intake, medicine dependence, exercise etc). That might actually get very close to examining the uncertainty about health & longevity.

AlchemistCamp 4y ago

It's closer to saying that someone's successful startup where they used X counter-intuitive strategy was "luck". Perhaps they were lucky but it's also possible that conventional wisdom on X is wrong.

drekk 4y ago
Yeah but the difference is we don't peer review large medical studies on successful startup strategies. We're talking about biomedical research and oncology, not "conventional wisdom"
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  The controls and reproducibility of studies on human nutrition may not be as rock solid as you think they are. The conventional wisdom on nutrition has changed radically since many doctors, including one in my direct family went through medical school. There are also considerable distortions due to who is paying for the research.