6 ms·

Definitely. I like to play a game sometimes... more or less based on the idea that bloodletting and rectal feeding and wound probing were medical "best practice

Definitely. I like to play a game sometimes... more or less based on the idea that bloodletting and rectal feeding and wound probing were medical "best practices" of the past and now seem so obviously ludicrous to us now. So I like to look at something that I think is obvious, some "best practice of our time", and wonder how it might in 100 or 150 years suddenly seem totally ludicrous to posterity with the revelation of some knowledge K where "oh now everyone knows K, how silly everyone was before they knew K." K=neuroplasticity is an emerging case of this phenomenon for the more recent history, I think the strength of the evidence is high there. HN has also entertained in its top ranking some articles from Slime Mold Time Mold hypothesizing a K="what if the obesity epidemic has nothing to do with calories in vs calories out, and actually there is some toxin which the body has to sequester in subcutaneous fat and that's why everyone's getting obese" -- that would be a potential modern example, although I don't think that blog makes a very good case for it. (Lustig makes a better case on this front for K="our modern Western diet removes liver protection and starves our gut microbiomes" and I think you could make an even better case that K="the dangers of chronic low-level whole-body inflammation", with Lustig only gesturing at one part of that broader problem maybe?) A major theoretical discovery of K="computers can't do XYZ" would be another such thing for all of us who in the modern world chase these fads about computers reinventing finance or art or the modern economy. You'd have people in the year 2100 saying "can you believe only 75 years ago, everyone would just believe that computers were magically going to fix X and then they wouldn't and everyone would suddenly believe they would now fix Y and then they wouldn't and then Z and they wouldn't and and and... straight faced rationalist businesspeople acting like 'Tech-Jesus is coming' on August 1st, oh sorry it's September 1st, sorry -- October 1st? November? Maybe in the coming year? well SURELY this decade."

coffeebeqn 3y ago
Mental health care is still in the dark ages and the medicine we have are mostly crappy. I just got off SSRIs - the most prescribed mental health medication. It messes with your whole body since serotonin has hundreds of different uses in the body. And we don’t know why it works! It’s basically bloodletting or eating the village healers herbs
- throw__away7391 3y ago
  Indeed, I've seen multiple people end up with their lives completely and utterly detailed, as well as wrecking their family and fiends (yours truly included) and a result of such prescriptions. I don't understand how this goes totally ignored by the public at large.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    SSRIs and other anti-depression medication are a lottery. There often isn't a good rationale for picking one over another. Many people get great benefits; some people have to go through trying several drugs to get benefits; a few get dramatically bad side effects.
    - staticautomatic 3y ago
      There’s genetic testing now that can help us avoid some of these problems.
  - ffjdkdbsl 3y ago
    Same here. SSRI -> different SSRI -> benzos -> antipsychotics. With some overlap. Finally off of everything and it was fucking brutal. My life is a pale shadow of what it used to be. Relationships and finances burned to the ground. Engaging with the mental healthcare system was one of the worst decisions of my life.
saghm 3y ago
> A major theoretical discovery of K="computers can't do XYZ" would be another such thing for all of us who in the modern world chase these fads about computers reinventing finance or art or the modern economy. You'd have people in the year 2100 saying "can you believe only 75 years ago, everyone would just believe that computers were magically going to fix X and then they wouldn't and everyone would suddenly believe they would now fix Y and then they wouldn't and then Z and they wouldn't and and and... straight faced rationalist businesspeople acting like 'Tech-Jesus is coming' on August 1st, oh sorry it's September 1st, sorry -- October 1st? November? Maybe in the coming year? well SURELY this decade." This might be a higher-level thing that you mean given that I'm not sure it's something "provable" or "disprovable", but I'm constantly amazed how incredulous people are that I don't expect any car to be fully self-driving (like in the sense that there wouldn't even need to be a steering wheel and someone without a license could ride in it alone) any time in the next few decades. To be clear, I'm not claiming that it's something that _definitely_ won't happen, but I don't think it's super likely, whereas the vast majority of people I share this opinion with (even people with similarly high levels of technical expertise) seem to think that it's almost a foregone conclusion that this will be solved within maybe 30 years.
- doublespanner 3y ago
  Have you experienced any of the current driverless taxi services? Personally i see the current limits to rollout as ones of hardware cost, but this is steadily declining.
  - ta988 3y ago
    Yes they may not be ready for this decade, but the arguments against remind me of those that said nobody would ever have a computer in their home. Even some stupid connected lightbulb have more computing power than some of the machines at that time... Don't trust anybody that believe they can predict the future.
  - dghlsakjg 3y ago
    There are only 3 cities in the entire US with generally available driverless taxis. All three of which are in sunny areas with generally no real inclement weather. At this point, driverless taxis are more science fiction than reality for a supermajority of Americans, let alone the rest of the world. Meanwhile up in Canada, I'm still struggling with the fact that google has completely mislabeled two of the streets that touch my corner lot, and invented a through street that has never existed on my neighbors property. All of this is information that I have submitted a correction to, as well as being available through our excellent public GIS system. The existence of these sorts of ambiguities in the map, and in the real world means that driverless taxis will be doing exactly what the poor pizza guy does periodically and wandering down my dead end road thinking they are on a completely different street. Luckily the pizza guy has the ability to knock on my door and get directions, while a driverless car will just... turn on its flashers and block the road as far as I can tell. When driverless cars can operate in Salt Lake City, a city that is incredibly tech friendly, low regulation, car centric, but with genuinely bad weather I will be impressed. In the meantime I would settle for more frequent bus service.
sacrosancty 3y ago
[dead]
fortran77 3y ago
> "what if the obesity epidemic has nothing to do with calories in vs calories out, and actually there is some toxin which the body has to sequester in subcutaneous fat and that's why everyone's getting obese" Everyone loses weight on a caloric deficit. And "doubly labeled water" experiments show that people vastly underestimate how many calories they actually eat each day. See this often cited paper: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199212313272701 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199212313272701 In a test of people who believed themselves to be diet resistant, every single subject lied about how much they ate when asked to self report. > The failure of some obese subjects to lose weight while eating a diet they report as low in calories is due to an energy intake substantially higher than reported and an overestimation of physical activity, not to an abnormality in thermogenesis.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- resolutebat 3y ago
  The actual Slime Mold Time Mold analysis is more nuanced than the previous characterization. Yes, you'll lose weight if you run a caloric deficit; the SMTM argument is that something is messing with what they call the "lipostat", which regulates how much your body thinks you should be eating. So when your body is yelling at you that you're starving (even though you aren't), it's very hard not to overeat, because hunger is right there at the bottom of the Maslow pyramid and it takes inordinate willpower to consistently ignore it. http://achemicalhunger.com/ http://achemicalhunger.com/
- nradov 3y ago
  For some real life examples see the "Secret Eaters" TV series. When people claim that they gain weight despite not eating much they are lying or delusional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Eaters?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Eaters?wprov=sfla1 I do understand that it can be challenging for many people to reduce their energy intake.
  - fortran77 3y ago
paulpauper 3y ago
To go off on tangent, if slime mold theory were true it would be possible to cure obesity by just switching to healthy, non-processed foods. i tried this in my own weight loss journey, and way easier said than done. CICO means you can get fat with anything. Thank god for new weight loss drugs . It took a century to get to this point and a century to develop these drugs...go figure.
- throwaw1yyy 3y ago
  slime mold made most of his fat theory up and got shot down doing poor analysis. He’s a well meaning charlatan but a charlatan nonetheless. skip his diet ideas. He’d tell you your baseball team lost because the humidity was too high when in actuality half the team is out sick with the flu. He ignores basic obvious reasons. Always a zebra when he thinks it’s never a horse…
saiya-jin 3y ago
Nah, I do get thy people want to shift blame away from their failings to control food intake and mental weaknesses thats literally in front of them - I see it often in peers struggling and failing with some aspect of life, but obesity is fully self-inflicted. As somebody currently used to mediterranean/french cuisine, and seeing what typical american eats and drinks, and how much, its definitely this. Plus idiotic car-first culture, compare it to how say Amsterdam looks like. And compare how local people on streets look like. HFCS, hectoliters of sugary drinks, pizzas and other fast food in quantities beyond ridiculous. Obviously bad diet messes up your gut biome, which adds to bad stuff happening but is not the primary source. More stressful lives don't help but same applies.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
Cancer treatment is progressing quite rapidly. I like to think in 40 years or so that people will look back on radiation and chemo like bloodletting. Chemo and radiation - at least 10-ish years ago - were pretty close to straight up killing yourself...
aa-jv 3y ago
>more or less based on the idea that bloodletting and rectal feeding and wound probing were medical "best practices" of the past and now seem so obviously ludicrous to us now I often remind myself that the Australian aboriginal people, the previous members of what was once a fantastic civilisation, had a sense of anti-bacterial properties of plants and things, and often treated their frail and ill in interesting ways which we, 'modern' Europeans, misinterpreted as "primitive hysteria", because everyone know: 'miasma theory was real, whereas the primitives are just cooking themselves'. So much life lost to those who always, always know best and never question themselves, really...

coffeebeqn 3y ago

Mental health care is still in the dark ages and the medicine we have are mostly crappy. I just got off SSRIs - the most prescribed mental health medication. It messes with your whole body since serotonin has hundreds of different uses in the body. And we don’t know why it works! It’s basically bloodletting or eating the village healers herbs

throw__away7391 3y ago
Indeed, I've seen multiple people end up with their lives completely and utterly detailed, as well as wrecking their family and fiends (yours truly included) and a result of such prescriptions. I don't understand how this goes totally ignored by the public at large.
- pjc50 3y ago
  SSRIs and other anti-depression medication are a lottery. There often isn't a good rationale for picking one over another. Many people get great benefits; some people have to go through trying several drugs to get benefits; a few get dramatically bad side effects.
  - staticautomatic 3y ago
    There’s genetic testing now that can help us avoid some of these problems.
- ffjdkdbsl 3y ago
  Same here. SSRI -> different SSRI -> benzos -> antipsychotics. With some overlap. Finally off of everything and it was fucking brutal. My life is a pale shadow of what it used to be. Relationships and finances burned to the ground. Engaging with the mental healthcare system was one of the worst decisions of my life.

saghm 3y ago

> A major theoretical discovery of K="computers can't do XYZ" would be another such thing for all of us who in the modern world chase these fads about computers reinventing finance or art or the modern economy. You'd have people in the year 2100 saying "can you believe only 75 years ago, everyone would just believe that computers were magically going to fix X and then they wouldn't and everyone would suddenly believe they would now fix Y and then they wouldn't and then Z and they wouldn't and and and... straight faced rationalist businesspeople acting like 'Tech-Jesus is coming' on August 1st, oh sorry it's September 1st, sorry -- October 1st? November? Maybe in the coming year? well SURELY this decade." This might be a higher-level thing that you mean given that I'm not sure it's something "provable" or "disprovable", but I'm constantly amazed how incredulous people are that I don't expect any car to be fully self-driving (like in the sense that there wouldn't even need to be a steering wheel and someone without a license could ride in it alone) any time in the next few decades. To be clear, I'm not claiming that it's something that _definitely_ won't happen, but I don't think it's super likely, whereas the vast majority of people I share this opinion with (even people with similarly high levels of technical expertise) seem to think that it's almost a foregone conclusion that this will be solved within maybe 30 years.

doublespanner 3y ago
Have you experienced any of the current driverless taxi services? Personally i see the current limits to rollout as ones of hardware cost, but this is steadily declining.
- ta988 3y ago
  Yes they may not be ready for this decade, but the arguments against remind me of those that said nobody would ever have a computer in their home. Even some stupid connected lightbulb have more computing power than some of the machines at that time... Don't trust anybody that believe they can predict the future.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  There are only 3 cities in the entire US with generally available driverless taxis. All three of which are in sunny areas with generally no real inclement weather. At this point, driverless taxis are more science fiction than reality for a supermajority of Americans, let alone the rest of the world. Meanwhile up in Canada, I'm still struggling with the fact that google has completely mislabeled two of the streets that touch my corner lot, and invented a through street that has never existed on my neighbors property. All of this is information that I have submitted a correction to, as well as being available through our excellent public GIS system. The existence of these sorts of ambiguities in the map, and in the real world means that driverless taxis will be doing exactly what the poor pizza guy does periodically and wandering down my dead end road thinking they are on a completely different street. Luckily the pizza guy has the ability to knock on my door and get directions, while a driverless car will just... turn on its flashers and block the road as far as I can tell. When driverless cars can operate in Salt Lake City, a city that is incredibly tech friendly, low regulation, car centric, but with genuinely bad weather I will be impressed. In the meantime I would settle for more frequent bus service.

sacrosancty 3y ago

[dead]

fortran77 3y ago

> "what if the obesity epidemic has nothing to do with calories in vs calories out, and actually there is some toxin which the body has to sequester in subcutaneous fat and that's why everyone's getting obese" Everyone loses weight on a caloric deficit. And "doubly labeled water" experiments show that people vastly underestimate how many calories they actually eat each day. See this often cited paper: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199212313272701 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199212313272701 In a test of people who believed themselves to be diet resistant, every single subject lied about how much they ate when asked to self report. > The failure of some obese subjects to lose weight while eating a diet they report as low in calories is due to an energy intake substantially higher than reported and an overestimation of physical activity, not to an abnormality in thermogenesis.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
resolutebat 3y ago
The actual Slime Mold Time Mold analysis is more nuanced than the previous characterization. Yes, you'll lose weight if you run a caloric deficit; the SMTM argument is that something is messing with what they call the "lipostat", which regulates how much your body thinks you should be eating. So when your body is yelling at you that you're starving (even though you aren't), it's very hard not to overeat, because hunger is right there at the bottom of the Maslow pyramid and it takes inordinate willpower to consistently ignore it. http://achemicalhunger.com/ http://achemicalhunger.com/
nradov 3y ago
For some real life examples see the "Secret Eaters" TV series. When people claim that they gain weight despite not eating much they are lying or delusional. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Eaters?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Eaters?wprov=sfla1 I do understand that it can be challenging for many people to reduce their energy intake.
- fortran77 3y ago

paulpauper 3y ago

To go off on tangent, if slime mold theory were true it would be possible to cure obesity by just switching to healthy, non-processed foods. i tried this in my own weight loss journey, and way easier said than done. CICO means you can get fat with anything. Thank god for new weight loss drugs . It took a century to get to this point and a century to develop these drugs...go figure.

throwaw1yyy 3y ago
slime mold made most of his fat theory up and got shot down doing poor analysis. He’s a well meaning charlatan but a charlatan nonetheless. skip his diet ideas. He’d tell you your baseball team lost because the humidity was too high when in actuality half the team is out sick with the flu. He ignores basic obvious reasons. Always a zebra when he thinks it’s never a horse…

saiya-jin 3y ago

Nah, I do get thy people want to shift blame away from their failings to control food intake and mental weaknesses thats literally in front of them - I see it often in peers struggling and failing with some aspect of life, but obesity is fully self-inflicted. As somebody currently used to mediterranean/french cuisine, and seeing what typical american eats and drinks, and how much, its definitely this. Plus idiotic car-first culture, compare it to how say Amsterdam looks like. And compare how local people on streets look like. HFCS, hectoliters of sugary drinks, pizzas and other fast food in quantities beyond ridiculous. Obviously bad diet messes up your gut biome, which adds to bad stuff happening but is not the primary source. More stressful lives don't help but same applies.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

Cancer treatment is progressing quite rapidly. I like to think in 40 years or so that people will look back on radiation and chemo like bloodletting. Chemo and radiation - at least 10-ish years ago - were pretty close to straight up killing yourself...

aa-jv 3y ago

>more or less based on the idea that bloodletting and rectal feeding and wound probing were medical "best practices" of the past and now seem so obviously ludicrous to us now I often remind myself that the Australian aboriginal people, the previous members of what was once a fantastic civilisation, had a sense of anti-bacterial properties of plants and things, and often treated their frail and ill in interesting ways which we, 'modern' Europeans, misinterpreted as "primitive hysteria", because everyone know: 'miasma theory was real, whereas the primitives are just cooking themselves'. So much life lost to those who always, always know best and never question themselves, really...