5 ms·

I'd take medicine over the internet. That would get us to at least a 1970s/1980s world. Having zero medicine but the internet would be a very very different wo

I'd take medicine over the internet. That would get us to at least a 1970s/1980s world. Having zero medicine but the internet would be a very very different world, with people dying left and right from infections, broken bones would not be set crippling quite a few, accidents would be a lot more fatal (also because there would be no understanding of effects and causes of injuries), no wounds would ever be treated, etc etc. It would be a truly bizarre world where humans wouldn't care one bit about damage to and problems with their bodies (but would have highly optimized advertising systems).

YetAnotherNick 3y ago
Both sits in different level of the needs hierarchy[1]. First level that is most important is food, water, shelter etc., then second level is medicine, safety etc. Internet is one of the most important invention for the top 2 levels. [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs2.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Maslow%2...
kamikaz1k 3y ago
You’re mixing up morality of life with impact on humanity. Medicine is great because it helps save lives (there is “non-medicine” which also achieves some good outcomes here). The internet, the instant exchange of information, is great because it magnifies humanity’s greatest power: mass collaboration. With the Internet, medicine could emerge. At least in the form of exchange of ideas and data, and subsequently spread its positive impact faster. The world’s greatest physician scientists working together. Also I am guessing the ads bit was hyperbolic but like, common, Google is a verb for a reason. We’ve never had access to information like this before. And this is just focusing on something abstract like “information”. And so, I disagree.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  I am thinking quite practical: do I prefer the internet over dying from smallpox or appendicitis, for example? The added benefit of the internet for mass collaboration isn't that much in the data... why hasn't productivity exploded upward? Why hasn't medical progress gone through the roof? Scientist collaborated long before the internet. Quite strong progress was made without it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - verinus 3y ago
    I am certain in some areas it has. but on the other hand in others it has damaged it- screentime is an awesome feature measuring "destroyed" productivity ;)
- WA 3y ago
  Life expectancy at birth before medical breakthroughs (1900): ~41 years Life expectancy at birth before the WWW started (1989): ~71 years Life expectancy now: ~75 years Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy
  - pc86 3y ago
    This seems to imply that most people would die in their 40s from one cause or another before the 20th century, which is patently untrue. This is entirely from infant and childhood illnesses. If you made into grade school in the 1800s you were nearly as likely to live into your 70s as you are 200 years later. > ‘… life expectancy in the mid-Victorian period was not markedly different from what it is today. Once infant mortality is stripped out, life expectancy at 5 years was 75 for men and 73 for women.’ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/ It seems the only real change modern medicine has had with regard to life expectancy is maternal mortality (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/table/tbl2/?report=objectonly https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/table/t... from the same article)
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
      Yes, but a big progress nevertheless. Life expectancy at 20 was also substantially different to today for males (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/articles/howhaslifeexpectancychangedovertime/2015-09-09 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde..., second graph) However, that is still a world with a lot medicine in there (just take simple things like sutures, inoculations, or setting broken bones). Very difficult to say what life expectancy for adults would have been with zero medicine in the world.
- verinus 3y ago
  I think your view has a distorted importance of medicine because you have never lived a live without it. And with that I mean felt the emotions of people going through it, like when your mother dies because of childbirth when you are a kid, your siblings die, because of infections. Like we have today in all the anti-vaccination guys esp. in better-to-do households that are responsible for measles outbreaks even though it was deemed extinct. People from areas where it was common to have all these kids' diseases, we are not afraid of are much more pro vaccinations... I can remember a time without the internet and while I really think it is great in many ways, humanity could do fine without it...
- Kye 3y ago
  Case in point: we got covid-19 vaccines so fast because the DNA sequence of the virus was posted for anyone to download by scientists working at ground zero. Much of the work was done before it was a global pandemic because of that sharing. Pair that with the work done on the mRNA vaccine for a previous coronavirus that didn't go far, and things weren't nearly as bad as they could have been. This is a problem with trying to name One Most Important Thing. It's usually the synthesis of multiple innovations that makes the revolution.
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Is there any evidence that the fact that anyone could look at the genome increased the speed of vaccine delivery measurably and not rather changes in processes for testing and roll-out? The genome data was only needed by a few actors for the vaccine.
    - Kye 3y ago
      Those few actors would have had to wait until it spread somewhere they have visibility in to before they could start a weeks-long sequencing process. It might have only added a month or two, but that's a lot of lives saved. The wikipedia page also credits it with speeding the process up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine#History >> " Its genetic sequence was published on 11 January 2020, triggering an urgent international response to prepare for an outbreak and hasten the development of a preventive COVID-19 vaccine.[182][183][184]" I haven't checked the citations, but I would expect an edit war if that were controversial.
      - RandomLensman 3y ago
        Maybe a month, maybe not (and we don't have the counterfactual). The quote is not directly implying a speed-up from the publication on the internet vs publication in other forms. The sentence after your quote is pointing to the real speed-up: "Since 2020, vaccine development has been expedited via unprecedented collaboration in the multinational pharmaceutical industry and between governments.[185]"
roenxi 3y ago
It is nonsensical as thought experiments go; we're comparing two things that can't be compared. But just for fun - if we existed in a world with no medicine and the internet, we'd be able to rediscover modern medicine extremely quickly. We might reasonably expect to get further than the current state of the art, in fact, because the initial wild west phase wouldn't be encumbered by overzealous safety regulation and we'd learn more before the legislatures of the world start shutting it down (especially since the baseline would be so horrific, they'd probably have tougher stomachs for some broken eggs while making omelettes). We ran the reverse (medicine then internet) and it took a long time to get to the internet.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Why would we discover modern medicine quickly just because we have the internet? There is no reason to assume some of the concepts needed would just happen to spring up because of a cacophony of voices on the Internet (and a lot of collaborators would die while you work with them). It could even be bad for progress as all problems get broadcast, loud but wrong voices get huge amplification, etc. The quote also is including all medicine, not just modern. Cold starting medicine then feels very hard. Btw, early modern medicine was pretty much unencumbered by regulation - so there would be little change.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    It isn't the number of voices; it is the speed and cost of setting up special interest communities. A bunch of health freaks with a penchant for experimentation would get together and start learning things. Not an overnight process but it'd be insanely quick compared to the sluggish speed of the last few millennia. > Btw, early modern medicine was pretty much unencumbered by regulation - so there would be little change. Not so; the early work was encumbered by rules against graverobbing. There were some famous advances made by .. someone who's name I do not recall, but he'd have been in trouble if people knew what he was up to.
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
      Yes, there were some rules holding back anatomy to some extent at certain times, but really pretty much free for all in a lot of other areas. Those health freaks would do the right things why? Why would other communities not seek to stop or block them from doing what they are doing (these experiments would have at times pretty dire consequences)? Why would there be zero rules for what those health freaks are doing? There is just no reason to assume this would just work out. Why hasn't the internet brought insane advances in science if it is such a force multiplier for it?
andy_ppp 3y ago
Most Doctors look stuff up on the Internet from what I’ve seen, so I’m not sure you can remove one from the other. You can for sure have two Great Works.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  In the 1980s they would look it up in a book like the the MSD - would work today, too.
  - andy_ppp 3y ago
    Is this as good as searching Google? The point is the internet has improved medicine as well.
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
      How much has it improved? Where has it improved? If the internet were not there, would that improvement not have happened? Modern medicine definitely existed well before the internet, so the internet wasn't necessary for that to exist.
      - andy_ppp 3y ago
        Just look at how treatment during a pandemic was communicated and evolved in realtime, the whole way we do science today interacts with learning from many people in a much faster and more efficient way. Luckily these sort of nonsense one or the other positions don’t work in the real world. Clearly it would be much easier to recreate modern medicine with the Internet available than it would be to recreate the Internet if we just had medicine.
        RandomLensman 3y ago
        Faster, yes, more efficient - not sure and very difficult to measure. We also got a lot more diversity and resistance to measures. I find the view that recreating modern medicine being clearly easy with the internet dubious. Even more, we did create the internet while having medicine before, not the other way around. Without modern medicine we might not have any internet to start with as the struggle with human diseases and illness might have led to very different time attribution of efforts. Also, the quote is for all of medicine, not just modern.

YetAnotherNick 3y ago

Both sits in different level of the needs hierarchy[1]. First level that is most important is food, water, shelter etc., then second level is medicine, safety etc. Internet is one of the most important invention for the top 2 levels. [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs2.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Maslow%2...

kamikaz1k 3y ago

You’re mixing up morality of life with impact on humanity. Medicine is great because it helps save lives (there is “non-medicine” which also achieves some good outcomes here). The internet, the instant exchange of information, is great because it magnifies humanity’s greatest power: mass collaboration. With the Internet, medicine could emerge. At least in the form of exchange of ideas and data, and subsequently spread its positive impact faster. The world’s greatest physician scientists working together. Also I am guessing the ads bit was hyperbolic but like, common, Google is a verb for a reason. We’ve never had access to information like this before. And this is just focusing on something abstract like “information”. And so, I disagree.

RandomLensman 3y ago
I am thinking quite practical: do I prefer the internet over dying from smallpox or appendicitis, for example? The added benefit of the internet for mass collaboration isn't that much in the data... why hasn't productivity exploded upward? Why hasn't medical progress gone through the roof? Scientist collaborated long before the internet. Quite strong progress was made without it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- verinus 3y ago
  I am certain in some areas it has. but on the other hand in others it has damaged it- screentime is an awesome feature measuring "destroyed" productivity ;)
WA 3y ago
Life expectancy at birth before medical breakthroughs (1900): ~41 years Life expectancy at birth before the WWW started (1989): ~71 years Life expectancy now: ~75 years Source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy
- pc86 3y ago
  This seems to imply that most people would die in their 40s from one cause or another before the 20th century, which is patently untrue. This is entirely from infant and childhood illnesses. If you made into grade school in the 1800s you were nearly as likely to live into your 70s as you are 200 years later. > ‘… life expectancy in the mid-Victorian period was not markedly different from what it is today. Once infant mortality is stripped out, life expectancy at 5 years was 75 for men and 73 for women.’ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/ It seems the only real change modern medicine has had with regard to life expectancy is maternal mortality (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/table/tbl2/?report=objectonly https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625386/table/t... from the same article)
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Yes, but a big progress nevertheless. Life expectancy at 20 was also substantially different to today for males (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/articles/howhaslifeexpectancychangedovertime/2015-09-09 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde..., second graph) However, that is still a world with a lot medicine in there (just take simple things like sutures, inoculations, or setting broken bones). Very difficult to say what life expectancy for adults would have been with zero medicine in the world.
verinus 3y ago
I think your view has a distorted importance of medicine because you have never lived a live without it. And with that I mean felt the emotions of people going through it, like when your mother dies because of childbirth when you are a kid, your siblings die, because of infections. Like we have today in all the anti-vaccination guys esp. in better-to-do households that are responsible for measles outbreaks even though it was deemed extinct. People from areas where it was common to have all these kids' diseases, we are not afraid of are much more pro vaccinations... I can remember a time without the internet and while I really think it is great in many ways, humanity could do fine without it...
Kye 3y ago
Case in point: we got covid-19 vaccines so fast because the DNA sequence of the virus was posted for anyone to download by scientists working at ground zero. Much of the work was done before it was a global pandemic because of that sharing. Pair that with the work done on the mRNA vaccine for a previous coronavirus that didn't go far, and things weren't nearly as bad as they could have been. This is a problem with trying to name One Most Important Thing. It's usually the synthesis of multiple innovations that makes the revolution.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  Is there any evidence that the fact that anyone could look at the genome increased the speed of vaccine delivery measurably and not rather changes in processes for testing and roll-out? The genome data was only needed by a few actors for the vaccine.
  - Kye 3y ago
    Those few actors would have had to wait until it spread somewhere they have visibility in to before they could start a weeks-long sequencing process. It might have only added a month or two, but that's a lot of lives saved. The wikipedia page also credits it with speeding the process up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine#History >> " Its genetic sequence was published on 11 January 2020, triggering an urgent international response to prepare for an outbreak and hasten the development of a preventive COVID-19 vaccine.[182][183][184]" I haven't checked the citations, but I would expect an edit war if that were controversial.
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
      Maybe a month, maybe not (and we don't have the counterfactual). The quote is not directly implying a speed-up from the publication on the internet vs publication in other forms. The sentence after your quote is pointing to the real speed-up: "Since 2020, vaccine development has been expedited via unprecedented collaboration in the multinational pharmaceutical industry and between governments.[185]"

roenxi 3y ago

It is nonsensical as thought experiments go; we're comparing two things that can't be compared. But just for fun - if we existed in a world with no medicine and the internet, we'd be able to rediscover modern medicine extremely quickly. We might reasonably expect to get further than the current state of the art, in fact, because the initial wild west phase wouldn't be encumbered by overzealous safety regulation and we'd learn more before the legislatures of the world start shutting it down (especially since the baseline would be so horrific, they'd probably have tougher stomachs for some broken eggs while making omelettes). We ran the reverse (medicine then internet) and it took a long time to get to the internet.

RandomLensman 3y ago
Why would we discover modern medicine quickly just because we have the internet? There is no reason to assume some of the concepts needed would just happen to spring up because of a cacophony of voices on the Internet (and a lot of collaborators would die while you work with them). It could even be bad for progress as all problems get broadcast, loud but wrong voices get huge amplification, etc. The quote also is including all medicine, not just modern. Cold starting medicine then feels very hard. Btw, early modern medicine was pretty much unencumbered by regulation - so there would be little change.
- roenxi 3y ago
  It isn't the number of voices; it is the speed and cost of setting up special interest communities. A bunch of health freaks with a penchant for experimentation would get together and start learning things. Not an overnight process but it'd be insanely quick compared to the sluggish speed of the last few millennia. > Btw, early modern medicine was pretty much unencumbered by regulation - so there would be little change. Not so; the early work was encumbered by rules against graverobbing. There were some famous advances made by .. someone who's name I do not recall, but he'd have been in trouble if people knew what he was up to.
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Yes, there were some rules holding back anatomy to some extent at certain times, but really pretty much free for all in a lot of other areas. Those health freaks would do the right things why? Why would other communities not seek to stop or block them from doing what they are doing (these experiments would have at times pretty dire consequences)? Why would there be zero rules for what those health freaks are doing? There is just no reason to assume this would just work out. Why hasn't the internet brought insane advances in science if it is such a force multiplier for it?

andy_ppp 3y ago

Most Doctors look stuff up on the Internet from what I’ve seen, so I’m not sure you can remove one from the other. You can for sure have two Great Works.

RandomLensman 3y ago
In the 1980s they would look it up in a book like the the MSD - would work today, too.
- andy_ppp 3y ago
  Is this as good as searching Google? The point is the internet has improved medicine as well.
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    How much has it improved? Where has it improved? If the internet were not there, would that improvement not have happened? Modern medicine definitely existed well before the internet, so the internet wasn't necessary for that to exist.
    - andy_ppp 3y ago
      Just look at how treatment during a pandemic was communicated and evolved in realtime, the whole way we do science today interacts with learning from many people in a much faster and more efficient way. Luckily these sort of nonsense one or the other positions don’t work in the real world. Clearly it would be much easier to recreate modern medicine with the Internet available than it would be to recreate the Internet if we just had medicine.
      - RandomLensman 3y ago
        Faster, yes, more efficient - not sure and very difficult to measure. We also got a lot more diversity and resistance to measures. I find the view that recreating modern medicine being clearly easy with the internet dubious. Even more, we did create the internet while having medicine before, not the other way around. Without modern medicine we might not have any internet to start with as the struggle with human diseases and illness might have led to very different time attribution of efforts. Also, the quote is for all of medicine, not just modern.