5 ms·

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

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]"

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]"