5 ms·

↑This. Stop. No. Don't go down the false hope path. It's cruel AF and puts off acceptance, wasting time that they can put to better use post acceptance. Maybe

↑This. Stop. No. Don't go down the false hope path. It's cruel AF and puts off acceptance, wasting time that they can put to better use post acceptance. Maybe let your friend explore what they want to do and you just give support. Celebrate what they celebrate and cry with them when they cry. Find(or better make) them some comfy/cute hats. If you want to research the things about the hospital, the procedures they are getting, the oncologists they are seeing, and drop re-affirming 'you are getting the best care'. They want to feel like they are getting good treatment. Not like 'if only they got something else they would have a better chance'. But reality is, they are getting the care they are going to getting. Hype the heck out of it, reassure them. Even if the care sucks, find something to hype. Ease the 'if only' burden/regret/fear on them, don't contribute to it with 'if only you could go see Joel Olsteen's prosparity preaching in person and he blessed you' or go see John of God in Brazil or something. If nothing else hype that the WHO ranked France in best overall healthcare. Leave out the 'in 2000'. 'Thank god we are in France, who the WHO ranked best in overall healthcare'. Find things for them to take comfort in. https://www.who.int/news/item/07-02-2000-world-health-organization-assesses-the-world's-health-systems https://www.who.int/news/item/07-02-2000-world-health-organi...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mllev 2y ago
I guess hope can be false now.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > guess hope can be false now "Hope is false if it is based on ignorance of the correct assessment of the probability that a desire is fulfilled or on ignorance with regard to the desirability of the object of desire. Hope is justified—realistic—when the hoping person knows and accepts experts’ judgement about the probability of hope fulfillment. However, I argued, what matters for evaluating a person’s hope is not only whether it is realistic, but also whether it is reasonable in light of the aim and goals for which the person strives in (the remainder of) his life ...a person’s hope that an (experimental) treatment may prolong his or her life or improve the quality of his or her life can only be called false when he or she thinks that the chances of personal benefits are greater than those estimated by experts. If he or she does accept their judgement, continuing to hope is realistic. Hope is moreover reasonable if it contributes to realizing what a person strives for in (the remainder of) his life" [1]. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6900746/#s10 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6900746/#s10
  - hnfong 2y ago
    Hope is premised on the basis that nobody knows the future 100%. Experts can give a mostly-frequentist analysis based on past medical cases. The unknown part is whether those cases apply to yours. And nobody knows. All the so-called probability is meaningless. It matters not whether your chances of remission is "99%" or "1%". Those numbers are meaningless in a specific case under a specific situation. I understand this is not the commonly understood notion of probability, but the common notion is simply wrong. I'm not saying experts are wrong, I'm happy to assume that their analyses are quite correct when applied to a population. I'm just saying the common way of interpreting their statistics onto one specific case (the one you care about) is wrong, because you can't just plug the probability onto a single person/case and round it off to zero or one.
  - mllev 2y ago
    I agree that the probability of a desired outcome is valuable information. But to call being unaware of this information “false hope” is a blight on our language. Hope is hope. It’s quite proven that believing a certain outcome is likely increases the likelihood of that outcome.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > to call being unaware of this information “false hope” is a blight on our language False hope is still a form of hope in the same way a red car is still a car. And it’s useful to delineate it. Hope is rooted in expectation. When we watch a film about a fraudster, the dramatic irony arises from the audience knowing the rube is being played even while the rube is quite hopeful. We may conclude it’s better for the victim to live in false hope. But again, it’s useful to understand it’s a hope that’s false (and that someone is making that decision for them).
      - mllev 2y ago
        If false hope is still hope the way a red car is a car, then false also has no meaning in this context. Would a false car still be a car? I agree people should be informed and manage their expectations. My issue is that it’s a terrible expression that gets misapplied constantly.
- selenography 2y ago
  Sure, if by "now" you mean "at least since Geoffrey Chaucer's time": > And thys vyce cometh of false hope that he thynketh he thall lyue longe, but that hope fayleth ful ofte. [1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Workes_of_Geffray_Chaucer_Newly_Prin/r1pfAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22false+hope%22&pg=PP241&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Workes_of_Geffray_C... [2] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=false+hope&year_start=1550&year_end=2024&corpus=en&case_insensitive=false https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=false+hope&yea... Or, come to that, "at least since Cicero's time": > ...cui legi cum vestra dignitas vehementer adversetur, istius spes falsa et insignis impudentia maxime suffragatur. [3] https://anastrophe.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/perseus/citequery3.pl?dbname=LatinAugust21&getid=0&query=Cic.%20Ver.%202.5.179 https://anastrophe.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/perseus/citequery3.p...
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  If I let playing the lottery change how I interact with the world/prevent me from dealing with my situation, because I hope I will win, that 'hope' is a negative impact on my life. If I encourage my friend who is down on their luck to buy lottery tickets so they can have hope, am I helping them, am I being kind?
d--b 2y ago
Errr. So your point is I should be reassuring my friend, by telling him he’s getting fantastic healthcare. I don’t get it. My friend doesn’t need reassurance. He doesn’t need to take comfort in the fact that France has good healthcare. He’s going to die and he knows it. I am here just because I want to tell him: if you want to try something crazy, and it may not work at all, there’s this. If you prefer not to, that’s fine too.
- hyperliner 2y ago
  [dead]
- _DeadFred_ 2y ago
  Yes, my point is you should be putting your friend with a terminal condition at ease so that they can skip wasting any energy on regretting their healthcare situation thinking they would have lived 'if only...', and you should help them enjoy/process/maximize their remaining time. I get what you want and why you are here, I do. Been there done that for friends and family. I lost my mom, don't think I didn't try to find every treatment, and for me she did them all no matter the pain/loss in quality of life it inflicted on her. In the end watching Joel Olsteen gave my hippie/anti christian progressive mom comfort so guess what, anti-organized religion me sat and watched Joel friggen Olsteen with her as she accepted and processed her situation, while inside I screamed 'noooooooo, we can't accept this! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Mom no, I can't lose you, and our final time can't be spent watching Joel friggen Olsteen!'. And on that final day, when she was suffering in worse pain than I can Imagine, I put on a brave face and told here it was OK mom, she can go now, she can have peace now, while inside I screamed 'you can not goooo! The world will end if you go!!!! You can't leave me, ever'. Do you really think anyone is saying 'you can go now' inside when they tell someone it's OK to go? Do you really think everyone thinks their local medical care is the absolutely best in the world when they say 'man, good thing you got Doctor X, good thing we have this facility'?
  - d--b 2y ago
    I get what you’re saying, but I think there is too big a cultural difference for your advice to make sense for us. Sorry for what you went through though, sounds like it was really painful.
_yb2s 2y ago
Personally, if I were dying and someone kept saying fake nonsense like "you are getting the best care" I'd probably cut off contact with them, or at least wish they would stop. I'd know I'm getting mediocre care like everyone else, that's also part of accepting the reality of the situation. I'd know my doctor probably graduated at the bottom of his/her class or else he/she wouldn't be an authorized provider on an HMO- and he/she probably can't understand or doesn't read the latest medical research on his/her own. And that probably doesn't matter one bit, because the "best care" wouldn't work either. I might also want them to share technical ideas they think might help, or at least I would tell them if I wanted them to or not. If you decide to experiment on yourself, you can still accept the reality of a terminal illness. For me, that would be part of ending my life with dignity- knowing I sincerely tried to understand and solve the problem my own, and share what I learned with others, just like I did in the rest of my life.
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  The best care is not necessarily the best bleeding-edge treatment. Most medical jobs are only possible at all (without burning out and destroying the person doing them) through them mostly acting in accordance with best practice and training. The ultra-rich don't have markedly better survival from nasties like GBM than the rest of us, unfortunately, so if better exists, it's not something money can buy. And where some degree of survival can indeed be bought, the medical industry does at least have a solid record of scaling it out to the professional classes, even if the poor go without.
  - _yb2s 2y ago
    > The best care is not necessarily the best bleeding-edge treatment It's mostly a conceptual thing for me. As a technical person with a hacker/nerd/scientist mindset, I will not be able to trust someone that blindly follows official protocols from some authority they don't personally understand the reasoning or evidence behind. For example- I do have a doctor that is a hacker/nerd/scientist that also teaches college biochem courses for fun on the side and he was about to prescribe me a medication, but then based on an offhand comment I had made, realized I've had a number of bad reactions to medications that he knew off the top of his head were metabolized by the same liver enzyme as this new medication. This guy keeps a book about drug metabolism biochemistry on his desk, and the cover is nearly worn off from use. I most likely have a SNP in that enzyme, that would have given me another bad reaction. This is deep nerdy biochem knowledge he was not going to get from any official protocol that led to better and safer care. The biggest problem here is we like geeking out on this stuff so much, he almost forgets to actually treat me when I visit him. I've had other doctors that even if I had noticed the potential P450 enzyme issue myself, would refuse to listen because they have a fundamentally non-technical mindset, combined with ego issues about being the expert- that are usually made worse not better if I mention that I have professional expertise and training on the underlying biology. In truth, I'll admit it is both quite rare to get any real benefit, and legally risky for the doctor to deviate from guidelines based on direct knowledge or understanding.
ungreased0675 2y ago
My friend, you are on a website called Hacker News. This isn’t Normie News where we stick with the most common solution for things.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mllev 2y ago

I guess hope can be false now.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> guess hope can be false now "Hope is false if it is based on ignorance of the correct assessment of the probability that a desire is fulfilled or on ignorance with regard to the desirability of the object of desire. Hope is justified—realistic—when the hoping person knows and accepts experts’ judgement about the probability of hope fulfillment. However, I argued, what matters for evaluating a person’s hope is not only whether it is realistic, but also whether it is reasonable in light of the aim and goals for which the person strives in (the remainder of) his life ...a person’s hope that an (experimental) treatment may prolong his or her life or improve the quality of his or her life can only be called false when he or she thinks that the chances of personal benefits are greater than those estimated by experts. If he or she does accept their judgement, continuing to hope is realistic. Hope is moreover reasonable if it contributes to realizing what a person strives for in (the remainder of) his life" [1]. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6900746/#s10 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6900746/#s10
- hnfong 2y ago
  Hope is premised on the basis that nobody knows the future 100%. Experts can give a mostly-frequentist analysis based on past medical cases. The unknown part is whether those cases apply to yours. And nobody knows. All the so-called probability is meaningless. It matters not whether your chances of remission is "99%" or "1%". Those numbers are meaningless in a specific case under a specific situation. I understand this is not the commonly understood notion of probability, but the common notion is simply wrong. I'm not saying experts are wrong, I'm happy to assume that their analyses are quite correct when applied to a population. I'm just saying the common way of interpreting their statistics onto one specific case (the one you care about) is wrong, because you can't just plug the probability onto a single person/case and round it off to zero or one.
- mllev 2y ago
  I agree that the probability of a desired outcome is valuable information. But to call being unaware of this information “false hope” is a blight on our language. Hope is hope. It’s quite proven that believing a certain outcome is likely increases the likelihood of that outcome.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > to call being unaware of this information “false hope” is a blight on our language False hope is still a form of hope in the same way a red car is still a car. And it’s useful to delineate it. Hope is rooted in expectation. When we watch a film about a fraudster, the dramatic irony arises from the audience knowing the rube is being played even while the rube is quite hopeful. We may conclude it’s better for the victim to live in false hope. But again, it’s useful to understand it’s a hope that’s false (and that someone is making that decision for them).
    - mllev 2y ago
      If false hope is still hope the way a red car is a car, then false also has no meaning in this context. Would a false car still be a car? I agree people should be informed and manage their expectations. My issue is that it’s a terrible expression that gets misapplied constantly.
selenography 2y ago
Sure, if by "now" you mean "at least since Geoffrey Chaucer's time": > And thys vyce cometh of false hope that he thynketh he thall lyue longe, but that hope fayleth ful ofte. [1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Workes_of_Geffray_Chaucer_Newly_Prin/r1pfAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22false+hope%22&pg=PP241&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Workes_of_Geffray_C... [2] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=false+hope&year_start=1550&year_end=2024&corpus=en&case_insensitive=false https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=false+hope&yea... Or, come to that, "at least since Cicero's time": > ...cui legi cum vestra dignitas vehementer adversetur, istius spes falsa et insignis impudentia maxime suffragatur. [3] https://anastrophe.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/perseus/citequery3.pl?dbname=LatinAugust21&getid=0&query=Cic.%20Ver.%202.5.179 https://anastrophe.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/perseus/citequery3.p...
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
If I let playing the lottery change how I interact with the world/prevent me from dealing with my situation, because I hope I will win, that 'hope' is a negative impact on my life. If I encourage my friend who is down on their luck to buy lottery tickets so they can have hope, am I helping them, am I being kind?

d--b 2y ago

Errr. So your point is I should be reassuring my friend, by telling him he’s getting fantastic healthcare. I don’t get it. My friend doesn’t need reassurance. He doesn’t need to take comfort in the fact that France has good healthcare. He’s going to die and he knows it. I am here just because I want to tell him: if you want to try something crazy, and it may not work at all, there’s this. If you prefer not to, that’s fine too.

hyperliner 2y ago
[dead]
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
Yes, my point is you should be putting your friend with a terminal condition at ease so that they can skip wasting any energy on regretting their healthcare situation thinking they would have lived 'if only...', and you should help them enjoy/process/maximize their remaining time. I get what you want and why you are here, I do. Been there done that for friends and family. I lost my mom, don't think I didn't try to find every treatment, and for me she did them all no matter the pain/loss in quality of life it inflicted on her. In the end watching Joel Olsteen gave my hippie/anti christian progressive mom comfort so guess what, anti-organized religion me sat and watched Joel friggen Olsteen with her as she accepted and processed her situation, while inside I screamed 'noooooooo, we can't accept this! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Mom no, I can't lose you, and our final time can't be spent watching Joel friggen Olsteen!'. And on that final day, when she was suffering in worse pain than I can Imagine, I put on a brave face and told here it was OK mom, she can go now, she can have peace now, while inside I screamed 'you can not goooo! The world will end if you go!!!! You can't leave me, ever'. Do you really think anyone is saying 'you can go now' inside when they tell someone it's OK to go? Do you really think everyone thinks their local medical care is the absolutely best in the world when they say 'man, good thing you got Doctor X, good thing we have this facility'?
- d--b 2y ago
  I get what you’re saying, but I think there is too big a cultural difference for your advice to make sense for us. Sorry for what you went through though, sounds like it was really painful.

_yb2s 2y ago

Personally, if I were dying and someone kept saying fake nonsense like "you are getting the best care" I'd probably cut off contact with them, or at least wish they would stop. I'd know I'm getting mediocre care like everyone else, that's also part of accepting the reality of the situation. I'd know my doctor probably graduated at the bottom of his/her class or else he/she wouldn't be an authorized provider on an HMO- and he/she probably can't understand or doesn't read the latest medical research on his/her own. And that probably doesn't matter one bit, because the "best care" wouldn't work either. I might also want them to share technical ideas they think might help, or at least I would tell them if I wanted them to or not. If you decide to experiment on yourself, you can still accept the reality of a terminal illness. For me, that would be part of ending my life with dignity- knowing I sincerely tried to understand and solve the problem my own, and share what I learned with others, just like I did in the rest of my life.

Earw0rm 2y ago
The best care is not necessarily the best bleeding-edge treatment. Most medical jobs are only possible at all (without burning out and destroying the person doing them) through them mostly acting in accordance with best practice and training. The ultra-rich don't have markedly better survival from nasties like GBM than the rest of us, unfortunately, so if better exists, it's not something money can buy. And where some degree of survival can indeed be bought, the medical industry does at least have a solid record of scaling it out to the professional classes, even if the poor go without.
- _yb2s 2y ago
  > The best care is not necessarily the best bleeding-edge treatment It's mostly a conceptual thing for me. As a technical person with a hacker/nerd/scientist mindset, I will not be able to trust someone that blindly follows official protocols from some authority they don't personally understand the reasoning or evidence behind. For example- I do have a doctor that is a hacker/nerd/scientist that also teaches college biochem courses for fun on the side and he was about to prescribe me a medication, but then based on an offhand comment I had made, realized I've had a number of bad reactions to medications that he knew off the top of his head were metabolized by the same liver enzyme as this new medication. This guy keeps a book about drug metabolism biochemistry on his desk, and the cover is nearly worn off from use. I most likely have a SNP in that enzyme, that would have given me another bad reaction. This is deep nerdy biochem knowledge he was not going to get from any official protocol that led to better and safer care. The biggest problem here is we like geeking out on this stuff so much, he almost forgets to actually treat me when I visit him. I've had other doctors that even if I had noticed the potential P450 enzyme issue myself, would refuse to listen because they have a fundamentally non-technical mindset, combined with ego issues about being the expert- that are usually made worse not better if I mention that I have professional expertise and training on the underlying biology. In truth, I'll admit it is both quite rare to get any real benefit, and legally risky for the doctor to deviate from guidelines based on direct knowledge or understanding.

ungreased0675 2y ago

My friend, you are on a website called Hacker News. This isn’t Normie News where we stick with the most common solution for things.