4 ms·

I think it's morally wrong to trust a child's well-being to an LLM over a trained medical professional, and I feel strongly enough about this to express that he

I think it's morally wrong to trust a child's well-being to an LLM over a trained medical professional, and I feel strongly enough about this to express that here.

jfindper 10mo ago
I agree with you, and reading some of the takes in this thread is actually blowing my mind. I cannot believe that the top-voted comment right now is saying to not trust doctors, use an LLM to diagnose yourself and others.
- vorpalhex 10mo ago
  You've never had "the experience". I'll share mine. Unusual severe one sided eye pain. Go to regular doctor's, explain, get told it's a "stye" and do hot compresses. Problem gets worse, I go to urgent care. Urgent care doc takes one look at me and immediately sends me to the ER saying it's severe and she can't diagnose it because she is unqualified. Go to ER, get seen by two specialists, a general practicioner and a gaggle of nurses. Get told it's a bad eye infection, put on strong steroids. Problem gets worse (more slowly at least). Schedule an urgent appoint with an opthalmologist. For some reason the scheduling lady just like, comprehends my urgency and gets me a same day appointment. Opthalmologist does 5 minutes of exam, puts in some eye drops and pain is immediately gone. She puts me on a very serious steroid with instructions to dose hourly and visit her daily. Only reason I am seeing out of both eyes today. As the top comment says, do not just "trust" Doctors. About 70% of hospital deaths are due to preventable mistakes in the hospital. People who are invested in their own care, who seek second opinions, who argue (productively) with their doctor have the best outcomes by far. Nobody said not to work with doctors, but blindly trusting a single doctor will seriously harm your outcomes.
  - daveguy 10mo ago
    > About 70% of hospital deaths are due to preventable mistakes in the hospital. Sure sounds like an asspull stat. Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence. Do you have a reference for that? Care to share?
    - cogman10 10mo ago
      At the high end, it's about 4.1% https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31965525/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31965525/
    - andrepd 10mo ago
      7 out of 10 made up statistics use the number 7 :p
    - vorpalhex 10mo ago
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499956/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499956/
  - jfindper 10mo ago
    >About 70% of hospital deaths are due to preventable mistakes in the hospital. It's awful that you had a bad experience, but no. Nowhere near 70% of hospital deaths are from preventable mistakes. I would also note that in your experience, you ended up trusting a different doctor (ophthalmologist), not ChatGPT. Second opinions from other qualified professionals is a thumbs up from me.
    - malfist 10mo ago
      I would add to your note, that the person that was correct in their care was the actual expert. Doctors are experts in their fields, but until they saw an ophthalmologist, they didn't see the right practitioner. Just like I wouldn't go to my podiatrist to treat a complex case of rosecea, urgent care and GCP aren't for specialized, complex and rare cases.
      - ponector 10mo ago
        I think chatgpt can help to argue with doctors and get to the specialist faster.
    - hiyer 10mo ago
      The author doesn't say don't trust doctors or trust chatgpt. He says don't trust "a single doctor" and look for a second opinion whenever possible.
      - jfindper 10mo ago
        Getting a second opinion is smart! Get it from a qualified professional, not chatgpt.
    - vorpalhex 10mo ago
      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499956/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499956/ cites >200,000 from one estimate. Harvard Health throws out 700,000 deaths per year in hospitals total. ~0.28 according to my quick math. I generally expect such counts to be under-representative. I'm also probably conflating cases of "this person was going to die regardless but the hospital screwed something up" with "this person was not going to die but did die because the hospital screwed up." It's not clear how any source would avoid that conflation though.
  - dingnuts 10mo ago
    [dead]
- dingnuts 10mo ago
  [dead]
- nataliste 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - jfindper 10mo ago
    Maybe you should put this comment into ChatGPT and ask it if you should take a step away from the computer for a little bit. >The problem is you're all dumb and getting dumber. But yeah, you're the only smart person here. Clap clap.
    - nataliste 10mo ago
      >Of course, you and every other histrionic lemming won't take this to heart or even really read it. You'll skim it, pretend that's the same thing, look for the no-no words, hammer your keyboard, confabulate a response to something no one actually said, then pat yourself on the back for having slapped down yet another hand reaching out to lift you out of your own ignorance. Like clockwork.
      - jfindper 10mo ago
        Of course I'm not going to read fucking paragraphs of pretentious writing calling me dumb. Genius call.
  - WhyOhWhyQ 10mo ago
    Everyone on this website has thoughts on LLM's, not just you. LLM's are heavily biased by leading questions, which is not a good property in a doctor. They also tend to respond in a way to please the prompter, which might be a frustrated parent, not in a way which is impartial and based on good medical practices. They frequently speak with high confidence and low accuracy.
  - tomhow 10mo ago
    This is a completely unacceptable comment on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're looking for a higher standard of discourse here. These lines in particular are relevant: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. We have to ban accounts that continue to comment like this, so please take a moment to remind yourself of the guidelines and make an effort to observe them if you want to keep participating here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
reenorap 10mo ago
[flagged]
- jfindper 10mo ago
  >How does this line up with your religious belief that doctors are infallible and should be 100% trusted? They did not say that in their comment. Replying in obvious bad faith makes your original comment even less credible than it already is.
  - nataliste 10mo ago
    It's an incredibly credible comment. But if you have a need to have slavish trust in authority, be it LLMs or MDs, yeah, it'll look preposterous that someone might have an independent mind and (gasp) believe their own lying eyes before a supposedly arcane, but in fact incredibly banal and fallible priesthood.
    - SketchySeaBeast 10mo ago
      But they aren't believing their eyes, they are believing a LLM. Wanna talk about a fallible priesthood? People are becoming adepts of the babble box. They make an argument to always "verify", but if your first source is ChatGPT, where are you verifying next? And why not go their first?
      - nataliste 10mo ago
        If you actually slowed down and read what I wrote, you'd see that I said that people blindly believing in either LLMs or MDs are stupid (as did the OP). And gee, what are people supposed to do when they encounter potentially unreliable information from a generic non-vetted source? The same thing you do with literally any other one: https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/what%E2%80%99s-wrong-wikipedia https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/what%E2%80%99s-wrong-wi... > If you do start with Wikipedia, you should make sure articles you read contain citations–and then go read the cited articles to check the accuracy of what you read on Wikipedia. For research papers, you should rely on the sources cited by Wikipedia authors rather than on Wikipedia itself. > There are other sites besides Wikipedia that feature user-generated content, including Quora and Reddit. These sites may show up in your search results, especially when you type a question into Google. Keep in mind that because these sites are user-authored, they are not reliable sources of fact-checked information. If you find something you think might be useful to you on one of those sites, you should look for another source for this information. > The fact that Wikipedia is not a reliable source for academic research doesn't mean that it's wrong to use basic reference materials when you're trying to familiarize yourself with a topic. In fact, the Harvard librarians can point you to specialized encyclopedias in different fields that offer introductory information. These sources can be particularly useful when you need background information or context for a topic you're writing about. This isn't rocket science.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
nutjob2 10mo ago
This is misguided, the moral imperative is to get to the correct diagnosis and treatment by any means possible, usually an "all of the above" strategy. In my experience many doctors are not ideal, and this "always consult a doctor" is legal boilerplate to avoid being sued. Usually you've got less than a 50-50 chance of getting useful help from a doctor on any one visit. In my case multiple doctor's treatment of my hypertension was largely useless because it followed the "typical" treatment. I only found what worked for me by accident. In other cases my own research was far superior to a regular doctor's visit. I can also quote the experience of a family member whose research into a major surgery paid huge dividends and if they had followed the advice of the first 2 doctors the surgery would very likely have failed. The chances of getting correctly diagnosed and treated for a problem that is not obvious is surprisingly close to zero unless you have a very good doctor who has plenty of time for you.

I think it's morally wrong to trust a child's well-being to an LLM over a trained medical professional, and I feel strongly enough about this to express that here.

jfindper 10mo ago

I agree with you, and reading some of the takes in this thread is actually blowing my mind. I cannot believe that the top-voted comment right now is saying to not trust doctors, use an LLM to diagnose yourself and others.

vorpalhex 10mo ago
You've never had "the experience". I'll share mine. Unusual severe one sided eye pain. Go to regular doctor's, explain, get told it's a "stye" and do hot compresses. Problem gets worse, I go to urgent care. Urgent care doc takes one look at me and immediately sends me to the ER saying it's severe and she can't diagnose it because she is unqualified. Go to ER, get seen by two specialists, a general practicioner and a gaggle of nurses. Get told it's a bad eye infection, put on strong steroids. Problem gets worse (more slowly at least). Schedule an urgent appoint with an opthalmologist. For some reason the scheduling lady just like, comprehends my urgency and gets me a same day appointment. Opthalmologist does 5 minutes of exam, puts in some eye drops and pain is immediately gone. She puts me on a very serious steroid with instructions to dose hourly and visit her daily. Only reason I am seeing out of both eyes today. As the top comment says, do not just "trust" Doctors. About 70% of hospital deaths are due to preventable mistakes in the hospital. People who are invested in their own care, who seek second opinions, who argue (productively) with their doctor have the best outcomes by far. Nobody said not to work with doctors, but blindly trusting a single doctor will seriously harm your outcomes.
- daveguy 10mo ago
  > About 70% of hospital deaths are due to preventable mistakes in the hospital. Sure sounds like an asspull stat. Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence. Do you have a reference for that? Care to share?
  - cogman10 10mo ago
    At the high end, it's about 4.1% https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31965525/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31965525/
  - andrepd 10mo ago
    7 out of 10 made up statistics use the number 7 :p
  - vorpalhex 10mo ago
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499956/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499956/
- jfindper 10mo ago
  >About 70% of hospital deaths are due to preventable mistakes in the hospital. It's awful that you had a bad experience, but no. Nowhere near 70% of hospital deaths are from preventable mistakes. I would also note that in your experience, you ended up trusting a different doctor (ophthalmologist), not ChatGPT. Second opinions from other qualified professionals is a thumbs up from me.
  - malfist 10mo ago
    I would add to your note, that the person that was correct in their care was the actual expert. Doctors are experts in their fields, but until they saw an ophthalmologist, they didn't see the right practitioner. Just like I wouldn't go to my podiatrist to treat a complex case of rosecea, urgent care and GCP aren't for specialized, complex and rare cases.
    - ponector 10mo ago
      I think chatgpt can help to argue with doctors and get to the specialist faster.
  - hiyer 10mo ago
    The author doesn't say don't trust doctors or trust chatgpt. He says don't trust "a single doctor" and look for a second opinion whenever possible.
    - jfindper 10mo ago
      Getting a second opinion is smart! Get it from a qualified professional, not chatgpt.
  - vorpalhex 10mo ago
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499956/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499956/ cites >200,000 from one estimate. Harvard Health throws out 700,000 deaths per year in hospitals total. ~0.28 according to my quick math. I generally expect such counts to be under-representative. I'm also probably conflating cases of "this person was going to die regardless but the hospital screwed something up" with "this person was not going to die but did die because the hospital screwed up." It's not clear how any source would avoid that conflation though.
- dingnuts 10mo ago
  [dead]
dingnuts 10mo ago
[dead]
nataliste 10mo ago
[flagged]
- jfindper 10mo ago
  Maybe you should put this comment into ChatGPT and ask it if you should take a step away from the computer for a little bit. >The problem is you're all dumb and getting dumber. But yeah, you're the only smart person here. Clap clap.
  - nataliste 10mo ago
    >Of course, you and every other histrionic lemming won't take this to heart or even really read it. You'll skim it, pretend that's the same thing, look for the no-no words, hammer your keyboard, confabulate a response to something no one actually said, then pat yourself on the back for having slapped down yet another hand reaching out to lift you out of your own ignorance. Like clockwork.
    - jfindper 10mo ago
      Of course I'm not going to read fucking paragraphs of pretentious writing calling me dumb. Genius call.
- WhyOhWhyQ 10mo ago
  Everyone on this website has thoughts on LLM's, not just you. LLM's are heavily biased by leading questions, which is not a good property in a doctor. They also tend to respond in a way to please the prompter, which might be a frustrated parent, not in a way which is impartial and based on good medical practices. They frequently speak with high confidence and low accuracy.
- tomhow 10mo ago
  This is a completely unacceptable comment on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're looking for a higher standard of discourse here. These lines in particular are relevant: Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes. We have to ban accounts that continue to comment like this, so please take a moment to remind yourself of the guidelines and make an effort to observe them if you want to keep participating here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

reenorap 10mo ago

[flagged]

jfindper 10mo ago
>How does this line up with your religious belief that doctors are infallible and should be 100% trusted? They did not say that in their comment. Replying in obvious bad faith makes your original comment even less credible than it already is.
- nataliste 10mo ago
  It's an incredibly credible comment. But if you have a need to have slavish trust in authority, be it LLMs or MDs, yeah, it'll look preposterous that someone might have an independent mind and (gasp) believe their own lying eyes before a supposedly arcane, but in fact incredibly banal and fallible priesthood.
  - SketchySeaBeast 10mo ago
    But they aren't believing their eyes, they are believing a LLM. Wanna talk about a fallible priesthood? People are becoming adepts of the babble box. They make an argument to always "verify", but if your first source is ChatGPT, where are you verifying next? And why not go their first?
    - nataliste 10mo ago
      If you actually slowed down and read what I wrote, you'd see that I said that people blindly believing in either LLMs or MDs are stupid (as did the OP). And gee, what are people supposed to do when they encounter potentially unreliable information from a generic non-vetted source? The same thing you do with literally any other one: https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/what%E2%80%99s-wrong-wikipedia https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/what%E2%80%99s-wrong-wi... > If you do start with Wikipedia, you should make sure articles you read contain citations–and then go read the cited articles to check the accuracy of what you read on Wikipedia. For research papers, you should rely on the sources cited by Wikipedia authors rather than on Wikipedia itself. > There are other sites besides Wikipedia that feature user-generated content, including Quora and Reddit. These sites may show up in your search results, especially when you type a question into Google. Keep in mind that because these sites are user-authored, they are not reliable sources of fact-checked information. If you find something you think might be useful to you on one of those sites, you should look for another source for this information. > The fact that Wikipedia is not a reliable source for academic research doesn't mean that it's wrong to use basic reference materials when you're trying to familiarize yourself with a topic. In fact, the Harvard librarians can point you to specialized encyclopedias in different fields that offer introductory information. These sources can be particularly useful when you need background information or context for a topic you're writing about. This isn't rocket science.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

nutjob2 10mo ago

This is misguided, the moral imperative is to get to the correct diagnosis and treatment by any means possible, usually an "all of the above" strategy. In my experience many doctors are not ideal, and this "always consult a doctor" is legal boilerplate to avoid being sued. Usually you've got less than a 50-50 chance of getting useful help from a doctor on any one visit. In my case multiple doctor's treatment of my hypertension was largely useless because it followed the "typical" treatment. I only found what worked for me by accident. In other cases my own research was far superior to a regular doctor's visit. I can also quote the experience of a family member whose research into a major surgery paid huge dividends and if they had followed the advice of the first 2 doctors the surgery would very likely have failed. The chances of getting correctly diagnosed and treated for a problem that is not obvious is surprisingly close to zero unless you have a very good doctor who has plenty of time for you.