AlphaOne1

I also thing the marketing release contradicts the terms of the cleared status by the FDA. The FDA specifically says this is not for screening or diagnosis. So essentially what does this device actually help with? A physician needs to be suspecting something abnormal with a lesion before using. If it is "negative" would a physician really want to trust a device in the off chance it misses a melanoma? If I were a family doctor and was suspicious of a lesion enough to use this device, wouldn't it make more sense to send to derm or just go ahead an biopsy?

I could be wrong, but this device is FDA cleared which is not the same as FDA approved. Title is a little misleading.

Interesting idea. I have recently been reading John C. Bogle's work (of Vanguard fame) and he seems to be of the opinion, from my interpretation, that short term speculation will have disasterious consequences for the Stock Market and that we need a sort of Sin Tax to discourage such behavior. Your idea would track with that.

Your comment reminded me about a discussion G.K Chesterton has in "Orthodoxy" on madness. My take is that when facts and information is divorced from experience we risk being unmoored from reality:

If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst for it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgement. He is not hampered by a sense of humor or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

[0] https://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Gilbert_K_Chesterton/Orthodo...

Maybe I'm being too simplistic, but I think going forward critical thinking as well as an understanding of what to value is going to be important for future generations. Something that computers will never be good at doing is 'understanding' what is valuable in life since many times this cannot be measured. In essence, a healthy understanding of the three transcendentals the Good the True, and the Beautiful will be essential to keep our humanity. ChatGPT can perform many amazing skills but lacks the ability to accurately judge the value of what is it reporting. I think passing on a love for the transcendentals to our children is the only way to inoculate them from the firehose of 'junk' information ChatGP et al is about to unleash on the world.

For all of the old Microsoft's faults, they really did an excellent job with backwards compatibility. Now things are a mess and I fear that you are right. It really isn't the developers fault imo. OS really should be more stable.

I would argue because no charity was given to opinions contrary to what Dr. Fauci and the NIH declaired as truth. Perhaps most infamous is Dr. Collins asking for a takedown of the Great Berington declaration. The fact that so little was certain early on about COVID should have been a reason to allow physicians and scientists to discuss and debate policy without fear of having their careers destroyed. Now that we are further out from the pandemic cooler heads will prevail but I fear the damage to the reputation of the health authorities in the US will take a long time to recover.

[1] https://www.statnews.com/2021/12/23/at-a-time-when-the-u-s-n...

Vinay Prasad, MD (Heme/Onc) gives a very good rundown on why this trial is so important. He also points out why having accurate data for screening recommendations is so crucial. USPTF has been making recommendations recently without data to back up them up and get appropriately taken to task for that.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SMRS4-ng8T0

The title of this article reminded me of a thought provoking book by GK Chesterton, "The Everlasting Man", obviously he write from a religious perspective but one discussion raised a question that I had not considered before. Why do we assume primitive man was any less intelligent or artistic than we are now?

"Human civilization is older than human records. That is the sane way of stating our relations to these remote things. Humanity has left examples of its other arts earlier than the art of writing; or at least of any writing that we can read. [..] In short, the prehistoric period need not mean the primitive period, in the sense of the barbaric or bestial period. It does not mean the time before civilization or the time before arts and crafts. It simply means the time before any connected narratives that we can read. This does indeed make all the practical difference between remembrance and forgetfulness;" [1]

[1]https://www.worldinvisible.com/library/chesterton/everlastin...

I always said that the public health official must be absolutely certain they that all of the vaccines they were pushing are as safe and effective as they claimed before even considering mandating them. We now know they were wrong about at least one of them: the J&J vaccine is no longer being offered in my health system both because it's questionable safety profile and the fact that it is not as effective. Once we start preventing children from entering schools and removing people from their jobs (some with decades of experience) for not wanting to take a vaccine, the burden of proof is on the health officials to prove they are right. We also must remember that these measures have second order effects. I fear by abusing the trust the public had in physicians, public health officials have cause possibly permanent damage to the trust the average citizen has for the health community (this is especially pronounced among the underserved community).

yes, but I think we need to start discussing what value college is actually bringing to society. Many of these majors do not contribute directly to wealth growth (but teach 'skills' such as critical thinking etc.) Higher education has no incentive to lower prices because they carry none of the risk if a student defaults. Even worse, there is no guarantee that students will be financially successful after graduation and they are still responsible for the debt if they are not successful. I don't blame students for being resentful but I think the resentment needs to be directed at the correct source of the problem: higher education, rather than blaming businesses for not paying enough money to pay off a 100K student loan debt. I think it is a tragedy that we live in a society where you are viewed as 'less than' if one does not go to college. This view takes advantage of our emotions and leads some to go to college without a plan and load up on debt without a clear plan on what they will do with their life. Just to be clear, some people should definitely go to college but the current situation kids being told practically from birth (my evidence is the popularity of 529 funds parents/grandparents set up) that they need to attend college is ridiculous.

Moderation is very complicated especially since it can be subjective based on the background and skill level of who is watching the video. Would it be possible to crowd source this? For example, I could add a filter to my search saying exclude 'profanity' and videos with profanity would be removed. Or exclude videos that are 'dangerous' or 'for entertainment only' and those would be removed. My thought is that we should use the shear numbers of persons watching the videos to our advantage. Honestly, I sort of do this by looking at the comments since many times you can gather the flavor of the video based on the comments. This could also be used to political bias. Videos with a right-wing leaning would get tagged as leaning right and vice-versa. Also, content creators would be incentivized to accurately tag their videos and perhaps the algorithm could penalize content creators with discrepant self-tag versus what viewers tag as.

Thanks for sharing, I just finished watching the video and found it very interesting. I was not aware how many states don't have any licensing requirements which really makes me question why we have so many licensing laws. Do you know if there have been any studies showing a change in pay based on the presence of license? I remember talking to a medical technician who moved from a state with licensing laws and he said he did take a pay cut but still was glad he moved.

The question that needs to asked though is: what would you do with that information? Would you be willing to undergo biopsy (which is the standard for diagnosis) knowing there is a non-zero risk of complication. What if the biopsy is not conclusive? Do we then do a major surgery which includes risk of death? Imaging is NOT diagnostic for tumors. For most lesions, you have to take tissue samples.

Disclosure: I'm a pathologist.

I wonder if there is a difference between oral stories and movies. My kids started to cry while watching the Little Dinosaur (ages 5 and under) several months ago. I recently bought a copy of the uncensored Brother Grim stories. Taking into account how sensitive they have been in the past with G rated cartoons, I decided I would edit the stories in real time (leaving out words like 'blood') and sometimes modify the ending slightly. Recently, I stopped editing the stories. My kids still love the stories and ask me to read them more right before bed time. They even asked me to re-read them Hansel and Gretel, which is quite a brutal tale in my opinion. Show them a single clip of a 'sad/scary' cartoon and they still freak out to this day; however.

I think there is something to be said about Disney cartoons use of music and visual images that sort of forces viewers into a certain emotional mindset. Oral stories/books on the other hand leave it up to the imagination of the listener to conger up the emotions and images. Not sure if this makes sense, but at least in the case of my kids it does.

Do you have a citation for this? Very interesting and would like to look into this more.

I also think the complete implosion of family medicine has made this worse. In the past, you would keep the same family medicine doctor for decades and trust them. They in turn would know what your values and priorities are. Moreover, they would be able to guide you through difficult healthcare decisions that inevitably come up (cancer diagnosis, mental health etc.). We have lost the human connection aspect of medicine and those few physicians that are able to hang on to it are burning out due to the massive amounts of paperwork they need to accomplish. From the hospital perspective, (which many physicians now work for) good paperwork=good patient care. Paperwork is measurable. Relationships (other than in the abstract) are not.

Yes, but in the subsequent podcast with Joe Rogan and Robert Malone, Dr. Malone specifically says that Dr. McCullough asked that he let everyone know that he was basing his information on pre omicron variant and that reinfections are actually much more common with this variant.

Locals [1] is an interesting idea that I think solves some of the problem with trolls. The idea is that you can register for different communities but have to pay in order to comment. The community founder gets a portion of income. They claim that since commenters have skin in the game they are less likely to start flame wars or violate local community guidelines (note that each community can have its own set of rules).

https://www.locals.com/

I think left wing thinkers are not censored as much because they are not as successful on YouTube. My pet theory on why right leaning channels are more successful in terms of viewers on YouTube than left leaning is similar to what happened with talk radio. Currently, most conventional news media has a distinctly left leaning flavor to it. Left leaning thinkers (not liberal per se but what is currently the trendy left leaning thinking) has to compete with these conventional news organizations. There is a demand for alternative voices on the right which is why I think you see many more right wing thinkers on YouTube who are successful. My point is that if left wing thinkers were successful on YouTube to the extent of Crowder et al they would likely be censored as well as they would conflict with the narrative of traditional media. Not sure if this is correct but a glance at top YouTube channels include Tim Pool, Ben Shapiro, and Steven Crowder.

Should have clarified, the reason why I am asking is because my understanding is that under usual circumstances it is the government that pays out for vaccine damages. Does the same apply in the case of an EUA? [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/vaccine-s...

This might be completely obvious but can Pfizer be sued if there is an EUA?

I will be the first to admit that becoming a father was a difficult transition. One book that I recommend that all fathers read is The Boy Crisis. With the usual disclaimer that I do not agree with everything the author states, it greatly helped me see what a crucial role I have in raising our kids (my wife and I were blessed with 5 children, including 2 sets of twins). Interestingly, the first baby was by far the hardest transition because we both felt trapped in our new roles. Now that we are a few years in, it has been extremely rewarding to watch our kids mature. My wife and I have spent hours discussing this topic and we agree that fatherhood in general is not well understood in society today. The book helped me to understand my unique role as a father in raising our kids. My wife and I share a similar value system but are often baffled by how different our approach is to parenting. I might sound antiquated but I really think we compliment each other in how we approach our children.

Oh and one side note: the single most important quality of life change that my wife and I made was to get our kids to go to bed early. We now have them all in bed by 7:30 PM so the rest of the evening we have to ourselves. This takes discipline on our part especially after a long day at work but the kids are much happier with more sleep (even though it can sometimes be a battle to get them to stay in bed).

Overtime you will be surprised at how much progress you can make. Try and enjoy the little things in life. Since I'm in medicine, most of my life has been a whirlwind of activity: having kids has forced me to slow down and appreciate life in a new way. One small example, is that the highlight of my week is seeing my kids super excited for the homemade pancakes I make on Saturdays. It gives mom a break :)

Being a father gets better with time and I will say that parenting is the most important and rewarding undertaking of my life, even more so than programming or graduating medical school. Good luck and remember you are not alone there are literally millions of other fathers out there with similar struggles!

Exactly, previous elections were fairly predictable in what states each candidate would win. In the past, elections had been predicted incorrectly. Some may not know this, but the Chicago Tribune (in)famously preprinted copies stating that Dewey had defeated Truman in part due to the state-of-the-art election predictions which were straw poles. Ironic that Gallop rose to prominence from this situation and now history repeats itself in a way (meaning that if the poles were correct this election would have been called on election day).

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/11/05/george-gal...

Technically, the election isn't over until the votes are certified by each of the states. Probably smart not to pay out until the process has fully played out. Not that the election results will change but some of the bets were for over a million dollars. [1] https://ballotpedia.org/How_and_when_are_election_results_fi...

But do we need a 'documentary' to tell us this is wrong? I would guess that most individuals would agree it's immoral regardless of where you are on the political spectrum albeit for possibly different reasons.

This is like making a movie about why dog fighting is bad and having a movie poster depicting dog fighting in a glamorous light but then having to watch the movie to show that's it's a problem. This is even worse though because children are more easily influenced by what is culturally acceptable. I know the whole 'save the children' is overused now but this is actually a situation where children really should be protected, and I as parent shouldn't have them assaulted by this.

Part of the controversy was the poster that was released for the marketing. People (I think rightfully) thought it was inappropriate. Personally, I thought it was problematic that this poster was not rejected by anyone at Netflix prior to release. The fact that Netflix backtracked on the poster seems to indicate that they realized the mistake they had made. Again, this mistake should never have happened in the first place.

Do we as a society want our children to think that it's ok for children to be sexualized like this? Yes, I know the argument is that the point of the movie is the opposite, but I'm not going to let my children watch it so that the 'learn' this message. The message should be self evident and not need a movie to make the point. Some may disagree but as a parent I feel very strongly about this.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-53846419

I agree that his Basic Economic book is very easy to read. It completely opened my eyes as to how to think about economics in high school when I first read. I recently watched an interview about his latest book, which he just published at 90 years of age, on charter schools. It was fascinating when he goes through the data showing that when charter schools were used in New York, the race gap disappeared. All the special interests involved in schooling as well as lack of accountability is quite depressing. Here is a transcript: https://www.hoover.org/research/economist-looks-90-tom-sowel...

Personally, I see a lot of similarities between "big" government and "big" business in terms of potential for abuse and massive bureaucracy and neither is particularly trustworthy (they are both composed of individual human beings with motives and desires). The major difference is that the government can abuse its power in the name of the "public good". Plus every business is beholden to the market and will go out of business if it does not provide what the public wants. What I am worried about is that we soon have a situation where the regulators that are intended to protect the consumer from abuse, prevent newer more ethical competitors from gaining market share. This happens a lot in the US where big business and big government form a sort of symbiotic relationship to maintain the status quo

I am not a database expert by any means but have been curious about distributed data systems and had not heard of FoundationDB till now and was very excited to read about it. On reading through the documentation, I encountered a section on "Known Limitations"[1] which stated that keys could not be larger than 10kb and values cannot be larger than 100kb. This seems to be a major limitation. Am I missing something or is this strictly for storing text?

[1] https://apple.github.io/foundationdb/known-limitations.html#...