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soreff comments on Prediction is hard, especially of medicine - Less Wrong
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Ow Ow Ow Ow
Weirdly enough, there is one prediction that looks like it panned out:
It would have to be in the single least life-critical area.
A lot of those areas turned out to be intrinsically harder than anyone expected. Oncology, Alzheimer's...
One thing that I just cannot understand: We had semi-workable artificial hearts 30 years ago. Now, yes, it is hard to make surfaces biocompatible. Still, that has been accomplished in many cases. As a society, we are reasonably good at mechanical engineering. How come a quarter of us still lose our live to the failure of a pump? We hear all the time about global warming, and sustainable this and recyclable that, and sometimes about what NASA might do. Prioritizing any of those things ahead of a decent permanent artificial heart is crazy.
I thought the increase in cosmetic surgery prediction was also very accurate, even if the US is not yet competitive with (say) South Korea.
Oops, missed that area, even less life-critical, Many Thanks! (Can I construe the replacement of solid metal crowns with polymers and ceramics as a cosmetic change, and therefore being in an area of overlap? :) )
Depends. Weren't solid metal crowns often involved with mercury amalgams? Whenever mercury is involved with anything, I have an unshakeable suspicion that someone is being harmed somewhere. It's a little like lead or a bloody body: maybe it's perfectly innocent and there's a reasonable explanation why you should not be worried by its presence... but don't bet on it and call the police.
Hmm - as far as I know, the metal crowns that I have didn't require any mercury amalgams.
I have three such ceramic implants. I remember having them put in over a simple half-hour operation, being awed by the amazing advances that medicine had made to allow me to carry on my life as if I hadn't knocked my teeth out at all. Little did I know that this was one of the only success stories of the last decade of medicine!