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Illano comments on Open thread, Oct. 12 - Oct. 18, 2015 - Less Wrong
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I'm rather frustrated that there's not a guide to being generally healthier that uses probabilities and payoffs and such to convince readers that they should bother to do any specific activity, or adopt any specific intervention to make themselves healthier. Health information is so disorganized-- which is fine for the cutting edge stuff, but for stuff that many people get that we've known how to treat for a while, such as cavities, acid reflux, and so on, I feel like it should be way the buck easier to find detailed info on how much certain activities increase or decrease your risk of getting that problem by, and what the base rate is.
For example, a week ago, I would have guessed that maybe 5% of adults in the US had ever had a cavity, but a quick Google search suggests that the actual number is closer to 95%. I've gone from rarely flossing to flossing daily since finding this out!
Agreed. I really wish that there was a site like webMD that actually included rates of the diseases and the symptoms. I don't think it would be a big step to go from there to something that would actually propose cost-effective tests for you based on your symptoms.
e.g. You select sore-throat and fever as symptoms and it says that out of people with those symptoms, 70% have a cold, 25% have a strep infection and 5% have something else (these numbers are completely made up). An even better system would then look at which tests you could do to better nail down the probabilities, which could be as simple as asking some questions like "Do you have any visible rashes?" or asking for test results like a quick strep test.