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SilasBarta comments on Link: "Health Care Myth Busters: Is There a High Degree of Scientific Certainty in Modern Medicine?" - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: CronoDAS 01 April 2011 05:25AM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 01 April 2011 08:22:54PM 3 points [-]

When it comes to medicine, if computers CAN outperform the average person, we should probably be using computers anyway.

Hey, if you want to get doctors to step out of the way on the grounds that a computer really can trounce their expert judgment, even in just a few domains ... well, you're going up against a lot of resistance.

Comment author: Raemon 01 April 2011 08:33:23PM *  4 points [-]

Well, yeah. That will definitely be an issue, if not now then in a few years. But I also wouldn't be surprised if this was a genuinely difficult task, and I don't know that statements like "a computer can probably outperform you" are justifiable to throw around, unless you actually know that computers DO have a better track record at the task in question.

Comment author: SilasBarta 01 April 2011 08:39:09PM *  2 points [-]

I hadn't read it myself, but I remember that there are a lot of stories like these in Ian Ayers's Supercrunchers and the success of simple algorithms over expert judgment and the resistance thereto. And Superfreakonomics mentioned the story of how hard it was to get doctors to wash their hands as often as necessary.