You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

gwern comments on Is latent Toxoplasmosis worth doing something about? - Less Wrong Discussion

23 Post author: jsalvatier 17 November 2011 05:04PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (28)
Tags: health

Comments (28)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: gwern 17 November 2011 06:49:00PM 5 points [-]

Phenotype screens off genotype, as the genetic saying goes. Infection reduces Openness? Well, do you have some reason to want to increase your Openness? (Are you also looking into acquiring some psilocybin, which might actually be cheaper than treatment if Morendil is generalizable about it taking 'months' ?)

Slower reactions - would that significantly improve your life? I'm a cat person so I may be infected, but I can't say I often think (outside of taekwondo) 'I wish I had 10% faster reflexes!'

The greater jealousy thing may be an issue.

Comment author: roystgnr 18 November 2011 04:46:16AM 6 points [-]

Car crashes are still responsible for a million deaths and something like a trillion dollars in damages every year. Reducing the number of people on the road with slowed reaction times would only have to make a very small relative dent in that to have a very large absolute effect.

On the other hand, toxoplasmosis treatment is almost certainly not the low-hanging fruit here - better cultural attitudes and vehicle safety features already make driving much safer in some places than in others, and self-driving cars may make the very concept of driver reaction time moot in a generation.

Comment author: gwern 18 November 2011 02:50:24PM 6 points [-]

Treatment on a large scale presents different concerns than on a small scale.

  1. Specifically, what about reinfection? AFAIK human-to-human infection is not how toxo is spreading, and so a mass treatment plan would not affect the reinfection rate or give people any sort of immunity. So either the benefit will be temporary as people are reinfected by their cats, or this is a perpetual ongoing public health commitment on the scale of vaccinations.
  2. And the treatment uses antibiotics. I suspect more lives are saved every year by antibiotics than are taken by cars, many more lives. (IIRC, there's around 50k car deaths annually in the US; I'd guess there are way more infections cured than that.) What's the risk of developing antibiotic resistance in toxo or anything people might have? (We're not risking any of the last-resort antibiotics are we?) And antibiotics aren't perfect, they can have serious side-effects.

So, I'm saying this is very far from a no-brainer on an individual basis, and it's even worse on a population level.

Comment author: MBlume 18 November 2011 04:55:00AM 3 points [-]

Self-driving cars look like an excellent lever point to increase standard of living and economic productivity. Unfortunately, I strongly suspect they will be regulated out of existence for about a decade after the technology is up to snuff.

Comment author: MattTagg 06 September 2012 08:16:54PM *  2 points [-]

I strongly suspect they will be regulated out of existence for about a decade after the technology is up to snuff.

I wouldn't be so sure about that.

Self-Driving Cars Approved By California Legislature

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/30/self-driving-cars_n_1845018.html

Comment author: CronoDAS 18 November 2011 12:16:54AM 0 points [-]

'I wish I had 10% faster reflexes!'

That would probably make me better at video games...

Comment author: DanielLC 18 November 2011 05:09:38AM 0 points [-]

It explains 10% of the variance. It can take you from the 45th percentile to the3 55th. It's probably decreases it by less than 10%.

Comment author: Peter_de_Blanc 18 November 2011 12:15:38AM 0 points [-]

Sounds like you should do more Tae Kwon Do.

Comment author: gwern 18 November 2011 12:34:22AM 2 points [-]

Yeah. But thinking about it some more, TKD was probably not the best example - I actually have thought, quite a few times, during fencing that 'man I wish I had faster reflexes, he's ridiculous'. (Weapons are a lot faster than legs.)

Comment author: Peter_de_Blanc 18 November 2011 02:54:22AM 2 points [-]

My fencing coach emphasizes modeling your opponent more accurately and setting up situations where you control when stuff happens. Both of these skills can substitute somewhat for having faster reflexes.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit