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army1987 comments on Open thread, February 15-28, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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“The vast majority” != “All”. What's wrong with “you most likely have nothing to worry about, but I suggest doing this exam the off-chance that you do”? You've got to multiply the probability by the disutility, and the result can be large enough to worry about even if the probability is small. (Yes, down that way Pascal's mugging lies, but still.)
EDIT: Okay, given the replies to this comment I'm going to Aumann my estimate of the cost of tests for rare diseases upwards by a couple of orders of magnitude. Retracted.
I'm pretty sure that, in this case, the probability is smaller than the disutility is large. Getting tested for cancer doesn't come cheap.
Doctors get taught to practice evidence-based medicine. There's a lack of clinical trials that show that you can increase life span by routinically giving people who suffer from headaches brain scans.
If I understand the argument right, then doctors are basically irrational because the favor empirical results from trials over trying to think through the problem on a intellectual level?
MONNAY.
The question is, whose utility?
There's also the problem of false positives. Treatments for rare diseases are often expensive and/or carry serious side effects.
I was thinking of diagnostics, not treatment, though from DanielLC's reply I guess I had underestimated the cost of that, too.
If you start diagnosing and find false positives than you are usually going to treat them.