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.

DanielLC comments on Open thread, February 15-28, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: David_Gerard 15 February 2013 11:17PM

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

Comments (345)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: DanielLC 20 February 2013 05:16:10AM 0 points [-]

More precisely, the question is whether or not the right reference class is one in which cancer tests are worth while. The headaches would have to be very unusually severe to get enough evidence.

Also, a doctor can ask for details about the headache before prescribing the expensive tests.

It was never mentioned whether or not the doctor asked for details. It's also possible that none of those reference classes are worth looking into, and she'd need headaches and something else.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 20 February 2013 10:38:25PM 0 points [-]

Cancer isn't the only solvable problem which could get ignored if headaches are handled as a minor problem which will go away on their own.

Comment author: DanielLC 20 February 2013 11:50:08PM 0 points [-]

Yeah, but the other ones also get ignored if you assume it's cancer. To my knowledge, they have to be individually tested for. If none is worth testing for individually, it's best to ignore the headaches.