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Douglas_Knight comments on Open thread, September 15-21, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: gjm 15 September 2014 12:24PM

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Comment author: Douglas_Knight 25 September 2014 12:34:58AM 0 points [-]

Whether they are about rare diseases or common diseases, almost all results that you get out of 23andMe are silly because they don't have rational effects on potential behavior. (They may have irrational effects - if you can use it motivate actions that you ought to be doing anyway, that's great. But there are also bad irrational reactions.)

Depending on your genetics, your chance of dying of heart disease might be as low as 30% or as high as 70%. (I made up those numbers; I suspect the real range evaluable with current genetics is much narrower.) Even the low number, 30% is very high. If you have a 30% of dying of something, you should think about it and react to it. Even in the best case, you still have to think about heart disease.