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.

Lumifer comments on Open Thread Feb 22 - Feb 28, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Elo 21 February 2016 09:14PM

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

Comments (228)

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

Comment author: Elo 28 February 2016 10:13:16PM *  0 points [-]

As was pointed out to me recently; (general practitioner) doctors are v̶e̶r̶y̶ good at general health;

specialists are very good at specific medicines; but if you want to spend 200 hours reading up everything about one molecule you can probably overtake their knowledge.

Comment author: Lumifer 28 February 2016 11:44:20PM 1 point [-]

doctors are very good at general health

What does "general health" mean? Doctors are not good at keeping people healthy and each failure of health is specific, not "general".

Comment author: Elo 29 February 2016 03:58:32AM 0 points [-]

A General Practitioner doctor deals with all health ailments. as a consequence they are not trained to be experts in all health ailments; they are trained in the first steps of dealing with all ailments (which is a difficult endeavour).

I made up the 200 hour figure, but if you consider one subject for one semester of university is expected to cost 150-250 hours depending on the details. Let's say I underestimated 200 and actually it's more like 4-500 hours reading up and understanding everything about one molecule to overtake the knowledge of health professionals.

Comment author: ChristianKl 29 February 2016 09:55:32AM 0 points [-]

A General Practitioner doctor deals with all health ailments. as a consequence they are not trained to be experts in all health ailments; they are trained in the first steps of dealing with all ailments (which is a difficult endeavour).

That's a defense for the claim that doctors aren't experts at everything. It's not evidence for that claim that doctors are very good at general health.

Comment author: Elo 29 February 2016 10:17:27AM *  0 points [-]

alright; I can wear that. I think I meant to say; "general practitioner doctors are very not good at oddly specific health" have adjusted the post above. Did not mean to make that claim.

Comment author: Jiro 29 February 2016 03:17:39AM *  0 points [-]

"General health" is a health intervention which would, if followed, mean that a relatively large number of patients' lives would be improved over how they are now.

Comment author: Lumifer 29 February 2016 03:49:34PM 0 points [-]

"General health" is a health intervention

8-0 I am more confused...