Is there a family history of this? If so that would skew my assessment towards that of the first doctor. If not, seriously another opinion...

Can you ask the second doctor to examine you to at least the same standard as the first one?

Maybe someone on Less Wrong who has access to UpToDate can send you a copy of their glaucoma page, for an authoritative list of pros and cons.

Laser iridotomy appears to be less risky:

http://www.surgeryencyclopedia.com/La-Pa/Laser-Iridotomy.html

http://www.surgeryencyclopedia.com/Fi-La/Iridectomy.html

My impression is that glaucoma (which is, basically, too high intraocular pressure) is easy to diagnose. Two doctors disagreeing on it would worry me.

Don't get just a third independent opinion, get a fourth one as well.

My eye doctor diagnosed closed-angle glaucoma, and recommends an iridectomy. I think he might be a bit too trigger-happy, so I followed up with another doctor, and she didn't find the glaucoma. She carefully stated that the first diagnosis can still be the correct one, the first was a more complete examination.

Any insights about the pros and cons of iridectomy?

From looking at the scripts, it appears first and last names (actually, all capitalised words I think) were counted separately ("Neal: 11, Stephenson: 11" and "Munroe: 13, Randall: 11", etc) and first names were handedited out (so that's why both Nassim and Taleb are on the list).

The answer is somewhere between "Nassim Taleb was quoted 16 times, and three of those times the attribution was just 'Taleb'" and "Nassim Taleb was quoted 13 times and was mentioned in three other quotes (since he's a controversial figure)".

Oh, these are all cumulative lifetime total karma scores...? I thought these numbers were just for 2013.

I am a little chagrined that though I am #2 by total karma, I have only 2 in the bests list. Seems I need to be a little more selective in the future.

Top short quotes (2009-2013) by karma per character:

• 55 A Bet is a Tax on Bullshit Alex Tabarrok
• 45 Luck is statistics taken personally. Penn Jellete
• 42 I've got to start listening to those quiet, nagging doubts.Calvin
• 33 Comic Quote Minus 37 -- Ryan Armand Also a favourite.
• 34 Nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time.Ken Wilber
• 32 A problem well stated is a problem half solved.Charles Kettering
• 48 I will not procrastinate regarding any ritual granting immortality. --Evil Overlord List #230
• 29 The greatest weariness comes from work not done.-Eric Hoffer
• 26 "Most haystacks do not even have a needle." -- Lorenzo
• 24 "I accidentally changed my mind." my four-year-old
• 40 Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.-Joel Spolsky
• 31 Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. Voltaire
• 39 People say "think outside the box," as if the box wasn't a fucking great idea.Sean Thomason
• 38 The Noah principle: predicting rain doesn’t count, building arks does. -Warren E. Buffett
• 37 It’s easy to lie with statistics, but it’s easier to lie without them. -Fred Mosteller
• 30 If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.-Seneca
• 34 It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.George Bernard Shaw
• 15 Focusing is about saying no.-- Steve Jobs
• 34 "Working in mysterious ways" is the greatest euphemism for failure ever devised.TheTweetOfGod
• 18 "A problem well put, is half solved." - John Dewey
• 34 Market exchange is a pathetically inadequate substitute for love, but it scales better.S. T. Rev
• 12 Death is the gods' crime.Unsounded
• 24 The most practical thing in the world is a good theory. Helmholtz
• 29 When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? John Maynard Keynes
• 30 “Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.” - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
• 28 Writing program code is a good way of debugging your thinking. -- Bill Venables
• 28 It is easy to be certain....One has only to be sufficiently vague.Charles S. Peirce
• 30 Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations. — John Von Neumann
• 31 There is one rule that's very simple, but not easy: observe reality and adjust. Ran Prieur
• 31 It's a horrible feeling when you don't understand why you did something.-- Dennis Monokroussos
• 26 Shouldn't "it works like a charm" be said about things that don't work?Jason Roy
• 21 Things are only impossible until they're not. -- Jean-Luc Picard
• 30 Now, now, perfectly symmetrical violence never solved anything.--Professor Farnsworth, Futurama.
• 24 Part of the potential of things is how they break. Vi Hart, How To Snakes
• 26 The dream is damned and dreamer too if dreaming's all that dreamers do.--Rory Miller
• 25 A scholar is just a library’s way of making another library. Daniel Dennett
• 29 We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it. Mark Twain
• 29 The Company that needs a new machine tool is already paying for it. -old Warner Swasey ad
• 25 "Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from SCIENCE!" ~Girl Genius
• 26 Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers. — Grossman's Law
• 22 Most people would rather die than think; many do. – Bertrand Russell
• 18 A sharp knife is nothing without a sharp eye.Klingon proverb.
• 22 The only road to doing good shows, is doing bad shows.Louis C.K., on Reddit
• 28 My brain technically-not-a-lies to me far more than it actually lies to me.-- Aristosophy (again)
• 23 The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off. Gloria Steinem
• 27 Nature draws no line between living and nonliving. -- K. Eric Drexler, Engines of Creation
• 26 “Anything left on your bucket list?”“Not dying...”-Bill Gates in his AMA on reddit.
• 22 It is better to destroy one's own errors than those of others. Democritus
• 12 Reality is not optional. Thomas Sowell
• 27 If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance we can solve them.-- Isaac Asimov
• 17 Statistics is applied philosophy of science. A. P. Dawid
• 26 A man who says he is willing to meet you halfway is usually a poor judge of distance.Unknown
• 22 Forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today. Lawrence Krauss
• 26 Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.H.L. Mencken
• 27 The first rule of human club is you don't explicitly discuss the rules of human club.Silas Dogood
• 23 Go down deep enough into anything and you will find mathematics. Dean Schlicter
• 18 Good things come to those who steal them.-- Magnificent Sasquatch
• 24 We are built to be effective animals, not happy ones. -Robert Wright, The Moral Animal
• 19 Being right too soon is socially unacceptable. Robert A. Heinlein
• 14 "Anything you can do, I can do meta" -Rudolf Carnap
• 17 Mind is a machine for jumping to conclusions - Daniel Kahneman
• 26 If Tetris has taught me anything it's that errors pile up and accomplishments disappear.-Unknown
• 26 A faith which cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.Arthur C. Clarke
• 26 Nobody panics when things go "according to plan"… even if the plan is horrifying. The Joker
• 23 "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." --Friedrich Nietzsche
• 14 I intend to live forever or die trying-- Groucho Marx
• 26 We shall not grow wiser before we learn that much that we have done was very foolish.-- F. A. Hayek
• 20 I honestly don't know. Let's see what happens. -- Hans. The Troll Hunter
• 16 Luck is opportunity plus preparation plus luck.--Jane Espenson
• 20 The singularity is my retirement plan. -- tocomment, in a Hacker News post
• 19 Better our hypotheses die for our errors than ourselves. -- Karl Popper
• 11 Whenever you can, count.--Sir Francis Galton
• 22 Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.-Charles Babbage
• 19 In general, we are least aware of what our minds do best. — Marvin Minsky
• 20 It is easier to love humanity than to love one's neighbor.--Eric Hoffer, on Near/Far
• 15 Keep your solutions close, and your problems closer.afoolswisdom
• 18 "If God gives you lemons, you find a new God."-- Powerthirst 2: Re-Domination
• 17 Truth comes out of error more easily than out of confusion.-Francis Bacon
• 23 Opening your eyes doesn't make a bad picture worse. http://onefte.com/2011/07/17/bully-for-you/
• 19 Know the hair you have to get the hair you want. -Pantene Pro-V hair care bottle
• 16 The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it. -Alan Saporta
• 16 Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse. — Wolof proverb
• 20 Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -- Voltaire
• 18 Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.--Bruce Lee
• 9 AI makes philosophy honest -- Dan Dennet
• 18 God created the Earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands. -- Dutch proverb
• 20 "Just because you no longer believe a lie, does not mean you now know the truth."Mark Atwood
• 14 History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme. -Mark Twain
• 17 The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. -- Plutarch
• 18 The person you are most afraid to contradict is yourself. -Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• 16 Like all dreamers, I confused disenchantment with truth. (Jean-Paul Sartre)
• 20 Man, I'm amazing! I'm a machine that turns FOOD into IDEAS! -- T-Rex, Dinosaur Comics #539
• 17 What good fortune for those in power that people do not think. Adolph Hitler
• 14 We see things not as they are but as we are, ...- G. T. W. Patrick
• 19 You don't have to believe everything you think. Seen on bumper sticker, via ^zhurnaly.
• 19 The truth is out there, but so are the lies.-Dana Scully, The X-Files, Season 1, Episode 17
• 13 Would anybody tell me if I was getting stupider? Mike Patton
• 13 We're even wrong about which mistakes we're making.-Carl Winfeld
• 13 If I close my mind in fear, please pry it open. -- Metallica

Top original authors by number of quotes. (Note that authors and mentions are not disambiguated.)

• Graham 43
• Russell 41
• Feynman 39
• Pratchett 30
• Chesterton 29
• Einstein 27
• Nietzsche 25
• Heinlein 23
• Dennett 22
• Johnson 20
• Bacon 20
• Wilson 19
• Newton 18
• Franklin 18
• Aaronson 18
• Shaw 17
• Darwin 17
• Taleb 16
• Dawkins 16
• Voltaire 14
• Kahneman 14
• Wittgenstein 13
• Sowell 13
• Munroe 13
• Aristotle 13
• Silver 12
• Meier 12
• Maynard 12
• Hume 12
• Asimov 12
• Stephenson 11
• Sagan 11
• Plato 11
• Orwell 11
• Moldbug 11
• Mencken 11
• Locke 11
• Huxley 11
• Hoffer 11
• Egan 11
• SMBC 10
• Pinker 10
• Peirce 10
• Neumann 10
• Keynes 10
• Harris 10
• Gould 10
• Friedman 10
• Clark 10
• Bakker 10
• Minsky 9
• Marx 9
• Leibniz 9
• Holmes 9
• Hofstadter 9
• Descartes 9
• Buffett 9
• Thoreau 8
• Jefferson 8
• Jaynes 8
• Godin 8
• Dijkstra 8
• Deutsch 8
• Crowley 8
• Aurelius 8
• Yudkowsky 7
• Wong 7
• Wilde 7
• Turing 7
• Schopenhauer 7
• Rochefoucauld 7
• Munger 7
• Mitchell 7
• Medawar 7
• Lichtenberg 7
• Hanson 7
• Goethe 7
• Diogenes 7
• Churchill 7
• Carlyle 7
• Babbage 7