zlacker

>>rossan+(OP)
This doesn’t surprise me. We have massive systemic issues in medical science and care delivery.

- Medical science handles variation by simply assuming that large enough samples will average out variation. This loses a ton of information as the “average person” is a construct that almost certainly doesn’t exist.

- news media on medical science glosses over all uncertainties in the name of clickbaity sensationalism.

- lawyers are the incentivized by our adversarial legal system to adopt aggressively hyperbolic interpretations of the science to sue people and extract money.

- medical associations then tweak policies to protect against malpractice

Run this loop enough times and lots of noise gets amplified.

My hope is the AI+sensors ushers in the era of truely personalized medicine.

>>rapate+Vf5
> - Medical science handles variation by simply assuming that large enough samples will average out variation. This loses a ton of information as the “average person” is a construct that almost certainly doesn’t exist.

Well, this wouldn't even be that bad, if sample size were actually large enough.

>>eru+zx5
No I think the point that was being made is that the "average person" idea is not that great if you have huge variance. If I have a uniform distribution from 0 to 1, average is '0.5', but its just as likely to get 0. or 1.

>>frotau+Vz5
Yes, I know.

My point goes beyond that one: yes, variance is a problem. But _even_ _just_ getting good averages, for all their faults, requires a bigger n than many studies have. Especially observational studies.