Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org

@NoahH I'm pretty sure that's among their goals. There was a time within living memory, in some parts of the US, when women could be arrested for wearing pants and men could be arrested for having long hair. Many right-wingers would love to go back enforcing gender roles at gunpoint.

@trinsec There are still enough good questions, and good answers, to keep me active there. But the signal-to-noise ratio is definitely dropping, and has been for years. A lot of formerly active users have decided it's not worth it anymore. Many of them are my friends, and sooner or later I'll probably join them. Just not *quite* there yet.

Do I have to explain *everything*?

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Europe-defy-God-by-not-using-the-United-Statess-dollar-which-was-invented-by-Jesus-in-1776/answer/Daniel-Dvorkin-3

@drsbello Yeah, they'll buy that! 😛

Scurry, my pretties, scurry!

DAMN IT.

#Bioinformatics life:

When working with #data from multiple #species, it is important to keep them separate. This is a particularly a problem with #human and #mouse data: we're pretty similar, big-picture-wise, with a lot of similarly named #genes that do similar things. So you want to make sure your species labels for each datum are clear and unambiguous.

Note to self: it helps if you label them "mouse" and "human" rather than ... say ... just to choose a random example ... "muman". Because trying to make *that* happen will get your funding yanked rather quickly.

A friend asks, "What is Neo-Gothic?"

The #Goths were a major geopolitical force from about 200 AD on, ruling much of the territory northeast of the #Roman #Empire, with a powerful and reasonably centralized government. Indeed, it was one of the few military-political entities in the world which could negotiate with #Rome on roughly equal terms. Today we know these people as the "elder Goths."

But around 375 AD, the #Huns crashed into the eastern edge of the #Gothic polity, bringing down their governmental and economic structure and driving uncounted refugees west. The Goths could at that point have been wiped away as so many other peoples had been in the Huns' ruthless march of conquest. Fortunately for them, the Eastern Roman #Emperor at the time, #Valens, gave them permission to settle along the Roman side of the #Danube, and they survived as a culture, albeit in a weakened state. Some commentators of the time claimed they were no longer truly Goths at all, but a new and lesser people, the "#Emos."

Of course they spent a lot of time being gloomy about this. Still, their fundamental nature was not to accept their fate passively: their cities may have lain in dust, but not for nothing was the refrain of one of their traditional songs, "I want more." So they rose, clad in leather and steel, and headed farther west ... conquering the Western Roman Empire in the process during the 5th Century. We divide them into #Visigoths and #Ostrogoths, but "neo-Goths" is a good catch-all phrase.

I hope this clears things up.

From electoral-vote.com: "If #Bragg was expecting a surrender in roughly 48 hours, especially from someone who lives more than 1,000 miles from #Manhattan, then he would likely have made contact with Trump's lawyers by this point. Although we suppose that, to make things easier, Bragg could meet #Trump halfway. Say, have him surrender at, oh, we don't know... #Appomattox Court House, VA? That would be an appropriate location, right?"

The whole post is great, but that last sentence is brilliant.

https://www.quora.com/Why-have-some-people-been-told-that-humans-evolved-from-chimpanzees-gorillas-monkeys-and-other-monkey-type-species/answer/Jake-Dickerman

@denniskpeters Yes, very much this. To some degree it's inevitable, but we *really* need to have fallback plans.

When my father was a NASA engineer, they talked about (I think I'm remembering this) "FO-FO-FAS," i.e. fail-operational, fail-operational, fail-safe. If one major subsystem goes out, the craft still works. If two fail, the same. If three, everyone still gets home alive. Medicine needs the same standard, and I'm not at all sure we're building that in to current systems.

Spot on. Right-wingers are like little kids desperately trying to get adult attention by saying dirty words they don't understand. If they get punished, they feel like they've accomplished something. If all they get is amusement, they'll cry and scream even less coherently.

The problem is, these third-graders are armed, which means we do have to take them somewhat more seriously. As little as possible is still a good idea, though.

@DreadShips Perfection.

@Marquestor I think it's just an abbreviation, specifically an initialism. The broadening of "acronym" annoys me.

For once, an #AI issue where I *can* speak with a certain amount of authority.

I've been hearing "expert systems outperform human #diagnostics, so pretty soon human #physicians will be obsolete" for a few years now. It's closely akin to "#airliners fly themselves these days, so what do we need #pilots for?" In both cases, people are paying attention to the best-case scenario with no understanding of the *enormous* number of how many and various the worse cases really are.

This is complicated by the fact that in most of #medicine (although not necessarily #emergency medicine, the author's specialty) and in nearly all of air travel, the best case is also the normal case. Most of the time, whatever is wrong with you can be diagnosed and treated. Almost all the time, when you get on a plane, you'll walk off at the other end of the trip as healthy as when you boarded. It's reasonable to expect those outcomes.

Not-best and not-normal cases add up really fast.

Without any false modesty whatsoever: as a #medic, I learned a truly impressive degree of clinical judgement. From the first moment I saw a patient, I had a pretty good idea of #diagnosis, #treatment, and #prognosis. (Sadly, if my initial call was "this one's not going to make it," I was almost always right. The exceptions kept me going.) I learned from the best—one of my mentors had learned *his* trade in rural Guatemala, where resources were terribly sparse and human judgement was the only line between life and death. He held back death for decades, and it came for him far too early. Gene Gibbs, RIP.

I can't code that. Neither can anyone else, and if they tell you they can, they're lying.

As a #researcher, I've done a fair amount of work in #clinical #decision #support (#CDS). The idea is simple, and valid: no human, or team of humans, can remember everything they need to know. There's simply too much knowledge for the brain to hold and recall on demand. Subtle relationships exist between disparate types of data that *nobody* knows, until we tease out the numbers. We're doing this, right now. It is saving lives and relieving suffering, right now.

The key word there is "support." Humans still absolutely, positively, 100% need to be in the loop.

Maybe that will change, someday. I'm not saying it's impossible, for two reasons. First, any time anyone says "computers will never be able to ___" they're usually proven wrong. Second, I don't want to limit my and my colleagues' imaginations. We need to stay focused, but it is a *good thing* for our reach to slightly exceed our grasp. That's how #science happens!

Just not this day, and not for many days to come. Right now, we need to keep muddling along. There's not much more human than that.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90863983/chatgpt-medical-diagnosis-emergency-room

@AndySocial [throws sign of horns]

I'm always happy to correct misconceptions.

https://www.quora.com/What-songs-do-atheists-sing-to-their-master-Satan/answer/Daniel-Dvorkin-3