Post: #726

(04-11-2019 04:26 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

(04-10-2019 06:42 PM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  ... god knows medical doctors have completely failed at their profession.

I'm biased in favor of results. When I see a profession that is making more money year by year while their results are getting worse year by year, I have very little sympathy.

Sign me up for RoboDoc.

That's a really interesting point. As large scale diagnostics become more accepted it's going to be really hard for the medical guilds to keep pushing their nonsense. The amount of tweaks and "corrections" they would have to make would begin to become extremely difficult.

"Where 2+ hours of sunlight per day = better cure for depression than mood-regulator drugs, CANCEL RESULT."
"Where drug-18443 is found to be ineffective, CANCEL RESULT."

At some point the amount of butchery it would take to "govern" a nation-spanning health result database would damn the people governing it.

Just want to point one thing out first: I don't find most MDs to be all that sharp. There was some talk earlier about doctors have high IQ and most likely being able to be retrained to do something else.

Yeah, I don't know about that.

I've had tons of pre-med students in the freshman physics classes I used to teach and these kids were absolutely awful at it. It's an opinion I've seen a lot of physics professors share.

And yes I know most pre-meds don't end up in medical school - even the people I know who did get into med school were terrible at it.

And I'm talking super simple shit like:
F=ma
v=at
x=at^2/2

If you're having a hard time applying these very simple Newtonian motion equations, you're going to have a super hard time trying to do the logic needed to program.

MDs in general don't have the quantative skills to learn how to code. They should be terrified of automation.

With that said, my impression of the tech field historically is that they've always tried to work with the medical Care system. Often they attempted to simplify things, for example the numerous, and mostly failed, attempts at a unified medical chart system.

With machine learning, AI and automation, tech companies can now effectively replace the entire system. They'll still need a CEO or two like Bezos who is deeply cunning to pull it off. But it's very much do-able.

I'm not a strategist or anything of the sort, but I can definitely see some type of divide and conquer play, pitting the different medical system groups against each other. Some examples:

* Collaborate with insurance companies to do cancer screening/radiology/etc screening with your tech company instead of what the current medical industry offers. Lower cost for the consumer and the insurance companies. Also push Medicare to do the same

* Set up primary care facilities that combine AI/Robodoc with nurses/PAs. Especially in areas that lack medical doctors this could be feasible. And it would start off small, but over time you expand services. And if the quality of care and cost are better than traditional hospitals, ...

There's plenty of examples of small timers growing and cannibalizing an entire industry, often taking the higher end producers by surprise. If the AMA wants to play it smart, they need to give not a single fucking inch to automation. The entire "AI will never replace doctors, they're only tools for doctors" mantra will end up destroying them.

Many engineers, like myself, have interacted a lot with medical doctors when they were in college with me. And those engineers, like myself, have zero to very little respect for authority and especially medical authority. A lot of them really don't give a fuck about decorum and playing nice. If there is a young Jeff Bezos of medicine automation out there, he would absolutely crush the entire industry without a second thought.

As such, although I understand that the AMA is a powerful guild and lobby, I would not put money on them winning this in the long run.

People really don't fool around when it comes to their health - at least when it's time to go the doctor - when they realize these computers give them better results than human doctors...yeah it's game over. It might take a while, but again there's plenty of people who don't care about the authority of docs, they only care about results and those people will drive the changes needed.

Post: #727

It will also be interesting to see how it plays out in both free-market (sort of) health care nations and socialist health care nations.

Doctors here in Australia are notorious for keeping patients in hospital care for far longer than is necessary because it's easy money for them to walk into a room and say "same as yesterday?", have the lazy fuck in the bed nod their head, rubber stamp an extra day in bed for them and then walk back out of the room and have a coffee for the next half hour that they're supposed to be working on that patient's care plan.

I'm not sure how that scenario plays out in America but in terms of sheer data crunching any doctor that did that under a somewhat automated system is going to start throwing up serious red flags over time, especially when bed shortages are rife.

Post: #728

The more I hear from Yang, the faster I think he'll cuck if elected. I have no doubt he'll throw whites under the bus in a second.

It doesn't matter anyway. Yang is the accelerationist candidate.

Post: #729

(04-11-2019 07:54 AM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  

(04-11-2019 04:26 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

(04-10-2019 06:42 PM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  ... god knows medical doctors have completely failed at their profession.

I'm biased in favor of results. When I see a profession that is making more money year by year while their results are getting worse year by year, I have very little sympathy.

Sign me up for RoboDoc.

That's a really interesting point. As large scale diagnostics become more accepted it's going to be really hard for the medical guilds to keep pushing their nonsense. The amount of tweaks and "corrections" they would have to make would begin to become extremely difficult.

"Where 2+ hours of sunlight per day = better cure for depression than mood-regulator drugs, CANCEL RESULT."
"Where drug-18443 is found to be ineffective, CANCEL RESULT."

At some point the amount of butchery it would take to "govern" a nation-spanning health result database would damn the people governing it.

...

* Collaborate with insurance companies to do cancer screening/radiology/etc screening with your tech company instead of what the current medical industry offers. Lower cost for the consumer and the insurance companies. Also push Medicare to do the same

* Set up primary care facilities that combine AI/Robodoc with nurses/PAs. Especially in areas that lack medical doctors this could be feasible. And it would start off small, but over time you expand services. And if the quality of care and cost are better than traditional hospitals, ...

There's plenty of examples of small timers growing and cannibalizing an entire industry, often taking the higher end producers by surprise. If the AMA wants to play it smart, they need to give not a single fucking inch to automation. The entire "AI will never replace doctors, they're only tools for doctors" mantra will end up destroying them.

Many engineers, like myself, have interacted a lot with medical doctors when they were in college with me. And those engineers, like myself, have zero to very little respect for authority and especially medical authority. A lot of them really don't give a fuck about decorum and playing nice. If there is a young Jeff Bezos of medicine automation out there, he would absolutely crush the entire industry without a second thought.

As such, although I understand that the AMA is a powerful guild and lobby, I would not put money on them winning this in the long run.

People really don't fool around when it comes to their health - at least when it's time to go the doctor - when they realize these computers give them better results than human doctors...yeah it's game over. It might take a while, but again there's plenty of people who don't care about the authority of docs, they only care about results and those people will drive the changes needed.

Interesting concepts. Even if you look at this forum, there is tons of nutrition and health advice that many doctors would dismiss because it goes against what they were taught decades ago (eggs are bad, vegetable oil is good, food pyramid, etc) and the doctors will never admit being wrong even as diabetes and obesity continue to skyrocket. I remember reading that Jordan Peterson's daughter got shit advice and useless medicine from doctors that barely helped her. It was her own internet research that led her to the unique diet that cured her issues. An AI would have a huge advantage over a regular doctor in a situation like this and tech savvy folks skeptical of authority would be eager to embrace it.

In terms of the primary care robodoc/nurse facility that you mention above, there are many opportunities to test it out in poor countries with zero regulations where there are no local hospitals. The nearest AI clinic will easily crush the local quack/witch doctor and people will start going to their technology for advice instead of doctors. Even if the AMA is all powerful, then there is nothing that can stop this technology from proliferating outside America where medical expertise needs are even more dire. It will become obvious to everyone that the AI is better. By pitting the groups against each other than at least some of the lobbyists will be in favor of disrupting the system.

What's scarier is that the average doctor graduates with nearly $200,000 in medical school debt. Are the medical students really that oblivious to the difficulties ahead? Everyone says that a robot can't do what they do, but most people don't understand the power of machine learning algorithms when combined with gigantic data sets. Once Yang has the platform of the debates I'm really curious to hear what doctors will say about this.

Post: #730

Yang is going to win. Called it here

He talks about topics the type of people who will donate $20 to a candidate like to hear about.

The same people who bankrolled Obama & Bernie

Automation, federal debt, student loan ponzis, climate change, UBI, cryptocurrency, etc

Post: #731

He's got two majors obstacles against him:

1-he's not a political beast/natural at this, the way Obama, Trump or Bill Clinton are. He's a good entrepreneur and business communicator, but not a Joe Blow, diner circuit, soundbite beast. He needs to sell himself and his "YangBucks and more" agenda better. "Humanity First" is kind of lame, too week and nebulous. JF did a good job pointing this out. He should be doing great with minorities. It remains to be seen if he can pivot being memeland dawg into DemLand ninja.

2-he doesn't have the DNC/Dem establishment behind him. Kamala, Buttboy, Biden, Booker have that. At least it's not downright hostility, like they have for Tulsi.

I think Yang does have some support from some globalist types, who see UBI as a tool to control the masses (it is, but in the right hands, it's also a double-edged sword that can destroy them).

Post: #732

(04-11-2019 07:54 AM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  

(04-11-2019 04:26 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

(04-10-2019 06:42 PM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  ... god knows medical doctors have completely failed at their profession.

I'm biased in favor of results. When I see a profession that is making more money year by year while their results are getting worse year by year, I have very little sympathy.

Sign me up for RoboDoc.

That's a really interesting point. As large scale diagnostics become more accepted it's going to be really hard for the medical guilds to keep pushing their nonsense. The amount of tweaks and "corrections" they would have to make would begin to become extremely difficult.

"Where 2+ hours of sunlight per day = better cure for depression than mood-regulator drugs, CANCEL RESULT."
"Where drug-18443 is found to be ineffective, CANCEL RESULT."

At some point the amount of butchery it would take to "govern" a nation-spanning health result database would damn the people governing it.

Just want to point one thing out first: I don't find most MDs to be all that sharp. There was some talk earlier about doctors have high IQ and most likely being able to be retrained to do something else.

Yeah, I don't know about that.

I've had tons of pre-med students in the freshman physics classes I used to teach and these kids were absolutely awful at it. It's an opinion I've seen a lot of physics professors share.

And yes I know most pre-meds don't end up in medical school - even the people I know who did get into med school were terrible at it.

And I'm talking super simple shit like:
F=ma
v=at
x=at^2/2

If you're having a hard time applying these very simple Newtonian motion equations, you're going to have a super hard time trying to do the logic needed to program.

MDs in general don't have the quantative skills to learn how to code. They should be terrified of automation.

With that said, my impression of the tech field historically is that they've always tried to work with the medical Care system. Often they attempted to simplify things, for example the numerous, and mostly failed, attempts at a unified medical chart system.

With machine learning, AI and automation, tech companies can now effectively replace the entire system. They'll still need a CEO or two like Bezos who is deeply cunning to pull it off. But it's very much do-able.

I'm not a strategist or anything of the sort, but I can definitely see some type of divide and conquer play, pitting the different medical system groups against each other. Some examples:

* Collaborate with insurance companies to do cancer screening/radiology/etc screening with your tech company instead of what the current medical industry offers. Lower cost for the consumer and the insurance companies. Also push Medicare to do the same

* Set up primary care facilities that combine AI/Robodoc with nurses/PAs. Especially in areas that lack medical doctors this could be feasible. And it would start off small, but over time you expand services. And if the quality of care and cost are better than traditional hospitals, ...

There's plenty of examples of small timers growing and cannibalizing an entire industry, often taking the higher end producers by surprise. If the AMA wants to play it smart, they need to give not a single fucking inch to automation. The entire "AI will never replace doctors, they're only tools for doctors" mantra will end up destroying them.

Many engineers, like myself, have interacted a lot with medical doctors when they were in college with me. And those engineers, like myself, have zero to very little respect for authority and especially medical authority. A lot of them really don't give a fuck about decorum and playing nice. If there is a young Jeff Bezos of medicine automation out there, he would absolutely crush the entire industry without a second thought.

As such, although I understand that the AMA is a powerful guild and lobby, I would not put money on them winning this in the long run.

People really don't fool around when it comes to their health - at least when it's time to go the doctor - when they realize these computers give them better results than human doctors...yeah it's game over. It might take a while, but again there's plenty of people who don't care about the authority of docs, they only care about results and those people will drive the changes needed.

I'm in the engineering field too, and I have to agree about doctors. Sure there are plenty of smart ones but you really don't need to be that smart for a lot of the memorization.

Intelligence aside, the problem with doctors is that they are too attached to doing things by the book rather than focusing on what's good for the patient. For example:
- Recommending certain procedures to a patient without any investigation of how much it would cost said patient given their insurance policy.
- Focusing on fixing the particular problem rather than on improving overall health. Prescribing painkillers and antidepressants for example.
- 30 hour shifts in residency can't be good for performance and thinking clearly.
- A lot of their supposed value comes in the form of most patients not knowing anything and wanting the doctor to tell them the problem and the solution, when it is often something they could have looked up online.
- Little willingness to rock the boat, probably due to how precarious their situation actually is, not just in terms of robots being able to do their job, but also things like cannabis and psychedelics being better able to treat pain and depression than prescription drugs.

Anecdote time: Once I went into a doctor's information session to consider whether I should receive some treatment. I realized that (1) the info session was a waste of my time because I had already researched my health problems online and 99% of it was info that I already knew (2) I was the only patient out of maybe 10 present who had done any prior research.

Automation in the medical field can't come soon enough...

Post: #733

Ummm am I missing something here or isn't UBI just another fancy term for welfare? For us all? Oh wait, I forgot, guys like me who make too much won't be eligible for it but I'll sure get to pay for everyone else to get it. Oh goody, like I don't pay enough in taxes already.

Post: #734

Brush up on your reading comprehension skills. Yang’s UBI is for every US citizen regardless of employment status.

Post: #735

Yeah and the money for all of this is going to just magically appear out of thin air. Makes sense.

Post: #736

Doc, it’s coming from value added taxes. Read the thread or at least skim it if you don’t want to watch a full 5 minute Yang interview.

And yes you would be eligible for Yang bucks, so would any of your kids over the age of 18.

Post: #737

So 350 million Americans x 12K per person per year is 4.2 trillion a year. All funded by a VAT?! Sure. If you guys say so.

Post: #738

(04-11-2019 06:19 PM)doc holliday Wrote:  So 350 million Americans x 12K per person per year is 4.2 trillion a year. All funded by a VAT?! Sure. If you guys say so.

No man. If you are already on any sort of government funded program, like food stamps, welfare, social security, you would not be eligible for yang bucks.

You should be for yang bucks. The biggest winners in Yang's presidency would be single men(guys would have the means to put together their small business) and young couples(getting another 2k per month would mean that the wife could work less and spend more time with their kids).


The welfare mums that are already on welfare would not see much change in a Yang presidency.


edit, if you are going to shit all over an idea without even trying to understand it or read up on it, what is your solution to the 15 million workers that are going to be replaced by automation in the next 10 years? (Truck drivers, retail workers, call center workers are being hit hard by automation and will continue to be hit hard)

Post: #739

(04-11-2019 05:50 PM)doc holliday Wrote:  Ummm am I missing something here or isn't UBI just another fancy term for welfare? For us all? Oh wait, I forgot, guys like me who make too much won't be eligible for it but I'll sure get to pay for everyone else to get it. Oh goody, like I don't pay enough in taxes already.

White males pay close to 80% of taxes, but only get back ~20% back. With UBI, we'd pay a slightly smaller percentage, and get $12,000/yr back.

Post: #740

(04-11-2019 06:33 PM)911 Wrote:  

(04-11-2019 05:50 PM)doc holliday Wrote:  Ummm am I missing something here or isn't UBI just another fancy term for welfare? For us all? Oh wait, I forgot, guys like me who make too much won't be eligible for it but I'll sure get to pay for everyone else to get it. Oh goody, like I don't pay enough in taxes already.

White males pay close to 80% of taxes, but only get back ~20% back. With UBI, we'd pay a slightly smaller percentage, and get $12,000/yr back.

Right, the more I think about it, I have a hard time believing even a democrat controlled congress would pass the sort of UBI that Yang is advocating for. It largely benefits straight white men and straight couples that do not currently benefit from welfare or food stamps.


Currently, the extreme left such as Kamala and Castro are advocating for slavery reparations to fire up the democrat base. Yang bucks don't really benefit the democrat base as they are already mostly on some sort of government hand out(a lot of people, a lot of democrats in particular are on food stamps)

Post: #741

Even if you take say even 100 million Americans off of the 350 million total population that leaves 250 million people who'd be eligible for this which would be an annual total of 3.0 Trillion that you'd have to come up with. That's on top of the welfare, food stamps, medicaid, medicare, social security, defense and whatever else the government spends it's money on. You'd need a 30% VAT on every good and service to get remotely close to 3.0 trillion per annum.

All for a measly 1K per month. The immediate increase in the cost of everything due to the VAT would quickly eat up that 1K/month. So then people would start spending way less to conserve that 1K, the VAT would stop generating the amount needed to sustain the UBI and then Yang's answer will be to raise taxes even more. Also, is the 1K subjected to income tax? I'm guessing it would. If not at the start then for sure eventually as the government needs more revenue for this thing.

Post: #742

(04-11-2019 06:08 PM)doc holliday Wrote:  Yeah and the money for all of this is going to just magically appear out of thin air. Makes sense.

The BILLIONS of dollars we give to israel seem to come from somewhere.

Post: #743

As far as the move to AI and automation to replace humans doing jobs, yes it is a serious concern and needs to be addressed. So what exactly is driving this move to automation by employers? Quite simply it's the government imposed costs of hiring people to do jobs. When you hire some one, it's not just the cost of paying them their salary but it's all the costs of things like the employer 7.5% FICA taxes, the unemployment insurance, health insurance, workers comp insurance and so on that the government mandates. Instead of crazy schemes like Yang is proposing, why can't we reduce or even eliminate these costs on businesses to make it cheaper to hire people. Why doesn't Yang propose a tax credit for employers to hire people. It wouldn't cost 3.0 trillion that's for sure. And it would be far more beneficial for economic growth and the well being of people who don't want government handouts but want to work.

Another thing, the astronomical increase in the cost of buying for businesses due to the VAT would end up killing most small businesses and even many mid sized businesses.

DJ Matt, you could eliminate all foreign aid which I'd be fine with and it would still be a drop in the bucket of what you need for Yang's program.

Post: #744

You’re too worried about the “numbers”. We’re living in clown world now. You’re gonna get $1000 a month and that’s all that matters. Don’t worry about “the economy”.

Post: #745

We’ve already displaced human workers for entire industries such as farming, mining, and manufacturing. Trucking, phone reps, retail employees are up next. A ten percent vat would cover the cost for UBI , according to yangs math at least.

Post: #746

If you went back 100 years and told the average man "in 2019 you're going to be paying half your income in various taxes and levies and your government is not only going to be trillions of dollars in debt but it will still be solvent" he'd laugh in your face. He'd tell you that you were an idiot to think that it was even possible to run an economy like that.

In America the term "economic viability" has lost all meaning.

Viable under a balanced budget?
Viable under current deficits?
Viable under increased deficits?
Viable if the USD ceases to retain reserve currency status?

Viva clown world! Avante!

Post: #747

(04-11-2019 08:28 PM)eradicator Wrote:  We’ve already displaced human workers for entire industries such as farming, mining, and manufacturing. Trucking, phone reps, retail employees are up next. A ten percent vat would cover the cost for UBI , according to yangs math at least.

Yeah but think about all the lost tax revenue from decreased productivity. People in lower income jobs are just gonna stop working, lowering GDP and therefore tax revenue.

I think yang is on the right track, perhaps one election cycle too early. I feel it's important that agricultural industry is even further automated before making the transition to UBI. If you're average farmhand makes $18000 a year, there is the possibility that he just stops working, making it difficult to find workers to harvest enough food for the whole country. I could be wrong, but I feel like the majority of people who already earn low income do not have the economic libido to continue working if they get yang bucks for just sitting around.

Post: #748

(04-11-2019 08:28 PM)eradicator Wrote:  We’ve already displaced human workers for entire industries such as farming, mining, and manufacturing. Trucking, phone reps, retail employees are up next. A ten percent vat would cover the cost for UBI , according to yangs math at least.

You really think 1K/month of government welfare is enough for these displaced people to live on? Especially if everyone is having to pay an extra 10% for everything they consume? Like I said, that 1K will get eaten up having to pay an extra 10% for everything. Yang is trying to build a perpetual motion machine which won't work.

Post: #749

(04-11-2019 11:12 AM)Arado Wrote:  

(04-11-2019 07:54 AM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  

(04-11-2019 04:26 AM)Leonard D Neubache Wrote:  

(04-10-2019 06:42 PM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  ... god knows medical doctors have completely failed at their profession.

I'm biased in favor of results. When I see a profession that is making more money year by year while their results are getting worse year by year, I have very little sympathy.

Sign me up for RoboDoc.

That's a really interesting point. As large scale diagnostics become more accepted it's going to be really hard for the medical guilds to keep pushing their nonsense. The amount of tweaks and "corrections" they would have to make would begin to become extremely difficult.

"Where 2+ hours of sunlight per day = better cure for depression than mood-regulator drugs, CANCEL RESULT."
"Where drug-18443 is found to be ineffective, CANCEL RESULT."

At some point the amount of butchery it would take to "govern" a nation-spanning health result database would damn the people governing it.

...

* Collaborate with insurance companies to do cancer screening/radiology/etc screening with your tech company instead of what the current medical industry offers. Lower cost for the consumer and the insurance companies. Also push Medicare to do the same

* Set up primary care facilities that combine AI/Robodoc with nurses/PAs. Especially in areas that lack medical doctors this could be feasible. And it would start off small, but over time you expand services. And if the quality of care and cost are better than traditional hospitals, ...

There's plenty of examples of small timers growing and cannibalizing an entire industry, often taking the higher end producers by surprise. If the AMA wants to play it smart, they need to give not a single fucking inch to automation. The entire "AI will never replace doctors, they're only tools for doctors" mantra will end up destroying them.

Many engineers, like myself, have interacted a lot with medical doctors when they were in college with me. And those engineers, like myself, have zero to very little respect for authority and especially medical authority. A lot of them really don't give a fuck about decorum and playing nice. If there is a young Jeff Bezos of medicine automation out there, he would absolutely crush the entire industry without a second thought.

As such, although I understand that the AMA is a powerful guild and lobby, I would not put money on them winning this in the long run.

People really don't fool around when it comes to their health - at least when it's time to go the doctor - when they realize these computers give them better results than human doctors...yeah it's game over. It might take a while, but again there's plenty of people who don't care about the authority of docs, they only care about results and those people will drive the changes needed.

Interesting concepts. Even if you look at this forum, there is tons of nutrition and health advice that many doctors would dismiss because it goes against what they were taught decades ago (eggs are bad, vegetable oil is good, food pyramid, etc) and the doctors will never admit being wrong even as diabetes and obesity continue to skyrocket. I remember reading that Jordan Peterson's daughter got shit advice and useless medicine from doctors that barely helped her. It was her own internet research that led her to the unique diet that cured her issues. An AI would have a huge advantage over a regular doctor in a situation like this and tech savvy folks skeptical of authority would be eager to embrace it.

In terms of the primary care robodoc/nurse facility that you mention above, there are many opportunities to test it out in poor countries with zero regulations where there are no local hospitals. The nearest AI clinic will easily crush the local quack/witch doctor and people will start going to their technology for advice instead of doctors. Even if the AMA is all powerful, then there is nothing that can stop this technology from proliferating outside America where medical expertise needs are even more dire. It will become obvious to everyone that the AI is better. By pitting the groups against each other than at least some of the lobbyists will be in favor of disrupting the system.

What's scarier is that the average doctor graduates with nearly $200,000 in medical school debt. Are the medical students really that oblivious to the difficulties ahead? Everyone says that a robot can't do what they do, but most people don't understand the power of machine learning algorithms when combined with gigantic data sets. Once Yang has the platform of the debates I'm really curious to hear what doctors will say about this.

I can tell you a lot about this because I am one of these people and I have thought a lot about it --- and debated it.

Quickly, Yang has no idea what he doesn't know. I fear that you all are in the same category. I can explain, we just need to have a proper dialogue and discussion.

As an aside, the future of medicine is questionable for reasons you state (length of training, crazy loans, crazy interest rates, etc) but not at all because of AI.

And yes, a majority of physicians know very little about nutrition and working out. But that's not what you are going to them for, is it?

Post: #750

(03-22-2019 10:28 PM)Kid Twist Wrote:  You forget that Trump came along after a 2 term president. Trump as incumbent, having been successful in many ways, and himself the first outsider, makes any newcomer like Yang, already a super longshot.

Throw in his physically weak appearance and presence, and he essentially has no shot. Add a dash of totally chaotic Democrat Party, and he's got what we all know, but what I'm still surprised you don't get --- he's got no chance.

Why do I have to re-post this?

Man, there's a lot of kool aid drinking going on here