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by cjbgkagh8 hours ago |
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upvoteby qup8 hours ago|
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Logic would dictate that medicine should be pragmatic and accept working cures that aren't understood.

If people had to understand everything that worked, most people could not really engage with anything.

If the requirement is just that one human, somewhere, understand it--how is that different from AI?

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upvoteby curt157 hours ago|
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Initial discovery in medicine is largely "try and see what seems to work". But there are many reasons why scientific inquiry just doesn't stop there and also seeks to understand the underlying mechanisms. For example, a naturally occurring product may be too difficult to harvest on a large scale. Or, a sample might not be sufficiently representative to uncover potentially deadly side effects or drug interactions. Humans are fundamentally unsatisfied to take everything purely on faith.
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upvoteby cjbgkagh7 hours ago|
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Now I’m even more confused, perhaps we are in agreement. My position is that there already exists many such medications that no one knows how it works. It also used to be the default way medicine worked. Lots of things that work were found though observation of trial and error.

My position is that Tao is not only wrong on this but his example makes the opposite case.

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upvoteby qup7 hours ago|
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Yeah, I think we were in agreement, I just wasn't sure why you downvoted my comment and challenged me, so I explained my position again.
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upvoteby cjbgkagh7 hours ago|
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“ They understand nothing at the level that Tao means. Literally nothing.”

Was this sarcasm and I missed it? Because not only do I think I understand at the level of Tao I also think he is wrong and not understanding something.

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upvoteby sesky6 hours ago|
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The person you are replying to is trying to make the following argument.

Tao is intelligent. Intelligent people have higher standards for understanding the world, such as assuming that the mechanism behind medicine are well understood. But most people are not intelligent, so they don’t understand things like medicine at the level Tao presumes.

I don’t agree with this argument, just explaining it.

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upvoteby jacquesm3 hours ago|
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I'm not sure if Tao believes that but if he does he should read up a bit more on medicine.
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upvoteby cjbgkagh6 hours ago|
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Where that falls down is that it is not even a good idea to limit the use of medicine to only what is well understood - i.e. that would be very un-intelligent. There is nothing higher level about it, quite the opposite.
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upvoteby CrimsonRain8 hours ago|
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Plenty of medicine... Not a single human on earth knows how they work. Now what?
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