General Musing

Adam Cohen in Paradiso

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:40:55 +0100

Adam Cohen in Paradiso

In the Paradiso

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:01:39 +0100

In the Paradiso

Brilliant!

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 10:17:23 +0100

Brilliant!

Cocaine, for toothache? The outrageous adverts that would never be allowed now

From an ad that claims smoking is healthy to one telling mothers they should give their babies Coca-Cola to their babies, they give a fascinating insight into a time gone by.

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Loved the book!

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:02:28 +0100

Loved the book!

Just Finished Reading: How Doctors Think #books

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Just Finished Reading: How Doctors Think #books

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 16:48:06 +0100

My daughter’s Godmother is studying to be an MD, and has started her internship. Starting her internship coincided with her birthday, which meant that many of the presents she received were related to medicine. One of the gifts, which she gracefully allowed me to borrow before she read it was How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman, MD.

Groopman’s book covers one subject which I love: heuristics and bias. Heuristics are the stuff the practice of medicine is made of, which makes it a little strange that this isn’t always taught. The influence of the intuitive, fast, effortless System 1 thinking versus the slower, conscious, System 2 thinking is reasonably well known. System 1 allows us to unconsciously come to conclusions based on the information at hand, as Groopman says: “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.” The practice of medicine is such that most of the diseases encountered fit into a nice pattern, however it is also a burden which make cognitive bias possible. When a doctor sees nine patients who are suffering from flue symptoms, System 1 will quickly come to the conclusion that the diagnoses of the tenth patient with these symptoms is also flue, and will even ignore facts to the contrary.

If it looks like a duck, it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, guess what? It’s a duck.

Taking the example of the series House you see that certain doctors who make suggestions during the differential diagnoses are prone to prefer a particular diagnoses, whether it is an auto immune disease, cancer, or psychological. The conscious mind (System 2) having found no fault in the choice that System 1 has made will defend the choice. As Groopman says in his book: “The doctor becomes increasingly convinced of the truth of his misjudgment, developing a psychological commitment to it. He becomes wedded to his distorted conclusion.”

When I realized that most of the occurrences of disease are evaluated based on bayesian inference of disease, and much like the Quants and their use of statistical arbitrage there are aberrations which can cause diagnostics to fail. While brushing up on the fundamentals of Bayesian probability I rediscovered the nitty-gritty of Markov chains, something in which I once had more than a passing interest. And came to the realization that to fundamentally diagnose a specific disease the sample rate, and thus the expensive tests, for specific markers should go up. Whether the first test confirms or denies a hypothesis System 1 takes this first as given, any further answer is seen as a deviation from the first “true” answer. Ockham’s razor doesn’t hold when the premise is reached based on incorrect data. Groopman calls this search satisfaction – you expected to find something found something so you stop searching rather than finishing your search.

When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.

This means that in a simulation the sample rate may cause the diagnoses to become more accurate, additional samples with aberrant results in reality may not cause as large a shift in the accuracy of the diagnoses. And naturally the speed at which a result of a laboratory test is returned means that in worst cases the patient is dead before the result is known, which means that the only diagnostic tool which can be relied on is suffers from flaws.

Current medicine seems to be held back by the limitations of man, and although this can be improved upon the basic limitation of human beings means that even with the knowledge that humans are fallible, it is impossible to take the human out of the current equation therefore there is a three stop solution:

communication
critical reasoning
compassion

Consider that there are ofter many unknowns with disease with the knowledge of the pitfalls apply critical reasoning to what you’re thinking. Communicate correctly with you doctor or patient, get it clear what the issue is, what the possible solutions could be. And show compassion, both doctor and patient rely on each other.

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Filed under: algorithm, books, health, medical Tagged: book, doctor, groopman
from http://bit.ly/wrjIKJ…

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Absolutely brilliant manifesto by +Hugh MacLeod...

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 00:48:01 +0100

Absolutely brilliant manifesto by +Hugh MacLeod of Gaping Void fame

Change This - How To Be Creative

If you’ve ever felt the draw to do something creative but just haven’t been able to pull it together, you’ll love this manifesto.

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Very fun!

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 21:47:21 +0100

Very fun!

Handmade Portraits: Sophie Blackall - Etsy on Blip

What would you say to the one who got away? Artist Sophie Blackall's illustrations are inspired by the Internet's love lost and found. Read the Etsy blog post: etsy.me/sophieblackall. Mu…

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Anonymous attack preparations?

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 21:03:09 +0100

Just saw the following on NANOG:

I am wondering if anyone else has seen a large amount of DNS queries coming from various IP ranges in China. I have been trying to find a pattern in the attacks but so far I have come up blank. I am completly guessing these are possibly DNS amplification attacks but I am not sure. Usually what I see is this:
- Attacks most commonly between the hours of 4AM-4PM UTC
- DNS queries appear to be for real domains that the DNS servers in question are authoritive for (I can’t really see any pattern there, there are about 150,000 zones on the servers in question)
- From a range of IP’s there will be an attack for approximately 5-10 minutes before stopping and then a break of 30 minutes or so before another attack from a different IP range
- Every IP range has been from China

And wondered whether it might be connected to the DNS Root Server party which is being organized by +Anonymous (Official) on March 31.

0100111 - Pastebin.com

“To protest SOPA, Wallstreet, our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun, On March 31, the Internet will go Black.”

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John Nash’s Letter to the NSA

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:32:24 +0100

John Nash’s Letter to the NSA

The National Security Agency (NSA) has recently declassified an amazing letter that John Nash sent to it in 1955. It seems that around the year 1950 Nash tried to interest some US security orga…

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*Striking Multiple Exposure Shot of Takeoffs...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:32:23 +0100

Striking Multiple Exposure Shot of Takeoffs at Hannover Airport by Ho-Yeol Ryu

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I did a long interview with George Dyson ...

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:32:22 +0100

I did a long interview with George Dyson in the current Wired. We discuss the origins of software, and how a small band of geniuses 60 years ago made the system we are still using today. The two most powerful technologies of the 20th century—the nuclear bomb and the computer—were invented at the same time and by the same group of young people. But while the history of the Manhattan Project has been well told, the origin of the computer is relatively unknown.

Me: Because your father, Freeman Dyson, worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, you grew up around folks who were building one of the first computers. Was that cool?George Dyson: The institute was a pretty boring place, full of theoreticians writing papers. But in a building far away from everyone else, some engineers were building a computer, one of the first to have a fully electronic random-access memory. For a kid in the 1950s, it was the most exciting thing around. I mean, they called it the MANIAC! The computer building was off-limits to children, but Julian Bigelow, the chief engineer, stored a lot of surplus electronic equipment in a barn, and I grew up playing there and taking things apart.

Me: How did the MANIAC project get started?Dyson: The von Neumann project was funded to do H-bomb calculations. It was a deal with the devil: If they designed this ultimate weapon, they could have this fantastic machine.

Me: So the creation of digital life was rooted in death?Dyson: In some creation myths, life arises out of the earth; in others, life falls out of the sky. The creation myth of the digital universe entails both metaphors. The hardware came out of the mud of World War II, and the code fell out of abstract mathematical concepts. Computation needs both physical stuff and a logical soul to bring it to life. These were young kids who had just come through World War II, who could repair the electronics on airplanes and get them flying the same day, and von Neumann put them together with mathematical logicians who could imagine a universe created entirely out of 0s and 1s.
http://bit.ly/y5ANJm

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LG Miracle outed in video, possible NFC support...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 20:20:33 +0100

LG Miracle outed in video, possible NFC support

OnCoupons. It’s all about Coupons, Gift Certificates, Loyalty Cards and NFC Loyalty Programs! No deals! Just facts! Not Automated! « Back to posts. Viewed. times. February 17, 2012 · LG Miracle ou…

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NFC-Enabled Nokia Luna Bluetooth Stereo Headset...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 20:20:31 +0100

NFC-Enabled Nokia Luna Bluetooth Stereo Headset Launched in India

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Brilliant! #abstrusegoose #obscuremoviereference...

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:32:13 +0100

Brilliant! #abstrusegoose #obscuremoviereference

Abstruse Goose » LINux hack

melikes. Brown Sharpie, Cyanide and Happiness, EXTRA ORDINARY, the Perry Bible Fellowship, POPSTRIP, Spiked Math, WE THE ROBOTS, xkcd · Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative …

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Where's Waldo? Neil explains...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:54:16 +0100

Where’s Waldo? Neil explains…

Neil Burgess: How your brain tells you where you are | Video on TED.com

TED Talks How do you remember where you parked your car? How do you know if you’re moving in the right direction? Neuroscientist Neil Burgess studies the neural mechanisms that map the space around us…

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"_And you know what? I'm not going to download...

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:32:39 +0100

”_And you know what? I’m not going to download your stupid app._”

All Web Developers Should Stop Doing This Immediately - Technology Review

Why do websites insist on treating tablets like second class citizens?

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How to write About Me

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:48:01 +0100

How to write About Me

Are You Making These 7 Mistakes with Your About Page? | Copyblogger

About Pages really aren’t that complicated. So why are most of them so horrible? Quick … read this, then go fix yours.

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Forget Stanford, MIT has free courses! ;)

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:48:00 +0100

Forget Stanford, MIT has free courses! ;)

MIT’s Online Education Prototype Opens For Enrollment - Slashdot

OldHawk777 writes with news that MITx, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s online learning initiative, has opened free enrollment for its first course: 6.002x: Circuits and Electronics. &q…

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Live vicariously... #snowboard

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:47:59 +0100

I would love to do this! Or live vicariously and see the film. :)

The Art of FLIGHT - snowboarding film trailer w/Travis Rice

youtube.com - The song is a collaboration between Anthony Gonzalez from M83 and Curt Morgan from Brain Farm. Artist: The Three Corners of The Earth Title: “The Fire Shall Devour Us” Download it here: http://bit.ly/ru5b5X…

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Creating Backdoors Using SQL Injection #security

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 21:47:58 +0100

Creating Backdoors Using SQL Injection

If you’re reading this article than I’m reasonably sure that you have heard of a virus, otherwise refered to as a Trojan horse or worm, which can infect your system. Once infecte…

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