kendallpark (u/kendallpark)

kendallpark commented on Modernity has made us allergic noemamag.com/modernity-ha... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

ttymck · 2 years ago

> Everything you're allergic to is something you were exposed to at least once; your immune system has to see it and learn to recognize it before you can react to it.

Is this true? From a biochemistry perspective, it doesn't seem like it's necessarily true. Allergies could be genetic, in which case a genetic mutation results in the phenotype where an immune system mis-identifies allergens as harmful.

kendallpark · 2 years ago

> Is this true?

Yup! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergy#Pathophysiology

kendallpark commented on Sunset at the South Pole brr.fyi/posts/sunset... · Posted by u/calcifer

tambourine_man · 2 years ago

Always dreamt of seeing this. Don’t know if I would stand the cold, but it must be incredible.

kendallpark · 2 years ago

The issue is not cold, but whether you can get a highly competitive position at the South Pole Station. In order to see the sun set, you have to be part of the skeleton crew which maintains the station during the winter-over. There are no flights going in and out during the winter. If you see the sun set over the South Pole... you'll also be stuck seeing the sun rise as well. In the months between you'll be working in perpetual night.

kendallpark commented on What it’s like to dissect a cadaver alok.github.io/2022/11/09... · Posted by u/yuppiemephisto

sneak · 3 years ago

What other inanimate objects (that can’t kill us easily, like an industrial press or firearm) do we talk about “respect” for?

I think this is a special case of emotional transference.

I don’t personally see a reason to treat cadavers any differently than any other object in a lab. They’re not people. Do we need to be careful to show respect for our mobile phones? How about our coffee mugs?

kendallpark · 3 years ago

> I don’t personally see a reason to treat cadavers any differently than any other object in a lab

Even from a purely consequentialist point of view: if behavior around the cadavers gets out to the public, and the public deems it disrespectful, the public stops donating cadavers, which negatively impacts medical education. Even if you don't personally believe in treating human remains with respect, a huge part of society does, and you have to at least respect that.

kendallpark commented on What it’s like to dissect a cadaver alok.github.io/2022/11/09... · Posted by u/yuppiemephisto

Buttons840 · 3 years ago

> Holding a donors brain in one's hand (it's smaller than one would expect). In the words of a lab partner, "I can't believe we are holding everything that made this person a person, all their personality, everything."

Thought provoking. I'll keep this in mind while holding a hundred billion apples during lunch. ;)

From another angle, I would argue that the eyes and face are part of what makes a human, as are the hands. And there's also something in the brain that has been lost, something beyond mere physical matter. An easy example of this is a puzzle, if you're putting a puzzle together, and I come in and mix it up, I've taken something from you, and yet I took no material object away. There's probably some organization that's part of our brain and "humanity" that is lost at death. I'm not talking about religious "spirit" here - back to the puzzle, it has no spirit, but an assembled puzzle is more than the physical material it is made of.

I don't mean to be super critical of your lab partner, just sharing some additional philosophical views.

kendallpark · 3 years ago

> From another angle, I would argue that the eyes and face are part of what makes a human, as are the hands.

I also agree with this take, though in the moment at the lab I didn't interject with a critique of mind-body dualism. Either way, it seems the brain has some sort of primacy over other organs, in terms of contributing to personhood. Pretty much everything else could be lost or transplanted, yet we'd still consider someone the same person. The brain however seems essential in making you you.

kendallpark commented on What it’s like to dissect a cadaver alok.github.io/2022/11/09... · Posted by u/yuppiemephisto

danielheath · 3 years ago

> most discussions involving cadavers are quite respectful of the fact that they are working on the mortal remains of a person

Not that I know first-hand, but that's not the impression I got from the med students when I was at uni.

People find all sorts of odd ways to cope with their own mortality, and getting reminded of it tends to bring those to the fore.

kendallpark · 3 years ago

Speaking from first-hand, I can't remember any disrespectful behavior. Acting disrespectful toward the donor (what we called the cadavers) would get you kicked out of anatomy lab. There is even a "gift of body" ceremony commemorating the donations every year that family members can attend. Med students will speak about how the donors impacted their medical education and how much they appreciate them.

I would hope that tales of inappropriate jokes of posing with body parts are relegated to a bygone era.

Fwiw I would have no issue donating my body to my institution for dissection. I certainly benefited from the donation. Some notable memories:

- The brittleness and crunchiness of an atherosclerotic artery compared to the pliable rubber hose of a healthy artery

- How incredibly soft lungs are -- like a tempur-pedic pillow. Unless the donor had been a smoker. Then the lungs were hard and black-spotted like a pumice stone.

- The muscular atrophy of old age. There were some donors whose abdominal muscles were as thin as paper.

- Holding a donors brain in one's hand (it's smaller than one would expect). In the words of a lab partner, "I can't believe we are holding everything that made this person a person, all their personality, everything."

kendallpark commented on Aleksandr Sorokin smashes 24-hour world record with 198.6 mile run irunfar.com/aleksandr-sor... · Posted by u/thm

dmos62 · 3 years ago

I've started running and an unexpected challenge is boredom. The running is challenging as is, but doing it for ~1h30m has been, for me, well, tedious. I guess that's a byproduct of always being within arm's reach of a phone.

kendallpark · 3 years ago

Try a run that is much longer (eg, 3 hours), then see how your 1.5 hour run feels. Usually you need a larger-than-normal stimulus to elicit adaptation. In my experience, the mind adapts to these things and will essentially learn to shut off.

kendallpark commented on How to Walk (12 miles a day) walkingtheworld.substack.... · Posted by u/detcader

dionidium · 3 years ago

> I will end by saying, as a guy, I have never had any problems from other people. In all my years walking all over. But that it is sadly very very different for women.

He's either only walking in exceptionally safe areas, he's very large, or I have a particularly punchable face. I biked every road in St. Louis a few years ago, which required biking every street in some high-crime neighborhoods. I was frequently made to feel uncomfortable. I was never attacked or anything like that, but multiple times it was made clear to me that I was where I didn't belong. And I was on a bike and could quickly ride away. I think I would have had a lot more trouble on foot.

I remember being in a bar once and some guy started trouble with me for no reason and my buddy, who is 6'3'' and 250 pounds did not believe that detail, because "nobody would start trouble with you for no reason." To paraphrase Don Draper, "no, nobody would start trouble with you for no reason."

kendallpark · 3 years ago

I had a conversation with a cyclist who grew up in one of those "high crime neighborhoods" in St. Louis. He said that he received strange looks and comments when he visited his old neighborhood with a road bike attached to his car. He belonged; the bike did not. I suspect that more-than-casual cycling is a cultural oddity in some areas. I'm not sure that walking would garner the same reaction.

kendallpark commented on How to Walk (12 miles a day) walkingtheworld.substack.... · Posted by u/detcader

kendallpark · 3 years ago

I've gained an appreciation for walking through very roundabout means.

For the longest time I found walking even short distances insufferably slow and boring. I ride my bike--a lot. The distances and durations I cover have grown each year to the point that centuries (metric or imperial) are a regular weekend event. Boredom is always an issue when you're out for 5+ hours, but you'd be surprised at how much your sense of time can change if you normalize riding long distances. Interestingly, my mind's time-condensation for cycling never translated to walking.

This year I branched out into winter ultra fat biking, which, as it turns out, can involve a significant amount of walking. In bad snow conditions one can end up pushing a heavy bike for hours at a time. The two races I did this winter had their respective all time worst course conditions. So, I did a lot of walking.

This spring I've found myself opting walk to the gym and office, leaving the bike at home. My mind doesn't count the minutes the way it used to. I actually have no sense of how long it takes me to get to these places. I suspect the exaggerated stimulus of pushing a bike for hours through snow drifts has adapted my perception of everyday walking. I would hypothesize that the author's 20-mile weekend walks makes their long daily walks more doable. If you want to enjoy short regular walks, perhaps it would help to go out for a very long and hard walk from time to time.

kendallpark commented on Andrew Ng says AI has a proof-of-concept-to-production gap spectrum.ieee.org/view-fr... · Posted by u/TN567

andy99 · 4 years ago

You've probably seen it, but a more recent, related paper (that I think has some of the same authors) about inherent features of modern ML that make models so fragile, even if they test OK:

Underspecification Presents Challenges for Credibility in Modern Machine Learning, D'Amour et al., https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.03395

kendallpark · 4 years ago

I had not seen it yet, excited to read it! Thanks!