onco (u/onco) - Readit News

onco commented on The Uselessness of Phenylephrine (2022) science.org/content/blog-... · Posted by u/ctoth

scarface_74 · 2 years ago

Of course you are going to get downvoted and you should.

I know my blood pressure medicine works for instance because every time I talk to my doctor about reducing it or getting off it, I monitor my blood pressure and it spikes.

I know psuedophredrine works.

And your data is just that, “anecdotal”, it’s no better than the people doing “research” by watching YouTube on the toilet.

onco · 2 years ago

Ehh. Your experience is similarly anecdotal. You ignore that there is a placebo effect, blood pressure is a surrogate marker for cardiac events, and drugs can have adverse effects.

It’s best to look at all cause mortality in your example. Many studies have looked at that endpoint if you are curious.

onco commented on Template for Impactful Ideas tidyfirst.substack.com/p/... · Posted by u/KentBeck

more_corn · 2 years ago

Pro tip when offering pro tips (stolen from Andrew Carnegie) begin by telling me why I should listen to your pro tip.

Pretend I’ve never hear of you and don’t know if you’ve ever accomplished anything meaningful. Assume that I’ll take one look, not recognize your name and go away unless you give me a reason to stay.

onco · 2 years ago

Different strokes for different folks. Kent Beck is a very well-known programmer and likely needs no introduction. If he started every article on his personal blog regaling readers with his accomplishments, it might not be received as well as you suggest.

onco commented on Effect of Breakfast Skipping and Late Night Eating on BMI with Type 2 Diabetes ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti... · Posted by u/ianai

tedchs · 2 years ago

IMHO, anything to do with Body Mass Index (BMI) is fake science. Ironically, this writeup is also from nih.gov: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930234/

onco · 2 years ago

Clarification unrelated to the BMI comment, but the writeup isn't from nih.gov. The article is found through PubMed, a search engine and data repository. Your article was published in the 'British Journal of General Practice'. OP's article is from 'Cureus'. PubMed just has copies of the articles.

Saying its ironic that nih.gov has both articles is somewhat like saying its ironic that Google has any two articles.

Disclaimer directly from the linked webpages: "As a library, NLM provides access to scientific literature. Inclusion in an NLM database does not imply endorsement of, or agreement with, the contents by NLM or the National Institutes of Health. Learn more about our disclaimer."

onco commented on How to get ChatGPT to stop apologizing? genai.stackexchange.com/q... · Posted by u/Grimburger

Xcelerate · 2 years ago

Are there any articles describing how GPT-4 without guardrails is different than the public version? I would be super interested in what the model’s actual “most probable next token” looks like.

onco · 2 years ago

A few months ago there was an MIT talk by Sebastien Bubeck about early tests with GPT-4.[0] He mentions that the tests he ran were on the model before it was RLHFed and if you tried to replicate the tests with the public version the performance was greatly degraded.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbIk7-JPB2c

onco commented on Ask HN: When does reading become procrastination? · Posted by u/popedriver

onco · 2 years ago

I definitely see what you are saying, but I don't think its procrastination. Knowledge compounds, meaning the more you learn, the more you can learn. Beyond learning, reading is associated with many positive outcomes, such as increased empathy[0] which is probably a differentiator in technical fields.

As for technical skills, I think it was Bob C. Martin or Andy Hunt who said that if you read one technical book a year you will be ahead of most of your peers.

My personal opinion is if there is a project you want to work on, do that. But if you aren't excited by anything at the moment, keep reading! Following your passions gives you a deep well of energy and it seems you are passionate about reading, so I'd lean into that and not worry too much about it. Its not the worst thing to be well-read.

[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/novel-finding-rea...

onco commented on Ask HN: What are the best papers you read in your life? · Posted by u/toombowoombo

onco · 2 years ago

"Retinoic Acid and Arsenic Trioxide for Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia" by Lo-Coco et al. from 2013.[0]

This paper presents a cure for an extremely aggressive cancer using vitamin A and arsenic. Its a unique, relatively benign treatment strategy that completely avoids chemotherapy. As far as I know this is the best result in all of oncology, though the cancer it treats is very rare.

The most well known paper in oncology that is probably more interesting to a general audience is "The Hallmarks of Cancer" by Hanahan and Weinberg.[1]

[0] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa1300874

[1] https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(00)81683-9?_re...

u/onco

KarmaCake day7July 21, 2023View Original