rtp's comments

rtp | 5 years ago | on: The Spoon Theory (2003)

It breaks my heart, especially for those who become severely chronically ill with diseases like ME/CFS in their teenage years, with little to no indication things will ever get better. Imagine that, maybe spending your next 50-60 years housebound, or even worse: bed bound. Add to that the sheer scale of how ignorant or severely misguided many people are about chronic illness (even doctors, ESPECIALLY doctors!), which imposes such stigma, guilt, and shame on these sufferers.

rtp | 5 years ago | on: Technical debt as a lack of understanding

Software development looks a lot like evolution. The market and business requirements are the environment that weeds out the unfit software. Adapt or die. Codebases that are slow to adapt to outside changes are like species that are slow to adapt to selection pressures. So like the vestigial organs bursting from infection, so are companies that are unable to ship because devs are slowed down by messy code.

rtp | 5 years ago | on: Cognitive deficits in people who have recovered from Covid-19

It's amazing how people think a virus that lives latently in B cells and epithelial cells, and is strongly associated with various forms of cancer among a big helping of autoimmune disorders, is incapable of causing post-viral syndromes. No, it must be anxiety, of course!

EDIT: Just because a disease makes you frustrated because you can't really do anything about it except empathize and listen, doesn't mean you can just slap the anxiety band-aid on it and call it a day.

rtp | 5 years ago | on: Coronavirus doctor's diary: Why are people remaining ill for so long?

Yeah, in its initial study, the nanoneedle had a 100% specificity and selectivity, and according to Ron Davis - main author - the results have held up as they've increased the number of tested people. That said it might also give a positive result for other illnesses. Hopefully a follow-up will be published soon.

rtp | 5 years ago | on: Joe Rogan Is the New Mainstream Media

Why would screening off entire categories of ideas lead to a systematically incorrect view of the world? Or why would entertaining those ideas lead to a less incorrect view of the world?

rtp | 5 years ago | on: Joe Rogan Is the New Mainstream Media

I'm not talking about censorship. I'm talking about all ideas getting equal exposure. If you follow that "equal exposure" idea to its conclusion, then what should be taught in "biology" class for example is evolution, protestant creationism, catholic creationism, sunni creationism, shia creationism, scientologic creationism, last thursdayism etc ad nauseam. Now, there isn't much to talk about regarding last thursdayism. But if everything should get equal exposure, then logically you must teach as much about evolution as last thursdayism, which is to say not a lot. So eventually you'd reduce ideas to the minimum viable size of an idea . And then there might be so many ideas that you'll die of old age before you're done being taught all the ideas.

rtp | 5 years ago | on: Joe Rogan Is the New Mainstream Media

Just because you think the state should allow any discussion and any opinion, doesn't mean you need to think its content is worthy or valuable. Do you think nazism should get as much exposure as something you like? Creationism? Flat-earthism? Any fringe idea with five believers?

rtp | 7 years ago | on: Online activists are silencing us, scientists say

I think that ME/CFS will go the same way as MS.

Once upon a time, not long ago, MS sufferers were deemed "hysteric", "crazy" etc, until there was technology that could show physical evidence of the damage caused by MS.

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