Aren't you now talking about different reasoning models/tasks:
Classification
Diagnosis
Hypothetical Reasoning
Bayesian
Fuzzy logic
etc.
On the other hand I've always felt the medical community named too many
diseases and conditions after their symptoms usually in a hi-falutin
format rather than an actual cause, e.g. abdominal aortic aneurysm or
after the person identifying it, e.g. Alois Alzheimer. Which get's back
to Glen's circularity.
Robert C
On 1/19/17 7:14 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
Point taken, Eric. That is more realistic. I was making the point
that even for non-psychiatric problems the symptoms (partly) define
the disease. There are tests like biopsies and cultures of organisms
that confirm the diagnoses of those diagnoses. Some psychiatric
disorders can be confirmed by biopsy (e.g. Alzheimer's) but they are
often done posthumously.
In my mother-in-law's case they said they thought she had pneumonia.
I don't remember the details but I know that they tried to drain her
chest but couldn't even insert a tube. Four weeks after the first
symptom she died. Of course they had changed the diagnosis early on.
Northwestern Memorial Hospital, 1984.
Nick will, I hope, explain the paper at Friam.
Frank
Frank Wimberly
Phone (505) 670-9918
On Jan 19, 2017 6:48 AM, "Eric Charles"
<eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com
<mailto:eric.phillip.char...@gmail.com>> wrote:
But Frank.... doesn't it normally go a bit more like this:
Why is my husband unable to breathe and coughs all the time?
I hypothesize that he has pneumonia - a chest x-ray is a cheap and
fairly reliable test of that hypothesis.
Then let's do a chest x-ray!
Well ma'am, the x-ray shows white lumps, supporting
the hypothesis. Pneumonia is often caused by a bacterial
infection, and because you say he didn't have a cold previously, I
think that is the case here. We can test that hypothesis with the
administration of certain antibiotics.
Then let's get those antibiotics!
Well ma'am, I see that after taking the antibiotics, the white
lumps, difficulty breathing, and coughs resolved. Based on that, I
feel confident that my hypothesis was correct, and that your
husband's pneumonia is now cured.
Wait a minute. How do you know he had pneumonia?
I don't really. But the antibiotics seem to have helped, and
that leads me both to have confidence in my original hypothesis
and, ironically, to not really care that much about the
hypothesis. All that really matters is that your husband is
better, and that I am likely to give antibiotics again if I meet
someone that presents in the same manner.
Oh.
P.S. See also Nick's paper, for quite different issues. Nick is
interested fundamental issues regarding what gets to count as an
explanation. But note that the discussion above any causality is
quite different than in the prior anecdotes. In this case,
taking-an-xray explains why we are looking at images of white
lumps, and taking-antibiotics explains why the symptoms resolved.
It matters not a bit if the entity referred to as pneumonia is
"real", if it is mere "symptomology" or a viable "causal" agent
responsible for the original difficulties, etc. Not that those are
not interesting questions, just that they are (potentially)
irrelevant to this particular interaction.
-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician
U.S. Marine Corps
On Wed, Jan 18, 2017 at 8:17 PM, Frank Wimberly
<wimber...@gmail.com <mailto:wimber...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Why is my husband unable to breathe and coughs all the time?
And what is this large white area on his chest x-ray?
He has lung cancer.
How do you know?
Because he has difficulty breathing, he coughs constantly, and
he has a positive chest x-ray.
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
wimber...@gmail.com <mailto:wimber...@gmail.com>
wimbe...@cal.berkeley.edu <mailto:wimbe...@cal.berkeley.edu>
Phone: (505) 995-8715 <tel:%28505%29%20995-8715> Cell:
(505) 670-9918 <tel:%28505%29%20670-9918>
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com
<mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2017 5:32 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The root of personality disorders
I found this opinion refreshing:
Narcissistic Personality Disorder and the President-Elect
http://behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/2017/01/16/narcissistic-personality-disorder-and-the-president-elect/
<http://behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/2017/01/16/narcissistic-personality-disorder-and-the-president-elect/>
I particularly liked the (strawman) circularity caricatured by
conflating phenomenology with ontology:
> Wife: Why is my husband so self-important; why does he have
such a sense of entitlement?
> Psychiatrist: Because he has an illness called narcissistic
personality disorder.
> Wife: How do you know he has this illness?
> Psychiatrist: Because he is so self-important and has such a
sense of entitlement.
But, personally, seeing [gag] Trump as the epitome of
everything that's wrong with our culture, I can sympathize
with the idea of using whatever tool we might have available
to _demonstrate_ to others how thoroughly unable the man is to
fill the role of President. But we should be careful not to
abandon our own principles in the process.
--
☣ glen
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--
Cirrillian
Web Design & Development
Santa Fe, NM
http://cirrillian.com
281-989-6272 (cell)
Member Design Corps of Santa Fe
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