[FRIAM] Friday AM

Steve Smith sasmyth at swcp.com
Tue Jan 3 16:26:07 EST 2023


Eric -

I like your introduction of "some kind of Ambivalence Frontier"... I 
think this also expresses itself in the "close races" we have in 
politics these days... a vague correlate to what happens with 
high-scoring competitive games (like basketball) which often end up in 
close calls with a few last-minute scores ultimately declaring the winner?

- Steve

On 1/3/23 1:31 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> Long a favorite topic of mine.
>
> Let me send you a link; almost-surely not the best, but done with 
> ~1min of google searching images:
> https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0233384
> See the 5th figure for actual data, rather than models.
>
> But my understanding is that Gompertz mortality statistics are 
> unbelievably universal across metazoans.  The parameters can be 
> shifted by lots of factors, but the functional form (which takes only 
> a couple of parameters) is absurdly more robust than one would expect 
> given all that varies.
>
> Anyway, to the extent that there is Gompertz mortality, there is a 
> natural associated age for age-associated-death.  For people it’s 
> somewhere in the 70-80 range, and I think there can be as much as a 
> 10-year difference across different world gene pools (Japanese being 
> at the upper end, and maybe some other group in Central Asia east of 
> the Caucasus; I forget).
>
> A thing I remember being told by a guy who does this kind of work, 
> there seem to be two modes between development-linked diseases (think, 
> childhood leukemias), and age-associated diseases.  We have made 
> remarkable progress on many of the former, and very little on many of 
> the latter.  Also (and I got this from researchers at Einstein college 
> in Yeshiva some years ago, or from a stack of their papers), if one 
> avoids rather specific risk factors, like welding or smoking for lung 
> cancers, or dioxin exposures for male breast cancers or the like, the 
> leading predictor for most of the old-age diseases is just your age. 
>  So it has (to me) the look of what Holmse’s Wonderful One-Hoss Shay 
> would be if redone with Poisson statistics, to become a 
> minimum-information process.  The nail that stuck up got hammered down 
> (extra resources for any disease that becomes visible to selection) 
> that now all the nails are at about the same height, and there is some 
> kind of ambivalence frontier.
>
> My own anecdotal experience suggests that my previous paragraphs can’t 
> possibly be right, since there clearly are common and rare diseases of 
> the old.  But I didn’t make this stuff up, and got it from some 
> serious literature.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>> On Jan 3, 2023, at 1:01 PM, glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> ">144 mmol/l with 21% elevated risk of premature mortality". My last 
>> test a week ago showed 144! Whew! I guess I have a normal risk for 
>> premature mortality. 8^D
>>
>> The concept of "premature death" is flat out ridiculous. But our 
>> inability to well-define it raises some interesting questions.
>>
>> • deprivation (by the dead, by the rest of us) - is the death of 
>> Ramanujan at 32 *more* premature than the death of some rando at 32?
>> • life expectancy seems like yet another instance of people not 
>> understanding statistics
>> • quality of life - is the death of a 20 year old born into and 
>> likely to live in poverty *as* premature as the death of a 20 year 
>> old born with a silver spoon?
>> • natural selection - is it premature for a 35 year old who's bred, 
>> say, 10 children to die?
>>  · or is it premature for them to die before their children have 
>> children? I.e. is being a grandparent a necessary element of a 
>> breeder's life?
>> • consequentialism - had Hitler dyed at age 35, would that have been 
>> premature?
>>
>> I know this seems like a tangent upon tangents. But it's not. It's 
>> nonsense to relate serum Na to premature mortality because premature 
>> mortality is nonsense. Prevalence of chronic disease seems, to me, a 
>> little more well-formed ... but not by much. Biological age just 
>> seems like pseudoscience to me, the flip side of Vampirism. I'd 
>> welcome an education, though.
>>
>> On 1/2/23 13:34, Roger Critchlow wrote:
>>> There was a hacker news item this morning about maintaining 
>>> hydration and chronic illness:
>>> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.thelancet.com%2fjournals%2febiom%2farticle%2fPIIS2352-3964&c=E,1,faHDDOmfSmBCowvyxqbh2EUz38-Hun0lWmP7p9abh_tufHZOPXeJwvh0zeVEv_pEJaprXTWcos80ECDWoak-cqMSeiutR3SgT9gK0pLzL_sP_rE,&typo=1(22)00586-2/fulltext 
>>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.thelancet.com%2fjournals%2febiom%2farticle%2fPIIS2352-3964&c=E,1,faHDDOmfSmBCowvyxqbh2EUz38-Hun0lWmP7p9abh_tufHZOPXeJwvh0zeVEv_pEJaprXTWcos80ECDWoak-cqMSeiutR3SgT9gK0pLzL_sP_rE,&typo=1(22)00586-2/fulltext> 
>>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.thelancet.com%2fjournals%2febiom%2farticle%2fPIIS2352-3964&c=E,1,3LHxHO_rViNgwp08a3UTrLq1b_6yBaBjAfTKkzoiGgk1aUzN0rPYsbYzlJsfApi25gw42MqluJCqfiu35DTgrGehNVRLAaY9x0j7RY6uGcDwh4A,&typo=1(22)00586-2/fulltext 
>>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.thelancet.com%2fjournals%2febiom%2farticle%2fPIIS2352-3964&c=E,1,3LHxHO_rViNgwp08a3UTrLq1b_6yBaBjAfTKkzoiGgk1aUzN0rPYsbYzlJsfApi25gw42MqluJCqfiu35DTgrGehNVRLAaY9x0j7RY6uGcDwh4A,&typo=1(22)00586-2/fulltext>>
>>> those who exceeded 142 mmol/l of serum sodium in middle age got 
>>> sicker more often later in life.
>>> It's the first measurement on my comprehensive metabolic panels.
>>> It would be really funny if there actually was "One simple trick to 
>>> staying healthy!", but it was only discovered after we had 
>>> conditioned ourselves into never reading any article with such a title.
>>> -- rec --
>>> On Mon, Jan 2, 2023 at 2:04 PM glen <gepropella at gmail.com 
>>> <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>>> wrote:
>>>    I think a mobility checkup would be more useful than blood tests. 
>>> See if you can stand on one foot for 10 seconds. Spin you around and 
>>> measure eye wobble. Measure joint angles in a sit-to-stand test. 
>>> Etc. Strength and reflex tests would also be useful. I *suppose* 
>>> cognitive testing trends would be useful. I'd love to see, eg how my 
>>> performance varies on something like a memory test or some logic 
>>> puzzles. With the covid loss of smell and taste thing, it would even 
>>> be cool to have a battery of sensory stimuli of some kind. If the 
>>> personality tests had any credibility, they'd be interesting to 
>>> track over time as well. Would you learn anything? IDK. But it would 
>>> be more interesting than the typical test results.
>>>    On 1/2/23 12:01, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>>     > The last time I went in for a wellness check, the doctor 
>>> seemed annoyed that I was there.   I left, humiliated.
>>>     >
>>>     > But it has been a while, and I am wondering what it would take 
>>> to actually learn something from a checkup.  Is there some standard 
>>> package of broad blood tests and/or MRIs that would be a clue I was 
>>> becoming gravely ill?  I was just shopping for new insurance and was 
>>> excited to learn all the things I can prepare for (Aflac's various 
>>> products).   What would I even ask for?
>>>     >
>>>     > A few years ago, I had a car accident on the snow in Santa Fe 
>>> and had to have quite a bit of work done on my car.   I have to say 
>>> billing the insurance for that was very satisfying.  I had been 
>>> paying all these years and had nothing to show for it.   It is 
>>> especially true for my medical coverage.
>>>     >
>>>     > To me going to the doctor is just an opportunity to get 
>>> COVID-19 in the waiting room.  How can I get more from this experience?
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>>
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