[QUOTE=ewmayer;362628].....

Or do some of our readers believe we are exchanging charming personal-medical anecdotes in a vacuum?[/QUOTE]

Not this one. :no:

I'll finish with:

[QUOTE=Prime95;362588]Mish's article does provide indirect evidence. The relevant quote is:
[quote]The oncologist informed me that ... "based on your conditions, there is no statistical evidence that strongly favors any one course of action. Equal results are obtained by surgery, by radiation therapy, and by waiting". [/quote][/QUOTE]"based on your conditions" means that what followed was applicable only to Mish. That statement doesn't provide any other reader with a useful guideline for deciding between the three alternatives.

[quote]It is not unreasonable to assume that the oncologist is referencing the kind of scientific evidence you desire.[/quote]But Mish doesn't reveal that scientific evidence, or help a reader find similar for himself.

[quote]If so, then Dr. G was pushing a $20,000 surgery that had the same statistical outcome as doing nothing and most would consider this an example of an unnecessary surgery.[/quote]Yes, given that lead "if so" hypothetical, that might indeed be what most others would decide. But the article gives the reader no information on whether that would be true in anyone's case but Mish, because of the "based on your conditions" qualification.

Cheesehead, there are forms of reasoning other than just inductive reasoning. Read up on deductive and abductive reasoning and see why you criteria for reasoning and evidence is unnecessarily narrow.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;362628]All these various anecdotes must be considered against the broader background (and statistics such as Ross provided) that the US spends twice as much per capita on medical care than the next-most-outlay-friendly nation on the planet, and for a result which taken on a whole-society basis can only be characterized as execrable.[/QUOTE]

Say it ain't so, Joe!

Interestingly, this kind of behavior was codified by Machiavelli ~480 years ago (and Sun Tzu ~2,200 years ago), and yet so few "get it" even today....

[Numerous inline links in the article not propagated to my quoted snip]

[url=https://al3x.net/2013/12/18/bitcoin.html]Alex Payne -- Bitcoin, Magical Thinking, and Political Ideology[/url]
[quote]Economic inequality is perhaps the defining issue of our age, as trumpeted by everyone from the TED crowd to the Pope. Our culture is fixated on inequality, and rightly so. From science fiction futures to Woody Allen character sketches, we’re simultaneously alarmed and paralyzingly transfixed by the disappearance of our middle class. A story about young people dying in competition with one another just to continue lives of quiet desperation isn’t radical left-wing journalism, it’s the pop fiction on every teenager’s nightstand and in every cinema right now.

With this backdrop of looming poverty, nobody can reasonably deny that the euphemistically “underbanked” are in desperate need of financial services that empower them to participate fully in the global economy without fear of exploitation. What’s unclear is the role that Bitcoin or a similar cryptocurrency could play in rectifying this dire situation.

The push toward Bitcoin comes largely from the libertarian portion of the technology community who believe that regulation stands in the way of both progress and profit. Unfortunately, this alarmingly magical thinking has little basis in economic reality. The gradual dismantling of much of the US and international financial regulatory safety net is now regarded as a major catalyst for the Great Recession. The “financial or political constraints” many of the underbanked find themselves in are the result of unchecked predatory capitalism, not a symptom of a terminal lack of software.

Silicon Valley has a seemingly endless capacity to mistake social and political problems for technological ones, and Bitcoin is just the latest example of this selective blindness. The underbanked will not be lifted out of poverty by conducting their meager daily business in a cryptocurrency rather than a fiat currency, even if Bitcoin or its ilk manages to reduce marginal transaction costs (at scale and in full regulatory compliance, that is). But then, we should note that Dixon wasn’t talking about lifting anyone out of poverty, just “offer[ing them] low-cost financial services”. Also notable is that both Andreessen and Horowitz supported Mitt Romney’s failed presidential bid, giving us some insight into the likely level of concern for economic inequality around Dixon’s office.

In Bitcoin, the Valley sees another PayPal and the associated fat exit, but ideally without the annoying costs of policing fraud and handling chargebacks this time around. Bankers in New York and London see opportunities for cryptocurrency market-making. International investors see the potential for arbitrage and are taking advantage of cheap electricity, bringing the environmental destruction of real-world mining to the brave new world of digital money.

In other words: Bitcoin represents more of the same short-sighted hypercapitalism that got us into this mess, minus the accountability. No wonder that many of the same culprits are diving eagerly into the mining pool.

...

Working in technology has an element of pioneering, and with new frontiers come those who would prefer to leave civilization behind. But in a time of growing inequality, we need technology that preserves and renews the civilization we already have. The first step in this direction is for technologists to engage with the experiences and struggles of those outside their industry and community. There’s a big, wide, increasingly poor world out there, and it doesn’t need 99% of what Silicon Valley is selling.

I’ve enjoyed the thought experiment of Bitcoin as much as the next nerd, but it’s time to dispense with the opportunism and adolescent fantasies of a crypto-powered stateless future and return to the work of building technology and social services that meaningfully and accountably improve our collective quality of life.[/quote]

[url=http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/12/china-interest-rate-crisis-continues-7.html]China Interest Rate Crisis Continues: 7-Day Interest Rate Doubles to 10% in One Week; China Bans Words "Cash Crunch"[/url]

Interesting things happen against a background of utterly out-of-control shadow banking/credit-bubble in the Middle Kingdom. China is my #1 pick for "2014 Black Swan candidates".

[QUOTE=ewmayer;362744]Interesting things happen against a background of utterly out-of-control shadow banking/credit-bubble in the Middle Kingdom. China is my #1 pick for "2014 Black Swan candidates".[/QUOTE]

I watched my favorite real-time news outlets last evening...

Interestingly, all the news was about war, hatred, natural disasters, and being scared and being under attack...

Meanwhile, all the ads were about sexy cars you just couldn't afford not to buy, pain-stopping drugs you just had to take if you were going to be productive the next day, and lotteries worth millions of dollars you just couldn't afford not to invest in.

It all seemed somewhat wrong to me....

[QUOTE=garo;362652]Cheesehead, there are forms of reasoning other than just inductive reasoning. Read up on deductive and abductive reasoning and see why you criteria for reasoning and evidence is unnecessarily narrow.[/QUOTE]
I note that you give no example of how my criteria for reasoning and evidence are unnecessarily narrow. Will you please do so, especially with examples of how abductive reasoning and deductive reasoning invalidate my criteria? Remember that one goal I seek is to avoid self-deception, so as to avoid pseudoscience.

I prefer subductive reasoning ... that way any faults that are present in the initial argument are guaranteed to get buried and erased with time.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;362834]I prefer subductive reasoning ... that way any faults that are present in the initial argument are [B]guaranteed to get buried and erased with time[/B].[/QUOTE]Which is it? Buried, or erased? Or are you talking about superpositions? Supine is pretty good. There is a book full of them.

First buried as the slab descends into the upper mantle, then gradually erased by annealing as the temperature rises. It's beautiful - first they're out of sight, then later if anyone tries to dig them back up, they're gone. Revisionist geologic history, as it were.