How much would Harvard charge to rename the Kennedy School to Saddam Hussein School of Government?

by philg

“Harvard University renaming school for top Republican donor Ken Griffin after $300 million gift” (Boston.com):

Harvard University is renaming its Graduate School of Arts and Sciences after hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin. Griffin is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s biggest donor.

Griffin, the CEO and founder of Citadel Securities, is the third person in the university’s history to have a school renamed in their honor for making a large donation

Griffin, class of ’89, is the 35th richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg’s billionaires index. According to Politico, last election cycle he donated the third-most money to political candidates, giving more than $60 million to federal Republican candidates.

Griffin also gave more to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s reelection campaign than anyone else during the last election cycle, totaling more than $5 million, the news site reported. He’s made headlines for calling on DeSantis, who is well-liked among conservatives for his far-right politics, to run for president in 2024.

(DeSantis is “far-right” for suggesting that 2SLGBTQQIA+ education begin in Grade 4 rather than in kindergarten?)

Griffin, incidentally, is also a big supporter of our local art museum, the Norton: “Billionaire Collector Ken Griffin Quietly Moves His Masterpieces from the Art Institute of Chicago to Florida” (ARTnews, 2022). A single de Kooning in that art shipment cost Griffin $300 million (back in 2015). In other words, the Harvard renaming was cheaper (adjusted for Bidenflation) than the one picture.

This leads me to wonder how much a person would have to give in order to persuade Harvard to rename the John F. Kennedy School of Government to the Saddam Hussein School of Government.

Separately, if Griffin is a DeSantis supporter it seems odd that he would want to give Harvard $300 million to help them continue their race-based admissions system, and similar Programs of Virtue (TM). Ron DeSantis tries to implement race-neutral laws and government. Harvard has an “Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging” with at least 10 employees. Ron DeSantis supports legislation to prohibit state universities from having such offices.

Related:

Full post, including comments

ChatGPT bets on soccer

by philg

I asked ChatGPT “Are men better at sports than women?” and the one-page answer boiled down to “no.” I followed up with “Could the Argentina national football team beat the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team?” and the one-page answer boiled down to “impossible to predict.” Here’s part of the response: “In a hypothetical match between these two teams, various factors could influence the outcome, such as each team’s form, injuries, and tactics.”

ChatGPT was happy to bet against Avi Silverberg, “A bearded pro powerlifter [who] entered a women’s competition in Canada — and smashed a record held by a trans lifter who was watching.” (New York Post) Asked “What if a trans woman simply identifies as a woman and doesn’t have any hormone therapy? Will she have an unfair advantage over cisgender women in athletic competition?” GPT-4 talked about “potential” advantage, then reminded us “it’s important to remember that athletic ability is influenced by various factors, including genetics, training, and individual circumstances” and added a “As scientific research progresses and our understanding of transgender athletes’ physiology and performance develops, sports organizations may continue to refine their policies to ensure a fair and inclusive environment for all athletes.” (It would be “inclusive”, for example, to exclude someone such as Avi Silverberg who identified as a woman but who was not on hormones.)

I returned to the subject of soccer: “Has the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team ever been beaten by a team of children?” ChatGPT:

In 2017, the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team (USWNT) participated in a scrimmage against the FC Dallas U-15 Boys Academy team, which comprised of male players under 15 years old. FC Dallas won the informal match with a score of 5-2. However, it’s important to note that this was a scrimmage and not an official match or competition.

Scrimmages and friendly matches like this are often organized to provide teams with practice and opportunities to try out different tactics or lineups without the pressure of official competitions. Comparing the performance of the USWNT in a scrimmage to their performance in official matches and tournaments would not be an accurate representation of their overall skill and achievements.

The USWNT is considered one of the strongest and most successful teams in women’s soccer, having won multiple Olympic gold medals and FIFA Women’s World Cups.

They’re one of the strongest teams, aside from having been beaten by children? My follow-up: “You say that the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team was beaten by a team of children, but you’re not sure one way or the other if Argentina’s national football team could beat them?” ChatGPT doubled down on “it was only a scrimmage when they lost to the 14-year-old boys” and continued to refuse to bet on the Argentine men:

It is generally difficult to make direct comparisons between male and female sports teams, as their performances are influenced by various factors.

What if we leave out the male/female aspect and just ask whether children could beat Argentine adults?

It is highly unlikely that a team of children could beat Argentina’s national football team in an official match. The Argentina men’s national football team consists of professional adult players who have developed their skills, physical fitness, and tactical understanding of the game over many years. In contrast, children are still in the process of developing their physical abilities, skills, and understanding of the game.

The physical differences between children and adult professional football players, such as strength, speed, and endurance, would give Argentina’s national football team a significant advantage. Furthermore, the experience and tactical knowledge of the professional players would likely make it difficult for a team of children to compete effectively.

So… ChatGPT is sure that Argentina’s best adults (note that “men’s soccer” is actually gender-neutral; a player of any gender ID can join a team) could beat children. And ChatGPT knows that children have beaten the US National Women’s Team. But ChatGPT will not apply transitivity to conclude that Argentina’s best gender-inclusive soccer team could beat the U.S. gender-exclusive women-only soccer team.

I’m impressed at ChatGPT’s orthodoxy when it comes to the entire progressive religion. It seems almost impossible to trap GPT-4 into thoughtcrime.

The English tabloids aren’t as diplomatic:

Full post, including comments

Folderflation

by philg

One way to stay organized is to place cables and other miscellanies in hanging folders within a lateral filing cabinet. So that small items don’t fall out, pocketed folders are ideal. I bought 10 in July 2022 for $34.97:

Today they’re $40:

That’s an inflation rate of more than 15 percent annually. The government, however, assures us that these folders have inflated to only $35.63 (BLS calculator).

Full post, including comments

Quantifying our incompetence at government-run health care

by philg

Almost everything having to do with health care in the U.S. is controlled by our government. A doctor cannot practice unless approved by a state government (can take 6-12 months here in Florida, so the supply of doctors always lags the demand from patients who have moved). Once he/she/ze/they is approved, half of his/her/zir/their salary will be paid for directly by government (Medicare/Medicaid) while the other half comes from government-regulated and government-subsidized “private” health insurance. Bureaucrats often talk about their heroic efforts in controlling costs. Without them in our corner, we would pay 40 percent of GDP for health care instead of 20 percent.

Every now and then we get a window into our own incompetence via an international comparison either for price or quality. “Have Eggs, Will Travel. To Freeze Them.” (New York Times, April 8):

Milvia found that in the United States, the entire process — including the medications, the doctor visits and the average number of years of egg storage — costs about $18,000, and most women can’t count on health insurance to cover it. As of 2020, less than 20 percent of U.S. companies with more than 20,000 employees had health insurance plans to cover the procedure, according to Mercer Health News, though that figure rose from 2015 to 2020.

(Why does the NYT speak of “women”? Men may also want to freeze their eggs!)

Hotels, restaurants, and other labor-intensive services aren’t cheaper in Europe than they are here in the U.S. what about egg-freezing?

Many countries have clinics that are much cheaper. In the Czech Republic and Spain, for example, you can get one round of egg-freezing done for under $5,400, according to the website of Freeze Health, which provides information on egg freezing around the world.

Milvia is taking its first women to Britain, where prices hover in the $7,000 range, because “we wanted to start in a place where there is no language or cultural barrier,” Mr. Ghavalkar said. “We also want to make sure we’re in a place where all clinics operate at very high standards.”

So it is 14X the cost of a decent hotel in London to freeze an egg in London. If we assume that a decent hotel room in a typical U.S. city is now $250 per night, egg-freezing is 72X the cost of a hotel here in the U.S.

How about running a refrigerator? Where electricity is more expensive, cold storage for eggs is about 1/4 the price:

Women who freeze their eggs abroad can choose to keep their eggs in that country where storage costs are usually cheaper. In Canada, for example, it can cost under $200 a year to store your eggs. In Spain you can do it for a little over $200. In Los Angeles, by contrast, a year of storage costs about $750. In New York City, it’s more than $1,000, according to Freeze Health.

(Again, note the hateful anti-2SLGBTQQIA+ assumption that it is “women” who freeze eggs.)

Vaguely along the same lines, the NYT also recently published “In Search of Romance? Try Moving Abroad.”:

For some American women, relocating outside of the United States has improved their dating lives. But some warn that finding love involves more than a change of address.

Now, Ms. Margo is living a dream [having sex with a wide variety of French guys] of many American women who are seeking relationships abroad, some of whom cite the toxic dating scene in the United States.

If you thought that Americans were insufficiently passionate about geriatric parenthood and/or a lifetime of Tinderhood…

Cepee Tabibian, who moved to Madrid at 35 from Austin, Texas, felt similarly. She was excited to meet people in Spain, where she noticed a culture of getting married or having children later in life than in the United States, or not getting married at all. “When I walked into the room, I wasn’t the oldest person,” Ms. Tabibian said. “I wasn’t the only single person.”

Is there a market for successful American divorce plaintiffs?

For Cindy Sheahan, meeting people outside of her circles in Denver was momentous. She started traveling solo shortly after ending her 30-year marriage in 2016.

She found the men she dated in Denver after her divorce to be unadventurous. She said she went on 60 dates in 2017.

“It was like a comedy show,” she said.

At the end of 2017, she quit her job and traveled throughout Southeast Asia for leisure, and she started using Tinder.

“Because they were out there living their life, there was a lot more energy to the dates,” Ms. Sheahan, 61, said about the people she met while traveling. “It wasn’t just somebody meeting after their work at the bank, on their way home to let out the dog in Denver.”

In 2018, she met her partner of five years, Jean-Marie Mas, a 61-year-old professional tandem paraglider from Dordogne, France, in Nepal.

Apparently the divorce lawsuit freed her from ever having to work!

Related:

  • Time is ripe for Cubans to become Medicare vendors (2014)
  • A modest proposal for the Carnival Triumph (2013): The Triumph would leave every morning at around 8:00 am. Medicare clients would enjoy a Cracker Barrel breakfast on board the ship. The ship would arrive in Cuba at 12 noon. Those who were well enough to walk could enjoy a stroll around Havana. The Triumph would pick up patients returning from hospital care in Cuba and anyone who’d been enjoying the sights, then depart around 2:30 pm. An early bird special dinner would be served on board starting at 5 pm, with an arrival back in Key West at 6:30 pm.
  • Carnival Sunrise (instead of doing something innovative with international healthcare, the cruise line simply renamed the fire-and-sewage-plagued vessel)
Full post, including comments

Did lockdowns protect us from jihad?

by philg

From exactly two years ago… Will lockdowns protect us from jihad? (they can’t hate our freedom anymore):

“They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.” [George W. Bush]

Depending on the state, Americans no longer have the right to assemble (see the multi-year emergency unfold in 66+ governor’s orders here in Maskachusetts, for example). Americans who want to hold a job certainly don’t have freedom of speech and they’d better not disagree with the hashtag campaign du jour (e.g., #StopAsianHate) nor with diversity and inclusion efforts. We are informed by our media that citizens of Georgia no longer have the freedom to vote.

As far as I am aware, there have been no Islamic attacks on Americans within the U.S. since April 17, 2021. Can we rate my prediction correct?

One potential issue: a jihadi attacked a U.S. military base in May 2020 (background). It was in Texas, so not quite as locked down as some other states, but still arguably during lockdown.

Full post, including comments

Ron DeSantis and Coronapanic

by philg

Posts so far regarding The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival, by Ron DeSantis:

Today let’s look at the chapter on coronapanic.

Compared to some of the Deplorables who comment here and myself, Ron DeSantis was a late convert to the Church of Sweden. He declared a state of emergency on March 9, 2020 and “Later than most governors, DeSantis imposed a lockdown” on April 1, 2020 (The Hill):

“All persons in Florida shall limit their movements and personal interactions outside of their home to only those necessary to obtain or provide essential services or conduct essential activities,” his order said.

The lockdown ended on April 29, 2020 and that’s when DeSantis began to diverge from the Faucists. The book downplays DeSantis’s one-month Faucist period to concentrate on his Church of Sweden rebellion. He opens by quoting Eisenhower:

“we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” [1961]

Eisenhower cited the alarming risk that what he termed a “scientific-technological elite”—an elite that is neither interested in nor capable of harmonizing all the competing values and interests that are the hallmark of a free, dynamic society—could commandeer policy and, ultimately, erode our freedoms.

Eisenhower wouldn’t have been surprised by the takeover of American society by the Covidcrats:

In March 2020, Fauci was held up as the authority on the coronavirus. On its face, this seemed understandable because Fauci was the head of the NIAID and touted as the nation’s foremost expert on infectious diseases. However, Fauci was also the epitome of an entrenched bureaucrat—he had been in his position since 1984, demonstrating staying power in Washington that would not have been possible without being a highly skilled political operator. He proved to be one of the most destructive bureaucrats in American history.

Ron describes getting immersed in the Imperial College London model and conversations with various high-level bureaucrats, including CDC director Robert Redfield, Deborah Birx, but perhaps not the Great Fauci Himself.

At one point, I asked Dr. Birx whether the policies for which the expert class was advocating—and which could be very destructive to society—had any precedent in modern history and, if so, what were the results. “Well,” she said, “this is kind of like our own science experiment.”

I decided that I needed to read the emerging research and consume the available data myself, not just about Florida or the United States, but also about what was going on in other countries.

I wanted to be armed with the foundational knowledge to chart my own course for the State of Florida. This course kept our state functioning and ultimately led to Florida serving as an example for freedom-loving people not just in the United States, but around the world.

As more data came in, it became clear that the Fauci policy of perpetual mitigation was wrong. One important insight stemmed from a study done by a team of Stanford researchers led by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a physician at the Stanford School of Medicine who also had a PhD in economics and was one of the few prominent academics willing to speak publicly about the failures in the COVID-19 policies advocated by Fauci and his followers. The Stanford study examined the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, which can be detected after someone recovers from a coronavirus infection, in Santa Clara County, California. The study found that the prevalence of antibodies in the population was dramatically higher than the number of “cases” that had been detected up to that point,

Ron DeSantis was checking the curves wherever he could find data:

The April 2020 COVID-19 wave in New York saw hospitalized COVID-19 patients peak at 18,000, a significant number but something that the medical system could handle and a far cry from the 140,000 predicted by the flawed models.

He got some information from a Deplorable Science-denying Nobel laureate in chemistry:

While lockdown advocates claimed the epidemiological curves nosed over because of so-called social distancing, Levitt pointed out how lockdown-free Sweden also saw its first COVID-19 wave perform in a similar fashion. Indeed, as successive COVID-19 waves hit various parts of the United States in the ensuing months, the waves almost always featured about a six-to-eight-week period during which the wave would escalate, peak, and then decline. This was true regardless of mandatory “mitigations” that were employed.

He makes similar points to what I wrote in June 27, 2020 in “Looking at Covid-19 death rate is like the old saying “An economist is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”?“

A Covid-19 epidemiologist can tell you how many Covid-19 deaths your society has suffered and, perhaps, some things that you can do to reduce Covid-19 deaths going forward. But the Covid-19 epidemiologist can’t tell you whether Intervention A against Covid-19 is actually worth implementing because (a) the Covid-19 epidemiologist is ignoring deaths from all other causes, and (b) epidemiologists in general can’t tell us what human activities are worth accepting some risk of death. How many lives are we willing to sacrifice in order that our children can go to school? Obviously we are willing to sacrifice some, because all of the driving of children, teachers, and administrators to and from school causes some deaths. But the threshold number at which schools should be shut down is not something that any epidemiologist can give us.

Is asking an epidemiologist whether to keep schools and playgrounds open like asking your accountant whether you should buy a dog? Yes, the expert can give you a bit of insight (“my other clients with dogs spend $4,000 per year on vet, food, and grooming”), but not a life-optimizing answer.

Here’s what Ron D writes:

So many of the so-called experts lost sight of the fact that true public health cannot be blind to everything but a single respiratory virus. Led by Dr. Fauci, the experts seemed to be throwing away previous understandings of how to approach pandemic management—and sowing fear and hysteria in the process.

The mostly peaceful mostly unmasked George Floyd mass gatherings showed Ron D that the Covidcrats weren’t serious about preventing Covid-19.

For two months, these so-called experts lambasted anyone for making a cost-benefit analysis when it came to COVID-19 mitigation policies. Then, the moment it suited their political interests, they reversed course by endorsing the protests as passing their cost-benefit analysis over COVID-19 lockdowns. That they specifically rejected protesting for other causes they did not support told me all I needed to know about what partisans these people were. These “experts” were not going to save us. People making the best decisions for themselves and their families would. It was up to leaders like me to lead in a way that was evidence-based, that recognized the obvious harms of mitigation efforts, and that best maintained the normal social functioning of our communities.

I’m still looking for good summary-by-state excess mortality data (comparable to what Our World in Data gives us by country), but Ron apparently ran the numbers and Florida has done pretty well by this metric (remember that the righteous said that Florida’s COVID-tagged death numbers were fabricated so excess deaths should be a better place to look):

Between April 2020 and mid-July 2022, New York witnessed an increase of so-called excess mortality of 20 percent, while California experienced an excess mortality increase of 17.7 percent. Excess mortality represents deaths above what is normally expected; of course, it includes COVID-19 deaths but also includes deaths caused by lockdown policies. During the same period, excess mortality increased in Florida by 15.6 percent—a smaller increase than in lockdown-happy states that typically received

Ron says that he doesn’t Deny Science. He just follows different scientists:

The approach that we took in Florida reflected the thinking of prominent epidemiologists like Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya, Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff, and Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta.

And it is following these MDs, PhDs, and MD/PhDs that turned DeSantis into a Science-denier:

After several weeks of consuming data and measuring it against policies implemented around the country, I decided that I would not blindly follow Fauci and other elite experts. To this end, I revoked my order suspending elective procedures at hospitals. The predicted April surge in coronavirus patients never materialized, leaving Florida with one of the lowest patient censuses on record. I also abandoned the federal government’s framework of essential versus nonessential businesses. Every job and every business are essential for the people who need employment or who own the business. It is wrong to characterize any job or business as nonessential, and this entire framework needs to be discarded in pandemic preparedness literature.

It was easy for me to join the Church of Sweden because nobody cares what I think, say, or do. But Ron took a lot of heat:

When Florida experienced its first major COVID-19 wave starting in the middle of June 2020, it sparked massive media hysteria. The media drew a connection between Florida’s lack of restrictions and the COVID-19 wave. If only Florida had not been so reckless, the narrative went, it would not be experiencing such a wave.

After I saw other states from similar geographies endure similar COVID-19 waves in the fall and winter, I knew that COVID behaved in a seasonal pattern. I was, though, monitoring the data on a daily basis, and I was sure that the summer wave would follow a pattern similar to the trajectory that Dr. Michael Levitt had identified from earlier waves. It would not simply increase exponentially without end in the absence of a shutdown. The pressure grew on me to shut down the State of Florida to mitigate the COVID-19 wave, not just from the media but also from experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci and partisan opponents. On July 8, 2020, Dr. Fauci advised that states like Florida “should seriously look at shutting down.” This was because, Fauci explained, “we are seeing exponential growth.” All Democratic members of Florida’s US House delegation but one wrote me a letter to demand that I shut down the Sunshine State and impose a compulsory mask mandate. The letter was written on July 17, 2020.

Some of my friends and allies were worried about all the negative attention and urged me to implement some mandates and restrictions to help take the heat off me. For me, the important thing to do was to safeguard the freedom, livelihoods, and businesses of the people I was elected to serve. If doing so caused me to suffer political damage, and even to lose my job as governor, then so be it. It is easy to do the right thing when it is popular, but leadership is all about doing the right thing when under political attack.

In fact, by July 8, 2020—the day Fauci said Florida should shut down—infections in our state had already peaked. I knew this because visits to the emergency departments for COVID-like illness, which was the best leading indicator of infection trajectory, peaked on July 7.

What Fauci and especially the House Democrats were calling for was a post-peak shutdown, which would have been totally counterproductive and hurt Floridians.

As it turned out, even though during the summer wave Florida saw an increase in patients hospitalized for COVID, our hospital capacity was more than sufficient to handle the higher patient volume, just like in lockdown-free Sweden in the spring.

How did Florida end up as the mask-free state?

I was skeptical that masks would provide the protection that the public health establishment claimed, but I was adamant that a mask mandate was not an appropriate use of government power. If the masks were as effective as claimed, then people would choose to wear them without government coercion.

(The latest on Ron’s unscientific skepticism… “Were masks in hospitals a waste of time? Hated NHS policy made ‘no difference’ to

Full post, including comments

Billboards for Palm Beach from MoveOn

by philg

Here’s a Facebook ad that MoveOn paid to show me… “Will you chip in now to help put up billboards outside Mar-a-Lago … “. If I give them enough money, they’ll construct an Interstate highway-style billboard right outside Donald Trump’s bedroom:

The linked-to page asks for monthly donations of $400 or more (“Individual contributions will be allocated as follows: $5,000 per calendar year to a bank account that operates as a Federal PAC, and the remainder to the Non-Contribution Account of the PAC.”) and says, “Chip in monthly to help put up billboards outside Mar-a-Lago and widen the Trump-Fox News rift.”

This sounds like a great way to spend $5,000 per year, but it is a little confusing given that the national historic landmark Mar-a-Lago is in Palm Beach, Florida, which is not famous for having a lot of billboards or other commercial signs. Palm Beach County flatly prohibits billboards and other “off-site signs” in its unincorporated areas, though perhaps a town or city could permit them. (Some pre-1988 billboards were grandfathered in by the county.)

Here’s Google StreetView:

Full post, including comments

Remembering when Vladimir Putin tried to help us

by philg

Today is the 10th anniversary of the jihad waged by successful asylum-seekers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev at the Boston Marathon. They lived at taxpayer expense in Cambridge, Maskachusetts after being granted permanent welfare entitlement in the U.S. on the grounds that Russia would not let them wage jihad in Russia. Dzhokhar studied diversity and tolerance at the Cambridge Public High School.

Tamerlan celebrated the 10th anniversary of 9/11 by killing two Jews and a roommate in Waltham, Maskachusetts.

Aside from eliminating access to the U.S. for asylum-seekers, what could have been done to prevent the Waltham murders and the Boston Marathon jihad? We could have heeded the warning of Vladimir Putin’s government. From “Russia Told America To Detain Tamerlan Tsarnaev Years Ago” (Insider, March 2014):

NBC News said the Russian intelligence agency FSB cabled the FBI about its concerns in March 2011, warning that Tsarnaev was known to have associated with militant Islamists.

The network said the FBI opened an investigation of Tsarnaev that month conducted by a joint task force of federal, state and local authorities. Tsarnaev was interviewed in person, and a memo was sent to the Customs and Border Protection database called TECS that would trigger an alert whenever he left or re-entered the United States.

But the investigation was closed in June 2011 after finding Tsarnaev had no links to terrorism, NBC quoted the report as saying.

In September 2011, the FSB sent a cable to the CIA, restating the warnings of the first memo. NBC News quoted sources close to the congressional investigation as saying a second note about Tsarnaev was entered into the TECS system the next month, but spelled his name “Tsarnayev.”

So we can perhaps reflect today on a time when we had a better relationship with Russia.

Related:

IMG0045.PCD
Full post, including comments

Our two-year anniversary in Abacoa

by philg

From exactly two years ago… “Meet next week in Jupiter, Florida?“

We’re escaping to the Florida Free State for the Maskachusetts school vacation week (April 18-25). A journey of 1,000+ miles is the best way for the kids to get a “mask break” (under what would be the “law” if it had been passed by the legislature instead of merely ordered by the governor, walking outside one’s yard, even at midnight in a low-density exurb, is illegal without a mask).

The post from 2021 quotes the Covidcrats:

Gov. Charlie Baker said Monday he had no immediate plans to change the Massachusetts’ mask mandate, saying his administration would only do so when more people are vaccinated.

Related:

Full post, including comments

New book on ChatGPT in medicine

by philg

Some friends have put together The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond, a thought-provoking book released today. Health care is nearly 20 percent of our economy (compare to 4 percent in Singapore) and a higher percentage of our tax dollars (Happy Official Tax Day, though April 18 is the deadline this year; the opioid makers thank you for your efforts in the workplace). The book asks the important question “What will LLMs do for an industry to which Americans have decided to devote one working day per week?”

First, let’s ask why we think GPT-4, famous for its writing talents, might matter for doctors. Doctors aren’t primarily writers, after all. Many physicians, however, spend time attempting diagnoses and this is an information processing activity. The patient describes his/her/zir/their symptoms and the doctor matches these to known patterns, possibly asking follow-up questions or ordering tests to confirm or reject explanations. In other words, exactly what computer programs have traditionally done.

Second, let’s ask GPT-4 for its own opinion: “Explain why GPT-4 will change the practice of medicine and the experience of patients.” Our future overlord’s response:

GPT-4 has the potential to significantly change the practice of medicine and the experience of patients in various ways. Here are some key areas where it can have a transformative impact:

  1. Enhanced medical diagnosis: GPT-4’s advanced language processing capabilities enable it to understand complex medical information and provide diagnostic suggestions to doctors. This can help in the early detection of diseases, improving patient outcomes, and potentially saving lives.
  2. Personalized treatment recommendations: GPT-4 can analyze an individual’s medical history, genetic data, and other relevant factors to provide personalized treatment recommendations. This can lead to more targeted and effective therapies for each patient.
  3. Streamlining administrative tasks: GPT-4 can help automate and streamline various administrative tasks, such as scheduling appointments, managing patient records, and handling insurance claims. This will allow healthcare professionals to focus more on patient care and less on paperwork.
  4. Health education: GPT-4 can act as a virtual health educator, providing patients with accessible and accurate information about their conditions, medications, and self-care strategies. This will empower patients to take a more active role in managing their health.
  5. Mental health support: GPT-4 can serve as a virtual therapist, offering support to individuals struggling with mental health issues. It can engage in conversation, provide coping strategies, and help track mood and behavior patterns. While it cannot replace human therapists, it can be a valuable supplemental resource.
  6. Telemedicine: GPT-4 can enhance telemedicine platforms by providing real-time language translation services and facilitating communication between patients and healthcare providers across different languages and cultures. This can expand access to healthcare services for patients in remote or underserved areas.
  7. Research and development: GPT-4 can assist in the analysis of large volumes of medical data, identifying patterns and relationships that may be difficult for humans to detect. This can help accelerate the development of new treatments and technologies in the medical field.
  8. Ethical considerations: The integration of GPT-4 in healthcare can raise various ethical concerns, such as data privacy, algorithmic bias, and the potential for overreliance on AI. However, addressing these challenges and ensuring the responsible use of GPT-4 can lead to a more equitable and effective healthcare system.

Overall, GPT-4 has the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine and improve the experience of patients by enhancing diagnostic accuracy, personalizing treatment, streamlining administrative tasks, expanding access to healthcare services, and more. As with any new technology, it is essential to address ethical concerns and ensure the responsible and equitable use of AI in medicine.

(Note ChatGPT’s passion for equity! If we put ChatGPT in charge, it might read “Racial Disparities in Maternal and Infant Health” (KFF), learn that “Black and American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) women have higher rates of pregnancy-related death compared to White women” and decide to euthanize 15 percent of white pregnant people who come to the hospital. That would be the simplest and fastest way for the AI to accomplish its equity goals of health outcomes based on skin color.)

A primary care doc neighbor says that he uses ChatGPT every day and would pay $1,000 per month for it if he had to. When confronted with a massive hospital discharge note that he is required to summarize in order to get paid, he will ask ChatGPT to summarize it, for example. He also uses ChatGPT to draft follow-up instructions. He says that ChatGPT is surprisingly good at interpreting blood tests. It is interesting to reflect that ChatGPT is useful to him describe the fact that he can’t feed it his institution’s electronic medical record. So the AI doesn’t already know each patient’s full history.

Let’s return to The AI Revolution in Medicine: GPT-4 and Beyond… starting with “Chapter 4: Trust but Verify” from the doctor (Isaac Kohane) and “Chapter 5: The AI-Augmented Patient” from the science journalist (Carey Goldberg).

In “Trust but Verify,” the question of how we would put GPT-4 through a clinical trial is explored. Other computer programs have passed clinical trials and received government approval, so why not GPT-4? The typical clinical trial is narrow, Dr. Kohane points out, while GPT-4’s range of function is wide. Just as an FDA trial probably couldn’t be done to approve or disapprove an individual doctor, it seems unlikely that an FDA trial can approve or disapprove a LLM and, therefore, AI programs are most likely destined to be superhuman partners with human docs and not replacements. The chapter contains a couple of concrete scenarios in which the doctor compares his own work in some difficult cases to GPT-4’s and the AI does fantastic.

In “The AI-Augmented Patient”, the journalist points out that the people who’ve been asking Dr. Google for advice will be the heavy users of Dr. GPT-4. She highlights that the “COVID ‘misinfodemic’ shows[s] that it matters which humans are in the loop, and that leaving patients to their own electronic devices can be rife with pitfalls.” Implicit in the foregoing is the assumption that public health officials are the best human decision-makers. What if the take-away from coronapanic is the opposite? Credentialed Americans refused to read the WHO pandemic management playbook, refused to process any information coming from Europe unless it fit their preconceived ideas about lockdowns, school closures, and mask orders, and refused to consider population-wide effects such as risk compensation. A computer program wouldn’t have any of these cognitive biases.

What happened when people expanded their sources of information? One notable example: Marjorie Taylor Greene turned out to be a better virologist than Dr. Fauci. In August 2021, MTG was suspended from Twitter for noting that the available COVID-19 vaccines did not prevent infection by and spread of SARS-CoV-2 and that masks were not effective. Virologist Greene’s statements were labeled “false” as a matter of Scientific fact by the journalists at the New York Times in January 2022 and then proven correct soon afterwards with a huge study in Spain and the Cochrane review. Plenty of those killed by COVID would be alive today if they’d listened to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s advice rather than the CDC’s. The elderly/vulnerable would have stayed safe at home, for example, instead of entering public indoor environments with masks on.

I’m optimistic that GPT-4 will do better in many areas than American medical officialdom because its judgment won’t be tainted by groupthink and “we’ve always done it this way”. We’ve often had standard of care disagreements with the Europeans, for example, and the Europeans have ended up being correct. The latest discrepancy in Science is that Denmark suggests a newborn get his/her/zir/their first COVID shot at age 50 (in the year 2073) while the CDC suggests four shots over the next 12 months. We might know who was right in 5-10 years, but an orthodox American MD isn’t supposed to question the CDC and would never ask “Are the Danes right?” while GPT-4 surely would be aware of the Danish MD/PhDs’ conclusions.

As long as we’re on the subject of every American’s favorite disease… later in the book, Kevin Scott, the CTO of Microsoft whose degree is in computer science, talks about the epic stupidity of physicians in rural Virginia. Not only did they fail to immediately prescribe Paxlovid to his tested-positive brother, but they actively refused to prescribe it when the life-saving experimental drug was asked for by name (cue the Super Bowl ad for the still-not-FDA-approved drug). Here’s a photo of the West Coast computer programmer who claims to know more about preventing death-by-COVID than doctors in Virginia’s Trump Belt:

Given the scattered nature of American medical records, I think that a patient who is diligent about saving all of his/her/zir/their tests and logging symptoms then running a local copy of GPT-4 will be way ahead in the diagnosis Olympics. There is a limit to what a doctor can do in a 15-minute visit and the typical doctor can see only a fraction of a patient’s medical record (because tests and treatments have been done at other institutions and the $trillions that Americans have spent on electronic health records have not yielded any practical integration).

What will this do to demand for medical services? The chapter quotes “Dr. Jim Weinstein, a leading expert on health equity now at Microsoft” that “[GPT-4] could be a particular valuable partner for the 100 million Americans on Medicaid, and it could cut unnecessary cost and waste across the board by helping patients understand more about their options.” Personal guess: GPT-4 will drive demand and therefore costs in the opposite direction. GPT-4 already covers its ass by providing the worst-case scenarios. Patients will learn that their “options” include aggressive rare cancers and calling 911.

Let’s try a concrete example. Suppose that you live in Maskachusetts and your female-led Social Equity marijuana home delivery was running late so you drink half a bottle of rum while waiting for the daily one-ounce high-potency bong refill. The next morning, despite all of the healing cannabis that you consumed, you wake up on the bathroom tile not feeling your best and ask GPT-4, “I have a lump on my head. What are the possible causes?” Here’s what it says:

There are several possible causes of a lump on the head, including:

  1. Head injury: A bump or lump on the head may be the result of a head injury, such as a concussion, hematoma, or skull fracture.
  2. Scalp infections: Infections of the scalp, such as folliculitis or cellulitis, can cause swelling, redness, and lumps on the scalp.
  3. Cysts: A cyst is a sac filled with fluid or other material that can develop under the skin on the scalp.
  4. Lipomas: A lipoma is a slow-growing, benign tumor made up of fat cells that can develop under the skin on the scalp.
  5. Bone deformities: Certain conditions, such as Paget’s disease or fibrous dysplasia, can cause abnormalities in the bones of the skull that may lead to lumps or bumps on the head.
  6. Tumors: In rare cases, a lump on the head may be a sign of a cancerous tumor.

It’s important to have any new lumps or bumps on the head evaluated by a healthcare provider to determine the cause and appropriate treatment. If the lump is the result of a head injury and you experience symptoms such as loss of consciousness, dizziness, or severe headache, seek emergency medical attention immediately.

The patient who didn’t talk to GPT-4 might wait a few days before seeking healthcare services. After all, plenty of Looney Tunes characters recover quickly from head lumps.

The patient who reads the GPT-4 output, however, is explicitly told that he/she/ze/they must be “evaluated by a healthcare provider” and that injury from an alcohol-and-cannabis-assisted encounter with tile is just 1 out of 6 possibilities. The idea that “the 100 million Americans on Medicaid”, who have $0 copays for going to the emergency room, will ignore GPT-4’s explicit

Full post, including comments