Comment by Fraterkes
9 hours ago
I don't know how to word this in a way that won't get me into a pointless semantics argument, but the word Cure in the slides is clearly used to mean "substance intended to be (but not necessarily confirmed to be) a cure". If you think it's badly worded that's fine, but ostensibly the point here's not to "win" the argument game, but to get his intended point and engage with that.
No, it doesn't mean "intended to be". "While nobody truly knows how this cocktail was found, this model prediction is confirmed in Lean, and the cocktail indeed passes a stage 3 trial".
My own pointless semantic argument: we typically don't use the word cure when we talk about cancer. Instead, we use the term "complete remission". Many people who were thought to be cured then developed cancer decades later that was genetically derived from a small remaining population of cancer cells that were not eliminated in the original "cure". The word is a shibboleth for not being familiar with cancer medicine and treatment.
The above commenter has the same allegory- most “users” of math don’t care about the body of work behind it; only the consequence of it being proved is the fact that matters.
But the slide says it passes a stage 3 trial. Surely many dying patients would kill for the opportunity to take the drug.
Many people would, many wouldn’t. The comment I’m responding to casts the decision as so uncontroversial that even asking the question is inhererently damning.
You're glossing over the false statement in your original argument that the cure was not confirmed. The slide says it passed stage 3.
Beat me to it. It is sad to see that a lot of the people commenting lack good reading comprehension. Or maybe it is that they just want to be dismissive of something they don't like, or just for the sake of it.
I would totally take the mysterious drug if it was clinically tested and shown to be reasonably effective. But that is not the premises presented here.
Wrong: the slide says "the cocktail indeed passes a stage 3 trial." Be careful before you accuse others of bad reading comprehension.