Comment by rtpg
2 hours ago
You interpret that wiki list of 154 items as proof that we know nothing. I interpret that as "oh wow, only 154!" That list feels pretty short, but of course it's just a wiki list.
I do get what you're getting at. I just feel like for every bit of drug that is just dumb luck we have a good amount of iterative processes.
I agree that you often find effects before understanding causes (I think that math also exhibits this! Many endeavors are about finding existing structure that we sense to be there but are unsure of).
Just... well... if you go down the "we don't understand anything anyways" path too much what makes your work different from alternative medicine?
I certainly don't mean to suggest we know nothing, and our current imperfect level of mechanistic understanding gives a much better hit rate than eating random plants. I just mean that when the understanding fails, we're perfectly happy to use the drug anyways if the clinical trials pass. The confidence comes from those human trials, and the mechanistic insight is more about probabilistically improving our screening before that.
> Just... well... if you go down the "we don't understand anything anyways" path too much what makes your work different from alternative medicine?
"Alternative medicine" in the pejorative sense is medicine that doesn't work, i.e. that would fail the clinical trial. That seems like a different question from whether we understand why it works.
The idea that we could know that something works but not why is almost inconceivable in computer science ex ML. That's the default state of most applied science though, consistent with your observation that effects are often discovered before causes.