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Comment by Alex3917

15 days ago

Yeah my personal experience has been that Gemini is much more useful for trying to understand complex health issues than OpenAI or Anthropic models. The standard of proof just seems to be much better calibrated, in terms of understanding that a potential treatment that is potentially dangerous probably needs more evidence backing it than another potential treatment without much downside risk.

Absolutely. As one of my physician friends told me: “half the time, the best plan is, ‘We'll have to wait and see.’”

But, as a patient, it's hard to find comfort in that. I think that might be what drives the craziness in “non-traditional” approaches to treating disease. Could it be that people using fruititarian diets and essential oils for cancer are doing so because they don’t understand enough to bear a “wait and see” situation?

Argon explained the problem to me in such depth that I could be content with my basic treatment plan. ChatGPT went way off the deep end, suggesting things like high-dose niacinamide treatment (which is admittedly being evaluated in clinical trials, but comes with a host of other side effects).

  • To be fair, try getting cancer and then consider how you feel about “wait and see” even when you understand enough to know it’s the advice with the best evidence.