
The Risks of Knowing Your Risk - imartin2k
https://points.datasociety.net/the-risks-of-knowing-your-risk-46e913c811dc?gi=210c29db70c8
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rootusrootus
At the risk (ha!) of a bad car analogy, I've experienced a similar feeling
when I was regularly doing used oil analysis on my car. One day the analysis
came back and told me I was getting elevated levels of metals that indicated
abnormally high bearing wear. From that point forward I worried needlessly
about when the motor was going to croak, and I realized that I was not willing
to preemptively rebuild it just because an oil analysis showed a higher risk.
So it was good for _nothing_ except higher anxiety.

Moral of that story -- I sold the car about 100K miles later and it was still
just fine. I've never bothered with the oil analysis since.

~~~
iamdave
Software related anecdote: I left a team that at one point, where an
unforeseen occurrence, think something like 1 in a million happened, taking
our production systems offline. Our decision makers became so risk averse to
change for fear of another similar event that we completely stopped innovating
and spent three years wrapping ourselves up in tape and saran wrap to protect
ourselves from getting hurt again because "risk". The thing that took us down
required a pretty trivial version upgrade and we never saw it again, even when
creating deliberate conditions for the bug.

I ended up leaving the company, I couldn't spend another year mitigating other
people's terror, the word "risk" became a trigger word, other engineers
started leaving in droves and eventually, they shut down months later.

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phant0mas
I don't understand. Knowing the worst case scenario doesn't necessarily mean
that it will happen, but helps you get prepared for it in case it does. Who
would choose bliss over knowledge?

~~~
ggambetta
Me neither. I know people who didn't go to the doctor because of this, or
because _" if you go to the doctor they will always find something wrong"_.
Some of these people died leaving sons and daughters without parents,
grandkids without grandparents. I not only don't understand the attitude, I
find it borderline irresponsible/selfish. And I'm saying this from the pain of
being one such son left without a father far too soon and in avoidable
circumstances.

~~~
perl4ever
Unnecessary treatment can be wasteful, harmful or both. Medical professionals
and public policy experts have debated how much cancer screening improves
average outcomes.

Portraying anyone who questions the value of medical testing as irrational and
selfish is denying the fact that smart, thoughtful people have a hard time
defining what is best practice on average. As many as 3/4 of positive cancer
screening test results can be false positives, and if you get one, you have to
then do further testing and possibly treatment, which entails risks.

'overscreening for prostate, breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screening
“is common in both men and women, which not only increases health care
expenditure but can lead to net patient harm.” ' [1]

My father was diagnosed (and eventually died) of cancer shortly before the age
at which periodic screening was recommended, in the early 80s. Nowadays,
screening is recommended at a younger age, and if he had been tested, then it
might have been caught in time. However, I reject the idea that anyone is
irresponsible based on hindsight in a single case. It's just bad luck. And
public policy needs to be set based on what is best for everybody.

[1]
[http://www.ascopost.com/issues/october-15-2014/overscreening...](http://www.ascopost.com/issues/october-15-2014/overscreening-
for-prostate-breast-colorectal-and-cervical-cancer-can-raise-costs-and-harm-
patients/)

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jimmies
> But what if precision medicine leads to negative psychological outcomes,
> including worry, loss of control, or worse?

Hey, do I get depressed because I planned a picnic with my friends tomorrow
and today the weatherman tells me it's going to rain? Would I be worse off if
I know there is a high chance of rain on my wedding which is planned next
week? Would I rather want to know whether it's going to rain tomorrow so I
know to prepare an umbrella, or I'd rather start every day as a complete
surprise? Maybe you like it to be a complete surprise, I think I and most
people would rather know. You can choose to start every day as a complete
surprise and not listen to the weatherman -- sure -- but that's probably not a
popular choice.

Other than that, it is a very big win to know personal genetics to me. With
personal genetics, I know the weakness of mine that I wasn't aware before. For
example, I know I have a higher chance of depending on drugs, so I don't touch
the hard ones. I don't take pain medication unless I can't bear it.

I wrote about it a couple of days ago here, and I offer you a different
perspective. [http://www.tnhh.net/posts/personal-genetics-and-
me.html](http://www.tnhh.net/posts/personal-genetics-and-me.html)

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nitwit005
I suspect it's more likely it will turn into a joke. If I tell you you're at
risk of 1 or 2 types of cancer, you might worry. If I give you a list of 800
things you're at risk of, you'll either ask your doctor, or glance at the
results and ignore it.

