Medicine and AI
Modern medicine works like everything else modern: first, it's a system designed to function as independently as possible from the individual running it. Second, it's a system with highly specialized parts. The doctor is no longer the most critical component in delivering healthcare. He is merely a node in a vast network of experts which are all supposed to work in unison and high efficiency to deliver the required result. The division of healthcare institutions into primary, secondary, and tertiary is an example.
For a correct diagnosis, a modern doctor builds on the efforts of doctors in lower divisions of the healthcare system, and relies quite heavily on lab tests, imaging technology, and histopathology whose reliability, in turn, rely heavily on the lab technician, radiologist, and pathologist respectively. For treatment, the doctor will be dependant upon nurses, pharmacists, surgeons, physical therapists, and many more.
The role of the doctor is being more and more transformed into something similar to an orchestra conductor; he has enough and necessary knowledge to mark a path to diagnosis and treatment, but doesn't have the knowledge and skills necessary to walk the patient through that path himself. His job becomes, in some regards, an administrative one.
In this context, where a doctor becomes more and more integrated into, and reliant on, a network of other experts, it might be reasonable to add another expert: artificial intelligence, which is an expert in indexing, navigating fetching, and summarizing the immense library of human knowledge; the internet. Since the volume of medical sciences and its related fields are simply too big, and growing bigger by the day, for the human mind to encompass, AI might eventually be a useful tool for the doctor if used properly.
Modern medicine works like everything else modern: first, it's a system designed to function as independently as possible from the individual running it. Second, it's a system with highly specialized parts. The doctor is no longer the most critical component in delivering healthcare. He is merely a node in a vast network of experts which are all supposed to work in unison and high efficiency to deliver the required result. The division of healthcare institutions into primary, secondary, and tertiary is an example.
For a correct diagnosis, a modern doctor builds on the efforts of doctors in lower divisions of the healthcare system, and relies quite heavily on lab tests, imaging technology, and histopathology whose reliability, in turn, rely heavily on the lab technician, radiologist, and pathologist respectively. For treatment, the doctor will be dependant upon nurses, pharmacists, surgeons, physical therapists, and many more.
The role of the doctor is being more and more transformed into something similar to an orchestra conductor; he has enough and necessary knowledge to mark a path to diagnosis and treatment, but doesn't have the knowledge and skills necessary to walk the patient through that path himself. His job becomes, in some regards, an administrative one.
In this context, where a doctor becomes more and more integrated into, and reliant on, a network of other experts, it might be reasonable to add another expert: artificial intelligence, which is an expert in indexing, navigating fetching, and summarizing the immense library of human knowledge; the internet. Since the volume of medical sciences and its related fields are simply too big, and growing bigger by the day, for the human mind to encompass, AI might eventually be a useful tool for the doctor if used properly.
The paradox of easier life and greater anxiety
Life became palpably easier for humans in the last few hundred years, yet complaints of depression and anxiety¹ seem to be rising more than before. This probably arises from the change in our concepts and expectations. Struggle and hardship were seen as part of normal life and they were to be expected. Therefore, a certain degree of anxiety and depression was normal and to be expected too. Most cultures of the past grasped and accepted these as aspects of Life itself and of human experience.
It's only in recent times that hardships and difficulties (both in personal life, and in human existence in general) came to be seen as anomalies and mistakes to be corrected. Thus anxiety and depression (or melancholia) were transformed from normal human experiences that can become problematic if extreme, into diseases by the very definition.
Living an easy life surely was desired in the past, but was not considered the norm, nor was the inability to achieve it considered an anomaly or a failure. The death of one's child, for example, as tragic as it was and will always be, was always around the corner; a possibility never forgotten in one's mind. Most of our grandmothers already lost one or two children in the course of life and moved on.
Anxiety was not seen as an illness, but a sensible precaution. Depression was not a disease, but an attitude towards the evidently hard life. They were viewed either as personal traits, attitudes towards life, or matters of ethics, and they were ameliorated through religion, community ties, ethical teachings, and poetry.
¹I am specifically talking about depression and anxiety in their milder forms, so to speak, not of major depressive episodes, for example, and certainly not of mental illnesses that cause severe dysfunction like schizophrenia.
Life became palpably easier for humans in the last few hundred years, yet complaints of depression and anxiety¹ seem to be rising more than before. This probably arises from the change in our concepts and expectations. Struggle and hardship were seen as part of normal life and they were to be expected. Therefore, a certain degree of anxiety and depression was normal and to be expected too. Most cultures of the past grasped and accepted these as aspects of Life itself and of human experience.
It's only in recent times that hardships and difficulties (both in personal life, and in human existence in general) came to be seen as anomalies and mistakes to be corrected. Thus anxiety and depression (or melancholia) were transformed from normal human experiences that can become problematic if extreme, into diseases by the very definition.
Living an easy life surely was desired in the past, but was not considered the norm, nor was the inability to achieve it considered an anomaly or a failure. The death of one's child, for example, as tragic as it was and will always be, was always around the corner; a possibility never forgotten in one's mind. Most of our grandmothers already lost one or two children in the course of life and moved on.
Anxiety was not seen as an illness, but a sensible precaution. Depression was not a disease, but an attitude towards the evidently hard life. They were viewed either as personal traits, attitudes towards life, or matters of ethics, and they were ameliorated through religion, community ties, ethical teachings, and poetry.
¹I am specifically talking about depression and anxiety in their milder forms, so to speak, not of major depressive episodes, for example, and certainly not of mental illnesses that cause severe dysfunction like schizophrenia.
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Bist du von deiner Geliebten getrennt Wie Orient vom Occident, Das Herz durch alle Wüsten rennt; Es gibt sich überall selbst das Geleit, Für Liebende ist Bagdad nicht weit. — West-östlicher Divan, von Goethe (الديوان الشرقي للمؤلف الغربي، غوته)
إذا كانَ بُعْدُ الحِبِّ ما قد قضى دَهْرِي
كبُعْدِ مغيبِ الشمسِ عن مطلعِ الفَجْرِ
ففي القلب هادٍ قد حداهُ —مسافرًا—
يجوبُ بأرجاءِ الفَلَا والقرى القَفْرِ
وبغدادُ ما بغدادُ دارًا بعيدةً
عن العاشقِ الولهانِ في ساعةِ العُسْرِ
— ترجمه شِعرًا عبد الله التغلبي
كبُعْدِ مغيبِ الشمسِ عن مطلعِ الفَجْرِ
ففي القلب هادٍ قد حداهُ —مسافرًا—
يجوبُ بأرجاءِ الفَلَا والقرى القَفْرِ
وبغدادُ ما بغدادُ دارًا بعيدةً
عن العاشقِ الولهانِ في ساعةِ العُسْرِ
— ترجمه شِعرًا عبد الله التغلبي
Reconstructed Minoan Palace in Crete, built around 1700 B.C., and destroyed around 1350 B.C.