[tominous]

The standard approach to orthodontics is to extract teeth to make room and then move the remaining teeth into place. There is an alternative approach which involves enlarging the jaw, either through expanders, surgery or a combination of both.

Unfortunately this is an area where the patient or parent often has to make the decision because specialists only know about what they do. As a related example, I asked a dentist and an orthodontist what was more suitable for me, Invisalign or braces. They could each tell me about the time and likely result of their own specialty, but refused to offer any opinion on what was better for me and my situation.

Somewhat related, there was an interesting article about the wildly different advice given to someone who visited 50 different dentists [1].

Bottom line is seek out multiple opinions and don't expect someone else to guide you on the bigger picture.

[1] https://www.dentistat.com/ReaderDigestArticle.pdf

[anon1253]

There's a larger truth hidden in here: experts disagree. It was one of the things that took me by surprise when building Machine Learning systems, but it makes sense if you think about it. For all but the most trivial matters, it's the job of the expert to exercise personal judgement. It's why they're experts, not because they have a solid understanding of the "knowns", but because they have developed methods and intuitions about the "unknowns". Ask 10 different experts a complex question in their field of interest, and you'll likely get widely varying answers. My guess is that it also played a role in the early expert systems AI bust (AI winter). There are interesting papers published about this as well, e.g. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0951832007... the money shot is in this chart http://imgur.com/a/shaii but you'll see similar distributions everywhere where expert judgement is warranted.

[erikpukinskis]

There is a corollary prediction: AIs will disagree.

Too many people imagine AIs are somehow "perfectly rational" and therefore will never disagree, they'll just tap into a unified decision making engine and automatically integrate all of their knowledge.

In order to integrate knowledge you need more knowledge. And in order to integrate that you need more still. It's turtles all the way down. If anything, AIs are at a disadvantage to humans, because we at least share a body, an emotional palette, and to some extent a cultural timeline. AIs have nothing to ground the beliefs of the other in.

[Felz]

Have you heard of Aumann's agreement theorem? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aumann's_agreement_theorem

Theoretically it means that two AI should be able to reach a consensus pretty quickly without needing to share a lot of information.

Unfortunately you need "honest, rational Bayesian agents with common priors" for this to work. Given that humans rarely agree with each other, it's interesting to think about where we fall short of that criteria.

[digi_owl]

If AI is to agree they need all the facts. And as we keep adding facts almost daily, there is simply no chance that the AI will have all the facts.

We like to think of logic as 1+1=2. But logic is more like A+B-C*D/E=F. Where any number of those being either completely unknown (we sometimes do not even know we are missing them), or some wide range of potential values.

[erikpukinskis]

You need a third model to map facts from one model into facts in another model. Doesn't really solve the problem.

[ethbro]

The issue with the medical profession seems to be when you ask them about something not in their specialty.

Most doctors I've spoken to without a personal relationship refuse to comment and instead refer to a specialist.

... Which forces the patient to make his or her own choice, even though they most information they have is a summary from hurried medical professionals.

I understand why they do it, but it's a suboptimal result compared to their weighing the relative merits with their expert knowledge in at least one and offering advice.

[JPKab]

The author of this article works at the University of Arkansas. I used to live 20 miles from there, and when we needed to "straighten" my son's teeth, we ended up checking out an orthodontist who has been influenced by the new school of thought that is emerging in Australia and Europe on dealing with orthodontic issues.

We ended up settling on a regimen of jaw exercises combined with a device known as a "Myobrace". I was initially very, very skeptical, and was concerned about the lack of rigorous scientific studies conducted on the practice. However, the more I researched the science, the more I became open to giving it a try.

Within 6 months, my son's jaw had widened, and his teeth were mostly straight. I was honestly shocked by how effective the treatment was. It's now been almost 18 months, and the before and after photos are shocking.

He wears the appliance while sleeping, and then during the day (we use the strategy of him doing it whenever he is watching tv or playing Xbox) we have him do jaw exercises with and without the appliance in.

The focus has been on expanding his jaw, and the side effect of this is straightened teeth. Pretty fascinating stuff.

[scott_karana]

If you don't mind my asking, how old is your son? I'm guessing this procedure is limited by age, since bone development stops as you get older?

[JPKab]

Correct! This is for children only. My son was 9 when we started the treatment.

[erroneousfunk]

I think the reason you didn't get a straight answer on the "invisalign vs. braces" is that they do such their jobs so similarly that the biggest factor is really what you want. Do you want a slower and more expensive treatment with less pain, greater dental hygiene convenience, and that less visible to people who see your teeth? Can you put up with a little pain and inconvenience, don't mind the aesthetics, and want to save money?

In some some cases (to the best of my knowledge -- I haven't had to know anything about braces in 15 years), only braces are available until the teeth are in a state where invisalign can do the rest. Clearly, you weren't one of those patients, so the rest is up to you.

The dentists don't know your financial or social situation, they don't know what kind of inconvenience you can and can't put up with. What were you really expecting them to say here?

[tominous]

What you say makes sense, but the people involved didn't even attempt to make me aware of the differences in the concise way you just did. And when I asked about the difference in final result, pain, and time, there was no straight answer. It was just, "This is what I do. I can't tell you about the other thing."