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by arbitrage 871 days ago
This article mentions nothing about twins being affected asymmetrically by schizophrenia. Any model of the disease needs to account for that.

Also, this gem: "You also can’t point to any individual lung cancer patient and say “smoking caused this person’s lung cancer”."

Article loses all credibility at that point. Lol.

6 comments

I used to giggle at lines like this too, but then I got into woodworking. Woodworking has roughly the same risk profile for lung disease, and roughly the same amount of people that don't or won't wear aspirators (effectively close to the percentage of people that smoke). The result? A relatively slim portion of people actually get lung disease from inhaling wood dust (not even treated, just general raw lumber dust).

The trick? We have no way to tell if you'll be susceptible. Most of this analogues to smoking. Not everyone (or even most) who smokes, or even smokes for a lifetime will get lung disease. That said, good luck predicting who will and won't.

>Also, this gem: "You also can’t point to any individual lung cancer patient and say “smoking caused this person’s lung cancer”."

But that's absolutely correct.

He covered this exhaustively in the previous post https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/some-unintuitive-properties...

Please actually read before snarking.

>"You also can’t point to any individual lung cancer patient and say “smoking caused this person’s lung cancer”."

>Article loses all credibility at that point. Lol.

I don't think the people with lung cancer secondary to silicosis will see the humor. You should explain the joke.

Not all people who smoke get lung cancer, lung cancer happens to non-smokers, and most of the evidence is in the form of statistical associations. Merely "proving smoking causes lung cancer" (rather than just association) was a major challenge, and strictly speaking, what he said is factually correct.
Upvoted for your first sentence. I wish I could split your comment in two and downvote the rest of it: the "gem", as you ironically call it, is absolutely correct.