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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Growth isn’t a problem when it’s sustainable. However, there are natural limits to how far and how fast technological development and resource extraction will allow us to grow the economy.

    Additionally, competition within capitalism forces the wealthy to seek out any and all means of growth. If they do not they actually risk all of their wealth becoming devalued. This drives innovation but it also is the driver of imperialism, exploitation, environmental degradation, all of which grow the economy.

    When growth because less attainable due to various natural constrains, the wealthy start to cannibalize the systems that keep society stable. Again, they can’t help themselves. If they don’t their class position is threatened as some other capital owner beats them to the limited profits that come from privatization and austerity.

    This usually results in mass unrest across all the various classes in society. That includes some of the middle classes who also rely on exploitation to maintain their standard of living. In response to threat of social unrest, the wealthy usually align themselves with right wing authoritarians that claim to be able to bring order to the chaos and renew growth through imperial expansion. This kind of politics is often supported by some of the downwardly mobile middle classes. That’s how we get fascism.


  • The false negative rate is also quite high. It will miss about 1 in 5 women with cancer. The reality is mammography is just not all that powerful as a screening tool. That’s why the criteria for who gets screened and how often has been tailored to try and ensure the benefits outweigh the risks. Although it is an ongoing debate in the medical community to determine just exactly what those criteria should be.



  • It’s a common problem in diagnostics and it’s why mammograms aren’t recommended to women under 40.

    Let’s say you have 10,000 patients. 10 have cancer or a precancerous lesion. Your test may be able to identify all 10 of those patients. However, if it has a false positive rate of 5% that’s around 500 patients who will now get biopsies and potentially surgery that they don’t actually need. Those follow up procedures carry their own risks and harms for those 500 patients. In total, that harm may outweigh the benefit of an earlier diagnosis in those 10 patients who have cancer.


  • cecinestpasunbot@lemmy.mltoScience Memes@mander.xyzBreast Cancer
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    2 months ago

    Unfortunately AI models like this one often never make it to the clinic. The model could be impressive enough to identify 100% of cases that will develop breast cancer. However if it has a false positive rate of say 5% it’s use may actually create more harm than it intends to prevent.


  • she had absolutely nothing to do with […] any regime changes

    That’s certainly not true if you if you know anything about recent Balkan history.

    Between 1993 and 2001, Alexander was USAID’s deputy for the Europe region, focusing on immediate post-conflict reconstruction in the Balkans.

    USAID financially supported anti-government organizations in the Balkans in order to foment regime change during her tenure. This isn’t a secret either. That information is publicly available. If she was working at USAID during that time at best she was only tangentially involved.



  • You don’t have to white wash Carter’s foreign policy to criticize Maduro.

    Carter’s own national security advisor tried to legitimize Pol Pot for fuck’s sake. That’s not to mention Carter continued support for the Indonesian dictator as he carried out a genocide in East Timor. Oh and we shouldn’t forget the Carter administration started the program which funded and armed the right wing islamist progenitors of the Taliban in Afghanistan. More relevant to Latin America, Carter’s support for the El Savadoran military dictatorship was critical for its stability as it committed unspeakable atrocities.

    Don’t be confused by Carter’s outward humanitarianism in his post presidency. He was not an aberration when it comes to US foreign policy and I wouldn’t expect the Carter center to be either. It’s literally run these days by a woman who spent much of her career working for USAID.






  • Well part of it is China was a severely underdeveloped country. They had to play catch up and so they traded access to their large labor market in exchange for technology transfers agreements.

    That said, I think it would be incorrect to say their economy is currently based on copying. They publish more high impact research papers these days than any other country and are technological leaders particularly in green energy. This has been such a rapid change though that I think people’s perceptions of the Chinese economy lag the reality.


  • Then I’m not sure you know much about the motivations of Xi, the CPC, or the US for that matter. Since the 80s both sides only real interest has been economic growth. The US was fine with Chinas growth for decades as long as they provide the US a source of cheap labor. However now, China’s economy is actually larger than the US’s in terms of purchase power parity. If left unchecked China would become the economic center of the world without firing a single shot.

    The US is clearly worried about losing it’s economic dominance as the worlds only superpower. That’s why it’s made contingency plans for how to confront China militarily. If they tried to subdue China through an invasion it wouldn’t work. China is a nuclear power and that would spell the end of the world. What they could do instead is use islands off the coast of China to enforce a naval blockade of the mainland. From South Korea, to Japan including Okinawa, to the Philippines the US is stationing military assets all the way down the coast. Taiwan would serve as the linch pin to that plan.

    Again I have to repeat the US is not the defender of liberal democracy that they claim to be. The people of Taiwan should be clear eyed about that.