> A deliveryman who would give only his surname, Yang, says he generally makes $15 to $30 a day, and as little as 75¢ for a short trip.
Honestly this makes me skeptical of an AI delivery person unless it starts in high cost of labor countries like the USA. It would be silly to try to beat the low human labor costs of China or Southeast Asia.
I wonder if this will be some small type of advantage for Western companies going forward.
Surely an AI delivery will eventually win in all markets, but who's going to risk trying to build it when the max theoretical benefit is a few dollars per day per worker replaced? In the US the benefit might be 20x that much [1], making the risk worth investing in.
[1] assuming a hypothetical hyper efficient drone deliverer costs $15 / day and a SE Asian delivery worker costs $20 / day, that's $5 / day potential. An American delivery worker that costs $100 / day leaves $85 / day potential, or almost 20x as much.
I don't see what's wrong with this if they asked for permission first. I gave access to Epic Games to collect info on who my steam friends are so I could play Apex with them.
Indeed but if it’s anything like other social activist issues there will be far more people worried about the (cuter) animals than the stuff that affects humans.
I know your comment is a joke but, if drones become a thing for herding then we'll just see less sheep dogs bred. This happened with sheep in the US after WW2. Other fibers had been introduced into the market which reduced wool demand.
I understand the frustration, but I think the anger should be directed at inefficiencies in the market. You can examine UPMC's Charge Description Master File for their different hospitals, and the cost for Y-90 Sirsphere is $222406.00 in Pittsburgh and $56687.00 in Erie ($150,000 and 2 hours drive difference).
Not bashing UPMC, but this probably applies to hospitals around the country. These hospitals have huge costs due to administrative and pay. As for us patients and potential patients, eliminating high drug costs by making sure people know they're finding equal quality medication at the best price is a step forward in my book.
"You can examine UPMC's Charge Description Master File for their different hospitals, and the cost for Y-90 Sirsphere is $222406.00 in Pittsburgh and $56687.00 in Erie ($150,000 and 2 hours drive difference)."
And you know that the charge master prices are pretty much phantasy and nobody knows what the insurance rates are. They should have to open up all pricing. There should be no hidden negotiated prices and all historical prices should be published.
It's such an absurd expense that I wonder if I get diagnosed with cancer, I would just deny treatment, accept death, and hand my assets to loved ones. Not sure if anyone else thinks the same way.
That is rational thinking through and through. Part of the reason that medical costs are so high is because some people will pay any price, to themselves or to society, to get/stay healthy.
A rational person says "some costs are too extreme and thus we must allow some to die".
A flip side of the argument is that very high cost(read profit margin) of treatment incentivizes others to fund research for treatments and cures.
I don't think anyone can think about it realistically until they are in that situation. How much is another year of your life worth to you? And to your loved ones for that matter? (assuming we're talking terminal cancer here, which it might not be)
I have family that suffered from cancer and spent a good lot of money prolonging their life by about eighteen months. They were not pleasant months, but I don't think for a second that the family would have preferred to take the lump sum instead.
My mom fought cancer at great expense and with everyone's support, and just ended up prolonging her suffering. When my dad was diagnosed with cancer a few years later, remembering that experience, he fought pretty much everyone and declined treatment, and died swiftly. If my turn comes and my odds are about as bad as theirs, I may well prefer to follow his example.
I'm on the downward side of 50. My best years (physically) are in the past. My kids are nearly adults. I'd rather pass on my assets to them and set them up for a better life than piss it away on medical treatments that don't have much hope of working.
My point is that your kids might not agree with you, and it is difficult, to say the least, to negotiate that situation. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that everyone has a different answer.
Take that lump sum or in another way of looking at it have that lump sum taken from them. Depending on the family situation this could cause knock on effect leading to financial burdens that who knows, could lead to suicide? Is that worth 18 months of a doomed persons life?
They wouldn't have the lump sum taken from them if they consented to it. And many do, sometimes with more enthusiasm than the person technically giving the money.
A lot of cancers have good a prognosis, especially if diagnosed early. Would you still do so if your chance of long-term survival and full remission, with treatment, is 50% or higher?
Problem is, the treatment provider offers no hard guarantees: full remission or your money back. The claimed success rates could be based on research studies, which have a reputation to be systemically flawed.
> Over a 10-year stretch, he said, Amgen’s scientists had tried to replicate the findings of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer biology. Just six of them came up with positive results.
I'm not even in US and I'm considering the same.. if the expenses go above some reasonable threshold, I don't see the point of me living enough to see my family dragged into poverty. I don't delude myself - it's not easy to do.
Part of the problem is that, especially with an illness with as complicated a treatment process as many cancers, there's no way to even estimate the expenses. Even once you get treatment, the expenses might not be accessible until the bill comes in and you find out what your insurance company will pay for.
After that, there's a sunk cost issue: once you've dropped (N*your current net worth) on treatment, what's the harm in continuing?
That was actually one of the cornerstones of the HSA for everyone plan that Ben Carson was pushing. The government would pay into your HSA and when you got a diagnosis like that, you’d have the option of not continuing treatment and passing the balance of the HSA to your family.
I think that route is unpopular because we no longer have a sane relationship with death as a society. Religion, at least in theory, should help, but rates are declining there too. We'll pay any price to avoid the inevitable. We'll spend hundreds of thousands to get one more year of poor quality time with family, yet neglect to spend that time in better quality when health is taken for granted.
If you had no family, you could save many more lives for cheaper and easier to treat sicknesses, plus donating your healthy organs.
This is precisely my plan. I gave away upwards of $1 million USD last year. I have no assets remaining, no career, parents, spouse or pet. I’m almost out of money finally.
40 something white American male college drop out with no social connections. Tinnitus and hyperacusis long term.
The biggest part is figuring out how to maximize the donation of my organs to the medical school by coordinating self termination in a country where suicide is still largely frowned upon.
I have no insurance and just yesterday I had serious chest pains for the first time on the right half. This is almost certainly the result of not taking care of my body. Better to self terminate and spare suffering and resources, and to donate the organs.
When societies began moving on, philosophically, from dogmatic religions and into the current era of empiricism, we lost the ability to put death in context. Empiricism tells us that when you die, there is nothing, and the objectively rational thing to do is whatever it takes to live as long as possible. Empirical thought patterns tend towards extremes. What society needs to do, and possibly is in the process of doing, is recognizing empiricism as an incomplete model of reality. Hopefully that will lead us back towards a healthier relationship with our mortality.
So it's definitely something that goes through your mind, however I've had the discussion with my wife. There's also the possibility that you'd be cured. It's entirely going to depend on your diagnosis, which you literally don't know until after you've gone through a CT scan, PET scan, and possibly surgery to determine tumor staging. I can say based on numerous conversations with other people, if you think you're going to die, you're going to die. Cancer is also extremely painful physically for some people with or without treatment. Best bet? Get life insurance.
I have two friends who have survived cancer. Both of them have said that they would skip treatment if they could relive the experience. I lost another friend to an agonizing one year battle with glioblastoma.
If I ever receive a cancer diagnosis it will probably be the end of me. I have great life insurance and my survivors will be well taken care of. Even with the modern, immune-based chemo(which my friend had for melanoma), there are severe and permanent side-effects. After watching my friend with GBM die, I realized the medical industry is more than happy to take any money you have even if there is no chance they can help.
I've been thinking about my own death since ~2003. I have established what I want to happen to my body; I have yet to determine an official will, medical attorney, &c and that great fault is on me.
I recommend following "Order Of The Good Death" for the "US alternatives on Death". It is good times. Yes, talking about Death counts as "good times"; it is not difficult to imagine your survivors arguing over your body... about your body... about your assets... about your legacy... about your estate... and so forth.
My doctor and I had a conversation about this and that was his position, though not for reasons of expense. He says it's a fairly popular position amongst his peers, as well. Those who get to see first-hand what treatment looks like don't want to go through it themselves.
That's any easy statement to make when being diagnosed with cancer is some small probability potential future event.
Not that I really disagree with the sentiment, but I find it difficult to judge people actually staring death in the face based on my comfortable position of, well, not.
I always thought this was the way to go. People routinely punch the numbers to figure out if they can 'afford' to have a child, why is it so strange to do the same for end of life?
I've lived in LA for 3 years and voted to support Measure M. My take on this is that by increasing the capacity for public transit, we'll be able to support a continuously growing city. One of the ticket items that got me to support Measure M is funding for the Sepulveda Transit Pass, which will build a train route from Sherman Oaks to UCLA and down to Culver City and ultimately connect to the Purple Line.
The problem with the graph is that it doesn't factor in population growth, which seems to have grown from 3.2 million to 6.9 million from 1970 to 10 million 2013. If you calculated the miles travelled in transit per year, you'll interpret many folks in LA benefit from the Measures.
As a result, I believe the article is disingenuous by attacking a successful measures by relying on poorly interpreted data.
Would you indicate this is a satirical article? Half the time I was looking for jump height or understanding if adding parachutes to commercial aircraft that suddenly experienced breakage such as a missile would improve passenger survival.
The fact that this isn't immediately tagged as satirical and requires actually reading the article and fully understanding the context (rather than just reading the headline and making a quick assumption) is pretty much the entire point of the "study" and the authors of it. Marking it as satirical would sabotage the purpose.
That was, after all, how something like A Modest Proposal was structured. You were supposed to believe the author was serious at first. That's an important element to a lot of satire.
I've done over 900 jumps so I can fill you in, no references ATM because I'm on my phone.
If you jump with a parachute, you will see chance of death go from 0% at zero feet, to approximately 100% at 35 feet. From there, it will remain near 100% until you reach about 600 feet, which is about the minimum distance it takes a parachute to open. Above 1000 feet and chance of death floors out near 0%
35 ft is a little pessimistic, the LD50 is 10.5m (~35 ft) for those with head and chest injuries, and 22.4m (~75 ft) for those without. Which is surprisingly far.
In patients with head and chest injuries, a 50% mortality rate was estimated to occur at falls from 10.5m, compared to 22.4m in those without injuries to head or chest
Studies like this don't provide good data points for "if you jump[...]" as the GP mentioned. The data is gathered from people who either accidentally fell, or intentionally jumped not intending to live.
They can't just randomly recruit people and have them jump to their near-certain deaths from ever increasing heights due to pesky medical ethics boards.
This matters because a person who's forced to jump from a significant height out of desperation (e.g. to avoid a fire) is likely to take certain precautions that people who accidentally fall don't take, and those trying to kill themselves intentionally avoid.
I distinctly remember seeing a video of a jump my unit did in Honduras (right before I got there) where someone on the ground with a camera followed someone burning-in who opened their reserve at ~50-75ft and "walked" away with just a broken tailbone.
There was another case where someone "successfully" burned-in from 800ft (where we did all our jumps from) and survived because they did a proper landing or, perhaps, just pure luck.
From what I remember there were only a couple jump-related fatalities in the 3 years I was on jump status and the 82nd did something like a million jumps a year...which says a lot because if we went 82 days without a fatality we would get a day off and in 3 years we reached that goal exactly once.
There are of course extraordinary cases. There is that last tiny fraction of survivors.
But really, falling sucks. There is a reason working in solar is more deadly than working in nuclear. And the reason is occasionally an installer falls off of a roof.
Some people survive such falls but they typically require extensive surgery and long hospital stays. They often suffer serious long-term cognitive or physical deficits. It's not a fun way to survive.
Theoretically, once you're high enough that you reach terminal velocity, any additional altitude does not increase your speed but does increase your time in the air, potentially giving you more time to navigate towards a more favorable landing site (evergreen grove, mountainside covered in deep snow, pile of 45 mattresses that happens to be outside, etc).
Not that I know of. Maybe, if you jump from high enough that you pass out due to lack of oxygen, and you land in a manner that benefits from you being a ragdoll vs an actively bracing person, then it could help, but that seems unlikely(you'd probably also wake back up before you hit the ground, as I've heard stories about this happening to WWII pilots).
But overall, I believe it is better to be conscious. If you are falling from 3 miles up, you can glide to maybe 1 mile in any direction. This gives you the chance to try to land in a snow drift, in some mud, maybe a hay bail, or even a thick shrubbery, etc.
First you must find... another shrubbery! Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here, beside this shrubbery, only slightly higher so you get a two layer effect with a little path running down the middle. ("A path! A path!") Then, you must cut down the mightiest tree in the forrest... with... a herring!
This is almost certainly survivorship bias[1]. Only middle-height cats that might theoretically survive are going to be taken to a veterinarian; the cats that fell from higher heights were not included, because they were "obviously dead". Which makes "high-rise syndrome" an example of the exact type of bias discussed in this paper.
> Strangely, cats that fall from a height under 6 stories have more severe trauma than those that fall from over 6 stories.
So, the theory is, if a cat falls from a height above 6 stories they either have less severe injuries or are just dead so the owner just doesn't bring them to the vet?
>>6 stories they either have less severe injuries or are just dead so the owner just doesn't bring them to the vet
I would guess that at that height something must've broken the fall such that the cat suffered almost no injuries. I really don't see how the cat would survive the fall otherwise.
Cats are much smaller than humans and better prepared to absorb impact after "floating" to ground. I assume breaking the fall would actually be dangerous to cats because it disturbs their approach.
Yes. Consider trialling a new drug that is supposed to prevent/cure a terrible disease, and has a well explained mechanism of effect, supported by clinical results of some % of sick people no longer being sick after treatment.
If you want an RCT you need a control group who will be subjected to the horrible disease with standard treatment (and sometimes a group with no treatment), and a group subject to the experimental treatment. Who will volunteer for this trial? Perfectly health people? Or people with the disease?
Like, maybe the measles vaccine is all just placebo effect and good sanitation and handwashing practices. Can we do an RCT where we inject some children with saline instead of vaccine, then see what happens?
Because we can't be certain the children of crunchy hipsters who don't get immunised get measles is related to lack of immunisation, it might be they expose themselves to exotic strains by taking exotic holidays.
Honestly this makes me skeptical of an AI delivery person unless it starts in high cost of labor countries like the USA. It would be silly to try to beat the low human labor costs of China or Southeast Asia.