Thursday, March 26, 2026

Tradeoffs Vs Failures

Scott Alexander, who is a psychiatrist, discusses the tradeoffs versus failures of schizophrenia as a jumping off point to discuss the phenomenon of tradeoffs versus flat-out failures in genes and interventions. (The title must need editing - doesn't make any sense.) He makes the good distinction that sometimes it is not the expression of a gene that is ambiguous in its fitness, but the risk of it. 

But cancer risk can also be elevated by tradeoffs: for example, with many asterisks and caveats, the higher a person’s risk of cancer, the lower their risk of certain degenerative diseases like Alzheimers, probably because cells can be set to either easy division (maximizing healing and growth) or limited division (minimizing cancer risk).

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