How secure do you feel in your livelihood?

[AlaskaTRX]

I work in the oil industry, so nothing is guaranteed; but I have a master's in mechanical & aerospace engineering, so I could always go back to designing missiles if times get tough...

[g-man]

In my current profession? Given that odds are reasonably high that we'll be involved in another shooting war of some sort before I'm retirement eligible, regardless of who wins this election, I'm likely to stay employed. Of course I'm all for someone developing a robot to do Army attrition analysis, build powerpoint slides, and herd high-ranking cats. The sooner I can automate myself out of a job, the better.

[SoupOrMan]

They'll have to change the state constitution to make me redundant. Regardless, I'm still looking for a side gig.

[Aesop]

Pretty rock solid secure.
Unpossible to replace me.

The range of things I do each shift couldn't be synthesized into robotic devices this side of free fusion power and warp drive travel.
Probably not even then. Even Gene Roddenberry got that part of the future right.
Even if health broke out from coast to coast, I'd still be able to work 14 12-hr shifts a week, if not for that pesky "sleep" thing.
And the brighter doctors will happily tell you that if 50% of the doctors died tomorrow, other than longer waits to see one, nothing much would change; but that if 50% of the nurses died tomorrow, it would simply be the harbinger of the next Black Death pandemic.

And let's get serious: they can't even keep the photocopiers running consistently at work.
Think about something like Siri or Windows 8 making life or death decisions about your medical presentation, care, and treatment, and then get back to me.
It would be an episode of The Jetsons by way of Dr. Kevorkian.



BTW, the local kids at BurgerKing were supplanted near universally hereabouts by illegal aliens about 20 years ago.
(That's why fast food now brings about a 1:10 chance of the Tijuana Twostep because someone didn't lave los manos before they made your burger.)
Bring on the damned robots, and let the illegals go back to picking fruit, making beds, and craping on your spinach.
Or better yet, just plain go back. La tierra is calling.

[BDK]

Medical diagnosis will change - has to change, really. If the FDA can get their head, slightly, unstuck about it, there's a world of faster, automatable cheap tests which could greatly improve the most "witch doctor" parts of medicine.

(Yes, I'm sure there's some training bias, but trying to see what's wrong by poking and prodding and... Oh hell, that ties in to some slightly complicated ideas which I will at least write the outline of tomorrow and look for input on how to structure and explain...

[Aesop]

Medical diagnosis will change - has to change, really. If the FDA can get their head, slightly, unstuck about it, there's a world of faster, automatable cheap tests which could greatly improve the most "witch doctor" parts of medicine.

I've only been doing this for about 30 years, in a small subset of the field. I have no idea to what you're referring. Please clarify.
FWIW, two immutable rules of thumb are that if it's witchdoctory, it's not medicine; and that all patients lie/mislead, because they're human.

[Lokidude]

Buildings need built and wired. And even if the machines did a big part of that for me, they still can't think and possess judgement to make the decisions I have to. They also cannot troubleshoot or do service work.

I ain't goin hungry anytime soon.

[BDK]

Aesop, the very short version is that the FDA was/probably still is, standing in the way of some of the rapid analysis tools being worked on/used in research.

The theory was to take the modern chemical research techniques, where hundreds of versions/tests are done at once, and apply them to diagnosis.

EG, replace "stick out your tongue and say Ahh," and go with the statistically most likely explanation for the observed physical condition, and actually look for identifying chemical markers in the body/blood/etc.

However, this leads to other issues, which I want to write about.

"Witch doctory", is because all medicine seems like little more than witch doctors from the research perspective, but researchers feel like something more primative than alchemists.

There is a vastly better way, and researchers - and some doctors - are headed that way, as there's no other option, but it essentially requires revisiting germ theory.

[Darrell]

Had another layoff late last week, five managers, I think. There ain't a whole lot of managers left. One of them was a friend of ~26 years.

[Aesop]

Aesop, the very short version is that the FDA was/probably still is, standing in the way of some of the rapid analysis tools being worked on/used in research.

The theory was to take the modern chemical research techniques, where hundreds of versions/tests are done at once, and apply them to diagnosis.

EG, replace "stick out your tongue and say Ahh," and go with the statistically most likely explanation for the observed physical condition, and actually look for identifying chemical markers in the body/blood/etc.

However, this leads to other issues, which I want to write about.

"Witch doctory", is because all medicine seems like little more than witch doctors from the research perspective, but researchers feel like something more primative than alchemists.

There is a vastly better way, and researchers - and some doctors - are headed that way, as there's no other option, but it essentially requires revisiting germ theory.

Gotcha. Understand where you're coning at this from.
But it really doesn't work like that in most cases.
I can confirm e.g., epiglottitis, a potentially life-threatening throat infection, with a $2000 CT scan, read by a board-certified radiologist, with a $2M CT machine, in about an hour, with internet service.
Or, I can have a moderately competent second-year med student have you open your mouth and say "Ah", while he looks inside your mouth with a penlight.

I have no doubt the FDA is to medicine what the post office is for rapid accurate delivery of mail.
And there may be some tests that will speed things up, and be more clinically predictive.*
If you just assume an unlimited budget, and all the conveniences of modern medicine.
OTOH, doing a clinic under a thatched roof in Trashcanistan, a tongue depressor and a penlight used by a good clinician achieve the same results that millions of dollars of technology achieve, and usually far faster.

*(We diagnose flu with a rapid test that takes 20 minutes, a lab tech, and probably some reagent or whatever. After a few million$ in development of the process. But first, the witch doctor (me) has to shove a sterile swab up both your nostrils back to about where your brain stem is, because that's where the flu virus resides.
Meanwhile, I found out Saturday night the test that CSI evidence techs use to determine culpability of drug use for DWI can be thwarted if the patient is on blood thinners (or just says they are) - like aspirin. So if Joe Dopehead is arrested for driving while stoned, the entire and sole test to determine clinically his culpability can and will be thrown out if the defense attorney or a fellow addict tips the guy off to say he takes a baby aspirin every day. At that point, the positive reading is inadmissible. So one liar can undo $1M of justice system with one fib.)

And we saved a kid's life last night because we had a $15K ultrasound machine to place an IV, because he had crap veins that couldn't be seen or felt, and without them, we couldn't fix his diabetic emergency that would have killed him in a few more hours left untreated. But that's technology extending the scope of the practitioner, not supplanting them. Fortunately, for most IV starts, all you need is a steady hand and a Mk. I eyeball, and $3 worth of IV catheter.

Any sufficiently advanced technology seems like magic.