I wonder if “brains” of the sort that are useful for math and programming are neccessarily all that helpful here.
I think I used to implicitly believe this too. I gravitate much more to math/programming than biology, and had a really hard time getting myself interested in biology/health stuff. But having been forced to learn more biology/health stuff, I seem to be able to ask questions that I don’t see other people asking, and thinking thoughts that not many others are thinking, so now I think the kinds of thinking used in math/programming generalize and would be quite helpful in solving mysterious chronic illnesses.
Separately, I used to mostly agree with the Elizabeth post you linked, but the biggest “win” I’ve had so far with my own chronic illness has had the opposite lesson, where careful thinking and learning allowed me to improve my breathing problem. Of course, I still try a bunch of random things based on intuition. But I have a sense that having a good mechanistic model of the underlying physiology will lead to the biggest cures.
I think I used to implicitly believe this too. I gravitate much more to math/programming than biology, and had a really hard time getting myself interested in biology/health stuff. But having been forced to learn more biology/health stuff, I seem to be able to ask questions that I don’t see other people asking, and thinking thoughts that not many others are thinking, so now I think the kinds of thinking used in math/programming generalize and would be quite helpful in solving mysterious chronic illnesses.
Separately, I used to mostly agree with the Elizabeth post you linked, but the biggest “win” I’ve had so far with my own chronic illness has had the opposite lesson, where careful thinking and learning allowed me to improve my breathing problem. Of course, I still try a bunch of random things based on intuition. But I have a sense that having a good mechanistic model of the underlying physiology will lead to the biggest cures.