At a noontime talk yesterday a physician explained the medical technique of Differential Diagnosis as the analysis of a sick patient's symptoms so as to find the most probable disease—but then he corrected himself and said, "the most probable treatable disease". If you can't do anything about it, he felt, then it's not worth thinking about.

Hmmm! Even though I'm something of a Utilitarian, I'd rather know the actual probabilities of what I might have, rather than ignore things that can't be cured. Maybe that's why I'm a "theoretician", in spirit anyway?

(cf. Diagnosis Mortality (2000-07-09), Pick Your Doc (2005-07-06), ...) - ^z - 2010-10-07