No, botox doesn’t “kill muscles”. It paralyses muscles by disrupting nerve signals to that muscle.
“botox” uses the neurotoxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum (which also causes botulism).
I haven’t actually researched this, just an educated guess, but one reason gears-level models are important is that they let us make pretty darn good educated guesses
Research is easy to do.
Guesses could be deadly when talking about neurotoxins, and definitely not appearing ‘educated’ in this case.
I can only go on the words that are used so I’m not sure, but I didn’t consider “kill” might be being used metaphorically on a rationality website.
Especially when the poster then describes it as an educated guess based on a model that lets us make “darn good educated guesses” and admits they did not even type ‘how does botox work’ into a search engine.
Kudos to the OP for the post but we’re moving into bio-medical sciences (my background) so there are “facts” out there. Is it not better to use the knowledge that is available than making guesses?
Our model of rationalists does have to account for them being normal-ish humans who speak the language in common use around them. “Kill” is in common usage for disabling something, temporarily or permanently, without specifying mechanism; e.g. one can kill the lights or the music or wasteful spending or careless use of lanuguage on internet forums. Granted, it’d be quite prudent to avoid such use in Biology contexts. Given this is a rationality forum, what do you think is reasonable likelyhood for misunderstanding caused by sloppy use of language vs major oversights in subject matter research like you’re suggesting above? I’d be very surprised if it was less than 10:1. How much does that differ from your estimate elsewhere?
[Genuinely interested in peoples’ thought process during an exchange like above from a “how do we manage to talk past eachother even in a good faith rational discourse?” angle]
No, botox doesn’t “kill muscles”. It paralyses muscles by disrupting nerve signals to that muscle.
“botox” uses the neurotoxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum (which also causes botulism).
Research is easy to do.
Guesses could be deadly when talking about neurotoxins, and definitely not appearing ‘educated’ in this case.
Are you sure they weren’t using kill metaphorically?
I can only go on the words that are used so I’m not sure, but I didn’t consider “kill” might be being used metaphorically on a rationality website.
Especially when the poster then describes it as an educated guess based on a model that lets us make “darn good educated guesses” and admits they did not even type ‘how does botox work’ into a search engine.
Kudos to the OP for the post but we’re moving into bio-medical sciences (my background) so there are “facts” out there. Is it not better to use the knowledge that is available than making guesses?
Our model of rationalists does have to account for them being normal-ish humans who speak the language in common use around them. “Kill” is in common usage for disabling something, temporarily or permanently, without specifying mechanism; e.g. one can kill the lights or the music or wasteful spending or careless use of lanuguage on internet forums. Granted, it’d be quite prudent to avoid such use in Biology contexts. Given this is a rationality forum, what do you think is reasonable likelyhood for misunderstanding caused by sloppy use of language vs major oversights in subject matter research like you’re suggesting above? I’d be very surprised if it was less than 10:1. How much does that differ from your estimate elsewhere?
[Genuinely interested in peoples’ thought process during an exchange like above from a “how do we manage to talk past eachother even in a good faith rational discourse?” angle]