Imagine debugging a program with an architecture utterly alien to your intelligence, and a poorly understood highly nondeterministic instruction set.
Oh, and
- No core dumps. Very limited logging. And the most human-readable log functions have the disclaimer “everybody lies.”
- It’s persistent and distributed
- You cannot stop it or step it, and…
- You’re debugging running production code and if you break prod someone dies a painful death
I’m excited. We’re finally getting basic debuggers! Imagine what can be done!
On the other hand, general whole body imaging technologies can reveal the wear and tear of simple aging, and when the results are interpreted by specialists, it's very easy to get caught in a doom loop. As in, "now I screwed up my spine, look at all of that degeneration" - and this can trigger sensations of pain where no pain was previously noticed. It's a fact that most whose imaging results indicate a potential very painful condition feel little or no pain. But, some can begin feeling pain when they think something's wrong. So this kind of scenario needs to be addressed. Which is why folks like Dr. Amen will say that sometimes, it's all in your head. And if you have a reason to think that you're in pain, your head can invent an excuse to make you feel it.
All of that said.... the cost needs to come down. Get some competition in there. Of course, as patents expire, this will be inevitable. But whole body imaging by MRI is a lot safer than scans involving high energy radiation.
pseudolus•2mo ago