A discussed version of the paper[1] says:<p>>A new study shows that computer technology known as machine learning is up to 93 percent accurate in correctly classifying a suicidal person<p>P(+|suicidal) = .93<p>I want to know P(suicidal|+) [2]<p>[1]<a href="http://neurosciencenews.com/suicide-machine-learning-5448/" rel="nofollow">http://neurosciencenews.com/suicide-machine-learning-5448/</a>
[2]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem#Drug_testing" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem#Drug_testing</a>
I can appreciate the effort made in the research, but classifying possible human behaviors is exactly a field where I don't want machine learning to go.<p>There is behind machine learning both a phantasm - artificial intelligences that can guess what humans can't - and a reality - it's just statistical models that are never 100% accurate because, well, that's an attribute of statistics.<p>Those two elements combined and applied to behavior classification sounds like a scary thing, not unlike the kind of errors eugenics made, over trusting their science to apply it on social facts, totally discarding empathy and individual context.
This is subject specific journal reporting a "machine learning" study with just ~400 odd patients dataset. I would not take these results seriously. The accuracy number cited is meaningless, and other than being a bullet point on someone's CV it does not have much of a value.<p>85% Accuracy or 0.8 AUC score is pointless, unless compared with current state of art e.g. having psychologist give an opinion and comparing against the correct population, e.g. all patients who get interviewed as opposed to a balanced set.
Based on [1], I think I can build a model that outperforms this:<p><pre><code> return False
</code></pre>
[1] "An estimated 9.3 million adults (3.9% of the adult U.S. population) reported having suicidal thoughts in the past year." <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/suicide-datasheet-a.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/suicide-datasheet...</a>
That 85% 'accuracy' is ambiguous.<p>I couldn't get into the article, but if that number includes false positives, that's not really practical. Suicide is really rare, so it could just be that it picks a 15% of the population that includes al suicidal people. That means the <i>vast</i> majority of those positives are false positives.<p>Basically, its the precision and recall that matters.
"classify 379 subjects recruited from two academic medical centers and a rural community hospital"<p>So they recruit people from hospitals and check if they ever thought about suicide/self death? Hmm okay nice test group....<p>Everybody, healthy or not healthy, in life will think about how it would be or how they would end themselves, it's human nature. Though people in hospitals, potentially sick, generally older, for sure will have had those thoughts, because they often had issues that makes them lets say less enthusiastic about life?
Suicide is a big taboo in the 'western' christian society, but there are (and have been) lots of cultures were suicide is looked at differently - as something honorable, good, etc.<p>Even our culture has different interpretations for it - eg suicide vs sacrifice.<p>We morally condemn the former but elate the latter, even though the outcome is the same - a person dies.<p>Metaphysically, the meaning of suicide is given by the perceived meaning of death and the [lack of] belief in some sort of afterlife.<p>Is it a sin or not ? If there's an afterlife, will you be punished for committing suicide? What about the loved ones ? They will judge..<p>But for example, if you knew that this life is actually a realistic VR simulation that you've entered into, then suicide would be perceived as a sort of 'ESC' key - a way out of the simulation. Like exiting a game.<p>If a person's circumstance in life is such that the person is bound to suffer until death (eg. disease, mutilation or loss of everyone), then suicide might be looked at as a sort of release - a good thing..
There's the whole controversy regarding assisted suicide..<p>Then there's the sacrifice - going into battle screaming is a form of attempted suicide combined with attempted murder. At the end of the day, the battlefield participants are eventually split into killers and those who committed suicide. From this perspective, going to war is collective [attempted] suicide.<p>War is a form of temporarily suspending the moral rules we obey by (do not kill others or self) and people gladly participate in both killing others and themselves.<p>I guess my point is that tfa is looking at a very narrow spectrum of 'suicidal people' - suicide is a lot more prevalent than that and it's practiced not just by people with mental illness..
Great, now society has an excuse to put <i>scary</i> people away with essentially no due process thanks to the magical label of "suicidal". For those living with mental illness, reasons to despair of safety and fair treatment are up, up, up. Seeking help will never have seemed so dangerous.
So does this mean it misses 14 suicidal people for every one it finds. Or that it classifies 14 people suicidal who aren't for each one it finds? Not super great either way!
And how accurate are traditional methods? Seems to be behind a paywall.<p>Exciting, whatever the answer is. It's awful when someone commits suicide, and if there's some automated way to test it, that would help a lot. Also less intrusive. Who knows how many people need help but are too shy to reach out.
"The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night."<p>-- Friedrich Nietzsche<p>(Not exactly the most balanced bike in the shed, but some people like it that way ...)
My friend was suicidal and we tried to get help from the authorities but got none. None at all. He later committed suicide for real and this makes me wonder why it matters to discover it if you're not even helping people that is asking for it?
What do you test against to see if someone is indeed suicidal? Self reporting, or do you wait around till they die and see if it was due to suicide or something else?
From Figure 1 (which illustrates some ROC curves):<p>> The gray line is the AROC curve for a baseline (random) classifier<p>The AROC is the area under the ROC curve, not the curve itself.<p>Also, the scale on Figure 1 for the x-axis (corresponding to the False Positive Rate, or sensitivity) go above zero and below one, which doesn't make any sense.
Suicide is a <i>very</i> serious health issue that affects an astonishing number of people worldwide. Any advance that helps detection and treatment is to be welcomed.
I'd love to take this test.<p>I don't really know the answer to if I am or not.<p>For instance, since everyone dies, I'd certainly like to die in a fantastic and wonderfully improbable way. Or if a doctor told me I was going to die soon, I'd accept it and start doing really irresponsible and dangerous things...<p>I wouldn't be like "oh dearest me, I must clasp on to life longer." Is that suicidal?