Larry Page posts about his voice | Hacker News Reader

Larry Page posts about his voice

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> Sergey says I’m probably a better CEO because I choose my words more carefully.

This is almost the exact same thing members of the band Def Leppard said about their drummer when he lost his arm in a tour bus accident. They said the limitation caused him to become a better drummer.

Def Leppard subsequently became one of the most successful hard rock bands in history when their first album post-accident, "Hysteria," sold 20M copies. Several of the beats on that album became legendary, including the beat to "Pour Some Sugar On Me" [1]

I wonder how we could teach ourselves these lessons (without injury, of course).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UIB9Y4OFPs

Ask anyone who knows anything bout music - Rick Allen is a not a great drummer.

John Bonham, Dave Lombardo, Bill Ward, Peart, even Dave Grohl is better than Rick Allen.

Rick Allen is a great person for continuing with his drumming career with one (1) arm. Nobody's claiming he's a "great drummer" and your insensitivity doesn't contribute much here. The comment section is not a record store.

Many people have stronger voices than Page, but the point still stands that it's how you approach your adversity that counts.

In all fairness to Mel Gibson above "Several of the beats on that album became legendary" would seem to imply he was a great drummer. I agree it's rather odd to take issue with what was an unusual analogy to begin with but it was hardly an outlandish response/comment.

Mel Gibson? I don't get that but his response was fair and considered and correct. The OP trolled a highly subjective argument about who's the best drummer which completely missed the point of the original comment and the entire story.

"braveheart" is part of his handle

How can you forget to include Alex Van Halen and Ginger Baker?

What about Quest Love mothafuckah!

Up-votes at first then down-votes. I guess people don't like Quest Love?

Ah well, HN giveth and HN taketh away...

You've mentioned a lot of my favorites, it's a shame your comment is rooted in negativity and therefore not upvote-worthy.

There's a similar story about Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi. The fact that he lost the tips of two fingers led him to develop a distinctive sound, which Black Sabbath became known for.

As someone that works primarily in Python lately and a terrible hack guitarist, I always think of the namesake behind the Django framework: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Reinhardt

I won't recap, but read up on the terrible burn injury on his playing hand and how he developed a new playing style of his own to compensate.

He's regarded as one of the fastest, cleanest guitarists ever. Here's an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoIJ4W7kXiQ

Jerry Garcia was missing half of his middle finger on his right hand, lost after a wood-chopping accident.

One of my favorite bars has a lot of cool rock memorabilia including an ink print of Jerry's truncated hand. It's fun to compare the size with your own.

SPOILER ALERT: His hands were huge!!

BUT Garcia didn't start playing guitar until after the finger incident. However, in 1986, Jerry Garcia's diabetic coma forced him to relearn some of his most basic motor skills which resulted in him needing to completely relearn and reapproach how to play guitar.

I am a big fan of The Dead.

All true! I submit to your expansive knowledge!

upvoted simply for working Def Leppard into the conversation. :)

Similarly, Paul Wittgenstein (brother Ludwig) was pretty damn amazing as well. The piano concertos for left hand, written for him, are some of the most interesting works in 20th century piano music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wittgenstein

> I wonder how we could teach ourselves these lessons (without injury, of course).

There's a wide-ranging and productive history of people expanding their creative capacity through self-imposed constraints.

http://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Constraints-The-Psychology-...

My debilitating chronic illness has certainly changed the way I make decisions and value things, for the better I believe.

Generally, I appreciate it when people with a condition or a risk factor speak out. I look forward to a day when diseases of all kinds are de-stigmatized, and each voice helps.

Curiously, I went to fill out the survey linked from Larry's post, and after I indicated that I don't have vocal cord paralysis, the survey was over for me. Somehow, I'm surprised they weren't interested in collecting denominator / negative information from those without the condition.

> after I indicated that I don't have vocal cord paralysis, the survey was over

They're not collecting information from people without the condition.

This is simply their way of getting rid of people who shouldn't be filling in the survey.

I think it's actually a reasonable UI decision. They could have done it one of two ways:

1. Have the page say, "Fill in the survey ONLY IF you have the condition".

2. Anyone can fill in the survey. But the first question determines whether you are a candidate or not.

They chose #2.

Yes, it's a nice UI decision.

I'm surprised by the business decision. My feeling is that there is often value in collecting information on people without the condition (negative data), should those people somehow feel compelled to participate.

I think they realize that the survey prompt is self-selecting enough that they can't get a valid sample of non-sufferers through it, and will have to go elsewhere for a baseline.

I generally agree, but this might be a case where there's already a lot of information about people without the condition and as he says, very little about those with it.

It's possible that for now he wants to hear the story only from people with his exact condition and symptoms. Let's face it, he's probably panicking (and for a good reason) so he wants to find out what he can do, if anything.

No doubt he'll open his wallet and for research that will help others that still haven't had the vocal cord issue.

Interestingly, VHI does research into other voice issues.

http://www.voicehealth.org/research.php

However, the survey does not give you the option to select for other conditions say, RRP.

http://www.voicehealth.org/research.php#rrp

One would think that they would try to capitalize on the publicity of Larry's post to try to gather as much data as possible for various conditions and not just vocal cord paralysis.

Usually marketing surveys and things will ask for demographic details before they give you the splitting question(s) to determine if you're a fit. I guess they're not really interested in that in this case. Larry did say " we’ve put together a patient survey to gather information about other people with similar conditions" so I guess it is exclusively just to try to gather some data about the issue.

In what way do you think diseases are stigmatized?

There's a pretty large literature on the topic. I'm going for a run but would encourage you to check out 'disease stigma' (not stigmata, which would yield a different set of results!) on your favorite search engine.

Just yesterday I was talking with several people who head organ donor foundations (seeking to aid those who require an organ donation). One of the things they mentioned was how hard it was for both donation recipients to find a job after their respective medical procedures.

It appears they have to follow strict medical checkups after the operation and thus have to leave work to attend these appointments. As such, many are denied jobs or are conveniently fired from their positions. And even though the law protects them from some of this discrimination it's hard and expensive to prove the discrimination.

>But I was told that sequential paralysis of one vocal cord following another is extremely rare. "

Same thing happened to me.. I was told by my doctor that it was like winning the lottery twice

I was not amused

One of my friend contracted two different rare disease, and one of his doctor made a similar remark. Sometimes you're really lucky, and sometimes you are really, really unlucky ...

It really sucks that so much of those things will probably never be treated properly because there is no incentive to do so. That's why initiatives like this are so great.

Health has nothing to do with luck, take it into your own hands (instead of other's hand) and you will see why. Stop giving up on yourself.

Ah yes, all of those people with chromosomal diseases should just take their health into their own hands, because it clearly has nothing to do with chance.

</sarcasm>

So if your genes are bad, you give up on life? /sarcasm

Not what I said. I was specifically calling you out for this comment: "Health has nothing to do with luck."

It was either naïve, ignorant, or a bit of both.

You have to work hard for health. If you don't.... you'll regret it by the time it is too late.

Doctors have no vested interest in your specific case. Their job is to cater to the lowest common denominator.

Is Regenerative Medicine already advanced enough to cure that, or is it still a long way to go?

I don't know a source that I would say is the definitive and best source of information to learn more about Regenerative Medicine, that's why I encourage you to do your own research. I don't want to convince anyone, just give you hope. =)

    * Hope you get better dude!

Larry Page did sponsor research in the field of his disease, but I don't know why he didn't consider Regenerative Medicine or something else promising. Maybe he didn't know about it, or it's less promising than I think.

For reference, here's a video of him talking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

And before the injury: http://youtu.be/ajxYlACeb4w?t=37s

This is after his first vocal cord was paralyzed, but before the second one was also damaged. You can hear what he called "a slightly weaker voice than normal which some people think sounded a little funny"--it quavers a bit. I was hoping to hear his voice before the first injury, but that was before Google was a phenomenon so there might not be any public recordings of him.

Scott Adams had blogged about it on Nov 8, 2012: http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/larry_pages_voice_update/

He doesn't have spasmodic dysphonia though...

Yes. I just thought I'd mention this because I remember reading about it first via Scott Adams blog.

But it's completely speculative and wrong. It's not really relevant.

While I think it's laudable that Larry Page would donate what I presume is a non-trivial amount of money to fund research and treatment into a condition he himself has, i.e. a voice disorder, at the same time I wonder whether he could get a bigger bang for his buck by funding the low hanging fruit. Maximum impact per dollar. Bill Gates foundation has taken this route and I think it's the right thing to do. There's a part of Larry's story that feels slightly egotistical.

Your comment is shortsighted. This is not at all egotistical.

Rare diseases are generally not huge money makers for big pharma. That is why there isn't as much money being devoted to them to find a cure. The fact that Larry Page is donating is a great reason to capture some of that long tail for whatever reason.

I don't care about the egotistical part, but the point about rare diseases is dead wrong - those are exactly the diseases, if suffered by the right (read: wealthy, Western part of the world) that are enormously lucrative to pharma. The diseases that are not lucrative to pharma are things like malaria.

The things most lucrative to pharma are problems whose number of affected patients (x axis) and price to treat (y axis) create a box with the highest volume on a graph. That is, things which are expensive to treat, yet treatable, which many people have (common, not rare). Things like diabetes, cancer, etc. I don't think Hashimoto's thyroiditis would fall into that category.

But, both of your driving factors, affected patients, and price to treat, are in turn driven by other factors such as competition, targeting symptoms, and the cost of research.

While perhaps not blockbuster, orphan drugs for rare diseases can turn quite a profit for pharmaceuticals.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2012/05/02/how-com...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732392610457827...

Of course, that's certainly not Larry Page's fault...

Actually, Congress is thinking of modifying the Orphan Drug Act because pharma has been raking in cash by the ton.

Genzyme was built on rare disease drugs.

I don't think I'd go so far as egotistical, but I do think putting a "significant" amount of money towards an issue that, as stated, just doesn't affect the patient's life that much is hard to fathom when there are so many fatal or crippling diseases and issues that such an amount of money could likely help as much.

Of course it's his money and his choice, and there's nothing bad or wrong about funding something that's important to him, but it does seem a little... shallow, I suppose.

Ultimately, folks with money can use that money how they want. You can dock credits because he didn't donate it to providing clean water or some other cause that you deem more worthy, but ultimately it's his money and it seems like a reasonably charitable thing to donate it to trying to find cures that will be available to everyone. There's supposed to be room for folks to make personal decisions about charity; otherwise we should just do it via taxation.

Yeah, not sure why people are being negative. I would understand that it would be selfish to direct Google funds to this research. Don't we all direct a large amount of our personal funds though to things that benefit us?

How is funding research that will benefit people, including yourself, egotistical? It seems like a perfectly logical thing to do. You have a rare illness, you have the money to research treatment, you do the research, that way everyone with the illness benefits. This isn't his philanthropy plan. I'm sure he does plenty of other philanthropic projects. He only mentioned one as it was related to the story he was writing about.

This. When a problem affects you in some way, you become best positioned to address it.

It's not egotistical, but you could call it selfish. He wants to cure himself. Steve Jobs was on a similar quest to cure cancer - because he didn't want to die. Larry wants to speak normally again.

Behind many non-profits and causes there was a similar personal catalyst. People trying to get rid of the three strikes law or drunk driving were many times similarly motivated into action by a personal tragedy.

You don't know what he wants or doesn't want. It _could_ be selfish, but it could very well not be.

Maybe he just had the chance to learn a lot more about this particular disease and so it's more natural for him to invest there. It sure would feel more natural to me to contribute to research on a disease that I have experienced first-hand than to some other random one, even if the random one is more "important." No selfishness there. I would just identify better with the victims and have a more real urge to help them.

I see it more as people trying to solve problems they come across. If you contribute to the ones you are close to, and others do the same, things improve.

Scratching your own itch is the classic motivation for free software - it works for medicine too !

Most philanthropy is selfish in nature. Who cares what his motivations are? Why would anyone want to criticize philanthropy? It's not like the founders of Google have a poor stance on charity or anything: http://www.google.org/

Give the man a break. It's good that it's not life threatening at this point as there are certainly much worse CEOs in the world.

This is one of the rare moments when I wish someone has a more serious condition, like blindness or deafness, so he can invest to cure those instead.

I can be selfish too.

exactly. Imagine how many more lives Larry could improve if he happened to have had diabetes?

I think it's selfish/egotistical for someone who wants to donate a TON of money to medical research to choose a disease that he/she happens to have instead of sitting back, doing some research, and supporting research that will help the most people. That's just my opinion. I can see the other side of the coin too. Hell, maybe the amount of money we're talking about here is peanuts compared to the amount of money Larry already donates to other more widespread medical causes, maybe Larry just failed to mention that in his writeup. I suppose one shouldn't jump to conclusions.

It may be selfish, but it's completely understandable. I don't know if Larry is facing the prospect of losing his voice entirely, but even if he isn't having a disease like this is quite upsetting and frightening. I think anyone in his position would use their resources to try and find a cure or at least a way of halting the progress of the disease.

I suppose it's his money and he can damn well spend it on whatever he wants. Earn a few billion dollars then spend it however you please. But for goodness sakes, please stop complaining that other people aren't spending their money in the most effective way.

Bottom line is that it's none of your business.

If you really want to get worked up, he "invests" in Tylenol when he gets a headache, too.

Why is his financial allocation a problem? Nobody was complaining when he wasn't donating to VHI at all. I'm sure it pales in comparison to what the public donates to sports teams and the movie industry.

There's no reason to assume that this is the only charitable cause to which Larry is contributing. This is just the one he's talking about.

Medical research has a tendency to break out of the pen you do it in. How many stories start "so I was researching this rare condition X when I noticed that the mice in test group A started to..."?

Just getting a rich guys attention and having him throw some money research's way is a crap-ton better than another jet-helicopter or mega-yacht.

Love the comment from Sergey : "Sergey says I’m probably a better CEO because I choose my words more carefully"

> So I’ve arranged to fund a significant research program through the Voice Health Institute, which he will lead.

I find this rather awkward. Here we have someone with a ton of money giving a tiny fraction of it away in a very public manner to a cause that seeks to remedy one of his own personal afflictions. He comes off looking like a good guy, and in the process generates excellent PR for his company and social network. What is the downside? It's as if there isn't one. I don't know why, but it gives me the squeamy jibbly icks. Same vibe as when he gave away flu shots at Target.

I guess I have the following questions. Why do the rich need to be our saviors? Do we really need to justify extreme wealth disparity with extreme condescension? Can't we just shuffle some defense money to healthcare and make democratic decisions about how to allocate healthcare funds? Or, god forbid, raise taxes on the wealthy?

Is the answer really, sorry, no, that's how it has to work in "free market" capitalism?

It's not a binary decision. Those with the means can still chose to donate some of their money to causes they like, and we as a society can (or should) still chose the way in which we want to allocate public funds towards more health spending or away from defense spending.

Choosing to donate to a cause that affects him personally is no different than when people create charities or foundations or donate money to fund research for diseases that affect their immediate family members - which happens quite often.

I agree, more or less, because certainly there's a long history of people creating charities to fill in the gaps left by government. It's the way he's doing it, on Google+ and as the CEO of Google that I don't like. Maybe it's just because of the mixing of personal and work life or something. I don't know why, it just gives me a creepy feeling like I wouldn't want to get involved with the guy. Maybe I'm just jealous because I don't have my own fuck you money.

It has more to do with the fact that most rich people know that they can't trust the government to use their money efficiently. In both cases, in a perfect world the rich would be our "saviors", but in the case of higher taxes you just wouldn't know, I like it the other way, I want to know who I'm benefiting from so I can say a proper "thank you".

It's his money. Are you okay with him telling you what to do with your money? Huh?

I didn't tell anybody what to do, I just said how it made me feel and asked some questions. If my spending made you or Larry Page feel awkward, yes I'd want to hear about it.

And anyway, it's not necessarily the spending itself, but the way that he announces it that makes me feel uneasy.

> [Can't we just] make democratic decisions about how to allocate healthcare funds?

And then, the rare conditions are starved of funding because everyone votes to throw more money at cancer/something well publicised because they spend a lot of money in marketing.

How does that help the rare sufferers, if their vote is never enough, and their voice drowned out by the megaphones?

I wouldn't be surprised if quite a lot of funding for rare (and not photogenic) stuff came from 'selfish' wealthy individuals with a vested interest.

Good point, the largest share ("majority") rule in democracy as we know it does tend to leave people out. Has anyone tried a political system where minorities are formally taken into account in the allocation of funds by percentage of the population?

> I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis in 2003. This is a fairly common benign inflammatory condition of the thyroid which causes me no problems.

Larry is indeed very lucky.

One of my good friends was diagnosed with Hashimoto's thyroiditis after ten years of misdiagnosed and ignored symptoms. (It's a very rare disease, and many of the early signs - weight gain, mood swings, fatigue, etc. - can easily be mistaken for typical adolescence).

In Larry's case, it seems they caught the disease and began treatment before it completely destroyed the thyroid, which is a real danger - if the disease isn't diagnosed by this point, treatment becomes much more difficult, and patients develop heart problems.

Unfortunately, my friend has not been so lucky, and has been suffering with the complications for several years now.

> (It's a very rare disease, and many of the early signs - weight gain, mood swings, fatigue, etc. - can easily be mistaken for typical adolescence)

Thyroid problems are routinely misdiagnosed as non-existent, not only for adolescents. Hypothyroidism in particular may be routinely under-diagnosed due to unspecific symptoms and far too stringent thresholds on thyroid levels.

http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com

To the downvoter: if the above is wrong, it's non-obviously wrong enough that it deserves an explanation.

(Not the downvoter.)

I've read that site several times. Frankly, while I'm sure a lot of patients don't do well enough on levothyroxine or need more intensive tests than the TSH, I'm very skeptical of people who develop fanatical, rigid opinions about how to treat hypothyroidism without extremely careful and rigorous study, largely because I'm very skeptical about people who develop fanatical, rigid opinions about anything without extremely careful and rigorous study.

Sounds like your friend would've been a perfect fit for CrowdMed [1], a start-up that aims to diagnose rare, hard to diagnose diseases. The founder's sister went thru a similar nightmare of endless doctors' visits and misdiagnoses, inspiring him to start the company. Shame they weren't around when your friend developed the condition.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/16/crowdmed/

I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's when I was 15. I was referred to an endocrinologist and placed on levothyroxine. Aside from a brief detour into Armour (they had production issues and I had to switch back to levo), it was fine.

Hashimoto's is not a rare disease. It is one of the most common forms of hypothyroidism and one of the most common autoimmune disorders. The diagnostic metric for it is also well-known--check TSH levels and, in some cases, the free T4 as well. I'm sorry to hear about your friend, but his experience is not entirely typical.

It's quite more prevalent in women than in men, and it's quite rare for young people.

Mine has been detected at age 24 (I'm a male) after a palpation by the company works doctor who found the thyroid slighlty abnormal. Confirmed by echography and blood tests. There are genetic predispositions though, my mother suffers from the same thing.

> it's quite rare for young people

Some doctors/researchers believe that hypothyroid (typically caused by Hashi's) is not rare in young people at all (or adults!), but merely underdiagnosed. Alleged symptoms of youth hypothyroidism include constant and recurring ear/nose/throat and upper respiratory infections, severe allergies, fatigue, sensitivity to cold, slow healing, etc.

I was recently diagnosed with low thyroid (not specifically hashi's but, again, probably) and had 100% of those symptoms (and many others) for my entire life. I nearly died as a child from asthma and have had constant sinus and lung issues since.

Since I've been on a very low dose of thyroid medication, the "allergy shiners" that I've had since I was 2 years old have disappeared… in a week.

An interesting point was brought from a WSJ article [1] about Paige's situation: "Page’s condition has worried the collective tech world and Google investors". Unfortunately, the article doesn't elaborate on this claim so it is tough to determine how true this is but like I said, it is an interesting point and thought-provoking.

[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/05/14/google-ceo-larry-page...

My brain is screwed up. I initially read this as "Larry King posts about his voice".

Seriously though, I hope Larry Page will recover. It was sad to see Roger Ebert lose a bit of his zest when he could no longer speak and I wouldn't want any more people to be forever silent.

I hope he gets better.

I also wonder what happened to selfless, anonymous donations. His affliction doesn't seem (medically or statistically) like something that would require rallying people to the cause, raising awareness, etc. There are conditions that matter, that affect millions (incl. children), that don't let people live normal lives (not kitesurfing - very basic everyday stuff).

The Target flu shot promo didn't seem genuine, neither does this.

Why does the donation need to be selfless? This one almost certainly isn't, but I don't see anyone claiming that it is, and I don't see any reason why it needs to be.

On Bloomberg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe4fpGUL_q4

It is interesting that he shared this. I like it.

I wonder how it will be perceived. Will stock traders buy or sell GOOG differently now that they found about it (or found out that the public found out) about this issue.

Did he have to get the approval of the PR or board of directors before disclosing it.

Couldn't help to notice: http://i41.tinypic.com/xbszk.png

Thats hilarious!

Probably not related but it reminded me of Scott Adams' voice disorder, which I only knew about because I knew a fan of his who had the same thing: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15446515/ns/health-health_care/t/d...

I know he has the best voice therapists in the world and there's no chance he'll ever read this but: kazoo. That's my advice for anyone who has to give a speech or get their voice in shape for any reason. Ukulele & a kazoo 45 minutes every day.

I saw a study that claimed improvement in sufferers of sleep apnea who played the didgeridoo.

That makes perfect sense for breath training, I came upon the kazoo after reading that an early 1900s opera singer never did vocal exercises, she just hummed to warm up. The kazoo works the breath and the vocal cords which are tougher than other muscles, so you can and should work them everyday without fear of injury.

I think the idea was not "breath training" but to reinforce the muscles in the walls of the throat which can relax and obstruct the airway causing apnea.

Humming is a vocal exercise. It engages the vocal cords.

Not sure why you think humming/playing kazoo should be a good exercise for someone who has damage in the vocal cords. E.g. the common medical advice for someone who with a hoarse throat (due to a cold etc) is to let it rest, i.e., refrain from speaking. But I'd be happy to see studies proving that wrong.

The vocal folds are emphatically NOT tougher than other muscles. They are in fact quite fragile and easy to damage compared to other muscles. It is irresponsible of you to post this.

Is there a reason the ukulele helps your voice aside from the irresistible urge to mimic Tiny Tim's falsetto?

Yes, it pushes you out of your natural range like a personal trainer will push you to lift heavier.

As a professional singer and former researcher at the National Institute for Voice and Speech, I call bullshit here. Being "pushed" out of your normal range will not automatically cause the same kinds of improvements as weight-lifting does for skeletal muscles. It's just not that simple. It's especially not that simple if you have a paralyzed vocal fold.

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