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{{g}}A side-effect. An [[iatrogenic]] illness is not one that the cure is worse than, but that the cure actually ''causes''. Popularised by {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}} in {{br|Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder}}, one can gleefully extrapolate it to many other walks of life, and service industries. So Night Nurse  may causes drowsiness and you shouldn’t drive tractors or operate photocopiers when dosed up, but at least it doesn’t make the head cold you are trying to alleviate ''worse''. Many forms of medical procedure can do this: antibiotics, for example, encourage bacteria to develop resistance to the antibiotics making your original problem harder to solve.  
{{a|mgmt|}}A side-effect. An [[iatrogenic]] illness is not one that the cure is worse than, but that the cure actually ''causes''.  


There is a peculiar form of [[iatrogenic]], where, without the (mis)diagnosis, the body would recover and there would be no illness at all. This is why the “six second rule” isn’t quite the careless outrage the helicopter mums of North London imagine. It may be false, but ingesting constant amounts of bacteria - rather than sterilising the whole environment with antibiotics, the body develops its own immunities to the bacteria, so you don’t ''need'' antibiotics.
So, Night Nurse{{tm}} may cause drowsiness and you shouldn’t drive tractors or operate photocopiers when dosed up on it, but at least it doesn’t make your head cold ''worse''. Many forms of medical procedure can do this: antibiotics, for example, encourage bacteria to develop resistance to the antibiotics making your original problem harder to solve. Antibiotics are, in this way, [[iatrogenic]]. Long term, they make your problem worse.


This is rather like [[insurance]]. For most purposes, [[insurance]] is a waste of money — realistically you are never going to claim on your extended warranty if your toaster breaks down after 18 months because (a) you can’t find it and (b) ''the damn thing only cost twenty five quid'' — the bother of having to find the stupid warranty, read it — there is guaranteed to be some exclusion — and actually claim on it is more bother than just shelling out twenty five more quid on a ''new'' toaster — of a different brand: screw you, Morphy Richards — and being done with it.
This is why the “six second rule” isn’t quite the careless outrage the helicopter mums of North London imagine. It may be ''false'', but allowing dear little [[Basil Fotherington-Thomas|Basil]] to ingest constant, small, amounts of bacteria off the sausage he just picked up off the lino — rather than nuking young sir’s entire theatre of operations with Dettol before he lays as much as a sticky finger on it — encourages his antifragile body to develop its own immunities to the bacteria, so you don’t ''need'' so much Dettol. This is cheaper, too. And makes the sausages tastier.<ref>Or is that just me?</ref>


But there are [[insurance]] policies that, ''by themselves'', ''increase'' the likelihood of loss. Public liability insurance, for example.
Popularised by {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}} in {{br|Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder}}, one can extrapolate [[iatrogenic]]s to many other walks of life, in particular those involving service industries, and it is rather fun to do so.  


So, a shaggy dog story: Against his better judgement, the [[JC]] is, for reasons that are now too ghastly to recount or even remember, an accredited level 2 ECB [[cricket]] coach. During that accreditation course, which he would not recommend to his worst enemy, candidates suffered a presentation by the ECB’s ''Association of Cricket Officials'' — I know, right — about the benefits of membership of that august body.
So let’s have that fun!
===[[Ergodicity]]===
Much of this effect derives from the rent-seeker’s fascination with the particular over the aggregate: as an abstract matter, it is better to address ''this'' peripheral risk here, than ignore it: the cost of addressing it now (say an hour of petulant argument) pails when compared with the consequences later should this risk come about.  Let’s unitise this: say the expected cost of this catastrophe, should it happen is one thousand times worse than the cost of dealing with it up front, and its probability of ever happening is one in ''two'' thousand.


Now every now and then the [[JC]] can come on all a bit misanthropic, and this rainy Saturday afternoon in March was just such a day.
That those consequences are ''unlikely'' is rather beside the point: it’s only an hour, after all. That is a bearable cost well spent to avoid a small chance of a large loss later. At some level of abstraction it’s not a cost at all: it lives within the ebb and flow of human  productivity in a day: we are not automata, we do glance up from our stalls and vainly peruse Expedia for last minute flights to Venice every now and then. What’s the odd hour, in the daily sludge?


“Why on God’s barren earth,” he wondered aloud, “would anyone want to ''pay money'' to be in an association like this?”
This is the individual “[[time-series probability]]”. It is a trip down the spidery, meandering path of ''one mortal [[Meatsack|meat-sack]]''. It is “just an hour” to fix it now against “God knows what” at some point down the line. It is to ask a [[legal eagle]] the question, ''do you feel lucky, punk?''


The best answer the fellow presenting — a member himself, of course — could give was, “because you would benefit from our [[public liability insurance]] policy. That is where the lion’s share of your membership dues go.” Now the “public liability” concerned was that of an amateur coach, on exercises with his team, when some accident befell one of the delicate little flowers in his charge, which might be attributable to the coach’s carelessness or lack of prudent regard.  
Assume [[rent-seeking]] [[legal eagle]], faced with an unchallenging hour earn his own keep, will not feel lucky. He has no interest in feeling lucky. to the contrary: all his personal incentives urge him to feel uncommonly cursed by ill fortune. He will spend that hour up-front every time. It is the prudent thing to do. It is ''insurance''. It will evaporate, unmonitored, into the ether of the daily grind.


Now here’s the thing. Coaching [[cricket]] is a pitiless pastime, in every possible way. You are not thanked for it, let alone paid for it. You certainly don’t grow rich from it — except spiritually, of course. You do it out of the goodness of your heart, a vague sense of moral obligation to the forthcoming generation, and a forlorn hope that some of the little ingrates might grow to love the game, for it is a wonderful diversion from the encroaching enormity of growing old. So any parent who gets a Sunday morning lie-in while you stand in a wind-swept field explaining the rudiments of the back-foot drive to little Horatio, but yet has ''civil [[litigation]]'' uppermost  in his mind — and not profound, undying gratitude — should rot in hell. He should be ''grateful'', as a default disposition, rather than opportunistically ''extortionate''.<ref>He won’t be, of course — that’s just the cruel reality of the human condition for you — but he ''should''.</ref>
But the “[[ensemble probability]]” — the same risk spread across a ''population'' of [[meatsack]]s, plays out quite differently. It scales badly. Say we run this same risk ''two thousand times''. Firstly, it’s harder to blow off  ''two thousand hours'' as “part of the ebb and flow of the daily grind”. That’s ''fifty working weeks''. It has its own daily grind —in each working day there’s a degree of googling and running off the the bathroom and so on — so call it more like ''sixty'' working weeks. And our catastrophic outcome: sure, it’s two thousand times more likely to happen, but since it was only a one-in ''two'' thousand shot, it’s still only likely to happen ''once''. And even if it does happen, the loss is only half the cost of preventing it.


All the same, [[cricket]] is a perilous pastime. That 5½ oz leather-encased cork ball flies about at a decent lick. If it clocks junior, or he sprains his ankle, gets run over or somehow contracts hepatitis, then (a) that will do him the world of good, long term, and (b) unless you, coach, are some kind of pederast or have been egregiously delinquent when supervising young Tarquin, his adequately socialised parents<ref>They won’t be, of course: they named the pompous little sod Tarquin, after all, so you know they lack fundamental empathy, and any way the apple does not fall far from the tree, does it?</ref> — even neurotic North London ones — will shrug shoulders and figure that’s the price of being a lazy sod and letting other people look after their kids.  
===Insurance===
This is rather like [[insurance]]. For most purposes, [[insurance]] is a waste of money — realistically, you are never going to claim on your extended warranty if your toaster breaks down after 18 months because (a) you can’t find it and (b) ''the damn thing only cost twenty five quid'' — the bother of having to find the stupid warranty, read it — there is ''guaranteed'' to be some exclusion — and actually claim on it is more bother than just shelling out twenty five more quid on a ''new'' toaster — of a different brand: screw you, Morphy Richards — and being done with it.


Will they ''sue'' you? Of course not. It is too much of a faff. For one thing, you are probably on the bones of your arse, and what judge is going to be in punitive frame of mind when considering a well-intended volunteer doing his best to look after someone else’s brat?
But there are [[insurance]] policies that, ''by themselves'', ''increase'' the likelihood of loss. Public liability insurance, for example. Directors’ and officers’ liability [[insurance]].


Yet all that might change, ''should you benefit from public liability [[insurance]]''. Suddenly it  isn’t ''your'' pocket that helicopter mum is going after. It is worth a claim. To be sure, the insurer will refuse the claim for as long as is commercially plausible, whatever its merits — that’s part of the funding model, for many of them — but in the mean time it will put up premiums, citing actuarial data, because of its assessed dereliction of obligation of the insured. Your own membership for the ECBACO might only go up a fiver, but in the mean time the insurance company is ''creaming it''.
So, yes: public liability insurance encourages shitty behaviour from everyone concerned: 
*''You'' are disincentivised from taking suitable care because — hey, you’re insured, right?
*''Helicopter mum'' is encouraged to [[Noli mentula esse|be a dick]] and make a claim, since it’s not thou well-intentioned volunteer coach he’s going after but a faceless corporate insurer, and
*''Faceless corporate insurer'', being little more than a faceless corporate mode of extortion, will tell Helicopter Mum where to get off ''and'' gouge the poor old cricket association — and by extension ''you'' — by jacking up its premiums on account of its transparently negligent membership.
{{sa}}
{{sa}}
*[[Insurance]]
*{{br|Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder}} by the perennially entertaining {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}}
*{{br|Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder}} by the perennially entertaining {{author|Nassim Nicholas Taleb}}
{{ref}}
{{ref}}

Latest revision as of 11:40, 24 February 2022

JC sounds off on Management™
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A side-effect. An iatrogenic illness is not one that the cure is worse than, but that the cure actually causes.

So, Night Nurse™ may cause drowsiness and you shouldn’t drive tractors or operate photocopiers when dosed up on it, but at least it doesn’t make your head cold worse. Many forms of medical procedure can do this: antibiotics, for example, encourage bacteria to develop resistance to the antibiotics making your original problem harder to solve. Antibiotics are, in this way, iatrogenic. Long term, they make your problem worse.

This is why the “six second rule” isn’t quite the careless outrage the helicopter mums of North London imagine. It may be false, but allowing dear little Basil to ingest constant, small, amounts of bacteria off the sausage he just picked up off the lino — rather than nuking young sir’s entire theatre of operations with Dettol before he lays as much as a sticky finger on it — encourages his antifragile body to develop its own immunities to the bacteria, so you don’t need so much Dettol. This is cheaper, too. And makes the sausages tastier.[1]

Popularised by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, one can extrapolate iatrogenics to many other walks of life, in particular those involving service industries, and it is rather fun to do so.

So let’s have that fun!

Ergodicity

Much of this effect derives from the rent-seeker’s fascination with the particular over the aggregate: as an abstract matter, it is better to address this peripheral risk here, than ignore it: the cost of addressing it now (say an hour of petulant argument) pails when compared with the consequences later should this risk come about. Let’s unitise this: say the expected cost of this catastrophe, should it happen is one thousand times worse than the cost of dealing with it up front, and its probability of ever happening is one in two thousand.

That those consequences are unlikely is rather beside the point: it’s only an hour, after all. That is a bearable cost well spent to avoid a small chance of a large loss later. At some level of abstraction it’s not a cost at all: it lives within the ebb and flow of human productivity in a day: we are not automata, we do glance up from our stalls and vainly peruse Expedia for last minute flights to Venice every now and then. What’s the odd hour, in the daily sludge?

This is the individual “time-series probability”. It is a trip down the spidery, meandering path of one mortal meat-sack. It is “just an hour” to fix it now against “God knows what” at some point down the line. It is to ask a legal eagle the question, do you feel lucky, punk?

Assume rent-seeking legal eagle, faced with an unchallenging hour earn his own keep, will not feel lucky. He has no interest in feeling lucky. to the contrary: all his personal incentives urge him to feel uncommonly cursed by ill fortune. He will spend that hour up-front every time. It is the prudent thing to do. It is insurance. It will evaporate, unmonitored, into the ether of the daily grind.

But the “ensemble probability” — the same risk spread across a population of meatsacks, plays out quite differently. It scales badly. Say we run this same risk two thousand times. Firstly, it’s harder to blow off two thousand hours as “part of the ebb and flow of the daily grind”. That’s fifty working weeks. It has its own daily grind —in each working day there’s a degree of googling and running off the the bathroom and so on — so call it more like sixty working weeks. And our catastrophic outcome: sure, it’s two thousand times more likely to happen, but since it was only a one-in two thousand shot, it’s still only likely to happen once. And even if it does happen, the loss is only half the cost of preventing it.

Insurance

This is rather like insurance. For most purposes, insurance is a waste of money — realistically, you are never going to claim on your extended warranty if your toaster breaks down after 18 months because (a) you can’t find it and (b) the damn thing only cost twenty five quid — the bother of having to find the stupid warranty, read it — there is guaranteed to be some exclusion — and actually claim on it is more bother than just shelling out twenty five more quid on a new toaster — of a different brand: screw you, Morphy Richards — and being done with it.

But there are insurance policies that, by themselves, increase the likelihood of loss. Public liability insurance, for example. Directors’ and officers’ liability insurance.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Or is that just me?
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