82,891
edits
Iatrogenic: Difference between revisions
no edit summary
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
| (2 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown) | |||
| Line 3: | Line 3: | ||
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. | 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 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 — 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. | 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> | ||
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. | 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 let’s have that fun! | |||
===[[Ergodicity]]=== | ===[[Ergodicity]]=== | ||
Much of this effect derives from the rent-seeker’s fascination | 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? | 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? | ||