Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes
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Re: Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes
#2It takes homeostasis, a biological mechanism, and tries to suggest that it applies to politics and economy, too. What a strange ideea...
Yes, the decisions to intervene should be taken more carefully, but I don't think that interventions "often leads to worse outcomes". In fact, where I live, indecision and lack of interventions are a very big problem.
Re: Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes
#3It takes homeostasis, a biological mechanism, and tries to suggest that it applies to politics and economy, too. What a strange ideea... Yes, the decisions to intervene should be taken more carefully, but I don't think that interventions "often leads to worse outcomes". In fact, where I live, indecision and lack of interventions are a very big problem.
There is a fairly famous story in management of a guy in the 1960s who fought against building housing projects for the poor by tearing down neighborhoods and building big high rises.
The idea was to give more people a better place to live.
What the opponent said was you're going to concentrate a bunch of poor people in a building that neither we nor they will maintain, it will be far away from any jobs, and it will lead to more crime and more poverty.
I don't think it takes much to say that people are short-sighted and some are only interested in their own personal short-term gain, certainly no metaphor or analogy is needed to state the obvious.
Re: Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes
#4It takes homeostasis, a biological mechanism, and tries to suggest that it applies to politics and economy, too. What a strange ideea... Yes, the decisions to intervene should be taken more carefully, but I don't think that interventions "often leads to worse outcomes". In fact, where I live, indecision and lack of interventions are a very big problem.
There is a fairly famous story in management of a guy in the 1960s who fought against building housing projects for the poor by tearing down neighborhoods and building big high rises. The idea was to give more people a better place to live. What the opponent said was you're going to concentrate a bunch of poor people in a building that neither we nor they will maintain, it will be far away from any jobs, and it will…
This is a very interesting story, but I feel like I'm missing something -- any chance you could dig up a reference to this for us?
Housing projects and private high rises seem like they would have similar problems...I'm not finding this easily, but confess I have no academic background in management!
Re: Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes
#5It takes homeostasis, a biological mechanism, and tries to suggest that it applies to politics and economy, too. What a strange ideea... Yes, the decisions to intervene should be taken more carefully, but I don't think that interventions "often leads to worse outcomes". In fact, where I live, indecision and lack of interventions are a very big problem.
See also, Le Chatelier's principle.
It kind of makes sense, if a complex system has found some kind of steady state there must be some "restoring forces" at work to hold it there.
Re: Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes
#6The word “Intervention” is just fraught with unconscious bias and makes it seem like the intention that motivates an action is relevant when it is not. The characteristics noted in the essay apply to all actions.
No one would characterize the Industrial Revolution or adding lead to gasoline as “intervention” yet clearly the second-order thinking this article prescribes for “interventions” needed to be applied in those cases.
“The key lesson here is that if we are to act, we need a solid idea of not only the benefits of our actions but also the harm we may cause—the second and subsequent order consequences.” is more correct but doesn’t serve this author’s agenda.
Re: Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes
#7I learned this big time as a parent: If the only solution you have is guaranteed to make it worse, it's better to stand there and watch it burn than to put out the fire with gasoline. The piece I wrote about it (titled The Hand Licking Incident) did well on HN if you want to read a variation on this theme.
Re: Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes
#8Does intervention lead to worse outcomes more often than not?
Re: Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes
#9Was hoping to find an intelligent and well researched article on medical interventions. Instead it's just some extremely hand wavy libertarian college essay.
Re: Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes
#10Iatrogenesis (adj.: iatrogenic) is, I suspect, what the fist word should be.