Is it my fault if you can't handle the truth? (2019)

Smart people attribute their success to their intellectual superior. When in reality of them have led a cuddled life, and their success is based on their social status, and not intellect. They act without questioning, defer to authority, and are rewarded for it by Society.

Think about how many Scientific truths are based on the reliability of carbon dating. What if it turns out its wrong.

How quickly would a scientist lose social status if they went around questioning evolution, the vaccine, or any myriad of socially accepted Truths.

There’s a hack hidden in this message, one that I’ve built an entire career out of: learn to not take anything personally in a professional context unless you absolutely must. Several times in my career I have heard someone say, “stay away from so-and-so, he’s an asshole.” And every time, literally every time, I have gotten along with them famously. Why? Because I discovered that that I could use the message these individuals couldn’t deliver (because they did not take the advice of Agile Otter linked here) and take it to the right people, with the right tone and the right context, and get shit done. Shit that these people had been trying for months to quarters to get done.

OK, 3: You're telling the truth, with no jerkiness.

3a: Some truths you have to earn the right to tell. They're being a bad spouse? Nothing useful is going to come from a random stranger pointing that out, even if they're right. That kind of truth takes a close friend, telling them in the right situation, with the right amount of firmness and the right amount of gentleness. You have to build the bridge of the relationship before you can take that kind of freight over it.

3b: You're telling the truth, but they're a snowflake, and they're melting. That is totally not on you, but once you find that out about them, you have to realize that there is nothing you can usefully do. (At least, I don't know of any way where you can get them to actually listen, rather than just blowing it off because it offends them.)

Can I clone you?

> I can't be the only one who thinks this delivery might be hilarious?

Of course, it is literaly a joke.

But think about the context. In reality people who are informed that they have only days to live are usually gravely ill. They are typically not joking around with their doctors at a cocktail bar, but are in considerable discomfort and pain. They also probably worried about their symptomps, their loved ones, and their financials. It is also probably not the first day they are being ill. Being sick makes one cranky, being deathly ill makes you even more so. The patient maybe haven’t slept well in days, possibly weeks. By the time a doctor is certain enough that a patient is about to die they have run a gammut of test. Very likely many of them quite invasive and unpleasant.

On top of that nobody goes to the doctor expecting to be told that they are about to die. People are optimistic. They think a few more tests, and the doctor will figure out what is wrong with them, they might need an operation, or some new medicine and things will improve.

So you are feeling the worst you ever felt, has been probed and poked for a while, you are in an uncertain situation. This whole disaster is going on since days, perhaps weeks. There is no respit. Maybe you can’t breath, or curled up in fetal position from pain, or your hearth is pumping like it is about to explode. You are scared. Are you still sure you would enjoy that joke?

What is even worse, what if the patient misunderstands? Hears the joke and thinks the doctor is just being funny. Will they feel like the rug was pulled from under them once they realise that, yes the doctor is just funny, but no they are going to die for real.

But there is more. It is not enough for the prognosis to be medicaly correct. The patient has to also believe it. There is so many reason to reject to believe a deadly prognosis. I can’t see an easier way for a doctor to lose their patient’s trust than to treat their life, their whole being as the butt of a joke.