51–60 of 83 posts
It 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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!
> any chance you could dig up a reference to this for us? you could search for Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago (torn down) or Pruitt-Igoe towers in St. Louis (torn down), for starters. Or the Cabrini–Green Homes in Chicago.
It was the private ones and the implied comparison that I was after -- but now that I'm re-reading the parent post maybe there was no comparison, just a long sentence describing public housing projects as torn-down neighborhoods with high-rises...
While conservatives love the stories of interventions failing with second order effects being worse than the initial situation, in practice these are only rare instances among plenty of successful intervention we don't even think about. The main factor leading to a disaster is usually the desire to make grandiose interventions (instead of steadily increasing ones that have proven successful at small scale) and refusa…
In my experience, bad mental models in medicine lead to all kinds of horrors for entire classes of patients. If they decide to call it a genetic disorder , they throw their hands in the air and give up on actually making you better and trot out phrases designed to politely break you of demanding such, like "the normal progression...", a phrase intended to make you accept that you will get steadily worse, you hurtling…
Doctors operate under the Standard of Care rules. If the doctor does not follow SoC they open themselves to medical malpractice liability. Problem is that the SoC is imperfect, especially for less common afflictions. Doctors often know their prescriptions will not help their patients or even worsen conditions, but recommending non SoC treatments will potentially cost them the medical license that came to them at high cost and represents their livelihood.
It can be argued that the SoC maximizes EV and minimizes cost across the population, however, even if that were true on day 1 of the implementation it would quickly degrade as bureaucratic lockin blunted the learning and innovation that doctors have historically used to advance knowledge.
Although it is certainly written by a human being, this article gives me a similar feeling to ChatGPT essays. The tone is compelling and plausible. But when I thought about it, I realized it didn't make much sense. > Rarely do we even consider that the cost of doing something might outweigh the benefits. Cost vs benefit is the main thing that people consider when making decisions. It's a core decision making framewor…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sunk cost fallacy applies to both interventionism and noninterventionism. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is an idiom for a reason. What made interventions such as the Berlin Air Lift work is that they were stuck with until they were no longer needed. An unanticipatable effect of the Berlin Air Lift was the "Tear down this wall" speech and the end of the USSR.
How do you know that was an unanticipated effect? Also, what about all other cases where interventionism didn't work, that is, made things worse? How can you tell a priori wether intervening will have good results? Moreover, if you're a decision-maker, will you bear any cost if your decision turns out wrong? If not, how is that supposed to be ethical?
> How do you know that was an unanticipated effect?
Wanting to support Berlin so that the communist regime would eventually collapse might be a desired outcome, but the way it happened couldn't have been anticipated, it could at most be wished for. Wishfulness is the very thing the parent article is arguing against.
> How can you tell a priori wether intervening will have good results?
You try to learn history and figure out parameters for successful predictions?
> Moreover, if you're a decision-maker, will you bear any cost if your decision turns out wrong? If not, how is that supposed to be ethical?
I don't disagree? Ethics effects exist to encourage people to take precautions when it comes to the effects of their actions or inactions. There are obviously entrenched interests that push back against ethical consequences.
Although it is certainly written by a human being, this article gives me a similar feeling to ChatGPT essays. The tone is compelling and plausible. But when I thought about it, I realized it didn't make much sense. > Rarely do we even consider that the cost of doing something might outweigh the benefits. Cost vs benefit is the main thing that people consider when making decisions. It's a core decision making framewor…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And yet governments worldwide ignored the cost-benefit of lockdowns and removing kids from schools. Perhaps it’s not such an obvious thing…
Or their cost-benefit analysis said that the cost of removing kids from schools was worth it. Do you have any evidence of ignored cost-benefit studies that were available at lockdown decision time (there wasn’t much time for studies when these decisions needed to be made)?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that I didn't use lame duck in the textbook definition but it does show the derogatory nature of not doing anything. Likewise congress would be called ineffective if they didn't pass laws. We often hear about gridlock when there's a balance of power with the 2 party system. I think saying 'deliberately designed to make doing something impossible' is an overstatement. Compromise is required. I see more and mor…
The Senate is a brake on change. In the most egregious example, the House passed anti-lynching legislation for 50 years, which never made it out of Senate committee. Patriot act was ultimately designed to avoid the types of failures to coordinate that stopped the authorities from preventing 9/11 attacks. It was very successful at that aim, but created a bunch of other problems in the process. My statement isn’t an en…
Edit - source - https://www.kff.org/report-section/the-uninsured-and-the-aca...
Although it is certainly written by a human being, this article gives me a similar feeling to ChatGPT essays. The tone is compelling and plausible. But when I thought about it, I realized it didn't make much sense. > Rarely do we even consider that the cost of doing something might outweigh the benefits. Cost vs benefit is the main thing that people consider when making decisions. It's a core decision making framewor…
> Cost vs benefit is the main thing that people consider when making decisions.
This article also makes the mistake of equation "we", the average reader of the blog, with the doctors who are making prescribing decisions.
Understanding the risks and side effects of prescribing a medication or procedure is core to the practice of medicine. It's integral to everything doctors do.
The field of medicine is often criticized for not being aggressive enough with treatments, though these criticisms often come from people who only see the potential upside but not the risks. We saw this most recently with complaints about how long the FDA took to get vaccines out (which was actually lightning fast) or in how the field of medicine didn't rush to recommend theoretical COVID treatments based on small-scale studies and petri dish studies (which turned out to be the right choice, given that none of them replicated at scale in controlled studies).
It's also the reason why the most effective medication may not be the first-line treatment, because the first-line treatment is chosen as a tradeoff of risks versus benefits.
Doctors know all of this. Unfortunately, doctors who decline to give patients the medications they think they need or recommend against surgical procedures patients think they want are subject to a lot of negative pressure in today's medical system. If someone goes into a doctor and demands antibiotics for their cold, the doctor must find a way to talk them down without risking another negative review which can impact their career and compensation in many systems. Some doctors just don't care enough, and will hand out prescriptions as asked. It's becoming a real problem now that medical systems have so many layers of middle management trying to put NPS scores and other feedback loops into the medical system, combined with social media pushing so many people to think they know they need antibiotics or thyroid medicine or other treatments that come with more downsides than benefits.