Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes • Hacker News Board

Re: Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes

#81

Post by sobkas » Mon, Feb 13, 2023, 4:31 PM UTC

DVassallo wrote: post #45

CipherThrowaway wrote: post #37

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…

Iatrogenics happens when the benefits are clear and the harms are hidden. So “rational” people tend to intervene because it would seem the benefits outweigh the costs.

> Iatrogenics happens when the benefits are clear and the harms are hidden. So “rational” people tend to intervene because it would seem the benefits outweigh the costs.

Also as always you must remember that not every single person will be harmed equally. And in many cases solutions are chosen not because they are best(cheaper/least harmful), but because they harm specific portion of population. Think why swimming pools were filled with concrete and many more.

Re: Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes

#82

Post by kaczordon » Tue, Feb 14, 2023, 4:38 PM UTC

vosper wrote: post #46

kaczordon wrote: post #38

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)?

There was plenty of evidence that COVID was not as dangerous to children as it was to elderly and yet politicians kept schools locked down. This is why many parents took their kids out of public school and into private schools which re-opened, or at least families that could afford it did. There has been a massive impact to school-age children and the development loss is massive. See this article from 2021: https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/90658

Many of the studies referenced in that article are from 2020, yet schools had not re-opened.

In addition to that the teachers union in the US influenced guidance by the CDC on school openings: https://nypost.com/2021/05/01/teachers-union-collaborated-wi...

Re: Iatrogenics: Why Intervention Often Leads to Worse Outcomes

#83

Post by readthenotes1 » Thu, Feb 16, 2023, 12:50 AM UTC

zamfi wrote: post #4

readthenotes1 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

It was, if I recall correctly, discussed in the book called _The Fifth Discipline_ by Senge.

The entire book is about systems and how we typically ignore them to our disadvantage.

There is some overlap between this and Weinberg's Quality books.

And, of course, _Systematics_ explains it all clearly.