How Do You Stay Upbeat Amidst the Idiocy?

Techdirt has a wonderful summary of how hard it is sometimes to stay upbeat when faced with some of the complete idiocy that intelligent, tech-savvy readers often have to deal with in their day-to-day lives. While the frustration will probably never go away, nor will the news calling attention to it, it does seem that opening people's eyes to problems helps things move in the right direction, so keep it up. "Yes, we're in the midst of a brutal financial mess — but that won't stop innovation. Yes, incumbent forces, with short-sighted plans and a desire to hold back the tides are annoying and disruptive (not in a good way) in the short run. But even they are finding they can't hold back progress. Robert Friedel has a wonderful book called A Culture of Improvement that details how we, as a society, are constantly looking to improve on what we already have. We add ideas and ingenuity to old concepts and build something better — not because of the desire to grab some "intellectual property," but because of the desire to improve our own lot, to build a better tool that we want to use. Incumbent short-sighted players have been able to hinder and harm progress, but they can't keep it down completely. That culture of improvement can't be stopped entirely."

Comments

Re:Not quite...

[Dun Malg]

In medicine you actually don't have axioms just raw data and very few theories on how things should work. So you must memorize that data.

But as a practicing doctor your daily life depends on the synthesis of that data. You must derive conclusions from much larger base of knowledge and be good at recognizing patterns.

None of that is creative work, just the ability to internally cross reference huge quantities of subtly different data in one's head. For some reason the US has elevated doctors to some sort of demi-god status, when in reality the profession is simply that of biological mechanic.

Usually several hundred ailments have similar symptoms. So the first step is always to make a differential diagnosis listing all possible things that might have those symptoms and then sorting the list by likelihood, and then you start eliminating the problems one by one by doing diagnostic tests and routing patients further to people who specialize in particular areas.

That's precisely the same thing an auto mechanic does, only with cars instead of people.

Needless to say mistakes can be costly both in terms of patients well being if you do not consider something in your differential diagnosis or economically if you suspect something whose elimination requires an expensive diagnostic test or invasive for the patient.

This only demonstrates that the difference between being an auto mechanic and a doctor is the degree of seriousness of the consequences of failure. I never said being a doctor was easy and care-free, only that it's a job that depends more on the ability to be a walking encyclopedia than a creative thinker.