The hidden costs of health care are largely in the denial of antifragility. But it may not be just medicine—what we call diseases of civilization result from the attempt by humans to make life comfortable for ourselves against our own interest, since the comfortable is what fragilizes.

Less Is More

For instance, a small number of homeless people cost the states a disproportionate share of the bills, which makes it obvious where to look for the savings. A small number of employees in a corporation cause the most problems, corrupt the general attitude—and vice versa—so getting rid of these is a great solution. A small number of customers generate a large share of the revenues. I get 95 percent of my smear postings from the same three obsessive persons, all representing the same prototypes of failure (one of whom has written, I estimate, close to one hundred thousand words in posts—he needs to write more and more and find more and more stuff to critique in my work and personality to get the same effect). When it comes to health care, Ezekiel Emanuel showed that half the population accounts for less than 3 percent of the costs, with the sickest 10 percent consuming 64 percent of the total pie.

• Nassim Taleb, Antifragile

When plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the “Intellectual Yet Idiot” uses the term “uneducated”.

• Nassim Taleb, Skin in the game

Good riddance. Agreed.

Typical predictionist world view. “Trying to lecture birds how to fly, because we have the Navier-Stokes equations.”

This is the same logical error that collapses the economy (eg. in 2008). Trying to predict the world, trying our damnedest to shoehorn it into a reductionist model. And then we act surprised, “nobody could have seen that coming”, when a black swan event happens. 99% days were ‘following’ the rule, one day it crashed erasing all preceding. So how correct is a prediction like that, not 99% in my view. (In face of unpredictability, risk reduction and resiliency is the solution, not more prediction.)

If we want to engage in mental exercises that have no relation to the real world, then sure let’s turn to the textbook. Just make sure you don’t forget to look up when crossing the road, traffic rules can’t overwrite physical ones. In the same vein as outcomes are real, reasons are made up.

(Just as you can find an infinite number of mathematical functions that fit a set of points. You can create an unlimited supply of models that explain an event, yet fail when a new data point is collected. Is the real world at fault then or the model?)

You understood nothing of the meaning. You argue on a textbook definition. Do you understand what tradition is?

Can you not see the difference of evolutionary and arbitrary?

Just because != tradition.

You underestimate how much is (successfully) driven by heuristics at every moment.

And please, keep the formal logic where it belongs, the paper. I studied enough logic to know how infexible of a tool it is to deal with the problems of the real world.

A ‘good reason’ is a useless illusion if it doesn’t lead to good outcomes.

A good reason is not something that follows the form A->B.

Last I checked people don’t live in Plato’s abstract plane of perfection, but in the imperfect and chaotic reality. A ‘good reason’ is a terrible one if it leads you or me to ruin, period.

• Why don’t you know?

• I don’t know.

• Why don’t you don’t know why you don’t know?

…

Subjective. I think it is way worse. Or “to see the world burn”, “to make humanity extinct”.

Be it a moral or technical angle, there is many worse than “because our ancestors did it this way and we still came about”.

That’s curiously a lot of text for someone not caring.

The scientific process is not harmful. If that’s your conclusion then welp.

What’s harmful is the blind belief in science. It is skepticism and exploration that brings new understanding.

But just because we label something science it can still be quack.

And it’s easy for you to dismiss old science because you have the current age’s perspective.

Evaluate each era on its own terms.

And once again science does work, otherwise we wouldnt pursue it. But the zelous blind faith in science is unscientific to say the least.

Science is good but most often incorrect or incomplete. Otherwise our current science wouldnt have disproved the old.

If you are unvilling to admit that human hubris is just as well capable of much harm through science like of which we had 200 years ago or just 100 then drink from lead pipes, paint with radium and do some bloodletting. Those were perfectly ‘safe’ at the time, right?

What will we think of todays acceptables tomorrow?

“Because I can”

Can you give a reason though? I guess a child haven’t asked you an endless chain of whys yet. By the end of which you can’t say ‘why’ just that ‘that’s how it is’, you’ve reached the limit of knowledge.

Of course when available knowledge is preferable.

I guess you are unfamiliar with iatrogenics. A good example is the case of Semmelweis, who discovered that pregnant women were dying at higher rates IN THE HOSPOTAL compared to births at home.

The reason wasn’t known before. But turned out the doctors didn’t wash their hands between autopsy and delivering babies.

Oops!

Knowledge comes from practice. Humans always did things first before they gained the knowledge. Think of apprenticeship and the natural sciences for example.

What I have a big issue with is today’s notion that application follows knowledge. A top down approach where academia is isolated from the feedback of the real world. What the hell do I mean by that?

A business or an artist goes bust if they do not perform well, they have direct risks attached to their work. While we can produce ‘knowledge’ (institutional knowledge), new (made up) economic theories, new (un-replicable) psychological explanations and so on, without any apparent problem. The natural selective feedback is missing. Academia is gamified, most researchers know they could be doing more useful research, yet their grants and prospects of publications don’t let them.

So when I hear reason and understanding casually thrown around, I smell scientism (the marketing of science, science bullshit if you will) and not actual science. Because no peer review will be able to overrule what time has proven in the real world. And traditions are such things that endured. Usually someone realizes and writes another paper, disproving the previous one, advancing science.

Don’t get me wrong, there are and were many unambiguously bad traditions by modern standards, and I’m sure there will be more. But we, the people are the evolutionary filter of traditions. We decide which ones are the fit ones, which ones of the ones we inherited will we pass down and which to banish into history.

Reasons are a human invention to help make sense of the world. If you want to base everything on logical grounds you will run into two things mainly:

1. Limits of knowledge. Knowledge is always incomplete, as more of it opens up more questions. There are things you intuitively know are good, but can’t prove why they are.

2. Systemic limits of logical reasoning. A sufficiently powerful and consistent formal system (such as formal logic) is incomplete, it cannot prove its own correctness. (Gödel’s incompleteness theorems)

The effect of a tradition is usually not apparent. They aren’t created consiously or in a goal oriented way.

They usually emerge naturally as a social behavior.

There are also a lot of vestigial traditions that once served an important purpose. (Eg dowry)

What tradition are you talking about?

For example funeral rites help prevent disease from corpses. Without knowing anything about germs.

Or the taboo of incest can avoid genetic defects, without knowing anything about genes.

Traditions formed for a reason. And that reason is way more ancient and more natural than modern logic. It is simply survival.

The people with traditions that helped them survived more often.

I can come up with worse reasons than tradition.

Like, to satisfy a sadistic urge or to cause suffering.

Traditions can and often do serve some purpose even if we don’t see them in such a light.

Just as evolutionary traits, only beneficial ones tend to survive the test of time. (Not necessarily beneficial to the individual, but the group)

And I thought running with scissors was bad, but flying?

I have a new (?) theory for the slow downfall of the roman empire.