Iatrogenics

Iatrogenics: trying to help but doing harm instead. @PhiloofAlexandria

[BritProgJazz]

Always look forward to Daniel's videos. Fantastic work as per usual!

[myothersoul]

A theory might be a dangerous thing but even more dangerous is no theory.

Yes, we should be careful and be aware that any action we take might do more harm than good. But when we do decide to take action we should do the best we can to judge what the consequences of our actions might be, the only way to do that is to have a theory, some notion of how things work. The alternative is to take some random action without any idea of what will result.

Our actions might be based on a formal theory, something we've worked out and explicitly stated or it might be some intuitive theory or assumptions we have. When things go (or right), the advantage of a formal theory is it can be examined and it's deficiencies or strengths identified. Intuition isn't not so correctable and when things go wrong people running on intuition often fail to figure out which of their ideas is mistaken and are thus are likely to make the same mistake again.

[JS-dttn]

But if the system is alienating its subjects from reality through the continued existence of its paradigm, then the very subversive act of making the system more fragile is seemingly potentially viable, IF and only IF those performing the subversive acts act within a 'post-system' theory of actualization rather than simply an 'anti-system' theory. So I guess I am both agreeing and disagreeing.

[JH-jicj]

5:20 I had heard Bret Weinstein make distinction between _Theory_ and _Hypothesis_ as the latter does not have accountability through evidence borne out of experiment and that it is a false equivalency to label a scientific theory as a proposed answer without objective, provable results. Wondering your thoughts as to whether the term is lacking specificity or if you think Weinstein was overstepping his own definition of the term.

[nimoadder]

there is a good freakanomics episode on this topic "When helping Hurts"

[jakewalters]

I'd love to know which specific books/sources he is using in this video

[JH-jicj]

Really sounds like this whole talk relates back to survivorship bias. The idea of lack of leadership is exactly what gives anarchist philosophies to rise and then end in dictatorship control to have order out if chaos. It seems to me you are expressing a negative feedback loop where any system that does not perfectly encapsulate every variable gets equated to failure and reassessed as needing to _have been_ managed opposite. Happens in football all the time "Why did the Seahawks throw instead of run the ball?".

Edit: reminds me of the issue where philosophers can each seem so correct in their assessments when they are actually expressing very opposing ideals. I think the _theory_ of Evolution comes handily into play here where organisms 'play out' the variables through adaptation/competition and even this is interdependent on environmental factors which does not lead to being able to objectively call those adaptations necessarily 'the fittest', though they may very well be most beneficial to the immediate environment expressed. Religious fracturing (seen as adaptation) is possibly a good example of this theory expression?

I guess it sounds to me a lot of Taleb's assessments are more marketing to the attention economy over scientific experiments, but I need to look more closely at his work.