I don’t think we can measure most of these closely enough, and I think the symptom clustering is imperfect enough that this doesn’t provide enough information to be useful. And really, neither does IQ—I mean it’s nice to know that one is smart, or not, and have an estimate of how different from the average one is, but it’s simply wrong to take any test result at face value.
In fact, you do ask the doctor if your hand is broken, but the important information is not binary. It’s “what do I do to ensure it heals fully”. Does it require surgery, a cast, or just light duty and ice? These activities may be the same whether it’s a break, a soft-tissue tear, or some other injury.
Likewise for mental health—the important part of a diagnosis isn’t “how severe is it on this dimension”, but “what interventions should we try to improve the patient’s experience”? The actual binary in the diagnosis is “will insurance pay for it”, not “what percent of the population suffers this way”.
I don’t think we can measure most of these closely enough, and I think the symptom clustering is imperfect enough that this doesn’t provide enough information to be useful. And really, neither does IQ—I mean it’s nice to know that one is smart, or not, and have an estimate of how different from the average one is, but it’s simply wrong to take any test result at face value.
In fact, you do ask the doctor if your hand is broken, but the important information is not binary. It’s “what do I do to ensure it heals fully”. Does it require surgery, a cast, or just light duty and ice? These activities may be the same whether it’s a break, a soft-tissue tear, or some other injury.
Likewise for mental health—the important part of a diagnosis isn’t “how severe is it on this dimension”, but “what interventions should we try to improve the patient’s experience”? The actual binary in the diagnosis is “will insurance pay for it”, not “what percent of the population suffers this way”.