Baby surgeon, washed-up gamer, centrist logic-bro, sourdough mum, hack guitarist, hillbilly mechanic, honorary Asian and fair-weather street-racer
Dr Valmonty
Karma: 2
Firstly, I am very sorry for what you are going through.
As a training surgeon, I would admit that I’d have a similar approach to yourself. Of my colleagues, I’d only say one in four are particularly ‘conscious’ thinkers despite being intelligent. Many work on auto-pilot in line with guidelines, which is the safest legal position and requires less effort in terms of decision-making. It also alleviates the need for people to read and study the evidence base in detail. Whether through laziness, being over-worked or feeling legally vulnerable, individual patient factors are under-emphasised in favour of following the algorithm.
I would advocate for 1) shopping for a physician who appears to exercise professional autonomy; 2) empowering yourself by reading; 3) if you want to go off-protocol, bring the evidence to an appointment so your physician can make themselves aware; 4) making your personal priorities clear both verbally and in documentation, i.e. advanced decision directives. I am not saying the doctors or guidelines are wrong, but they are standardised and generalised in a manner that gives 80% optimal care to 80% of people, roughly speaking
I wonder whether a cost judgement plays a part in these examples. Saving 2000 birds will have low effort cost and the risk of failure is less significant—trending towards ‘there’s nothing to lose’. Meanwhile, and attempt to save 200,000 birds (on its face) appears to entail a higher effort costs and the repercussions of failure would be more severe. Where faced with a situation where the default state is a negative outcome, people are often reluctant to invest their resources.
Is this not just an alternative way of describing a red herring argument? If not, I would be interested to see what nuance I’m missing.
I find this classically in the abortion discussion. Pro-abortionists will bring up valid-at-face-value concerns regarding rape and incest. But if you grant that victims of rape/incest can retain full access to abortions, the pro-abortionist will not suddenly agree with criminalisation of abortion in the non-rape/incest group. Why? Because the rape/incest point was a red herring argument