Bill James' "Popular Crime"

Okay. Have fun with your anti-intellectualism.

 

Um, a doctor with scientific training who is finely tuned to what the data means in relation to my body and my circumstances--nothing anti-intellectual about that at all. I'm as intellectual as anyone; I just think I'm intellectual enough to know that intellectualism has its limits in the world of humans, and thus I don't follow it flying out the window.

 

Doctors make a lot of mistakes. It is the nature of the job. In fact, "Complications" is practically a confessional at times.

 

Applies to every profession, including computer programming, data entry and data analysis. Point?

 

It does apply to every profession. But most professions don't involve saving lives. If a computer can do a better job reading an EKG, then give me the computer. Lives saved because of better accuracy. Lives saved because doctors can spend time they would have spent reading EKGs instead treating patients. I'm all for greater efficiency that leads to net social gains.

 

My last point, and then I'm done with this particular tangent (if Stain wants to bat around my intellectualness some more, that's a different issue). I'll take my chance with the scientific professional who knows my context over a collection of data that doesn't. And I note that the apparently fragile credential of "doctor" was good enough to pin the credibility of the original work on.

 

Isn't this the central plot point of Minority Report?

 

There is an enormous gap between "fragile" and "infallible."

As far as context and so forth goes, Gawandi argues that that can be to the doctor's detriment, because humans are influenced by bias.

I'll have to type some of the passage here. He's a much more eloquent writer than I am, obviously, and has much greater mastery of the concept.

 

I'm glad James has chosen to look into the Kennedy assassination. Not enough research and analysis have been done on that case.

 

I can't wait to find out what Jack Ruby's OPS was.

 

We'll find out that Cochran's status as a clutch attorney is illusory.

 

Oswald Patsy Shootings? I think it was 1.000, right?