a warning to doctors

Note added: Tuesday October 5, 2010
Two inadequacies in what I've written below: talk about "abstract" thinking is too vague. It surely cannot be good to get more abstract if one uses categories like Nelson Goodman's famous "grue". So, people who talk about the advantage of "abstract" thinking are not being clear.
Secondly, I would like to add a quotation from Flynn's book to illustrate my general point.

a warning for all doctors : You are in danger--danger for what Socrates would call your "souls" ("psuche"--not a Christian soul capable of independent existence, but rather that part of your mental organization which allows you to live well...) In a more modern idiom: Don't lose your intellectual integrity!!! You are in danger of indulging in the privileges of your position! Treat your patients as genuine equals!

It happens that doctors are a well-studied population when it comes to making fallacious inferences. Doctors are just as prone to make basic errors in statistical reasoning as are non-doctors who have had no statistical training. Moreover doctors are inclined to rely upon "clinical judgment' even when it is unreliable.
[note added 5 October: This is not to say that other professions do not also make reasoning errors. It just happens that doctors have been studied. Reference: See references in Keith Stanovich, Decision Making and Rationality in the Modern World (Oxford UP 2009)]

so, to all doctors, we might say: People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

More recently, apart from that general warning, I have experienced an overly hasty youngish doctor who mis-diagonosed my eighty four year old mother as suffering from senile dementia.

Mis-diagnosed? How dare I say that when I am not a doctor?

I'll make a bet that the doctor in question (as well as most doctors) has not read James R. Flynn's "What is intelligence?" In that book, a psychologist who specializes in intelligence, points out that our culture has changed in the past hundred years. ROughly it's become more abstract, less concrete. It's not that we are really smarter, but jobs today (and computers etc.) require us to think a different (not necessarily better) way.

I suggest that some doctors who meet older people are unaware of this general phenomenon.

So, if my eighty-four year old mother doesn't think like a computer program/menu, that doesn't mean she is stupid or has dementia.

I noticed that the doctor who made this diagnosis spent as much time looking at his computer screen as my mother during our recent visit.... hmmmm....doesn't he know that our evolutionary biology has equipped us with a fantastic skill to read faces and body language? Or has he let those skills atrophy as he relies upon his computer to tell him what to do next?

Let's be clear: my mother and father came of age at a time when there were no personal computers. They don't think like people who use computers regularly. My mother might seem to treat another person as an actual person capable of emotion and with broad worldy knowledge, and she will call upon that knowledge which is irrelevant if we think like a computer.

But among human beings of her generation those irrelevant details were relevant. IT was a different world.

Now I know there are wise men who think we are making progress, and I won't tackle them today, but I am not convinced. My mother has people skills. She can communicate.

And she can perform the tasks she needs to on a daily basis. Moreover, she managed quite well when we were growing up.

So, I am suggesting that any evaluation of a person's skill in dealing with life, their life, the problems they face must (unsurprisingly) consider what skills the person actually needs to possess to function in their daily life. My mother does indeed possess the relevant skills.

And I'll bet the doctor who is the target now did not stop to consider what she needs to do in her ordinary environment. He was more concerned with whether her style of conversation fit into his game plan. She probably treated him too much like a person, and an equal (when it comes to that), and was insufficiently passive in allowing him to frame the discourse....

There's more to say on this subject, but I will stop now, hoping to return some day with further references and more argument to and fro....

I cannot continue this note now, but hope to return to it soon.

Post script
In fact, as my entry about jitterbug phones, albertsons, and the united states postal service indicates, I think there is altogether too much SCRIPTING IN ADVANCE of our conversations by the rich and powerful, and I object to it.

Sorry, I've been hearing about efficiency in conversation all my life, and what I've been hearing represents a sort of phoney folk pragmatics which primarily serves the needs of the rich and powerful.

LET'S START A CONVERSATION LIBERATION MOVEMENT

Yes, the more I think about it, we can demand real conversations, as in RESISTING:
BULLSHIT PROPAGANDA WORDS "I'm just doing my job"
REPLY, "sORRY, you are a human being with a heart and a brain, and you are allowed to use them. EVen if you and I are both powerless, we can agree that this is an absurd situation which benefits neither one of us... As a thinking creature, you can recognize the justice in my complaint --NOT THE PHONY 'I am sorry you feel that way'... (another make me puke phrase)....." dON'T BE SORRY, admit that I have a point, and that you as a rational creature understand that I am not merely "feeling" a certain way, but that I have a legitimate grievance....even if we are both powerless to change anything (ahhhhh but why are we powerless/?

Note added Sunday 3 October: I've added a few words to prevent misunderstanding by careless readers....