doubling down on mistakes, and other links
RWL 331
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! We’re back at it! But I am zooming off tomorrow to North Conway, New Hampshire in the White Mountains for the annual meeting of the Northern New England chapter of the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA). The organization is generously allowing me to bring a dozen students with me for the two-day meeting. I’m really excited for the trip. I recorded replacement lectures for my Thursday classes today since I won’t be here to teach. This is one nice outcome of the last couple of years - no one really blinks if you record a class instead of canceling.
Today’s newsletter is organized around epistemology - how we know stuff. I listened to the EconTalk podcast with Megan McArdle about doubling down on mistakes (like promoting lobotomies - see “Listen”), and it got me thinking about how we know what we know, and how we correct ourselves when we realize we’ve made a mistake.
Pic above is the hatchet I inherited from my maternal grandfather (not the one with the wacky instruments). I use it to break up wood for kindling for the wood stove. I’m beginning to wonder how many more fires we will have this year, and beginning (just beginning!) to think about storing the snow blower. We’ll see!
I’ll be back Sunday with an essay. As usual, willing good for all of you!
Read
What: Persuasion, When Words Lose Their Meanings
Why: We know things through language. Language constantly evolves, and sometimes there is active fight over language so that we can control Truth. This is a good essay on this topic. From the essay:
A useful term for this phenomenon is “concept creep.” This idea was first explored by the social psychologist Nick Haslam, who defines it as “the gradual semantic expansion of harm-related concepts such as bullying, mental disorder, prejudice, and trauma.” Concept creep has been especially prominent in psychology. For example, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, was once a narrowly defined mental health problem that people experience after a life-threatening experience—usually war. But now, psychologists have expanded the category to include life experiences like childbirth, sexual harassment, and infidelity, that may be physically or emotionally painful, but are far afield from the traditional understanding of PTSD.
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What: Boston Review, How Not to Tell the History of Science
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/how-not-to-tell-the-history-of-science/
Why: I talk about the scientific revolution in my US Health Systems class when I talk about the history of medicine as is explicitly criticized in this article. My story is the Enlightenment brought about a different way of thinking about what we know, and a willingness to challenge tradition. I don’t think that is wrong. But it might be inadequate. And it may de-valorize the tinkerers and craftsmen who have always been noodling at the edges. What is science? It’s an interesting question.
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Watch
What: The Thomistic Institute, Thomistic Epistemology (9 min)
Why: This video is a brief outline of the epistemology of St. Thomas. It joins a long tradition dating back to the Greeks (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) that stands in opposition to skepticism (we can’t know anything) to relativism (the only truth is our truth). Although I use a quote from St. Thomas each week, I actually don’t know that much about his writing. I was intrigued when I came across this video. There is a place for skepticism, especially since what we hold as true so often is revealed to be false, or at least misinformed.
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Listen
What: EconTalk, Megan McArdle on the Oedipus Trap (74 min)
Why: McArdle tells the story of a doctor who pioneer the lobotomy in the United States by basically sticking an ice pick-like instrument through patients’ eye sockets and scrambling their frontal lobes. The procedure went out of fashion rapidly when psychiatric drugs began to work in the 1950’s. He continued to perform lobotomies into the 60’s and then traveled around the country following up with patients in what McArdle claims was an effort to prove he was right to have done such a barbaric procedure. She interprets this as doubling down, even once confronted with the evidence that he was wrong. She and Roberts discuss how easy it is to fall victim to this psychological trap - rather than admitting we’ve done something wrong, we double down. It’s a very interesting discussion.
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