Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (2305)	10/24/2007 6:02:35 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 42652

Explainers Shoot High. Aim Low! Followup to: Illusion of Transparency: Why No One Understands You, Expecting Short Inferential Distances A few years ago, an eminent scientist once told me how he'd written an explanation of his field aimed at a much lower technical level than usual. He had thought it would be useful to academics outside the field, or even reporters. This ended up being one of his most popular papers within his field, cited more often than anything else he'd written. The lesson was not that his fellow scientists were stupid, but that we tend to enormously underestimate the effort required to properly explain things. He told me this, because I'd just told him about my experience publishing "An Intuitive Explanation of Bayesian Reasoning". This is still one of my most popular, most blogged, and most appreciated works today. I regularly get fan mail from formerly confused undergraduates taking statistics classes, and journalists, and professors from outside fields. In short, I successfully hit the audience the eminent scientist had thought he was aiming for. I'd thought I was aiming for elementary school. Today, when I look back at the Intuitive Explanation, it seems pretty silly as an attempt on grade school: * It's assumed that the reader knows what a "probability" is. * No single idea requires more than a single example. * No homework problems! I've gotten several complaints about this. (Then again, I get a roughly equal number of complaints that the Intuitive Explanation is too long and drawn-out, as that it is too short. The current version does seem to be "just right" for a fair number of people.) Explainers shoot way, way higher than they think they're aiming, thanks to the illusion of transparency and self-anchoring. We miss the mark by several major grades of expertise. Aiming for outside academics gets you an article that will be popular among specialists in your field. Aiming at grade school (admittedly, naively so) will hit undergraduates. This is not because your audience is more stupid than you think, but because your words are far less helpful than you think. You're way way overshooting the target. Aim several major gradations lower, and you may hit your mark. PS: I know and do confess that I need to work on taking my own advice. overcomingbias.com Edit - I posted this on the wrong thread, but I'm not going to bother moving it. Its not like its offensive or is likely to provoke a long off topic conversation.

To: Lane3 who wrote (2305)	10/25/2007 11:30:10 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

Thanks for the explanation. I too understand pro socialization of medicine arguments. The likelihood of a one-size-fits-none result makes it a change that we should all fear. My current feeling is that it boils down to one important issue. That is who do you want saying no to you? Under our current system if your medical procedure is declined for insurance funding there are options for second opinions and appeals of the ruling. If that fails one can always opt to pay for it themselves, appeal to their doctor's egalitarian side or some combination of the two. Under socialized medicine a rejection by government bureaucrats is much more rigid. It is not unlikely that the only way to obtain a rejected procedure would be to take a foreign medical "vacation" such as so many Canadians and British do in the US currently. IMHO, most people who understand the risk of empowering entrenched government bureaucrats to deny them health care would never consciously choose such a system.