Digital Exhaust #207 and other stuff
Unpacking the seven deadly sins and OR mojo lost
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Unchanged humans
Earlier this week I shared an article that raised the question, despite the change happening around us, what will not change? It got to the core of what defines companies and health organizations going forward. If you missed my riff, it’s here.
I got thinking more about it: What is it about us that will never change?
If you have young kids, what do you tell them when they’re surrounded by tools built with the assumption of human inferiority? What are they to think of themselves and what are their superpowers? What do we teach them about what makes them different?
What’s our killer feature? The thing that will always set us apart.
I pulled this from a book by Brian Christian written over a decade ago, The Most Human Human. He was talking about our future relevance. This was well before the AI wave:
What we are fighting for, in the twenty-first century, is the continued existence of conclusions not already foregone—the continued relevance of judgment and discovery and figuring out, and the ability to continue to exercise them.
Unwiring the seven deadly sins
This week on Freerange MD I spoke to Dr. Guy Leschzinger, neurologist at Guy’s Hospital London and BBC 4 commentator. His new book, The Seven Deadly Sins unpacks the vices that have traditionally been framed as moral shortfalls and explains them as part of our wiring for survival. I cornered him on whether there are some people who are ‘just lazy’ — apparently not.
The book will pique your interest if you’re into the weirdness of the human brain — think Oliver Sacks with a British accent. Of course, you can just listen over on Apple Podcasts, or wherever finer ‘casts are sold.
Help me out and ‘follow’ or rate Freerange MD wherever you listen. Apparently the algorithms think this is important.
Communication eats process
I was flipping through my notebook and found something that I had written two years ago:
A tight process will never cover loose communication. But tight communication will always cover a loose process.
This is an absolute in healthcare. I need to make a t-shirt out of this.
Digital Exhaust
Reclaiming the joy of buttons and dials. Amber Case is one of the world's smartest design thinkers. This Medium article covers what we lose when our interface with technology is mediated by flat screens. New word of the week: Enshitification.
In a related Wired piece, Volkswagen is bringing back knobs and buttons.
Should autopsies be private? Autopsy reports often reveal health conditions—conditions that might have been kept private while the person was alive. Interesting short-form article in MIT Tech Review covering the ethics of post-mortem privacy.
The Internet of Bad Information. Nice report on the mess of online health misinformation. Not a new idea, but a nice summary of the madness all in one place.
OR mojo lost. A longform essay in Aeon from anesthesiologist/author Ronald Dworkin who one day suddenly lost his intuition. Interesting deep dive into this mysterious element of our work.
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