Reality has no versioning

What happens to reality when the map becomes richer than the territory?

Flood. Assimilate. Abstract. Refine. Reiterate.

RP The Future of Medicine

It is not new technologies that we have to fear, but old passions. The ban on human cloning will be lifted at some time with both good and bad consequences most of which are currently unforeseeable.

 

The future is unpredictable and will become more so. New technologies will continue to proliferate and the average standard of living will continue to rise. Life will become materially easier and psychosocially more stressful. We remain constrained by a very slowly evolving biology.

 

Welcome to the Future of Medicine.

RP I am Sorry

I am sorry.

 

I am sorry that you do not have the life that you dreamed of having. I am sorry that you do not have the work you thought you were made for or the partner you believe you deserve. I am sorry that you were mistaken in the options you thought you had.

 

I am sorry.

 

I was late learning that saying those three words is not the same as saying that it is my fault. It is my expression of my feeling for you and not an attribution of blame, an acknowledgement of responsibility. Women seem to learn this at an early age. Men often do not.

 

Most people feel entitled to an apology for numerous unnamed injustices and many walk around with an unacknowledged anger. No-one's life is perfect and no-one cares!

 

Csikszentmihalyi has an agreeable prescription: forget happiness as a goal, it is a by-product: seek challenge. Goethe offers encouragement too, "Whatever you believe you can do, or dream you can…."

 

RP Risk Neutral

"If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;"

                                         

Rudyard Kipling

 

I cannot do that.

 

I am unusually rational and by that I mean that I tend not to make decisions on the basis of my feelings. I try to be risk neutral which is not always easy and even so, I know I cannot do that: risk everything and bear the loss in silence.

 

Life is about risking loss. We love despite the risk. We marry and have children despite the risks. We may be blind to the risks; we still take them.

 

I cannot do that, but I do consider it an ideal to strive for.

Zemanta helped me add links & pictures to this email. It can do it for you too.

“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.”

Henry David Thoreau

A basic emotion (e.g., interest, joy, sadness, and anger) is a set ofneural, bodily/expressive, and feeling/motivational componentsgenerated rapidly, automatically, and nonconsciously when anecologically meaningful stimulus is sensed or perceived (Izard,2007).

http://ping.fm/XU7eX

Queueing theory, stochastic limerence, imaginary numbers and a girl called Cindy...

"It is discomfiting to accept that health care in the emergency department (ED) is basically dangerous, kept from disaster only by the continuous interventions and adjustments of the people working in it."

http://ping.fm/PhRg5

"comiogenic error"

http://ping.fm/b2MQl

AMA & Social media

"The chief result of all this more modern view is the gradually growing conviction that mental life is primarily teleological; that is to say, that our various ways of feeling and thinking have grown to be what they are because of their utility in shaping our reactions on the outer world"

http://ping.fm/5cAmc

"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now".

"No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try."

Yoda

Hospital based multi-specialty practice as federated. What are the rules of engagement?

"In times of peace, we should learn ourselves, and teach others, that which, in troublous times, both they and we must practise"

We are arrested in conviction; deafened with acclaim and facile with facade. Torment knows no preparation and Ecstacy burns it all away.

Good night! Good morn! Good day! Scripted so; and such! Welcome! [Got any LSD?]

The Proper Study of Mankind
From Alexander Pope. An Essay on Man. As reproduced in Poetical Works, ed. H. F. Cary (London: Routledge, 1870), 225-226.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

The evidence is conclusive: homo sapiens sapiens is not designed for thinking; reason is grafted and we named ourselves more in hope than description

Fickle fortune, inconstant Hynos, remitting Morpheus!

Are you not glad there is no monopoly on idiocy? I am.

Why does an assessment of the utility of knowledge exclude superordinate changes of perspective? There are no immutable facts; theories (sic) are just that; opinions are really statements of preference. Wisdom is superordinate.

Here's to the celebration of apparently useless knowledge: may the worlds we live in intersect....