Based on what we know about our heuristic decision-making tendencies, our prodigious healthcare failures and widespread economic insecurities all make sense.
In health, as an example, rather than support the intelligence and strength of our bodies, we turn to chemical intervention. No one really agrees with this method. Rather, we unconsciously follow an established order of healthcare. No one would argue that enhancing well-being is better than unnaturally distorting function through drugs to manipulate physiology to do a doctor’s bidding. While medical intervention is necessary and life-saving at times, no one really believes that its use should not be so pervasive to all human-kind. When thought out, most would agree that the greater purpose of medicine should be to establish health and avoid or get off of medication rather than to keep piling it on.
We can’t legally tell you whether or not you should take a drug for a particular health concern. Only medical doctors can do that, and in most cases, they always say “Yes.”
Those that are immersed in the medical model, particularly in the U.S., have fallen into a cultural norm that they’ve not fully considered. It’s always interesting how violently people will defend the need for drugs without having done really any investigation on their own. It’s something the culture believes in strongly and unfortunately many passionately follow suit.
This happens to us all in many areas of our life. We tend to just believe in what we know through our own point of view and set of experiences. Unfortunately, those beliefs can be strongly limited or even dead wrong.
HOW DOES OUR THINKING STRAY SO FAR FROM FACT?
Visible light is not the only source of illumination in the universe. Rather, it is a sliver of electromagnetic radiation made up of 400-700 nanometers (billionths of a meter). This is measured on the spectrum of gamma waves that are trillions of nanometers shorter than radio waves which are trillions of nanometers longer. We are continually bathed in these electromagnetic rays, but without instrumentation, are totally oblivious to their existence because the human retina is designed to only see 400-700 nanometers. Similarly, humans can only hear 20 – 20,000 hertz (HZ), which refers to cycles of compressed air per second.
Beyond these ranges, you have to be a dog or like a bat that sends ultrasonic waves into the air and listens to it bounce off of prey so they can hone in and feed on them. Only through the use of new technology can scientists hear these bat sounds and track their movement. Before the inventions of such technologies, mankind was clueless, literally deaf to what went on in the animal world.
Heuristics; Daniel Kanehman (Nobel Prize winning economist and psychologist)
On a slightly different note, in 1941-42, Jews in most parts of Europe were forced to wear the Star of David in order to label themselves and hold them to a set of restrictions. With no laws in place to protect them, violating a restriction could mean severe punishment or death. The rules included a strict 6 p.m. curfew and no phones. When Daniel Kanehman, the Nobel Prize winning economist and psychologist was only 7 or 8 years old, he had gone to play with a Christian friend and failed to realize that he had stayed past curfew. He turned his sweater inside out, hoping to hide his star and headed home hoping to avoid trouble. As he was heading down an empty street, he saw a German soldier in a black uniform approaching him. Specially recruited SS soldiers wore the black uniforms and were the men that children were most taught to fear. He tried to walk quickly by him, but the soldier called him over. Rather than arresting him, the soldier hugged him, showed him a picture of his own son who was of the same age, and gave him some money.
There are compassionate, thinking people present in some of the most horrifying places and spaces. Through his experiences and education, Daniel Kanehman coined the term, “Heuristics.” Heuristics refers to the rules of thumb that we accept. He came to these conclusions when he discovered the “illusion of validity.” I face the illusion of validity in our practices each week when we ask patients, “Where do you think the U.S. healthcare system ranks in the world when it comes to saving lives and helping people get well and stay well? At the top or at the bottom?” The answer for most people is always, “At the top.”
Even though the numbers show, the U.S. is ranked at or near the bottom in all critical areas of health.
Heuristics are the tendency for people to view their own beliefs as reality. In many cases, there is no evidence. In reference to healthcare, a simple google search would show that the U.S. ranks as the system that spends the most on health with the poorest results. Yet, if someone’s “heuristics” are locked in tight enough, even when faced with the facts, they will filter out reality and stick to their opinions.
In a rational world, when given a choice, we would evaluate the probability and take note of all possible outcomes, combining these factors to make a judgment call. Unfortunately, we rarely have all the facts, it’s not possible to know all of the outcomes, and even if we were given all of that data, there is not enough mental flexibility, brain capacity, or time to analyze all of that data. Instead, we make our decisions on limitations; forming these heuristic rules of thumb to guide or mis-guide our lives. This refers to limitations of the brain, time constraints, and the partial information we know or have received. Heuristics are “biases” These biases create a subconscious strategy for solving problems that save us time and energy by using simple rules of thumb to make decisions.
Take for instance, availability heuristics, which explains that the availability of examples in life that we use for comparison and our ease of access to this information becomes a significant portion of our foundation for assessment. This leads to cognitive (mental) biases that create poor judgment in many important situations. Similarly, confirmation bias is the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions, but it actually limits our ability to accept new and improved data or change our old opinions. Confirmation bias has been supercharged through social media where the majority of the “friends” you choose believe as you do and many serve to reinforce misconceptions. Therefore, if you are committed to vaccinations being the greatest health discovery in history, then any information that confirms your position will be remembered while conflicting data will be denied or not be registered at all.
Another similar concept is ’anchoring,’ which is the tendency to rely too heavily on one piece of information when making a decision. In addition, consider the bandwagon effect, which is the tendency to believe things simply because others do. Was Humpty Dumpty an egg? Ask everyone you know and they will tell you yes. It is the story we have been telling ourselves since Mother Goose wrote her book in 1803. However, if you read the words, you will not find any reference to him being an egg. The same is true with healthcare. Create a story, create the disease, and offer the chemical cure. After a while no one will think further about it or know the difference despite deep dissatisfaction with the results.
If people became aware of their best path to health, they would realize that the risks of taking chemical drugs far outweighs the benefits. In other words, most people would not take multiple blood pressure medications if they knew the truth. However, patients are unfortunately over confident when it comes to believing in the ability of pills and procedures to prevent disease. In addition, patients wildly overestimate the degree to which drugs can stop illnesses from developing.
Most patients want to be told the truth and be told the numerical benefit of a medication before they take it. However, a conflict develops between the patient’s right to know and the patient’s willingness to take a drug if the individual is properly informed. The lack of education is immoral, unethical, and unfair. Why? This is because the stakes are a whole lot higher than people know. If you get pulled over for doing 60mph in a 55mph zone and the officer tells you the penalty is 12 years in federal prison that would be radically unfair. If you knew the risks were that high beforehand, you likely would’ve kept it under 55.
Have an open mind. Be a seeker of better health. Don’t just follow a symptom or the traditional, cultural wave. Particularly when it’s not working out. It’s not working out at all.
Be blessed
Dr. Ben
