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hyporational comments on The Danger of Invisible Problems - Less Wrong Discussion

14 Post author: Snorri 06 November 2014 10:28PM

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Comment author: hyporational 07 November 2014 07:09:15PM 0 points [-]

Interesting thing about anecdotal data is I tend to hugely overestimate my effect in making people better. To bring myself back to earth I look at the puny effects many treatments have been demonstrated to have and conclude many patients get better regardless of treatment. I certainly underestimate my faults too, but that's a tougher nut to crack. I've also seen doctors overestimate other doctor's faults; of course the failure to intervene with a treatment shown to avoid a bad outcome by a few percentage points killed the patient!