Iatrogenics and Nihilism

Iatrogenics and Nihilism

Two words for which most of us would have to either take pain to type the same in search bar of google  or in Wikipedia.

We start our discussion where we we exactly left them, that is paradox of life, so while we think that we are good at predicting things, but it turned out to be different.

a little example of a commutative error proved our typical prediction o f profits to be wrong by 55%. This error is much more substantial than what is scientifically acceptable.

Take the example of today's world, why S&P is revising rating of BRICS countries so many times in a year? why IMF changes the growth forecast of so many countries for numerous times. Answer is because the conditions, which were different when predictions were made. Now put your thinking hat (and for those who do not want to be caught in thought process while having tea can skip to the last three paragraphs of this blog) can analyse that the condition which was base to these prediction was also a out come of some other prediction, which was also revised (cause i am observing the pattern of changing the forcast by IMF, S&P, wall street hotshots, Economist and et cetra ) by forecasters hence the commutative change is significant from the original forecast, which is always the case and till the time we analyse what these new number convey they produce another one, this in fact shows the helplessness of our knowledge of mathematics to produce results which holds good in our world.  Another point is why people even do the forecast, if they know  they cant produce the correct one. you may listen typical answers from them like "Because you have to have some assumptions" or "Why cant you do it?" or "If you think that you are better than me, than prove it" or "Its not like we are wrong, our predictions are accurate mostly ?? (are they)" or the best one "We have to do it because we are being paid to do it."

Now just observe this phenomena. Do you really care what is the probability of a event to occur? in my opinion we all are concerned more about the outcome of the event. Like people are more concerned about the harvest and always measure rains (moonsoon) with harvest and hence the economy. For a war what we care most the the damage, take a example insurgency in India, was there for 2 decades, but when it hit the WTC in USA, killing 2900 people (RIP), then only USA acted upon it; tells  us  that most of the time we care about the consequences. So it does not matter  if there is a insurgency that killed 2990 people or a war that killed them.

Also ! this phenomena complete this triangle  of our ignorance of knowledge and i will be explaining those fancy terms written in the heading.  We can calculate average weight and height of all population, and yet if we see the effect if most bulky (or fat) person in the average, it is minuscule, it does not makes considerable effect. same is the case with height, the longest man of earth does not makes much difference in the height average. But if you calculate the contribution of the largest firm on a stock exchangeable, you will find it considerable. If calculate the average of top 100 companies and check the effect of largest company, then you will see that biggest companies have around 12- 20 percent of the contribution.   Which is a proof that we face two kinds of things or results or effect in our daily life. One which is explainable by our Developed mathematics and some other which are yet to be explained with the existing toll so f mathematics.

So Iatrogenics : means study of harm caused by healer i.e. How doctor make us more sick with his limited knowledge, How the wisdom of knowledge has its limits and we are blind enough to acknowledge it.

Nihilism: One can get the standard definition from web(Wikipedia) which is complex (and makes my tea cold) so i am omitting that and giving you a nutshell view of it. In my words it is Doing nothing.  Yes some times doing nothing is far better than doing something with the help of wrong measures. remember, i am talking about the condition where we see Winner take it all effect, the world where the payouts are handsome and Failure are blackouts. I am talking about the economy

So in this final paragraph, i am trying to summaries, both new words with first word i am trying to say that the limitation of our knowledge of the conditions prevailing in the world, and that is evident with the faulty models that predict the outcome of the economy and Gaussian curve which we apply on the over simplified problems of the world. Where we forget that world is interconnected and we does not take account of the feedback and feed forward loops of the complex socio economic structure of society and yet we continue to forecast and make fool of our self and others. Iatrogenics is the  correct word for the condition.

and Nihilism is correct answer, I would enter in the markets, or in the competition without wrong tools of measure, rather than playing with wrong tools.  It is simply that fact that measure the risk you can take or take the risk you can measure, i will choose the latter as it is right tool to sustain in this world.

As mother nature, only let the survival of the fittest.

God bless :)

P.S. I am not saying that we do nothing. I am just saying that we do not try to play the game with wrong tools.

do leave a comment if you got my point.