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Complex systems are sometimes complex only because the cost of caring about them enough to figure them out is too high. Even people capable of nerding out over almost anything can’t find a rewarding pathway to caring. There is no learning curve that’s satisfying to climb.
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Like the railroad system is only somewhat less complex than the healthcare system but it offers a vastly more rewarding nerdgramming API. Build/collect models, learn to identify all the types of equipment, learn the history, etc. This pathway is much less fun for healthcare.
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I assume there’s at least a few healthcare nerds who build model hospitals, put pill photos in albums, and read insurance policies for “fun” but I doubt it’s a huge hobbyist subculture like railroads. If there’s a fun hobby there (not quantified self) I’m not seeing it
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By the law of variation and nerdtular selection, such systems will only grow uglier and less comprehensible over time. If you want to keep a system comprehensible and explainable as it evolves, maybe make it nerd-outable early on. Of course you usually want the opposite.
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A complex system can only be properly nerdified when it stops evolving fast. It’s a sort of live embalming process. Or living taxidermy.
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Railroad systems initially seem more complicated than complex to me. Unless you start to tie in related regulatory, political, safety and usage systems. On their own, almost the definition of complicated?
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Interesting idea but I'm not sure that I agree. Healthcare in a way mirrors biology in that all of the complexities and inconsistencies make it difficult to draw a map. What I know of RR, there's lots of info sure but rules are more consistent, easier to map the landscape.
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Disagree. Healthcare is unavoidably, inherently, wildly more complex than railways. Success metric for railways - write it on a fag packet. Success metric for healthcare - endless tomes, and still no agreement. Complexity of success metric matters.