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For example, https://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Engineers-Disease https://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Enginee... > ...used t
by Karnickel 9y ago
For example, https://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Engineers-Disease https://ask.metafilter.com/297591/Origin-of-the-term-Enginee...
> ...used to describe engineers and other technical folks assuming their technical knowledge of systems (usually computer, mechanical/electrical) gives them expertise in solving other complex issues.
Most of health care is a power/influence and social problem: Who gets to control things, who gets the money, who gets influence over the streams of money through the system? That's not an engineering problem but power play. Even if you _could_ show, using science, that you would get better outcomes with other methods, I don't think the people struggling for the honey pot care.
That's why thinking an engineer could build a better health care system seems misguided to me. Better machines to be used as part of the system, sure, but not the system itself. That's politics and hard-core power struggle for the money first of all. If the currently relevant people cared about the health outcomes they would already have changed the system. After all, that "U.S. Spends More on Health Care Than Other High-Income Nations But Has Lower Life Expectancy, Worse Health" (Americans Get Less Health Care, Spend More for It) [0] is not exactly news.
[0] http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/press-releases/2015/oct/us-spends-more-on-health-care-than-other-nations http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/press-releases/...
- dqpb 9y agoPolitics and power struggles don't build systems, they build shit-shows. Engineers build systems.
- pjmorris 9y agoEngineers build systems, but who writes the specification for those systems, and who pays for them? Jerry Weinberg's [0] second law of consulting is "No matter what it looks like, it's a people problem." [1],[2]. [0] http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/ http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/, @JerryWeinberg [1] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/alikl/2008/11/12/three-laws-of-consulting-by-gerald-m-weinberg/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/alikl/2008/11/12/three-laws... [2] "The Secrets of Consulting", Weinberg
- meddlepal 9y agoEngineers build shit-shows too... everyday.
- orf 9y ago> Politics and power struggles don't build systems, they build shit-shows. Engineers build systems. The shit-show that is my current engineering-built system would beg to differ.