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It's not moloch. It's all health systems, even ones that are religiously oriented. Triage and logistics and having enough trained people working all hours to ha

It's not moloch. It's all health systems, even ones that are religiously oriented. Triage and logistics and having enough trained people working all hours to handle all cases of life threatening situations... it's a bug in all systems. Nothing is scarier than the moment you realize you're in the hands of the medical establishment. Whatever that looks like, wherever you are. Ever tried to rush a mechanic to fix your car? Ever tried to argue with a gate agent at the airport about rebooking a cancelled flight? Now imagine doing that while your heart is failing and 10,000 other people are also trying to get their attention. If you want to blame anything, blame the fact that our society has failed to produce sufficient numbers of people trained or willing to help in emergency situations. And the people who sacrifice their lives to doing it are heros, the finest of us. The difference between individual societies and governments is quite small in the long run.

Aurornis 1y ago
> It's not moloch. It's all health systems, even ones that are religiously oriented. The moloch reference is a shibboleth for the rationalist community. It’s not an actual religious reference. There’s another reference to “updating” further down which is another rationalist term meaning “updating your priors”.
- endtime 1y ago
  Specifically: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
- noduerme 1y ago
  Huh. This gets complicated. I wasn't making an appeal to religion... my perception was that "moloch" was understood by non-religious socialist-leaning people to mean the god of money or capitalism (which seems to comport with what you're saying). But it has a separate meaning as a vengeful deity from the bronze age that demands sacrifice and which is used as an example in Abrahamicreligions for why you shouldn't worship other deities. I was pointing out that the alternative to a "moloch" health care system would be a "religious" one - by which I guess I meant a Judeo/Christian/Islamic one, but it serves a few separate meanings, like, one which isn't at its core capitalistic, or one which doesn't sacrifice children. All I was trying to say was that the organizing ideology of such a system (healthcare) doesn't matter as much as having enough people committed to and working within the system. A capitalist version may work better than a communist one, e.g. at developing new approaches to disease, or serving more people in more tailored ways, as long as the incentive structure exists to bring enough people into the workforce so that each practitioner is not overwhelmed. TL;DR I was playing along with the "moloch" reference, although clearly it means different things to different people.

Aurornis 1y ago

> It's not moloch. It's all health systems, even ones that are religiously oriented. The moloch reference is a shibboleth for the rationalist community. It’s not an actual religious reference. There’s another reference to “updating” further down which is another rationalist term meaning “updating your priors”.

endtime 1y ago
Specifically: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
noduerme 1y ago
Huh. This gets complicated. I wasn't making an appeal to religion... my perception was that "moloch" was understood by non-religious socialist-leaning people to mean the god of money or capitalism (which seems to comport with what you're saying). But it has a separate meaning as a vengeful deity from the bronze age that demands sacrifice and which is used as an example in Abrahamicreligions for why you shouldn't worship other deities. I was pointing out that the alternative to a "moloch" health care system would be a "religious" one - by which I guess I meant a Judeo/Christian/Islamic one, but it serves a few separate meanings, like, one which isn't at its core capitalistic, or one which doesn't sacrifice children. All I was trying to say was that the organizing ideology of such a system (healthcare) doesn't matter as much as having enough people committed to and working within the system. A capitalist version may work better than a communist one, e.g. at developing new approaches to disease, or serving more people in more tailored ways, as long as the incentive structure exists to bring enough people into the workforce so that each practitioner is not overwhelmed. TL;DR I was playing along with the "moloch" reference, although clearly it means different things to different people.