Prior and subsequent / The smoke under the door

… Because the doctor just upped my ADD meds a notch – and, when I went to the pharmacy, my health insurance told the pharmacy through their computers that it needed a PA, a prior authorization, from the doctor before they would pay for the larger-dosage pill. Now, Gentle Reader, help me out here – if the doctor has already printed me out the prescription and has scrawled his signature on it, isn’t the insurance company really demanding a subsequent authorization? I’m almost completely certain of that. It’s these little clarifications that keep my mind from crumbling.

Meantime I’m going to be scatting at butterflies for the next few days.

Not kidding, either. You (whoever you are) who have stuck with me as I’ve written these tolling, structured logical-relational diagrams – you’ve never met me in person. I keep forgetting that. I am personally as blowsy-whimsy as one of my favorites appears (you know who you are). Perhaps more. Gwen could testify to this. I’ll never “sound” like it, though. Not in text. It’s peculiar, I’m extremely right-brained but it’s all routed through my left brain…

***

I do wish you could attach files in this thing. Well, in this case it doesn’t matter; here’s a direct link to a PDF of the article “Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgment Of Global Risks,” by Eliezer Yudkowsky.

This morning I was thinking about one line of experiments in it… If a naive (unwarned) person is alone and smoke begins to seep from under a door, the person will usually go to report it. If the room is full of naive (unwarned) people and smoke begins to seep from under a door, usually no one will go to report it.

Why? Well, in an unfamiliar or uneasy situation, one thing people do to find out how they should react is to glance around at other people to see how they’re reacting. And meanwhile you look calm, because you don’t want to be the one who looks stupid by reacting big.

But what people don’t realize is that everyone else is doing the same thing.

So people glance around and see a roomful of calm, unconcerned people who aren’t reacting in alarm to the wisps of smoke.

This picture applies to all things.