The hardest wait

Parent Cafe
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One of my coworkers who used to date a surgeon has a very negative opinion about physicians (especially those in a highly competitive specialty.) She said they live a very self-centered life. The only thing that is important to their lives is their job and themselves. Everything else is of a priority much lower than that.</p>

<p>She even comes up with a “theory” about why these surgeons end up like this. In their environment, if they are not very selfish, they can not survive. After a person has been in such a competitive environment for so many years (and becomes a “winner” in this field), he will more likely than not become such a person. She said if you can meet a person in such a competitive career path (she used a neurosurgeon as an example) who still behaves like a “normal person” in his daily life, you would be extremely lucky.</p>

<p>Granted, her opinion may be biased because of her past experience.</p>

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<p>All of our opinions are biased because of past experience. That’s how we form opinions.</p>

<p>Of course, that’s just my opinion.</p>

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<p>Probably true–but is that a good way to form opinions? Especially generalities? Of course we all do it, but acknowledging that this creates a bias which wider information might refute, as mcat2 does, seems like a good idea to me.</p>

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<p>I mean, I know YOU woudln’t do this, VH, but a lot of prejudices are based on “well, that was MY experience, so that’ s my opinion!”</p>

<p>(been thinking about this a lot as I’m working on how to teach college students fair argumentation.)</p>

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<p>Well, one should try to avoid extrapolating and generalizing based on a sample size of one, but after one has a sample size of five or ten or 100, generalizing seems reasonable. </p>

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<p>I agree 100% that we should avoid extrapolating and generalizing based on a sample size of one. There are two factors that could work against us mere mortals though:</p>

<p>We often have an experience of a small sample (e.g., can attend only one college, have only a few roommates, have only one BF or GF.)</p>

<p>I heard of a quite convincing argument that human’s brain is more a “pattern recognition” machine than a “logic reasoning” machine. The latter skill just does not come naturally to many people without extensive training. Some people may not acquire much of that skill in their whole life.</p>

<p>Since we are good at pattern recognitions, we love to draw conclusion even when there is none. Because we often “think” by drawing on our past experience (even when we have limited one), we tend to have prejudices, often even without knowing it.</p>