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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 22h \ on: Social Media's Semmelweis Moment ideasfromtheedge
One major difference is that for improvements in medicine, once it's discovered that this new treatment is better, most of the incentives are aligned in terms of adopting that new treatment. So Semmelweis's frustrations came from people not believing in him, but once he was proven correct there wasn't much resistance to adoption.
The social media dilemma is much trickier because the incentives are not aligned towards solving the problem, even if some solution is discovered
All of the incentives aligned against Semmelweis in exactly the same way. The hierarchy of the medical establishment were implicated in manslaughter, some of them, including a senior colleague of Semmelweis whose niece died of puerperal fever, committed suicide when they finally acknowledged their complicity, for dismissing the hygienic rituals of the midwives they attempted to displace as woo-woo and mysticism. Semmelweis proved definitively using statistical techniques that were not acknowledged in the scientific community as valid arguments. It took later more politically savvy actors Florence Nightingale, to sway the public against the medical establishment, which forced them into line.
Semmelweis died and his children and wife didn't attend his funeral because exactly the truth is exactly the opposite of the idealised narrative of the scientific academy that you believe.
And with regard to social media some solution is discovered, as obvious as basic hygiene was in the case of Semmelweis. I "discovered" it (it's so obvious that it cannot be considered a discovery at all). The problem is the pretence that it's a complex technical or commercial problem. The real problem is the general ideological biases of our time and the compatibility that the solution reveals, which keeps the boots on the necks of people like me.
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