this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
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My first job out of college was in a hospital. When you see doctors outside of their own setting, you quickly realize that >90% of them are pretty stupid at literally everything else. I was an accountant processing travel reimbursements for business-related professional expenses (mostly vacations disguised as conferences and workshops for CMEs) and many of them just could NOT understand why they weren't allowed to claim alcohol on their travel reimbursements. Literally, the IRS will not allow it. And even if it did, state law forbids it, too. Sometimes, I got angry emails because they couldn't claim miles for taking a detour to visit a relative before going to their destination after I adjusted it as if they drove directly from work to the airport. Shit like that. I was good friends with the IT guy there and he had many similar gripes. Most of his job was arriving on-site to plug machines in because they swore up and down on the phone that the machine was plugged in.
I'm convinced the majority of doctors are just average intelligence people who spent a decade practicing and mastering a skill. That's it. Anyone can be a doctor if they can be allowed into med school and sink the time and effort into becoming one.
Doctors are min-maxers. It's just that simple.
What's that? My friend's dog is asking
Min maxing is a game theory strategy (mathematics). Coincidentally useful in games and other competitions. It involves a reward and working your resources to max out your winnings while minimising the opponents'. The min max approach to a genie wish that gives you a thousand dollars but someone close to you you hate a million is to not take the wish.
But I think here who you were responding to is talking about the colloquial term: doctors focused on becoming (good?) doctors in detriment of every other skill. I personally find we in the sciences often disregard social skills too far, academically and at times professionally.
Min maxing is a legit academic topic? Awesome. I learned what it is from years of being sweaty at killing internet dragons
[Wiki article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimax#:~:text=Minimax%20(sometimes%20Minmax%2C%20MM%20or,to%20maximize%20the%20minimum%20gain.) is pretty good at talking about it, yeah.
Is that some king of new trend like nft?
It's actually more like choosing the strategy with the relatively best worst-case scenario, in general. In zero-sum games it turns into what you're describing.
But either way, yeah, that's not what OP means.
But it's a specific best worst case : it's not only about how best you can do for yourself, it's for how far from you the opponent is. You prefer'd a -1 -100 option over a +2 +1 in minmaxing. While you'd take the second in a maximizing strategy, if there wasn't a third option thatd be like +3 +20. All that being your reward, opponent reward.
That's what I want to transmit to folks reading us.