Disaster Incoming? NYU Medical School enacts FREE TUITION

[SnapSlav]

So apparently NYU has announced that their medical school will have free tuition to all of its students. They touted this as "improving diversity" as they anticipated it to remove (any and all) barriers to entry. One news station even described it as eliminating "merit based systems" from the equation. The announcement was met with thunderous applause.

They're hoping this policy will be adopted all across the country.

This worries me... Nothing in this world is free. You know that what you're doing has value because someone is willing to pay a price for it. Price tells us what we can and cannot do. When we remove incentives to put our time to something useful, we lose the valuable desire to do that useful something. When something of incredible value requires equally incredible dedication, it deserves the necessary price barrier so that only those dedicated to pursuing it will do so. Now we have young women spending their most prime years studying a service that many of them will abandon. We have the floodgates opened so that people who have no business attempting medicine will now waste their time, and the facility's resources, pursuing such degrees.

Simply making medicine itself "free" in the countries attempting socialized medicine has universally resulted in a tremendous disaster and very costly, incredibly slow medical care. And now they want to apply this same disaster to the study of medicine, too?

Someone tell me I'm dreaming, or that I missed something that makes this a-okay somehow... ~_~

[ticketyboo]

See Affirmative Action Hoax, by Steven Farron.

They already have lower standards for certain groups in the MCAT (standardized test for medical school). No rational and informed person should ever trust a black doctor (unless you know his MCAT score).

 

[barn]

6 hours ago, ticketyboo said:

No rational and informed person should ever trust a black doctor (unless you know his MCAT score). 

This conclusion sounds very bad. ie. - Presumptuous, and its logic's erroneous. At least from 'no Chinese basketball player...' - perspective, it appears as an oversimplification.

Maybe it wasn't/was intended to generalise to all people within a specific group?

As in: I think it takes more than just one metric to evaluate a professional's ability.

[ticketyboo]

1 hour ago, barn said:

8 hours ago, ticketyboo said:

No rational and informed person should ever trust a black doctor (unless you know his MCAT score). 

This conclusion sounds very bad. ie. - Presumptuous, and its logic's erroneous. At least from 'no Chinese basketball player...' - perspective, it appears as an oversimplification.

Maybe it wasn't/was intended to generalise to all people within a specific group?

As in: I think it takes more than just one metric to evaluate a professional's ability.

Blacks with lower scores than members of other races are admitted to medical schools, therefore blacks doctors will be less competent on average, therefore you should not trust your health to a black doctor, unless you know his scores.

What is wrong with that logic? Why is it "presumptuous"? Why is it "very bad"? What is "oversimplified"? Be specific.

Negative adjectives are not an argument. You need to support your claims.

Working with your Chinese basketball player example, if the only thing you know about two people is their race, say one is black and the other is Chinese, then the black person is more likely to be a better basketball player. If you can actually evaluate their individual performance, then you know more than the race, and can make a more informed decision. This is analogous to knowing the MCAT score of your doctor.

Most people will never know the MCAT score of their doctor.

In the absence of that information, and in the presence of the knowledge of your doctor's race, you should rationally avoid black doctors, because a black doctor is more likely to have a lower MCAT score (be less intelligent, capable, and competent as a doctor).

Quote

As in: I think it takes more than just one metric to evaluate a professional's ability.

This is the only part of your reply that looks like an argument.

If you can evaluate a doctor's professional history and know their record, then you probably have a signal stronger than race or MCAT score. Can most patients do this? What about emergency room patients and doctors?

The entire point of the certification process that doctors go through is to ensure that doctors meet a certain minimum standard. If they lower this standard for black doctors, then you shouldn't trust black doctors.

Negative adjectives are not an argument.

 

[barn]

Fantastic. You could update/correct/extend your earlier oversimplification then. (if you chose)

If your logic is followed, everyone who is a good test taker equals as a good doctor. I know that to be false. (not to mention all the essentials medics learn while practising medicine, molding their skills at work)

I can go as far as saying, a good test-taker has a higher chance than the rest in becoming a better professional with continued effort. That can be universalied, the opposite of it is true and also, it can be disproven on the basis of observable reality (ie. - a worse test-taker has a lower chance in becoming a good doctor, especially if lacking perseverance, the continuous effort invested)

I strongly think the MCAT score however relevant, insufficient on its own to classify doctors as trustworthy/UN-trustworthy. I mean you can if you want to base your decision on it but I think you are erroneous, and that's a narrow-minded idea. There's field experience, individual circumstances, state of the hospital (when looking at job effectiveness, performance)... etc. If I have a medical issue, I'm more interested in the doctor's tangible experience in dealing with specific illnesses and the state of the hospital (how staffed, equiped, quality they provide).

That's why I still think your earlier statement... :

"No rational and informed person should ever trust a black doctor (unless you know his MCAT score) . "

... sounds very bad, it can't be universalised.

[SnapSlav]

Not to suggest that this isn't an important discussion, but it's kinda tangential to the topic...

What's going on with this newest announcement isn't simply "lowering of standards", it's a shift from partially (and arguably predominantly) subsidized medical education to entirely subsidized medical education. As a principle, I am wholly against subsidization of industries. I try to talk people out of recycling plastics and papers because they're effectively charging themselves to be paid the pennies-on-the-dollar that they'll get for their trash... whereas they'd be getting paid for their trash in the form of gas-produced energy if they simply threw it away! Because it's subsidized, people don't see the true costs of what they're doing, so they do things they otherwise would have avoided doing. A growing and strong country cannot feed its population (at least, not healthily) off of corn products, so the bulk of farmers would not grow corn, but once the government steps in and subsidizes the corn, the farmers grow more of the stuff! We're in a health epidemic that was largely caused by obscuring the natural incentives of free market indicators of value. We're in a vicious death-spiral of dysgenic population alteration because welfare has removed the incentive for wealthy people to have more children and given that incentive to poor people. We're in a global humanitarian crisis because of foreign aid for the same reasons. Every time "good things" are subsidized, we end up creating disasters.

What I'm seeing is we're going to reverse the direction that medicine has taken us if these paths continue. We're going to go back to a time where going to the doctor was a risky decision more than it was a good decision. Or worse, we're going to see a major collapse of the entire industry, when generations of capable doctors fail to be created, because social programs stepped in and removed market incentives.

Would I like it for BOTH market incentives to dictate who can and cannot be a doctor, AND admission standards to be unflinchingly fair and unbiased? Absolutely. But the two topics are only tangentially related, they're still separate topics of discussion.

But by all means, don't let me discourage you! If this is the direction people wish to steer the conversation, then this is what people want to talk about! =)

[ticketyboo]

On 8/19/2018 at 8:46 PM, SnapSlav said:

Would I like it for BOTH market incentives to dictate who can and cannot be a doctor, AND admission standards to be unflinchingly fair and unbiased? Absolutely. But the two topics are only tangentially related, they're still separate topics of discussion.

They are not only tangentially related.

If med school is expensive and has a high graduation barrier, then only the smartest will apply to and attend med school. If people with low scores can be admitted, and they don't have to pay for it, then there is no cost to their failure to perform in school. Even worse, if incompetents are graduated because we need a diversity quota of black doctors, then society has paid to educate a doctor, but doesn't have a doctor.

The standards keep society from wasting its resources on incompetent doctors. The high cost of education forces individuals to be honest with themselves about their ability to be a doctor, and forces a high cost on them if they are wrong. Skin in the game.

 

[ticketyboo]

On 8/18/2018 at 4:43 PM, barn said:

"No rational and informed person should ever trust a black doctor (unless you know his MCAT score) . "

... sounds very bad, it can't be universalised.

What do you mean by "universalised", and why can't it be universalised?

[barn]

null

On 08/20/2018 at 5:46 AM, SnapSlav said:

Would I like it for BOTH market incentives to dictate who can and cannot be a doctor, AND admission standards to be unflinchingly fair and unbiased? Absolutely. But the two topics are only tangentially related, they're still separate topics of discussion.

Signs are pointing at a NOT efficient and definitely NOT patient oriented mechanism :

"Doctors have a higher prevalence of mental ill health compared with other professional occupations but incidence rates are poorly studied."

... from a study I read not long ago.

The current education system goes hand in hand with the certificate industry&public-sector jobmarket if you ask me. (in this case)

Supplementary: Dr. P. Roy Vagelos

(I'd make him watch a few of Stefan Molyneux's presentations if I could... would bet he'd curb his altruism... given he was sound minded and not an ideologue, he's got the capacity now it would be purely down to morals. Except he's more like Soros, at age 8800)

[barn]

3 minutes ago, ticketyboo said:

On 08/19/2018 at 1:43 AM, barn said:

"No rational and informed person should ever trust a black doctor (unless you know his MCAT score) . "

... sounds very bad, it can't be universalised.

What do you mean by "universalised", and why can't it be universalised? 

I thought it might be helpful:

On 08/19/2018 at 1:43 AM, barn said:

I can go as far as saying, a good test-taker has a higher chance than the rest in becoming a better professional with continued effort. That can be universalied, the opposite of it is true and also, it can be disproven on the basis of observable reality (ie. - a worse test-taker has a lower chance in becoming a good doctor, especially if lacking perseverance, the continuous effort invested) 

as in: 'what can be universalised, can be applied to everyone and it's also true when you turn it the other way around' 

plus I think the emphasis is on the comparative nature of it, other than the

On 08/18/2018 at 6:59 PM, barn said:

On 08/18/2018 at 12:14 PM, ticketyboo said:

No rational and informed person should ever trust a black doctor (unless you know his MCAT score). 

This conclusion sounds very bad.

 

[ticketyboo]

6 minutes ago, barn said:

I can go as far as saying, a good test-taker has a higher chance than the rest in becoming a better professional with continued effort. That can be universalied, the opposite of it is true and also, it can be disproven on the basis of observable reality (ie. - a worse test-taker has a lower chance in becoming a good doctor, especially if lacking perseverance, the continuous effort invested)

Looks like we are in agreement.

6 minutes ago, barn said:

This conclusion sounds very bad.

Not an argument.

[barn]

2 minutes ago, ticketyboo said:

Not an argument. 

sure.

[SnapSlav]

4 hours ago, ticketyboo said:

They are not only tangentially related.

As you said, they both threaten the quality of incoming doctors, though I didn't say they were but tangentially related, I said it was tangential to the topic. Related topics, but distinct topics.

But like I said, I merely suggested the topic, I don't own it. So it's not for me to say anything silly like "don't talk about X". The free tuition is a much newer event, but it's all part of a much bigger ugly picture of the collapse of our civilization. And I feel sad that I didn't write that with any hint of irony or hyperbole. =/

 

[ticketyboo]

https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2018/09/08/medical-school/

Quote

Medical school cancels honor society because whites and Asians were earning better grades than blacks and Latinos

Choose your doctor carefully.