Block parties, leadership, and relative vs. absolute risk

I - Block Parties

We picked the Saturday months ago, and the planning committee was set up. The results of the planning committee agenda were sent out each time a decision was made. Each family would need to pony up $40. Katie has a friend with a photo booth and so she was responsible for the photo booth. Nora had a friend with another block party. Nora's friend's block party was a very popular event and hundreds of random people attended "...in recent years it has become a bit of a nightmare - ice cream trucks, Renaissance festival performers, dunk tanks, etc - and it no longer has its "back yard bbq" appeal. It's expensive for the hosts and a hassle to plan & clean up..." Nora didn't want our block party to get out of control so she sent out an email to everyone warning them about what happens when a block party gets out of control. After reading the email, Katie decided against the photo booth, mostly out of spite. The block party was fun even without the photo booth or the random people and DJ Brandon dropped the beats until 9:00 pm. I had fallen asleep drunk and high on the grass and so my 2-year old buddy, Wyatt, woke me up to check on me and at that point I decided to go inside.

II - Leadership and job promotions

Competence and technical skill are what get you your first job. After that, promotions come from having qualities of a good leader. Curiosity trumps knowledge. Inspiration trumps accreditation. Having a question is better than having an answer.

III - Relative vs. absolute risk

When little Dawson was born, he was one small little guy. Being so small, there were increased risk levels for lots of stuff they can test for in the hospital. Doctors in hospitals are risk averse so they tend to prescribe treatment to prevent the worst thing that can happen from happening. If you leave a hospital alive (and indebted), they have done their job.

Absolute risk is the chance that something happens. Relative risk is the incremental amount of risk based on two courses of action around the same thing. For example, if I try to cross 17th street to get a coffee, using the intersection of 17th and Welton when I have the pedestrian signal in my favor and I am otherwise paying attention, my chances of being run over by a speeding lunatic or cab driver is something like 1 / 10,000. If I cross directly across 17th street those odds might jump to 5 / 10,000. FIVE TIMES THE RISK. 500% riskier. But, if I use the pedestrian signal I am 100% guaranteed to lose the time it takes to walk to the corner, wait for the signal, and walk back on the other side. So every day, I choose to accept the risk from the relatively riskier way across the street and thus save hours of my life (assuming no other inherent value from the walk to the corner). This is a good example of when to accept absolute risk despite the five-fold increase in relative risk.

Similarly, doctors argue for certain treatments because of relative risk. They wanted to put Dawson under a "phototherapy" light to help insure he didn't have problems with his young liver's potential inability to deal with the bilirubin in his blood, The risk for anything severe resulting from not doing the treatment was very low, and would only really be acute if there were constitutional reasons for the bilirubin level (i.e. an underlying disease). The relative risk was argued by the doctor and we firmly and emotionally defended our young son from this excessive treatment. If he were subjected to the treatment there was a 100% chance we wouldn't get to hold him as he slept through the night (an alternative 'treatment' for the same risk, particularly in an otherwise healthy baby, and one we felt strongly about).

The problem here is with language and numbers and rhetoric and incorrect incentives. The doctors are not focused on holistic outcomes, they are focused on not killing us and collecting revenue from unneeded procedures.