Risk-management is a foundational competency of not only the emergency physician, but the department (ED) as a whole (future essay). Utilizing a suite of tools and processes, the department aims to identify and stratify - often surreptitious - risk in an environment that is time, attention, and informationally constrained. It is tasked to rule-in/rule-out high-morbidity… Continue reading Riskology
Tag: False Negatives
Drowned in (False) Positives
In most real-world biological ecosystems where stimuli are often riddled with ambiguity, predictions are inherently probabilistic, and resources are time and computation constrained, organisms are forced to navigate the trade-offs between false-positives and false-negatives and the opportunity costs of (in)action. For example, if a feeding animal senses the presence of a possible predator, at the… Continue reading Drowned in (False) Positives
Fluency and Its Illusions
Although we think of information overload as a contemporary phenomenon, throughout evolutionary history organisms have always had to grapple with a world brimming with noisy data. Ever present and life threatening features such as camouflaged prey, lurking predators, strategizing competitors, invasive species, weather changes, and insecure food supply have always been part of the challenges… Continue reading Fluency and Its Illusions
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