s1m0n wrote:Yes, of course it's conjecture. That's where the fun lies. If my conclusions were certain, they'd be no fun at all.
Every field has its essence. Or essences, because there are several. Mine is English Literature, and one essence is that studying lit is expert training in drawing conclusions on the basis of insufficient evidence. Other fields, like science and (to a considerably lessor extent) law demand convincing evidence, but lit is very little interested in clear cut cases. Instead, what intrigues us is the murky middle ground. We learn to muster evidence and argue cases where the truth could lie at either hand. If the answer to a question is clear or obvious, none of us cares. Someone will have worked that out years ago. What's intriguing are questions where the evidence is ambiguous, but you have to find your way through to some kind of conclusion(s) regardless. This is what lit training excels at. We're experts in doubt and conjecture.
On the basis of this conversation, I'm afraid I find no outcrop I can moor my boat to with this expertise you speak of, or at least your presentation of it. What you have done is arrive at and impose rigid conclusions (I would say mistaken ones) about my story. Then you backpedal saying it's merely a literary exercise, but if so, it doesn't indicate to me any readiness to really entertain all the possible realities of an actual moment in life itself, and to me the proof of this is that you have nothing whatsoever to say about my own interpretation. In fact, you seem to avoid it. What I see instead is no flexibility for any viewpoint other than your own prejudices, so the claim of "exercise" (my word, of course, not yours) frankly rings a bit hollow for me. You postulate from the outset that everyone in the medical profession operates from a siege mentality born of an adversarial relationship to the patient, but that is the only thing you seem to be able to latch onto despite clear evidence of compassion on their part. What about that? You only acknowledge this when your back's against the wall; the rest of the time you stop just short of saying it's an outright sham. I don't find this willful omission and innuendo to be expert at all, but see it as the traces only of a perennially suspicious mind. Just because I'm not suspicious, it doesn't follow that I'm not a thinker. Make no mistake about that. I do indeed arrive at my own conclusions, and not just out of blind reflex.
As the man said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
AaronFW wrote:However, two employees at one hospital is not a sufficient sample size to say that the article is wrong.
And that must be said. OTOH, I've also lived long enough to recognize the general reliability of the maxim that where there's smoke, there's fire.
AaronFW wrote:I would also argue that the article isn't claiming that the stethoscope is useless now, but that its importance in diagnosis is decreasing and it is gaining more prominence and functionality as a symbol.
The problem for me is that the article didn't say that in so many words. Your interpretation is better nuanced, and I appreciate and give you that, but when the article makes sweeping claims that the latest generation of doctors don't know how to use stethoscopes and only make a show of it for psychological purposes, to say that my credulity is strained to the max is putting mildly.
Really, at this point we would need an actual practitioner's input here to better inform, if not settle, the matter.
"If you take music out of this world, you will have nothing but a ball of fire." - Balochi musician
