Why don’t we like medicine

moralesmendozar0 commentsUncategorized
It is commonly accepted as a premise that the body is wise and that it knows when it needs something. For example, one might find himself craving an apple or even a chocolate. However, then, why is it that many times the case that the body is misguided? In terms of diet, many times we crave things which end up compounding for malnutrition, like when we want to eat junk food all the time. Some people argue that due to evolution, it made sense to accumulate fat for the days we wouldn't have abundance. Still, this argument implies that the adaptability of the body is somehow limited. Most notably, when going to the doctor, many times the body does not crave the medicine or the remedy, whether it is because of the discomfort of wearing a cast or because of the taste of the medicine itself. This further true with alternative medicine, which is typically the unprocessed substance. All these examples point at somehow flaws of the body, or rather, at a fault in the premise that the body knows.


Relatedly, one reason why for economic theory it is so difficult to understand human behaviour is because of rationality, and that ultimately brings us to the complexity of our brain, which has been said to be the most complex system in the universe. The subconscious, as psychologists have studied, is capable of processing information at a faster pace than the conscious mind, and potentially picks on hundreds if not thousands more of elements. For example, when greeting someone, the subconscious is reading on queues regarding the trustworthiness of a person, the mood, and so on. How can we, then, incorporate this into Economic Theory? One answer would be that it is already incorporated, as the subconscious is not necessarily irrational, in the sense that it defies completeness and transitivity of preferences.


However, it seems to be the case that there are aspects of human experience that are not simply captured by binary models of reality, and that is why, perhaps axiomatically, some philosophers have defined religion as the most fundamental structure of reality. The problem is that it seems that hard Science seems insufficient to express or contain concepts like Motherhood or Justice, which are at the core of human experience. What then, can we make of this? On the one hand, it is possible that AI takes over our capacity of developing, creating and solving for complex models. We have multiple times hit the limit of what our computational ability allows with research and models that are not only on the frontier, but that are simply suffering of some sort of curse of dimensionality. In my own work with networks and other topics, I have many times encountered that the computational cost (in time) really bears a burden on what can be done or studied. On this end, it will be interesting to observe the interplay of computers with Economic Policy. On the other hand, it is possible that in fact Economics might become more legendary, if we want to get closer to the Liberal Arts, that is, to the spirit of what makes us human. At any rate, the question of why we don't always like medicine remains open. Perhaps it is in a way that we are meant not to be eternal. What do you think?


Below there is a picture of a recent sunset in Philadelphia:

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