I’m not meaning to slam facebook. It is set up in a way that works for most of the people in the current state of the culture of the world. It is set up to enable people to promote things. It is not set up to enable the search for truth.

Everyone these days is expected to have an elevator speech they can use to explain and pitch themselves. Having a good one of those is respected.

A person who doesn’t purport to have an answer ready for promotion is thought of as being lost, confused, and ill-prepared for interaction with other people. But a person looking for answers is in that position, a position that is regarded as being as much as impolite.

A patient safety advocate could be asked, “What one thing should we do to make patients safer.” One thing? That’s looking for answers that fit headlines. Like “Stop Errors.” Which is the main headline currently channeling thought into promoting a counter productive effort instead of encouraging the search for truth.

There are preconceptions holding back the search for truth on both sides of the equation. In facebook threads you can get banned for disagreeing with the promotion of nonsense. Because it is rude to disagree.

That might be a blessing in disguise. Otherwise what keeps arriving in your email is notifications of imbellcillic ideas that are difficult not to correct, which is time consuming, and a waste of time, and considered rude. When those stop arriving, you are less distracted by the nonsense and can concentrate more on thinking about solving problems rather than correcting people who spent one minute deciding what the solution must be and then the rest of their lives defending and promoting that.

A doctor in a patient safety thread says that patients should get comfortable with one doctor guiding their care. So you say that getting comfortable with one doctor guiding yoru care is like getting comfortable with driving without a seat belt. The result is you get banned from the group.

The statement wasn’t made to persuade the doctor. It was made to encourage patients to form questions based on the experience of other patients rather than fall in line with the self-serving myopia of a care giver. Time is more productive without constant exposure to their nonsense. There is work to be done and it isn’t going to get done by speaking to one doctor at a time. Or even to all of them. We’ve been trying that for 160 years. It is time to move on.