The importance of differential diagnosis

[injunjane]

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Stupid title, but a very interesting interview worthy of watching.

There is something which was not directly discussed in there but I think it's very important. In the middle of the talk Dr Kanojia says that social media and modern isolation do make people more narcissistic. I notice not only that, but the increasing tendency of failing to see 'big picture' out of enormous amount of facts nowadays available to people due to the internet.

This is IMHO similar to the 'differential diagnosis' mentioned by him a bit earlier in the same interview - people find opposite information about the same thing and assume that either one is 100% correct and another 100% wrong, or worse they are both equally true. Despite that usually there is general tendency and some outliers.

For example, for war in Ukraine there is a general truth - we are an independent state which was attacked unprovoked by the much larger and stronger neo-empire, and our people are fighting for 3 years for their survival as a nation. And there are (numerous but still) outliers like false volunteers selling humanitarian aid, deserters, and corrupted officials profiting from war. That doesn't mean all Ukrainians are corrupt or war crimes and deserting the battlefield are normal in Ukraine.

Learn to see differential diagnosis, not only separate facts.

By the way, there are tons of other useful info in this interview, too :)