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Putting women in law and medicine is also dumb for another reason, which is that you force the most intelligent women to have a lower TFR than they otherwise might have. And you force them into a dysgenic and unhealthy motherhood environment, because stress before and during pregnancy increases the risk of all sorts of impairments in children, and a stressful occupation prevents the kind of loving mother-child bond that is essential during the first three years of life. Your milk will be filled with stress hormones, and your mood will be too stressed for your child to feel safe in the world, and your child will forever have a slightly autistic unease because they did not sustain sufficient skin contact to modulate oxytocin, like the wire monkeys. We have screwed up an entire generation of intelligent adolescents this way, though the effects are almost impossible to study (who is willing to do this to a twin?). And I think a lot of modern ills (overuse of smart phones, parasocial relationships, etc) are consequences of an impoverished bond to the mother during early life.
Also, it seems to me that women just don’t think up interesting ideas at the same rate men do. As someone who ravenuously pursues interesting ideas and thoughts (as I imagine many themotte users do as well), about 99% of interesting ideas I read are produced by men. And if you look at the places where interesting ideas proliferate without the allure of a secondary reward (social attention), it’s overwhelmingly men, like on the anonymous humanities or political board of 4chan (which like it or not has had an enormous influence on today’s online culture). And the games which focus on creative problem solving, strategy or Minecraft style games, are overwhelmingly male, whereas the cosmetic and nurturing games are overwhelmingly female. This tells us something because what people do in their leisure is what they like to do without the watchful eye of society. So, women can do systems-oriented creative problem solving, but will they if they don’t have a structure involving secondary rewards of cogent social reinforcement (degrees and peer competition), by which they can feel superior to their pretty peers? I’m going to say usually not, most just don’t do that, but that’s an issue if we want people who intrinsically love problem-solving in every kind of role like that — such people require less mentoring, less extrinsic reward infrastructure, might come up with a novel insight out of the blue, etc
My parents are gynecologists, and I don't think I've suffered in the least from having my mom be a working doctor.
I believe that it is nigh universal for female doctors to work fewer hours/in less hectic specialties than their male peers, on average. That is not necessarily a bad thing, the concerns @Throwaway05 raises below have far more to do with the AMA limiting medical seats and residencies than it has to do with a universal requirement for all doctors to be Type A workaholics. Yes, if there is a severe paucity of doctors, you want doctors who work longer and harder. Yet the option to have more doctors who don't work brutal hours exists.
These specific claims are dubious to say the least. The amount of maternal cortisol in breast milk is tiny, and the effects on nursing infants negligible. I think there is a rather significant difference, both quantitative and qualitative, between a "wire mother" and a mother who works full-time.
Sir!
I expect better from you, that's not how it works at all. ;_;
What have my rants been for!
Hmm? Doesn't the AMA limiting seats lead to increased wages for physicians plus a relative lack of doctors everywhere, which makes it easier for them to only work in preferred locations (cities)?
I'm not sure which rant in question says otherwise!
This is a meme passed around by anti-doctor idiots.
The government funds a good chunk to most of the residency spots, this number has been flat mostly due to US government dysfunction. Hospitals and States are welcome to fund their own spots and in recent years have increasingly done so (with mixed results since one of the biggest funders is a shitty for-profit health system).
Every year there are tons of unmatched residency spots (almost always in less desirable specialties). Places would rather not be fully matched than pull from the candidacy base.
When it comes to Medical Schools, the number of them has increased wildly in recent years. This has been questionably helpful because most of the new ones are bad and residencies won't take bad applicants, they'd rather try and SOAP or try again next year.
Additionally, because of the salaries the U.S. never has to deal with an applicant shortage - most of the world's best students will try and match here, even if the U.S. schools don't have enough graduates they don't need to worry (again they just won't take them because reasons).
Lastly it seems reasonable to assume that the AMA has some questionable lobbying on this subject in the past, I don't know about this for sure though - what I do know is that most of their lobbying has been spent on social causes and expansion of mid-level practice rights in the last few decades and they have rock bottom support from U.S. physicians at present. They are not an influential lobby either, which is why our salaries have been going down also for decades.
Thank you for taking the time to explain! I'll commit this to memory, whatever is left in it that's not receptor binding variances.
I will say that the shortage in specific competitive subspecialties is a little more complicated - I can't say for sure that they are lobbying to reduce training volumes but it wouldn't be a stupid thing for them to do. That said for many things (especially surgery) getting requisite case volumes and educational quality is an important complicating factor, especially in the era of robotic surgery.
Most of the "shortage" is inadequate primary volume, but primary care doesn't actually pay that much and people want to be in big cities so it is an allocation and funding problem.
But since "pay the doctors more" is an unacceptable response...it doesn't go anywhere.
If you'd like to learn more about the noodly bits of the American system their is a YouTuber Sheriff of Sodium who does long form videos analyzing these things.
Hmm.. I appreciate the context, but it seems somewhat orthogonal to the concerns I'd raised earlier. It is nigh universal (across professions to boot) for doctors to want to live in urban environments as opposed to some sleepy Appalachian town. You can increase the number of rural doctors by either increasing salaries (as you've mentioned as untenable) or by having so many doctors that market forces... force some of them to go to less desirable locales.
Now, I'm not advocating for the latter, I would like to live in a proper city myself. But I think it's obvious that that approach works.
Some of it is a focus on hard blue tribe recruitment.
Getting through the undergrad and medical school filters requires a lot of woke interest and an aversion to red and rural areas.
Do some affirmative action or requirement focused on getting people who want to go to those areas and you'll have doctors who want to go as an adult, but for now a lot of people are straight up afraid of big cities in Florida because of dem Republicans.
Doesn't just need to be salary push.
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