Things I've noticed while visiting the ICU
&gt; There’s no sense of a scientific method, reasoning from first principles, or even reasoning from similar cases though. It’s all shooting in the dark, and most of the time I felt like I could have done just as good a job on these longterm issues...<p>This articulates very well what I&#x27;ve usually felt when dealing with doctors. It&#x27;s like the story of a programmer finding that his code outputs 5 when it should be 4, and then adding...<p><pre><code>    if(return_value == 5):
        return_value = 4
</code></pre>
...to fix it, and being satisfied. What I <i>want</i> is something like in the television show <i>House.</i> The main character is unhinged and anti-social and takes extreme risks, but at least he demonstrates curiosity to really figure out and understand the root of what&#x27;s going on. To be fair, I don&#x27;t actually think that doctors lack curiosity or are incapable of doing this, the medical <i>system</i> as it&#x27;s set up just doesn&#x27;t allow it. For chronic issues, I&#x27;ve usually figured them out for myself, as a layperson, by persistently keeping track of things, searching the web, reading, and experimenting over months and years.