For some years now I’ve been saying that life is a movie, not a snapshot. What I mean is that, if we focus too intently on the way things are now, without paying attention to trends, we might get blindsided by future changes. I just did a Google search for my saying; I found exactly one relevant hit, a Web page about "Deficits, the National Debt, and Economic Growth," by a guy named Steve Conover. I have no opinion about Mr. Conover’s economic theories, but I like the way he expressed what he calls the snapshot fallacy:
I think I’ve discovered a logical fallacy that isn’t on anybody’s official list. I call it the snapshot fallacy. Take a snapshot, examine it for things one likes or doesn’t like, then draw conclusions about what should be different to make things better.
The fallacy is this: A snapshot is a poor substitute for a movie. Life, history, the economy, the ecology, politics, warfare, invention, innovation, experimentation, and even the weather are much more easily understood in movies rather than snapshots.
(Emphasis and paragraphing added.)
The underlying concept here isn’t new. When I was a Navy nuclear engineering officer, it was pounded into
our heads that we had to watch for trends. A feed pump’s oil temperature might be within acceptable limits, but if the temperature had been slowly climbing over the last several hours, it might indicate a problem that could cause the pump to fail later. Better to take the pump off-line now and fix it, rather than have it fail unexpectedly at a critical moment.
The same is true in medicine. If you’re a male of a certain age, chances are
that you’ve had a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, which can be a good predictor of prostate cancer. A few years ago, an
older friend of mine learned that his PSA level had climbed somewhat
after staying rock-steady for decades. His doctor waited a month and
did another PSA test. It was higher yet, but still within acceptable
limits. The doctor ordered a biopsy. Sure enough, it was prostate
cancer. Surgery was successful, and my friend has fully recovered. Had
his doctor not paid attention to the trend — had he focused on the
snapshot instead of the movie — the outcome might have been very
different.
Leave a Reply