Topic: TIDE - Active Underwriting

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Year: - Current postings - 1999 - 1998 - 1997 - 1996 - 1995

Name: Paul Grobstein
Username: pgrobste@serendip.brynmawr.edu
Subject: Active underwriting
Date: Sun Jan 8 18:58:36 EST 1995
Comments:
"Active underwriting" is indeed "applied science", so let's carry the important argument one step further. "Realistic" is a bit of a problem for a scientist (at least this one), since one man or woman's realism is another's fantasy. How about (as is true for science) "TEST: Take some thing or process (or idea) and test its performance in circumstances where it hasn't been tried before". And then "UNDERSTAND: If it works, repeat in your best guess as to the situation where it won't. When it (inevitably) does not work, use additional experience gained to dream up a new way of thinking about the problem and its solution". And then "IMPROVE: Make what you've dreamed into a concrete thing which can in turn be tested." Alright, so I'm pushing the metaphor, in ways that may seem too abstract for the real world. But I don't think they are. "Realistic" is so slippery a criterion that "active underwriting" could be understood as less novel and demanding that it actually is. And the same goes for "better performance", "most productive citizens (higher accomplishments, higher salaries), and "find out which policies work best." What we want is to do more than assert the importance of evaluation and accountability and desire for improvement by some fixed standard. "Active underwriting" can and should guarantee (as it does for biological systems) that things will get progressively less wrong, even (and particularly) when "right" is either dimly glimpsed or unknown.

Name: Nan Lux
Username: nlux@mit.edu
Subject: Active Underwriting
Date: Mon Jan 9 09:08:05 EST 1995
Comments:
This is a test comment on the MIT Line Writer Board.

Name: Kyle Smith
Username: kesmith@mail.sas.upenn.edu
Subject: Active Underwriting
Date: Mon Mar 20 10:30:20 EST 1995
Comments:
The application of "active underwriting" to health care, in order to "prevent their policy holders from becoming ill" is an effort doomed to failure. Health care, administered in any form, cannot keep folks from becoming ill. The notion that somehow if we just new enough or had the right drugs, we could sterilize the body and protect it from the invading pathogens is false. We cannot. Our existence is only a tenuous dance of molecules that succeeds, for a time, in sustaining the form we recognize as human. This dance has been choreographed over millions of years, and succeeds today to the extent that it does, precisely because other dances failed. We need to become ill and we need to die. An insurance company that would try to reduce its liability by vainly attempting to prevent its clients from becoming ill can do know better than the insurer that sees the situation for what it is, and merely predicts the outcome. An illness prevented today will only be replaced by another sickness tomorrow. People will die, as is required for the improvement of the dance. It is true that an insurer may benefit from orchestrating peoples behavior so as to guide them toward, what is in the insure's viewpoint, a less expensive illnesses, but they cannot prevent illness. -kyle

Name: Lauren Lock
Username: llock@inforamp.net
Subject: underwriting
Date: Thu Apr 6 11:38:03 EDT 1995
Comments:
there are again arbitrary definitions of success,achievment,productivity etc. How can you expect to creativily implement and alter or improve quality of life, when the very boundaries of creativity and life itself are so limiting?

Name: ginger gordy
Username: ginger@highway1.com.au
Subject: Active Underwriting
Date: Mon Aug 7 03:21:07 EDT 1995
Comments:
Most of the previous comments are typical academic knit-picking, devil's advocate, criticism-critique. "Real" people, those looking at the practical,positive value of the idea of active underwriting and not concerned about the philosophical complexities, would agree with the need for this idea to be common practice over a wide range of situations and become policy for many private and government organisations. Humans have a tendency to be very short-sighted in decision-making. Our system of govt where only those policies that produce superficially favourable results before the time of the next election, is a case in point. But your average middle-aged thinking person who has seen ideas come and go knows that only the long term really matters. The key word is sustainability. Just as medicine is turning to more epidemiological studies, I would like to see more facts that come from a wholistic study of RESULTS that comes from valid feedback from many users in realistic situations. I want to know if the route I take every day is the safest. Is the school my child goes to the best for her needs? Is my car make and model the safest? Which training choices do I have that have greatest chance of satisfying long-term employment? Should the govt be giving big tax incentives for all buildings to be built based on energy-efficiency concepts? I think we should build financial incentives to take the long-term benefits approach into all parts of our economy.