Just lost another filling. This one lasted 2 months.
Back in the day, I had a discussion with a union rep about the dental benefit being useless as insurance because all it covered was routine maintenance. I argued that I didn't need help with predictable expenses. I needed help paying for dental disasters that would break the budget. He replied that a benefit covering two appointments a year is what the members wanted. He was probably right. Anyway, no dental insurance now. I gave that up when I retired.
Four decades ago, I got a quote of $13,000 to fix my mouth (multiply by 3 or 4 [or more] in today's dollars). I stuck with original equipment rather than going into debt. Now decades later, I have spent more on fillings than I might have spent on crowns. This one that just fell out cost $261. Should have got porcelain like Daddy did.
This note is about our incompetence in estimating costs and benefits: think vaccinations, mortgage rates, wars, climate change. Why are we so stupid?
We attended a workshop a few years ago in which I was surprised to discover that my worldview is postmodern. I thought I was a unique free-thinker challenging superstitious errors with fresh evidence. No label was gonna stick to me.
It turns out I am a typical creature of my time and place, an artifact of culture riding a wave of circumstance. Born into modernity, I am now naively postmodern in a confidently postmodern world which is rapidly evolving into something post-postmodern, begging definition quick before us geezers miss out on joining the re-renaissance.
Modernism was sure of itself. To the modern mind, truth was what was new especially if it was science and technology.
Postmodernism looked at the confident excesses of modernism and was sure of nothing. Truth became a fuzzy guess based on sketchy experience and cognitive bias.
Post-postmodernism gropes in the wreckage for something that might work while the world races on faster than a fuzzy guess can follow.
About that filling. I will soon be chewing with a blender, $49.99 on Amazon.
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The Truth About Planetary Boundaries: Just Have a Think (video), 2024
for what it's worth, crowns fall off too...
ReplyDeleteI was thinking I knew what I was talking about. Hence the stupid label. Should have got that blender four decades ago.
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