this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2025
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[–] TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Doctors regularly Google stuff. Their training isn't in memorizing everything, but in contextualizing data, making decisions based upon the evidence and risk, and communicating that decision to the patient in a way that the patient can understand while allowing the patient to maintain bodily autonomy.

When patients Google symptoms they have no understanding of the disease, it's prevalence in the community, it's long term effects, and it's risk profile. It's why medicine uses scientific data to make decisions but not a science itself.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago

This is it.

Same with programmers. Of course I don't have the documentation of everything I use memorized. But my skill is to understand what I am reading, figure out what is trash and what is useful and then apply it to the situation in front of me.

Same as a doctor would do when googleing the specifics of medicine and conditions.

[–] M1k3y@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago

Have you tried turning him off and on again?

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

"Programmers" who google+copy+paste most of their code are not programmers (yet) they are Script Kiddies... they are programmers in training

[–] mcv@lemmy.zip 28 points 1 day ago

Googling stuff online doesn't make you a programmer either. You still have to learn it, know how to apply what you look up, understand how the computer works. Although it's easier to learn by yourself, at least partially because there are no lives at stake.

And doctors look up plenty of stuff too. Only a fool would think they already know everything.

[–] gedhrel@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

I've a couple of GP friend who used to describe "Dr Google" as their online colleague.

The point being, they were somewhat trained in interpreting risk as opposed to the stereotypical googler-of-symptoms. Once upon a time search engines were quite useful.

[–] Geth@piefed.world 93 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If i see a doctor look up something I immediately trust them more. It shows that they are open to more that the bare minimum and willing to learn if needed.

[–] orhtej2@eviltoast.org 58 points 2 days ago (2 children)

There's this meme of 'why is ChatGPT expert on everything but the area I have knowledge of'.

What you're describing is a professional looking up aditional info, with ability to sift through and judge the result, and I appreciate it in specialists of all the professions.

This is however largely not what this meme is about as in my experience cobbling together random snippets of code rarely if ever works.

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 6 points 2 days ago

There's this meme of 'why is ChatGPT expert on everything but the area I have knowledge of'.

That's just Gell-Mann amnesia applied to chat bots.

[–] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

There's this meme of 'why is ChatGPT expert on everything but the area I have knowledge of'.

I didn't know about the meme but for a while, YouTube recommended me reviews of the book Sapiens which tries to encompass all of human history, starting from evolution and everyone was like "I learned alot but in the field of my experience, it's garbage" and I felt like c'mon, don't you see the pattern

[–] mcv@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I switched newspapers when I noticed that every time my newspaper write about something I actually knew about, they wrote garbage.

Sapiens does present some really powerful ideas, though. I enjoyed it a lot, but the book clearly glosses over a lot of details. Then again, it tries to tackle a ridiculously big scope, so I can see how it can't get into all of the details. I still consider it a worthy read despite its shortcomings. But read it more for the ideas than for the facts.

[–] lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Isn't the "idea" a very eurocentric understanding of progress and how colonialism is actually good because it civilized the colonized? But I'm sure there is more to the book than that

[–] mcv@lemmy.zip 3 points 21 hours ago

That's not what I picked up from it. The biggest idea that it presents very early in the book is that of a shared subjective truth: most of the things that make up our society, like countries, laws, corporations, etc. do not exist objectively; they only exist because we all believe in them. Objectively, these things don't exist, but our society is built upon everybody agreeing that these imaginary orders exist, and we're constantly inventing new imaginary structures on top of that.

[–] Brkdncr@lemmy.world 26 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I went to a dr recently and he asked why I was taking a medication that was for something I wasn’t diagnosed with. I told him it was because it’s found to also improve symptoms of a different condition.

Later I went back and he was looking at my chart and mentioned that the medication I was on was known to help a lot of other issues and listed off a bunch that I knew about but didn’t tell him.

Obviously he looked it up at some point based on my comments.

I like that dr and wish he wasn’t a specialist.

[–] Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

The wishing they weren't a specialist is so real. I wish my psychiatrist was also my GP and my therapist. I've found out through her about diagnoses that are in my chart that nobody ever bothered to tell me about and that I overlooked in there, as well as about off label medication uses that you mentioned and medication or illness interactions I never would've guessed. Outside her domain too, e.g. between my thyroid meds and ibuprofen. All the GPs I've ever been to are either jaded, refuse to learn or admit you might know something they dont, or don't take you seriously.

[–] eigenraum@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 day ago

But we know that doctors watch YouTube tutorial videos ;-)

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Extremely talented expert programmer with 30 years experience: "I need an API for the Windows registry that's accessible in perl syntax within the Android 8.5 OS, and it's got to be written in Chinese"

Zero Results

College dropout with two years at Best Buy who got the job from his uncle: "How make phone edit WimOSreg fewest characters chinglish"

1879563822560 results, answer in first screen

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

When I code, I feel like Joey from Hackers.

"So I'm in this thing, I don't know what it is or where it is and I'm just throwing commands at it to see what happens..."

[–] orhtej2@eviltoast.org 16 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Same, but Joey from Friends.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 5 points 2 days ago

What language supports moo point numbers? 🤔

[–] porksnort@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 day ago

“Could you BE any more leet?”

[–] jawa22@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago

I was a developer for only a short while. It was from about 2003-2005. My memory is hazy on when. I did web based Java and PHP stuff (as well as being the DBA since I went to college for that). Even then, maybe 80% of what I did was just ripping stuff off from forums. I finally quit after I realized that my programming hobby made me want to stab my eyes out if it was a 9-5.

[–] SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

TBF there are plenty of programmers who aren't good programmers, but keep their job because rarely does anything they do actually affect someone's physical health.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

It's no secret that a lot of doctors are terrible at their jobs too

[–] omniman@anarchist.nexus 7 points 2 days ago

I mean , if they look on dark web they can also get body for practice 😃

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

The more I learn the less I use google.
Mainly because google is getting worse but still.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 4 points 2 days ago

Programming and being a doctor are different things. This comparison makes no sense.

[–] who@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago

What about Googling stuff offline?

[–] zqwzzle@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] orhtej2@eviltoast.org 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

'Stack programming' is a direct reference to that 😉

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

Oh ok... I was confused about either being Forth or language equivalents class to ruby on rails.

[–] PattyMcB@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah, but AI does!