The Miracle of Dosage

Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight BG609 crashed in 1997. A few miles away from my home. I didn’t hear any noise, but the news quickly spread, because of a miracle. The plane was carrying 85 passengers and 4 crew members, some of whom I knew personally. Every single one of them survived. Not a single person was even seriously injured. The BBC has even called it a ‘miracle’.

Many theories were floated around that time. My theory is that the plane luckily didn’t receive enough dose of impact to go ablaze. No wonder, today we are talking about the wonderful wonders of dosage.

We, by nature, think in binary. There is all or there is none. Yes or no, good or evil. We’re so used to it that in English language we don’t have a single word to ask “how much?”. Thankfully, many languages have one word like “quanto”.

The real world, however, is not that straightforward or absolute.

Is sleep good for you? Yes - but how much? Ask an insomniac and a depressive and you’ll get opposite answers.

Is honesty good for you? Yes - but how much? Say every true thing you think today and count “how many” friends you have tomorrow.

Is water good for you? Yes - but how much?

Now this makes sense so far, because we can see the impact of dosage very quickly. But things get really mucky when the feedback loop is delayed.

Is education good for you?

Is safety good for you?

Is self-awareness good for you?

Is trust good for you?

I know I’m throwing out some paranoid questions. So let me tell you a story then come back to it again. I heard it in a book called Range by David Epstein.

There was a fire in a small town in a barn and it was in danger of spreading to houses nearby, but it was near a lake. So neighbours came out and started getting buckets and throwing water on the fire while it was still small. But they couldn’t get it to go out.

Eventually, the fire chief showed up and said, “Okay. Everybody, stop what you’re doing. Go fill your buckets with water and then come back here,” and he arranged them in a circle around the fire and said, “1, 2, 3, we’ll all throw once,” and they did that and dampened the fire and soon it was out and the fire chief got a raise.

Less amount of water with different intensity and velocity, i.e. dosage, became a force for good for villagers (for fire, it was bad).

So how do we answer those identity-threatening questions above? Simply dosing is not enough, because it takes years to know what dose is optimal for you.

It’s hard to see, but the fire story has the answer. Make the question more specific.

The chief never asked for more water. He changed what it was counted against - one bucket per man became forty per moment.

When a dose question won’t resolve, you’re missing a variable, not a quantity. So pair your dose with time or other variables. The questions still change from yes-no, binary type questions to how-much type questions.

Is education good for you? becomes

How much education is needed to get to the next thing?

Is safety good for you? becomes

How much safety do you need to be safe but not too comfortable?

The answer to life’s many complicated problems lies in dosage. Next time you face a tough problem, rather than asking yes or no, ask how much, and see the difference.