In other words, your doctor could have been losslessly replaced with a rock that says “apply a steroid cream”, and that heuristic would have harmed you.
If it had benefited thousands of others, does it matter in the larger view?
The naive alternative is the doctor always spending time to get to more nuanced advice, that will be more often than (every time the rock was as good) a waste of resources (time/money/opportunity cost), and which in a lot of cases would also be more harmful (iatrogenic harm) than the rock advice.
"But, why 'always'? It's enough that the doctor goes for more nuance when he sees a reason to!", you'll say.
Well, that's what doctors actually do. They are not glorified rocks, they are bimodal (rock mode vs looking deeper mode) - and they're most rock because (even if the miss a few 'loop deeper' cases) because it's way more efficient than the alternative (always or mostly non-rock, that is, digging deeper without first seeing strong indications that they should dig deeper).
The naive alternative is the doctor always spending time to get to more nuanced advice, that will be more often than (every time the rock was as good) a waste of resources (time/money/opportunity cost), and which in a lot of cases would also be more harmful (iatrogenic harm) than the rock advice.
"But, why 'always'? It's enough that the doctor goes for more nuance when he sees a reason to!", you'll say.
Well, that's what doctors actually do. They are not glorified rocks, they are bimodal (rock mode vs looking deeper mode) - and they're most rock because (even if the miss a few 'loop deeper' cases) because it's way more efficient than the alternative (always or mostly non-rock, that is, digging deeper without first seeing strong indications that they should dig deeper).