In his 1971 book, Extraordinary Tennis for the Ordinary Player, Dr. Simon Ramo (also known as, of all things, the “father of the intercontinental ballistic missile”) popularized the concept of Loser’s Games and Winner’s Games:
The notion is that professional tennis is a Winner’s Game, where you win through high athletic achievement and hitting incredible shots, whereas amateur tennis is a Loser’s Game, where you win by avoiding unforced errors (i.e. you win by “not losing”).
Medicine, and especially radiology—which is especially prone to post-hoc criticism thanks to the permanent unchangeable nature of the images themselves—is much more the art of avoiding unforced errors than the art of hitting home runs. After all, common things are common. Horses, not zebras, as they say.
This is the purpose of search patterns and good habits: to build and achieve consistency.
It remains to be seen if and how and when AI might change what kind of game medicine is.