"In retrospect, we can now tell that Jobs clearly had
a tumor that was unusually aggressive for an insulinoma."
... seems to undermine the author's own argument that Jobs's nine months of ineffective dieting and dithering was not necessarily a problem. Was it an aggressive tumor, or not? If so, then the early CAT scan was a lottery win, and it was incredible that Jobs failed to cash in the winning ticket. If not, then sure, maybe nine months more or less didn't matter.
As one of the commenters emphasizes, what's truly incredible is that he even considered waiting nine months before seeking state-of-the-art treatment. An intellectual environment where smart people make decisions like that is not healthy for any of us. That's the real reason why we should fight woo where we find it, as if it were a cancer in itself.
"The first 90 percent of the task takes 10 percent of the time. The last 10 percent takes the other 90 percent."
Do you see where I'm going ? If you believe there's some truth in this saying (quote, murphy law, whatever it is) then you should fix problems as early as possible. Granted, you don't always have time for that, and this saying applies mostly to such situations. Software projects, for example. But if you have an opportunity to fix a complicated problem/task early, don't procrastinate. There are often unexpected complications. Solve them early. If you start earlier, the chance you into the deadline is smaller.
I think it's perfectly possible that Steve Jobs acted brilliant in some situations and plain stupid in this case. There are no 100% brilliant and 100% stupid people. It's not binary, a smart person is not immune to stupid actions.
As one of the commenters emphasizes, what's truly incredible is that he even considered waiting nine months before seeking state-of-the-art treatment. An intellectual environment where smart people make decisions like that is not healthy for any of us. That's the real reason why we should fight woo where we find it, as if it were a cancer in itself.