Re: COVID, the correct course of action (unless one was psychic) was to be extremely paranoid at the start (trying for total bubbling, sterilizing outside objects, etc) because the EV was very downside-skewed—but as more information came in, to stop worrying about surfaces, start being fine with spacious outdoor gatherings, get a good mask and be comfortable doing some things inside, etc.
That is, a good EA would have been faster than the experts on taking costly preventative acts and faster than the experts on relaxing those where warranted.
Some actual EAs seemed to do this well, and others missed in one direction or the other (there was a lot of rapid group house self-sorting in March/April 2020 over this, and then a slower process afterward).
Yep, agree—I think it was warranted to be extremely cautious in February/March, and then the ideal behavior would have been to become much less cautious as more information came in. In practice, I think many people remained extremely cautious for a full year (including my family) out of some combination of inertia and exhaustion about renegotiating what had been strenuously negotiated in the first place.
Some people furthermore tried very aggressively to apply social pressure against fully vaccinated people holding events and returning to normalcy in spring of 2021, which I think was an even more clear-cut mistake given the incredibly high pre-omicron vaccine efficacy. I am not actually sure I know anyone who I believe missed in the incautious direction, and if we’d had equal misses in both directions I’d feel a lot better about our community decisionmaking.
Disagree. I think it is best to behave “reasonably” until proven otherwise. Things like (1) sterilizing mail and delivered groceries, or (2) trying for total bubbling when everyone you know is already being highly, highly careful, always seemed like covid theater and it disturbed me that EAs didn’t realize that with common sense. It also led to some, I think, social injustices, like suppressing your housemates right to see family or see their live-out romantic partners.
Yes I want EAs to be faster than experts at taking “costly preventative acts” but… the EV cost should be well in the positive. And with EA productivity worth a lot, that is a high bar. Firstly, I think, be very sure the acts are effective, to counterweight the lack of sureness of the other variable (likelihood of harm from the problem you are trying to avoid). If you cant be sure effectiveness with data yet, check your intuition (which EAs mostly didn’t do I think, I mean people mostly chose sterilizing things over HEPA filters, wtf, and mostly didn’t downgrade risk of meeting with “quarantined people” as the quarantined person neared the end of their 2 weeks still showing no symptoms).
[EDIT: RE: determining effectiveness of relocation against nuclear risk, I asked a question in comment below]
Transfer your argument that EAs should be “extremely paranoid at the start” to nuclear risk, and you get the advice that people should basically move, idk, this month? Or start renting a house now that remains empty, but is ready for them in case of rapid departure? Possibly even spend their work hours arranging any of this? These mostly seem too big for where we are now IMO (the house rental seems decentish because it could calm people’s anxieties knowing they did something, and a house in the boonies is cheap).
It sounds like you bore the brunt of some people’s overly paranoid risk assessments, and I’m sorry to hear that.
To be concrete about my model, sterilizing groceries was the right call in March 2020 but not by June 2020 (when we knew it very probably didn’t transmit through surfaces), and overall maximum-feasible alert was the right call in March 2020 but not by June 2020 (when we knew the IFR was low for healthy young people and that the hospitals were not going to be too overwhelmed).
“Be sure the act is effective” is not a good proxy for “take actions based on EV”. In March 2020, the officials were sure (based on a bad model) that COVID wasn’t airborne. We masked up all the same, not because we knew it would be effective but because the chance was large enough for the expected gain to outweigh the cost.
[[I acknowledge this is an out of scale reply, might make it a post one day soon. Thanks for reading]]
Thanks. I understand what you mean about EV. I just think problems sneak through in practice. In practice, people tend to weight things pretty badly and, especially in the middle of a mass-televised news cycle, be desperate for some control and hope things will work that won’t. So I claim “reasonableness” or “certainty” for at least one of the variables is important. Else we are going to have a lot of Pascal’s muggings.
To be concrete about my model too, even in March I think plenty of weird acts were the wrong call. It’s hard to explain what I meant when I said “check your intuition” but I basically mean, reason it out and extrapolate from what you know, and also heed red flags and weird vibes (like the community’s behavior starting to pattern-match mental illness and groupthink).
Anyway, we should expect that many (even most) interventions suggested at the early phase of a problem are somehow out-of-step with reality. The solution is not to do all of the ones your peers are doing just in case, as you seem to suggest, but to actively question and sort out the worst. You said we didn’t know masking would be effective but we did it anyway based on EV… But,that isn’t true. We did know masks were effective.So comparing EA masking to extreme-looking, always-speculative interventions does not follow. They are at different ends of the spectrum.
At risk of sounding harsh, EA is about using evidence and reason. I hope EAs don’t shrug mistakes off with “we needed more data”. We didn’t always need more data. We needed the community to reason for itself, as it did about masks.To go “Does that make sense to me?” Then, do the “reasonable” things only. I guess I wasn’t clear, but that’s what I meant when I said “be very sure the act is effective” and “act reasonably”. For acts without enough hard data, EAs could do better to check their intuition, model of the world, expected human behavior, and be more skeptical, even of copying other EAs.
Reasonableness and paranoia are by definition in conflict, so I’m disturbed that you essentially say that “paranoia” was the “right call” “(unless one was psychic)”. We never dismissed trying to make predictions as being “psychic” before. Could we not have done better in March? Do you look back at the early extreme reactions and find no reason to be skeptical of them? Other people were skeptical, and then correct. The truth of what was useful wasn’t in a time-activated lockbox. Even in March 2020, it existed in the world and was, if not observable, extrapolatable. I’m reminded of this EA short story:
”Impressive,” [the mirror] says with a voice cool and smooth.… “I didn’t think you could succeed with raw power alone. Some might say you didn’t.”...
“So? I killed the Broken King. I stopped the summoning of the Old Horrors,” [the hero] challenge[s]. “What more could I have done?”
“Now you are asking the right question,” the mirror laughs. “What more indeed? You must train yourself until the answer comes naturally as the spellforce in your veins.”
[Later:]
”Saved them? What could I do?” the hero frowns, and then the memories still settling in their head cohere. The mirror’s solution replays in vivid clarity...
“You should have taken the time to work it out,” the mirror chastises. “You were capable of it.”
Wrong is wrong. Something went wrong. It’s okay to be wrong. Attempting was good. Even failing is okay. And now let’s clarify that we should not repeat a tactic that went awry. We weren’t skeptical and selective enough in the beginning, and it took some EAs a year longer than you’d expect to get their heads screwed on straight again about the whole thing. That’s painful for everyone. But maybe it’s human nature. I’m updating that it is. If you start with extreme, paranoid behavior and your community is encouraging you to be paranoid rather than question the paranoia, I doubt most people find it easy to correct later.
We knew that surgeons and other medical personnel wear masks for a reason, because we can assume their doing so for centuries has been expensive and hospital interests/board members wouldn’t have kept it going if it weren’t doing something worth the effort. We knew that doctors and nurses were still wearing masks during Covid: in other words, the Covid pandemic did not just randomly time itself with the global realization that masks had always been pointless. We knew that other country’s citizens were wearing masks. We knew that COVID travelled through our breathing apparatus, which opens where the mask goes. Looking at the whole system, it is harder to be more sure than that. At some point you have to call your EV calculus what it is: “knowing something”.
Re: COVID, the correct course of action (unless one was psychic) was to be extremely paranoid at the start (trying for total bubbling, sterilizing outside objects, etc) because the EV was very downside-skewed—but as more information came in, to stop worrying about surfaces, start being fine with spacious outdoor gatherings, get a good mask and be comfortable doing some things inside, etc.
That is, a good EA would have been faster than the experts on taking costly preventative acts and faster than the experts on relaxing those where warranted.
Some actual EAs seemed to do this well, and others missed in one direction or the other (there was a lot of rapid group house self-sorting in March/April 2020 over this, and then a slower process afterward).
Yep, agree—I think it was warranted to be extremely cautious in February/March, and then the ideal behavior would have been to become much less cautious as more information came in. In practice, I think many people remained extremely cautious for a full year (including my family) out of some combination of inertia and exhaustion about renegotiating what had been strenuously negotiated in the first place.
Some people furthermore tried very aggressively to apply social pressure against fully vaccinated people holding events and returning to normalcy in spring of 2021, which I think was an even more clear-cut mistake given the incredibly high pre-omicron vaccine efficacy. I am not actually sure I know anyone who I believe missed in the incautious direction, and if we’d had equal misses in both directions I’d feel a lot better about our community decisionmaking.
There’s a certain rationalist-adjacent meditation retreat I can think of.
Disagree. I think it is best to behave “reasonably” until proven otherwise. Things like (1) sterilizing mail and delivered groceries, or (2) trying for total bubbling when everyone you know is already being highly, highly careful, always seemed like covid theater and it disturbed me that EAs didn’t realize that with common sense. It also led to some, I think, social injustices, like suppressing your housemates right to see family or see their live-out romantic partners.
Yes I want EAs to be faster than experts at taking “costly preventative acts” but… the EV cost should be well in the positive. And with EA productivity worth a lot, that is a high bar. Firstly, I think, be very sure the acts are effective, to counterweight the lack of sureness of the other variable (likelihood of harm from the problem you are trying to avoid). If you cant be sure effectiveness with data yet, check your intuition (which EAs mostly didn’t do I think, I mean people mostly chose sterilizing things over HEPA filters, wtf, and mostly didn’t downgrade risk of meeting with “quarantined people” as the quarantined person neared the end of their 2 weeks still showing no symptoms).
[EDIT: RE: determining effectiveness of relocation against nuclear risk, I asked a question in comment below]
Transfer your argument that EAs should be “extremely paranoid at the start” to nuclear risk, and you get the advice that people should basically move, idk, this month? Or start renting a house now that remains empty, but is ready for them in case of rapid departure? Possibly even spend their work hours arranging any of this? These mostly seem too big for where we are now IMO (the house rental seems decentish because it could calm people’s anxieties knowing they did something, and a house in the boonies is cheap).
It sounds like you bore the brunt of some people’s overly paranoid risk assessments, and I’m sorry to hear that.
To be concrete about my model, sterilizing groceries was the right call in March 2020 but not by June 2020 (when we knew it very probably didn’t transmit through surfaces), and overall maximum-feasible alert was the right call in March 2020 but not by June 2020 (when we knew the IFR was low for healthy young people and that the hospitals were not going to be too overwhelmed).
“Be sure the act is effective” is not a good proxy for “take actions based on EV”. In March 2020, the officials were sure (based on a bad model) that COVID wasn’t airborne. We masked up all the same, not because we knew it would be effective but because the chance was large enough for the expected gain to outweigh the cost.
[[I acknowledge this is an out of scale reply, might make it a post one day soon. Thanks for reading]]
Thanks. I understand what you mean about EV. I just think problems sneak through in practice. In practice, people tend to weight things pretty badly and, especially in the middle of a mass-televised news cycle, be desperate for some control and hope things will work that won’t. So I claim “reasonableness” or “certainty” for at least one of the variables is important. Else we are going to have a lot of Pascal’s muggings.
To be concrete about my model too, even in March I think plenty of weird acts were the wrong call. It’s hard to explain what I meant when I said “check your intuition” but I basically mean, reason it out and extrapolate from what you know, and also heed red flags and weird vibes (like the community’s behavior starting to pattern-match mental illness and groupthink).
Anyway, we should expect that many (even most) interventions suggested at the early phase of a problem are somehow out-of-step with reality. The solution is not to do all of the ones your peers are doing just in case, as you seem to suggest, but to actively question and sort out the worst. You said we didn’t know masking would be effective but we did it anyway based on EV… But, that isn’t true. We did know masks were effective. So comparing EA masking to extreme-looking, always-speculative interventions does not follow. They are at different ends of the spectrum.
At risk of sounding harsh, EA is about using evidence and reason. I hope EAs don’t shrug mistakes off with “we needed more data”. We didn’t always need more data. We needed the community to reason for itself, as it did about masks. To go “Does that make sense to me?” Then, do the “reasonable” things only. I guess I wasn’t clear, but that’s what I meant when I said “be very sure the act is effective” and “act reasonably”. For acts without enough hard data, EAs could do better to check their intuition, model of the world, expected human behavior, and be more skeptical, even of copying other EAs.
Reasonableness and paranoia are by definition in conflict, so I’m disturbed that you essentially say that “paranoia” was the “right call” “(unless one was psychic)”. We never dismissed trying to make predictions as being “psychic” before. Could we not have done better in March? Do you look back at the early extreme reactions and find no reason to be skeptical of them? Other people were skeptical, and then correct. The truth of what was useful wasn’t in a time-activated lockbox. Even in March 2020, it existed in the world and was, if not observable, extrapolatable. I’m reminded of this EA short story:
”Impressive,” [the mirror] says with a voice cool and smooth.… “I didn’t think you could succeed with raw power alone. Some might say you didn’t.”...
“So? I killed the Broken King. I stopped the summoning of the Old Horrors,” [the hero] challenge[s]. “What more could I have done?”
“Now you are asking the right question,” the mirror laughs. “What more indeed? You must train yourself until the answer comes naturally as the spellforce in your veins.”
[Later:]
”Saved them? What could I do?” the hero frowns, and then the memories still settling in their head cohere. The mirror’s solution replays in vivid clarity...
“You should have taken the time to work it out,” the mirror chastises. “You were capable of it.”
Wrong is wrong. Something went wrong. It’s okay to be wrong. Attempting was good. Even failing is okay. And now let’s clarify that we should not repeat a tactic that went awry. We weren’t skeptical and selective enough in the beginning, and it took some EAs a year longer than you’d expect to get their heads screwed on straight again about the whole thing. That’s painful for everyone. But maybe it’s human nature. I’m updating that it is. If you start with extreme, paranoid behavior and your community is encouraging you to be paranoid rather than question the paranoia, I doubt most people find it easy to correct later.
We knew that surgeons and other medical personnel wear masks for a reason, because we can assume their doing so for centuries has been expensive and hospital interests/board members wouldn’t have kept it going if it weren’t doing something worth the effort. We knew that doctors and nurses were still wearing masks during Covid: in other words, the Covid pandemic did not just randomly time itself with the global realization that masks had always been pointless. We knew that other country’s citizens were wearing masks. We knew that COVID travelled through our breathing apparatus, which opens where the mask goes. Looking at the whole system, it is harder to be more sure than that. At some point you have to call your EV calculus what it is: “knowing something”.