YARROW: Boy, one would have to be a complete moron to think that COVID-19 would not be a big deal as late as Feb 28 2020, i.e. something that would imminently upend life-as-usual. ⌠What kind of complete moron would not see whatâs happening here? Why is lesswrong patting themselves on the back for noticing something so glaringly obvious?
Not at all accurate. Thatâs not what Iâm saying at all. It was a situation of high uncertainty, and the appropriate response was to be at least somewhat unsure, if not very unsure â yes, take precautions, think about it, learn about it, follow the public health advice. But I donât think on February 28 anyone knew for sure what would happen, as opposed to made an uncertain call that turned out to be correct. The February 28 post I cite gives that sort of uncertain, precautionary advice, and I think itâs more or less reasonable advice â just a general âdo some research, be preparedâ sort of thing.
Itâs just that the post goes so far in patting itself on the back for being way ahead on this, when if someone in the LessWrong community had just posted about the CDCâs warning on the same day it was issued or had posted about it when San Francisco declared a public health emergency, or had made post noting that the S&P 500 had just fallen 7.5% and maybe that is a reason to be concerned, that would have put the first urgent warning about the pandemic a few days ahead of the February 28 post.
The takeaway of that post, and the takeaway of people who congratulate the LessWrong community on calling covid early, is that this is evidence that reading Yudkowskyâs Sequences or LessWrong posts or whatever promotes superior rationality, and is a vindication of the communityâs beliefs. But that is the wrong conclusion to draw if something like 10-80% of the overall North American population (these figures are loosely based on polling cited in another comment) was at least equally concerned about covid-19 at least as early. 99.999% of the millions of people who were as concerned or more as early or earlier than the LessWrong community havenât read the Sequences and donât know what LessWrong is. A strategy that would have worked better than reading the Sequences or LessWrong posts is: just listen to what the CDC is saying and what state and local public health authorities are saying.
Itâs ridiculous to draw the conclusion that this a vindication of LessWrongâs approach.
Dominic Cummings cited seeing the smoke as being very influential in jolting him to action (and thus impacting UK COVID policy), see screenshot here.
I donât see this as a recommendation for LessWrong, although it sure is an interesting historical footnote. Dominic Cummings doesnât appear to be a credible person on covid-19. For example, in November 2024 he posted a long, conspiratorial tweet which included:
âThe Fauci network should be rolled up & retired en masse with some JAILED. And their media supportersâi.e most of the old mediaâdriven out of business.â
The core problem there is not that he hasnât read LessWrong enough. (Indeed, reading LessWrong might make a person more likely to believe such things, if anything.)
Incidentally, Cummings also had a scandal in the UK around allegations that he inappropriately violated the covid-19 lockdown and subsequently wasnât honest about it.
My personal experience: As someone living in normie society in Massachusetts USA but reading lesswrong and related, I was crystal clear that everything about my life was about to wrenchingly change, weeks before any of my friends or coworkers were. And they were very weirded out by my insistence on this.
Tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people in North America had experiences similar to this. The level of alarm spread across the population gradually from around mid-January to mid-March 2020, so at any given time, there were a large number of people who were much more concerned than another large number of people.
I tried to convince my friends to take covid more seriously a few days before the WHO proclamation, the U.S. state of emergency declaration, and all the rest made it evident to them that it was time to worry. I donât think Iâm a genius for this â in fact, they were probably right to wait for more convincing evidence. If we were to re-run the experiment 10 times or 100 times, their approach might prove superior to mine. I donât know.
A funny example that sticks in my memory is a tweet by Eliezer from March 11 2020. Trump had just tweeted:
This is ridiculous. Do you think these sort of snipes are at all unique to Eliezer Yudkowsky? Turn on Rachel Maddow or listen to Pod Save America, or follow any number of educated liberals (especially those with relevant expertise or journalists who cover science and medicine) on Twitter and you would see this kind of stuff all the time. Itâs not an insight unique to Yudkowsky that Donald Trump says ridiculous and dangerous things about covid or many other topics.
Not at all accurate. Thatâs not what Iâm saying at all. It was a situation of high uncertainty, and the appropriate response was to be at least somewhat unsure, if not very unsure â yes, take precautions, think about it, learn about it, follow the public health advice. But I donât think on February 28 anyone knew for sure what would happen, as opposed to made an uncertain call that turned out to be correct. The February 28 post I cite gives that sort of uncertain, precautionary advice, and I think itâs more or less reasonable advice â just a general âdo some research, be preparedâ sort of thing.
Itâs just that the post goes so far in patting itself on the back for being way ahead on this, when if someone in the LessWrong community had just posted about the CDCâs warning on the same day it was issued or had posted about it when San Francisco declared a public health emergency, or had made post noting that the S&P 500 had just fallen 7.5% and maybe that is a reason to be concerned, that would have put the first urgent warning about the pandemic a few days ahead of the February 28 post.
The takeaway of that post, and the takeaway of people who congratulate the LessWrong community on calling covid early, is that this is evidence that reading Yudkowskyâs Sequences or LessWrong posts or whatever promotes superior rationality, and is a vindication of the communityâs beliefs. But that is the wrong conclusion to draw if something like 10-80% of the overall North American population (these figures are loosely based on polling cited in another comment) was at least equally concerned about covid-19 at least as early. 99.999% of the millions of people who were as concerned or more as early or earlier than the LessWrong community havenât read the Sequences and donât know what LessWrong is. A strategy that would have worked better than reading the Sequences or LessWrong posts is: just listen to what the CDC is saying and what state and local public health authorities are saying.
Itâs ridiculous to draw the conclusion that this a vindication of LessWrongâs approach.
I donât see this as a recommendation for LessWrong, although it sure is an interesting historical footnote. Dominic Cummings doesnât appear to be a credible person on covid-19. For example, in November 2024 he posted a long, conspiratorial tweet which included:
âThe Fauci network should be rolled up & retired en masse with some JAILED.
And their media supportersâi.e most of the old mediaâdriven out of business.â
The core problem there is not that he hasnât read LessWrong enough. (Indeed, reading LessWrong might make a person more likely to believe such things, if anything.)
Incidentally, Cummings also had a scandal in the UK around allegations that he inappropriately violated the covid-19 lockdown and subsequently wasnât honest about it.
Tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people in North America had experiences similar to this. The level of alarm spread across the population gradually from around mid-January to mid-March 2020, so at any given time, there were a large number of people who were much more concerned than another large number of people.
I tried to convince my friends to take covid more seriously a few days before the WHO proclamation, the U.S. state of emergency declaration, and all the rest made it evident to them that it was time to worry. I donât think Iâm a genius for this â in fact, they were probably right to wait for more convincing evidence. If we were to re-run the experiment 10 times or 100 times, their approach might prove superior to mine. I donât know.
This is ridiculous. Do you think these sort of snipes are at all unique to Eliezer Yudkowsky? Turn on Rachel Maddow or listen to Pod Save America, or follow any number of educated liberals (especially those with relevant expertise or journalists who cover science and medicine) on Twitter and you would see this kind of stuff all the time. Itâs not an insight unique to Yudkowsky that Donald Trump says ridiculous and dangerous things about covid or many other topics.