The U.S. government advice was pretty bad, but I don’t think this was from lack of knowledge. I think it was more a deliberate attempt to downplay the effectiveness of masks to mitigate supply issues.
I also wouldn’t expect the government to necessarily perform well on getting the truth out there quickly, or on responding well to low-probability /​ high impact events by taking EV+ actions that cause significant disruption to the public. Government officials have to worry about the risk of stoking public panic and similar indirect effects much more than most private individuals, including rationalist thinkers. For example, @Denkenberger🔸 mentions some rationalists figuring out who they wanted to be locked down with on the early side; deciding that the situation warrants this kind of behavior—like deciding to short the stock market, or most other private-actor stuff—doesn’t require consideration of indirect effects like government statements do. Nor are a political leader’s incentives aligned to maximize expected value in these sorts of situations.
So I’d consider beating the government to be evidence of competence, but not much evidence of particularly early or wise performance by private entities.
The U.S. government advice was pretty bad, but I don’t think this was from lack of knowledge. I think it was more a deliberate attempt to downplay the effectiveness of masks to mitigate supply issues.
I also wouldn’t expect the government to necessarily perform well on getting the truth out there quickly, or on responding well to low-probability /​ high impact events by taking EV+ actions that cause significant disruption to the public. Government officials have to worry about the risk of stoking public panic and similar indirect effects much more than most private individuals, including rationalist thinkers. For example, @Denkenberger🔸 mentions some rationalists figuring out who they wanted to be locked down with on the early side; deciding that the situation warrants this kind of behavior—like deciding to short the stock market, or most other private-actor stuff—doesn’t require consideration of indirect effects like government statements do. Nor are a political leader’s incentives aligned to maximize expected value in these sorts of situations.
So I’d consider beating the government to be evidence of competence, but not much evidence of particularly early or wise performance by private entities.