A Failure, but Not of Prediction(slatestarcodex.com)
slatestarcodex.com
A Failure, but Not of Prediction
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/04/14/a-failure-but-not-of-prediction/
179 comments
Where do you bet for money to "support yourself"? Good Judgment Open doesn't have cash awards.
Had they made that bet with out options in mid to late feb they could be a millionaire.
For political bets you can bet on betting sites. Much harder to earn an income though.
For political bets you can bet on betting sites. Much harder to earn an income though.
This is one of the rare times that I obviously should have done just that, but usually it's hard (for me at least) to really think of ways to carry some forecast over into the stock markets.
Yeah I’m kicking myself over it. I knew enough to withdraw my money from the market on the 24th (took the decision the 22nd on a weekend).
But I literally forgot about puts. I was under the impression you had to be an accredited investor.
I was thinking about withdrawing on the 20th/21st of feb, when spread happened in Korea and Italy locked down some northern towns. Puts were still very cheap then.
But I literally forgot about puts. I was under the impression you had to be an accredited investor.
I was thinking about withdrawing on the 20th/21st of feb, when spread happened in Korea and Italy locked down some northern towns. Puts were still very cheap then.
Although market reaction is fundamentally hard to predict. It caughy many by surprise that markets reacted positively when Trump was elected. Or when there’s 150k people dead from coronavirus.
Prediction markets. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market
Stock markets and futures exchanges can be reasonably modeled as placing bets, too.
Stock markets and futures exchanges can be reasonably modeled as placing bets, too.
I'm aware of them. None of them let you bet (for money) on the number of COVID-19 cases with a % likelihood like OP describes.
True story: Intrade let you bet on the swine flu count, as reported in major media sources, and I bet that there would be 50,000 cases in the US by the end of June 2009. Then they changed it to "CDC official count" before the bet resolved, and the CDC decided to stop updating it, so I lost the bet even though there were 50k cases by the terms of the original bet.
Were they allowed to do that under the terms of the contract or something like that? If not, it sounds like fraud. If so, it sounds like a way to never make any significant payouts...
Not like I could sue, since it was hosted in Ireland :-(
And in effect they could do whatever they wanted.
And in effect they could do whatever they wanted.
I still play on GJOpen if not only because the variety of topics is greater but I also like some of the players there and what they have to say. Brier score approaches also feel more rigorous.
It exposes an interesting flaw in people's thinking where they hear percent and immediately convert it to a binary (75% -> Yes, 29% -> No). If pressed most would probably claim to understand that 75% means "every 4th time we see this it won't work" and 29% "nearly every 3rd time it will", but in my experience most people act more appropriately for the binary outcome than the probabilistic one.
Thinking and acting to the probability model is almost a superpower; I keep finding I'm ready for 1 in 10 style events that other people don't see coming. After being told authoritatively there is a 10% chance of it happening, no less. Eg, I will look at what a 1:100 year rain event in an area will cause then make long term decisions around it.
Thinking and acting to the probability model is almost a superpower; I keep finding I'm ready for 1 in 10 style events that other people don't see coming. After being told authoritatively there is a 10% chance of it happening, no less. Eg, I will look at what a 1:100 year rain event in an area will cause then make long term decisions around it.
Yes, this drives me nuts.
I'd also say that when viewing something like a "1:100 year rain event" to understand that it's just a model there, and not always the actual probability, and to try to understand what limitations might exist. Climate change is likely making some events like that more frequent for example.
I'd also say that when viewing something like a "1:100 year rain event" to understand that it's just a model there, and not always the actual probability, and to try to understand what limitations might exist. Climate change is likely making some events like that more frequent for example.
I think there is an additional problem with "1 in 100 year" events: it looks so small that a lot of people don't realize that they are more likely than not to see it in their lifetimes.
It depends on framing. Most people would decline to play Russian roulette even with a 100 chamber cylinder with but a single live round.
Of course they would. What have they got to gain?
Now put a prize in there and I might well play.
Now put a prize in there and I might well play.
> I keep finding I'm ready for 1 in 10 style events that other people don't see coming.
Surely if you’re ready for more than 10% of 1-in-10 events, your probabilities are just as wrong as other people’s; it’s just that your risk management is better.
That is why I don’t like probabilities for what are fundamentally one-off events.
Surely if you’re ready for more than 10% of 1-in-10 events, your probabilities are just as wrong as other people’s; it’s just that your risk management is better.
That is why I don’t like probabilities for what are fundamentally one-off events.
So if you know of 10 different events which may occur with probability 10% each, you would prepare for exactly one of them?
I think it's clear that there are some events that may be rare but which are cheaper to plan ahead for than to deal with after the fact, and vice versa (e.g. for many people self insuring against minor losses like appliance failures makes sense).
I think it's clear that there are some events that may be rare but which are cheaper to plan ahead for than to deal with after the fact, and vice versa (e.g. for many people self insuring against minor losses like appliance failures makes sense).
Here are some risks I'd like you to maybe prepare for:
A: 10% chance you lose 100$. Preparing costs 5$
B: 10% chance you lose 100$. Preparing costs 15$
C: 10% chance you lose 200$. Preparing costs 15$
D: 10% chance you lose 200$. Preparing costs 30$
E: 10% chance you win 100$. Ticket costs 20$
F: 10% chance you win 100$. Ticket costs 5$
You prepare for A & C. You buy tickets for F
Think of it like choosing when to fold in poker
A: 10% chance you lose 100$. Preparing costs 5$
B: 10% chance you lose 100$. Preparing costs 15$
C: 10% chance you lose 200$. Preparing costs 15$
D: 10% chance you lose 200$. Preparing costs 30$
E: 10% chance you win 100$. Ticket costs 20$
F: 10% chance you win 100$. Ticket costs 5$
You prepare for A & C. You buy tickets for F
Think of it like choosing when to fold in poker
It's useful to think that way, until you add more options:
G: 5% chance one of your parents die, preparation costs $X
H: 3% chance you die, preparation costs $Y.
What at what values of $X and $Y do you prepare?
G: 5% chance one of your parents die, preparation costs $X
H: 3% chance you die, preparation costs $Y.
What at what values of $X and $Y do you prepare?
Refusing to answer the question doesn't mean you won't have to make that decision. Better to've considered these questions ahead of time. People run into this when they haven't decided how much they're willing to pay before putting their pets down
The 5%/X 3%/Y question is also hard to answer since one also has to consider how much is it mitigating, if I survive with chronic pain or something then that loses value. Assuming full mitigation:
I'd be willing to pay ~16000$ to skip a 1/30 chance of death (valuing ~480000$ to live ~50 years, or 9600/year being-alive tax)
For my parents I'd be willing to pay ~9000$ to skip a 1/20 chance of one of their's death. (valuing ~180000$ for them to live ~30 years, or 6000/year being-alive tax)
The 5%/X 3%/Y question is also hard to answer since one also has to consider how much is it mitigating, if I survive with chronic pain or something then that loses value. Assuming full mitigation:
I'd be willing to pay ~16000$ to skip a 1/30 chance of death (valuing ~480000$ to live ~50 years, or 9600/year being-alive tax)
For my parents I'd be willing to pay ~9000$ to skip a 1/20 chance of one of their's death. (valuing ~180000$ for them to live ~30 years, or 6000/year being-alive tax)
I posted a comment saying "a common mistake is thinking 10% = No" and you've responded by with something that looks a lot like "you're making a mistake thinking 10% = yes".
My suggestion is you don't have enough information to claim I'm making any specific mistake.
My suggestion is you don't have enough information to claim I'm making any specific mistake.
You prepare for a 1 in 10 chance event which other people don't prepare for; i.e. is you act exactly as if you think it will certainly happen, but you tell yourself you don't think it will certainly happen?
This sounds like a distinction without meaning. Using "people mistake my preparation for me believing that it will happen, so they are dumb" is weird. You're acting as if you think it will happen, of course people think you think it will happen. Why else would you bother preparing? You're not buying 10% of the sandbags you'd need, you're buying 100% of them because nothing else would do.
"Oh but I'm smarter" but your belief is leading you to take the same actions as the person who thinks 10% == yes, so in what way is it smarter? In what way is it different?
This sounds like a distinction without meaning. Using "people mistake my preparation for me believing that it will happen, so they are dumb" is weird. You're acting as if you think it will happen, of course people think you think it will happen. Why else would you bother preparing? You're not buying 10% of the sandbags you'd need, you're buying 100% of them because nothing else would do.
"Oh but I'm smarter" but your belief is leading you to take the same actions as the person who thinks 10% == yes, so in what way is it smarter? In what way is it different?
> You prepare for a 1 in 10 chance event which other people don't prepare for; i.e. is you act exactly as if you think it will certainly happen, but you tell yourself you don't think it will certainly happen?
"Prepare for" is not the same thing as "think it will certainly happen". It's a case of making your cost-benefit calculations appropriately. You don't do all the things that you'd do if you thought it was 100% going to happen, you do a cheap subset.
"Prepare for" is not the same thing as "think it will certainly happen". It's a case of making your cost-benefit calculations appropriately. You don't do all the things that you'd do if you thought it was 100% going to happen, you do a cheap subset.
I bought 2 bottles of hand sanitizer and 2 reusable n95 facemask and some filters in mid January.
I didn't think I'd need it - I thought it'd end up like SARS or h1n1. But it cost me $30 or something and I can afford to lose that so why not.
I bought some Bitcoin fairly early. I thought it was stupid but there was a small chance I was wrong.
In both these cases if I'd been sure I'd have acted very differently!
I'm unsure about a lot of things so sometimes I try to get on both sides of a subject.
I didn't think I'd need it - I thought it'd end up like SARS or h1n1. But it cost me $30 or something and I can afford to lose that so why not.
I bought some Bitcoin fairly early. I thought it was stupid but there was a small chance I was wrong.
In both these cases if I'd been sure I'd have acted very differently!
I'm unsure about a lot of things so sometimes I try to get on both sides of a subject.
> so in what way is it smarter? In what way is it different?
As Alexander said repeatedly, it's cost-benefit analysis. See my other post in this thread.
If you go through life only preparing for the things you are certain will happen, you are quite likely to experience some avoidable unpleasantness.
As Alexander said repeatedly, it's cost-benefit analysis. See my other post in this thread.
If you go through life only preparing for the things you are certain will happen, you are quite likely to experience some avoidable unpleasantness.
This doesn't answer my question. If you prepare for it, then you are acting as if you think it will happen. That is, if you thought it would definitely happen you would do the same thing you are doing now, therefore the two states are indistinguishable except for the story in your head - and the main point about the story seems to be "I don't think it will happen therefore I'm better than the people who do think it will happen, even though we are both expending the same effort, doing the same preparations, to avoid the exact same problem"
Chanting "cost benefit analysis" doesn't change anything.
Chanting "cost benefit analysis" doesn't change anything.
> This doesn't answer my question.
Of course, if you persist in dismissing everything that makes a difference, then you will never figure out what the difference is.
You are being inconsistent in the way you presume (mostly mistakenly, I believe) various opinions and motives on the part of Scott Alexander, while attempting to reject opinions, motives and rational thought as being relevant to the behavior of people who prepared for C19.
> Chanting "cost benefit analysis" doesn't change anything.
Well, I agree that "chanting" (i.e. explaining to someone who will not listen, apparently) will not change anything (and least of all your understanding of the issues), but actually practicing cost-benefit analysis effectively does make a difference - as we can see, for example, in the difference in how C19 is progressing in South Korea and in Britain.
Of course, if you persist in dismissing everything that makes a difference, then you will never figure out what the difference is.
You are being inconsistent in the way you presume (mostly mistakenly, I believe) various opinions and motives on the part of Scott Alexander, while attempting to reject opinions, motives and rational thought as being relevant to the behavior of people who prepared for C19.
> Chanting "cost benefit analysis" doesn't change anything.
Well, I agree that "chanting" (i.e. explaining to someone who will not listen, apparently) will not change anything (and least of all your understanding of the issues), but actually practicing cost-benefit analysis effectively does make a difference - as we can see, for example, in the difference in how C19 is progressing in South Korea and in Britain.
> If you prepare for it, then you are acting as if you think it will happen.
That isn't the case. Preparation isn't a binary state either - people can be more or less prepared for an occurrence. The estimated likelihood of an event changes how much time and effort should be spent preparing to it.
There is a big difference in how people behave if they thing there is a 0%, 0.05% or 98% chance of being mugged when they go outside for example. The 0.05% case would rationally start avoiding people late at night or not carrying valuables. The 98% person would not go outside.
That isn't the case. Preparation isn't a binary state either - people can be more or less prepared for an occurrence. The estimated likelihood of an event changes how much time and effort should be spent preparing to it.
There is a big difference in how people behave if they thing there is a 0%, 0.05% or 98% chance of being mugged when they go outside for example. The 0.05% case would rationally start avoiding people late at night or not carrying valuables. The 98% person would not go outside.
Are you absolutely sure you are across all the flaws in my character and decision making process after my 2 short comments? You've got practically no idea at all how I approach planning and you're already telling me a bunch about myself that I never said.
> "Oh but I'm smarter" but your belief...
Case in point.
The article says Nate Silver had Trump's chances at a little worse than 1 in 3. The average person is going to sit through 17 presidential elections.
I don't have to be very clever to say that Trump winning is totally consistent with the model; and anyone who was caught by surprise has failed to understand probability. 29% is not saying no chance of victory and it isn't really that surprising. It isn't even a forecast of defeat if you think about it. It is evidence that a defeat was likely, but a modeled probability is not a forecast - it is evidence used in forecasting.
I'm really claiming that most people will hear "10% chance of disaster!" then after it didn't pan out 9 times they'll start talking about the boy who cried wolf or stopped clocks when the disaster strikes the 10th time. I have a massive advantage over them, because that is exactly the wrong attitude towards probabilities.
> "Oh but I'm smarter" but your belief...
Case in point.
The article says Nate Silver had Trump's chances at a little worse than 1 in 3. The average person is going to sit through 17 presidential elections.
I don't have to be very clever to say that Trump winning is totally consistent with the model; and anyone who was caught by surprise has failed to understand probability. 29% is not saying no chance of victory and it isn't really that surprising. It isn't even a forecast of defeat if you think about it. It is evidence that a defeat was likely, but a modeled probability is not a forecast - it is evidence used in forecasting.
I'm really claiming that most people will hear "10% chance of disaster!" then after it didn't pan out 9 times they'll start talking about the boy who cried wolf or stopped clocks when the disaster strikes the 10th time. I have a massive advantage over them, because that is exactly the wrong attitude towards probabilities.
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> Surely if you’re ready for more than 10% of 1-in-10 events, your probabilities are just as wrong as other people’s.
Not necessarily; as Alexander mentioned repeatedly, it depends on the cost of repeatedly preparing unnecessarily versus the cost of not being prepared that one time it happens.
Just about the whole of aviation safety, to give one extended example, is based on this principle.
Not necessarily; as Alexander mentioned repeatedly, it depends on the cost of repeatedly preparing unnecessarily versus the cost of not being prepared that one time it happens.
Just about the whole of aviation safety, to give one extended example, is based on this principle.
> Surely if you’re ready for more than 10% of 1-in-10 events, your probabilities are just as wrong as other people’s
Disagree, it depends how much it costs to be ready, and how much it costs to be unprepared if the 1-in-10 event happens.
Disagree, it depends how much it costs to be ready, and how much it costs to be unprepared if the 1-in-10 event happens.
"I am currently supporting myself by betting on politics and economics."
So what do you think of the stock market rebound?
So what do you think of the stock market rebound?
Historically I've stayed away, and view index funds as the way to go. I have no training in finance or stock valuation. It's easier for me to think about probabilities than what the pricing of Tesla means.
The rebound does seem like early overconfidence, but could be a bet on the fact that public corporations are more likely to get bailouts than not. I hope the markets are right that it's more than that. But markets seem to do a lot of dumb things over the short and medium term.
The rebound does seem like early overconfidence, but could be a bet on the fact that public corporations are more likely to get bailouts than not. I hope the markets are right that it's more than that. But markets seem to do a lot of dumb things over the short and medium term.
> I can open any thread on HN regarding economics and the general level of arrogant ignorance is staggering.
This is a problem very generally -- and is significantly exacerbated by the highly-polarized nature of our society at present. Right now, virtually anything interesting becomes a part of the political identity fight immediately -- and once that happens, reinforcing the narrative is more important than anything else. Not just by people actively trying to advance the narrative -- but because people collectively only talk to other people from their tribe, and so they get facts and "facts" that fit the narrative.
The Coronavirus is no exception. In early February, it was a Republican/Right position that the Coronavirus was dangerous and a Democrat/Left position that Coronavirus fears were an excuse to hate Asian/Chinese people.
Ironically, now, in April, it's a Republican/Right position that Coronavirus fears are dramatically overblown / a crisis being exaggerated for political or economic gains, and it's now a Democrat/Left position that the Coronavirus is a near-existential level threat that requires the strongest response possible.
These positions were initially formed from data, but once the narratives are chosen, partisans do what partisans do -- and since basically everybody is hyperpartisan now, that means we get where we are.
This is a problem very generally -- and is significantly exacerbated by the highly-polarized nature of our society at present. Right now, virtually anything interesting becomes a part of the political identity fight immediately -- and once that happens, reinforcing the narrative is more important than anything else. Not just by people actively trying to advance the narrative -- but because people collectively only talk to other people from their tribe, and so they get facts and "facts" that fit the narrative.
The Coronavirus is no exception. In early February, it was a Republican/Right position that the Coronavirus was dangerous and a Democrat/Left position that Coronavirus fears were an excuse to hate Asian/Chinese people.
Ironically, now, in April, it's a Republican/Right position that Coronavirus fears are dramatically overblown / a crisis being exaggerated for political or economic gains, and it's now a Democrat/Left position that the Coronavirus is a near-existential level threat that requires the strongest response possible.
These positions were initially formed from data, but once the narratives are chosen, partisans do what partisans do -- and since basically everybody is hyperpartisan now, that means we get where we are.
There was fight in February about closing fights specifically with China (but not from Europe which was already affected and not testing travellers), calling virus Chinese virus.
Republicans back then however also claimed it is under control and not much if threat and definitely did not advocated for any measures (testing, masks, making people stay at home, closing public events) except closing direct flies from China.
There was no observable flop between the two parties positions.
Democrats can simultaneously believe that 1.) calling virus China virus and closing exactly direct flights is mostly about racism and pushing blame from own inaction 2.) virus is threat, crisis and country needs to act in other ways.
Republicans can simultaneously believe it is nothingburger no worst then flu exaggerated by Democrats for political reasons and then call it China virus.
Republicans back then however also claimed it is under control and not much if threat and definitely did not advocated for any measures (testing, masks, making people stay at home, closing public events) except closing direct flies from China.
There was no observable flop between the two parties positions.
Democrats can simultaneously believe that 1.) calling virus China virus and closing exactly direct flights is mostly about racism and pushing blame from own inaction 2.) virus is threat, crisis and country needs to act in other ways.
Republicans can simultaneously believe it is nothingburger no worst then flu exaggerated by Democrats for political reasons and then call it China virus.
This seems to be a particularly American issue. Even in the UK post Brexit it hasn't happened. There has been the odd gentle prod but in general the opposition has supported the stance taken by the government.
The UK opposition party has been supportive, but I can't say the same thing about the press or their supporters in the general population - that's still really hyper-partisan and has imported a bunch of the US narratives as well.
Yes, the UK press has been terrible. Surprisingly (or maybe not) the best coverage seems to have come from the business press.
That's not a good thing given the awful response that the UK government has had.
America has become this extremely polarized place the last 10ish years where everybody know that "the other side" are actually monsters.
If you are a Democrat, you think of Republicans as Nazis and white supremacists. If you're a Republican, you think of Democrats as authoritarians and communists.
Naturally, once you "know" that the other side is the party of pure evil, you know that whatever the propose, you must oppose. (Even if you're a politician who doesn't really believe this, you wouldn't want to be seen as agreeing with monsters).
A related problem is that nobody trusts our institutions and processes. Republicans mostly believe that the Democrats have built their power primarily on vote fraud and the support of the media. (Things like the big push for extended time mail-in ballots and "ballot harvesting" which produce ballots with no chain of custody feed these fears of vote fraud). Democrats mostly believe that Republicans have built their power on secret backroom deals with foreign powers and a collection of billionaires (there have been a variety of investigations into folks' dealings with Russia in particular.)
As a result nobody much cares about preserving the norms or the niceties -- only winning the fight of the moment.
If you're an American, you can likely point to one or two things that "the other side" did that started this process -- my Republican friends and my Democrat friends each tell me about what the enemy did to start the fight. (Republicans are more likely to use the word 'war', but they both tend to see it as an existential struggle for our continued freedom)
Against that background of hate and distrust, every action is seen as obviously being the worst possible thing.
I know plenty of (smart) Republicans who know for certain that coronavirus lockdowns are part of a premeditated plan to finally end liberty and install a new communist dictatorship in November (that's why mail in balloting is holding up the coronavirus relief bill -- Democrats need to make sure they can vote fraud their way to 100% control before we demand to be let out of our houses).
Before you tell me that they aren't smart, I also know some very smart and capable Democrats that believe that Republicans want to reopen states like Michigan because the only people who will go back to work in big numbers will be the poor and minorities, and the entire goal of the coronavirus response was to use it as best as possible to "liquidate" the poor and brown people, so that the rich who control Republicans can have lower taxes and lots of vacant property to buy up for cheap. That's also why the borders are closed -- they believe that is intended to be permanent and in both directions, since Republicans hate foreigners.
These that I have presented are the "strong" versions of the beliefs I've encountered. They're not universal, but the hate and distrust implied by them is nearly universal.
I am presumably not an exception, though the (unusual) fact that I keep members of both parties in my social circles helps keep me able to see both perspectives clearer than most seem to.
If you are a Democrat, you think of Republicans as Nazis and white supremacists. If you're a Republican, you think of Democrats as authoritarians and communists.
Naturally, once you "know" that the other side is the party of pure evil, you know that whatever the propose, you must oppose. (Even if you're a politician who doesn't really believe this, you wouldn't want to be seen as agreeing with monsters).
A related problem is that nobody trusts our institutions and processes. Republicans mostly believe that the Democrats have built their power primarily on vote fraud and the support of the media. (Things like the big push for extended time mail-in ballots and "ballot harvesting" which produce ballots with no chain of custody feed these fears of vote fraud). Democrats mostly believe that Republicans have built their power on secret backroom deals with foreign powers and a collection of billionaires (there have been a variety of investigations into folks' dealings with Russia in particular.)
As a result nobody much cares about preserving the norms or the niceties -- only winning the fight of the moment.
If you're an American, you can likely point to one or two things that "the other side" did that started this process -- my Republican friends and my Democrat friends each tell me about what the enemy did to start the fight. (Republicans are more likely to use the word 'war', but they both tend to see it as an existential struggle for our continued freedom)
Against that background of hate and distrust, every action is seen as obviously being the worst possible thing.
I know plenty of (smart) Republicans who know for certain that coronavirus lockdowns are part of a premeditated plan to finally end liberty and install a new communist dictatorship in November (that's why mail in balloting is holding up the coronavirus relief bill -- Democrats need to make sure they can vote fraud their way to 100% control before we demand to be let out of our houses).
Before you tell me that they aren't smart, I also know some very smart and capable Democrats that believe that Republicans want to reopen states like Michigan because the only people who will go back to work in big numbers will be the poor and minorities, and the entire goal of the coronavirus response was to use it as best as possible to "liquidate" the poor and brown people, so that the rich who control Republicans can have lower taxes and lots of vacant property to buy up for cheap. That's also why the borders are closed -- they believe that is intended to be permanent and in both directions, since Republicans hate foreigners.
These that I have presented are the "strong" versions of the beliefs I've encountered. They're not universal, but the hate and distrust implied by them is nearly universal.
I am presumably not an exception, though the (unusual) fact that I keep members of both parties in my social circles helps keep me able to see both perspectives clearer than most seem to.
Where do you bet? Betting markets like predicit?
Yes, PredictIt. I didn't want to say it because I don't think anyone here who is feeling stressed about money should consider it an option. I had a least a year or more of practice on a play money site, Hypermind, which has real money prize pools.
I looked into the economics of PredictIt a few years back.
* Fees are high. They charge 10% of profits and and additional 5% for withdrawals.
* Markets were illiquid. There aren't enough shares available to put much money to work. There's an $850 limit per bet, but it's hard to reach that amount.
* Bets can take a long time to settle. So even if you are 90% certain of something trading at 50%, you can't put a ton of money into that view, nor can you necessarily get paid quickly.
* Occasionally bets are determined by dumb technicalities. As I recall the bet for Powell being the next Fed chair settled on No, because the date referenced in the bet was a holiday or something, and he was confirmed on the next business day.
If you are smart enough to make significant money on PredictIt aren't you smart enough to make more money doing almost anything else?
* Fees are high. They charge 10% of profits and and additional 5% for withdrawals.
* Markets were illiquid. There aren't enough shares available to put much money to work. There's an $850 limit per bet, but it's hard to reach that amount.
* Bets can take a long time to settle. So even if you are 90% certain of something trading at 50%, you can't put a ton of money into that view, nor can you necessarily get paid quickly.
* Occasionally bets are determined by dumb technicalities. As I recall the bet for Powell being the next Fed chair settled on No, because the date referenced in the bet was a holiday or something, and he was confirmed on the next business day.
If you are smart enough to make significant money on PredictIt aren't you smart enough to make more money doing almost anything else?
> Fees are high.
Yep. I was skeptical about if they were beatable initially.
> Markets were illiquid.
Not always true. This varies a lot between markets. If you look at the Democratic nominee markets, you can buy as many shares you like.
> $850 limit
This is per bracket. So you can max No on several candidates in a market if you want, and PI also refunds the amount that is impossible to lose since only one can resolve as Yes. There are also a lot of correlated markets that are effectively the same bet. You can bet on Biden being the nominee at least 4 different ways if you want.
> Bets can take a long time to settle.
You can sell at any point in time. No need to wait. There are long and short term markets.
If there was something 50% that was 90%, I'd have no problem taking that bet. But it's something like a 2020 election you can always wait until closer to the election. Though some markets appreciate during that span of time.
> dumb technicalities
> Powell being next Fed chair
Always read the rules. All predictions are useless without a time.
Powell market was free money. The good players were telling people the correct answer in the comments for months but people didn't want to listen. Amazing.
> aren't you smart enough to make more money doing almost anything else?
That's what I was aiming for before the economic shock, but it's not like people think "Oh you won money at bet on politics? Here is job"
Yep. I was skeptical about if they were beatable initially.
> Markets were illiquid.
Not always true. This varies a lot between markets. If you look at the Democratic nominee markets, you can buy as many shares you like.
> $850 limit
This is per bracket. So you can max No on several candidates in a market if you want, and PI also refunds the amount that is impossible to lose since only one can resolve as Yes. There are also a lot of correlated markets that are effectively the same bet. You can bet on Biden being the nominee at least 4 different ways if you want.
> Bets can take a long time to settle.
You can sell at any point in time. No need to wait. There are long and short term markets.
If there was something 50% that was 90%, I'd have no problem taking that bet. But it's something like a 2020 election you can always wait until closer to the election. Though some markets appreciate during that span of time.
> dumb technicalities
> Powell being next Fed chair
Always read the rules. All predictions are useless without a time.
Powell market was free money. The good players were telling people the correct answer in the comments for months but people didn't want to listen. Amazing.
> aren't you smart enough to make more money doing almost anything else?
That's what I was aiming for before the economic shock, but it's not like people think "Oh you won money at bet on politics? Here is job"
Any advice on how to get better at making predictions?
I second stevenwliao's recommendation of Superforecasting by Philip Tetlock. It's a good intro. It might seem unsatisfying in that there is no single thing that makes one good, and he basically refers to it (appropriately) as good judgement. But it highlights a lot of basic areas.
Practice is also good. If you're not used to probabilistic thinking you'll need to develop that intuition and calibration.
Anything about how to think about things better is going to be useful. There's a Coursera course called Model Thinking that is might be useful. Just being curious about things in general and pushing yourself outside of your normal areas of competency/interest.
It might seem weird, but I find Twitter to be pretty essential these days. There are a lot of smart people freely sharing information and some don't mind answering questions.
Practice is also good. If you're not used to probabilistic thinking you'll need to develop that intuition and calibration.
Anything about how to think about things better is going to be useful. There's a Coursera course called Model Thinking that is might be useful. Just being curious about things in general and pushing yourself outside of your normal areas of competency/interest.
It might seem weird, but I find Twitter to be pretty essential these days. There are a lot of smart people freely sharing information and some don't mind answering questions.
There's an awesome book about getting better at predictions called "Superforecasting"
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23995360-superforecastin...
The idea is to make lots of time-limited, falsifiable predictions with percentage estimates attached and check your track record.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23995360-superforecastin...
The idea is to make lots of time-limited, falsifiable predictions with percentage estimates attached and check your track record.
>If you are smart enough to make significant money on PredictIt aren't you smart enough to make more money doing almost anything else?
Don’t underestimate the value of domain specific knowledge and the costs of lacking it. Just because you know how to count cards doesn’t mean you know how to deal cards, how to run a casino, or most importantly, how to avoid getting caught.
Don’t underestimate the value of domain specific knowledge and the costs of lacking it. Just because you know how to count cards doesn’t mean you know how to deal cards, how to run a casino, or most importantly, how to avoid getting caught.
The domain knowledge is freely available for the overwhelming majority of markets but it's usually not enough to provide an edge.
Sure, but you usually don’t know what you don’t know. More pertinent to jobseeking, you don’t know who you don’t know.
I overall agree with the tone of this post. It's as if everyone who feels smugly clever is sitting around a TV broadcast with horrible static (this is the old school type with rabbit ear antennae), yet a whole slew of them are certain they can see and hear clearly exactly what is happening. To put this in different terms, we have witnessed the media, government officials, "elites," HN commenters, etc. partake in the high-status equivalent of millenarian preachers emphatically predicting the rapture (repeatedly), but this time with human lives in the crosshairs.
In fact, I think the only criticism that can be leveled at these groups are ignorance of risk mitigation strategies and cost-benefit analysis. More or less what Scott put in his post. (Short aside: the mask calculus seemed incredibly obvious to me from the start. I was not embarrassed to wear a mask on a flight back east from CA in late February, but I did hear about my stupidity from quite a few of the aforementioned. Including my wife. Who knows if the masks work, but the critics failed critical thinking 101. They're all Goofi. Except my wife.)
With that in mind (and at the risk of indulging in what might consider "arrogant ignorance"), I would like to gently push back on this sentence:
> We're on target to massively screw up the economic relief, which will make the economic stimulus phase all the more challenging. People need to be more predisposed to having possible intellectual and knowledge blind spots.
What specifically are you referring to? Is the rescue plan doing too little? Too much? No effect? Is Congress making uncertainty worse by not replenishing the fund for small business loans? Are they even a good idea?
The problem is no one can say much of anything about this crisis because it's unprecedented. We haven't had a financial crisis or some spontaneous crash in asset prices. The shock came from the real economy first, at least as far as I can tell. I debate with my economist friends (most of whom have advanced degrees in the subject beyond my B.S.) about whether this is even mostly a supply or demand shock. The opinion is mixed (two economists -> three opinions). I've probed what policy responses should be enacted from a variety of perspectives, or what economic recovery looks like. All over the map again.
I've been a bit more optimistic than most, since I see this as primarily a demand shock starting with entertainment, travel and hospitality and then spreading to other sectors (enforced by fiat). Keynesian response might be quite effective. And the rescue plan is quite close to what Keynes himself wrote in ch. 24 of the General Theory: nationalized investment and income redistribution to those with the highest marginal propensity to consume. But my assumptions could be way off. It could be that this thing really was a supply shock through and through, or that debt of all types really has been untenably high, or that there are serious problems that have arisen in the real economy as a result of the crisis.
I do find that alongside degrees of confidence (which is a good mental cold shower for making bold claims) some skin in the game is useful as well. (Mine is that I have a $10 bet with a friend that $DIS will be above $120/share on August 1 (might lose that one) and that I've moved a few grand from cash into the market at times during the past 7 weeks or so.) I really appreciate that you gave a clue that you have made some bets, but I'd be curious as to what those are. That would represent some skin in the game as well, and reflect your beliefs about what the economic problems will be.
I will say I know a lot more about economics, but I was a lot more confident that an epidemic would occur than I am about any particular short-run economic outcome.
In fact, I think the only criticism that can be leveled at these groups are ignorance of risk mitigation strategies and cost-benefit analysis. More or less what Scott put in his post. (Short aside: the mask calculus seemed incredibly obvious to me from the start. I was not embarrassed to wear a mask on a flight back east from CA in late February, but I did hear about my stupidity from quite a few of the aforementioned. Including my wife. Who knows if the masks work, but the critics failed critical thinking 101. They're all Goofi. Except my wife.)
With that in mind (and at the risk of indulging in what might consider "arrogant ignorance"), I would like to gently push back on this sentence:
> We're on target to massively screw up the economic relief, which will make the economic stimulus phase all the more challenging. People need to be more predisposed to having possible intellectual and knowledge blind spots.
What specifically are you referring to? Is the rescue plan doing too little? Too much? No effect? Is Congress making uncertainty worse by not replenishing the fund for small business loans? Are they even a good idea?
The problem is no one can say much of anything about this crisis because it's unprecedented. We haven't had a financial crisis or some spontaneous crash in asset prices. The shock came from the real economy first, at least as far as I can tell. I debate with my economist friends (most of whom have advanced degrees in the subject beyond my B.S.) about whether this is even mostly a supply or demand shock. The opinion is mixed (two economists -> three opinions). I've probed what policy responses should be enacted from a variety of perspectives, or what economic recovery looks like. All over the map again.
I've been a bit more optimistic than most, since I see this as primarily a demand shock starting with entertainment, travel and hospitality and then spreading to other sectors (enforced by fiat). Keynesian response might be quite effective. And the rescue plan is quite close to what Keynes himself wrote in ch. 24 of the General Theory: nationalized investment and income redistribution to those with the highest marginal propensity to consume. But my assumptions could be way off. It could be that this thing really was a supply shock through and through, or that debt of all types really has been untenably high, or that there are serious problems that have arisen in the real economy as a result of the crisis.
I do find that alongside degrees of confidence (which is a good mental cold shower for making bold claims) some skin in the game is useful as well. (Mine is that I have a $10 bet with a friend that $DIS will be above $120/share on August 1 (might lose that one) and that I've moved a few grand from cash into the market at times during the past 7 weeks or so.) I really appreciate that you gave a clue that you have made some bets, but I'd be curious as to what those are. That would represent some skin in the game as well, and reflect your beliefs about what the economic problems will be.
I will say I know a lot more about economics, but I was a lot more confident that an epidemic would occur than I am about any particular short-run economic outcome.
"First, a bunch of generic smart people on Twitter who got things exactly right... 'Bill Gates, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Graham, Greg Cochran, Robin Hanson, Sarah Constantin, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Nicholas Christakis....'"
And
"...they didn’t beat the experts in epidemiology. Whatever probability of pandemic the experts and prediction markets gave for coronavirus getting really bad, these people didn’t necessarily give a higher probability. They were just better at probabilistic reasoning, so they had different reactions to the same number..."
I noticed that. As a math person, things were exceptionally clear at a point, clearer than many uncertain events tbh. Simple exponential growth this, I can understand ... and so could a significant slice of people.
But my question is: if epidemiologists aren't experts at THIS, wtf are they experts in? Isn't this exactly the "classic" circumstance any average epidemiologist should be a able to see in a heartbeat. Apparently not, so what do they train these people in? Question maybe half rhetorical but also serious. What's "expert knowledge" in these circumstances.
And
"...they didn’t beat the experts in epidemiology. Whatever probability of pandemic the experts and prediction markets gave for coronavirus getting really bad, these people didn’t necessarily give a higher probability. They were just better at probabilistic reasoning, so they had different reactions to the same number..."
I noticed that. As a math person, things were exceptionally clear at a point, clearer than many uncertain events tbh. Simple exponential growth this, I can understand ... and so could a significant slice of people.
But my question is: if epidemiologists aren't experts at THIS, wtf are they experts in? Isn't this exactly the "classic" circumstance any average epidemiologist should be a able to see in a heartbeat. Apparently not, so what do they train these people in? Question maybe half rhetorical but also serious. What's "expert knowledge" in these circumstances.
I extrapolated simple exponential growth wrong lots of times, including during the pandemic. You can see where it's going until it stops being exponential, and it's ferociously hard to tell when that's going to happen, but it always does happen, roughly.
I think you may be misreading the article. It claims epidemiologists did, in fact, see this in a heartbeat.
I think you may be misreading the article. It claims epidemiologists did, in fact, see this in a heartbeat.
There are a couple parts to the "getting it right" part.
One is seeing that exponential growth is involved. The second is seeing the fatality statistics are going to much more reliable than test results and that fatality statistics are effectively delayed 2-3 weeks for the virus to incubate.
With this, Tomas Pueyo laid out the case as well as anyone but these numbers are easy to get, why all the listed people were saying this. If you didn't get, sorry about that, it's a failure on a problem no harder than an advanced undergraduate modeling class final. The situation was obvious to that degree of obvious - which I think is much more obvious than the likelihood of most moderately common events in modern society.
And further, I'd claim there aren't many places in the world where you can see exponential growth stopping - certainly not in deaths in the US - 1000 death in NYC today. US cases have slowed their growth 'cause US testing is once again a mess. Even California doesn't have much evidence of a peak and reasonable evidence exponential continues. So maybe Italy, Spain, South Korea, China and Washington state are not experiencing exponential. And that's not comforting.
And you're wrong about the article - it definitely says the mainstream epidemiologists got it wrong 'cause they did.
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
One is seeing that exponential growth is involved. The second is seeing the fatality statistics are going to much more reliable than test results and that fatality statistics are effectively delayed 2-3 weeks for the virus to incubate.
With this, Tomas Pueyo laid out the case as well as anyone but these numbers are easy to get, why all the listed people were saying this. If you didn't get, sorry about that, it's a failure on a problem no harder than an advanced undergraduate modeling class final. The situation was obvious to that degree of obvious - which I think is much more obvious than the likelihood of most moderately common events in modern society.
And further, I'd claim there aren't many places in the world where you can see exponential growth stopping - certainly not in deaths in the US - 1000 death in NYC today. US cases have slowed their growth 'cause US testing is once again a mess. Even California doesn't have much evidence of a peak and reasonable evidence exponential continues. So maybe Italy, Spain, South Korea, China and Washington state are not experiencing exponential. And that's not comforting.
And you're wrong about the article - it definitely says the mainstream epidemiologists got it wrong 'cause they did.
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-peop...
>> "They were just better at probabilistic reasoning, so they had different reactions to the same number..."
epidemiologists aren't experts at THIS, wtf are they experts in?
They are experts, but aren't used to rapid analysis with incomplete data.
The very early data (early-mid January) was very unclear. This is completely normal with a new disease (just look at how the US has to rely on newspapers and universities for national reporting numbers!)
But epidemiologists are reluctant to guess when we weren't even sure about the transmission mechanism, how infectious it is, incubation times, or even hospitalisation numbers (don't forget it's a respiratory disease and there was no test available until well into January)
(Not an epidemiologist, but I've had papers published by the CDC on epidemiology)
They are experts, but aren't used to rapid analysis with incomplete data.
The very early data (early-mid January) was very unclear. This is completely normal with a new disease (just look at how the US has to rely on newspapers and universities for national reporting numbers!)
But epidemiologists are reluctant to guess when we weren't even sure about the transmission mechanism, how infectious it is, incubation times, or even hospitalisation numbers (don't forget it's a respiratory disease and there was no test available until well into January)
(Not an epidemiologist, but I've had papers published by the CDC on epidemiology)
That’s spot on, and a great comment on times of crisis in general. In times of peace, leaders in most fields are not chosen for their ability to quickly make the best decision from uncertain data.
There are a few exceptions, e.g. some military commanders with real field experience. Some stock market speculators. A rare few skilled politicians. But the vast majority know the tools, rituals and heuristics of their trade, and apply them blindly. This normally works well. But during times of crisis, when knowledge is uncertain and data changes rapidly, it leads to huge mistakes. Like clockwork, one after the other.
I could go on and on about examples of this from different fields, observed only during the last 6 weeks.
There are a few exceptions, e.g. some military commanders with real field experience. Some stock market speculators. A rare few skilled politicians. But the vast majority know the tools, rituals and heuristics of their trade, and apply them blindly. This normally works well. But during times of crisis, when knowledge is uncertain and data changes rapidly, it leads to huge mistakes. Like clockwork, one after the other.
I could go on and on about examples of this from different fields, observed only during the last 6 weeks.
A better way to think about this is that an epidemiologists take the inside view (because they are experts at the inside view) while the generalists take the outside view (because that is what they are good at).
In scenarios with high uncertainty in parameters, the outside view can perform as well as or better than the inside view.
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Outside_view
In scenarios with high uncertainty in parameters, the outside view can perform as well as or better than the inside view.
https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Outside_view
As a bonus, they probably got burnt a bit by the bird flu nothingburger. That will be conductive neither of them speaking up when not being certain and of politicians listening to them.
Instead of bird flu being a lucky near-miss wake-up call (it spawned Contagion which laid out the issue in an easy to digest movie format!), it became an excuse to hit the snooze button.
That's a bad take: even in the US the CDC built a bunch of knowledge and systems ready to respond to another epidemic like bird flu. Unfortunately it all got thrown away over the last couple of years.
Other countries that were hit by it and by SARS or MERS were ready for it.
Other countries that were hit by it and by SARS or MERS were ready for it.
Professions exist that effectively have negative knowledge about their field, in the sense that they do worse than smart generalists at making predictions.
Closest to home, I'd say Software Engineering mostly fits this description. 90% of people who call themselves that are terrible at actually making software.
Or, for example, most of the best fiction is not written by English Literature majors.
Perhaps epidemiology is like that. Based on what I've seen in the last few months, I'm not impressed.
Closest to home, I'd say Software Engineering mostly fits this description. 90% of people who call themselves that are terrible at actually making software.
Or, for example, most of the best fiction is not written by English Literature majors.
Perhaps epidemiology is like that. Based on what I've seen in the last few months, I'm not impressed.
Arguably 90% of all people who make software are terrible at actually making software.
So, there's a basis for "Goofus" mentality:
If you're trying to compile a set of facts, you very likely want a system which is incomplete, but correct. ie false positives have a significant cost to your models, where you essentially have a technical debt of needing to weed out false facts
Policy should follow risk analysis, but research which is not time sensitive has compounding factors which favor building certainty before skipping ahead
Think of it like software development: planning/testing/etc have high rewards throughout development, but sometimes you need to sell a rushed MVP
If you're trying to compile a set of facts, you very likely want a system which is incomplete, but correct. ie false positives have a significant cost to your models, where you essentially have a technical debt of needing to weed out false facts
Policy should follow risk analysis, but research which is not time sensitive has compounding factors which favor building certainty before skipping ahead
Think of it like software development: planning/testing/etc have high rewards throughout development, but sometimes you need to sell a rushed MVP
> "First, a bunch of generic smart people on Twitter who got things exactly right... 'Bill Gates, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Graham, Greg Cochran, Robin Hanson, Sarah Constantin, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Nicholas Christakis....'"
What you fail to mention is that had the US Federal Government gotten this right, all those people would have been wrong.
Many people assumed that the CDC/NIH/etc. was going to react to this like Ebola and SARS. Now THAT was a mistaken assumption.
What you fail to mention is that had the US Federal Government gotten this right, all those people would have been wrong.
Many people assumed that the CDC/NIH/etc. was going to react to this like Ebola and SARS. Now THAT was a mistaken assumption.
What did CDC do differently for Ebola and SARS? My impression is that not much, it’s just we got lucky back then.
Totally different transmission model parameters. Ebola especially is much much harder to transmit.
But ... epidemiologists did seem epidemic back then and were warning about it ...
They argued about models and about R0 and so on. But fundamentally, they predicted the spread.
They argued about models and about R0 and so on. But fundamentally, they predicted the spread.
> But my question is: if epidemiologists aren't experts at THIS, wtf are they experts in? Isn't this exactly the "classic" circumstance any average epidemiologist should be a able to see in a heartbeat.
They're experts at remaining epidemiologists. Epidemiology is a lose-lose profession. If you overreact, then you get blamed. If you underreact, then you get blamed. Every epidemiologist who was willing to put their predictions in clear, unambiguous language and put their reputations on the line to urge decisive action was drummed out when MERS didn't turn out to be a big deal or Ebola didn't turn out to be a big deal or when H1N1 didn't turn out to be a big deal or when SARS didn't turn out to be a big deal.
Thus, what remains are people putting their predictions in mush mouthed, carefully qualified scientific language that is all technically correct but carefully calibrated not to encourage anyone to do anything.
First time entrants have an advantage in the field in that they don't care if they get drummed out.
They're experts at remaining epidemiologists. Epidemiology is a lose-lose profession. If you overreact, then you get blamed. If you underreact, then you get blamed. Every epidemiologist who was willing to put their predictions in clear, unambiguous language and put their reputations on the line to urge decisive action was drummed out when MERS didn't turn out to be a big deal or Ebola didn't turn out to be a big deal or when H1N1 didn't turn out to be a big deal or when SARS didn't turn out to be a big deal.
Thus, what remains are people putting their predictions in mush mouthed, carefully qualified scientific language that is all technically correct but carefully calibrated not to encourage anyone to do anything.
First time entrants have an advantage in the field in that they don't care if they get drummed out.
"First, a bunch of generic smart people on Twitter who got things exactly right"
I think it is far too early to declare anyone "exactly right". We won't know for months, maybe years; maybe we will never know because it will be impossible to disentangle the effects of the virus and the response. The more fundamental problem, in my view, is tunnel-vision on the epidemiological models. The epidemiological models represent, or should represent, input into a higher-level model that we might call the covid overall impact model. Such a model would take into account second and third order effects, it would include not just the virus but also the effects produced by the response. It would factor in economic, political, psychological, non-covid health, and broad societal effects. This is the model and perspective that really matters.
I think it is far too early to declare anyone "exactly right". We won't know for months, maybe years; maybe we will never know because it will be impossible to disentangle the effects of the virus and the response. The more fundamental problem, in my view, is tunnel-vision on the epidemiological models. The epidemiological models represent, or should represent, input into a higher-level model that we might call the covid overall impact model. Such a model would take into account second and third order effects, it would include not just the virus but also the effects produced by the response. It would factor in economic, political, psychological, non-covid health, and broad societal effects. This is the model and perspective that really matters.
A bit unrelated, but I heard about this 2007 paper recently [1]:
> The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb.
I know the instant reaction is "people predict things all the time, some are bound to come out right", but this seems so specific that I think it's not just pure chance... we're just not heeding some of the warnings.
------
Now one reaction to the blog post: it does make a lot of good points (especially about masks), but for the part about shutting society at least, it doesn't seem to account for the follow-on effects of being wrong. If governments had shut things down due to a 10% chance of a pandemic, and it was prevented, chances are decent that a lot of not-similarly-reasoning people would've been angry. A lot of people, some for good reason and some for bad, just don't trust their governments (or the media) enough, and of those that do, a fair chunk are going under a lot of hardship to comply. So they don't just say "okay, I don't see it that way, but I trust you that this is for the best, even if it means I can't put bread on the table for my family, so I'll just live with the consequences and stay at home." Now I'm not really saying this is an excuse for governments/media to send poor messages, but it's an understandable human component... surely you can't attribute everything to irrational probabilistic reasoning?
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2176051/#__sec2...
> The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb.
I know the instant reaction is "people predict things all the time, some are bound to come out right", but this seems so specific that I think it's not just pure chance... we're just not heeding some of the warnings.
------
Now one reaction to the blog post: it does make a lot of good points (especially about masks), but for the part about shutting society at least, it doesn't seem to account for the follow-on effects of being wrong. If governments had shut things down due to a 10% chance of a pandemic, and it was prevented, chances are decent that a lot of not-similarly-reasoning people would've been angry. A lot of people, some for good reason and some for bad, just don't trust their governments (or the media) enough, and of those that do, a fair chunk are going under a lot of hardship to comply. So they don't just say "okay, I don't see it that way, but I trust you that this is for the best, even if it means I can't put bread on the table for my family, so I'll just live with the consequences and stay at home." Now I'm not really saying this is an excuse for governments/media to send poor messages, but it's an understandable human component... surely you can't attribute everything to irrational probabilistic reasoning?
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2176051/#__sec2...
There wasn't a 10% chance of a pandemic once cases were in the US - it being a "pandemic" didn't matter. The nature of virus, it's incubation time, and the mortality rate all meant the US needed to go into lock down the moment cases started turning up state-side.
This wasn't a long range problem by the time there were cases in the US - it was the early stage of the catastrophe starting, when it could have been much more cheaply prevented.
This wasn't a long range problem by the time there were cases in the US - it was the early stage of the catastrophe starting, when it could have been much more cheaply prevented.
But if every government had acted much earlier, when the probability seemed to exceed 10%, there wouldn't have necessarily been any total shutdowns like what we're seeing now (except for the initial containment in China). There would still be some economic harm, but it'd be far, far less.
If we took those measures every time there was a 10% chance of a pandemic would we be better off overall? Honest question I don't know the answer. It's easy to say we should have acted sooner, but should we have also done more for ebola, zika, SARS, MERS etc in the US as well, even though those didn't end up having much of an impact here?
We had this expectation that nothing was really important enough to interrupt international travel. Even as Hubei was put in lockdown the Chinese were allowing their citizens to travel the globe, including direct flights from Wuhan to international destinations, and applying extreme pressure on countries to not restrict their entry.
Basically the system has too much delay to respond, even to a strong signal. Even significant local deaths in the US is not strong enough to change politics and media. If Ebola had broken out we would have had the same problem.
I think we are stuck in a local maximum. It takes a significant push for the system to escape oscillating back to where we are.
Basically the system has too much delay to respond, even to a strong signal. Even significant local deaths in the US is not strong enough to change politics and media. If Ebola had broken out we would have had the same problem.
I think we are stuck in a local maximum. It takes a significant push for the system to escape oscillating back to where we are.
> Even as Hubei was put in lockdown the Chinese were allowing their citizens to travel the globe, including direct flights from Wuhan to international destinations
What? I remember Hubei was shut down with airports, and the rest of the world had to scramble evac flights to retrieve their citizens from the area.
What? I remember Hubei was shut down with airports, and the rest of the world had to scramble evac flights to retrieve their citizens from the area.
They announced the lockdown before it was put into effect, leading to a bomb burst of potential carriers escaping in the next 24H. Even after that, international commercial flights were allowed to depart.
Oh, so just like everyone else.
I remember suggesting here and elsewhere that lockdowns should be announced on the spot, and quarantines should be applied retroactively. I.e. if at 18:00 the president/prime minister gets on air and announces a lockdown, that lockdown should be active from 18:00, and everyone coming into the country in the 14 days before the announcement should be quarantined.
I remember being shouted down as suggesting something extremely undemocratic. After all, the law isn't supposed to work backwards (all the cases where it does notwithstanding).
I remember suggesting here and elsewhere that lockdowns should be announced on the spot, and quarantines should be applied retroactively. I.e. if at 18:00 the president/prime minister gets on air and announces a lockdown, that lockdown should be active from 18:00, and everyone coming into the country in the 14 days before the announcement should be quarantined.
I remember being shouted down as suggesting something extremely undemocratic. After all, the law isn't supposed to work backwards (all the cases where it does notwithstanding).
At no point did I imply the Chinese were worse than anyone else at responding. I agree, the lockdown should be immediate, and exceptions should be publically documented -- 'incident 782: flight xyz with 10 pax was granted clearance to land as a medical transport flight, under authority of XYZ, regional medical coordinator'. I don't see requiring retroactive effect though -- just require those people to confine themselves and their co-habitants, and stand by to be contacted for contact tracing.
Ebola has an African name so I bet it would have panicked westerners into a stronger response if covid was called ebola.
> should we have also done more for ebola, zika, SARS, MERS etc in the US
Obviously yes, and not only in the US. The complete lack of any preparation for this kind of events in most of the world is what makes this specific event so disastrous, and the extent of that disaster is going to be more visible only once everything settles -- we're still far from that.
Obviously yes, and not only in the US. The complete lack of any preparation for this kind of events in most of the world is what makes this specific event so disastrous, and the extent of that disaster is going to be more visible only once everything settles -- we're still far from that.
I honestly at least in US culture we'd end up with a 'boy who cried wolf' situation if we had tried to even encourage social distancing during past pandemic scares. If we had done that in the past when a pandemic didn't occur we would have had an even harder time getting people to take this one seriously, and it would likely have been worse.
Very unfortunate, but true, point. Most of those past ones were much more deadly and much less contagious for a variety of reasons, which played a role. Another silver lining is that this event might reduce the chance of future wolf-crying/false alarms occurring when we actually do need to take something seriously.
It's certainly possible that an existing, or, more likely, new ebola/filovirus strain could become a pandemic, too, though. Hopefully we'd be able to spot it early enough. (And there are some vaccines, which may or may not work against a new strain.) And of course it could really be anything.
It's certainly possible that an existing, or, more likely, new ebola/filovirus strain could become a pandemic, too, though. Hopefully we'd be able to spot it early enough. (And there are some vaccines, which may or may not work against a new strain.) And of course it could really be anything.
What would've been there instead of a shutdown and how could that have avoided a shutdown? (Specifically thinking of the US here.)
The 40,000 people who left China to the United States after Trump's limited travel ban could've been intensively interrogated, monitored, and quarantined as need.
Cool that would have given the US another 4 weeks to ignore the problem before it got exactly as bad it is now. You can't solve an exponential problem with a constant size reduction.
>You can't solve an exponential problem with a constant size reduction.
Isn't that exactly what we're doing with social distancing?
Isn't that exactly what we're doing with social distancing?
> The 40,000 people who left China to the United States after Trump's limited travel ban could've been intensively interrogated, monitored, and quarantined as need.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavi...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/science/new-york-coronavi...
Yeah, there is probably nothing that the US could have done unilaterally which would have contained this. Italy was still reporting something like three total cases in mid-February. There was no more reason to quarantine or monitor travellers from there than there was anyone else in the country.
You mean 3 total confirmed cases?
Note that even South Korea was apparently monitoring everyone and suddenly 1 person slipped through and infected like a thousand people (read this recently, don't have the link handy).
Note that even South Korea was apparently monitoring everyone and suddenly 1 person slipped through and infected like a thousand people (read this recently, don't have the link handy).
Note that Patient 31 is only the index case that caused the thousand-person cluster to be discovered, she's almost certainly not the cause of it despite various media reports that try and make it look that way. She had no recent overseas travel and no contact with known cases, I don't think anyone knows how she got it, and apparently she didn't even meet testing criteria and only got tested because some doctor ignored them on a hunch.
She probably wasn't even the first person in the Shincheonji Church in Daegu to be infected. The timeline of her infection is just too late compared to the cases at the hospital in Cheongdo potentially tied to other church members, most of the membership is much younger than her and therefore likely to display mild or no symptoms, and some of them had in fact travelled to China. If anything, it seems likely that she caught it from there rather than the other way around.
She probably wasn't even the first person in the Shincheonji Church in Daegu to be infected. The timeline of her infection is just too late compared to the cases at the hospital in Cheongdo potentially tied to other church members, most of the membership is much younger than her and therefore likely to display mild or no symptoms, and some of them had in fact travelled to China. If anything, it seems likely that she caught it from there rather than the other way around.
But the ending to that story is very different. South Korea did have an outbreak, but they contained it. That’s the counterfactual to “nobody could have prevented this.”
> A lot of people, some for good reason and some for bad, just don't trust their governments (or the media) enough
One only has to look around HN for posts about using the current crisis for various unrelated political and economic goals to understand why this might be. Why, just in the last three minutes on HN, I came across media sources advocating everything from nationalizing Amazon (now that it's "a public good" because of the crisis) to permanently banning the use of vehicles in cities (now that the crisis has shown how lovely the inner city air is when both cars and factories all stop).
Nobody's willing to let a crisis "go to waste", and so nobody trusts anybody to be giving them true information untainted by their ulterior motives.
Not trusting that the government and the media have your best interests at heart is simply being aware of how things are.
One only has to look around HN for posts about using the current crisis for various unrelated political and economic goals to understand why this might be. Why, just in the last three minutes on HN, I came across media sources advocating everything from nationalizing Amazon (now that it's "a public good" because of the crisis) to permanently banning the use of vehicles in cities (now that the crisis has shown how lovely the inner city air is when both cars and factories all stop).
Nobody's willing to let a crisis "go to waste", and so nobody trusts anybody to be giving them true information untainted by their ulterior motives.
Not trusting that the government and the media have your best interests at heart is simply being aware of how things are.
> I know the instant reaction is "people predict things all the time, some are bound to come out right", but this seems so specific that I think it's not just pure chance... we're just not heeding some of the warnings.
Right. I had not seen this paper. But then, I'm just some anonymous coward who writes a lot about anonymity and privacy.
But if I were, say, an epidemiologist specializing in viral diseases, I would likely have remembered this paper, as soon as I heard about the Wuhan outbreak.
So what stopped that paper's authors from raising an alarm? And what about all the experts who had read it?
And about TFA, given that it doesn't cite that paper, and so explore how it got ignored, it's hard to take it seriously.
Right. I had not seen this paper. But then, I'm just some anonymous coward who writes a lot about anonymity and privacy.
But if I were, say, an epidemiologist specializing in viral diseases, I would likely have remembered this paper, as soon as I heard about the Wuhan outbreak.
So what stopped that paper's authors from raising an alarm? And what about all the experts who had read it?
And about TFA, given that it doesn't cite that paper, and so explore how it got ignored, it's hard to take it seriously.
I wouldn't say that they should have shut things down preemptively, but their job is to have up-to-date contingency plans and be ready to implement them when thresholds are crossed.
“If you can buy an 80% chance of stopping a deadly pandemic for the cost of having to wear some silly cloth over your face, probably that’s a good deal”
The reason the CDC didn’t previously recommend face masks could’ve been because of a lack of RCT. But in order to do that, they would have had to expose subjects to disease without face masks which wouldn’t make sense. Goes to show there has to better ways for judging the viability of something without resorting to a strict binary of “do or do not”
The reason the CDC didn’t previously recommend face masks could’ve been because of a lack of RCT. But in order to do that, they would have had to expose subjects to disease without face masks which wouldn’t make sense. Goes to show there has to better ways for judging the viability of something without resorting to a strict binary of “do or do not”
> Goes to show there has to better ways for judging the viability of something without resorting to a strict binary of “do or do not”
It's not just a question of how to judge but who makes the judgment. Part of the point of the article is that wearing a mask seems like something you should be able to conclude is a good idea based on common sense; you shouldn't need to wait for an expert to tell you, and if the expert is telling you something that seems to conflict with common sense, you shouldn't automatically disregard common sense.
It's not just a question of how to judge but who makes the judgment. Part of the point of the article is that wearing a mask seems like something you should be able to conclude is a good idea based on common sense; you shouldn't need to wait for an expert to tell you, and if the expert is telling you something that seems to conflict with common sense, you shouldn't automatically disregard common sense.
I find conflict of interest a much better indicator of truthfulness than common sense.
In this case: doctors wearing masks conflicts with doctors recommend people don’t wear masks.
In this case: doctors wearing masks conflicts with doctors recommend people don’t wear masks.
Not necessarily. Doctors are exposed to a different set of risks while on the job than ordinary people going about their business. And common sense already tells you that it's a good idea to take precautions when working with sick people, so the fact that doctors wear masks while ordinary people going about their business don't have to should not come as a surprise.
That's not to say that doctors (and others) can't have reasons other than "masks don't work" for recommending that people (other than other doctors) don't wear masks. Just that doctors wearing masks themselves, by itself, is not enough to know that their recommendation for ordinary people not to wear masks is unreliable. You need more information.
That's not to say that doctors (and others) can't have reasons other than "masks don't work" for recommending that people (other than other doctors) don't wear masks. Just that doctors wearing masks themselves, by itself, is not enough to know that their recommendation for ordinary people not to wear masks is unreliable. You need more information.
I disagree. I think the CDC did actually perform a cross-benefit analysis on masks during the initial segment of the outbreak. Given the not-incontrovertible, yet positive, efficacy of masks, combined with the implications of a PPE shortage for healthcare workers meant that there probably was a calculated decision made to not recommend masks. Though at this point, without some more transparency, I'm not sure what we can say about the CDC's decisionmaking here.
> not sure what we can say about the CDC's decisionmaking here.
We can say "gee, we should appoint more truthful bureaucrats".
It isn't a crazy guess that (for this pandemic) a useful mask for a normal everyday person is anything that puts something in front of their face that makes it a little harder to breath and baffles the air currents.
There may be a shortage of proven face masks but there is no shortage at all of things that could be sewn up to cover faces and deaden air currents. The cost is tiny vs the risk of it not working.
Officials who are more worried about preventing a response to the potential crisis than the potential crisis should not be in charge if there is a potential crisis. We want people to change their behaviors if there is a crisis. Ideally even before the evidence in overwhelming that there is a problem.
We can say "gee, we should appoint more truthful bureaucrats".
It isn't a crazy guess that (for this pandemic) a useful mask for a normal everyday person is anything that puts something in front of their face that makes it a little harder to breath and baffles the air currents.
There may be a shortage of proven face masks but there is no shortage at all of things that could be sewn up to cover faces and deaden air currents. The cost is tiny vs the risk of it not working.
Officials who are more worried about preventing a response to the potential crisis than the potential crisis should not be in charge if there is a potential crisis. We want people to change their behaviors if there is a crisis. Ideally even before the evidence in overwhelming that there is a problem.
The cost of recommending masks is that a large minority of people will decide they need the best mask to protect themselves, and buy them up thus depriving the healthcare workers of them. Yes, in an ideal world, the entire situation would be spelled out and only those people who are truly at higher risk would acquire some of the limited supply of more-effective masks.
For that to work, however, requires a sense of community and level of trust in government that has been in short supply in the US in recent years. These factors were also in play for swine flu and the other potential pandemics the article examined CDC rsponses for. In a crisis, officials have to base their decisions on current conditions, not on what they should ideally be. Restoring trust in government is extremely important, but can’t be accomplished in the timescale necessary to be useful for this crisis.
For that to work, however, requires a sense of community and level of trust in government that has been in short supply in the US in recent years. These factors were also in play for swine flu and the other potential pandemics the article examined CDC rsponses for. In a crisis, officials have to base their decisions on current conditions, not on what they should ideally be. Restoring trust in government is extremely important, but can’t be accomplished in the timescale necessary to be useful for this crisis.
There isn't a coach and team in the world, real or hypothetical, who could win a football game down by 10 goals with 5minutes on the clock. The mask stuff was deck chairs on the Titanic.
They didn't just "not recommend" masks, they affirmatively said "don't".
They also said "and don't tell anyone that masks might be beneficial"
I missed the word don't. I did see them use "not effective" which is CDC muckmuck for hasn't been proven by multiple rigorous studies to work.
The CDC and Surgeon General ran a campaign with the slogan "STOP buying masks". It doesn't simpler than that.
Agreed. There's a difference between "stop buying masks because we need to save them for nurses" and "stop buying masks because they don't help at all*".
Lying erodes public trust.
Lying erodes public trust.
Potentially, but then surely a Cost/benefit analysis would strongly encourage the CDC to stockpile them in advance too? Perhaps nations need strategic PPE reserves.
They cover this argument in the article.
TFA actually mentioned that point specifically, if you read it...
> I went into it thinking they’d lied to us, hoping to prevent hoarders from buying up so many masks that there weren’t enough for health workers. Turns out that’s not true. The CDC has been singing the same tune for the past ten years. Swine flu, don’t wear masks. SARS, don’t wear masks. They’ve been really consistent on this point. But why?
Quoted text included this link: https://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/masks_cdc.png
> I went into it thinking they’d lied to us, hoping to prevent hoarders from buying up so many masks that there weren’t enough for health workers. Turns out that’s not true. The CDC has been singing the same tune for the past ten years. Swine flu, don’t wear masks. SARS, don’t wear masks. They’ve been really consistent on this point. But why?
Quoted text included this link: https://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/masks_cdc.png
That's very weak reasoning, and I felt it was more musing than anything else. What evidence do we have for it not to be true? Why do we think consistency with previous advice trumps scientific evidence here? It feels like a cop-out to rule out a cost-benefit analysis simply because this advice mirrors advice in the past.
You, earlier:
>I think the CDC did actually perform a cross-benefit analysis on masks during the initial segment of the outbreak. Given the not-incontrovertible, yet positive, efficacy of masks, combined with the implications of a PPE shortage for healthcare workers meant that there probably was a calculated decision made to not recommend masks. (emphasis added)
You postulated that the CDC not recommending masks was due to a recent cost-benefit analysis taking into account a circumstance (mask shortage) that has only been true for a few months. The article and link shows that the recommendation predated that by 10 years. Ergo the mask shortage could not be the cause of that recommendation.
There's no reason to even think that the CDC considered recommending masks - surely the default position is to leave pre-existing recommendations (don't wear masks) in place. You speculated that they did an analysis, which is not in evidence, and made a conclusion based on factors that may or may not have been important even had the analysis happened. That seems pretty weak to me.
>I think the CDC did actually perform a cross-benefit analysis on masks during the initial segment of the outbreak. Given the not-incontrovertible, yet positive, efficacy of masks, combined with the implications of a PPE shortage for healthcare workers meant that there probably was a calculated decision made to not recommend masks. (emphasis added)
You postulated that the CDC not recommending masks was due to a recent cost-benefit analysis taking into account a circumstance (mask shortage) that has only been true for a few months. The article and link shows that the recommendation predated that by 10 years. Ergo the mask shortage could not be the cause of that recommendation.
There's no reason to even think that the CDC considered recommending masks - surely the default position is to leave pre-existing recommendations (don't wear masks) in place. You speculated that they did an analysis, which is not in evidence, and made a conclusion based on factors that may or may not have been important even had the analysis happened. That seems pretty weak to me.
> There's no reason to even think that the CDC considered recommending masks - surely the default position is to leave pre-existing recommendations (don't wear masks) in place. You speculated that they did an analysis, which is not in evidence, and made a conclusion based on factors that may or may not have been important even had the analysis happened. That seems pretty weak to me.
You're right, there is a hidden assumption I have here that I did not document. I believe the CDC is, within human limits, a capable organization of experts. I assumed that it was more likely for an organization of experts to perform a cost-benefit analysis than simply reiterate advice given in the past under similar situations. If you disagree with this assumption, then that's where we disagree.
You're right, there is a hidden assumption I have here that I did not document. I believe the CDC is, within human limits, a capable organization of experts. I assumed that it was more likely for an organization of experts to perform a cost-benefit analysis than simply reiterate advice given in the past under similar situations. If you disagree with this assumption, then that's where we disagree.
They did an effectiveness analysis at some point in the past. If the situation had not changed from that point in a way that would indicate masks should be used, why would they reevaluate the whole thing? No organization, no matter how capable or expert, has infinite time or resources to reevaluate every past policy every day.
You seem to think they looked at it, found evidence that masks were effective, but then decided not to tell anyone due to the shortage. But then, a few months later, while that mask shortage was still in effect they decided to reverse that decision. Which is completely irrational.
I'd say I'm assuming it's an organization like any other. You're assuming it's populated by maliciously irrational people who are out to get you.
You seem to think they looked at it, found evidence that masks were effective, but then decided not to tell anyone due to the shortage. But then, a few months later, while that mask shortage was still in effect they decided to reverse that decision. Which is completely irrational.
I'd say I'm assuming it's an organization like any other. You're assuming it's populated by maliciously irrational people who are out to get you.
> If the situation had not changed from that point in a way that would indicate masks should be used, why would they reevaluate the whole thing?
Changed from what? During previous coronavirus epidemics, the CDC did not recommend wearing masks, and during the earlier stages of the pandemic they did not either.
> why would they reevaluate the whole thing? No organization, no matter how capable or expert, has infinite time or resources to reevaluate every past policy every day
What... else would they be doing? The CDC's entire mission is to steward American public health. If they can't reevaluate in the face of a new threat, well, what good are they really?
> You seem to think they looked at it, found evidence that masks were effective
Yes, I do think the CDC is capable of performing a literature survey on masks. There have been several papers on masks, N95 or not, during previous epidemics. You can find several papers related to masks dating from the original SARS epidemic. Some of these papers were funded by the CDC themselves, so it makes absolute sense to look back at one's own publications.
> but then decided not to tell anyone due to the shortage.
I believe the CDC made a calculated decision based on an American population would hoard resources. In hindsight, some of this is occurring. Despite no actual shortages in production of toilet paper, flour, and yeast, there are shortages in supermarkets throughout the US, and I've heard anecdotes from friends' parents who decided to hoard masks, flour, and yest because they "were worried".
> But then, a few months later, while that mask shortage was still in effect they decided to reverse that decision. Which is completely irrational.
Guidance changes. Factors that go into updating your risk cost-benefit analysis (better understanding of transmission rates, political pressure, etc.) change over time, and an effective leader does not double down on previous decisions in the face of new information. There's nothing irrational about changing your position.
Changed from what? During previous coronavirus epidemics, the CDC did not recommend wearing masks, and during the earlier stages of the pandemic they did not either.
> why would they reevaluate the whole thing? No organization, no matter how capable or expert, has infinite time or resources to reevaluate every past policy every day
What... else would they be doing? The CDC's entire mission is to steward American public health. If they can't reevaluate in the face of a new threat, well, what good are they really?
> You seem to think they looked at it, found evidence that masks were effective
Yes, I do think the CDC is capable of performing a literature survey on masks. There have been several papers on masks, N95 or not, during previous epidemics. You can find several papers related to masks dating from the original SARS epidemic. Some of these papers were funded by the CDC themselves, so it makes absolute sense to look back at one's own publications.
> but then decided not to tell anyone due to the shortage.
I believe the CDC made a calculated decision based on an American population would hoard resources. In hindsight, some of this is occurring. Despite no actual shortages in production of toilet paper, flour, and yeast, there are shortages in supermarkets throughout the US, and I've heard anecdotes from friends' parents who decided to hoard masks, flour, and yest because they "were worried".
> But then, a few months later, while that mask shortage was still in effect they decided to reverse that decision. Which is completely irrational.
Guidance changes. Factors that go into updating your risk cost-benefit analysis (better understanding of transmission rates, political pressure, etc.) change over time, and an effective leader does not double down on previous decisions in the face of new information. There's nothing irrational about changing your position.
You've managed to argue with the individual phrases while missing the actual point.
Tell you what, let's assume that you're right. The CDC is continuously reevaluating mask usage by the general public, but recommended against it due to fears of a shortage and/or hoarding. That being the case, please help me understand the following:
1) Why did the CDC change guidance on mask usage despite the shortage and risks of hoarding being, if anything, worse than before? If it was the controlling factor before, why is it not a concern anymore?
2) If they are continuously reevaluating policies, and believed masks should be used, why was the guidance not changed at any point in the last 10 years when there was no shortage or any particular reason to worry about hoarding?
3) Why is this a more parsimonious or plausible explanation than the one advanced in TFA, which is that they had a very high standard of evidence which they have relaxed somewhat in the face of a pandemic?
Tell you what, let's assume that you're right. The CDC is continuously reevaluating mask usage by the general public, but recommended against it due to fears of a shortage and/or hoarding. That being the case, please help me understand the following:
1) Why did the CDC change guidance on mask usage despite the shortage and risks of hoarding being, if anything, worse than before? If it was the controlling factor before, why is it not a concern anymore?
2) If they are continuously reevaluating policies, and believed masks should be used, why was the guidance not changed at any point in the last 10 years when there was no shortage or any particular reason to worry about hoarding?
3) Why is this a more parsimonious or plausible explanation than the one advanced in TFA, which is that they had a very high standard of evidence which they have relaxed somewhat in the face of a pandemic?
It's actually the strongest form of logical reasoning, a formally valid argument. This argument is true no matter what you substitute for A and B:
* You said X did A only because of situation B.
* But X does A even in situation not-B.
* Therefore, situation B is not a necessary condition to cause A.
The only way to rescue "mask shortage" as causing the WHO's advice is if you can show that whatever caused the advice last time was missing this time, so the WHO was primed to reverse the advice until "mask shortage" brought it back to do the same advice again.
* You said X did A only because of situation B.
* But X does A even in situation not-B.
* Therefore, situation B is not a necessary condition to cause A.
The only way to rescue "mask shortage" as causing the WHO's advice is if you can show that whatever caused the advice last time was missing this time, so the WHO was primed to reverse the advice until "mask shortage" brought it back to do the same advice again.
> It's actually the strongest form of logical reasoning, a formally valid argument
Garbage In, Garbage Out. You are making several assumptions in order to apply this "logical" (which logic? This isn't FOL, since FOL has no concept of time, so I'm guessing you're invoking some Temporal Logic) argument, you need to assume that the CDC is a static, homogeneous organization that, for the purposes of this statement, continues to be a valid X between the past and the present. This seems naive to me; the CDC has changed in funding, priorities, membership, and leadership over time, and it's unclear to me how you can use past behavior as an indicator of future communication.
Garbage In, Garbage Out. You are making several assumptions in order to apply this "logical" (which logic? This isn't FOL, since FOL has no concept of time, so I'm guessing you're invoking some Temporal Logic) argument, you need to assume that the CDC is a static, homogeneous organization that, for the purposes of this statement, continues to be a valid X between the past and the present. This seems naive to me; the CDC has changed in funding, priorities, membership, and leadership over time, and it's unclear to me how you can use past behavior as an indicator of future communication.
That’s exactly the point he makes by bringing up the lack of RCTs regarding jumping out of a plane with/out a parachute.
One thing this analysis misses is the crystals.
As in: The CDC is a huge government bureaucracy that employs (and cannot swiftly fire) enormous numbers of people from diverse backgrounds. If RCTs aren't the standard, well then why not also wear crystals to ward off the virus? They're inexpensive, and they couldn't hurt-- you can probably find a poorly controlled study to support it too.
The CDC is not human, it is a meat-and-paper-political-machine. You cannot understand it's actions under the same framework you'd use to judge another person.
The CDC must contain internal defenses against hokum which are much stronger than any person needs to personally have.
So why does the CDC sometimes provide overly conservative advice even when doing so causes death? For the same reason the scorpion stings: it's in its nature.
It's far from clear to me that a CDC which did make a more prudent facemask recommendation would actually be a better organization overall. Sure, it would have gotten this one right, but it would have likely given other bad advice as a result.
As in: The CDC is a huge government bureaucracy that employs (and cannot swiftly fire) enormous numbers of people from diverse backgrounds. If RCTs aren't the standard, well then why not also wear crystals to ward off the virus? They're inexpensive, and they couldn't hurt-- you can probably find a poorly controlled study to support it too.
The CDC is not human, it is a meat-and-paper-political-machine. You cannot understand it's actions under the same framework you'd use to judge another person.
The CDC must contain internal defenses against hokum which are much stronger than any person needs to personally have.
So why does the CDC sometimes provide overly conservative advice even when doing so causes death? For the same reason the scorpion stings: it's in its nature.
It's far from clear to me that a CDC which did make a more prudent facemask recommendation would actually be a better organization overall. Sure, it would have gotten this one right, but it would have likely given other bad advice as a result.
>As in: The CDC is a huge government bureaucracy that employs (and cannot swiftly fire) enormous numbers of people from diverse backgrounds. If RCTs aren't the standard, well then why not also wear crystals to ward off the virus? They're inexpensive, and they couldn't hurt-- you can probably find a poorly controlled study to support it too.
Alexander's discussion of parachutes gave some good heuristics for when you should trust common sense vs require an RCT, which explains why his advice doesn't generalize to advocating crystals.
The heuristic was basically that you should trust common sense when
a) there's a solid scientific model of the key dynamics,
b) the purported remedy is cheap, and
c) the costs of not stopping the threat are disproportionately high.
Crystals meet b)[1] and c) but fail a) -- we don't have a validated model of crytal/virus interactions. In contrast, we know that (some) viruses (including this one) spread through unimpeded airflow, and masks impede said airflow. We know that high-speed impacts between your body and the ground are deadly, and parachutes demonstrably slow the falling speed of objects.
Thus, you should go with common sense in the absence of an RCT for parachutes and masks but not crystals.
[1] They might fail b) depending on the particular charlatan!
Alexander's discussion of parachutes gave some good heuristics for when you should trust common sense vs require an RCT, which explains why his advice doesn't generalize to advocating crystals.
The heuristic was basically that you should trust common sense when
a) there's a solid scientific model of the key dynamics,
b) the purported remedy is cheap, and
c) the costs of not stopping the threat are disproportionately high.
Crystals meet b)[1] and c) but fail a) -- we don't have a validated model of crytal/virus interactions. In contrast, we know that (some) viruses (including this one) spread through unimpeded airflow, and masks impede said airflow. We know that high-speed impacts between your body and the ground are deadly, and parachutes demonstrably slow the falling speed of objects.
Thus, you should go with common sense in the absence of an RCT for parachutes and masks but not crystals.
[1] They might fail b) depending on the particular charlatan!
I strongly suspect that the virus doesn't survive in vitro when exposed to a multitude of crystals! A sodium chloride crystal, for example.
Due to placebo effect you could probably even extract a "reduces symptoms" in a not very good human study too.
:)
I don't disagree that you could setup a criteria which would admit masks and parachutes but deny crystals. But would it also deny all (or even almost all) other manner of 'obvious' snake oil past or future?
Due to placebo effect you could probably even extract a "reduces symptoms" in a not very good human study too.
:)
I don't disagree that you could setup a criteria which would admit masks and parachutes but deny crystals. But would it also deny all (or even almost all) other manner of 'obvious' snake oil past or future?
The post discusses this at length, maybe you should review those points about how to generalize the advice before commenting on it?
Also, salt healing doesn’t involve salts touch the virus in any way know to break them down.
Also, salt healing doesn’t involve salts touch the virus in any way know to break them down.
I didn't know there was such a thing as 'salt healing', specifically but just goes to show that if a thing exists then there is snake oil of it.
Your prior post asserted crystals might pass (b) and (c) but fail (a); my response was simply that I am not entirely convinced that it would unless a was fairly rigorous.
And what the CDC appears to be doing-- requiring a RCT-- can be seen as an extremely rigorous (a).
Sorry about the communications failure-- communication is hard. I appreciated your response, even if I apparently missed the point.
Your prior post asserted crystals might pass (b) and (c) but fail (a); my response was simply that I am not entirely convinced that it would unless a was fairly rigorous.
And what the CDC appears to be doing-- requiring a RCT-- can be seen as an extremely rigorous (a).
Sorry about the communications failure-- communication is hard. I appreciated your response, even if I apparently missed the point.
I was using "salt healing" and "crystal healing" interchangeably because you mentioned specifically sodium chloride crystals.
And I don't see a communications failure; you're communicating your idea fine, it's just based on not having read, and misunderstanding, the heuristics the author advocated for "when to require an RCT".
>And what the CDC appears to be doing-- requiring a RCT-- can be seen as an extremely rigorous (a).
And once again, it's a poor handling of evidence, for exactly the same reason it would be to "not advocate parachutes for jumping out of a plane" until the RCTs come in. That can only "be seen as rigorous" if you ignored the very considerations the author mentions.
I'll just excerpt a characteristic portion so you don't have to go to the site:
>>Goofus started with the position that masks, being a new idea, needed incontrovertible proof. When the few studies that appeared weren’t incontrovertible enough, he concluded that people shouldn’t wear masks.
>>Gallant would have recognized the uncertainty – based on the studies we can’t be 100% sure masks definitely work for this particular condition – and done a cost-benefit analysis. Common sensically, it seems like masks probably should work. The existing evidence for masks is highly suggestive, even if it’s not utter proof. Maybe 80% chance they work, something like that? If you can buy an 80% chance of stopping a deadly pandemic for the cost of having to wear some silly cloth over your face, probably that’s a good deal. Even though regular medicine has good reasons for being as conservative as it is, during a crisis you have to be able to think on your feet.
And I don't see a communications failure; you're communicating your idea fine, it's just based on not having read, and misunderstanding, the heuristics the author advocated for "when to require an RCT".
>And what the CDC appears to be doing-- requiring a RCT-- can be seen as an extremely rigorous (a).
And once again, it's a poor handling of evidence, for exactly the same reason it would be to "not advocate parachutes for jumping out of a plane" until the RCTs come in. That can only "be seen as rigorous" if you ignored the very considerations the author mentions.
I'll just excerpt a characteristic portion so you don't have to go to the site:
>>Goofus started with the position that masks, being a new idea, needed incontrovertible proof. When the few studies that appeared weren’t incontrovertible enough, he concluded that people shouldn’t wear masks.
>>Gallant would have recognized the uncertainty – based on the studies we can’t be 100% sure masks definitely work for this particular condition – and done a cost-benefit analysis. Common sensically, it seems like masks probably should work. The existing evidence for masks is highly suggestive, even if it’s not utter proof. Maybe 80% chance they work, something like that? If you can buy an 80% chance of stopping a deadly pandemic for the cost of having to wear some silly cloth over your face, probably that’s a good deal. Even though regular medicine has good reasons for being as conservative as it is, during a crisis you have to be able to think on your feet.
Honest question, are there many people out there who find wearing a mask "silly"? Yes, they can be sometimes uncomfortable in terms of ease of breathing but to be honest I don't find them silly at all, they serve a purpose, just like an umbrella serves a purpose, it would be stupid of me to laugh of someone holding an umbrella while it's raining outside.
I haven't noticed any of my acquaintances saying that mask-wearing is silly.
But I have noticed many people not observing social distancing and stay-at-home requests. Perhaps if those people ignore the guidance because they're not convinced it's important, those same people would judge mask-wearing to be a waste of effort.
Perhaps another issue is people who have heard that wearing cloth masks mostly prevents you from getting others sick, and some of them just can't be bothered to make small sacrifices for the speculative benefit of strangers?
But I have noticed many people not observing social distancing and stay-at-home requests. Perhaps if those people ignore the guidance because they're not convinced it's important, those same people would judge mask-wearing to be a waste of effort.
Perhaps another issue is people who have heard that wearing cloth masks mostly prevents you from getting others sick, and some of them just can't be bothered to make small sacrifices for the speculative benefit of strangers?
It's worse than "silly", it's "Oriental".
Lack of RCT is a crutch (in this case), the practical reason is that as hard as it is to get face masks now it would have been much harder if the entire population was scrambling for them in the early days of the pandemic and given the US size, purchasing power and worldwide visibility it would have made it more difficult world-wide - all Western countries did the same, de-emphasized masks as they were imposing a lockdown and are now emphasizing them when planning for gradual release.
The article claims to refute your statement by pointing out that "The CDC has been singing the same tune for the past ten years. Swine flu, don’t wear masks. SARS, don’t wear masks. They’ve been really consistent on this point. But why?" This text in the article has several links.
https://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/masks_cdc.png
Seems pretty consistent with my point - if masks weren't believed to be effective they would not be recommended "if unavoidable" , a use / don't use recommendation is not the same as a scientific finding of efficacy - it almost always factors in an implicit cost-benefit analysis of exactly the kind SSC advocates for. Case in point - all countries are now recommending (and in some places legally requiring) masks and not because a bunch of RCTs were conducted in the last two months.
Seems pretty consistent with my point - if masks weren't believed to be effective they would not be recommended "if unavoidable" , a use / don't use recommendation is not the same as a scientific finding of efficacy - it almost always factors in an implicit cost-benefit analysis of exactly the kind SSC advocates for. Case in point - all countries are now recommending (and in some places legally requiring) masks and not because a bunch of RCTs were conducted in the last two months.
I was more or less convinced by the discussion in mid-February at https://virologydownunder.com/past-time-to-tell-the-public-i... and https://virologydownunder.com/so-you-think-youve-about-to-be... that there was a reasonable chance of needing to take some modest steps to prepare for a pandemic.
The predictions in these blog posts about pandemic best practices were in retrospect fairly accurate (see e.g. discussion under "Social distancing will be important but unpleasant") and have been a pretty good guide for the first month of major international response.
We're kind of into uncharted waters now though, and I'm wondering who else will have accurate predictions of how the next year or two will go.
The predictions in these blog posts about pandemic best practices were in retrospect fairly accurate (see e.g. discussion under "Social distancing will be important but unpleasant") and have been a pretty good guide for the first month of major international response.
We're kind of into uncharted waters now though, and I'm wondering who else will have accurate predictions of how the next year or two will go.
> We're kind of into uncharted waters now though, and I'm wondering who else will have accurate predictions of how the next year or two will go.
There have been several out-of-control pandemics in human history that we can look at. It’s true that lots of things have changed between the Bubonic plague sweeping through Europe and now, but people are still people; there may be some insights there. You’d have to ask a historian (I’m not one).
As different regions get this under control, I expect there to be health screenings required for international travel. In the old days, this was quarantine for inbound travellers, but adding a week or two to travel times is a lot less palatable now. We now have other, faster, ways of determining if someone is ill and I expect them to be deployed to protect areas that have succeeded.
There have been several out-of-control pandemics in human history that we can look at. It’s true that lots of things have changed between the Bubonic plague sweeping through Europe and now, but people are still people; there may be some insights there. You’d have to ask a historian (I’m not one).
As different regions get this under control, I expect there to be health screenings required for international travel. In the old days, this was quarantine for inbound travellers, but adding a week or two to travel times is a lot less palatable now. We now have other, faster, ways of determining if someone is ill and I expect them to be deployed to protect areas that have succeeded.
I’m sorry to say it, but the author is wrong in his central point that this was not a failure of prediction.
> For that matter, why didn’t you post this – on Facebook, on Twitter, on the comments here? You could have gone down in legend
Well, I did. I started hedging against a stock market collapse on Feb. 19 and sold half my tax-exposed holdings on Feb. 28, incurring a really painful skin-in-the-game tax bill.
In the first week of March, I made a very alarmist post on my personal social media profile, announcing to all my contacts a call to institute quarantines, work-from-home, reduce public transport use, face masks in public and outlaw crowds until control of the epidemic control was evident. This was after reading anonymous first-hand accounts from doctors in Lombardia, following the obvious exponential trend of spread in every country hit and watching China shut down the economy of a meteopolis. At this point, it was clear what would happen. Maybe not if you struggle to disregard opinions that don’t match the data, but that’s not the point.
I never take these kinds of defensive or alarmist measures in times of peace. It was a one-time thing, and I felt like a complete freak for going against the consensus and sticking my head out among educated and respected friends. Had the worst FOMO of my life regarding the tax bill and stock market hedges. But I was right, I am not usually wrong and this is not a post-fact rationalization. This was predictable in early March, at the latest.
Maybe the author is right that society would have been unable to heed these warnings, but that’s practically a tautology, given that we know how things played out in most Western countries.
My family heeded my warnings, and stayed safe through the most critical phase when the disease was rampant but not obvious.
> For that matter, why didn’t you post this – on Facebook, on Twitter, on the comments here? You could have gone down in legend
Well, I did. I started hedging against a stock market collapse on Feb. 19 and sold half my tax-exposed holdings on Feb. 28, incurring a really painful skin-in-the-game tax bill.
In the first week of March, I made a very alarmist post on my personal social media profile, announcing to all my contacts a call to institute quarantines, work-from-home, reduce public transport use, face masks in public and outlaw crowds until control of the epidemic control was evident. This was after reading anonymous first-hand accounts from doctors in Lombardia, following the obvious exponential trend of spread in every country hit and watching China shut down the economy of a meteopolis. At this point, it was clear what would happen. Maybe not if you struggle to disregard opinions that don’t match the data, but that’s not the point.
I never take these kinds of defensive or alarmist measures in times of peace. It was a one-time thing, and I felt like a complete freak for going against the consensus and sticking my head out among educated and respected friends. Had the worst FOMO of my life regarding the tax bill and stock market hedges. But I was right, I am not usually wrong and this is not a post-fact rationalization. This was predictable in early March, at the latest.
Maybe the author is right that society would have been unable to heed these warnings, but that’s practically a tautology, given that we know how things played out in most Western countries.
My family heeded my warnings, and stayed safe through the most critical phase when the disease was rampant but not obvious.
Yeah, the grocery stores emptying out in Korea and Italy is weirdly what set off the ‘this shit is about to get real’ alarms for me. Sold stocks, stocked up on food, told everybody I knew to get ready for 1918.
> My family heeded my warnings, and stayed safe through the most critical phase when the disease was rampant but not obvious.
The vast majority of people "stayed safe" through the most critical phase, regardless of behavior. even a million infections in USA is statistically almost no one.
It's an exponential process and the world is big, and still now, deep into the disaster, most people haven't developed symptoms.
The vast majority of people "stayed safe" through the most critical phase, regardless of behavior. even a million infections in USA is statistically almost no one.
It's an exponential process and the world is big, and still now, deep into the disaster, most people haven't developed symptoms.
I have family in their 70s with asthma in the south-east of France, near Italy. They were warned in the range of dates I mention here, at a time when their authorities encouraged them to go out and vote during a rampant, poorly acknowledged epidemic for which the healthcare system was unprepared. A culture where friends and strangers kiss on the cheek twice at every meeting.
You've got a point regarding the population in general, and the sentence you're pointing at is peripheral to my point. But I have caused a significant decrease of risk of a catastrophic outcome to some people dear to me.
They likely would have been okay. But "likely" doesn't cut it when the cost of defensive measures are low and the result of being unlucky is permanent loss of health or death.
You've got a point regarding the population in general, and the sentence you're pointing at is peripheral to my point. But I have caused a significant decrease of risk of a catastrophic outcome to some people dear to me.
They likely would have been okay. But "likely" doesn't cut it when the cost of defensive measures are low and the result of being unlucky is permanent loss of health or death.
I thought this was an excellent article, particularly the point about how and (possibly) why the CDC advised against the use of face masks to limit spread of infection during a pandemic. There seems to have been other failings of expert advice in the early days of the pandemic (e.g. see the UK government's apparent change of strategy early on) and they do to me look like failures in academic reasoning, rather than failures of political decision making. Will be interesting to read the findings of the inevitable inquiries after the dust has settled.
I find it hard to criticise the UK government on that U-turn. The facts changed and they reacted. Prior to this starting a flu-like pandemic was at the top of the governments risk register and they had models and a plan which they started following.
There was some initial idiocy of course, like Boris shaking hands with everybody in a hospital he visited.
They should probably be criticised more for their general preparedness and tight health care spending in the face of an ageing population.
There was some initial idiocy of course, like Boris shaking hands with everybody in a hospital he visited.
They should probably be criticised more for their general preparedness and tight health care spending in the face of an ageing population.
Another benefit to thinking in probabilities is that you don’t get as attached to ideas. You don’t feel the need to defend your Opinion past it’s expiration date. People can have better discussions without getting offended.
Otoh probabilities are hard to check for correctnessso you can weaael out of being wrong by making everything you say a motte-bailey deception (to use a slatestarcodex term).
That's why it's important to be precise in describing what you mean (which may involve explaining the intended meaning when using a common word), so that you can't back-track on it later. Conversely, when you see someone not doing that, be prepared for the possibility of weaseling out.
It’s ok to be wrong though.
It's nice to read a well-thought-out piece that both critiques and enlightens.
That said, I do think it bears some mention that a substantial amount of the early Coronavirus discussion was being poisoned by people who were not arguing in good faith. That sucked a fair amount of the oxygen out of the debate, and I suspect may have left journalists in less of a position to provide thoughtful context around expert opinions. In other words, flat earthers occupying enough print and mindshare to make it hard to focus on the subtleties of Keplerian motion.
That said, I do think it bears some mention that a substantial amount of the early Coronavirus discussion was being poisoned by people who were not arguing in good faith. That sucked a fair amount of the oxygen out of the debate, and I suspect may have left journalists in less of a position to provide thoughtful context around expert opinions. In other words, flat earthers occupying enough print and mindshare to make it hard to focus on the subtleties of Keplerian motion.
Sort of like how Trump’s China travel ban announcement was accompanied by a statement saying he wanted to close the Mexican border right away too but they decided against it. Almost to bait the media into accusing him of using the situation for his own ends.
> Predicting the coronavirus was equally hard
No, it's mainly not. The problem is people assume tomorrow is going to be like today and yesterday (for all problems, not just this one). Add to that that people don't like hearing unpleasant news and will tune it out. Net result: they ignore it and when pushed will start to deny it. You can add on top that rare newspaper editors that do recognise a risk will not want to piss off their readership by telling them the truth (or a or probably future occurrence) that they will get angry at. Give the people what they want, not what they need.
For covid, I started stockpiling a bit of food etc. about a month before anyone else. My calculation was, this is likely to happen but may not. If things kick off I may need it. If they don't, I eat it anyway. There's no downside. (Incidentally I did the same ~2007 before the crash for the same reason. Turned out unnecessary then).
What happened when I told people about covid usually follows 2 particular patterns 1) "No don't be stupid, it's not that bad" - simple denial. 2) they stare at you full-face on, totally expressionless for about 2 or 3 seconds, they turn their head away, exhale, turn back and start talking about something else as if what you'd said never happened - blanking it. It's a curious, quite consistent response when it happens.
We get all the warning we need, the majority of people just don't want to know. QV. climate change, carrington events, epidemics (we had plenty of epidemiologists saying When not If), financial crashes. It's all there if you want to know.
No, it's mainly not. The problem is people assume tomorrow is going to be like today and yesterday (for all problems, not just this one). Add to that that people don't like hearing unpleasant news and will tune it out. Net result: they ignore it and when pushed will start to deny it. You can add on top that rare newspaper editors that do recognise a risk will not want to piss off their readership by telling them the truth (or a or probably future occurrence) that they will get angry at. Give the people what they want, not what they need.
For covid, I started stockpiling a bit of food etc. about a month before anyone else. My calculation was, this is likely to happen but may not. If things kick off I may need it. If they don't, I eat it anyway. There's no downside. (Incidentally I did the same ~2007 before the crash for the same reason. Turned out unnecessary then).
What happened when I told people about covid usually follows 2 particular patterns 1) "No don't be stupid, it's not that bad" - simple denial. 2) they stare at you full-face on, totally expressionless for about 2 or 3 seconds, they turn their head away, exhale, turn back and start talking about something else as if what you'd said never happened - blanking it. It's a curious, quite consistent response when it happens.
We get all the warning we need, the majority of people just don't want to know. QV. climate change, carrington events, epidemics (we had plenty of epidemiologists saying When not If), financial crashes. It's all there if you want to know.
Sometimes you need to answer the question, what would you pay for that lottery ticket? Sometimes you need to answer, would you pay Russian roulette with that gun? In this case if you had a 90% confidence that Coronavirus wouldn’t escape China or wouldn’t cause catastrophe if it did, then you still have to point that 10-chambered revolver at your head if you choose “don’t prepare”. But buying your way out of the game has a cost, too.
A major issue, not just with the current pandemic, but all major network news programs, is they are not news, they are entertainment editorials. However, they don’t present themselves as such, and present information as if absolute and unbiased.
If there were journalistic standards and not just first to print clickbait, there would have to be nearly as many corrections and retractions as there are news stories.
The constitution guarantees freedom to publish, but it would be really nice into have some legal standard for accurate reporting of current events in good faith.
If there were journalistic standards and not just first to print clickbait, there would have to be nearly as many corrections and retractions as there are news stories.
The constitution guarantees freedom to publish, but it would be really nice into have some legal standard for accurate reporting of current events in good faith.
You could call it a fairness doctrine, or something ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
[deleted]
Not even a mention for Taleb who had a paper out in January [1] yet paragraphs for Zeynep and the rest who merely parroted rising consensus?
Weak, very weak.
[1] https://necsi.edu/systemic-risk-of-pandemic-via-novel-pathog...
Weak, very weak.
[1] https://necsi.edu/systemic-risk-of-pandemic-via-novel-pathog...
IMO it was not about prediction per se, it was about prediction of magnitude. Will be Wuhan virus bad? Probably so. HOW BAD will it be? That's just another level of prediction.
Remember that experiment with smoke in the room with actors sitting and chatting like this is totally fine? [0] Posting a tweet "I am getting ready to 3-6 months quarantine and advise everybody to do so as well" has much more internal pressure.
[0] http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/the_smoke_filled_...
Remember that experiment with smoke in the room with actors sitting and chatting like this is totally fine? [0] Posting a tweet "I am getting ready to 3-6 months quarantine and advise everybody to do so as well" has much more internal pressure.
[0] http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/the_smoke_filled_...
Indeed, Putanumonit used precisely that analogy in https://putanumonit.com/2020/02/27/seeing-the-smoke/ .
IMHO, the journalists' mistake was lazily relying on easily accessible Western orgs instead of partnering with Eastern-based journalists to examine stories coming out of China.
I've been following the South China Morning Post since the first week of January and so far all the observations coming from their experts has been refuted by the CDC first, then confirmed a month or two later. They are just as smart, highly motivated and had at least 10x more casework to examine.
Tldr; if you want to make better predictions, compare expert opinion against news closer to the source.
It is astounding how much D-K this piece exhibits. On what basis does he think that virus-transmissive mask wearing is effective? Absolutely none. (He doesn't mention equally plausible arguments about why it could be worse.) And then he goes on to mis-comprehend the parachute study, and predictably use it to justify doing not what experts recommend, but what non-experts want to believe.
Also he really seems to mis-comprehend probability and confidence intervals -- like most people. A 29% chance of Trump winning should have been a five alarm alert that there was a significant chance of catastrophy -- even for Republicans. But we're too focused on the things that are very likely. (Like death, and as an American prelude, bankruptcy from health costs, being screwed by megacorps, taxes, and rich getting unfair tax breaks.) If car accidents weren't common and easily foreseeable, would we have insurance? Only if part of the system made us, based on risk analysis.
Also he really seems to mis-comprehend probability and confidence intervals -- like most people. A 29% chance of Trump winning should have been a five alarm alert that there was a significant chance of catastrophy -- even for Republicans. But we're too focused on the things that are very likely. (Like death, and as an American prelude, bankruptcy from health costs, being screwed by megacorps, taxes, and rich getting unfair tax breaks.) If car accidents weren't common and easily foreseeable, would we have insurance? Only if part of the system made us, based on risk analysis.
>On what basis does he think that virus-transmissive mask wearing is effective?
His prior post has already proven this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-t...
Perhaps that post is a prerequisite to this post.
His prior post has already proven this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/23/face-masks-much-more-t...
Perhaps that post is a prerequisite to this post.
Well, we have different concepts of doubt. Also, he's talking about proper procedure masks (ASTM Level 1), not paper or cloth or home made masks. These are hard to come by, and in any case should be reserved for high risk situations. There are no studies that I can find showing woven fibre or paper mask effectiveness, especially in regards to the risk increased contact transmission from touching the mask.
>There are no studies that I can find showing woven fibre or paper mask effectiveness
Oh, well you're in luck. I have just the thing for you:
https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/best-materials-make-diy-...
This image is the quick, all-encompassing money-shot: https://smartairfilters.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/202...
You can make the argument that homemade masks won't reach those levels of effectiveness because of a lack of a strong seal around the airways. And there have been no real-world case studies of cotton masks protecting people from getting sick.
But there are plenty of arguments to be made that support the idea that if 100% of the population wore a cotton shirt around their face, then the pandemic would be strongly mitigated.
Oh, well you're in luck. I have just the thing for you:
https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/best-materials-make-diy-...
This image is the quick, all-encompassing money-shot: https://smartairfilters.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/202...
You can make the argument that homemade masks won't reach those levels of effectiveness because of a lack of a strong seal around the airways. And there have been no real-world case studies of cotton masks protecting people from getting sick.
But there are plenty of arguments to be made that support the idea that if 100% of the population wore a cotton shirt around their face, then the pandemic would be strongly mitigated.
> The stock market is a giant coordinated attempt to predict the economy
This statement is so obviously and absurdly wrong it makes it difficult to appreciate the rest of the article.
This statement is so obviously and absurdly wrong it makes it difficult to appreciate the rest of the article.
Could you elaborate why you think that? It isn’t obvious to me why this is absurdly wrong.
The stock market and the economy are observably decoupled. I’m a trader by profession and if I traded based on the real economy rather than, say, the Fed’s latest shenanigans, I’d be ruined in a heartbeat. Just this past month we’ve seen the most crippling blow to the real economy in over a century and a massive stock market rally.
But if the stock market is trying to predict the future, instead of describe the present, the big question is what window does the stock market operate on, and what window do you? Maybe stocks are going up because the aggregate feeling is that the economy will recover quickly.
Okay, but in this case a better assumption seems to be, the stock market is a function of the economy and political interventions. Or would you suggest this function does not depend on the economy at all?
I wont't say that the stock market doesn't depend on the economy at all, because that's also obviously incorrect. A total economic collapse (think dollars stop being worth money) would obviously affect the stock market just to list a limit case. But on the margins, no, the economy doesn't move the stock market in any appreciable fashion in the time frame a trader operates. In the extremely long term though the health of US capital markets is a function of the size and broad diversification of the US economy.
Operationally speaking, the market moves based on the actions of market participants and thus the primary intellectual challenge is predicting those actions. Since currently the Federal Reserve working in concert with the US Treasury is an active market participant with unlimited capitalization that is telegraphing its moves, that is what's moving the market. Literally nobody trades on the reality that thousands of small businesses are in danger of going bust. Personally I think it's awful, but I don't have the capital to fix it.
Operationally speaking, the market moves based on the actions of market participants and thus the primary intellectual challenge is predicting those actions. Since currently the Federal Reserve working in concert with the US Treasury is an active market participant with unlimited capitalization that is telegraphing its moves, that is what's moving the market. Literally nobody trades on the reality that thousands of small businesses are in danger of going bust. Personally I think it's awful, but I don't have the capital to fix it.
The key word is "attempt". It is observably a poor result, but nevertheless the intent is there (among other intents).
Nate silver is a god. When everyone else was massaging their predictions to get them under 5% for Trump, he stuck to his guns. I have a strong suspicion that if we could run the counterfactual, 29% would be right on the money.
I am honestly more impressed by his original work, building multi-level models for Bush vs Obama. There was a kind of earnestness to his coverage that's been lost (inevitably) since he, and 538, became such a big brand.
> I have a strong suspicion that if we could run the counterfactual, 29% would be right on the money.
Conditioned on what? How would you model that? Go back and change the weather? Redo polls?
Conditioned on what? How would you model that? Go back and change the weather? Redo polls?
There's some shockingly bad thinking in this article and I'm surprised that people seem to be taking it at face value. Picking just a few things that stood out to me:
> First, a bunch of generic smart people on Twitter who got things exactly right – there are too many of these people to name, but Scott Aaronson highlights “Bill Gates, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Graham, Greg Cochran, Robin Hanson, Sarah Constantin, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Nicholas Christakis.”
This is pretty much the definition of cherry-picking. How many equally smart people got it wrong? Was there something in common among these particular people that led them to get it right, or did they hazard a guess on approximately the same information that everyone else had and then end up in the winning group?
There's a fun article somewhere in my bookmarks that I can't find right now, but it covers the phenomenon of some bettor -- at the race track, or the stock market, or something -- who has this crazy winning streak and nobody can figure out why. Maybe it's this person's lucky hat, or maybe it's the notes they take, or maybe... who knows. But the most compelling reason is that they just happen to be the 1 member of a very large group who, through probability alone, keeps winning.
This other article sort of mentions it in passing:
> The prosecution also had an expert witness, an economist named David DeRosa. He didn’t share Heeb’s views about poker. DeRosa used a computer to simulate what might happen if 1,000 people each tossed a coin 10,000 times, assuming a certain outcome — such as tails — was equivalent to a win and the number of times a particular person won the toss was random. But the results were remarkably similar to those Heeb presented: A handful of people appeared to win consistently, and another group seemed to lose a large number of times. This wasn’t evidence that a coin toss involved skill, just that — much like the infinite number of monkeys typing — unlikely events can happen if we look at a large enough group.
(https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/are-the-best-g...)
Back to the posted article...
> parachutes, etc. etc.
I mean, all kidding aside, there are enough parachute failures at this point to have a pretty good idea of the grim odds of surviving a fall from an aircraft without one.
There are some really good reasons for conservativism in medicine. We have lost many, many lives to cures, treatments, and preventions that were "common sense" and only later discovered to be wrong. Or, sometimes, work, but only accidentally. Scurvy is the historical go-to example here. Its cause and treatment has been discovered, lost, and rediscovered many times, and each time, there was some common-sense treatment for it that was wrong.
> Gallant wouldn’t have waited for proof. He would have checked prediction markets and asked top experts for probabilistic judgments. If he heard numbers like 10 or 20 percent, he would have done a cost-benefit analysis and found that putting some tough measures into place, like quarantine and social distancing, would be worthwhile if they had a 10 or 20 percent chance of averting catastrophe.
Gallant will spend his life preparing for the next disaster that has a 20% chance of occurring and will eventually end up living in a small off-the-grid cabin deep in the woods, slowly being poisoned by the well water that isn't being tested correctly or often enough.
There is an opportunity cost for preparing for disaster. I'm all for being at least a little bit prepared. My favorite hobby involves going out and retrieving people who were unprepared. But I never criticize them for getting into bad situations, because it can happen to any of us. (With the possible exception of people who don't evacuate from hurricane areas. Those people piss me off.)
You can't prepare for everything. Most of us have never lived through a situation like we're living through now. How believable would this all have been a year ago? Who could believe that we'd be willing to stop the world economy because of a virus?
The irritating nut of this is that this isn't necessarily something you can learn from. Okay, let's say you're one of the people that did the mental math and chose not to react -- a "Goofus", according to this article. So you learn from it, yeah? Next thing comes along with a 10% or 20% chance, you prepare for it. You're in California, so, earthquake: you fill up your garage with supplies. The earthquake never comes. Then there's a 10% or 20% chance of wildfire destroying your community... so you move, except the wildfire never hits that community. Armed robbery. Disease. Storms. All of these have some kind of low probability of happening, but will have super serious consequences if they do, so you -- remembering covid-19 -- prepare for each of them. Decades come and go, and eventually, you decide, hey, you're busy. You can't really deal with that thing right now. And besides, none of the others have happened. Except, this time the floods do come, and you're screwed again, and now some guy is writing about how all those people who didn't properly prepare for the flood had bad mental models for assessing risk.
> A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post on face masks. It reviewed the evidence and found that they probably helped prevent the spread of disease. Then it asked: how did the WHO, CDC, etc get this so wrong?
Absent from the blog post he references is that there's uncertainty over whether face masks might actually increase the risk of infection among healthy populations of non-medical professionals. The thinking goes that some number of people don't know how to properly use the masks (which he covers) and that they end up touching their face more as a result, and that the masks that most people are using aren't great filters for this particular virus, so the net change in probability of getting infected is going up.
But this isn't a certainty. There isn't enough data to know for sure if this is true or not. Even after this pandemic runs its course, there will probably still be disagreement in the studies to come because of all the confounding factors at play.
It's a reasonable position though, and that's why people keep getting conflicting information on this. You can get some treatment of the debate and confusion around this from this discussion: https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fcwcn7/to_mask_or_... ...people are posting studies supporting one position, then rebutting them, then offering professional advice in one direction, and then others in another. It's a mess, and while that thread isn't rigorously scientific, essentially the same argument is happening at and between the CDC and WHO and others.
> First, a bunch of generic smart people on Twitter who got things exactly right – there are too many of these people to name, but Scott Aaronson highlights “Bill Gates, Balaji Srinivasan, Paul Graham, Greg Cochran, Robin Hanson, Sarah Constantin, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Nicholas Christakis.”
This is pretty much the definition of cherry-picking. How many equally smart people got it wrong? Was there something in common among these particular people that led them to get it right, or did they hazard a guess on approximately the same information that everyone else had and then end up in the winning group?
There's a fun article somewhere in my bookmarks that I can't find right now, but it covers the phenomenon of some bettor -- at the race track, or the stock market, or something -- who has this crazy winning streak and nobody can figure out why. Maybe it's this person's lucky hat, or maybe it's the notes they take, or maybe... who knows. But the most compelling reason is that they just happen to be the 1 member of a very large group who, through probability alone, keeps winning.
This other article sort of mentions it in passing:
> The prosecution also had an expert witness, an economist named David DeRosa. He didn’t share Heeb’s views about poker. DeRosa used a computer to simulate what might happen if 1,000 people each tossed a coin 10,000 times, assuming a certain outcome — such as tails — was equivalent to a win and the number of times a particular person won the toss was random. But the results were remarkably similar to those Heeb presented: A handful of people appeared to win consistently, and another group seemed to lose a large number of times. This wasn’t evidence that a coin toss involved skill, just that — much like the infinite number of monkeys typing — unlikely events can happen if we look at a large enough group.
(https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/are-the-best-g...)
Back to the posted article...
> parachutes, etc. etc.
I mean, all kidding aside, there are enough parachute failures at this point to have a pretty good idea of the grim odds of surviving a fall from an aircraft without one.
There are some really good reasons for conservativism in medicine. We have lost many, many lives to cures, treatments, and preventions that were "common sense" and only later discovered to be wrong. Or, sometimes, work, but only accidentally. Scurvy is the historical go-to example here. Its cause and treatment has been discovered, lost, and rediscovered many times, and each time, there was some common-sense treatment for it that was wrong.
> Gallant wouldn’t have waited for proof. He would have checked prediction markets and asked top experts for probabilistic judgments. If he heard numbers like 10 or 20 percent, he would have done a cost-benefit analysis and found that putting some tough measures into place, like quarantine and social distancing, would be worthwhile if they had a 10 or 20 percent chance of averting catastrophe.
Gallant will spend his life preparing for the next disaster that has a 20% chance of occurring and will eventually end up living in a small off-the-grid cabin deep in the woods, slowly being poisoned by the well water that isn't being tested correctly or often enough.
There is an opportunity cost for preparing for disaster. I'm all for being at least a little bit prepared. My favorite hobby involves going out and retrieving people who were unprepared. But I never criticize them for getting into bad situations, because it can happen to any of us. (With the possible exception of people who don't evacuate from hurricane areas. Those people piss me off.)
You can't prepare for everything. Most of us have never lived through a situation like we're living through now. How believable would this all have been a year ago? Who could believe that we'd be willing to stop the world economy because of a virus?
The irritating nut of this is that this isn't necessarily something you can learn from. Okay, let's say you're one of the people that did the mental math and chose not to react -- a "Goofus", according to this article. So you learn from it, yeah? Next thing comes along with a 10% or 20% chance, you prepare for it. You're in California, so, earthquake: you fill up your garage with supplies. The earthquake never comes. Then there's a 10% or 20% chance of wildfire destroying your community... so you move, except the wildfire never hits that community. Armed robbery. Disease. Storms. All of these have some kind of low probability of happening, but will have super serious consequences if they do, so you -- remembering covid-19 -- prepare for each of them. Decades come and go, and eventually, you decide, hey, you're busy. You can't really deal with that thing right now. And besides, none of the others have happened. Except, this time the floods do come, and you're screwed again, and now some guy is writing about how all those people who didn't properly prepare for the flood had bad mental models for assessing risk.
> A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post on face masks. It reviewed the evidence and found that they probably helped prevent the spread of disease. Then it asked: how did the WHO, CDC, etc get this so wrong?
Absent from the blog post he references is that there's uncertainty over whether face masks might actually increase the risk of infection among healthy populations of non-medical professionals. The thinking goes that some number of people don't know how to properly use the masks (which he covers) and that they end up touching their face more as a result, and that the masks that most people are using aren't great filters for this particular virus, so the net change in probability of getting infected is going up.
But this isn't a certainty. There isn't enough data to know for sure if this is true or not. Even after this pandemic runs its course, there will probably still be disagreement in the studies to come because of all the confounding factors at play.
It's a reasonable position though, and that's why people keep getting conflicting information on this. You can get some treatment of the debate and confusion around this from this discussion: https://old.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/fcwcn7/to_mask_or_... ...people are posting studies supporting one position, then rebutting them, then offering professional advice in one direction, and then others in another. It's a mess, and while that thread isn't rigorously scientific, essentially the same argument is happening at and between the CDC and WHO and others.
Mm, most of this seems well-intentioned but a bit confused to me. I might specify the easiest point that's mistaken as this bit:
> So you learn from it, yeah? Next thing comes along with a 10% or 20% chance, you prepare for it. You're in California, so, earthquake: you fill up your garage with supplies. The earthquake never comes. Then there's a 10% or 20% chance of wildfire destroying your community... so you move, except the wildfire never hits that community. Armed robbery. Disease. Storms. All of these have some kind of low probability of happening, but will have super serious consequences if they do, so you -- remembering covid-19 -- prepare for each of them.
In the last decade of living in Berkeley, me and my nearest ~150 friends+acquaintances have not experienced a wildfire destroying our community, an earthquake causing life-threatening damage, armed robbery (a few muggings, but less of us have been affected by 10-100x as are affected by covid), storms causing life-threatening damage, etc. So the probability of all of these cannot be 10% in a given couple-of-months period (as we did to Covid in Feb), because they would all have happened like a dozen times in the last decade if so.
10% is just really, really high, relative to the baseline for life-shattering catastrophes. I've seen journalists say "We can't talk about all the 10% catastrophes, we'd look alarmist!" The level of threat that Covid was in mid February was just not comparable to the tragedies you listed above, it was a straightforward exponential growth in a fairly severe disease happening in many countries. You can argue that at the time I (or professional epidemiologists or whoever) should've assigned it the sort of low probability (<1%) associated with things like armed robbery and wildfire hitting me in Downtown Berkeley, but I think you'd be wrong, there just weren't that level of strong arguments about the baseline safety. It was a real risk, and it was correct to prepare in late Feb (as I did, and self-quarantined as soon as the first Berkeley case was reported in early March).
I just wanted to rebut the thing that seemed most wrong to me. I hope you're well in this difficult time.
> So you learn from it, yeah? Next thing comes along with a 10% or 20% chance, you prepare for it. You're in California, so, earthquake: you fill up your garage with supplies. The earthquake never comes. Then there's a 10% or 20% chance of wildfire destroying your community... so you move, except the wildfire never hits that community. Armed robbery. Disease. Storms. All of these have some kind of low probability of happening, but will have super serious consequences if they do, so you -- remembering covid-19 -- prepare for each of them.
In the last decade of living in Berkeley, me and my nearest ~150 friends+acquaintances have not experienced a wildfire destroying our community, an earthquake causing life-threatening damage, armed robbery (a few muggings, but less of us have been affected by 10-100x as are affected by covid), storms causing life-threatening damage, etc. So the probability of all of these cannot be 10% in a given couple-of-months period (as we did to Covid in Feb), because they would all have happened like a dozen times in the last decade if so.
10% is just really, really high, relative to the baseline for life-shattering catastrophes. I've seen journalists say "We can't talk about all the 10% catastrophes, we'd look alarmist!" The level of threat that Covid was in mid February was just not comparable to the tragedies you listed above, it was a straightforward exponential growth in a fairly severe disease happening in many countries. You can argue that at the time I (or professional epidemiologists or whoever) should've assigned it the sort of low probability (<1%) associated with things like armed robbery and wildfire hitting me in Downtown Berkeley, but I think you'd be wrong, there just weren't that level of strong arguments about the baseline safety. It was a real risk, and it was correct to prepare in late Feb (as I did, and self-quarantined as soon as the first Berkeley case was reported in early March).
I just wanted to rebut the thing that seemed most wrong to me. I hope you're well in this difficult time.
> I've seen journalists say "We can't talk about all the 10% catastrophes, we'd look alarmist!"
Alarmism is the bread and butter of journalism. Media consensus was that electing Trump was supposed have led to invading Poland and gassing minorities by now.
Alarmism is the bread and butter of journalism. Media consensus was that electing Trump was supposed have led to invading Poland and gassing minorities by now.
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Background: I am currently supporting myself by betting on politics and economics. I was caught jobless when this thing hit, halting my attempt at a career switch into either coding or data science. At the end of February I posted my first forecast for 200k cases by March 20th, giving it a 96% chance.
I feel like there exists the possibility of doing better, and there exist people who are already there but no one wants to listen or change.
Watching this thing since the start of the year has been like watching a preventable slow motion crash, where many people seemed to be trying their hardest to intentionally fail.
Let's not just blame the MSM or "elites" either. I speak to people who confidently assert everything is going to be fine in a year, and when pressed for a probability it's not even in top quartile. Even if it was 90% certain, a 10% chance of a significantly negative outcome is too high.
I can open any thread on HN regarding economics and the general level of arrogant ignorance is staggering. We're on target to massively screw up the economic relief, which will make the economic stimulus phase all the more challenging. People need to be more predisposed to having possible intellectual and knowledge blind spots.
But I'm not all negative, as I remain very optimistic that people will continue to ignore reasonable warnings.