From the notes: "One of my goals in life is to create a tool that can help humans think with others" - I am often thinking about something like that, especially in relation to the point related to the System: "Systems should be designed to eliminate human failure". I think currently we are facing the challenge related to the fact that we need to renovate our system: we have many vicious circles (like an algorithm feeding itself with wrong data) about many different topics (some things are going bad, because all the actors are doing what the system is pushing them to do, but sometimes we don't see the big picture and the consequences, sometimes we do, but we are not able to stop the circle). We need to redesign our system, but our system doesn't include a place for doing so: the possible places for doing so are affected by the system. It is time to start to think differently and the first step would be to find a space for doing so.
Let us not forget that politicians were advised by scientists and doctors. As Tomas' discussion with Prof John Edmunds last year showed, that advice wasn't always ideal.
First of all: thinking of this as a cost-benefit-analysis implies the underlying ethical framework of utilitarianism. While that is one way to approach ethical considerations, it's not the only way, or the only correct way. This is something to consider. Personally, I think the utilitarian framework *itself* has been a part of the failings around the crisis. We haven't paid much attention to the intrinsic value (and values) of life.
But second, quite important, this crisis has been going on while global politics were very unhinged with very corrupt and quite destructive leadership. The thing with those in power isn't just that they tried to analyse and failed, but in that many of them really don't care about human lives as cost at all. They may very well have calculated certain things very accurately, just not with 'society' on the side of benefit. Without putting that front and center, how corona happened cannot be understood.
On utilitarianism, you're absolutely right. I don't agree with its narrow version, one that imagines Homo Economicus and hard utility for everything. But I do believe in one that includes other variables such as emotions in the calculations of utility. For me, the intrinsic value of life is calculated in QALYs, and although it's not idealistic, it's the only way to make actual policy. Otherwise, for example, cars would be banned altogether.
I agree with your second point. Very obvious for the likes of Bolsonaro or Putin. But it doesn't explain what happened in France or Germany, leaders more technocratic, anti-populist, and clearly caring, who nevertheless failed.
I think that the "good" politicians did not do as well as they could have mostly because Covid was a novel and difficult problem and most people are not taught and don't develop thinking systems or procedures for complex problem solving. The structures set up to react to a threat of this kind simply did not work. Some considerations:
1. The first reaction of human brains to something bad happening is often denial. If you pretend that something isn't really happening or isn't relevant to you then it is pretty hard to take any meaningful action.
2. Humans tend to simplify things into a binary view to enable decisions to be made more easily and rapidly (e.g., fight or flight). Thus Covid was viewed by many as either really bad or "just a little flu". In reality the virus found a confusing "sweet spot": not a bad illness for a lot of individual people so plenty of available examples available for confirmation bias, but really bad at a population level if allowed to get out of control.
3. Politics has drifted towards the easy option of making decisions based on opinion polls rather than leadership (explaining and convincing the electorate of the merits of a particular course of action). This allowed the media and "just a little flu" crowd to have more influence on decision making than perhaps they should have. Politics is about compromise, but a virus doesn't negotiate.
4. Divide and conquer: young people aren't generally affected badly by the virus so it was hard to convince them that they should give up freedoms for the sake of those most at risk. If there is a strong sense of community (listen to the way Jacinda Arden speaks to New Zealanders) then that really helps. The current view of individual rights vs responsibilities to society is very different than that prevailing before Maggie Thatcher told us that there is no such thing as society.
4. Over the last 50 years the Western world has been heavily influenced by free market economic thinking and a focus on measuring everything in monetary terms. Only recently have people tried to incorporate factors like health, happiness and the environment into that model.
5. Europe in particular was not keen to close borders (both internal and external) because it was contrary to the ideals of the European Union.
Having just returned from Australia (which is in a very different position with Covid than the rest of the world) it is fascinating to follow their political and media discussion about how to handle outbreaks, borders and vaccination. Despite being 16 months into the pandemic and being a "good" country at managing Covid, most of the pitfalls discussed above and below are still plain to see.
Thank You Tomas for writing this. And thank You VictoriaF for broadening it. I wish we had more intelligence like yours in this humanity of ours. Maybe it can be seeded?
Grasping systems on any broader, meaningful level is hard work for a poor brain. Most ppl don't want to go there. And to be honest, many have their abilities developed in other walks of life. Being good at something must and will suffice. We are diverse.
We are on a treshold to develop human systems or -- keep marching blindfolded into a grim future. I'd very much prefer the former :-o
I hear you, Pekka. My belief is that anybody can do it, but we just need the tools.
This newsletter is one humble way to achieve it. Hopefully, in the future I will develop something more scalable. I look at it a bit like Steve Jobs looked at computers as a bike for the brain: it's a tool that expands the universe of things humans can do. We'll see if we succeed!
I bought it but need to finish a couple of other books before I start Cialdini's.
I'd like to add a couple mental pitfalls to your excellent review:
- Risk seeking in losses. This is the bottom-left end of the Prospect Theory curve where losses increase but the perception of loss flattens. Think of Napoleon who fought the Battle of Waterloo with a low chance to win and the eventual loss of over 40,000 people on his side. During COVID, many politicians doubled down on their strategies, e.g., Bolsonaro.
- Survivorship bias (and Taleb's Silent evidence) when we attribute success to certain measures and ignore situations in which the same measure have not produced success. For example, a few weeks ago the U.S. was attributing the victory over COVID to the vaccination, while Michigan was having unusually high COVID rates even though their vaccination rate was above the US average.
- Kahneman's Peak-end rule stating that an event is judged not by its entirety but by its extreme and final manifestations. The American history of COVID will be judged by the successful end when the majority of the population is vaccinated and the unpleasantness of the peak of lock-downs. The Japanese history of COVID could, potentially, be judged by the infection rates during the Olympics.
- COVID Black Swans may appear just when we are celebrating a victory. The obvious risks are from new variants with higher virulence and fatality rates and from variants bypassing the vaccine-induced immunity. But true Black Swans could be combinations of events, e.g., infrastructure collapses similarly to what happened in Lebanon.
Thanks again for your excellent articles - long, informative, and stimulating thinking.
Amazing, Victoria. Thank you so much. Very interesting! Procesing 1 by 1:
- Risk seeking in losses: interesting. Another reason for escalation of commitment.
- Survivorship bias (and Taleb's Silent evidence): what mismgmt have you seen caused by this?
- Kahneman's Peak-end rule: true. But has it caused COVID mismanagement failures? Maybe it will in the future by preempting the US from signing new legislation?
- COVID Black Swans: something might happen indeed, although it hasn't caused COVID mismgmt yet, right (beyond COVID itself). Also, I am personally optimistic on these: I think vaccines will reduce the infections worldwide, and will likely be easy to adapt to new variants.
- Survivorship bias and Silent evidence: policy makers pick and choose COVID protections that work in some places and ignore instances in which the same measures do not protect. In my previous message I mentioned Michigan, where vaccination was insufficient to prevent a surge in COVID, but the rest of the country was assuming that the vaccines have already done their job. Several Asian countries were safe for a long time, which was attributable to wide spread masking, testing, and tracing. But now Japan is experiencing a surge, even before the Olympics-related travel. To be clear: vaccines, masks, testing-tracing, and other measures are important for stopping the COVID spread. But it's dangerous to ignore instances in which they do not work. In my opinion, local policies should incorporate all prudent protections, and global policies should be directed at vaccinating as many people as possible around the world, as quickly as possible. Another way to look at it: So far we were fortunate to have young people safe from COVID. But in the flu pandemic of 1918, the greatest losses were among young people. As I understand it, the 1918 flu virus has adapted to the young solders in the trenches of the World War I. Today, we have a survivorship bias towards the survival of the young and we underestimate the risk to the young if COVID mutated to target them.
- Kahneman's Peak-end rule affects the mentality of policy makers. They accept large sacrifices when they expect a victorious end. China had draconian lock-down measures but now we praise it for getting out of COVID quickly and with relatively low losses. This attitude is reflected in sayings such as "History is written by the victor" and "The end justifies the means."
- COVID Black Swans may or may not happen. The essence of Black Swans is that they are unpredictable. Recall that there are positive Black Swans as well as negative ones. If COVID spread all of a sudden stopped, it would be a positive one. Taleb's advice for preparation for unknown Black Swans is to reduce fragility and pursue anti-fragility. Policy makers should request much larger safety margins in hospital beds, equipment, and medical staff. The medical professional must have much larger safety margin for their time, energy, and stress levels. There must be large reserves of test kits and masks. Speaking of the masks, I don't understand why the Defense Production Act was not used to produce N95 masks at the peak of the pandemic. Note that a solid preparation to pandemics not only reduces fragility but also has anti-fragility effects. A country that can send its vaccines and other medical supplies to other countries gains a geopolitical advantage. With COVID, China has demonstrated its anti-fragility: it benefited from the risk.
I think that one bias that causes a lot of problems is our tendency to assume that others think in the same way that we do. We find it difficult to grasp that another human being can think in ways completely alien to us (e.g., those whose focus in life is power or wealth struggle to believe that others may not have this as their primary goal) . We mostly grow up with and associate with people who think like us and it is not until we travel or have open discussions with those who think differently that this bias is challenged. As with all challenges, this can be seen as a positive thing or as a threat.
I note the emphasis in the 3D conversation article on countering this bias with paraphrasing to check that others share our understanding of what has been said.
From the notes: "One of my goals in life is to create a tool that can help humans think with others" - I am often thinking about something like that, especially in relation to the point related to the System: "Systems should be designed to eliminate human failure". I think currently we are facing the challenge related to the fact that we need to renovate our system: we have many vicious circles (like an algorithm feeding itself with wrong data) about many different topics (some things are going bad, because all the actors are doing what the system is pushing them to do, but sometimes we don't see the big picture and the consequences, sometimes we do, but we are not able to stop the circle). We need to redesign our system, but our system doesn't include a place for doing so: the possible places for doing so are affected by the system. It is time to start to think differently and the first step would be to find a space for doing so.
I agree. Personally, I think it's a digital tool that can help ppl properly debate arguments and make decisions
To correct for bias we need to understand it better
1932. «Franzosischer Witz» by Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935):
«Der Krieg? Ich kann das nicht so schrecklich finden! Der Tod eines Menschen: das ist eine Katastrophe. Hunderttausend Tote: das ist eine Statistik!»
Let us not forget that politicians were advised by scientists and doctors. As Tomas' discussion with Prof John Edmunds last year showed, that advice wasn't always ideal.
First of all: thinking of this as a cost-benefit-analysis implies the underlying ethical framework of utilitarianism. While that is one way to approach ethical considerations, it's not the only way, or the only correct way. This is something to consider. Personally, I think the utilitarian framework *itself* has been a part of the failings around the crisis. We haven't paid much attention to the intrinsic value (and values) of life.
But second, quite important, this crisis has been going on while global politics were very unhinged with very corrupt and quite destructive leadership. The thing with those in power isn't just that they tried to analyse and failed, but in that many of them really don't care about human lives as cost at all. They may very well have calculated certain things very accurately, just not with 'society' on the side of benefit. Without putting that front and center, how corona happened cannot be understood.
Thank you, Inca. Very interesting points.
On utilitarianism, you're absolutely right. I don't agree with its narrow version, one that imagines Homo Economicus and hard utility for everything. But I do believe in one that includes other variables such as emotions in the calculations of utility. For me, the intrinsic value of life is calculated in QALYs, and although it's not idealistic, it's the only way to make actual policy. Otherwise, for example, cars would be banned altogether.
I agree with your second point. Very obvious for the likes of Bolsonaro or Putin. But it doesn't explain what happened in France or Germany, leaders more technocratic, anti-populist, and clearly caring, who nevertheless failed.
I think that the "good" politicians did not do as well as they could have mostly because Covid was a novel and difficult problem and most people are not taught and don't develop thinking systems or procedures for complex problem solving. The structures set up to react to a threat of this kind simply did not work. Some considerations:
1. The first reaction of human brains to something bad happening is often denial. If you pretend that something isn't really happening or isn't relevant to you then it is pretty hard to take any meaningful action.
2. Humans tend to simplify things into a binary view to enable decisions to be made more easily and rapidly (e.g., fight or flight). Thus Covid was viewed by many as either really bad or "just a little flu". In reality the virus found a confusing "sweet spot": not a bad illness for a lot of individual people so plenty of available examples available for confirmation bias, but really bad at a population level if allowed to get out of control.
3. Politics has drifted towards the easy option of making decisions based on opinion polls rather than leadership (explaining and convincing the electorate of the merits of a particular course of action). This allowed the media and "just a little flu" crowd to have more influence on decision making than perhaps they should have. Politics is about compromise, but a virus doesn't negotiate.
4. Divide and conquer: young people aren't generally affected badly by the virus so it was hard to convince them that they should give up freedoms for the sake of those most at risk. If there is a strong sense of community (listen to the way Jacinda Arden speaks to New Zealanders) then that really helps. The current view of individual rights vs responsibilities to society is very different than that prevailing before Maggie Thatcher told us that there is no such thing as society.
4. Over the last 50 years the Western world has been heavily influenced by free market economic thinking and a focus on measuring everything in monetary terms. Only recently have people tried to incorporate factors like health, happiness and the environment into that model.
5. Europe in particular was not keen to close borders (both internal and external) because it was contrary to the ideals of the European Union.
I agree with all of this!
Having just returned from Australia (which is in a very different position with Covid than the rest of the world) it is fascinating to follow their political and media discussion about how to handle outbreaks, borders and vaccination. Despite being 16 months into the pandemic and being a "good" country at managing Covid, most of the pitfalls discussed above and below are still plain to see.
Thank You Tomas for writing this. And thank You VictoriaF for broadening it. I wish we had more intelligence like yours in this humanity of ours. Maybe it can be seeded?
Grasping systems on any broader, meaningful level is hard work for a poor brain. Most ppl don't want to go there. And to be honest, many have their abilities developed in other walks of life. Being good at something must and will suffice. We are diverse.
We are on a treshold to develop human systems or -- keep marching blindfolded into a grim future. I'd very much prefer the former :-o
I hear you, Pekka. My belief is that anybody can do it, but we just need the tools.
This newsletter is one humble way to achieve it. Hopefully, in the future I will develop something more scalable. I look at it a bit like Steve Jobs looked at computers as a bike for the brain: it's a tool that expands the universe of things humans can do. We'll see if we succeed!
FYI, Cialdini has just published an extensively revised "Influence"
I didn't know. Thanks! It seems like a merger of Pre-suasion and Influence. Have you read it?
I bought it but need to finish a couple of other books before I start Cialdini's.
I'd like to add a couple mental pitfalls to your excellent review:
- Risk seeking in losses. This is the bottom-left end of the Prospect Theory curve where losses increase but the perception of loss flattens. Think of Napoleon who fought the Battle of Waterloo with a low chance to win and the eventual loss of over 40,000 people on his side. During COVID, many politicians doubled down on their strategies, e.g., Bolsonaro.
- Survivorship bias (and Taleb's Silent evidence) when we attribute success to certain measures and ignore situations in which the same measure have not produced success. For example, a few weeks ago the U.S. was attributing the victory over COVID to the vaccination, while Michigan was having unusually high COVID rates even though their vaccination rate was above the US average.
- Kahneman's Peak-end rule stating that an event is judged not by its entirety but by its extreme and final manifestations. The American history of COVID will be judged by the successful end when the majority of the population is vaccinated and the unpleasantness of the peak of lock-downs. The Japanese history of COVID could, potentially, be judged by the infection rates during the Olympics.
- COVID Black Swans may appear just when we are celebrating a victory. The obvious risks are from new variants with higher virulence and fatality rates and from variants bypassing the vaccine-induced immunity. But true Black Swans could be combinations of events, e.g., infrastructure collapses similarly to what happened in Lebanon.
Thanks again for your excellent articles - long, informative, and stimulating thinking.
Victoria
Amazing, Victoria. Thank you so much. Very interesting! Procesing 1 by 1:
- Risk seeking in losses: interesting. Another reason for escalation of commitment.
- Survivorship bias (and Taleb's Silent evidence): what mismgmt have you seen caused by this?
- Kahneman's Peak-end rule: true. But has it caused COVID mismanagement failures? Maybe it will in the future by preempting the US from signing new legislation?
- COVID Black Swans: something might happen indeed, although it hasn't caused COVID mismgmt yet, right (beyond COVID itself). Also, I am personally optimistic on these: I think vaccines will reduce the infections worldwide, and will likely be easy to adapt to new variants.
- Survivorship bias and Silent evidence: policy makers pick and choose COVID protections that work in some places and ignore instances in which the same measures do not protect. In my previous message I mentioned Michigan, where vaccination was insufficient to prevent a surge in COVID, but the rest of the country was assuming that the vaccines have already done their job. Several Asian countries were safe for a long time, which was attributable to wide spread masking, testing, and tracing. But now Japan is experiencing a surge, even before the Olympics-related travel. To be clear: vaccines, masks, testing-tracing, and other measures are important for stopping the COVID spread. But it's dangerous to ignore instances in which they do not work. In my opinion, local policies should incorporate all prudent protections, and global policies should be directed at vaccinating as many people as possible around the world, as quickly as possible. Another way to look at it: So far we were fortunate to have young people safe from COVID. But in the flu pandemic of 1918, the greatest losses were among young people. As I understand it, the 1918 flu virus has adapted to the young solders in the trenches of the World War I. Today, we have a survivorship bias towards the survival of the young and we underestimate the risk to the young if COVID mutated to target them.
- Kahneman's Peak-end rule affects the mentality of policy makers. They accept large sacrifices when they expect a victorious end. China had draconian lock-down measures but now we praise it for getting out of COVID quickly and with relatively low losses. This attitude is reflected in sayings such as "History is written by the victor" and "The end justifies the means."
- COVID Black Swans may or may not happen. The essence of Black Swans is that they are unpredictable. Recall that there are positive Black Swans as well as negative ones. If COVID spread all of a sudden stopped, it would be a positive one. Taleb's advice for preparation for unknown Black Swans is to reduce fragility and pursue anti-fragility. Policy makers should request much larger safety margins in hospital beds, equipment, and medical staff. The medical professional must have much larger safety margin for their time, energy, and stress levels. There must be large reserves of test kits and masks. Speaking of the masks, I don't understand why the Defense Production Act was not used to produce N95 masks at the peak of the pandemic. Note that a solid preparation to pandemics not only reduces fragility but also has anti-fragility effects. A country that can send its vaccines and other medical supplies to other countries gains a geopolitical advantage. With COVID, China has demonstrated its anti-fragility: it benefited from the risk.
I think that one bias that causes a lot of problems is our tendency to assume that others think in the same way that we do. We find it difficult to grasp that another human being can think in ways completely alien to us (e.g., those whose focus in life is power or wealth struggle to believe that others may not have this as their primary goal) . We mostly grow up with and associate with people who think like us and it is not until we travel or have open discussions with those who think differently that this bias is challenged. As with all challenges, this can be seen as a positive thing or as a threat.
I note the emphasis in the 3D conversation article on countering this bias with paraphrasing to check that others share our understanding of what has been said.
Yes! Definitely!