Phil's Newsletter #4 - Rationality & Risk
What COVID-19 can teach us about risk management. Reason vs reasons. The beauty of science. đ
Whatâs on my mind
Having spent quite a bit of time reading up on the situation regarding the COVID-19 disease outbreak Iâve realized itâs a good lens with which to view the follies of human misjudgment. Itâs also a lesson on (ir)rationality.
Over the past days and weeks, in conversations and online Iâve come across various kinds of arguments and ways of reasoning in regards to what to do, or what not to do.
There tend to be two camps.
The first camp of people assumes that any preparation or worry is silly and motivated by irrational fears. Theyâll point to past viral outbreaks and pandemics (SARS, H1N1) and urge that nothing âreally badâ happened, or at least that âthe world didnât endâ. Therefore, we donât have to do anything now. And if you are doing something more than just washing your hands, youâre silly.
The second camp is more on the hysterical end of the spectrum. Theyâre constantly checking the news or Twitter, have been hoarding food, buying face masks and havenât left their homes since the 2nd of February. Theyâre either overestimating the immediate risks or just overestimating their own ability to prepare and survive by themselves. Itâs either driven by undue fear, or by an almost fetishistic longing for widespread societal collapse (the lone wolf mentality).
Both of these ways of reasoning strike me as misguided. It shows a misunderstanding, or perhaps misappreciation of how to asses risks properly. As with much else, the truth is somewhere in between. Although Iâm currently leaning more towards the second camp than the first.
There are of course many people much smarter and better educated than me on the topic of risk management so I donât feel confident in espousing too strong of an opinion here. But Iâve come to understand two things that I think people donât appreciate well enough: 1) exponential functions and 2) how to think about very large but rare incidents or catastrophes.
The first explains why we donât prepare enough and are completely blindsided by the outbreak when it actually starts to pick up speed. Read the text in this picture and consider how bad your intuition is at grappling with exponential growth:
The second explains why we should probably put more resources to mitigate or prepare for unlikely but impactful events like pandemics that could upend our normal lives or society. As I wrote in last weekâs newsletter, the cost of insuring against these risks is rather low compared to the costs of being wrong. Most peopleâs homes never burn down, but itâs still sensible to buy home insurance.
What this all means is that being concerned and taking action now (or yesterday) can likely be an âoverreactionâ, especially from a social point of view, but may nevertheless be the rational thing to do.
âBut Iâm young and healthy, and the fatality rate is < 1%â. Maybe youâre not convinced by my arguments above, in that case, ask yourself: Would you play Russian Roulette with a 100 chamber gun?
This is really the main idea I want to share with you this week so Iâll jump right ahead to some other useful and interesting links Iâve found.
Interesting things I've come across
So you think youâre about to be in a pandemic? - This blog article is a few days old now (Iâd say we pretty much are in a pandemic) but the information is sound and useful. Itâs written by a virologist and has good information about the Why/How/What of the virus and pandemic. Some excerpts:
âStay at least 2m away from obviously sick people. Weâre trying to avoid receiving a cough/sneeze in the face, shaking hands, or being in the range of droplet splatter and the âdrop zoneâ.â
âWash your hands for 20 seconds & more frequently than you do now.â
âTry not to touch your face.â
âOlder people with comorbidities have experienced higher proportions of death than those with no comorbidities. â
âBuy a few of the things each weekly shop. Donât buy things you wonât eat later, donât hoard and donât buy more than youâll need for a 2 week period.â
"If you or a loved one becomes sick, follow the practices of the day. Call ahead before going to a Doctor, fever clinic or hospital and get advice on what to do"
Unraveling the Enigma of Reason - Why are we so bad at reasoning? Why do only humans possess the ability to reason? It turns out that these are actually the wrong questions to ask. Reason, rather than being a mental faculty separate from intuition or emotion is just another cognitive adaption alongside several others in humans. We use reason when we have to. The purpose of reason is not really as a means to think better or more clearly, but instead to generate reasons for our actions. We apply reason after the fact, not before.
Anti-Intellectualism and Rejecting Science - I read an article about a new study on anti-intellectualism and science denial. Explains why those things go together with a general mistrust of authority and the rise of populism. It explains why, for some people, adopting this attitude is like a defense mechanism, a way of feeling in control by rejecting all mainstream opinions on principle.
"That alternative is populist rejection of not only experts, but the institutions of expertise and the concept of expertise itself. This leads to intellectual anarchy (often justified by portraying it as intellectual freedom, but that is not the issue and entirely misses the point.)"
Podcast of the week
Ann Druyan: Cosmos, Carl Sagan, Voyager, and the Beauty of Science.
As a big fan of Carl Sagan and a long time science nerd I really enjoyed this episode. With all the gloomy news and fear around the Coronavirus, this conversation will liven up your day and give you hope for the future of humanity.
âAnn Druyan is the writer, producer, director, and one of the most important and impactful communicators of science in our time. She co-wrote the 1980 science documentary series Cosmos hosted by Carl Sagan, whom she married in 1981, and her love for whom, with the help of NASA, was recorded as brain waves on a golden record along with other things our civilization has to offer and launched into space on the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft that are now, 42 years later, still active, reaching out farther into deep space than any human-made object ever has. This was a profound and beautiful decision she made as a Creative Director of NASAâs Voyager Interstellar Message Project. In 2014, she went on to create the second season of Cosmos, called Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, and in 2020, the new third season called Cosmos: Possible Worlds, which is being released this upcoming Monday, March 9. It is hosted, once again, by the fun and brilliant Neil deGrasse Tyson.â
Quote of the week
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function"
- Albert Bartlett