I watched all 7 hours of Dominic Cummings’ testimony to parliament yesterday on the UK government response to COVID. (Cummings was the Prime Minister’s top adviser.)
Key points he made that are relevant to rationalists (some hardly mentioned by the media):
Groupthink throughout government and its SAGE committee of scientific advisers meant their initial plan—no lockdown, await herd immunity—wasn’t abandoned soon enough. Psychological ‘memes’ - that Britons wouldn’t accept lockdowns or track & trace—were believed with little basis. The groupthink was broken in part by Cummings seeking an outside view of technical documents from Demis Hassabis and Tim Gowers (interestingly).
Institutional design failure means incompetent people get promoted to leadership and decision-making roles in UK government and political parties. Various highly competent individuals in more junior ranks were sidelined and left. People aren’t incentivized to do the right things. Cummings said he himself shouldn’t have been in such a high-powered job, which should have been held by someone far more intelligent & capable. (Cummings was in fact considered the smartest person in Downing St, though he lacks a technical background.)
Weak planning for catastrophes, e.g. poor access to data, inability to circumvent slow bureaucratic procedures, lack of detailed advance plans and lines of responsibility for them. He mentioned anthrax attacks and solar flares as other potential scenarios.
Human challenge trials should have occurred early on—perhaps even in Jan 2020.
Overall I found him a credible witness, because his testimony was very detailed (e.g. he recalled numerous dates of meetings & events), and quite self-critical, blaming himself for not forcing a lockdown sooner, and for not resigning at various points. His analysis above also seems sound.
I watched all 7 hours of Dominic Cummings’ testimony to parliament yesterday on the UK government response to COVID. (Cummings was the Prime Minister’s top adviser.)
Key points he made that are relevant to rationalists (some hardly mentioned by the media):
Groupthink throughout government and its SAGE committee of scientific advisers meant their initial plan—no lockdown, await herd immunity—wasn’t abandoned soon enough. Psychological ‘memes’ - that Britons wouldn’t accept lockdowns or track & trace—were believed with little basis. The groupthink was broken in part by Cummings seeking an outside view of technical documents from Demis Hassabis and Tim Gowers (interestingly).
Institutional design failure means incompetent people get promoted to leadership and decision-making roles in UK government and political parties. Various highly competent individuals in more junior ranks were sidelined and left. People aren’t incentivized to do the right things. Cummings said he himself shouldn’t have been in such a high-powered job, which should have been held by someone far more intelligent & capable. (Cummings was in fact considered the smartest person in Downing St, though he lacks a technical background.)
Weak planning for catastrophes, e.g. poor access to data, inability to circumvent slow bureaucratic procedures, lack of detailed advance plans and lines of responsibility for them. He mentioned anthrax attacks and solar flares as other potential scenarios.
Human challenge trials should have occurred early on—perhaps even in Jan 2020.
Overall I found him a credible witness, because his testimony was very detailed (e.g. he recalled numerous dates of meetings & events), and quite self-critical, blaming himself for not forcing a lockdown sooner, and for not resigning at various points. His analysis above also seems sound.