I’m actually confused by that response, and I don’t think it’s really part of your best attempt to explain what you meant by ‘rationalists pwned covid’. I’ll try to explain why I’m unimpressed with that response below, but I think we’re in danger of getting into a sort of ‘point-scoring’ talking past each other. Obviously there were a few rhetorical flourishes in my original response, but I think the biggest part of what I’m trying to say is that the actual personal benefits to most people of being ahead of the curve on thinking about the pandemic were pretty minimal, and I think avoiding infection would fall in that ‘minimal benefit’ bucket for most of us.
I think we can be a bit more concrete—I think the actual personal benefits to either you or me of being aware of what was happening with COVID slightly before everyone else were pretty minimal. I really liked your article from February, and I really think the points you were making about conformity bias are probably the strongest part of your argument that rationality has practical uses, but you pretty much said yourself in that post that the actual, practical benefits were not that big:
“Aside from selling the equities, all the prep I’ve done was to stock a month of necessities so I can work from home and to hold off on booking flights for a trip I had planned for April.”
And I think (and this is where we probably differ) that this is pretty typical of the sort of topics where you can get the right answer using explicit reason.
To address the actual claim that rationalist didn’t get infected (although, as I said, I don’t think it really gets the meat of what you were saying originally).
First, I think it’s probably not true, there are two main reasons for this: one, there are 255k confirmed COVID cases in New York City, so if there are 10 million people in the city, and 25% of them have had COVID, then only 10% of the people who’ve had it know they’ve had it; two, I’m about 85% sure that I remember a post going round Bay Area rationalist Facebook friends in March about someone who had been to a party at a group house having a positive test.
Second, if it is (even proportionally) true, I think it’s probably mostly down to demographics. I play in a regular bridge game with some Scottish and English internationals, and as far as I’m aware, none of them have had COVID. I think this is probably more to do with the fact that very few bridge players work in the service sector, and almost all of us were able to work from home during a pandemic than any particular perspicacity on our part.
Third, as I said above, it’s a pretty low bar. If you’re rich enough (and don’t work at a hospital), avoiding personally getting infected is relatively straightforward, and while obviously it has some benefits, I don’t think it would be enough of an incentive to convince me to take on a whole new worldview.
Third, as I said above, it’s a pretty low bar. If you’re rich enough (and don’t work at a hospital), avoiding personally getting infected is relatively straightforward, and while obviously it has some benefits, I don’t think it would be enough of an incentive to convince me to take on a whole new worldview.
My personal experience is consistent with this take, for what it’s worth. I think that “rationalists didn’t get COVID” is indeed mostly due to substantially higher average income (perhaps not even among ‘rationalists’ but specifically among Jacob’s friends/acquaintances).
I’m actually confused by that response, and I don’t think it’s really part of your best attempt to explain what you meant by ‘rationalists pwned covid’. I’ll try to explain why I’m unimpressed with that response below, but I think we’re in danger of getting into a sort of ‘point-scoring’ talking past each other. Obviously there were a few rhetorical flourishes in my original response, but I think the biggest part of what I’m trying to say is that the actual personal benefits to most people of being ahead of the curve on thinking about the pandemic were pretty minimal, and I think avoiding infection would fall in that ‘minimal benefit’ bucket for most of us.
I think we can be a bit more concrete—I think the actual personal benefits to either you or me of being aware of what was happening with COVID slightly before everyone else were pretty minimal. I really liked your article from February, and I really think the points you were making about conformity bias are probably the strongest part of your argument that rationality has practical uses, but you pretty much said yourself in that post that the actual, practical benefits were not that big:
“Aside from selling the equities, all the prep I’ve done was to stock a month of necessities so I can work from home and to hold off on booking flights for a trip I had planned for April.”
And I think (and this is where we probably differ) that this is pretty typical of the sort of topics where you can get the right answer using explicit reason.
To address the actual claim that rationalist didn’t get infected (although, as I said, I don’t think it really gets the meat of what you were saying originally).
First, I think it’s probably not true, there are two main reasons for this: one, there are 255k confirmed COVID cases in New York City, so if there are 10 million people in the city, and 25% of them have had COVID, then only 10% of the people who’ve had it know they’ve had it; two, I’m about 85% sure that I remember a post going round Bay Area rationalist Facebook friends in March about someone who had been to a party at a group house having a positive test.
Second, if it is (even proportionally) true, I think it’s probably mostly down to demographics. I play in a regular bridge game with some Scottish and English internationals, and as far as I’m aware, none of them have had COVID. I think this is probably more to do with the fact that very few bridge players work in the service sector, and almost all of us were able to work from home during a pandemic than any particular perspicacity on our part.
Third, as I said above, it’s a pretty low bar. If you’re rich enough (and don’t work at a hospital), avoiding personally getting infected is relatively straightforward, and while obviously it has some benefits, I don’t think it would be enough of an incentive to convince me to take on a whole new worldview.
My personal experience is consistent with this take, for what it’s worth. I think that “rationalists didn’t get COVID” is indeed mostly due to substantially higher average income (perhaps not even among ‘rationalists’ but specifically among Jacob’s friends/acquaintances).
Something about that seems plausible to me. I’ll think on it more...