I would caution away from a bias towards “the current situation seems vaguely bad, therefore Something Must Be Done.”
I agree, and I am a firm believer in Don’t Do Something, Just Stand There.
One of the things that is perhaps unclear from this post is just how much Standing There has been done; people were talking about this as a problem in 2013, I went from believing that a decline existed and it was okay to believing a decline existed and it wasn’t okay in 2014, most of the in-person conversations about this happened in August of this year.
To continue with my theme about the bias towards action, I would note the following. Suppose that one periodically samples a random variable to decide whether the correct action is to leave some situation alone, or to intervene. Assuming that one continues sampling after getting back “do nothing”, but that an “intervene” decision is final, it should be clear that “intervene” will always win eventually, if the random variable has even a tiny probability of coming up “intervene”, even if the vast majority of the probability mass is on “do nothing”.
So in light of that, if one is going to continue to stand around and talk about intervening, one should probably bias further and further away from intervening as time passes, to account for the fact that eventually the coin will come up “intervene” through bad luck no matter what the correct decision is.
I agree, and I am a firm believer in Don’t Do Something, Just Stand There.
One of the things that is perhaps unclear from this post is just how much Standing There has been done; people were talking about this as a problem in 2013, I went from believing that a decline existed and it was okay to believing a decline existed and it wasn’t okay in 2014, most of the in-person conversations about this happened in August of this year.
To continue with my theme about the bias towards action, I would note the following. Suppose that one periodically samples a random variable to decide whether the correct action is to leave some situation alone, or to intervene. Assuming that one continues sampling after getting back “do nothing”, but that an “intervene” decision is final, it should be clear that “intervene” will always win eventually, if the random variable has even a tiny probability of coming up “intervene”, even if the vast majority of the probability mass is on “do nothing”.
So in light of that, if one is going to continue to stand around and talk about intervening, one should probably bias further and further away from intervening as time passes, to account for the fact that eventually the coin will come up “intervene” through bad luck no matter what the correct decision is.