When you’re dealing with a threat that doubles in size every few days, you do not have the luxury of excess caution. Inverted pendulums have an exponentially growing error as well, and no matter what you do (or don’t do) to react, if your control system doesn’t do it faster than the instability grows, you lose. Period. If you try to move slowly in the act of balancing, then you will fall off the tight rope no matter how sure you later become of what the right action would have been. It is fundamentally necessary to be able to react and then correct for errors later (so yes, pre-frame this in your communication so that you don’t over-commit to something you will need to later change).
It’s also worth noting that “literally everyone on earth” only starts trying to solve the problem once they know that it’s a problem, and at the time that Pueyo’s first essay came out, that was absolutely not the case. At that time, I was still scrambling trying to figure out how to best leverage my credibility and communication skills to convey the exact same point about “Why you must act now” because people around me had not yet come to realize how serious an issue this was going to be. Sure, they’d have heard it without me too. But they would have heard it later with less time to act, and might not have taken it as seriously without my credibility behind it. If enough people like me took your advice they might not have heard it at all because it could be out competed by other less useful memes.
It’s just that, as you manage to find alternative takes (perhaps by credentialed experts, perhaps not) that find flaws in the memes you’ve been spreading, you spread those too. I would say “correct for your mistakes” except that it’s not even a “mistake” necessarily, just “a clarification of oversimplification” or “the next control input given the newest estimate of the state”.
As we get deeper into this mess and people start mobilizing, then “do something in this general direction!” becomes less important. At some point you have to wonder whether the pendulum has swung too far, or if we need to be acting in a different direction, or something else. When everyone in the world is thinking about it we now have a very different problem and instead of simply requiring an ability to take back of the envelope models seriously when they are outside the “socially accepted reality”, you actually need more detailed analyses.
Still, public opinion will need to get on board with whatever is necessary, and in the absence of your input the memes don’t just stop and wait for science, and neither does the coronavirus. If you try to say “but I can pick nits! This isn’t credentialed and perfect!” and try to replace useful first steps with inaction, then you blow your credibility and with it your ability to help shape things for the better. Let’s not do that.
Yes, it is important to not initiate or signal boost bad information at the cost of good ones. Yes, it is important to look for people who are (actually) experts. But it’s also important to provide a path from the real experts to the layfolk, since that doesn’t and cannot happen on its own. The public in general not only can’t evaluate the object level arguments about epidemiology and must defer to authority, they can’t even evaluate object level arguments about who is the real authority—that’s why you get antivaxxers listening to crackpots. It’s appeals to authority (mixed in with justifications) all the way up. If you can’t create the best ideas but you can distinguish between the best ideas and those which merely look good to the untrained eye, it is your job to pass the best ideas down to those who are less able to make that distinction. If you can’t make that distinction yourself but you can at least distinguish between people who can and posers, then it is your job as the next link in the chain to pass this information from those more able to discern to those who are less able to discern than you. This goes all the way down to the masses watching the news, and you better hope you can get the news to get their shit together. I still know people who are in denial because mainstream news told them to be and then failed to appropriately correct for their earlier mistakes. Let’s work to fix that.
Exponential memetic spread does not pathology make. Yes, it’s possible for overactive or mistargeted immune systems to fail to prevent things or to do more harm than good. Yes, Dunning Kruger applies and humility is as necessary as ever. However, so is the courage to be bold and to take action when it is called for instead of hiding in false humility. This “intellectual curve” is a part of our collective immune response to an actual virus which is killing people and threatening to kill exponentially more. Do not flatten the wrong curve. Find a role that allows you to guide it in the right direction, and then guide.
When you’re dealing with a threat that doubles in size every few days, you do not have the luxury of excess caution. Inverted pendulums have an exponentially growing error as well, and no matter what you do (or don’t do) to react, if your control system doesn’t do it faster than the instability grows, you lose. Period. If you try to move slowly in the act of balancing, then you will fall off the tight rope no matter how sure you later become of what the right action would have been. It is fundamentally necessary to be able to react and then correct for errors later (so yes, pre-frame this in your communication so that you don’t over-commit to something you will need to later change).
It’s also worth noting that “literally everyone on earth” only starts trying to solve the problem once they know that it’s a problem, and at the time that Pueyo’s first essay came out, that was absolutely not the case. At that time, I was still scrambling trying to figure out how to best leverage my credibility and communication skills to convey the exact same point about “Why you must act now” because people around me had not yet come to realize how serious an issue this was going to be. Sure, they’d have heard it without me too. But they would have heard it later with less time to act, and might not have taken it as seriously without my credibility behind it. If enough people like me took your advice they might not have heard it at all because it could be out competed by other less useful memes.
It’s just that, as you manage to find alternative takes (perhaps by credentialed experts, perhaps not) that find flaws in the memes you’ve been spreading, you spread those too. I would say “correct for your mistakes” except that it’s not even a “mistake” necessarily, just “a clarification of oversimplification” or “the next control input given the newest estimate of the state”.
As we get deeper into this mess and people start mobilizing, then “do something in this general direction!” becomes less important. At some point you have to wonder whether the pendulum has swung too far, or if we need to be acting in a different direction, or something else. When everyone in the world is thinking about it we now have a very different problem and instead of simply requiring an ability to take back of the envelope models seriously when they are outside the “socially accepted reality”, you actually need more detailed analyses.
Still, public opinion will need to get on board with whatever is necessary, and in the absence of your input the memes don’t just stop and wait for science, and neither does the coronavirus. If you try to say “but I can pick nits! This isn’t credentialed and perfect!” and try to replace useful first steps with inaction, then you blow your credibility and with it your ability to help shape things for the better. Let’s not do that.
Yes, it is important to not initiate or signal boost bad information at the cost of good ones. Yes, it is important to look for people who are (actually) experts. But it’s also important to provide a path from the real experts to the layfolk, since that doesn’t and cannot happen on its own. The public in general not only can’t evaluate the object level arguments about epidemiology and must defer to authority, they can’t even evaluate object level arguments about who is the real authority—that’s why you get antivaxxers listening to crackpots. It’s appeals to authority (mixed in with justifications) all the way up. If you can’t create the best ideas but you can distinguish between the best ideas and those which merely look good to the untrained eye, it is your job to pass the best ideas down to those who are less able to make that distinction. If you can’t make that distinction yourself but you can at least distinguish between people who can and posers, then it is your job as the next link in the chain to pass this information from those more able to discern to those who are less able to discern than you. This goes all the way down to the masses watching the news, and you better hope you can get the news to get their shit together. I still know people who are in denial because mainstream news told them to be and then failed to appropriately correct for their earlier mistakes. Let’s work to fix that.
Exponential memetic spread does not pathology make. Yes, it’s possible for overactive or mistargeted immune systems to fail to prevent things or to do more harm than good. Yes, Dunning Kruger applies and humility is as necessary as ever. However, so is the courage to be bold and to take action when it is called for instead of hiding in false humility. This “intellectual curve” is a part of our collective immune response to an actual virus which is killing people and threatening to kill exponentially more. Do not flatten the wrong curve. Find a role that allows you to guide it in the right direction, and then guide.
Excellent comment, thank you! Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good if you’re running from an exponential growth curve.