n probably too small to read much into it, but yes: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3Rtvo6qhFde6TnDng/positly-covid-survey-2-controlled-productivity-data
KatjaGrace
Karma: 8,967
I did ask about it, data here (note that n is small): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/iTH6gizyXFxxthkDa/positly-covid-survey-long-covid
Yeah, I meant that early on in the vaccinations, officialish-seeming articles said or implied that breakthrough cases were very rare (even calling them ‘breakthrough cases’, to my ear, sounds like they are sort of more unexpected than they should be, but perhaps that’s just what such things are always called). That seemed false at the time even, before later iterations of covid made it more blatantly so. I think it was probably motivated partly by desire to convince people that the vaccine was very good, rather than just error, which I think is questionable behavior.
Why do people avoid vaccination?
Bernal Heights: acquisition of a bicycle
Positly covid survey 2: controlled productivity data
Positly covid survey: long covid
I agree that I’m more likely to be concerned about in-fact-psychosomatic things than average, and on the outside view, thus probably biased in that direction in interpreting evidence. Sorry if that colors the set of considerations that seem interesting to me. (I didn’t mean to claim that this was an unbiased list, sorry if I implied it. )
Some points regarding the object level:
The scenario I described was to illustrate a logical point (that the initially tempting inference from that study wasn’t valid). So I wouldn’t want to take the numbers from that hypothetical scenario and apply them across the board to interpreting other data. I haven’t thought through what range of possible numbers is really implied, or whether there are other ways to make sense of these prima facie weird findings (especially re lack of connection between having covid and thinking you have covid). If I put a lot of stock in that study, I agree there is some adjustment to be made to other numbers (and probably anyway—surely some amount of misattribution is going on, and even some amount of psychosomatic illness).
My description was actually of how you would get those results if approximately none of the illness was psychosomatic but a lot of it was other illnesses (the description would work with psychosomatic illnesses too, but I worry that you misread my point, since you are saying that in that world most things are psychosomatic, and my point was that you can’t infer that anything was psychosomatic).
If the scenario I described was correct, the rates of misattribution implied would be specific to that population and their total ignorance about whether they had covid, rather than a fact intrinsic to covid in general, and applicable to all times and places. I do find it very hard to believe that in general there is not some decently strong association between having covid and thinking you have covid, even if also a lot of errors.
It’s a single study, and single studies find all kinds of things. I don’t recall seeing other evidence supporting it. In such a case, I’m inclined to treat it as worthy of adding some uncertainty, but not worthy of a huge update about everything.
If this consideration reduced real long covid cases by a factor of two, it doesn’t feel like that changes the story very much (there’s a lot of factor-of-two-level uncertainty all over the place, especially in guessing what the rate is for a specific demographic), so I guess it doesn’t seem cruxy enough to give a lot of attention to.
I agree that mostly it isn’t salient to me that some fraction of cases are misattributions, and that maybe I should keep it in mind more, and say things like ‘it looks like many people who think they had covid can no longer do their jobs’ instead of taking things at face value. Though in my defense, this was a list of considerations, so I’m also not flagging all of the other corrections one might want to make to numbers throughout, as I might if I were doing a careful calculation.
It’s true that I don’t really believe that half of the bad cases at least are misattributions or psychosomatic—the psychosomatic story seems particularly far-fetched (particularly for the bad cases). Perhaps I’m mis-imagining what this would look like. Is there other evidence for this that you are moved by?
Long covid: probably worth avoiding—some considerations
Survey supports ‘long covid is bad’ hypothesis (very tentative)
I thought rapid tests were generally considered to have a much lower false negative rate for detecting contagiousness, though they often miss people who are infected but not yet contagious. I forget why I think this, and haven’t been following possible updates on this story, but is that different from your impression? (Here’s one place I think saying this, for instance: https://www.rapidtests.org/blog/antigen-tests-as-contagiousness-tests) On this story, rapid tests immediately before an event would reduce overall risk by a lot.
Agree the difference between actors and real companions is very important! I think you misread me (see response to AllAmericanBreakfast’s above comment.)
Your current model appears to be wrong (supposing people should respond to fire alarms quickly).
From the paper:
”Subjects in the three naive bystander condition were markedly inhibited from reporting the smoke. Since 75% of the alone subjects reported the smoke, we would expect over 98% of the three-person groups to contain at least one reporter. In fact, in only 38% of the eight groups in this condition did even 1 subject report (p < .01). Of the 24 people run in these eight groups, only 1 person reported the smoke within the first 4 minutes before the room got noticeably unpleasant. Only 3 people reported the smoke within the entire experimental period.”
Fig 1 in the paper looks at a glance to imply also that the solitary people all reported it before 4 minutes.
Sorry for being unclear. The first video shows a rerun of the original experiment, which I think is interesting because it is nice to actually see how people behave, though it is missing footage of the (I agree crucial) three group case. The original experiment itself definitely included groups of entirely innocent participants, and I agree that if it didn’t it wouldn’t be very interesting. (According to the researcher in the footage, via private conversation, he recalls that the filmed rerun also included at least one trial with all innocent people, but it was a while ago, so he didn’t sound confident. See footnote there.)
It still looks to me like this is what I say, but perhaps I could signpost more clearly that the video is different from the proper experiment?
Beyond fire alarms: freeing the groupstruck
I think I would have agreed that answering honestly is a social gaffe a few years ago, and in my even younger years I found it embarrassing to ask such things when we both knew I wasn’t trying to learn the answer, but now I feel like it’s very natural to elaborate a bit, and it usually doesn’t feel like an error. e.g. ‘Alright—somewhat regretting signing up for this thing, but it’s reminding me that I’m interested in the topic’ or ‘eh, seen better days, but making crepes—want one?’ I wonder if I’ve become oblivious in my old age, or socially chill, or the context has changed. It could be partly that this depends on how well the conversationalists know each other, and it has been a slow year and a half for seeing people I don’t live with.
To check I have this: in the two-level adaptive system, one level is the program adjusting its plan toward the target configuration of being a good plan, and the other level is the car (for instance) adjusting its behavior (due to following the plan) toward getting to a particular place without crashing?
Not quite sure what you mean, but all data is linked at the end of https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3Rtvo6qhFde6TnDng/positly-covid-survey-2-controlled-productivity-data