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On “Armchair Epidemiology”

scottaaronson.com

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Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#41

Post by btilly »

jasonhansel wrote: post #22

> A viral article implores us to “flatten the curve of armchair epidemiology”—that is, to listen only to authoritive sources like the CDC, not random people spouting on social media. > This was notable to me for being the diametric opposite of the actual lesson of the past two months. So, because some (unspecified, unnamed) experts weren't able to predict the future with perfect accuracy, we should give equal credenc…

That isn't what Scott is saying.

His default was to listen to those in authority and responsible. Instead he wishes that he listened to those who did independent thinking and their own projections with verifiable reasoning from the data.

This doesn't mean don't listen to epidemiologists. There were plenty of epidemiologists who were plenty concerned in early February. It means do not pay particular heed to epidemiologists who were selected to be listened to via a politically motivated process.

And my own editorial. Go read the book Superforecasting. The people that Scott is recommending listening to are exactly the kind of people who do better at making short term forecasts than the majority of recognized experts. And the reason why their forecasts are better is exactly the same as why they got it right this time.

Quantitative thinking is something we as a society are still learning to trust. We've come to trust it in baseball. (Go read Moneyball.) We've come to respect it in politics. (Nate Silver established a following for a reason.) But we have yet to internalize as second nature the idea that we should sanity check everything with people who clearly think in a quantitative way. And that we should attempt that kind of thought ourselves.

In the long run I believe we will. And perhaps reflecting on who got COVID right and who got it wrong will help us get there sooner.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#42

Post by vincentmarle »

jasonhansel wrote: post #22

> A viral article implores us to “flatten the curve of armchair epidemiology”—that is, to listen only to authoritive sources like the CDC, not random people spouting on social media. > This was notable to me for being the diametric opposite of the actual lesson of the past two months. So, because some (unspecified, unnamed) experts weren't able to predict the future with perfect accuracy, we should give equal credenc…

This is typical game theory: epidemiologists and other authorities care about the collective outcome (reducing the # of deaths, the economy, PPE for medical workers etc) while individuals mostly care about their own safety, and those goals aren't always aligned. This is why it’s not necessarily wise to listen to their “advice” of not wearing masks or keep going to work, because they’re optimizing for different things than you should do for yourself. For example, look at the disastrous “herd immunity” experiments that countries like the UK and the Netherlands are trying to conduct at the cost of many lives.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#43

Post by gentleman11 »

tjr225 wrote: post #2

If this current situation has taught me anything it is that the internet is a mush of armchair garbage and it’s overwhelming to decipher- yes even what I’m typing now. The whole thing has me desperate to ignore everyone and read a book. What a joke; to think we are all somehow experts.

I worry about this in software development. There are so many “experts” posting blogs about whatever is on their mind, and the tide of common wisdom gets caught up in it.

Eg, everybody, everywhere said that NodeJS has amazing performance for high io workloads. If you look at benchmarks however, the nodejs systems cannot keep up with older tech, so now the argument is “we use it because it’s a nice environment, not for performance.”

I am trying to focus on textbooks now, but with so much self publishing I think that it is only a temporary strategy

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#44

Post by JimTheMan »

zozbot234 wrote: post #15
alexandercrohde wrote: post #12

This is a topic that seems to be in a perverse conflict of interests. A. Politicians have interests representing themselves as well as their country, and thus have given dishonest advice (masks don't help) with an ulterior motive (save them for hospital), downplayed the problem, and covered up the number of cases. B. I think a lot of actually qualified experts (doctors, scientists) to think the public can't handle th…

> Social distancing is a drop in the bucket Sorry, but look at how China, South Korea, Taiwan etc. are doing right now - this doesn't jive at all with "social distancing is a drop in the bucket". Even Western countries/places which started social distancing early in their local outbreaks look like they'll be a lot better off than places which didn't. > The vast majority of young people will be totally fine This is al…

I highly recommend this video from Korea (Professor Kim Woo-joo from Korea University Guro Hospital) that gives a Korean perspective on the disease and the western response to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU

A few points of interest: (He is a very respectful fellow so apologies if the summary seems a bit to the point)

- Masks help and he is slightly puzzled why the west hasn't adopted that culture

- Their testing and tracing helps and they doubt the US would allow their level of privacy invasion

- Korea is doing well because they have had to respond to pandemics and were prepared (as are Taiwan, Singapore etc)

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#45

Post by whatever1 »

petertodd wrote: post #39
whatever1 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Art can be contemporary. Science not. We are currently looking at 200k deaths in the USA [1] from COVID-19, in the good scenario. How is it even compatible with their 0.01% mortality rates? Have we forgotten how to divide numbers? [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/490138-birx-says... P.S. They even make the claim that COVID-19 has 1/10th the mortality of seasonal flu :facepalm:

"We are currently looking at 200k deaths in the USA" That is a prediction. It is not yet a fact. Right now we just don't have a good idea of how many people 1) how many people are currently infected, 2) how many people have already been infected and recovered without being tested, 3) how many people were already immune and would never have been infected, 4) how the way you are infected changes the outcome of the dise…

This way of thinking is exactly what brought us here.

"We need more data".

No you dont need data, look at the ICUs you fool. They are struggling to find ventilators and in worse cases with lower capacity, even just for beds to deal with the influx of patients.

But you can wait for the data. They are incoming. Hopefully we will still be here in 2 months to discuss.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#46

Post by jasonhansel »

btilly wrote: post #41
jasonhansel wrote: post #22

> A viral article implores us to “flatten the curve of armchair epidemiology”—that is, to listen only to authoritive sources like the CDC, not random people spouting on social media. > This was notable to me for being the diametric opposite of the actual lesson of the past two months. So, because some (unspecified, unnamed) experts weren't able to predict the future with perfect accuracy, we should give equal credenc…

That isn't what Scott is saying. His default was to listen to those in authority and responsible. Instead he wishes that he listened to those who did independent thinking and their own projections with verifiable reasoning from the data. This doesn't mean don't listen to epidemiologists. There were plenty of epidemiologists who were plenty concerned in early February. It means do not pay particular heed to epidemiolo…

Did people "thinking independently" and "making their own projections" do a better job--on average, not just looking at the outliers--than the more established experts? I don't think we have any empirical data to support that claim.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#47

Post by Gibbon1 »

naringas wrote: post #27
tjr225 wrote: post #2

If this current situation has taught me anything it is that the internet is a mush of armchair garbage and it’s overwhelming to decipher- yes even what I’m typing now. The whole thing has me desperate to ignore everyone and read a book. What a joke; to think we are all somehow experts.

I agree, I still cannot make up my mind about masks... It seems like "back in the day" people trusted the experts, becuase well, there weren't many alternatives (?); but now thanks to the internet everyone can google for a while and feel like they have a worthwhile opinion. It seems like now it's possible to find an expert (and/or data) to justify any opinion. I am not saying this is bad, but that it's just different…

After rolling things around my current thought is, what if this isn't the last rodeo? What if there is another outbreak?

Because there will be. Of 'something' but we don't know what that will be.

Seems to me then what you want to a robust set of responses that do not require people to make decisions based on god knows what. Because in the future you don't know ahead of time what's going to be helpful and what won't be.

What you want to public to do is reflexively anything that might help. And then later tell them what measures they can back off on. Not the other way around.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#48

Post by BurningCycles »

zozbot234 wrote: post #15
alexandercrohde wrote: post #12

This is a topic that seems to be in a perverse conflict of interests. A. Politicians have interests representing themselves as well as their country, and thus have given dishonest advice (masks don't help) with an ulterior motive (save them for hospital), downplayed the problem, and covered up the number of cases. B. I think a lot of actually qualified experts (doctors, scientists) to think the public can't handle th…

> Social distancing is a drop in the bucket Sorry, but look at how China, South Korea, Taiwan etc. are doing right now - this doesn't jive at all with "social distancing is a drop in the bucket". Even Western countries/places which started social distancing early in their local outbreaks look like they'll be a lot better off than places which didn't. > The vast majority of young people will be totally fine This is al…

>Sorry, but look at how China, South Korea, Taiwan etc. are doing right now

I'm taking China numbers with a LARGE grain of salt (basically I don't believe them at all given how they have lied from day one of this pandemic). I'd wager South Korea has a level of preparedness that few other countries in the world has, given that they share border with a hostile country.

Overall it seems that South Korea and Taiwan were very successful in restricting and tracking travelers (I read Taiwan totally closed the border for foreigners a couple of weeks ago) and were therefore quick to quarantine people coming from countries with outbreaks.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#49

Post by bJGVygG7MQVF8c »

> I sent a quick reply two minutes later:

> For now, I think the risk from the ordinary flu is much much greater! But worth watching to see if it becomes a real pandemic.

Nope. Lost all credibility right there. Do not pass GO, do not collect 2 minutes of attention. Sorry.

Oh, you've learned something from the error and you've updated your priors? Great, good for you. You're still unreliable.

Re: On “Armchair Epidemiology”

#50

Post by fellowniusmonk »

Caveat Emptor is one of the deepest truths, whether shopping on amazon or listening to experts of different stripes, there has been enough information on the internet to come to accurate conclusions at every step, enough historical info from sars and spanish flu to see what could have been coming down the pipe, enough social media leak from China to tell that this was not contained, the choice is not between obliviousness or panic it's about prudent low cost risk mitigation.

The fact is, that many people's internal information filtering algorithm is lacking, small preparation is sufficient 90% of the time as long as you are looking at slow moving historic signals, it's about small risk mitigations early.

As played out as it is, this is further proof that the medium is the message, people engaging in unidirectional or bidirectional firehose messaging (cable tv, twitter, facebook) have tended towards panic or dismissiveness, people following historical information and slowly changing documents and global forums have been able to take prudent low cost risk mitigation, and by doing it early have operated comfortably on a different wavelength than people panic buying.

Unstructured messaging and it's cognitive overhead is a problem, unstructured messaging means that even if the inbound message is about the issue currently in your head, the design of "alerts" trigger a disruptive near context switch, like a digital doorway effect that sabotages deep thinking, deep thinking is required for prudence.

People still don't understand how bad this is though, for Americans, I'm only just now seeing a few people and articles connect the dots on bio warfare preparedness and how our asymmetrically weak and discordant response puts the U.S. at increased risk from a national security and power projection perspective. These aren't truths per se, just probability curves.

As an example, since mid December I've been gently decreasing my downside risk, divesting and putting a few dollars here and there into things like masks and non perishables, already had a bidet, water filter, UV lamps, etc. No special preparation just things I already have around the house for my aquarium, camping, spray painting, hot ones challenges, etc. I haven't had to wait in any grocery lines or experience any personal discomfort or anxiety, and my slightly early social distancing was subtle enough most people didn't even notice. I was telling people who asked "These might be historic times, low cost preparation is in order."

All this is from an individuals perspective, businesses should already be operating with risk management plans.

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