I listened to a podcast this morning in which a scientist - one who believes he is speaking within his field but actually isn't - predicts that a coronavirus second wave with be ramping up shortly, by the end of July, which will be 5-10 times worse than the first run, and will result in the deaths of up to 3 million Americans. He claims that this is because we didn't shut down early enough in March, and that Trump and Fox News have systematically misled us, and Trump should be tried for crimes against humanity, Nurenberg style. He was still going, but I turned it off, so I don't know the rest of it. Maybe he eventually got around to mentioning China, but somehow I doubt it.
That could be, I suppose. My reading of the numbers has been more encouraging. The deaths per day have continued to slowly decline. The places that have sudden crises are spread apart, reducing the possibility of overload. We do have more equipment. We know more about what is very dangerous and not-very-dangerous. Yet I know nothing about epidemics and second waves, so it's best not to breathe a sigh of relief on the basis of my assessment. A second wave might be coming, and it might be terrible.
What occurred to me while shaking my head during the rest of my commute is that just about everything has been predicted at this point, so many people are going to be right just by accident even if they are jerks, and some good and well-meaning people will be wrong. As always, really. There has been a lot of crowing about how the experts were wrong and good free Americans will never listen to them again, but of course the experts they are choosing to reject are as carefully selected as the other experts they choose to believe. It has all been a very discouraging display of confirmation bias all around.
4 comments:
Definition of Expert: "Ex" is a has-been while "spurt" is a drip out of control.
Expert: a sonuvabitch from out of town, with slides.
Assistant Village Idiot: What occurred to me while shaking my head during the rest of my commute is that just about everything has been predicted at this point, so many people are going to be right just by accident even if they are jerks, and some good and well-meaning people will be wrong.
You receive an unsolicited newsletter each week for seven weeks correctly predicting the movement of the stock market. After that, the sender asks for $1000 for the next newsletter.
This is how the hoax works. The scammer sends out 100,000 newsletters. Half the newsletters predict the market will rise, half that the market will fall. For those who received the correct prediction, the scammer sends out 50,000 newsletters. Again, half the newsletters predict the market will rise, half that the market will fall. After seven weeks, there will remain about 700 who have seen perfect predictions. Of those, multiply the percentage of suckers by $1000.
Assistant Village Idiot: one who believes he is speaking within his field but actually isn't
The further someone is from their field of study and the further an expert opinion is from the consensus within the field of study, the less credence should be given to the appeal to authority.
Uncle Bill: Expert: a sonuvabitch from out of town, with slides.
Experts are not always right, but they are more likely to be right when speaking to a consensus within their own field of study than someone who is not such an expert. With regards to COVID-19, the predictions about 100,000+ deaths were roughly correct, the significant unknown factor having been the effectiveness of countermeasures. In South Korea, they have been very effective. In the U.S., not so much.
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