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Comment by wheelerwj | Hacker News Reader

> I’m a software / site reliability engineer

okay, thanks.

Seriously, the list of scientist and medical organizations advising through this period is so long, I don't know why anyone who isn't at equally experienced tries to counter-claim their insights.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do our own research and arrive at our own conclusion, but if you arrive at a different conclusion, you're almost certainly the one whose incorrect. It's so likely that you're wrong, that you must question the logic and data you used to arrive at your conclusion.

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There are two things that non-experts can contribute in a discussion.

The first and most important is "who is the expert". Out of all epidemiologists and government bodies saying different things, who should we listen to?

Secondly, people have other expertises that may be relevant. Experiments have demonstrated that getting people with a lot of different perspectives together can produce better decisions. I recognize that I'm not an expert in respiratory diseases. But I'm pretty good with mathematics, including graph theory and statistics and differential equations. Someone else may know a lot about how supply chains or small businesses are affected by various policies. Or they may be experts in the psychological effects of various levels of isolation.

I also want to mention shouldn't necessarily underestimate the armchair analyst. It's possible to learn a lot on your own. This ties in with the first point I made above, about who is the expert. Evaluating people based on credentials is one way. It's easy and low effort. Taking into account conflicts of interests and track records will improve your evaluation quality a lot. And for most people it's probably not worth their time to evaluate how credible an armchair analyst is.

"It's possible to learn a lot on your own."

Many of us activist bloggers got our start by asking "stupid questions" and then digging deeper when the answers didn't make sense.

Some times we just need motivated laypersons to explain what the experts are trying to say.

Other times we need to point out the emperor is naked.

And so forth.

> Seriously, the list of scientist and medical organizations advising through this period is so long, I don't know why anyone who isn't at equally experienced tries to counter-claim their insights.

Scientists and organizations are made up of people, and thus they can make errors like everyone else. Our expert panel yesterday in Italy pulled out catastrophic scenarios (150K people requiring ICU) that were heavily criticized, not only by "regular" commentators but also scientists.

I don't mean that experts can't be trusted. quite the opposite. They play an important role in advising for a proper public policy to manage the current epidemic, but with such a large number of unknowns, mistakes can and will happen. And when they occur, they must be pointed out regardless of where they come from.

>Seriously, the list of scientist and medical organizations advising through this period is so long, I don't know why anyone who isn't at equally experienced tries to counter-claim their insights.

The average scientist or medical organisation has no more economic knowledge than a layman. The costs of the lockdown are primarily economic. We couldn't possibly make the best decisions by listening to people who are only in a position to identify the benefits of the lockdown (medical) and not the costs (economic). In that regard, some random blogger is just as qualified to assess the economic costs as some random doctor or epidemiologist.

Why is a intelligent, qualified, experienced team of epidemiologists "only in a position to identify the (medical) benefits of the lockdown and not the costs."

After all, you were able to recognise both parameters?

Epidemiologists also talk to economists and other healthcare professionals, and are considerably more likely to be familiar with studies on short and long term health impacts of economic downturns, stress induced by disruption, cancellation of non-critical medical appointments etc than the average smart layman...

Not to mention the fact the core competency of an epidemiologist is statistical analysis and predicting human behaviour with mathematical models at a high level of abstraction, so it's not like the interdisciplinary understanding is a stretch for them

Epidemiologists are not equipped to understand the economic ramifications that occur when large portions of society are forced to halt their business operations. This seems self-evident.

Public policy wrt Covid basically occurs at the intersection of epidemiology and economics. The epidemiologists can help tell you what will happen under different scenarios, and the economists can tell you what will happen economically speaking in those same scenarios.

We're basically balancing the economic impact directly attributable to sick days and to COVID-19 deaths, with the impact of the shutdown itself.

As you already know, my conclusion is that the latter is far more severe. But that balancing act is of course precisely what all the debate is about.

They aren't, but you are. Right

Thus why I don't engage in gatekeeping. I'm just pointing out the obvious hole in your view.

There's no hole in my view because I believe that experts are right more often than not, but I also believe that they can get things wrong, or fail to see the ramifications of certain policies.

Thus why so much of the discussion seems to be optimizing for a single variable - COVID-19 deaths - while ignoring plenty of other dimensions that we care about (deaths from all causes in the long run, quality of life, etc).

In particular quality of life is absolutely missing from the analysis in many who claim that the lockdown is justified.

Well, the problem that at least where I live the experts make statements on public policy outside their domain (e.g., organization of public transport) that are barely practical, if not down right impossible to carry out.

OTOH, someone well versed in economy but not in epidemiology or medicine would fail to understand some of the health implications of the current epidemic.

It's not a problem per se, but that's where the discussion on public policy comes in, weighing all the opinions from the stakeholders, then making a decision (right or wrong, but taking responsiblity for it).

That's why I'm wary of statements like "we will reopen when the scientists say so": it's a deflection of responsibility (they don't carry the burden, rightly so, for their decision, but politics does), and for the politics, a serious step back from its duties.

This attitude reminds me of the story of Mats Järlström who presented a case about Oregon traffic lights being flawed, was written off for not being a professional, then was proven right a year later.

Appeals to authority are never good to do blindly. If different conclusions are reached from two parties, then the conversations must continue if they are legitimately grounded.

While I don't entirely disagree, there's a trap here, which is that being open to all comers also allows (sometimes dangerously) time-wasting cranks/fools and trolls/provocateurs through the door. Filtering below "credentialed" but above "Dunning-Kruger" and "willfully misleading" is not simple.

> was written off for not being a professional, then was proven right a year later.

He was sued for using the title "engineer" while not being registered as a professional engineer in the state. He still had an engineering degree and the education that came with it. He was only written of since traffic light cameras were a money maker and the times were intentionally short to keep the money flowing. Basically he could have been Einstein himself and would have faced the same road blocks, because the people responsible did not want to hear the truth, their money depended on not hearing the truth.

A better comparison for this case would be the story of amateur mathematician Goodwin in Indiana. Whose attempts to revolutionize math were ultimately blocked by a university professor abusing his position as authority figure to coach legislators against redefining PI. Actually it is a nice reversal: Goodwin was a doctor first and self taught mathematician second, and he was in direct opposition to the educated authority on math of his time. Meanwhile now we have a computer scientist and self educated expert on virology contradicting almost every practicing medical professional alive.

I’ve started explicitly telling people in my life that I’m not interested in their non-expert opinions when they weigh in on when we should open up.

Do you tell that to everyone, as soon as they open their mouth with a thought, or only the folks who suggest we should ease the lockdown sooner?

It would be interesting on HN if we developed a habit of interrogating everyone for their credentials and shouting them down immediately if they're just another software engineer.

I think your parent commenter literally said “yes” to your question.

It didn’t sound like an interrogation, it sounded more like a brick wall of “this conversation is over.”

There are definitely diplomatic ways to say this to people or change the subject.

People get the polite one the first time, and the undiplomatic “I’m not interested in your opinion” the second time.

When people ask me, I usually say “I have no idea, we’re all stuck on this ride until the end”.

>It would be interesting on HN if we developed a habit of interrogating everyone for their credentials and shouting them down immediately if they're just another software engineer.

That would be horrible but anyone who is a specialist in a field knows how consistently wrong the HN hivemind is on any subject outside the realm of software. This place is perhaps the biggest community of people who overestimate their knowledge on any subject when in reality they have little knowledge/expertise in said subject.

The encouraging thing about HN is that much of the community seems aware of the propensity for software engineers to think they have the answer to all the problems of the world. IMO, acknowledging that and not taking ourselves too seriously helps keep this forum from completely degenerating into another Reddit.

>IMO, acknowledging that and not taking ourselves too seriously helps keep this forum from completely degenerating into another Reddit.

Ironic, because many people here seem to believe not taking ourselves too seriously will lead to this forum degenerating into another Reddit.

Touché. I guess I'm describing my wishes more than reality.

> It would be interesting on HN if we developed a habit of interrogating everyone for their credentials and shouting them down immediately if they're just another software engineer.

HN is a rich source of ironic behavior indeed.

Ryan Kemper is attempting to construct a decision making framework. Right or wrong, I like that someones are trying.

It now occurs to me that the experts (epidemiologists?) have already done this, which would be a pretty good starting point. If so, why aren't we now debating their plans?

I want someone, anyone to state thresholds and benchmarks. Tell us the parameters and values. Then we can have a constructive debate.

Declining infection and death rate for X days.

Permissible level of activities to keep R < 1.

Supply chain activity levels to keep people fed, production of essential goods.

Given the complete lack of a plan at the federal level, we can forgive the Ryan Kempers of the world for trying to make some sense of this craziness.

Also, it just now occurs to me the newly formed regional compacts most certainly are doing the same. I'll look to see my jurisdiction is publishing.

Multiple groups of experts have released plans to reopen the country [1], and I'm assuming this is happening all over the globe. The reason some people are not debating them is that they find the options very unpalatable, so instead they turn to armchair experts who write authoritative-sounding treatises that tell us what we want to hear.

1. Examples: https://www.vox.com/2020/4/10/21215494/coronavirus-plans-soc...

Good stuff. Thanks.

Very quick response, because I will go back and read all the linked plans more thoroughly.

I want more of Center for American Progress's "Step #6: Targeted, gradual lifting of restrictions", done more concretely.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/news/2020...

Apologies, because I'm way more arm wavy than pedantic, so always struggle to explain myself:

I expect:

Concrete targets with concrete numbers, to be revised as necessary. Repeating from above "Downward trend for X days."

Explicit preconditions and assumptions. Like "3 day supply surplus of PPE, with excess mfg capacity to allow ramp up." and "Sufficient testing (per capita) with X hours turnaround with < X false negatives."

Automatic actions, consequences when targets & thresholds are reached. Like "Restore social isolation if trends are flat or increasing for X days."

Initially, best guess for targets and thresholds are just fine, then iterate as we mature.

PS- CAP omitted temperature screenings, which I currently think must be part of the overall strategy.

The "experts" get it wrong all the time. They have the same dysfunctions as any other community of people, including orthodoxies, group think, and other defects to their capacity to solve problems.

why don't you enlighten us as to where the logic breaks down instead of refuting the idea that you might have chosen the wrong voice to believe?

And scroll down to the section on hero worship to see where the author anticipated and addressed your objection.

That seems to be classical ad hominem.

For example, I also don't have medical education, yet I am entitled to analyze information and insist that homeopathy, Chinese medicine and chlorine necklaces absolutely do not help against the virus, unlike the educated medical professionals who disagree with me.

“You have no credentials or expertise to make public health recommendations” is not an ad hominem.

That's exactly ad-homimem. Instead of arguing against his points directly, they are dismissed because of who thre author is...

Whether the author is a health official who has authority to do something is irrelevant to the substance of their opinion.

The traditional ad hominem is a personal attack on the character, beliefs, motivations, or characteristics of the speaker, which is why they’re considered out of bounds in polite society.

Discussing the experience and expertise that someone has in a subject when they’re making policy prescriptions is absolutely in bounds. While it sounds high minded to say that we should argue everything on the merits alone, the brutal reality is that this results in the experts (who are few) being shouted out by the amateurs (who are many).

Expertise matters; this isn’t debate club. If you’re going to start making extraordinary claims in a field you just started studying last month, you must provide extraordinary proof. Not having expertise in an area doesn’t make you a bad person, it just means that maybe we don’t have to listen to your take.

"Ad hominem" literally means "against the man", and it refers to the logical fallacy of attacking the attributes of the man rather than the logic of the man's argument. That's all there is to it, and you're simply wrong.

Well, perhaps to avoid such attacks in future he could establish some sort of credentials in the area of interest.

Perhaps by gaining a degree and employment in the area of health and medicine?

Most educated medical professionals absolutely agree that homeopathy, Chinese medicine and chlorine necklaces do not help against the virus [except to the limited degree placebos are useful].

A software reliability engineer citing LessWrong and reddit to argue epidemiologists fundamentally misunderstand how to do epidemiology is much closer to the instinctive contrarianism of the average defender of homeopathy....

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