Comment by ryankemper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryankemper | Hacker News Reader

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As you can tell, I read everyone's feedback.

I don't share your views on this matter. I think, particularly given that public policy is relevant to all of us, that it does make sense for even a layperson to engage in the conversation. This is not merely a scientific issue. Rather, we need to don our scientist caps to try to figure out what is likely to happen under different scenarios from an epidemiological standpoint, and then we need to think like economists when analyzing the economic impacts of proposed policies, etc. It's very much an intersectional discipline.

While I am very transparently trying to shift peoples' opinions, I am also inviting them to try to shift my opinion.

Rather than sink 200 hours into this in order to make it picture-perfect, I wrote a first draft that I feel covers some important points, and shared it to get feedback. As you have seen, some parts were completely wrong, some parts were completely right, and a lot of parts were/are in between.

By doing so, I've exposed myself to viewpoints that I would not have otherwise heard, and vice versa.

We all get frustrated when people make statements that expose an ignorance on a subject that we are well versed in. But how we choose to respond to it is very telling. So personally, if someone makes a ridiculous statement about my field, but their statement was made in good faith and they are seeking feedback, I will absolutely take the time to try to tell them where I think they got it wrong. Even if I think they got, well, everything wrong.

I do believe that you believe your article was written in good faith...

You said you didn’t sink 200 hours into this project, and that is my exact criticism. The people working on covid-19 mitigation in hospital systems, labs, pharmaceuticals, and within the CDC and state health agencies actually do this for a living and have spent well over 200 hours per-capita figuring this stuff out. I mean, heck, that’s only about a month’s worth of full time work. That’s how little expertise you’re bringing to the table here: basically less time than a summer internship.

What role do you feel private citizens should take in discussing public policy?

I agree that my projections won't be as accurate as, say, the top modellers'. (BTW, I'm working on the next iteration of this article that will tie in Ferguson's model which is IMO very high-quality and what I will use to better characterize the containment case, since I agree with the criticism that I need to do a better job characterizing the "other side" so to speak)

Where I disagree is the incredible notion that only "scientists" or epidemiologists are equipped to propose/discuss policy. That seems very backwards to me. We need experts, scientific, economic, etc, in order to help us make predictions about the ramifications of various public health interventions. But when it comes to an ultimate decision on policy, that requires knowing what our _values_ are (i.e. what we're optimizing for).

I don't see many epidemiologists trying to forecast the economic cost of lockdown, or trying to debate the ethical merits of these extreme measures, nor the constitutionality therein. They're not fully equipped to do so. Neither am I, as we've already said. But each of us as private citizens needs to look at the data and the projections, and then look at our personal values, in order to determine what we feel is best.

Or to put another way, what I would call "the cult of expertise" has a bootstrapping problem. Let's say I accept that I should follow whatever the experts say without question. The hard problem of expertise is, how am I, a non-expert, supposed to evaluate who is an expert? Or which of the experts specifically I should trust?

When we decide someone is an expert we are making a value judgement based off of our own heuristics, biases, preconceptions, etc. There's no getting around that.

To be clear, I am not "arguing against" the concept of experts. Or claiming that I know more than them, etc. All I'm saying is, it's not enough to just say "let the experts handle it", because the problem of "who is the expert?" is intractible. So instead, we make the best effort that we can.

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Finally, I want to say that, as I've said elsewhere, if my argument is truly so riddled with flaws and holes - and this thread has pointed out a _lot_ of flaws, which I am currently trying to address - then it should not be very hard to show why my conclusions are incorrect. It really shouldn't require having to resort to credential-waving, etc.

Thanks for engaging. I truly appreciate it.

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