Comment by georgespencer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by georgespencer | Hacker News Reader

This article puts it better than I ever could. I had a similar reaction when I read extremely critical press coverage of some VCs in Europe investing in YPlan, which eventually sold for a nominal amount to Time Out London.

The synopsis of all the coverage was: "How could they have spent all that money? And how could the investors have been so STUPID?"

My friend Fred Destin wrote a great essay on this[1], and I'll do the horrid thing of quoting my own note to him in reply:

> It’s analogous to a soccer fan questioning the manager’s decision to put player X on the field instead of Y. The manager sees both players on the training ground for hours every day, knows their mood, talks to them, understands how they respond to different situations, and consults his coaches. Then the matchgoing fan sees 90 minutes of output on Saturday and makes a judgement with <1% of the data a manager has.

> Past a certain point in fundraising and traction, it’s impossible to believe that a startup failing is anything more interesting than a combination of poorer-than-expected execution, and bets not paying off.

[1] https://medium.com/tech-london/hey-yplan-how-do-you-dare-go-...

Scale this up to anything and you will want to be governed by a benevolent dictator. Not even senators themselves read the full bills they vote on, and I don't blame them with it being hundreds of pages of reading that could easily be parted out to aides, but the electorate certainly doesn't have this advantage. Maybe 1% of voters are truly informed.

It's perfectly fine not to be informed (or interested!) in most topics. It only becomes dangerous when you're uninformed but trust your own opinion more than the experts. Popular examples are climate change, or the COVID-19 response.

SO we are to be ruled by experts?

Show me the model produced by he experts that has been right? Show me the science behind the idea of quarantining the entire population in order to slow the spread of Covid-19. There is science behind quarantining sick people - but not healthy people. Show me the science behind the social distancing - 6 foot rule? I mean really - where IS the science to those things? These experts are self-proclaimed. I am more than willing to listen to a bridge builder tell me why I need to use a certain kind of steel as apposed to another - but many of these experts that we have been listening to lately are anything but experts.

I’m confused. Are you arguing for being ruled by non-experts? Sounds like you think we already are, what’s the problem?

The opposite of “expert” isn’t “uses magical common sense to arrive at the right decision”, it’s “crapshoot”.

> Are you arguing for being ruled by non-experts?

No, he is making the valid point that in many areas that are highly relevant to public policy, there are no experts. Those who call themselves "experts" actually aren't. Nobody has enough understanding of the problem domain to make accurate predictions.

In such a case, the only viable solution is for nobody to "rule".

"The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists." - Joan Robinson, 1955

She's not wrong. If my adulthood has taught me anything it's that supposed "experts" are oftentimes anything but. And they're certainly not trustworthy just because of their title or credentialing.

Decisions have to be made—including doing nothing. Someone is always "ruling". Diffusing responsibility does not change that fact (though it can have other significant benefits).

I'm sympathetic to your POV, by the way, because uncritically listening to experts has literally killed millions of people in the past century. But the key word is "uncritically". Pushback is healthy, discussion is super-healthy; my position, though, is that in any argument, experts should get more weight unless the people arguing back have strong, on-the-ground evidence.

> Decisions have to be made

In general, I disagree. Most of the time decisions do not have to be made--more precisely, decisions by "leaders" who get to dictate what everyone must or must not do so not have to be made, and should not be made. Our political structure makes it seem like they do, but that's a bug in our political structure, not an actual necessity.

> in any argument, experts should get more weight

If "experts" is defined as "people who have a demonstrated track record of making accurate predictions in the past", then yes, I agree.

However, by that criterion, as I said, in most domains that are of importance for public policy, there are no experts. Your statement, while correct in itself with that definition of "expert", does not help at all in those domains.

Any other definition of "expert" does not justify your statement.

> Our political structure makes it seem like they do, but that's a bug in our political structure, not an actual necessity.

Again, "no decision" is a decision, especially in the presence of alternatives.

> If "experts" is defined as "people who have a demonstrated track record of making accurate predictions in the past", then yes, I agree.

How good must their track record be before they warrant more weight? 100%? 75%? 5% better than an average person's? I think each level warrants different levels of deference. If a perfect oracle speaks, you do what they say. If someone who spent a long time studying a very complex problem has an opinion, you listen carefully, and ask follow-up questions, but you don't pretend that the Google University™ twenty minute crash course on the topic is as informative.

I recognize it's not simple (and it's fraught). But saying "there are no experts" when people dedicate their lives to studying a lot of these phenomena is only true if you demand 100% accuracy.

> "no decision" is a decision

"No decision" by leaders in a situation where there is not sufficient justification for ordering everyone to do or not do something, is not the same as "no decision" period. Individuals are still making decisions.

> How good must their track record be before they warrant more weight?

Good enough that their predicted benefits from a policy are reliable enough to justify the costs and risks of that policy.

> If someone who spent a long time studying a very complex problem has an opinion, you listen carefully

Not if they have no track record of accurate predictions. "Studying for a long time" is not a good proxy for that. Lots of people study complex topics for a long time without ever making any accurate predictions.

> saying "there are no experts" when people dedicate their lives to studying a lot of these phenomena is only true if you demand 100% accuracy

You're missing the point. It's not that the accuracy has to be 100%. It's that you're looking at the wrong thing. It doesn't matter how long someone has spent studying a topic. All that matters is their predictive track record. Looking at anything else just distracts you from what matters.

> Individuals are still making decisions.

Or, the market is making decisions for them. And those are often obvious to predict.

>> "no decision" is a decision

> "No decision" by leaders in a situation where there is not sufficient justification for ordering everyone to do or not do something, is not the same as "no decision" period. Individuals are still making decisions.

Except that it did not play out well because individuals were deceived by so called (wrong) experts who claimed that it is nothing worse than flu.

Based on this individuals took decisions that were opposite to the optimal result and traveled to the areas most inflicted by the virus and carried it to their countries en masse.

Countries that understood the character of the virus and implemented early restrictions (that was questions on days) did fare better that countries that waited to implement restrictions.

>> Decisions have to be made > In general, I disagree.

You can check the data. Lets take for example 3 similar Mediterranean countries - Spain, Italy and Greece.

First 2 waited with restrictions till >1000 confirmed infected. 3rd executed restrictions when there was only 65 confirmed cases.

Result. First 2 tens of thousands dead, 3rd <200.

There is clear patterns - earlier countries did implement testing facilities and applied restrictions - faster they got the spread under control with lower causalities.

The Imperial College paper that kicked off the whole thing has plenty of details on various quarantining scenarios, including full population quarantine and at risk population quarantine, or any combination thereof. Did you read it? Do you not agree with the simulations or what are your objections?

https://judithcurry.com/2020/04/01/imperial-college-uk-covid...

From browsing that site, she seems to be a professional science contrarian - worth keeping in mind when reading that article.

> she seems to be a professional science contrarian

She's a scientist. To the extent she's a "contrarian", it's due to her personal experience in seeing how science actually works as compared to how it's supposed to work.

> However, using Ferguson20’s stated assumptions, I calculate a 30% higher death toll of approximately 660,000 people (Column A7), implying an IFR of 1.23%.

Now what?

The word quarantine originated from quarantining all people entering an area a certain number of days. Not just visibly sick people.

> a certain number of days.

to be precise, literally 40 days ("quaranta" means 40 in Italian).

> SO we are to be ruled by experts?

There's a reason people in power have advisors, and it isn't just to rubber-stamp things.

Back in the old days, FDR had a board of experts to advise him on things. He listened to them. Governments also have a professional civil service, full of people who don't rule but who are in contact with those who do, and who know enough to give good advice.

So the question isn't whether we have a technocracy or a democratic system totally unconnected to reality. It's how well-advised our democratically elected leaders are.

Hi! I am not sure about your background--which matters for explanation. I cannot speak to 6 feet in particular, but the basic idea starts with the assumption that the primary vector is large respiratory droplets. If that's the case, imagine you are a droplet. You are acted upon by gravity and by air/temperature. As you move along, you will fall. At some distance, most droplets above a certain size will have settled. That's the basic reasoning. You can argue about the particular cutoff, but the bigger question is how relevant aerosols are. But, the problem is that in the early spread of a virus, the growth in infections is very fast. Someone has to guess. If you wait for perfect knowledge, a lot of people will die because you are taking a linear approach to an exponentiatial problem.

My IT director doesn't know every facet of what is in our environment, and generally is not up to date as to what changes are happening on the day to day. And he doesn't need to be.

The point of high-level workers is so they can focus on high-level priorities. They have staff -- legal aids, system admins, business analysts, whatever -- whose job it is to digest that stuff and put it into simple briefings for leadership to evaluate in the context of other issues.

> I don't blame them with it being hundreds of pages of reading that could easily be parted out to aides, but the electorate certainly doesn't have this advantage

The electorate isn't expected to have this advantage, and is not expected to read the bills. The whole reason for representative democracy is so that the common voter does not have to parse this stuff -- that's explicitly the point. I find someone who reflects my views and I put them in office, and trust that they'll be able to digest what's happening and vote accordingly. The common man isn't expected to understand tariffs, international banking, military theory, computer engineering, social justice issues, and food scarcity.

A lot to unpack here.

> The common man isn't expected to understand tariffs, international banking, military theory, computer engineering, social justice issues, and food scarcity.

What better use is there of the common man's time than understanding societal issues like justice and scarcity? Are you describing how the world is or claiming how it should be? If you do not understand justice, scarcity, etc. how can you claim to elect someone who reflects your views--ignoring that a lot of politics is lesser evil voting?

An uneducated populace voting is a worst-case scenario for a representative democracy.

> > The common man isn't expected to understand tariffs, international banking, military theory, computer engineering, social justice issues, and food scarcity.

> What better use is there of the common man's time than understanding societal issues like justice and scarcity?

Both of those can be true.

Hence my question of whether the OP is prescriptive or descriptive.

> An uneducated populace voting is a worst-case scenario for a representative democracy.

I'd probably say that the worst-case scenario is a populace that doesn't care whether their representative is educated on the issues.

There are many things that I consider myself uneducated in, but as long as my representative has similar values, is not corrupt, is competent and finds and listens to experts in the relevant fields, then I don't necessarily consider that to be a problem.

We should be electing people we trust to care about the detail of stuff that doesn't interest normal humans, not people we'd like to have a beer with.

Political theory: The study of how to maximize the knowledge of decision-makers while minimizing their conflict of interest.

I get the opposite message: You're saying (and I agree) that even a small group of people chosen to be dedicated to making informed decisions is not able to keep up with the demands it puts on them, specifically they need to make decisions based on very partial information. How is a benevolent dictator supposed to do better? That doesn't make sense.

At least in theory the wisdom of crowds can do better. In practice, it's often hard to argue.

Regarding sports. Unfortunately, let's not discount the politics and human nature involved in fielding a team. Some players get to play because of their salary, some players get to play because of their relationship with the coach, some players get to play because they're trade bait, some coaches really are wrong, etc.

https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck-daddy/maple-leafs...

Coaches are human too. They are just as fallible as the rest of us. They may work with better information than the fan, but this doesn't mean that they should never be questioned. And good coaches allow themselves to change opinions if criticism makes sense.

For business... for every Netflix, there's a WeWork that everyone can see is insane and they're not wrong.

Regarding sports, most people fail to understand that most professional sport association (like football "clubs") are actually entertainment companies.

The sport is just the bait for the spectators.

A coach might choose a certain player over another just because the people acclaim him/her.

Also, don't forget that scandals about rigged games are quite regular nowadays.

The american model is certainly entertainment focused, but the european football model at least has youth leagues and a lot more local outreach than a given american pro team in their host city.

But they still make decisions on who to play (partially) based on who puts butts in seats.

> some players get to play because they’re trade bait

I mean, insofar as we’re measuring teams by winning games, rather than measuring teams by how profitable they are, we’re probably not measuring their inclusive fitness. Winning doesn’t help you if nobody pays attention; and, vice versa, making money helps you (in the long term) even if you don’t win.

The other thing is that player evaluation is an extremely imprecise science. For example, even with all the information modern professional sports scouts get about their prospects, many new players still wash out and are busts. The science just isn't precise enough to give definitive answers (and it's possible that science can't give answers in some of these cases). So there are a large number of judgement calls to be made, even with all the information available.

A fan might be correct when they say, "Coach should have played X instead of Y.", but the trick is knowing that in advance. And knowing hundreds of other things in advance too. Maybe coach got that one decision wrong, but hundreds of others right. The fan is unlikely to get that many correct on a percentage basis.

I suppose that's part of the fun of fantasy sports, proving that if you had the chance you could do a better job deciding which players will perform the best each week

I disagree with the soccer fan analogy. Often in soccer the team manager publicly reveals key perspectives and strategies that always guide their decisions. They also reveal patterns of player selection that link to their perspectives and strategies, often over many years across multiple teams.

If Jose Mourinho comes to coach your team, you know right away the player recruitment and selection will be rooted in a very calculated defensive approach, conservative possession-oriented play style.

He has done this at several clubs where it was universally understood to be a bad strategic idea given the talents of the specific players he would be inheriting, even from his first day on the job.

Even casual fans could see that, despite the coach spending hours and hours observing player training, talking to players and studying game film, he was biased to impose his preferred strategy onto the team no matter what, even if all the evidence said it was unjustified.

Considering the Premier League further, this effect just gets worse the less skilled the manager is. Many mid or bottom table teams have blunderously bad managers that combine both being low skilled with being hyper committed to a fixed strategy regardless of the characteristics of their players. Once they have dug their heels in on the strategy, they can’t go back on it or appear to buckle under fan pressure, or else they seem like a pushover / non-expert with no special knowledge worth millions of dollars, and it becomes entirely political (making the strategic weakness even more apparent).

I would say it’s a case where “the wisdom of crowds” really is wisdom and the consensus criticisms about player selection are usually very valid and well-supported and the connection to the coach’s strategic weaknesses is obvious.

I'd say both of those things are frequently true, and it's hard to know which is right when. "Fans" in aggregate also have the benefit of hindsight and confirmation bias. For every smart fan who was right, there were many who were wrong but don't keep bringing it up years later. Coaches OTOH have to live with the decisions made in the moment, right or wrong.

> If Jose Mourinho comes to coach your team, you know right away

1. You're about to spend a whole heaping wad of cash on overpriced players that other people are trying to offload. 2. He'll be gone in under 3 seasons with a hefty golden parachute. 3. The toxic after-effects will contaminate your club for years.

Signed, a very bitter United fan.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com