Comment by civilized | Hacker News Reader

Comment by civilized | Hacker News Reader

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> ... ethicist Jerry Menikoff [...] had decided maybe it was unethical to do RCTs on ventilator settings at all. He asked whether they might be able to give every patient the right setting while still doing the study. The study team tried to explain to him that they didn’t know which was the right setting, that was why they had to do the study. He wouldn’t budge.

> Finally, after a year, another panel of experts ruled in favor of the investigators and gave them permission to restart the study right away. They did, but the delay was responsible for thousands of deaths, and produced a chain effect on ventilator research that made us less prepared for the surge in ventilator demand around COVID.

People who do not understand or accept the role of risk-taking in the expansion of scientific knowledge and the betterment of the human condition should not be in positions of authority over the scientific process.

I have to ask: what went wrong here? Why would such a person be in this position? Surely a judgment like this is exceptionally bad...? Or has the rot spread much farther, to the point where incompetence this severe is normal?

That science requires risk taking means that the more institutionalized it becomes, the less scientific it becomes as institutions are naturally allergic to risk.

Institutions are allergic to short-term, acute risks that result from their actions. They are insensitive to long-term, chronic risks that results from their inaction.

Meta-risk, the risk that comes from not taking any risk, needs to be drilled into everyone's head: the public, journalists, politicians, IRBs, etc. I think the concept that not taking risks is risky should have its own label, but if someone doesn't like "meta-risk", maybe they will accept "risk tradeoffs".

> Institutions are allergic to short-term, acute risks that result from their actions. They are insensitive to long-term, chronic risks that results from their inaction.

That's not true in general. It all comes down to incentives on both the institution and individual actors.

To give a counter-example to your claim, there are plenty of companies who see the writing on the wall, and desperately try to do something to avoid the risk of inaction.

Facebook might be an interesting example: it's slowly sliding into less and less relevance, and the 'metaverse' is a big and bold bet to actively change that. (To make that example even better, as far as I can tell, it's not working out. So we can guess that there was considerable risk in taking that bet.)

In the context of this thread, I was referring to institutions that conduct basic science (i.e., primarily universities and government agencies) rather than business, which is not the first thing I associate with the label "institution".

I think Facebook and the metaverse is a great counter-example, but it also seems to highlight the general trend. I would be very surprised by any institution where power is diffuse understanding the value of avoiding meta-risk. Business can concentrate immense power in the CEO, particularly when they are also the largest shareholder, which enables them to act decisively.

I would love to see examples of where groups or co-operative without powerful individuals collectively chose to embrace risk to avoid meta-risk, since they could provide incredibly valuable lessons.

I think to some extent, we're just not naturally wired to think of meta-risk. We have innate biases against negative outcomes, but since risks—or surefire outcomes, like in Scott's post—are more abstract, we just don't naturally think about them. I think you're right though, we have to start teaching people that not taking a small risk can have a much larger impact.

To have a labor market that demands people who can perceive abstract issues and interconnected system failures requires, in the first place, a prerequisite population that has the cognitive ability to conceive big picture models which include risk contemplation as a decisive factor in organizational success. These intelligent representatives will not be working for free without indoctrination projects like the lifelong instilling of patriotism. So, realistically, any executive officer who can meet the requirements for a demanding large scale management labor will be selective in what administration he serves. Leaving those unfortunate enterprises that can't satisfy natural requirements left to fend for themselves with whatever unsustainable capabilities they can acquire or start up with. All this is broad, globally occurring competition for talent, labor, and resources and it provides an explanation for why things are the way they are.

This comprehension on business management can lead to the conclusion that socialist visions will always have capitalist characteristics associated with their attempted executions. So it seems there's an extensive and influential capitalism that exists somewhere in the world, right now. The only way for socialist goals to prosper is to remove that wide-reaching capitalism.

So just educating people about risk might actually, ironically and funnily, be an unproductive decision and indicative of a much more interesting problem.

I've been thinking for a while that it's time to start fresh building institutions that can take over the tasks our current universities have largely drifted away from.

> Why would such a person be in this position?

Such a person will always be in this position, it is the type of personality that thrives in a bureaucratic institution. No amount of fiddling with the process will fix it, you need an alternative form of decision making

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