For people who are new to this blog:
1. The tradition here is for respectful, constructive discussion. For five years up until the past week, I probably deleted fewer than 10 comments for violating that tradition.
2. My wife and I began a self-quarantine on March 12, which was before most people were doing so, and before almost any public official recommended it. I became a doubter of the quarantine approach when it occurred to me that a public hygiene approach could be a more cost-effective alternative. By public hygiene, I mean masks and scarves, handwashing, and efforts to frequently sanitize surfaces that are touched by many people. I will not stand for accusations that my motives are selfish.
“I will not stand for accusations that my motives are selfish”
Very fair, let’s keep the ad hominems to a minimum. But…
Lighten up, Francis.
https://youtu.be/iN-aXzpQUdw
And, let’s not pretend that your views haven’t evolved significantly over time. You came to your present position on masks/hygiene long after 3/12. Any casual and objective reading of your posts will confirm that.
I said very clearly that my views changed. I hope you are not accusing me of pretending otherwise.
Dear Arnold Kling,
The comment I made (that you deleted) was not accusative or abusive in any way. I have re-read it just to make sure. In case I owed you an apology- but I don’t. It was a response from me to your implying I don’t understand what small business owners are going through – and I do understand it and am facing that situation myself.
This is tough times for all of us. I won’t bother you with any more comments. I hope you stay well during this stressful time. I will go back to reading your blog without commenting but am disappointed by your intolerance in this case.
Clearly your motives are not selfish.
I do wonder whether it is possible that your views are in (small) part influenced by an unfortunately often accurate view that the conventional wisdom of the suits is likely to be wrong.
Early on, when you were far ahead of the curve in starting your personal quarantine, the suits weren’t calling for this action.
Over time, with the growth in the conventional wisdom of that view, your own personal doubts have grown. I suspect that is largely driven by legitimate research on your end.
But is there some small chance that the two are linked – perhaps appropriately, given that you could make a legitimate case that the adoption of a given view by the “elites” does in fact lower the probability of that view being accurate from a Bayesian standpoint.
More specifically, I suspect that your “skeptic” radar is raised when the “suits” adopt a particular view. That then causes you to more skeptically and rigorously research a given issue and that will of course, often result in your renouncing that view. In other words, you aren’t aiming to be a contrarian in and of itself, but you are more likely to adopt contrarian views once adopted by the mainstream simply because that adoption increases your “truth seeking” behavior.
To be clear, your writings during this ordeal have been much appreciated on my end, and I credit you along with others in helping to appropriately spread alarm. I additionally have no doubt that we’d be in a better place had your views been adopted earlier.
J, this reminds me of some Robin Hanson, from http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/02/decision-theory-remains-neglected.html
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execs and their allies gain more by using other more flexible decision making frameworks for key decisions, frameworks with more wiggle room to help them justify whatever decision happens to favor them politically. Decision theory, in contrast, threatens to more strongly recommend a particular hard-to-predict decision in each case. As execs gain when the orgs under them are more efficient, they don’t mind decision theory being used down there. But they don’t want it up at their level and above, for decisions that say if they and their allies win or lose.
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