[mistermann]

We believe many things to be true, that are not true. And not only do we believe them, we passionately defend them!

I don't think many of us would recommend writing software on top of such uncertainty, yet we seem to think it's possible to do so with a society and economic system. Then we're surprised when it blows up in our faces every decade or so.

The surprised Pikachu meme seems fitting.

EDIT: To those who disagree, I'm rather curious to know the specifics of why you disagree. Do you actually believe that humanity, and each individual in it, has evolved to the point of something resembling omniscience? Perhaps we don't know everything, but that the subset of everything that we do "know", is absolutely perfect, not the slightest imperfection, however small?

Have our various societies and financial systems evolved to the point of near perfection?

And if it isn't that, then is it something else I'm off on? Just trying to get a better understanding of what the situation is here.

[AdrianB1]

Not voted in any way, but I cannot figure out what you tried to tell and how that would contribute to this discussion.

[mistermann]

The short answer is, much of what we believe, both individually and collectively, is simply incorrect. In this case, my perception is that a person believed something to be untrue due to the idea having been labelled a conspiracy theory, and then after reading this story, he was less confident in the belief.

Generalized, we might state this as: the perception of high accuracy in our beliefs is illusory. Not only does this occur at the individual level, but also at the group level (see: religion, Trump supporters, etc)

I then compared that to the manner in which different people exhibit "unexpected" differences in insistence in accuracy/quality across different domains, demonstrating that the inner workings of this behavior can be counter-intuitive at times.

In light of this ongoing global pandemic, I am curious whether this "illusion of truth" phenomenon that psychologists suggest occurs within human consciousness may possibly have been a contributing factor to some of the perceived shortcomings involved in our response.

For example, as I understand it, Donald Trump seemed to believe that this pandemic was not terribly important, and the result of this was that the response from the United States government was slower than it could have been.

Similarly, prior administrations, I'm not sure going how far back, were also aware of the possibility and consequences of the outbreak of a global pandemic. It would have been possible at that time to make a significant permanent investment in nationwide infrastructure for stockpiling critical supplies, but for specific reasons not known to any of us, it seems like very few countries went forward with such an initiative. Not only in the United States, but many other countries.

Generally, I think it's fair to say that historic decisions related to pandemic response were less than optimal. Assuming this is true, it seems reasonable to speculate that a misunderstanding of risk was a contributing factor to the imperfect responses.

If we take a hypothetical example of two different countries, one with a brash, super confident leader, and the other with a much more restrained, cautious leader, one who is naturally distrustful of casual optimism and a culture of "don't worry about it", might these two leaders have had different perceptions of risk, and as a result made different decisions and taken different approaches, both during and in the years before an actual outbreak occurred?

I believe this is possible, and also that the magnitude of the difference may be significant, depending on the circumstances

And if that scenario is possible, might this phenomenon also occur in other domains, and if so, what might the plausible range of possible consequential variances look like?

Take the Iraq war as an example. Might it be possible that errors in perception of risk were a contributing factor in the decision to go forward with the war? Using a similar example to the one above, might a leader or society that insisted on a higher standard of certainty and trustworthiness of evidence have made a different choice on whether to proceed with a war? And if so, might this have had an effect on the amount of money spent as well as the number of casualties? I suspect that if the Iraq war did not take place, both cost and casualties would be significantly lower than they were under the scenario that actually did play out.

So what? Well...if we made better decisions, might we realize better outcomes? This seems both plausible and potentially significant to me.

If one assumes this is true, a question arises in my mind: should we perhaps consider collectively exerting additional effort towards the goal of making better decisions, and what are some of the things we could do in an effort to achieve that?

To be clear, I'm not suggesting we do such a thing at this particular point in time, and I'm certainly not insisting we do it. It's mostly just an idea I've had knocking around in my head for a while.

[AdrianB1]

The only thing I can respond to your lengthy comment is: politics as we have it now is rigged in the favor of populist "leaders" that do what people want them to do, not what is the right thing to do. With "one man, one vote" the lower 51% less educated and intelligent part of the voters will elect the politicians that play their tune, even if the other 49% that are more qualified will vote otherways. In a way, it is the dictatorship of the stupid (no intention to offend someone, just math and basic psychology).

I found some of my father's school books from ~ 1960: that close after the war, it included lots of war-like information like how to use protective gear (not top NBC one, but how to improvise if needed), how to carry a stretcher, first aid, etc. Now people forgot about war, this is no longer in the school teachings and people lack self-preservation skills. If a country leader tells them to self-isolate, they will laugh and ignore until it gets serious and in hindsight they blame politicians. When you have no pandemic for 100 years you don't care about ventilators and ventilator contracts, you care about unemployment, taxes, football and the last iPhone models.

History is always forgotten because regular Joe and Jane don't read history and Einstein has a single vote.

[mistermann]

> The only thing I can respond to your lengthy comment is: politics as we have it now is rigged in the favor of populist "leaders" that do what people want them to do, not what is the right thing to do.

I mostly agree, but I would replace "populist leaders" with something like "the rich and powerful". If you think back to before Trump's election, can you remember anyone complaining about the system being rigged in favor of the rich and powerful?

> With "one man, one vote" the lower 51% less educated and intelligent part of the voters will elect the politicians that play their tune, even if the other 49% that are more qualified will vote otherways.

I agree a lot with this also. Where you and I likely differ quite substantially is in the designation of who belongs in the groups "less educated and intelligent part of the voters" or "more qualified". I consider concepts like intelligence and qualification to be highly dimensional, where most people seem to see it as uni-dimensional (here I must speculate, because ideas like this seem to be a rather sensitive subject for many people).

> In a way, it is the dictatorship of the stupid (no intention to offend someone, just math and basic psychology).

I would absolutely love to see the math behind this, are you referring to a specific paper of some kind?

> If a country leader tells them to self-isolate, they will laugh and ignore until it gets serious and in hindsight they blame politicians.

This seems true enough, there have been all sorts of people on TV laughing it up on the beach with full knowledge that a global pandemic was underway. It would be nice if we could find a way to put some additional sense into these people's minds.

> When you have no pandemic for 100 years you don't care about ventilators and ventilator contracts, you care about unemployment, taxes, football and the last iPhone models.

110% agree here - it's true, and it is a very big deal, imho.

> History is always forgotten because regular Joe and Jane don't read history and Einstein has a single vote.

Yup. The interesting thing about that though, is that hardly anyone reads history. Take HN for example, I'd be surprised if even 10% of the people here would remotely qualify as "students of history", yet I suspect the percentage of people who consider themselves qualified to deploy phrases like "History is always forgotten..." would be up around the 90% range. Obviously I'm not referring to you here since I mostly agree with everything you've said, but I suspect I'm at least in the ballpark.

[AdrianB1]

I forgot to tell: you are focusing on US (the Trump mention), I work in a US company (so I keep up with the situation there) but I live in Europe and I see the situation in the countries around me: it's full of populism, not "the rich and powerful".

I don't have a specific paper in mind for the math, but the knowledge from college with a major in statistics (and demography). It does not make me an expert, just a bit more qualified than most people.