[scottlocklin]

I realize HN sperdos have a hard time with this concept sometimes, but MUH SCIENCE isn't how we make decisions as a society, anywhere, ever.

Leadership is decision under uncertainty. The best thing most scientists can do for leadership is tell them the best guess and estimates of how big the uncertainties are. Recent events have shown how unbelievably shitty these guesses were, and, frankly, continue to be; and as far as I can tell, none of the important players over the last 6 months mentioned any of the uncertainties in a useful actionable way.

Putting scientists and operations research types in charge of anything more complicated than airline routing tables is basically the definition of madness; literally every time it's been tried in human history has ended up a disaster. Adam Curtis and that gasbag Taleb have made a career of documenting this obvious truism.

[dang]

> I realize HN sperdos have a hard time with this concept sometimes

Hey please don't do that here. Crotchety contrarianism needn't be a bad thing but the HN guidelines say "don't be snarky" for a reason, and there are other guidelines too: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Many of your comments are clearly based on knowledge, which we cut a lot of slack for, but if you would make our lives a little easier I'd appreciate it. This comment would be just fine if it started with the "Leadership is" sentence. "Gasbag" is name-calling but as part of a backhanded compliment, no big deal; we're not sticklers.