[yanks215]

Institutional trust has eroded.

The US surgeon general and Fauci told people to stop buying masks. Then they reversed themselves, and defended their position at the time.

Media reports "fiery, but mostly peaceful protests".

What intelligent person would trust institutions that are inconsistent and refuse accountability? What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace? Can you blame distrust given this environment?

[helen___keller]

I agree with

> Institutional trust has eroded.

I think the biggest problem is social media. A reasonable person would make this same conclusion you have, for example:

> What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace?

And yet another person who gets their information from another source, would reach the opposite conclusion. The simple fact is that enough happened in enough locations that if you hone in on one protest here or one riot there you can paint a completely different picture.

For full disclosure, most of the images I got of the protests personally were from a twitch stream called "Woke" which was a compilation stream of about usually 5-10 simultaneous protest streams from different cities. I don't think I ever once witnessed arson or another crime, despite having watched that stream ever night during the height of the protests.

But I don't doubt there was arson and numerous other crimes.

In other words, I am particularly pessimistic that it is possible to have institutional trust anymore, because the events in our world are so numerous and nuanced that it is frankly impossible to give a succinct, consistent, and accountable view of them.

Same with the mask thing: Fauci and the surgeon general were absolutely correct telling people to stop buying masks when there was a shortage and hospitals were running out of them. And they are absolutely correct now telling people that, with no remaining shortage, we should all have masks and wear them to stop the spread (in particular now that most people aren't sheltering in place anymore). But that level of nuance doesn't come through, especially in a world where most "news" comes from headlines on reddit links and facebook posts.

[dnautics]

> Institutional trust has eroded. I think the biggest problem is social media.

Why do you jump straight to social media?

Why wouldn't the fault lay with the authority figures themselves? For decades we have authority figures saying "the science says X therefore you must Y" while at the same time we have an educational system that (correctly) says "science is not authoritative".

Maybe if we had leaders that were less hubristic and lead with uncertainty on scientific matters and are careful to get buy in on nonscientific (i.e. ethical or self-serving) grounds this would happen less.

[helen___keller]

> Why do you jump straight to social media?

Social media is literally the catalyst for the loss of institutional trust. Maybe in the long run this is a good thing, and we will rebuild our institutions in a way that we can trust them in a hyper-shared hyper-aware world, but currently i just see no way that it can possibly work out.

> Maybe if we had leaders that were less hubristic and lead with uncertainty on scientific matters and are careful to get buy in on nonscientific (i.e. ethical or self-serving) grounds this would happen less.

In all honesty, I don't believe this is possible. It's the same problem as how people end up cancelled on twitter for the smallest reasons: humans are flawed, and in our hyper-shared hyper-aware world a single human flaw (or a single systemic flaw in our instutitions) becomes a gigantic crack that makes everyone outraged.

While outrage culture exists I don't think it is possible to have high-trust institutions that are run by human. Period.

And I don't know if it's possible to get rid of outrage culture, any suggestions are welcome.

(NOTE: just to be clear, I'm not saying our institutions are in the right. they are frequently wrong. But any wrongness you find, as in your example the way we communicate science as a closed book done deal, is one single flaw in a massive sprawling institution. I'm saying that statistically any large institution WILL have flaws, no matter what, thus in our new world we CANNOT have trust in these institutions the way things are now because any flaws will get blown up into a full model of distrust by social media. That's simply the new world we live in.)

[anm89]

I disagree that social media is the problem but even if we assume it is, then what?

Ban social media? Should we make a government review board for all social media posts to make sure people don't think the bad things?

Even if social media were the problem, I'd start thinking about other places to solve it because social media isn't going anywhere.

We've got a better shot at finding less hubristic leaders all though those odds aren't great either

[helen___keller]

> I disagree that social media is the problem but even if we assume it is, then what?

Just to be clear, I didn't mean to say social media is "a problem" or "the problem", but rather the catalyst of the modern status quo. I should have worded my original post better. Specifically, social media (and I suppose the internet in large) allowed us to much easily share information in a way that sidesteps those institutions. This allows us to easily share information that's negative about those institutions, whereas before we could not. Thus, it was the catalyst towards the modern avalanche of distrust towards once-venerated institutions.

> then what

> Ban social media? Should we make a government review board for all social media posts to make sure people don't think the bad things?

> Even if social media were the problem, I'd start thinking about other places to solve it because social media isn't going anywhere.

I generally agree with what you're saying, I don't have an answer. Pandora's box is open, and from now on it seems impossible to have a big monolithic organization and not have a high level of public distrust (both grassroots and organized by that organizations' opposition).

Ironically you even see this effect for large tech companies. There was a time when people really trusted and loved brands like Google, Apple, Amazon, even Facebook. Nowadays it feels hopeless naive, and the newest cohorts of top startups are often viewed even worse (the Ubers of the world)

I certainly hope the answer isn't an authoritarian control of discourse, because that's probably the only thing worse than having institutions of low trust.

But what is the solution? Heck if I know.

[mistermann]

> While outrage culture exists I don't think it is possible to have high-trust institutions that are run by human. Period.

I would say that before forming such conclusions, we should actually try to do it first.

> And I don't know if it's possible to get rid of outrage culture, any suggestions are welcome.

I suggest treating it like an engineering problem, something humans are quite good at. Analyze it as a behavior exhibited by systems, in this case, roughly:

- People (the human mind)

- Society (a set of networked human minds, networked via a variety of flawed communication mediums, some of which have human minds filtering and transforming what passes through them).

This is an extremely high level perspective, there is obviously a ton of important complexity (of varying importance) here and there within the system, but a high level perspective like this seems like where an engineer would start when analyzing a misbehaving system.

[mc32]

>” The simple fact is that enough happened in enough location..”

But why with the backdrop of that violence do they characterize that one “as mostly peaceful”. They could at least have been forthcoming and said while most are peaceful this one has devolved into violence you see behind me. But they are like Baghdad Bob ignoring the bombs falling as he broadcasts...

[helen___keller]

I don't know who "they" you are referring to (plenty of organizations covered the violence...) nor why they would not cover the violence in the protests but consider the following possibilities:

1. Executives at the news agencies told the reporters to cover the protests favorably for corrupt reasons

2. The news reporters and camera crew were at the protests for several hours and genuinely got a lot of footage of peaceful protests; the violence happened at 2 AM when most protestors had gone home, and were both not filmed by the camera crew and seemed unrelated to the protest that the camera crew had covered

3. Most of "them" did in fact cover in the violence in some amount, maybe less footage or less coverage then you think is appropriate but some amount of coverage nonetheless. However, because "they" are an unspecific and presumably large number of media channels that run all day long, you probably weren't watching all of the coverage and you might have missed it (or the sources that tell you "they" didn't cover the violence hadn't mentioned that they actually did cover it a little)

I can't tell you which is true between 1-3, because I don't know who "they" refers to, and I know I don't watch "them" anyways because I never watched mainstream coverage of the protests. Just some food for thought, again that we are quick to turn to instant distrust before we apply nuance and consider the alternative.

[kube-system]

Protests aren't a monolith, though. People come and go throughout the course of the protest. They are loose in organization, and the participants are generally unaffiliated.

[llcoolv]

>For full disclosure, most of the images I got of the protests personally were from a twitch stream called "Woke" which was a compilation stream of about usually 5-10 simultaneous protest streams from different cities. I don't think I ever once witnessed arson or another crime, despite having watched that stream ever night during the height of the protests.

Sorry, but this is classical gas-lighting. This is absolutely equivalent to saying - I saw Leni Riefenstahl's movies and there were no people dying in concentration camps, so Nazi propaganda is factually correct. There are tens of thousands of criminal acts documented during those 'peaceful' protests and I don't think that anyone with IQ >80 and the slightest bit of self-respect would ever take what you're saying seriously.

Btw, these days even far-left HN seems to be split in two and I was sure it would be one of the last bastions of group-think. I guess we live and learn.

[helen___keller]

> Sorry, but this is classical gas-lighting

I sincerely apologize if it came off that way, because it was not my intention.

I'm not trying to deny that there were crimes and arson and whatever else. They did happen, and they are inexcusable.

I am specifically making the point, that the GP had posed the answer:

> What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace?

My point is simply trying to add nuance: nobody is saying arson is okay, the people I talk to say things like:

"this protest I was at was OK. I left at 11 PM everything that happened while I was there was super peaceful and wholesome and people even brought their kids!"

The bifurcation comes when we start to group everything that happened all across the country into one label of "protests". There were violent protests, there were peaceful protests. There were protests that started peaceful and became violent. Sometimes there were small violent groups that were literally ousted from the larger protest group for causing trouble.

I'm not denying that there were violent protests. But I'm also not going to deny that there were a whole lot of peaceful protests.

[dgfitz]

> The bifurcation comes when we start to group everything that happened all across the country into one label of "protests".

It is interesting thought experiment to keep your sentence the same, but replace "protests" with "police."

Police brutality is wrong, full stop.

[necrotic_comp]

> The US surgeon general and Fauci told people to stop buying masks. Then they reversed themselves, and defended their position at the time.

Making a claim and then reversing it based on new data is the correct thing to do. This isn't an issue at all and shouldn't be considered a violation of trust.

[throwmeaway_pls]

Saying they don’t work or aren’t necessary was a lie. I’m honestly not trying to stir anything up here, but a lie is a lie.

Here’s an interview where Fauci discusses point-blank why the American public was mislead, and it had nothing to do with data: https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-dire...

We need to hold our leaders to a higher standard. All of them. Red, blue, green, whatever.

[necrotic_comp]

What he said on 60 minutes in March 2020, and I'm transcribing here:

"The masks are important for someone who is infected to prevent them from infecting someone else. Now when you see people and look at the films in China and South Korea and everyone is wearing a mask - right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks.

There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection people think it is. And often, there are unintended consequences, people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.

When you think mask, you should think of healthcare providers needing them and people who are ill. When you look at the films of foreign countries and you see 85% of the people wearing masks, that's fine, I'm not against it, if you want to do it, that's fine."

"But it can lead to a shortage of masks?"

"Exactly. It can lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it."

This was in March, before things started really blowing up. That seems pretty upfront to me as to why they are making the recommendation, and it's incorrect in hindsight.

I don't see it as a lie at all.

[mistermann]

> I don't see it as a lie at all.

Lying is a combination of truth + intent to speak untruthfully.

The video you are replying to at least plausibly demonstrates intent to deceive (for arguably good reason imho, but deceit nonetheless)

The video you responded with offers a different perspective, but it does not nullify the prior video. What is True is true from all perspectives, otherwise it is not true.

> "There's no reason to be walking around with a mask."

From a Truth perspective, this seems untrue.

> "When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel better, and it might even block a droplet, but it is not providing the perfect protection people think it is."

"perfect protection" is an interesting choice of words. Is he suggesting that if masks are not perfect, they should not be worn? Of course not. But then, why did he say that?

> "And often, there are unintended consequences, people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face."

And therefore, we shouldn't wear masks?

> "Exactly. It can lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it."

Which is the reason he gave in the first video for the deceit. I'm not disputing that this was a decent enough strategy under the circumstances (a mask shortage), but it backfired.

> I don't see it as a lie at all.

They've done a decent job covering this up in most people's minds, but not with conspiracy theorists or highly detail oriented people, and I think it's a shame that people seem frequently unwilling to even acknowledge that they have at least somewhat of a valid point. What is strictly true should perhaps not be ignored. If you want people to "not do your own thinking, trust the experts, without exception, then you would be well advised to be worthy of trust. Or, don't, and reap the rewards Mother Nature bestows upon you.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

- Richard Feynman

[necrotic_comp]

Your response is extremely frustrating. At the time they gave this advice, it hadn't yet hit NYC, and the scope and speed of the future outbreak in the states was unknown ; in late February/early March it's more than reasonable to think that, like swine flu, the states' response would contain the outbreak to hospitals and therefore masks a) weren't necessary for the day-to-day, b) could give a false sense of protection to the people wearing them, and c) were best suited to be used by professionals.

Of course, within two weeks, NYC was shut down and people were wearing makeshift masks and the advice was updated.

To say that Dr. Fauci, of all people, was lying to the public instead of giving the best advice available at the time is an affront to his decades-long career of public service.

[mistermann]

> Your response is extremely frustrating.

I fully realize the manner in which I speak is frustrating, and it frustrates me that people find it frustrating (and also that it will get you throttled on HN so you have to wait when replying to posts).

I should also note that the "tone" of this message will be more of the same, because I believe speaking frankly in pedantically objective terms is useful, even if it may offend. If I was able to do it without offending I would, but that is a skill I seem to lack.

> At the time they gave this advice, it hadn't yet hit NYC, and the scope and speed of the future outbreak in the states was unknown.

Agreed. But was it unknown at the time that the stage was set for a serious global pandemic?

> in late February/early March it's more than reasonable to think that, like swine flu, the states' response would contain the outbreak to hospitals

It is reasonable to speculate that this is one possible outcome, but I do not believe it is reasonable to speculate that this is the only possible outcome, or choose to ~assume it will be the outcome that will manifest in reality and set strategy on accordingly. I believe when considering and managing risk, worst case scenarios should always be front and centre in people's minds.

> and therefore

I read this is: "and therefore it logically follows that", and therefore disagree.

> a) weren't necessary for the day-to-day

I prefer: may not.

> b) could give a false sense of protection to the people wearing them

Is this harmful? To what degree, and in what way?

Was no other messaging possible that could accommodate this detail?

> c) were best suited to be used by professionals

They may be "best" suited for professionals, but this does not mean that value can only be derived from professionals wearing them, which seems to be what was communicated.

> Of course, within two weeks, NYC was shut down and people were wearing makeshift masks and the advice was updated.

Agreed. However, a reader might implicitly infer from this statement that health officials were acting ~perfectly based on available information, when the truth very much seems to be (based on the one Fauci interview video posted here) that at least part of the motivation for the messaging to not wear masks was known to be untruthful, but was done to preserve mask supply for health care personnel. I do not object to this strategy in general, but I do object to the unwillingness to consider the value in coming clean about it after the fact - it seems perfectly plausible to me that if officials were more truthful in this way, they they'd get less blowback from conspiracy theorists and detail oriented people.

> To say that Dr. Fauci, of all people, was lying to the public instead of giving the best advice available at the time is an affront to his decades-long career of public service.

Mother Nature (and sometimes the real-world behavior of a subset of human beings) is not persuaded by emotion-based [1] rhetoric like this - she behaves the way she does, and we can choose to acknowledge that and respond accordingly [2], or we can choose to ignore objective details and live in a narrative-based fantasy land.

I believe thinking about things in this manner (meta-conversation, meta-cognition) is useful [3]. Is this not the way we think when we are doing engineering and systems analysis? Yes, managing the affairs of humans is different, but it is also similar. What is optimal is unknown, it must be discovered, like anything else humanity has achieved.

[1] affront - an action or remark that causes outrage or offense.

[2] This does not mean that we must tell citizens the truth all the time, but only that it should be acknowledged than when you deceive, you run the risk of being found and suffering consequences.

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!"

"If you tell the truth you don't have anything to remember."

I suspect there may be an evolutionary reason why such aphorisms persist across generations.

[3] not "the" "answer", but useful. Perhaps what I say here is 100% incorrect, but to know with some certainty would require actually trying it.

[throwmeaway_pls]

> There's no reason to be walking around with a mask.

I see that statement as a lie. Fauci addressed it in the TheStreet interview and explained why he lied. I don’t see how somebody would see that as not-a-lie, but if you’d like to, go ahead.

[yanks215]

> Making a claim and then reversing it based on new data is the correct thing to do.

Agree with this statement, however it does not apply here. There was no new data. They always knew that masks worked, but they needed them for first responders. Confirmation of this from Fauci interview: https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-mask-advice-was-becaus...

The responsible, accountable thing to do would have been to say to Americans, "these masks do work, but we need them for first responders, please donate yours!"

[necrotic_comp]

See my comment above. Fauci said on national TV that the first responders needed the masks, and that people buying them up could cause a shortage for the people that needed them.

Somehow the messaging got muddied over the last few months.

[yanks215]

I read and comprehend both of your comments. I think we are describing two different points: you are speaking about data on PPE shortages, and I have been speaking about data on PPE efficacy.

In the article I linked to, the surgeon general said masks were not effective. This is false. They are effective (along with non-N95 masks).

The data on shortages did not need to be remedied with a mischaracterization of PPE's effectiveness. It could have been communicated as I previously suggested, stating, "we messed up and need donations from the world." This would have increased institutional trust (being honest about the situation), and perhaps supported more uniform mask usage in the long-run.

The original mischaracterization and subsequent defense of this communication choice remains a cause of institutional mistrust. And even if you don't agree, you must be able to sympathize with the logic behind this conclusion for others. In fact, two other replies to your first comment similarly agreed with me.

[necrotic_comp]

I maintain that your logic is faulty, mainly because of the timing of when these things were said.

We had a window in late February/early March where we didn't know how nasty this thing was going to get in the states, and the responsible people in charge (namely, Dr. Fauci and not the administration writ large) made a claim based on previous experience ; as soon as it became apparent that it was getting out of control, there were calls for PPE donations, and the Federal Government refused to act, going so far as to steal PPE purchased by states.

There are many reasons for having institutional distrust, but to claim that the singular person in the administration who fought the President on his strategy (and was subsequently muzzled) was actively misleading the public is beyond frustrating.

[yanks215]

I understand your frustration. I also want institutions to be trusted. American government fails without it.

Even if our logic is faulty, the reality is that people have come to these conclusions in large minority status in this poll: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/19/914233038/poll-climate-become....

The number of distrust has doubled, from 14% in March to 29% in September. So it's possible there is merit and momentum to my reasoning, that government should be transparent and avoid mischaracterization (or the appearance of it) and irresponsibility.

[vlucas]

That's not what happened. They intentionally told people to stop buying masks when they KNEW they would help, because they were worried about running out of them for medical professionals.

https://medium.com/incerto/the-masks-masquerade-7de897b517b7

[anm89]

Agreed, we seem to believe as a society that we can spew bullshit in all directions constantly (advertising, media, our legal system, our politicians campaigning, so many others) but then just turn it off when we want people to agree on some thing.

The individual things people seem to believe seem to be nearly universally idiotic, but I sympathize with them to the extent that they can see they are being fed bs narratives all the time and just decide to believe whatever they want if it's all bs anyway.

[jlokier]

> What intelligent person would trust institutions that are inconsistent [...]

An intelligent person would trust institutions that change their mind more, because it's the right thing to do.

Institutions that remain utterly consistent in the face of evolving knowledge are the ones you should be wary of.

I saw an analogous thing in the much simpler world of signal processing and statistical estimation. Estimators and control systems sometimes oscillate as new data is acquired. It seems counterintuitive, more data should just improve accuracy, right? As if to converge toward an underlying true value? No, sometimes the best possible estimate and control output oscillates gently as more data is acquired, without any inconsistency. It took me a while to appreciate that.

Back to the big picture of institutions. Inconsistency over time may seem dissonant, but it shouldn't. It can be the most correct and accurate recommendation over time as new data and knowledge is accumulated. In an evolving situation, you should be seeing this.

The fact is people do cite inconsistency as a reason to disbelieve, and it puts public health policymakers in a dilemma. If they tell the truth and give the best advice to follow, people don't believe it because the truth is complicated and counterintuitive, and best advice rightly changes over time, and in different locations, circumstances, etc. So they have to walk a line between fully detailed truth, and simplified advice that people en masse are more inclined to believe and follow.

(I don't disagree with your other assertions about accountability etc).

[throwmeaway_pls]

> it puts public health policymakers in a dilemma

> they have to walk a line between fully detailed truth, and simplified advice that people en masse are more inclined to believe and follow

I know they are acting in good faith. However, the field also has a lot of received wisdom that may or may not be true. There’s clearly a bag of tricks they believe must be used to achieve a set of self-set goals, and I think a more straightforward approach along with dialogue would have been wiser in this instance.

The alternative is that some people will lose trust and won’t comply. You don’t want that if your plan requires everyone to comply.

[jlokier]

> The alternative is that some people will lose trust and won’t comply. You don’t want that if your plan requires everyone to comply.

The dilemma they face is no matter what they do, some people will lose trust and won’t comply.

Getting an optimal outcome in the middle of that dilemma is impossible to get right. Not just difficult, but impossible due to the back and forth inter-reactions between individuals, groups and policy.

So the process inevitably involves some mixture of politics and data, and multiple points of view that differ. There's no getting away from it.

I'm not going to say they have got it right. The different points of view and debate have to continue after all, to pursue the "best" outcome whatever it may be.

Only that I have some sympathy with the public health messaging dilemma, and I hope other people can take something useful from the knowledge that public health policy people face this dilemma, and are not just incompetent, blunt instruments, or trying to hoodwink everyone.

[mistermann]

> The dilemma they face is no matter what they do, some people will lose trust and won’t comply.

This is speculation. There are an infinite set of approaches for complex situations, that we have not found an approach that is consistently effective in no way proves that "no matter what they do, some people will lose trust and won’t comply", it only proves that they won't trust & comply under the approaches we have tested.

Such things seem to be easy to conceptualize when we are performing computer system analysis, but it seems like when we are embedded within the system being analyzed, we lose this ability.

> So the process inevitably involves some mixture of politics and data, and multiple points of view that differ. There's no getting away from it.

This seems true. But it seems to me that when making strategic decisions about how to go about this, we make plausibly unnecessary mistakes on a regular basis. One problem might be though: if we start discussing some topics in an objective, truthful manner (more facts & logic oriented, less "truthy" narrative oriented), the public might expect us to start discussing all things in this manner.

> public health policy people face this dilemma, and are not just incompetent, blunt instruments, or trying to hoodwink everyone

If the government, media, and health professionals would explicitly acknowledge the fallibility and errors of institutions, perhaps people would have more trust. But instead of describing reality as it is, we seem determined to stick with the simplistic fantasy land approach. This approach was extremely effective prior to the internet, but it seems insufficient now (except sometimes, like politics - here it continues to work like a charm, albeit with fairly disastrous outcomes).

[throwmeaway_pls]

Endless message mapping and behavior change campaigning was never going to cut it here for an entire pandemic. People know they’re being led by the nose.

I get it, it’s hard, which is why we give the CDC a ton of money every year.

I just don’t have much sympathy for people who deploy preplanned psychological tricks and then don’t get what they want. We deserve better, seriously.

[maxerickson]

1 person committing arson and 10,000 other people protesting peacefully nearby is entirely possible.

That's of course an over-simplification of the dynamics at play in many US cities this summer, but it's not reasonable to attribute responsibility for the actions of a few to large groups that just happen to be nearby.

[tobr]

> Media reports "fiery, but mostly peaceful protests".

> What intelligent person can cope with the dissonance of arson = peace?

The first statement sounds more like an ampersand than an equals sign.

[supercanuck]

There was an actual, clear shortage of respirator masks N95 masks for Medical Staff