A Letter to My Family

It’s not poetic or luvy duvy, at all.

My eldest sister started an email thread for siblings whose families are spread out over six cities on three different continents. While I am usually thoughtful in my public pronouncements, I thought I could just vent a little with family - then be beaten up by them as an exercise in finding out will happen. 

Always looking for the next emotional adventure.

"Jerry and his mouth!" 

I know that's one of their listening's for me – family unforgivingly stamp on your tender parts. That's why I love them. 

Then I thought – hey, I am just going to send this letter to my list. Here it is – me venting about what is going on…

Feel free to stamp.

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(It's my day off!)

How about a debate?

(Putting it here because the other thread is friendly family news, this one could get heated!)

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I am personally against conventional wisdom.

If anyone of you wants to comfort yourself with some solid science behind the mass hysteria happening now, you can't do better than Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow". 

I spend my time reading that, not the news.

Starting with Paul Meehl's "disturbing little book" 50 years ago, one of his more surprising reports is the overwhelming science showing how abysmal the ability of ANY expert in ANY field is to be able to predict what will happen based on current facts when compared to a simple formula.

Algorithms consistently beat them 60% of the time! (Chapter 21):

"A review of 41 separate studies of the reliability of judgements made by auditors, pathologists, psychologists, organizational managers, and other professionals suggest that this level of inconsistency is typical, even when a case is reevaluated within a few minutes. Unreliable judgements cannot be valid predictors of anything… No exception has been convincingly documented." p.223

So be careful listening to Dr Expert Whoever when he believes he can wave a crystal ball and predict what will happen with c19. Today's reaction is absurd by almost any sane parameter. 

Does it make sense to decimate the Australian economy because .00008% of the Australian population has c19? 

(John Hopkins c19 dashboard https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)

Well, the experts say it is going to get worse. 

What if they are wrong? 

The "cure" is already inflicting far more pain than the disease has done. Our reaction is disproportionate to the risk, and Kahneman documents why this happens.

I suggest you get into it!

And a question for elder Sis – please help me unpack Elon's justification for calling the c19 panic dumb:

"Virality of C19 is overstated due to conflating diagnosis date with contraction date & over-extrapolating exponential growth, which is never what happens in reality. Keep extrapolating & virus will exceed mass of known universe!"

***

That's all from Chancer today. 

Be well, act sanely and stop reading the news!