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> Ultimately, Seattle’s experience shows the futility of travel bans Is there a word or phrase for the act of poorly implementing an idea, then using the faile
by tejohnso 7y ago
> Ultimately, Seattle’s experience shows the futility of travel bans
Is there a word or phrase for the act of poorly implementing an idea, then using the failed result as a way to discredit the idea? It's like a straw man argument but done in practice rather than in argument.
- godzillabrennus 7y agoPoliticking
- the-dude 7y agoSounds like a variant to 'starve the beast' to me.
- tvanantwerp 7y agoNever understood the "starve the beast" argument of reducing government. Take ten seconds to imagine being locked in a room with a starving beast--does that sound like a good idea to anybody?
- the-dude 7y agoWhy don't you stop feeding your cat and see what happens.
- ta999999171 7y agoIf the alternative is being slowly eaten by the beast....
- bluGill 7y agoDon't get locked in the room with the beast. Or at least not until the beast is almost dead anyway.
- narrator 7y agoMaybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science
- drocer88 7y agoQuarantine worked for American Somoa during the Spanish Flu : https://tedium.co/2017/10/16/american-samoa-spanish-flu/ https://tedium.co/2017/10/16/american-samoa-spanish-flu/ From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu "n Japan, 257,363 deaths were attributed to influenza by July 1919, giving an estimated 0.4% mortality rate, much lower than nearly all other Asian countries for which data are available. The Japanese government severely restricted sea travel to and from the home islands when the pandemic struck." So evidence suggest it's not futile. So , you're right , maybe you're looking for "projection" or "cherry picking".
- lloydatkinson 7y agoI think you've misunderstood what OP meant
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y agoBut GP did help the point along, though
- fps_doug 7y agoYes, it's like "it didn't work this one time, let's just scrap that idea entirely" I wish they would apply that logic to whenever they implement more surveillance measures.
- jgust 7y agoBuried underneath this discussion is a lesson in incentives.
- s1artibartfast 7y agoAlso, there is no evidence that it didnt work. The goal is to slow infection, not prevent it. We could hypothetically have a much greater infection rate than we do today.
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoIt's fair to assume that everyone will get this, and 2.5% will die. (Edit: when I said everyone, I'm thinking of 'everyone' with regards to contagion like the normal flu that goes around. There are always outliers and people who miss it. Didn't think I had to spell that one out. Evidently I did.) However controlling the rate of infection (coefficient of the exponent) can make the difference between hospitals able to handle the disease, versus hospitals getting completely flooded and having more die due to not enough care. Tl;dr. You're going to get it, but you don't want everyone getting it at once.
- ghostbrainalpha 7y agoI hope your wrong. That the spread is somewhat contained and that a vaccine is developed before 2.5% of us die. But I hope that someone in government is thinking like this and taking actions accordingly. Being pessimistic isn't and overshooting your precautions is probably smarter than thinking we are going to have a "cure" in a few weeks, like POTUS said.
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoAnecdotally, I know 2 MDs in the Layfayette, IN (Purdue) area. Multiple people have come in with 100% of the symptoms, recently came from Seattle, and 1 worked in the Amazon factory with positive coronavirus. They were not tested because the tests are not available. Because of the way 'We' (royal) have structured our economy and govt assistance systems, the working poor will have the highest contagion rates and serve to spread it rapidly. They have meager insurance, if any at all. They have no sick days, and certainly not paid sick leave. And being threatened to come to work sick is a common thing. Even Starbucks did that to me. And from what I know about the laws, I don't believe quarantines can legally order you in. Everything so far has been a suggested self-quarantine. I don't paint a pretty picture. That's because I've worked in food service while sick. I made your food, and infected you. I chose to do that vs be destitute.
- irrational 7y agoWhy are you being downvoted? Is this the equivalent of people sticking their hands over their ears and saying “la la la la! I can’t hear you!” It seems obvious that you are right that everyone will get it. The real quibble is what will the death rate actually be. 2.5% seems like a middle-of-the-road estimate according to current knowledge.
- notduncansmith 7y agoI think it’s a form of “sandbagging”, where competitors deliberately underperform at an event.
- v77 7y agoMaybe we should wait a bit until figuring out what works and what doesn't in this case.
- AdmiralAsshat 7y agoGlass cliff would be a particular subset of this kind of thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff
- dathinab 7y agoThis quoted sentence is quite dangerous. It's also not unlikely that there are "other" patient zeros and then there are all the thinks about bad implementation of measurements and potential spread before measurements where implemented. Also it's all about _slowing_ spread, with the properties SARS-Cov-2 is believed to have it's likely impossible to contain it anymore in long term. (IMHO) But each day we gain saves lives by giving us more time in finding usable medicine or even vaccine and producing it. Additionally it reduces the load on the hospitals, if we do not slow the spread it will infect to many people at the same time to early. Which likely will lead to people not getting the appropriate medical care which likely will make the infected->death rate increase noticeable. So it's a typical "it's not perfect so lets not do it at all straw man argument" which is this case is very dangerous as it can cost human lives. Also given that they wrote: > County health officials located more than 60 people who’d come in contact with him,[..] fully recovered. Somehow, someone was missed. It's strange to end up with travel bans are futile? A conclusion like "it's hard to find all contact persons" would be better. > All the careful medical detective work, it’s now clear, wasn’t enough to slow a virus moving faster than the world’s efforts to contain it. This is supper missguiding, sure in this case it's not wrong, but if a single of the 60 checked people would have had been infected this would have majorly slowed down the spread. In the end the first quote said it all: Someone was missed. And IMHO someone will most times have been missed and sometimes that one will have been infected, so the spread won't be stopped. But it will be slowed down. Which is most important.
- Seenso 7y ago>> Ultimately, Seattle’s experience shows the futility of travel bans > Is there a word or phrase for the act of poorly implementing an idea, then using the failed result as a way to discredit the idea? It's like a straw man argument but done in practice rather than in argument. I don't know, so I'm going to coin a term for it: dishonest experiment.
- gentleman11 7y ago“Bad faith” research might be more appropriate, since it sort of acknowledges bias
- peteradio 7y agoI like both.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoIt's not the experiment that was dishonest, though - it's drawing conclusions from it as if it was conducted correctly that's dishonest.
- ta999999171 7y agoDisingenuous effort.
- throw0101a 7y ago> Is there a word or phrase for the act of poorly implementing an idea, then using the failed result as a way to discredit the idea? First off: I'm sure the Germans have something. :) Otherwise, some candidates: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization#Hasty_generalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization#Hasty_ge... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_solution_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_soluti... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrelevant_conclusion#Red_herring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrelevant_conclusion#Red_herr...
- codeulike 7y agoUltimately, Seattle’s experience shows the futility of travel bans Yes this is complete bullshit. Wuhan and now Italy are showing that travel bans are very important. edit: When I say Travel Ban, I'm also thinking of a soft lockdown such as Italy have implemented, which is slightly different to a travel ban in some senses.
- brewdad 7y agoWuhan shows they are important. Italy remains to be seen. Though given the reports I've read suggesting thousands of Italians returned south ahead of the travel ban, their efforts may indeed prove futile.
- CydeWeys 7y agoThe whole country is now under a travel ban, so there should be plenty of areas that don't have the virus still, and without further travel, hopefully will never get it.
- curiouscats 7y agoThose areas will get it. The virus has spread too far throughout Italy to stop it but reacting late, now, to how far it has already spread can slow down how quickly it continues to spread.
- codeulike 7y agoAt this point its about slowing down the peak so that health services can keep up.
- codeulike 7y agoThousands out of an area of 16 million people is small change. They are probably people who would have been heading home anyway. The Travel Ban in Italy doesn't mean nobody move, it means nobody move without a decent reason. The Italy ban is quite different to the Wuhan one, if you look at the details. edit: To be clear, as well as restricting travel out of an area, we're also talking about reducing movement _within_ that area. So it ties into Social Distancing really.
- sib 7y agoI'd call it "Mythbusters-ing" since this is pretty much how many of their episodes go.
- dredmorbius 7y agoMB are fair but stern. Myths can be busted or confirmed, often surprisingly.
- thedance 7y agoThe word is "Republican".
- downerending 7y agoDon't think Seattle has a lot of those.
- thedance 7y agoSeattle doesn't have a travel ban, either. The Republican brand is "We are bad at governing, therefore government is bad." The whole party strategy is one big logical fallacy.
- seneca 7y agoThis is a pretty low-effort flame post and clearly violates HN rules.
- thedance 7y agoIt's none of those things. Doing a bad job at governing and then using your own bad work to discredit government is literally the Republican party strategy since (at least) Grover Norquist / Newt Gingrich in 1994.
- seneca 7y agoAgain, your opinions are not facts, and flaming a large percentage of the US is explicitly against the rules of this site. Your level of posting is not appropriate here.
- seany 7y agomotte and bailey is similar in concept, but related to arguments.
- empath75 7y ago"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."
- DoofusOfDeath 7y agoI don't know, but it reminds me of a saying from another context: Don't judge a philosophy by its misapplication. Edit: I think that's a quote from some well-known person, but I'm having no luck looking it up.
- jolmg 7y ago> Is there a word or phrase for the act of poorly implementing an idea, then using the failed result as a way to discredit the idea? It might not be that specific, but "faulty generalization"[1] might fit the bill. The Wiki article offers other phrases like "jumping to conclusions" and "fallacy of defective induction". I would like to know if there is a name for specifically doing the poor implementation with the malicious purpose of discrediting the idea. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization
- wmeredith 7y agoI believe US Republicans call this starve the beast when applying it to government programs they don't like.
- adrianmonk 7y agoStarve the beast is either (charitably) a way to encourage efficiency by introducing necessary scarcity or (uncharitably) a way to deliberately create artificial failure to leverage the phenomenon being described here where people will conclude that because something doesn't work, it can't work, and therefore should be abolished. It's related, but it's not the same thing. EDIT: Note that I'm assuming that prematurely leaping to the conclusion isn't deliberate on the part of the reporter here. If it were, then maybe it would be the same thing.
- charwalker 7y agoStarve the beast? Reaganomics? Deficit Hawks?
- adrianmonk 7y agoSome related phrases: * "We already tried that." * Once bitten, twice shy. * Not giving the idea a chance; not giving it a fair shake. * Giving up on an idea too easily. * Closing your mind to a possibility. For what it's worth, I think both the poor implementation and the wrong conclusion can be either deliberate or accidental. In this case, the poor implementation was almost definitely accidental, and most likely the reporter isn't actively trying to discredit the idea; they are just leaping to a conclusion. So the best phrase might be vary depending on whether it's just poor reasoning or an underhanded attempt to manipulate people's views. Also, on a tangent, there's probably some validity to this kind of reasoning. Sometimes in problem-solving there are almost an infinite number of things you could try. If you spend all your resources going down one particular rat hole that doesn't seem to be working, you may never move on to exploring the rest of the solution space. In practice, it can make a lot of sense to essentially do a breadth-first search of possible approaches. The error isn't in using a breadth-first order; it's in deleting things from the FIFO queue of stuff to try eventually (or never adding). And the other common error is in assuming you can't or shouldn't try to do both in parallel.
- Psyladine 7y agoPerfidy, in some contexts, means a promise to act in good faith but with intention to subvert the effort.
- dredmorbius 7y ago"Self-fulfilling prophecy" captures elements of this. Robert K. Merton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy