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I always criticized the idea that “radical technology could exist but the competition buys it up” as a naive conspiracy theory. It’s pretty remarkable that the

I always criticized the idea that “radical technology could exist but the competition buys it up” as a naive conspiracy theory. It’s pretty remarkable that the government paid for this but somehow the international medical corporation can swoop in, buy the competitor who is threatening their margins, and void the contract.

blunte 7y ago
> somehow the international medical corporation can swoop in, buy the competitor who is threatening their margins Perfectly normal and common in the US low-regulation economic system. > and void the contract Most likely the government officials with the ability to allow this cancelation were bribed, or rather lobbied, to allow it.
- AdrianB1 7y ago
  It does not look like a regulation problem, but a contract breach: the buyer corporation should be held accountable to execute the contract as agreed, it bought the company with everything - assets and obligations.
  - blunte 7y ago
    The government often makes decisions about companies buying other companies. If a company has a contract with the government, then the government should have (specified already in the contract, perhaps) the right to prevent the sale of the company (with some specific exceptions). The primary problem here is that in theory, the government works for the people; but also in theory, the (publicly traded) corporations work for the shareholders. But yes, even without regulation, the government should have made more effort to enforce the contract. Perhaps the key government people with the power to do so were influenced somehow... But even if the contract had been upheld, there's certainly no guarantee that the new big company would have put their best effort into meeting the original goals of the contract (especially if it was against their "best" (profit) interest).
mistermann 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Not voted in any way, but I cannot figure out what you tried to tell and how that would contribute to this discussion.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    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.
AlexCoventry 7y ago
It is pretty remarkable, and reflects a remarkable failure of the US obsession with market-driven resource allocation mechanisms.
mhb 7y ago
Another line of inquiry to pursue would be why it took the government five years from canceling the Covidien contract to ordering ventilators from Philips.

blunte 7y ago

> somehow the international medical corporation can swoop in, buy the competitor who is threatening their margins Perfectly normal and common in the US low-regulation economic system. > and void the contract Most likely the government officials with the ability to allow this cancelation were bribed, or rather lobbied, to allow it.

AdrianB1 7y ago
It does not look like a regulation problem, but a contract breach: the buyer corporation should be held accountable to execute the contract as agreed, it bought the company with everything - assets and obligations.
- blunte 7y ago
  The government often makes decisions about companies buying other companies. If a company has a contract with the government, then the government should have (specified already in the contract, perhaps) the right to prevent the sale of the company (with some specific exceptions). The primary problem here is that in theory, the government works for the people; but also in theory, the (publicly traded) corporations work for the shareholders. But yes, even without regulation, the government should have made more effort to enforce the contract. Perhaps the key government people with the power to do so were influenced somehow... But even if the contract had been upheld, there's certainly no guarantee that the new big company would have put their best effort into meeting the original goals of the contract (especially if it was against their "best" (profit) interest).

mistermann 7y ago

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 7y ago
Not voted in any way, but I cannot figure out what you tried to tell and how that would contribute to this discussion.
- mistermann 7y ago
  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.

AlexCoventry 7y ago

It is pretty remarkable, and reflects a remarkable failure of the US obsession with market-driven resource allocation mechanisms.

mhb 7y ago

Another line of inquiry to pursue would be why it took the government five years from canceling the Covidien contract to ordering ventilators from Philips.