6 ms·

If Dan is right (and I think he is), have a stiff drink nearby and then think about how his point applies to something complicated that is life and death, such

by loteck 5y ago

If Dan is right (and I think he is), have a stiff drink nearby and then think about how his point applies to something complicated that is life and death, such as conveying information to the public about a rampant virus.

jiggawatts 5y ago
To me it was eye-opening to see just how bad people were at understanding what they were told in the clear, simplified language of public statements regarding COVID. I don't just mean "lay people", I mean the relatively well-educated HN crowd and even some medical professionals misunderstood what was said. Across the entire group, literally every part of what was publicly said by government agencies was misinterpreted in some way and turned into an argument. For example, the "We don't recommend the general public wear masks at this time" was consistently misinterpreted to mean "Masks don't work", which is not what was said at all. The more nuanced and complex statement has too many parts to it, and just like Dan Luu said, the second you have an AND or an OR, (or IF, THEN, BUT, etc...) people will just blank and see some random subset of the logical statement. The full nuanced statement was: "The CURRENT scientific evidence that is available does not support (OR deny!) that mask wearing by (specifically) the general public is (cost) effective enough to legally mandate. ALSO, at THIS TIME there is insufficient supply of masks, AND UNTIL supply can be increased the masks should be prioritised for health workers (that are trained to wear them properly)." (This of course implies that once evidence is available to support the efficacy of public mask wearing AND the supply problems are solved, the recommendation may change.) Something like 50% of the people listening to that misunderstood it. And then when the recommendation changed, they lost their minds. "I don't even know what to believe any more! They keep saying different things!" was a common response. People got especially confused by the "current scientific evidence does not support", because to them that sounds like "scientists say it doesn't work". That's not what that says at all, it's just a statement to say that not enough studies have been done at all to say anything one way or another confidently. This kind of precise speech as heard from scientists is ironically less effective than simpler but technically incorrect statements! For developers: One issue I've had with Agile techniques is that that same people that just can't wrap their heads around government agencies changing their recommendations to fit the changing scenarios of an unfolding event like a pandemic also work in large enterprises and are unable to comprehend a plan changing. Ever. Not even once. Everything has to be known ahead, forever, and be set in stone and never change in any way. It's "just too confusing", a sentence I've heard verbatim more than once.
- timr 5y ago
  > For example, the "We don't recommend the general public wear masks at this time" was consistently misinterpreted to mean "Masks don't work", which is not what was said at all. Anthony Fauci literally said that "there's no reason for the general public to be walking around with a mask". On television. I'll link to this version, since hilariously, facebook has "fact checked" it: https://www.facebook.com/DeannaForCongress/videos/368249931220565 https://www.facebook.com/DeannaForCongress/videos/3682499312... (note that I have no idea who "Deanna for Congress" is. This is the first version of the video I could find -- linked from a reuters article also claiming to "fact check" it [1] -- because google has gone out of its way to bury the video.) It's pretty darned ironic that this is your preferred example of people "not understanding" messaging. If you search for this, you will find hundreds of other articles "fact-checking" this, even though he said it, it's not debatable, and the various walk-backs and fact-checks and whatnot simply make the issue look ridiculously farcical. Just to underscore the point here, the Reuters "fact check" admits he said it (since, to be fair, he said it), and the only "fact checking" involved is that the official government position has changed. It wasn't taken out of context. It wasn't a misquote. It wasn't "misinterpreted". He said masks don't work other than blocking "the occasional droplet", and that there's no reason for the public to wear them. This was March 2020. While it's true (and obvious to anyone) that the government position has changed, it doesn't change the "fact" of what was said in the past. And yet, people persist in trying to do this absurd stuff. Let's be honest with ourselves: if this leads to doubt amongst the public, is this the fault of a dense public not understanding sophisticated, super-nuanced messaging, or simply that the messaging was muddled and has wavered over time, and that some parties are engaged in blatant attempts to re-write the factual record? [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-video-masks/fact-checkoutdated-video-of-fauci-saying-theres-no-reason-to-be-walking-around-with-a-mask-idUSKBN26T2TR https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-...
  - jjeaff 5y ago
    Am I missing something? "there's no reason for the general public to be walking around with a mask". Nothing in that statement says that masks don't work. It also doesn't say there will never be a reason for the general public to walk around wearing masks. It is in the present tense and a single sentence. In a shortage, you want the masks focused where the infections are coming in, the hospitals. The virus was not widespread at that point, so you are wasting resources by spreading your mask supply so thin. His statement seems like an acceptable balance of simplicity and the truth. I also remember him couching it with "at this time" though I don't know if that was a common thing he said.
csours 5y ago
Among other things, we are suffering from a "righteousness" arms race - whatever opinion or tendency we have, we have to find a righteous and moral reason for that feeling, because someone will find a moral reason for the opposite view. Speaking down from a moral high ground obviously does not motivate everyone to do what we want, but it does motivate everyone ... a) it makes those who agree feel good for following the agreed rules b) it makes those who disagree feel like their human experience is invalid and motivates them to find a counter argument that feels just as strong (I HAVE to fight to protect my RIGHTS) Obviously this is not the only thing that's going on. Every crisis is someone's opportunity.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
I agree with your point, but it's got me thinking about how the early mask guidance was so wrong. Early in the pandemic, virtually all the major health orgs spread the message "masks for the public don't work". Of course, the real issue was that there was a valid fear that there would be a run on masks and not enough for healthcare workers. There was never any significant evidence masks for the public don't work, on the contrary there was at least some flu-based evidenced that they were beneficial, but at best you could say "we don't know". So I'm very sympathetic to the authorities trying to give simple messages, but in the end the original guidance really bit them in the ass and made a lot of people lose trust. I wonder if the simpler message could have been "don't use a mask, because it means nobody will be left to treat you when your nurse/doctor needs a mask".
- 8note 5y ago
  What I heard from public health folks is that masks have not been shown to work, therefore we are not recommending them. Not that they don't work
- timr 5y ago
  > There was never any significant evidence masks for the public don't work, on the contrary there was at least some flu-based evidenced that they were beneficial, but at best you could say "we don't know" We aren't supposed to make decisions on medical interventions based on "evidence that X doesn't work". Otherwise, we'd default to just doing stuff until we had evidence that it was worse than doing nothing at all. Literally every failed drug ever tested had a biologically plausible reason for starting the test, and yet we know that most drugs don't work when you take them out of the lab! Saying that there were some papers out there recommending masks is beside the point, because you can find papers recommending lots of things that don't work. Pretty much anything, in fact. We can see the double-standard at play directly with the Ivermectin debate. Public masks and Ivermectin both have an evidence base of low-quality data, with weak effect sizes and huge error bars overall, and a clear bias of the strongest reported effect toward the lowest-quality evidence. But one is evil and the other is magic, depending on your politics. To take it back to the subject of the OP, here we have two issues that are fundamentally nuanced (the evidence bases are ambigious, at best), and collapsing the range of allowable communication to "you must do X!" leads to obviously wrong outcomes no matter what you do. So maybe we shouldn't be doing anything at all? Or maybe...maybe...we could try to get answers with experiments, instead of just making things up and asserting that we're right? For whatever it's worth, I recommend this paper as a balanced, comprehensive review of mask literature (not just cloth, though that is the title). You will not find a more complete treatment of the data for public masking: https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2021-11/working-paper-64.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2021-11/working-pa...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by loteck 5y ago

jiggawatts 5y ago

To me it was eye-opening to see just how bad people were at understanding what they were told in the clear, simplified language of public statements regarding COVID. I don't just mean "lay people", I mean the relatively well-educated HN crowd and even some medical professionals misunderstood what was said. Across the entire group, literally every part of what was publicly said by government agencies was misinterpreted in some way and turned into an argument. For example, the "We don't recommend the general public wear masks at this time" was consistently misinterpreted to mean "Masks don't work", which is not what was said at all. The more nuanced and complex statement has too many parts to it, and just like Dan Luu said, the second you have an AND or an OR, (or IF, THEN, BUT, etc...) people will just blank and see some random subset of the logical statement. The full nuanced statement was: "The CURRENT scientific evidence that is available does not support (OR deny!) that mask wearing by (specifically) the general public is (cost) effective enough to legally mandate. ALSO, at THIS TIME there is insufficient supply of masks, AND UNTIL supply can be increased the masks should be prioritised for health workers (that are trained to wear them properly)." (This of course implies that once evidence is available to support the efficacy of public mask wearing AND the supply problems are solved, the recommendation may change.) Something like 50% of the people listening to that misunderstood it. And then when the recommendation changed, they lost their minds. "I don't even know what to believe any more! They keep saying different things!" was a common response. People got especially confused by the "current scientific evidence does not support", because to them that sounds like "scientists say it doesn't work". That's not what that says at all, it's just a statement to say that not enough studies have been done at all to say anything one way or another confidently. This kind of precise speech as heard from scientists is ironically less effective than simpler but technically incorrect statements! For developers: One issue I've had with Agile techniques is that that same people that just can't wrap their heads around government agencies changing their recommendations to fit the changing scenarios of an unfolding event like a pandemic also work in large enterprises and are unable to comprehend a plan changing. Ever. Not even once. Everything has to be known ahead, forever, and be set in stone and never change in any way. It's "just too confusing", a sentence I've heard verbatim more than once.

timr 5y ago
> For example, the "We don't recommend the general public wear masks at this time" was consistently misinterpreted to mean "Masks don't work", which is not what was said at all. Anthony Fauci literally said that "there's no reason for the general public to be walking around with a mask". On television. I'll link to this version, since hilariously, facebook has "fact checked" it: https://www.facebook.com/DeannaForCongress/videos/368249931220565 https://www.facebook.com/DeannaForCongress/videos/3682499312... (note that I have no idea who "Deanna for Congress" is. This is the first version of the video I could find -- linked from a reuters article also claiming to "fact check" it [1] -- because google has gone out of its way to bury the video.) It's pretty darned ironic that this is your preferred example of people "not understanding" messaging. If you search for this, you will find hundreds of other articles "fact-checking" this, even though he said it, it's not debatable, and the various walk-backs and fact-checks and whatnot simply make the issue look ridiculously farcical. Just to underscore the point here, the Reuters "fact check" admits he said it (since, to be fair, he said it), and the only "fact checking" involved is that the official government position has changed. It wasn't taken out of context. It wasn't a misquote. It wasn't "misinterpreted". He said masks don't work other than blocking "the occasional droplet", and that there's no reason for the public to wear them. This was March 2020. While it's true (and obvious to anyone) that the government position has changed, it doesn't change the "fact" of what was said in the past. And yet, people persist in trying to do this absurd stuff. Let's be honest with ourselves: if this leads to doubt amongst the public, is this the fault of a dense public not understanding sophisticated, super-nuanced messaging, or simply that the messaging was muddled and has wavered over time, and that some parties are engaged in blatant attempts to re-write the factual record? [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-video-masks/fact-checkoutdated-video-of-fauci-saying-theres-no-reason-to-be-walking-around-with-a-mask-idUSKBN26T2TR https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-fauci-outdated-...
- jjeaff 5y ago
  Am I missing something? "there's no reason for the general public to be walking around with a mask". Nothing in that statement says that masks don't work. It also doesn't say there will never be a reason for the general public to walk around wearing masks. It is in the present tense and a single sentence. In a shortage, you want the masks focused where the infections are coming in, the hospitals. The virus was not widespread at that point, so you are wasting resources by spreading your mask supply so thin. His statement seems like an acceptable balance of simplicity and the truth. I also remember him couching it with "at this time" though I don't know if that was a common thing he said.

csours 5y ago

Among other things, we are suffering from a "righteousness" arms race - whatever opinion or tendency we have, we have to find a righteous and moral reason for that feeling, because someone will find a moral reason for the opposite view. Speaking down from a moral high ground obviously does not motivate everyone to do what we want, but it does motivate everyone ... a) it makes those who agree feel good for following the agreed rules b) it makes those who disagree feel like their human experience is invalid and motivates them to find a counter argument that feels just as strong (I HAVE to fight to protect my RIGHTS) Obviously this is not the only thing that's going on. Every crisis is someone's opportunity.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

I agree with your point, but it's got me thinking about how the early mask guidance was so wrong. Early in the pandemic, virtually all the major health orgs spread the message "masks for the public don't work". Of course, the real issue was that there was a valid fear that there would be a run on masks and not enough for healthcare workers. There was never any significant evidence masks for the public don't work, on the contrary there was at least some flu-based evidenced that they were beneficial, but at best you could say "we don't know". So I'm very sympathetic to the authorities trying to give simple messages, but in the end the original guidance really bit them in the ass and made a lot of people lose trust. I wonder if the simpler message could have been "don't use a mask, because it means nobody will be left to treat you when your nurse/doctor needs a mask".

8note 5y ago
What I heard from public health folks is that masks have not been shown to work, therefore we are not recommending them. Not that they don't work
timr 5y ago
> There was never any significant evidence masks for the public don't work, on the contrary there was at least some flu-based evidenced that they were beneficial, but at best you could say "we don't know" We aren't supposed to make decisions on medical interventions based on "evidence that X doesn't work". Otherwise, we'd default to just doing stuff until we had evidence that it was worse than doing nothing at all. Literally every failed drug ever tested had a biologically plausible reason for starting the test, and yet we know that most drugs don't work when you take them out of the lab! Saying that there were some papers out there recommending masks is beside the point, because you can find papers recommending lots of things that don't work. Pretty much anything, in fact. We can see the double-standard at play directly with the Ivermectin debate. Public masks and Ivermectin both have an evidence base of low-quality data, with weak effect sizes and huge error bars overall, and a clear bias of the strongest reported effect toward the lowest-quality evidence. But one is evil and the other is magic, depending on your politics. To take it back to the subject of the OP, here we have two issues that are fundamentally nuanced (the evidence bases are ambigious, at best), and collapsing the range of allowable communication to "you must do X!" leads to obviously wrong outcomes no matter what you do. So maybe we shouldn't be doing anything at all? Or maybe...maybe...we could try to get answers with experiments, instead of just making things up and asserting that we're right? For whatever it's worth, I recommend this paper as a balanced, comprehensive review of mask literature (not just cloth, though that is the title). You will not find a more complete treatment of the data for public masking: https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2021-11/working-paper-64.pdf https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2021-11/working-pa...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]