Russ Roberts: prediction

Transcript context

…Well, on my own blog, Marginal Revolution, I’m trying to collect the information that I consider to be either reliable or at least interesting or worth reading or thinking about. Whatever I know I’m putting up there and the volume of blog posting is much higher. Sort of by definition, that’s what I think is important. Clearly it’s not all true and I try to indicate when something is speculative. I can’t not recommend my own efforts, but I think the important thing is for people to be as safe as they possibly can and to develop that regimen in a way that is psychologically sustainable, not just to say it and then a week later be off gallivanting in the St Patrick’s Day Parade or whatever. That’s very hard. The remedies differ by person. Don’t trust everything you read out there. The degree of misinformation is very high. The degree of uncertainty from the best and most reputable sources is very high. There’s no magic bullet on how to figure out what’s going on. I can’t quite say, “Oh, trust the authorities.” It’s not exactly how it’s gone, but there’s not any single way to really know what’s happening. That’s very frustrating. I would say do your best and keep in mind that’s a highly imperfect endeavor. There’s a lot you won’t know and some of the things you think you know are probably wrong. For you, what do you say? Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about the so-called death of expertise. I was really going to ask you about that. Whether you know a lot of people who’ve been crowing this week about how, see you do need these experts. Obviously epidemiology and understanding the science of this is incredibly valuable and important. I’m a big fan of science and not such a big fan of experts. That would include you and me, Tyler. I do think the internet has helped influential people influence people’s behavior to be more worried about this, which I think is probably going to be a lifesaver for, I think, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. I think that’s been a very, very good thing. I don’t know what’s going to happen if the death toll is enormously high or enormously low. I think that’s going to have a lot of ramifications. I think people are paying attention to this in a way that they don’t pay attention to other things obviously. They’re going to have judgments based on the outcomes that are probably not going to be, not so healthy. I’m very interested in what that’s like going forward. I’m thinking a lot, we’ve talked about this before when we talked this last summer, I’m thinking a lot about how we’re influenced by data and numbers. We’re so focused right now on cases or deaths. There’s so many other aspects of life, we have to focus on cases of death. I’m not saying we shouldn’t, but I find it fascinating how that’s almost all we’re focusing on. What this is going to do to the fabric of American life going forward, we’ve spent the last hour and a half trying to get some idea of what that might be. That is going to be kind of important too. I agree.…

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