Don't Look Up and Trusting Experts
Why we should often trust expert opinion, but COVID-19 is largely different
In one of my earliest blogposts “Default to Expert Opinion”, I made the argument that is usually best to just trust expert consensus unless you have a good reason to suspect that the experts are wrong because it might be epistemically irresponsible to try to figure things out yourself despite the temptation to think for yourself. Scott Alexander’s recent article on the movie Don’t Look Up—spoilers incoming—discusses the movies agenda to trust the experts, specifically, he points out that the experts and leadership in the movie are portrayed as untrustworthy, undermining the very message the movie wants to promote.
The movie seems to be an analogy for the country’s reaction to COVID-19 but others have mentioned the possibility of it analogizing climate change as well. The movie portraits the comet-skeptics in a very buffoonish manner. The politician, which seems like an exaggerated version of Trump, doesn’t do anything about the comet until it is politically expedient. The comet-skeptics are at one point so absurdly and idiotically dogmatic that they won’t look at the sky, chanting “Don’t Look Up!” despite the fact that the comet is clearly visible in the sky.
The movie can hide behind the fact that it is a comedy film, but it can’t help but be an improper analogy on many fronts. Some will treat it as making a good point about the real world situation, but the movie has to distort thing so drastically that nobody who is skeptical about expert authority on COVID would accept the analogy.
The certainty of destruction is ~100% and the destruction is killing all humans on earth. The people are unwilling to take it seriously but COVID-19 isn’t anywhere close to killing all human life on earth. Brushing it off and continuing on with your life, especially post-vaccine is a reasonable decision.
There seems to be an effective way of totally evading the destruction of the earth but there isn’t a way of preventing COVID-19 totally. Many measures fail! We still have the virus and at the time of writing, more cases than ever despite masking, vaccinations, boosters, social distancing and so forth. As the ineffectiveness of the interventions is made clear, people treat it less and less seriously. A rational response.
People believed in the existence of COVID-19 just many skeptics didn’t believe that interventions were effective or worthwhile.
If you are sympathetic to the idea that the analogy is apt, it’s a fun movie and makes a good point about the COVID-19 skeptics. If you feel contempt for elite that enacted lockdown measures, then the movie just adds to your frustration.
I think that if you want people to avoid COVID-19 or get vaccinated, the most effective strategy isn’t mockery and condescension, but addressing the concerns of the conspiracy theorists. People don’t really trust expert opinion on COVID-19 or at least they are very skeptical. Unfortunately, people lost trust in the thing that actually works well in preventing deaths—the vaccines!
Even if people should default to expert opinions normally, there are valid reasons for discounting expert opinion in the case of COVID-19. I want to be clear that I believe it is important for people to take precautions if they are an at risk and that I believe vaccines are effective at reducing your chance of hospitalization. However, we could discount expert opinion and advice for the following reasons:
Expert opinion on normative matters is different from expert opinion on empirical matters. Someone could have the same opinion on COVID-19’s dangerousness as public epidemiologist, but have different beliefs about what is appropriate behavior.
Expert risk aversion is not necessarily the same as the risk aversion of a member of the public. Experts tend to be overly risk averse.
Expert advice is often not qualified by age or risk factors. The advice often needs to be legible to the public and so sometimes experts make recommendations that are for the whole population, leading to more excessive precaution.
Experts have an inflated sense of concern for particular issues relating to their area of expertise. Epidemiologists don’t go into epidemiology because they think disease isn’t important.
Many experts don’t have relevant knowledge to weigh economic trade-offs.
Who to regard as an expert and how to survey expert opinion is subject to bias. If I want an outcome, I can select experts to fit the outcome.
Dissenting opinions are censored from public spaces—even among people with relevant credentials.
Experts who are public figures do not want to be insufficiently precautious because they may face blame for not being alarmist.
There is action bias. When there is a problem, people want to intervene to fix the problem even if interventions don’t work.
Experts who are more alarmist get more attention from media. Some media, if it fits political biases, has a tendency to be alarmist. The new anxiety inducing variant gets attention.
Consensus measures are subject to political filtering. The type of people who rise to public attention in academia lean toward the left already. The type of people who want to be government bureaucrats probably leans left as well.
Experts in the spotlight often have feelings of self-importance. If someone is COVID-19 expert, they are no longer important when COVID-19 is no longer a problem.
Experts used deception and hyperbole to get compliance.
Expert advice is sometimes shown to be based on false premises but the experts do not update their advice.
Compliance is used as social signaling even when often ineffective.
All of the above are legitimate reasons to be skeptical when someone says that an expert on COVID is giving advice and you should follow it. Not everyone is an epidemiologist who can understand the data, but most people can understand biases and the politicizing of an issue when they see it. If you want to persuade skeptics, you have to address concerns reasonable without mockery, condescension or hostility.