On: Rigorous Uncertainty: Science During COVID-19
Transmission Series Ep. 1
Episode: 26
Date: April 7, 2020
Evolutionary biologist.
Review of 5 Transmission Essays.
- 000: David Krakauer on Citizen-Based Medicine
- 001: David Kinney on Why Scientists Must Make Value Judgments in a Complex Crisis
- 002: Luu Hoang Duc and Jürgen Jost on Making the Most of Bad Data
- 003: John Harte on Reducing Conflicting Advice on Allowable Group Size
- 004: Simon DeDeo on Thinking out of Equilibrium
Key Takeaways
- Certainty is acquired slowly.
- Requires trial and error.
- Tension between certainty needed to make decisions and uncertainty of predictions.
- Bad science -> false certainty -> bad predictions -> loss of credibility.
- Be tolerant of simplicity in times of uncertainty.
- When data is bad, use simple models.
- When environment changes, re-think your habits.
- Habitual thinking exploits regularity.
- If regularity disappears, drop associated automatic behaviors.
- Analyze and build new habits (slowly).
Key Concepts
David Krakauer on Citizen-Based Medicine
- COVID-19 virus – map of the problem.
- Parasite that requires a host for reproduction.
- Once inside the host (cell), hijacks machinery to copy itself and continue transmission.
- RNA virus with a genome of about 30,000 bases.
- Long genome ensures less mistakes during copying, which makes it less mutable.
- Higher mutability would make vaccines more difficult.
- Corona viruses have been around for a while.
- Mostly harmless to date.
- COVID-19 version hijacks important human biological pathway.
- Renin-angiotensin pathway, the way the body regulates cardiovascular functions.
- COVID-19 binds to one of the receptors needed for regulation (ACE2).
- Role of S and E protein.
- S or spike protein: helps virus gain entry to the cell.
- E protein: elicits the host immune response, leading to inflammation.
- Parasite that requires a host for reproduction.
- Why is this particular virus outbreak so disruptive to complex systems?
- Complex systems tend to be difficult to disrupt.
- Typically they don’t have one single lever
- Other major lethal diseases: complex causality.
- Correlated with genetics, habits, social systems, economies and eco-systems.
- Cancer, Alzheimer’s, other respiratory infections.
- Prevention and treatment hard, patchy understanding of origin.
- Correlated with genetics, habits, social systems, economies and eco-systems.
- COVID-19: convergence of causes …
- Transmission mechanism operates on multiple levels.
- Cell to cell, human to human, country to country.
- Transmission mechanism operates on multiple levels.
- … creates vulnerability through alignment.
- Transmission = shared factor = integral to many levels of modern life.
- Reduces complex society to a vulnerable, aligned mono-culture.
- Solution: create misalignment at different layers.
- ACE2 receptor = biological / biochemical cure.
- Isolation = behavioral, citizen-based cure.
- Complex systems tend to be difficult to disrupt.
001: David Kinney on Why Scientists Must Make Value Judgments in a Complex Crisis
- Living with uncertainty: certainty is acquired slowly.
- Policymakers are driven by certainty.
- To support their decision-making.
- Scientists are driven by accuracy.
- Providing probabilities of outcomes.
- This reduces certainty.
- Sometimes, temptation leads to bad science.
- Certainty or severity of outcome is exaggerated to promote political action.
- Policymakers are driven by certainty.
002: Luu Hoang Duc and Jürgen Jost on Making the Most of Bad Data
- Be tolerant of simplicity in times of uncertainty.
- When data is bad, use simple models.
- When data improves, make models more complicated.
- Put complexity in the model only if it is justified by empirical data.
- Imperial College model in hindsight too complicated.
- Simple models are less sensitive to fluctuations in the data.
- Reduce over-fitting.
- Linearize data.
003: John Harte on Reducing Conflicting Advice on Allowable Group Size
- Super-linear scaling.
- Double size of the group, four times increase in transmission.
- A small increase in a group leads to a very large increase in transmission.
- Caution: gradual return to normal.
004: Simon DeDeo on Thinking out of Equilibrium
- Habitual thinking.
- Exploiting environmental regularity.
- Society has evolved to minimize the cognitive burden on individuals.
- Minimization of burden through habit forming (rules of thumb, heuristics).
- Allow us to solve problems quickly because our environment is more or less constant.
- Rethinking habits.
- When the environment changes.
- What has become automatic and instinctual needs to become analytical again.
- Turn thought into action, making analysis the new, changed habit (social norm).
- Small incremental change.
- Attempt to treat the system as if it was simple (big transformation levers) is a mistake.
- Small changes in many different places that you can build on.
- Washing hands, smaller group sizes, face masks, etc.