“Trust the science” has always bothered me for two reasons: 1) science is frequently not black and white and anyone who has done hard science research knows there are plenty of competing opinions among scientists and 2) while scientific facts are facts, we still need to decide on how to act on those facts and that decision making process is most certainly political and subjective in nature.
> “If you’re a public-health person and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is.” “So you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recover from.”
I don't expect public health officials to have a utilitarian function that maximizes global health considering second order effects. This should have been stated more clearly at the beginning of the epidemic.
When the actual science was suggesting we take care of the medically vulnerable and elderly. But hey, there’s an election to win!
We also knew early on that COVID posed little risk to kids themselves. So it was entirely rational for parents, especially of young children, to value keeping those kids in school over the negligible health risks (to the kids) of COVID exposure.
I think you claim to much here. Or are using odd definitions, to me at least.
Sure you can extract something about what has been learned with properly made tests administered correctly. It is the tool that is used because it is the tool we have, not because it 'measures learning' in all the ways we want to measure.
Why not? It sounds to me that is the ideal scenario. If I go to the doctor I want them to maximize for health, it's up to me to make health concessions
In the same way, we have an entire political class who should be able to look at the health of the population and gauge which measures are worth taking and which aren't, no?
This is an incorrect statement that can be fixed with minutes of research.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.0610941104 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00916...
One might argue about the quality of the research or point out contradicting studies, but saying there was zero basis is flat-out false.
Adding that the idea was "made up" is a great example of bending the idea of science to prop up a point.
They have wildly different rules, designs, systems, and results.
It reminds me of a comedian snippet I saw recently who was asking the crowd... "Has life gotten back to how it was before Covid", and one person in the audience yells out, "No"... and the comedian says, "OK, tell me one thing you had before Covid that you don't have now"? And the person says, "My family". The comedian goes -- "Oh yeah, I guess that was the point of it all wasn't it..."
In practice, we instead have centers that focus on first-order effects and who advocate for their position (from an authority based on scientific knowledge, and preparation for emergencies) which are then evaluated and mixed with other centers by political leaders to incorporate the best attempt at considering second and further effects.
Everybody has a different utilitarian model and we don't have enough data or algorithms to predict second or third order effects (we usually fall back on "wisdom" from prior experience).
And there I was, in American schools being told test scores were 80% of my grade with homework accounting for 10% and class projects another 10%. Both high school and university. Fucking liars.