1/10 How to apply the advice of a piece I wrote two years ago to your #COVID19 decision-making:
bit.ly/quaesita_inspi…
bit.ly/quaesita_inspi…
2/10 It's not helpful to form an uninformed opinion & then look for media that confirms your views. You'll find it, maybe you'll feel better, but you may as well skip it - it's a waste of time. You already know you'll just confirm whatever you wanted to believe. Instead, do this:
3/10 Think carefully about your ethics/values/goals (for world, community, family, self). (This post isn't about telling you how much of a nice person to be, only how to make decisions within your own moral framework... but I hope you'll choose to be nice.)
4/10 Consider potential actions you might take in the near future. Everything from washing your hands a bit more to working from home to full self-quarantine to, I dunno, reading manuals on how to hunt bears with your bare hands.
5/10 For each action, think VERY carefully about what would have to be true for you to want to take this action. Perhaps your chosen trigger is an event (e.g. "Stop going to the theatre if no one else is." or "... if large gatherings are banned by your government.") or
6/10 perhaps your chosen trigger is a piece of evidence (e.g. "Stop going to the theatre if scientists find that people can be asymptomatic and contagious.") You may choose multiple triggers for each action.
7/10 If there's nothing that could make you want to take one of the actions (as is the case with me and the bear-hunting), be honest with yourself that you will never willingly do it, then conserve effort by eliminating it outright so the decision process doesn't take forever.
8/10 Choose the sources of information you're willing to trust (e.g. publications with good reputation, scientists professing high confidence in their own conclusions, and so on) and minimum quality of new sources.
9/10 Gather information (and keep gathering it) from high-quality sources. If the decision is important, do your homework thoroughly.
10/10 When an action is triggered, do it. (Perhaps you'll notice that some actions should already have been triggered and this exercise helped you catch up.)
11/10 If you found this useful, please share it. If you want to talk nuances about null hypotheses and so on, find that on my LinkedIn (which has more space for longer comments).
