Nicholas Taleb
by James A. Bacon
More good news from the latest COVID-19 data dump: The number of new hospitalizations reported by the Virginia Department of Health fell to 25 yesterday, and the number of deaths reported declined to five. We’re back to the levels of early April — more evidence that Governor Ralph Northam can relax his Vulcan Death Grip on Virginia’s economy.
To what do we owe this fortuitous turn of events? Social distancing? Mask wearing? The economic shutdown? to what extent do Northam’s emergency decrees deserve the credit? To what extent would the viral spread have peaked and receded without his draconian measures?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has nothing to say about Virginia. But the philosopher, best known for his books “Black Swan,” “Antifragility,” and “Skin in the Game,” makes several observations that are helpful in understanding America’s response to the virus. I highlight here three of his principles from a recent post that (a) I found easiest to understand (he’s difficult for mathematical ignorati like me to comprehend when he delves into probability theory), and (b) I found most relevant to our situation in the Old Dominion.
Missing the compounding effect. Taleb is a big proponent of wearing face masks. Early in the epidemic, the World Health Organization, Centers for Disease Control and other public health bureaucracies failed to understand that the benefit of wearing masks compound geometrically with the number of people wearing the masks. The naïve approach is to say that if wearing a mask reduces the risk of transmission to 1/4, the rate of transmission will fall to one quarter if everyone wears masks. In truth, there is a compounding effect. In the rapid-propagation phase of an epidemic, he says, “a reduction of viral load by 75% for a short exposure could reduce the probability of infection by 95% or more.”
Misunderstanding the market and people. Early on, paternalistic bureaucrats advised the general public not to use masks, thinking that the supply was limited and would be needed by health professionals. Hence, they lied by saying masks were not effective. Over and above confusion and mistrust created by the lie, the bureaucrats failed to take into account “the inventiveness and industriousness of people who do not need a government to produce masks for them,” Taleb argues. Americans have shown extraordinary ingenuity in devising and fabricating face coverings. Bureaucrats, he said, did not heed the power of opportunists responding to the market to “supply people with what they want.”
The Non-aggression principle. Pseudo-libertarians resist wearing masks on the grounds that it constrains their freedom. “Yet the entire principle of liberty lies in the Non-Aggression Principle, the equivalent of the Silver Rule: do not harm others, they in turn should not harm you.” Even more insulting, he says, is the pseudo-libertarian argument that businesses should be banned from forcing customers to wear masks. “But libertarianism allows you to set the rules on your own property. Costco should be able to force visitors to wear pink shirts and purple glasses, if they wished.”
“By infecting another person,” says Taleb, “you are not infecting just another person. You are infecting many any more and causing systemic risk.”
Using Taleb’s observations as a launchpad, I would suggest:
- The measures enacted by so-called “experts” (Intellectuals Yet Idiots, Taleb calls them) created economic calamity. IYIs are nowhere near as smart as they think they are; indeed, their actions are often counter-productive.
- Bureaucrats invariably over-rate their own competence and under-rate the ingenuity and competence of people operating free from government restraint.
- Progress in combating the COVID-19 virus comes mainly from (a) progress by hospitals and doctors, working through trial and error, in creating better treatments for the disease, (b) the efforts of businesses and employers in creating social distancing in workplace and commercial settings, and (c) individuals taking measures (wearing masks, restricting their activities) consistent with their own risk tolerance to protect themselves.
Whether Taleb would agree, I haven’t a clue. But that is how I have used (or abused) his ideas.
