David Dunning, Judgment & Decision-making

I think some people, and a lot of kids, are being exposed to how you think about information? How do you think about data? How do you think about evidence, and more to the point, how do you do it in a scientific way? What does science look like? What does gaining information or knowledge in a completely new situation, where there’s tremendous uncertainty, and where the story may change from week to week as we learn more, a lot of people are going to be exposed to that. I imagine much like a lot of my generation went into science because of Sputnik, a lot of people are going to go into health and science because of this situation.

Now, the wisdom they’re going to need is the wisdom that a lot of social commentators have said we’ve already needed as we moved to the internet age. There is just a tremendous amount of information on the internet. A lot of it’s incredibly valuable, but a lot of it is incredibly misleading, and a lot of it is just outright fraudulent. And we have to become experts and be able to tell which experts to follow, who has a sound voice and who is giving us information that’s going to mislead and maybe harm us. That’s been true before the pandemic, but I think the pandemic has really brought this to the fore. And hopefully people become expert at telling who’s the expert. I know that there’s a difficulty in that because how can you tell who the expert is without expertise yourself? Well that’s a skill we’re all going to have to learn.

A negative consequence of the pandemic is all this media we’re being shown, that shows us people not on their best behavior. It shows conflict. And remember that conflict is highlighted on the internet, because well, conflict attracts eyeballs. People who do drama have known this since the Greeks. What also attracts eyeballs is incredibly outrageous behavior. I don’t know how many videos I’ve seen of people massively upset because you’ve been asked to wear masks in the local supermarket. They’re outrageous. They can make you angry. But they could also give you a tilted view of what’s really going on with people, what people are really doing. You may focus on the person not wearing the mask and being upset, but you may not notice all the other people in the store wearing the mask that they’ve been asked to wear. So one of the negative things that we have to be cautious of is not letting, or being shown, about what’s going on in the world, to mislead us about how people behave, we can become cynics when a lot of people are acting in a very non cynical, very cooperative way.

The skill we need is to notice everybody. We need to see what other people are doing. We also need to remember the power of norms, what other people are doing really does have an impact on how we behave. It’s important to get the norm right. One last type of wisdom people are going to need is to remember that the pandemic is a public health crisis. It’s fairly obvious it’s a health crisis. But I think what people tend to forget is that it’s also public. We are all individuals. But we are also all “we,” we all have to act together and take care of each other in order to get through this thing the best way that we can, we have to remember that, we have to remember that’s part of our duty as humans. The human ability to cooperate, to coordinate, to work together, is the one superpower we have as a species. To get through the pandemic, we’re going to have to remember that we have to take care of each other. For two reasons. First, it’s always been thus. And second, it’s going to become important in the very near future because pandemic in many ways is just an overture for the real challenge  we as a species face and we’re all going to have to work together in the near future if it isn’t here already. And that’s dealing with climate change.

Now, one last type of wisdom people are going to need is to remember that the pandemic is a public health crisis. It’s fairly obvious it’s a health crisis. But I think what people tend to forget is that it’s also public. We are all individuals. But we are also all “we,” we all have to act together and take care of each other in order to get through this thing the best way that we can, we have to remember that, we have to remember that’s part of our duty as humans, it’s always been thus. The human ability to cooperate, to coordinate, to work together, is the one superpower we have as a species. To get through the pandemic, we’re going to have to remember that, that we have to take care of each other. For two reasons. First, it’s always been thus. And second, it’s going to become important in the very near future because pandemic in many ways is just an overture for the real challenge or we as a species face and we’re all going to have to work together in the near future if it isn’t here already. And that’s dealing with climate change.To get through the pandemic, we’re going to have to remember that, that we have to take care of each other. For two reasons. First, it’s always been thus. And second, it’s going to become important in the very near future because pandemic in many ways is just an overture for the real challenge or we as a species face and we’re all going to have to work together in the near future if it isn’t here already. And that’s dealing with climate change.