People are Idiots
People are idiots.
My grandmother was the first person who introduced me to this notion. I was about eight and found her by her closet placing her jewelry over a thin blanket. Upon inquiring why, she told me,
“When the mobs come it will be easier to quickly wrap up the jewelry and swing it over my shoulder and run.”
“Amma, why do you think the mobs are coming for you?” I responded.
“People forget that what is true today may not be true tomorrow.”
She paused and looked at me. Realized my confusion and continued.
“Look around you and then believe what you see. The signs are there. We can all see them. Some choose not to see them, most others refuse to believe them. Why? Because people are idiots. Now get out of here and let me finish my work.”
She imparted this piece of life advice to me in October of 1992. Two months later the Hindu-Muslim riots started in Mumbai and mobs burned down Muslims and their homes. Amma’s neighborhood in Mumbai was amongst the worst hit, but luckily she didn’t have to resort to her escape plan. Others she knew did.
I have been thinking of my grandmother and people being idiots quite a bit over the past couple of days. I have been sharing articles and tips with those that I know for weeks on how this virus is going to, at least temporarily, change life as we know it. Save for a few, most of the responses I have received have been dismissive at best to outright aggressive at worst. I have tried to counter with the point that the track we are on is inevitable due to math. Despite my best efforts, I continue to see people I know and live amongst go out and make merry in close proximity to each other. If my grandmother were alive she would say that I shouldn’t be surprised. Because people are idiots.
Maybe they are not idiots. Maybe they are just bad at understanding math, namely exponential growth. The Washington Post had a great article the other day which clearly articulated this. In it the author illustrates exponential growth by a simple question
There’s an old brain teaser that goes like this: You have a pond of a certain size, and upon that pond, a single lily pad. This particular species of lily pad reproduces once a day, so that on day two, you have two lily pads. On day three, you have four, and so on.
Now the teaser. “If it takes the lily pads 48 days to cover the pond completely, how long will it take for the pond to be covered halfway?”
The answer is 47 days. Moreover, at day 40, you’ll barely know the lily pads are there.
Now if one were to read this article and then this one from the same publication which shows the impact of exponential growth and still choose to not stay at home and go out, well, then I guess it is a fair conculsion to draw that they do not understand exponential growth.
That may the case. But everyone I see in my Manhattan neighborhood and on my Instagram feed definitely has passed at least basic college level math and therefore been exposed to exponential growth concepts. So it would be a stretch for me to assume they do not get them. Perhaps they do but the issue is they cannot mentally conceive of large numbers. Numbers that are so large that it just breaks their mind. That would make sense. In the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, they speak of the Total Perspective vortex. A device of torture that killed people by showing them how big the entire universe is in relation to themselves. It did so by placing the prospective victim within a small chamber wherein it displayed a model of the entire universe — together with a microscopic dot bearing the legend “you are here.” Seeing something so large was enough to crush their brains. Our minds cannot conceive large scales and that’s why we cannot understand exponential growth. That could be it.
Or maybe my Hitchhiker Guide analogy is a bit of stretch and people understand the numbers and their scale well. But what they do not get are dynamic systems. That numbers and odds are not static but part of a constantly changing world. That would explain why people I know respond to my messages of staying away from crowds with answers such as: the kill rate of this thing is so low especially for younger healthy people that it is not worth worrying about it.
That is not correct. While the death rate is highest amongst the oldest of us, the impacts are pretty bad for people of all ages. This article talks about how one study from the New England Journal of Medicine shows that of the 163 severe cases reported in the study, 41 percent were young adults, 31 percent were aged 50 to 64, and 27 percent were above 65. The only age group spared by severe COVID-19 appeared to be kids under 14.
So while it may kill the old, it doesn’t actually spare the younger. That means we all may get sick. But they respond, “Ya, and then we will recover.” I have an analogy with which I respond:
Say I cut my hand while slicing an onion. Say it gets infected. My chances of dying from that are very close to zero. I would call my doctor and get some antibiotics. However, say there are no antibiotics and the infection continues to spread. Now all of a sudden, my odds of dying have increased dramatically. Similarly, if you get sick from COVID-19 and got all the care you need, you should recover. But what if you can’t? What if the hospitals are overwhelmed, and the workers too few? Then your odds change.
Odds in dynamic systems are not static. As a situation changes, the odds change with it. I tried to explain this to a co-worker by telling him about the Monty Hall problem. In the Monty Hall problem you are asked to choose one of three doors. One of the doors hides a prize and the other two doors have no prize. If you choose the right door you get the prize, otherwise you get nada. You state out loud which door you pick, but you don’t open it right away. Then the host, Monty, opens one of the other two doors, and reveals that there is no prize behind it. You are then asked if you want to stick with your choice or switch it to the other door.
Most people would say that the chances of them picking the right door are unchanged despite the new information they have. That their odds are the same and so they do not switch their pick. They would be incorrect. If they were to switch to the other door they would make the right choice 2 out of 3 of times. Because the more you know, the better the decision you should be able to make. Initially their chances of being right were 1 in 3. With the new information they are now 1 in 2 (this offers a good explanation of why). So they should switch. Most people do not.
So you have a bunch of people who do not understand odds, scale and exponential growth. Is there anything to be done to help them so that they can do what’s best for themselves and society as a whole? Could we illustrate these concepts to them any better?
My wife says even if we were to, they would simply ignore it. It is hard to argue with her when you see something like this. Here it is a response to a tweet from Andy Slavitt, the former head of the Medicare and the ACA. A trusted source if there was any, urging people in NYC to stay indoors. The second response to his tweet is from a woman whose husband wants to hit the bars because he has a good immune system and thinks everyone is being alarmist. A ‘good immune system.’ I assume telling him people like NBA athletes have contracted this disease would be pointless.
Maybe if we had a more effective leader who could give a clear and stirring speech on the importance of physical distancing and the seriousness of the situation we’re in. Doubt that would help. Here is a tweet showing a packed Bourbon street, mere hours after the Governor of Louisiana announced schools were closing for a month.
So maybe my grandmother was right. People are willfully blind to evidence that the world may be different tomorrow than it is today. You can’t convince them to change with math or good analogies. They will simply choose to ignore them. Because they are idiots. And idiots usually pay a price for their ignorance.
I was once watching a game of cricket where the famous Australian bowler Shane Warne was speaking about a young English spinner Monty Panesar. Warne was trying to explain why Panesar, despite so many chances, was not able to translate his many talents into on-field success. Warne said something that has always stuck with me:
“Panesar hasn’t played 33 games, he has played his first game 33 times over. He doesn’t learn and improve. He just keeps doing the same thing over and over again.”
I bring this little anecdote up because I know this piece may come across as alarmist. And maybe I am overreacting. Maybe the data are incorrect, or the virus will disappear or it not as potent or deadly as it is being made out to be. I want this to be true. I just left my job to build a new startup and the last thing I want is a global pandemic which causes a horrible recession. So, I pray that I am wrong. That I look an idiot.
But I lived through 2008. I was in NYC working at AIG as an investment professional when that crisis happened, and it changed my entire life and not for the better. I was unprepared and unable to respond to this change because I ignored the signs that it was coming. The signs were there, I just choose to not believe them. I continued to go about believing that the world was fine and events happening in one part of it wouldn’t impact my part of the world. I was wrong. So this time I want to make sure I listen, believe and plan. I would be an idiot not to.
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