What I Read or Listened to This Week


Here is some non-basketball content I read or listened to this week that I found interesting:

  • The Covid-19 Tracking App Won’t Work - “In addition to detective work, Singapore covered the cost of all treatments and tests -– which were widespread and accessible – and provided sick pay for people who had to stay home. The U.S. has a long way to go to match that. Even the best smartphone app won’t solve systemic problems.”

  • The coronavirus crisis will eventually end, but the distributed newsroom is here to stay - “Operating as a distributed newsroom will make your organization more accessible to diverse talents, which can directly benefit your reporting and thus your sustainability.”

  • A Failure, But Not Of Prediction

    • “I think the answer is: they didn’t beat the experts in epidemiology. Whatever probability of pandemic the experts and prediction markets gave for coronavirus getting really bad, these people didn’t necessarily give a higher probability. They were just better at probabilistic reasoning, so they had different reactions to the same number. There’s no reason generic why smart people shouldn’t be better at probabilistic reasoning then epidemiologists. In fact, this seems exactly like the sort of thing generic smart people might be.”
    • “Uncertainty about the world doesn’t imply uncertainty about the best course of action! Within the range of uncertainty that we had about the coronavirus this February, an article that acknowledged that uncertainty wouldn’t have looked like “We’re not sure how this will develop, so we don’t know whether you should stop large gatherings or not”. It would have looked like “We’re not sure how this will develop, so you should definitely stop large gatherings.””

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