1. Too much skepticism can be paralysing While messianic belief in the omnipotent lead to zoobies who can’t think for oneself, too much skepticism seems to be paralysing as well. Case in point is this face mask thing. Study after study, resources devoted to masks while it is an act with only upsides. Also when that dexomethosm study comes out, people want wait the full data.
  2. A trial for the animals I first read it in the Josheph Needman’s book on Titration between East and West. He posted the question as of why with such an advanced engineering capacity, scientific methods never really take root in Chinese culture. His explnataion was that Chinese believe in the metaphysics such that they are not looking for the fundamental laws. Yet in the Christian culture, they believe everything stems from the God’s words. Their lies of thinking are more systematic, but that could also lead to stupidity, in addition to scientific methods. For instance, he recorded trials where the defendents are the animals.

I think multileving thinking is required for striking a balance. Any logic/methodology taking too far would result in foolness. The key is to recognize when this line of thinking has stopped being effective and switch to anther angle of observation. For instance, while the data is not yet there, can I make a decision not so much on data, which is of course the first choice, but on risk analysis. If there are things that I can do that provide upsides with limited or manageable downsides, why not? If I have to spend loads of energy on drawing a line on the sads when the wind is blowing hard, maybe the best approach is to move on.

People debating which mode of decision making is the best, maybe they just have different pros and cons on different circumstances. The best approach would be having them all in the aseno and recognize when would be best to deploy them.

  1. who are the ones that take on the risk? Mervyn King wrote about his in his excellent books regarding radical uncertainty. The intent of financial system is to shift risks to those who can afford to bear them. But turns out, those who bear the risks are those with least information. I’ve always felt this, those who do anything not because they know the risk profile and decided to take on the risks, yet, most likely it is because they have no idea what they are doing.