“Staff” level operators in some state governments: up, in a way which was surprising to me.
American governors: down markedly, both with regards to specific identifiable examples but also as an institution.
Public health as a field: they don’t make numbers low enough to quantify my regard for it as a result of the pandemic.
FDA: Down markedly and continued going down with every additional decision.
CDC: Somewhere between FDA and public health as a field.
Pharmacies: down markedly.
Pharmacists: up markedly; I previously regarded this field as a charming historical anomaly and saw some genuinely heroic behavior (amid a lot of mediocrity) in service of patient health outcomes.
Doctors: down slightly as a class due to inconsistency on several subjects the field should have been markedly consistent in execution on.
The people in charge of complex public software projects for a nation other than the US: up markedly, in a way which was extremely surprising to me, because while operational hypercompetence for that nation is basically Tuesday I would not have predicted approximately mid private sector levels of competence in the field of software from the government under almost any circumstances.
AppAmaGooBookSoft: For reasons I cannot share, down on net with respect to my confidence in their ability to act correctly given their values, up slightly with regards to my perception of their realized ability to positively impact the world. (Note that I am near the extreme right of the curve with regards to my estimate of how good AppAmaGooBookSoft are for the world and I feel it depressing that the extreme right of the curve is not where everyone interest hangs out all the time because this should be extremely uncontroversial.)
What are plausible explanations for early “vaccination rollout” authorities’ communications having been so aggressively wrongheaded, to hinder the use of about-to-expire doses?
Extreme risk-aversion, poor incentives to be right, a true values function which does not actually reflect the one we expect them to have, and extreme undercompetence in areas that we expect competence.
Tyler Cowen Question: What parts of the government, or processes/bureaucracy, rise and fall in status for you as a result of seeing it close up?
Ooh good questions.
“Staff” level operators in some state governments: up, in a way which was surprising to me.
American governors: down markedly, both with regards to specific identifiable examples but also as an institution.
Public health as a field: they don’t make numbers low enough to quantify my regard for it as a result of the pandemic.
FDA: Down markedly and continued going down with every additional decision.
CDC: Somewhere between FDA and public health as a field.
Pharmacies: down markedly.
Pharmacists: up markedly; I previously regarded this field as a charming historical anomaly and saw some genuinely heroic behavior (amid a lot of mediocrity) in service of patient health outcomes.
Doctors: down slightly as a class due to inconsistency on several subjects the field should have been markedly consistent in execution on.
The people in charge of complex public software projects for a nation other than the US: up markedly, in a way which was extremely surprising to me, because while operational hypercompetence for that nation is basically Tuesday I would not have predicted approximately mid private sector levels of competence in the field of software from the government under almost any circumstances.
AppAmaGooBookSoft: For reasons I cannot share, down on net with respect to my confidence in their ability to act correctly given their values, up slightly with regards to my perception of their realized ability to positively impact the world. (Note that I am near the extreme right of the curve with regards to my estimate of how good AppAmaGooBookSoft are for the world and I feel it depressing that the extreme right of the curve is not where everyone interest hangs out all the time because this should be extremely uncontroversial.)
What are plausible explanations for early “vaccination rollout” authorities’ communications having been so aggressively wrongheaded, to hinder the use of about-to-expire doses?
Extreme risk-aversion, poor incentives to be right, a true values function which does not actually reflect the one we expect them to have, and extreme undercompetence in areas that we expect competence.
(this question is just a rephrasing of the “existence of the other kind of oversight” one, so please don’t answer both.)