In the heat of a crisis, battle, or passionate argument, we tend to lose our objectivity. Who cares what the other side thinks, right? Well, I think you are half-way to the truth, there. Indeed, who cares what the other side thinks?! Their thoughts are motivated by an implicit bias, in other words: a bias, of which they may not even be aware, is influencing their interpretation of the information at hand. The other half-way that we need to get, which is much tougher, is: who cares what your side thinks, either? Every side of the political spectrum has an implicit bias which they bring to political issues, and, this pandemic, sadly, has become an American political football – complete with every side trying to score points. If you read my last article, then you know that I encourage you to be the judge in the metaphorical courtroom; struggling desperately to spot your own biases, and to discard them, in the quest to become an independent fact finder. So, if we all have an implicit bias, how do we see past any given writer’s biases, as well as our own? One great approach is to look to the (slightly less) recent past.
Anything that you can find, written between now and dating back to March 2020, is tainted. It is stained with the partisan rancor that most closely competes with “being sprayed in the face by a skunk,” in the category of “foulest stenches.”
In WWII, Winston Churchill had a best friend who also happened to be one of the most brilliant people in all of the U.K. The trouble is, that friend was loyal to Churchill above all else. If Churchill wanted a conclusion reached, his friend would reach it – supported by some great sounding evidence, and, utterly ignoring any countervailing evidence. The left does this – and, so does the right. So, what are we to do? One simple solution is to look back and see what people were saying about these very same topics just a few years ago – when there was no passion in the argument. If you take the passion out of the argument, you are left with an intelligent discussion of the ideas; the merits of the argument. Does this mean that you will find consensus? No, you almost certainly will not. However, you will find a more balanced approach; one which doesn’t involve anyone contemplating the idea that hundreds of thousands of lives hang in the balance. Such thoughts cloud our judgments. So to, do fear, and restlessness. Remember the lead up to the Bush Administration’s decision to bomb Afghanistan, after 9/11? In the intervening weeks, there was a growing sense of rage – SOMEONE needed to pay. Pick a God Damn target and start exacting revenge! Nearly all of us felt it, even if only on a subconscious, primal, level. Remember “shock and awe?” I’m practically a G.W.B. groupie. However, the national sense of excitement at showing *them* what we could do to anyone who dared defy us, (which was also palpable), embarrasses me to reflect upon. But after all, we were defending America from the savages who would threaten us, and, our way of life… at least, that’s how it felt in the fog of 9/11. Years later, we absolve ourselves of our own enthusiasm, while pointing fingers at political “others,” upon which to apportion blame. We foolishly expect our Presidents to be perfect – or else, we forgive them for a multitude of sins, by explaining that, “nobody’s perfect,” generally failing to see the flaw inherent in each argument. Our leaders are not perfect; it is not wrong to love them, despite their flaws; it is wrong to pretend that their flaws don’t exist, or, that our collective lack of perfection means that we should give them a free pass on their bad behavior. But, I digress. This is about objectivity, and finding cool heads, in the midst of the pandemic (because, you can’t spell PANdemIC, without the panic!).
One of the solutions is to look a few years back, when ***fact checking every claim***, which I am sure you were already doing. As an aside, you might have noticed that I always say, “one of the solutions” or, “one of the answers,” instead of “the solution,” or “the answer?” This is because there are many legitimate answers and solutions – not just one. Just as there are no perfect answers… only incomplete answers and solutions; each one with its own problem or flaw. In light of that fact, and, as always, let us remember the brilliant words of Benjamin Franklin, at the close of the Constitutional Convention, when he encouraged the room full of distinguished members to each “doubt a little of his own infallibility,” as we hurry to conclusions about the new “truth” which we are racing to embrace.
We’ve all played the role of the chump at one point or another, falling victim to a dubious claim, or fake quote. I personally love the one from President Lincoln, admonishing people that they can’t trust everything they read on the internet. Sadly, not all fake news is quite so obvious. So, how do you sort it all out, and, why should you trust me? You sort it out by examining the credibility of the evidence, and, you should trust me because I’m an attorney. Stop laughing. I’m serious! Allow me to explain. I’m not your attorney, and, I’m not opposing counsel. I’m speaking to you from the position of a neutral – like a judge. Lawyers are professional researchers, advisors, and debaters, among whatever other things you may want to call us. We exist because, despite what you may wish to think, the world is full of ambiguity, uncertainty, and different ways to look at the same information. This reality allows us to look at the facts, and, find the positions which support our client’s case. However, our arguments are not the end of the matter. They are, in fact, the middle of the matter. The end of the matter, is when the arguments are brought before the judge. The judge weighs the credibility of the evidence and arguments presented, and decides what he believes to be the more compelling side (there are more precise ways of explaining this, but, for our purposes, this will suffice). Which means that we need to do a good job at the beginning, when we are researching. Imagine missing something big, and, not finding out until you’re in front of the judge, with your client standing next to you. Not an experience that you want to have. It is with that in mind, that I ask you to trust me, and, allow me to help you figure out how to sort through the mess of information for yourself.
The first problem that we have, collectively, is that we are all playing the role of “lawyer,” these days, instead of being the judge. What I mean by that, is that we are so busy arguing for “our side,” that we have abandoned the role of truth seeker, entirely. You can think of it like this. The information with which we are presented is like a witness, giving testimony on the stand. If you’re a Republican, and the witness is Fox News, you are likely giving a vigorous defense of the witness, yelling out objections when your Democrat-friend is cross examining the witness, and, lobbing softball questions, and defenses. If the witness is CNN, then, the tables are turned. Can you see the problem with this? The lawyers are not fact finders – that’s the role of the judge (or the jury… but, let’s pretend we are only dealing with judges, for the sake of the analogy). Lawyers are the story tellers – we create the narrative, we spin the facts in the way that advances our side. It’s not that we lie – we literally are not allowed to do that. We just present the facts in the light that best suits our side’s position. That’s not a great way to exist outside the courtroom. In fact, it’s destroying us. We must learn to play the role of the judge, or, our Republic will fail; the Great American Experiment, will be over.
So, how do we play the role of the judge? Well, that’s going to be a struggle, because, it involves skills that you were probably never taught. For instance, we have a school system that has terrible text books – and always has, and teaches that the often incorrect (and even more often, over-simplified) information within those books is true. We are taught not to question, or challenge, but, to accept what we are told as true. Unfortunately, such a system designs suckers. To be the judge, you have to retrain yourself not to accept anything, without supporting evidence. You have to learn how to weigh the evidence. You have to accept that you might not like the truth; to choose an ugly truth over an uninformed falsehood. Finally, you have to accept that you will never have complete evidence. The judge wasn’t there when the events transpired, which brought the litigants into the courtroom. There may have even been better information available, which the lawyers missed. The judge has to work with the information at hand, to be able to draw the best conclusions possible, being open to the fact that s/he may be wrong, in the conclusion that is reached – that’s why we have appeals. Changing one’s position because new information has come to light is not called “flip-flopping,” it’s called being rational.
So, how do we weight evidence? Well, for starters, we fact check EVERYTHING. I fact check myself – CONSTANTLY. I start to say something to my kids that I learned in school, and, then, I stop, and say, “you know what, let’s look that up.” Why? Because human memory is faulty, and, because, when I grew up, scientists thought there were only nine planets in the UNIVERSE. Our knowledge was, and is, so vastly incomplete, that, remaining open to the possibility that we are wrong is critical. But, when we talk about “fact-checking,” what do we mean? Whose facts? Well, we want first hand evidence, whenever possible. If the witness says, “I never wear red ties,” and we have video of him wearing a red tie, that’s pretty solid evidence – although still not conclusive, thanks to technology, so, we need to seek the totality of the evidence. If we are talking about a scientific study, then, we need to know what kind of study it was. Does it follow the “rule of large numbers?” That rule is one that applies in any study – and, at the roulette wheel. Just because the ball landed on red ten out of the last eleven spins, does not mean that it lands on red for ten out of EVERY eleven spins. To find out how often it lands on red, we need to spin the wheel at least 100 times, and, 1000 would be better, and 10,000 would be better still. Why? For the same reason that you can flip a quarter and get heads three times in a row, even though there is only a 50/50 chance that it would land on heads, and, that, on average, it would land on heads one out every two flips. Small sample sizes give untrustworthy results. Then, we need to ask whether it was a double blind, controlled, randomized, study. That kind of study removes the ability of the researcher to accidentally, or purposefully manipulate the data. It’s not that you should throw out every other study, but, you certainly shouldn’t trust them very much. You should eye them with skepticism, and seek confirmatory or disconfirmatory evidence – and, seeking such evidence only for the sake of getting closer to the truth, not to support your preconceived notions.
After you have done all of this, you should evaluate for risks – judges, since we are using the analogy, do this when setting bail. In the world of finance, there is a different way of framing risk. It is the consideration of the existence of what is called, “fat tail risk;” a low probability event which, if it occurred would have massive ramifications. In other words, the risk of rare events with big consequences; the Chernobyl events, if you will. If the risk is small, but, the consequences large, you might reconsider taking the risk, in making your decision.
If you put all of this together, you’ll be pretty solid at spotting hoaxes, and identifying valid claims. You still might come to a different conclusion from someone else, who is applying the same approach, but, that’s ok. This approach means that you’ll be able to understand one another’s perspectives. It also means that you’ll both be approaching the information from a well reasoned position, and be more open to reconsidering your conclusions, based on new information. It becomes a collaborative process, instead of a competitive one, where you seek to defeat one another’s arguments. It removes the us vs. them tribalism that has ravaged through our society more savagely than the Pandemic. Truth isn’t about choosing sides, and, no side has a lock on the truth – that’s just the claim that the lawyers make.
The moment my twin sons’ Squirt AA team won their Columbus Day Tournament in 2017. You can’t social distance and play this game.
I hate what I’m about to write. As a youth hockey coach who has eight seasons behind the bench, and, as someone who has played the game since I graduated from the inaugural version of the “learn to play hockey program,” I want you to know, that I genuinely hate writing this, to the core of my being. I hate it for all four of the hockey players in my family, including myself, who are impacted by the inescapable reality of the impossibility of playing the game right now. I hate that my daughter will miss her planned return to the ice. I hate that my sons, who were born for contact hockey, will not get the first year bantam experience that they’ve been looking forward to since mites, but, hating it doesn’t change the reality. We can’t play hockey right now. It’s just that simple.
As USA Hockey, and the Atlantic Amateur Hockey Association, or the “AAHA,” for short, both gear up for a 2020-2021 youth hockey travel season, with tryouts by email, the gory details of what they are, and aren’t, saying should give every parent pause – and, I’m being very generous when I frame it that way. USA Hockey’s “plan,” is bad enough, considering that it only makes recommendations; an ironic, if not remarkable, decision, considering the fact that they require coaches to wear helmets during practice, even though the risk of death or serious injury related to a mite coach not wearing a helmet is remarkably lower than the risk that numerous people will die from COVID-19, if we try to play anything resembling actual hockey right now. The AAHA’s plan, on the other hand, is downright absurd. Taken in their totality, the two plans are impractical, implausible, and, most likely impossible to implement. In short, they are the results of a desperate desire for normalcy, where none can exist. They are the panicked attempts of an entire industry to wish the problem away, with almost comic guidance, if it wasn’t so damn dangerous, and so profoundly sad.
What are they actually suggesting? Well, the AAHA wants you to “tryout” by emailing the coaches. Then, you’ll have to pay, of course, if your kid “makes the team.” When will “hockey” actually “start?” Well, that’s a great question that no one at all in the AAHA region can answer, because, you know COVID-19. Rest assured, ice skating rinks will be among the last places to open, for patently obvious reasons. The only things to do at rinks involve congregating and not social distancing, after all. Public skating? Yeah right! Even ignoring the unsanitary skate rental situation, how are you going to be 6 feet away from everyone in all directions??? I don’t want to do the math, but, you have one person taking up a circular space of 12 feet in all directions (6 feet to the left, 6 more to the right, 6 to the front, and 6 to the back). With a width of 85 feet across, that’s good enough for 7 skaters across, and, at 200 feet long, you can get 16 deep – so, there’s room for 112 socially distanced people, as long as no one moves… That doesn’t really matter, though, since gatherings of more than 50 people are likely to continue to be banned until there is a cure or a vaccine, but, who cares about social distancing at public skating? We are hockey families, right? Well, the rinks might care, since, you know, they have to make enough money to stay in business. Mind you, it won’t just be public skating that they lose. The version of “hockey,” that they have in mind isn’t conducive to adult leagues, since it doesn’t involve the actual playing of hockey games. Wait, you didn’t know that? True story! We’ll get into that later, though. For now, let’s leave it at “no adult hockey, and, no public skating.” Oh, and, no snack bar, since even USA Hockey and the AAHA seem to grasp that the rink lobby must be closed. Learn to play hockey and mites are unequivocally out, since little kids cannot be counted on to remember that they can’t engage in typical human interaction, and, kids who can’t skate well enough to be in a league simply fall all over themselves and each other, so, those are both out. It’s getting harder to imagine how the rinks can make any profit at all, isn’t it? I think that’s because there isn’t a way to make this math add up.
Now, let’s get to the details of what is going to pass for “hockey.” As soon as the rinks are allowed to open, the AAHA’s advice is for coaches to get their players on the ice. So, basically, the second they get the chance, they are going to crowd rinks with the greatest number of players allowable by law – that’s totally not going to result in a wave of new cases! As any learn to play hockey student can tell you, learning something new is an imperfect, imprecise, process, and, that you’re worst at the beginning. So, all these coaches, implementing a new approach that is radically different from anything they’ve ever done before is going to be a mess. The current approach takes zero consideration for any learning curve, expecting coaches to get it perfect the first time. That’s delusional, and dangerous. Especially considering the fact that all of us youth hockey coaches are such completely reasonable people, when it comes to the sport that we love, right?! None of us will push it too far, too fast, right? Sure. Now that we are all back in the actual rink, there will only be practices – for how long? Dunno. Likely until there is – you guessed it, a vaccine or a cure… so, probably, well into next season. Angling drills? Body checking drills? Sorry, Charley! There is no contact. In fact, there is literally no contact of any kind. Six feet of social distance in all directions, remember? Players will not be allowed on the benches, because they can’t possibly fit a full forward line on the bench, without violating social distancing guidelines, let alone a team. You’d need a 30 foot long bench for five players! But, you can’t have a coach behind the bench – no way he’s 6 feet behind the players. They recommend drills where the players don’t stand in line – surrrrre, I’ve got a ton of those! Besides, what player doesn’t want to have a practice where they never for a second get to stop moving. By the way, what kind of choreography are you going to need to do, to keep the players six feet apart while they are doing these drills? No crashing the net. No small area games. Can’t work on edges, since that always involves players standing in lines. Good thing the lobby is closed, because, you’re going to need the entire rink for players to get dressed. Oh! They want players to wash every piece of their gear, after every single practice, in the highest temperature water setting. Right. That’s as laughable as the suggestion that they made for sending the players off the ice after practice – players should be individually sent off the ice, to avoid having them congregate, and, time should be built into practice to permit this dismissal. No word on how they’ll avoid them congregating before practice. How much space do you need off the ice, to keep all players 6 feet apart? With a full roster of three lines, and two goalies, the line to get onto the ice will be 102 feet long. Is anyone else seeing how absurd, and unworkable, this plan looks?
This isn’t hockey. It’s not even hockey practice. Worse still, it eliminates most of the reasons that we put our kids in hockey in the first place. There’s no team when you can’t get changed in the locker room together, sit on a bench together, work through disagreements together. There’s no overcoming adversity by battling back, late in the game – because there’s no game. I don’t know how you form new friendships when you can’t get closer than 6 feet apart, with mouth guards in, and never get to even fist bump each other, which USA Hockey is, absurdly, ok with. Perhaps, if the players fully extend their arms, they can pull off a socially distanced fist bump, but, come on. That’s obviously not how it’s going to go.
Please don’t misunderstand me – I’m not arguing against the social distancing rules. This is what they had to do during the Spanish Flu with similar activities, and, it’s what we need to do now. As painful as it is, there shouldn’t be any games right now. It’s not safe. It won’t be safe until there is a vaccine, herd immunity, or, a cure. Now, there is the chance that we, as a nation, will simply open up for business, in a foolish bid for herd immunity, thereby allowing untold millions of people to die, since the strain of such a massive wave of infections would mean that anyone who needed a hospital bed to survive would die – since there would be a shortage of bed in the tens of millions. That would be foolish and imprudent – not to mention emotionally and financially devastating beyond even what we face with a patient, annoyingly slow reopening. However, I don’t think we will do that, because, even most of the tough-talkers will retreat from their positions when the people who they love start dying. At that point, this conversation would be moot, since everything would likely shut down again. What this present approach is trying to do, is to have it both ways, by not reopening, and, not waiting this out – and, what do we all know about the ability to have it both ways? You can’t.
Even these rules, or, in USA Hockey’s case, “recommendations,” will slacken once the pucks hit the ice. Why? For the same reason that we have to “skate” players from time to time for touching a puck after they were explicitly told not to touch the pucks (DON’T TOUCH THE PUCKS! I yell it in my sleep during the middle of the season)… it’s because we love this game. It is, I think, a fundamental part of us. We are like junkies. We can’t help ourselves – we can’t be trusted with the pucks. And, what happens then? If even one team relaxes on the rules, it will start a wave of new cases, that rips through entire teams, if not whole organizations, and, then through families. And, what if the rules don’t slacken? Then, what are we even doing out there? We should at least come up with a new name for it, because, it’s sure as hell is not hockey.
We like a lot of things that have, for the moment, been stripped away from us:
Walks on the beach, vacations, going outside without being afraid that we might become violently ill and die or bring the plague upon our family, amusement parks, free water ice from Rita’s on the first day of spring, professional sports, that thing about the murderous virus – again, getting to watch our kids play sports, and going to the grocery store without being forced to go, in a singular direction, through every aisle (why in the hell is the word “aisle,” spelled that way? Never mind, I’ll look it up later), because – social distancing. But, of all the things that we miss, there is one thing that I think we miss the most – it’s a bad habit, though, and, it’s time to give it up. It’s our deeply misguided sense of certainty, and, honestly, it’s toxic. To the frustration of everyone who has not previously had the sense of certainty beaten out of them – which, I believe is life’s most frequent method of teaching about uncertainty, the last few weeks have been… rough, to put it mildly. “The Coronavirus,” and CoVid-19, the disease that it causes, are new in humans. This means that we, collectively, “know” – and, this is a technical term – “jack squat,” about the ways to treat it, the ways that we catch it, and the ways to protect ourselves, and our families, from it.
The trouble is, we have a whole bunch of experts, telling us that they do “know.” To make matters worse, the experts at the top, Dr. Anthony Fauci, in particular, seem less confident, and “we the people,” are not used to seeing a prominent expert looking uncertain. There is a reason for this – we don’t give uncertain people the spotlight in America. The media, and politicians alike, stick with “experts” who “know.” What we all know about the experts with whom we disagree is how wrong they always are. We are less convinced that our preferred experts have a similar track record – rest assured, they do. In fact, in the late 1980’s, researcher Philip Tetlock proved that the so called “experts,” performed worse than “a dart throwing chimpanzee.” This is, understandably, maddening. What’s far worse, is that these less accurate than, head-or-tales-call-it-in-the-air “experts,” continue to get a spot on the talking-heads-tv-shows. What we don’t often see, are the Dr. Fauci’s of the world. We prefer our deeply flawed, less than 50-50 experts, who provide us with false certainty, to a truth teller – because, very often, the truth is, “we don’t know.”
So what the hell do we do with, “we don’t know?” How can that be valuable? Well, it’s actually incredibly valuable. If you listen carefully, a Dr. Fauci doesn’t stop at, “we don’t know.” He tells you what we think is true – what the possibilities might be. From there, we make our decisions: what are the chances things go this way, or that way? What is the worst case scenario? What are the chances that the worst case scenario happens? We do this everyday without thinking. For instance, you know that people die in car accidents, but, you still get in a car. Coincidentally, CoVid-19 is killing more Americans every day, right now, than die per day from all accidents, of any type – which happens to be the third leading cause of death in the United States. It’s no joke.
So what do we do, when something is killing people, and, we don’t know how to stop it? We take the extra cautious approach, because the risk is high enough to warrant it. This is why civilization has come to a grinding halt, globally. It isn’t because people were overreacting. If you have a 1 in 100 chance of dying by going on a rollercoaster, then you don’t go on the rollercoaster – unless you’re a moron. Some morons will still roll the dice. Don’t be the moron. It costs you very little to skip outings which are not required. Death, on the other hand, costs a great deal. Extreme illness, which occurs in 15-20% of cases, costs a great deal. So, you stay inside. Some “experts” say take Tylenol for now, because NSAIDs cause this virus to proliferate. Some say that’s just a myth. Unless you have a need to take NSAIDs, use your brain – take the Tylenol. The same with masks – if some say they work, and some say, it’s just a waste of time to use a mask, then use the damn mask. What, are you afraid of looking stupid? I think that you’re pretty stupid if you’ll risk serious illness, to avoid looking stupid, so, let’s assume it is something else stopping you, and that I just can’t figure out what that thing is, and move on. These choices are not particularly difficult. Some of the questions are, of course, harder to answer. These, I will not even try to answer for you – because you need to use your own judgment, based on the available information. If the available information changes, don’t start wringing your hands – just make the adjustment. It should not be a surprise that the information will change, once you accept uncertainty. The approach should always be the same, though. Ask yourself, “what happens if I choose this course of action, versus the other available options?” Then, look at the chances that each outcome takes place, and the consequences of that outcome. Then, ask yourself if you can live with that outcome. Oh, and, for God’s sake – do try not to be a selfish bastard. Think about the impact that your actions have on your loved ones, and, on someone else’s loved ones. If we all look out for ourselves, there is only ever one person looking out for you. If we look out for each other, there are countless people looking out for you. The second way is objectively better.
All of this takes thinking. It’s hard work, and, maybe that’s part of why we don’t like it. Life is not a scantron test – no matter how often someone tries to present it that way. In fact, life is a philosophy class, with a whole bunch of questions that have imperfect, or entirely non-existent answers. Ironically, our schools don’t teach philosophy, so, most of us spend the majority of our lives, alternatively, looking for “the answer,” or hiding from the fact that the question exists at all: what should I do with my life, can you have it “all,” how do I find happiness, etc. Maybe the other reason that we want someone to give us the answer, is so that we have someone else to blame, just in case things don’t go, “just so.” Neither of these motivations are justified, though. Nearly every good thing you’ve ever had required hard work (surely thinking will be no exception), and, you can engage in all the blaming that you’d like, but, in the end, we make our own decisions. So, I’d ask you to allow this crisis to teach you to accept uncertainty, and, embrace that, once life returns to whatever we will eventually call “normal.” You’ll make better decisions, and, you likely lead a happier life, because, you’ll be the one making decisions. You also won’t be blindsided when things don’t go according to plan. You’ll happily acknowledge that nothing is certain, so, why would you ever be certain of an outcome? Of course, I can’t be certain – but, neither can you. It’s just the best conclusion that I can come to, based on all the available information.
thereluctantcommentator 