Most people are capable of learning difficult skills like swimming, riding a bike, or cooking a decent meal because these activities provide a lot of instant feedback on what you’re doing right, or wrong. If you put far too much salt in the sauce, your pasta will taste memorably bad. The next time, you’ll know what mistakes to avoid.
But some activities, including dangerous ones, provide negative feedback only rarely. When I am in a rush, I often cross the street at a red light. I understand intellectually that this is stupid, but I’ve never once seen evidence of my stupidity. In fact, every time I cross on red, the world sends me a signal that it’s safe: After all, I’ve never (yet) been hit by a car! So I keep crossing on red.
Exposure to COVID-19 works the same way. Every time you engage in a risky activity—like meeting up with your friends indoors—the world is likely to send you a signal that you made the right choice. I saw my pal and didn’t get sick. Clearly, I shouldn’t have worried so much about socializing! But that is just as wrong as thinking that jaywalking is safe because you haven’t yet been hit by a car.
Yascha Mounk
Excellent observations about how everyday human choices and routines can become harmful during a pandemic. I was getting at a similar point in my latest article about the coronavirus when I was writing about the need for flexibility, to adapt our habits to this exceptional situation, at least temporarily. I would add that, in the case of infectious diseases, dangerous situations do provide negative feedback – when we or people around us get sick – but unfortunately that feedback arrives much later, and in our minds becomes disconnected from the actual behavior causing the infection. A similar problem arises with pollution and global warming, both issues that affect the whole planet, but whose ultimate consequences are hard to grasp on short timescales.
Post a Comment