great piece. epistemic humility indeed. i have one teeny tiny nit: Y2k isn't an example of a failed prediction. Widespread disruptions were avoided precisely because an army of programmers foresaw (not predicted ha!) the issue and harangued their bosses with horror stories to convince them to put money and time towards fixing it.
It's actually a pretty inspirational story of humans cooperating across industries to solve a potentially disastrous issue.
This is true. BUT there were also many countries that did very minimal in comparison to the US and had no major problems either. We’ll never know the counterfactual of what if the US did less or nothing. But the media cycle and panic that ensued is an interesting (or disturbing) precursor to future crises like the pandemic. For me the dilemma it raises is are you reporting on reality or are you creating one in order to report on it.
great piece. epistemic humility indeed. i have one teeny tiny nit: Y2k isn't an example of a failed prediction. Widespread disruptions were avoided precisely because an army of programmers foresaw (not predicted ha!) the issue and harangued their bosses with horror stories to convince them to put money and time towards fixing it.
It's actually a pretty inspirational story of humans cooperating across industries to solve a potentially disastrous issue.
This is true. BUT there were also many countries that did very minimal in comparison to the US and had no major problems either. We’ll never know the counterfactual of what if the US did less or nothing. But the media cycle and panic that ensued is an interesting (or disturbing) precursor to future crises like the pandemic. For me the dilemma it raises is are you reporting on reality or are you creating one in order to report on it.
I like to repeat periodically my own personal moto to stay humble: I’m just an idiot like everyone else doing my best job to not be a complete moron.