HN: Covid-19 and Human Ir-Rationality Part 1

- tags :: [[file:../../../../home/powellc/org/20200315015002-covid_19.org][Covid-19]] Psychology Human Behavior

Tech innovation is not enough

COVID is a perfect example of why Technological Innovation is not enough. With

no vaccine available yet, how do you get experts to share their knowledge in a

way such that it actually gets absorbed?

But while creatives are well aware that they lack the tools to do the job of

scientists, there’s often an Unconscious assumptions that that line of reasoning

need not travel in the opposite direction, see Dunning-Kruger Trap

**Influencing behavior can appear simple even when the application is very

complex.** This phenomenon occurs in comedy as well. It’s easy to underestimate

how difficult it is to create a good set because the tools (language) are

simple, so while you laugh you think, I could do this easily.

This creates biases in us where we fear spiders more than we fear doctors with

messy handwriting. Even though messy handwriting which causes patients to

receive the wrong dosage or incorrect medicine has an astronomically higher

probability of killing you than a spider does (Sokol & Hettige, 2006; see also

Ennik, 1980).

Acting rationally will harm others initially, and then it’ll harm you as well.

**So the right course of action is to act irrationally;** to ‘overreact/panic’ at

the individual level to minimize systemic risk.

Experts in advertising have taught us that influence follows a predictable

pattern in precisely the following order:

- i. Get the attention of the consumer

- ii. **Communicate CLEARLY to the consumer**

- iii. Persuade the consumer

Nearly 90% of ads aren’t remembered, and this is being done by so-called experts

in my industry! **SO the hardest part is getting attention**