Do The Right Thing
I wrote last week that the 6th anniversary of the start of Covid Madness and the coincidence of the two years’ dates had triggered some memories of that time, and I promised to write more.
I here offer you a condensed account of what was for me the most infuriating of the many infuriating things that occurred during that time.
It was in the Fall of 2021, and I was still a working stiff. We had finally been allowed to go back into our offices at UWO (although many of my colleagues were almost never there) and in-person meetings could again happen – with various restrictions, of course.
A big event that happened every Fall in Econ was the Prospectus Meetings, at which senior PhD students presented their plans for what their dissertations would look like. Almost all faculty attend these, along with most grad students, even the ones not presenting. Afterward the students are all sent out of the room and the assembled faculty come up with detailed commentary on each proposed dissertation and, finally, a decision as to whether the proposal should be passed (good to go ahead) or not (the student has to re-work their ideas and come back and try again).
A big moment for the grad program and the Dept in general, as you can imagine, and we could once again do it together in a room, face-to-face. Ya-hoo.
There is a limit to how many of these one-hour sessions one can digest in a day, so the proposals were scheduled to happen over two successive Fridays, with four presentations on the first Friday. A bigger room than any available in our building was arranged for, and we met.
A few days after that first meeting, an all-Dept email was sent out reporting that someone at that first meeting might have Covid. Oh. Our Chair then sent out a very sensible email saying that the current university policy if someone in a class is diagnosed with Covid is to just proceed with the class. We would do likewise. Ok, then.
Some days after that we got another all-points email saying the person in question had taken a Covid test, and it was negative. So – relax.
Except not.
Before the second prospectus meeting on the following Friday could take place, we got a third email saying that (I will never forget the phrase) ‘out of an abundance of caution’ the second prospectus meeting would occur only on Zoom. No more in-your-face presentations or discussions would occur.
Just after this last email landed, one of my youngest colleagues came into my office, angry. I cannot remember his exact words, but it was along the lines of ‘what the hell are we doing?’
I said ‘I guess we have decided to abandon Bayes Rule’ and he said ‘yea, that’s fair’.
I’m going to now tell my faithful readers about Bayes Rule, because otherwise you cannot understand what an absolute abrogation of our duties as academic economists it was for that second meeting to be moved to Zoom.
The Reverend Thomas Bayes (1701-1761) was the English minister and mathematician who was, so far as we know, first to codify a rule for updating one’s beliefs about anything uncertain in the face of new information. His Bayes Rule, or Bayes Theorem, is absolutely essential to Economics and any other science that studies decision-making under uncertainty. Very few of the economists in the world do not teach some version of Bayes Rule in any reasonably advanced class. I taught it in my Political Economy class because it is central to understanding how people update their views of political candidates during the course of an election campaign. Decision theorists use it, management gurus use it, psychologists use it, statisticians use it.
And, without dragging you into the weeds with me, I can assure you that the only Bayes-rule-consistent decision that could possibly emerge from our learning about the person who had the negative Covid test would have been – ‘Next Friday’s Prospectus Meeting will be back in person and in the same room’.
Indeed, it is really common sense. All we had learned between the two meeting dates was that one person at the first meeting had tested negative for Covid. Not a reason to do anything different. None.
Had I set this scenario as a question on an exam, asking students ‘Under what conditions should the second meeting be held?’, any student who answered ‘Only on Zoom’ would have gotten an F.
But it was my Department that earned an F. And that includes me.
I have no idea who made the decision to move to Zoom, it was certainly not the administrator who was given the task of sending the email.
I did not try to find out, and I did not march into that person’s office, whoever it was, and ask them ‘What the Hell is wrong with you?’
One very simple, almost costless thing I could have done is Reply All to that stupid third email, saying ‘So I assume we will no longer teach Bayes Rule in any of our classes?’
The young colleague who came into my office understood that, every other economist in the Dept would have, also.
But I did not do even that small thing.
So, the minor lesson from this story is that supposedly smart people are willing to abandon their principles in the face of…..I don’t know what it was, but I suppose ‘fear’ is as good a word as any. I am told it was Jordan Peterson who coined the term ‘terrified tyrants’ for the folks who made most of the big decisions during the Covid Catastrophe. They locked us all down and imposed all sorts of nonsensical rules on us, and suggested that anyone who protested against any of it was asking to kill Granny. This from people who let Granny die alone in a room with no family to comfort her.
The Major lesson from this episode for me, however, is personal. It is always easier to shut up and go along, and that is what I did, and I am still kicking myself for not saying or doing anything about this particular piece of madness back in 2021. That it was madness from my own colleagues rather than some dipshit administrator makes it worse.
What each of us does is what the world is made of. It’s goddam hard to do the right thing, often, which is no doubt why we see it done so seldom. But it’s still the right thing. And if no one does it, methinks the world just goes to shit. As it indeed is.