Covid and freedom

I've been unsure about whether to write this post.

I write this blog for two main reasons.  (a) To record our family's homeschool/life journey; we enjoy looking back at what we've done over the years.  And (b) when I come across interesting ideas, writing them down helps me with trying to understand them better.

I'm not sure this topic fits either reason.  To be blunt, I find the topic not especially challenging or interesting.  On the other hand, it is kinda topical.  So here goes.

I'll start by saying I'm a liberal.  By this, I just mean that liberal has to do with liberty which has to do with freedom.  In other words, a liberal thinks that freedom is very important.  (Yeah, I know that USers use words in weird ways, and for them "liberal" is either a term of abuse or praise, depending on their political affiliation.  But I'm going to ignore that stuff.)

So, for me, I take the view that the default is that people should be allowed to do whatever they want, whenever they want.  They should have their freedoms.

However, in the real world people bump up against each other in all sorts of ways.  We're a society, a community, after all.  It's practically impossible for everyone to have complete freedoms, because sometimes what I want and what you want conflict.  Only hermits don't have that problem.

So, in the real world we have to qualify things.  We can't have complete freedoms.  Maybe our slightly more nuanced liberal statement is that people should be allowed to do whatever they want unless it harms others.  When it harms others, then we need to figure out who has the right of way, and which freedoms it's better to restrict.

Speaking of right of ways, road rules are a good example.  We could have complete freedom on the road, with no road rules.  Everyone driving their own way, with no speed limits and no red light stopping requirements.  But we recognise that, while it would be fun to be free to drive at 200km/h, the downsides outweigh the upsides.  Besides the likelihood of dying or being injured, it would also take us longer to get where we want to go.  There'd be plenty of traffic jams slowing us down.

So, we agree to restrict our roading freedoms, because overall it's better for each of us.  Road rules reduce harms to us.

The road rules example introduces us to a curious fact about freedoms -- they come in different types.  Sometimes reducing one sort of freedom simultaneously increases another sort of freedom.  When we reduce our freedom to drive however we want by introducing road rules, we also increase our freedom to get where we want to go faster and with less chance of being killed.

We can call these two types of freedoms negative freedom and positive freedom.

Negative freedom is the absence of control by others (it's called negative because it's the absence of something -- barrier, constraint, interference).  Road rules reduce our negative freedom because they control our driving behaviours.  Positive freedom is the ability to do something (it's called positive because it requires something extra).  Road rules increase our positive freedom because they manage traffic flow to enable us to go where we want to go faster and safer.

Which type of freedom is more valuable?  Is it more important to not be told what to do, or is is more important to be able to do stuff?

It seems to me that in the road rules case, being able to go where we want faster and safer is far more important than being able to drive however I want on the road.  In this case the positive freedoms are more important than the negative freedoms, and if we can't have both then let's have road rules that allow us to get where we want to go.

So, we can argue that road rules actually increase our overall freedom, not reduce it, because some freedoms are more valuable than others.

So, there are two things to remember.  (1) There is no such thing as complete freedom, and in any society we have to have some restrictions on our freedom.  And (2) reducing some freedoms sometimes increases other freedoms, which can be more important.

Which brings us to Covid.

At the moment a small percentage of people are protesting their loss of freedoms.  Are they right?

Quite clearly, Covid lockdowns, mask requirements, vaccine passport mandates, etc reduce our negative freedoms.  They control our behaviours.

So, quite clearly we have lost some valuable freedoms.

If we're a liberal, as I am, then we need to have a good reason for justifying this.  The default is freedom, after all.

As with the road rules example, there are two aspects to think about, which are both linked together.  (a) Is the action from this freedom causing significant harm to others, and so would restricting this freedom reduce these harms?  And (b) are there more valuable positive freedoms associated with the negative freedoms, such that reducing the negative freedoms increases the positive freedoms?

In the same way that road rules manage traffic flow and so make things overall better for us, do Covid rules manage contagious disease flow and so make things overall better for us?  (Of course, we want faster traffic flow and slower disease flow.)

And this is where I say I don't know!

To answer this question we need to know certain empirical facts about the world, and we need to have certain skills and tools to analyse the facts properly.

While I hung out at university for 15 years, I never got around to studying epidemiology.  And while I got an A in my first year undergraduate stats course, and did a decent amount of social science, I'm not a statistical population modeler.  

I don't have the expertise to make an informed decision on this.  My years of study on other subjects don't give me the automatic right to opine on this issue.  If I did I would be arrogant.

(My rough opinion is that I could only respectably start to have a decently informed opinion on it after maybe about five-ish years of fulltime study on the specific subject matter, in a community of others, and under the tutorage of subject-experienced people.  Any less than that, and I wouldn't entirely trust myself.)

But if I don't know, then (assuming I should have an opinion on this; on some matters I really don't need to have an opinion) I've got to trust someone else on this.  To act in the world (protest or not?), I need to trust someone.

Unfortunately, no one is perfect.  So who should I trust?

This is where things get messy and complicated.

To tidy things a little, we could try to make a list of the sorts of qualities we might look for, such as:

• More than one person -- the more the better
• These people should be in communication with each other, explicitly interacting on specific points at issue -- they should be a community
• Each of these people should be working on the specific subject area fulltime, and should have been working on it fulltime for many years (ideally decades)
• These people should be publicly publishing their work, with oversight and constant checks, with replies, to minimise the chance that their publications have errors
• Their writings are being accepted in multiple reliable publications
• They should ideally be from as many places as possible, internationally located, with different ethnicities and genders 
• These people should have minimal conflicts of interest -- perhaps a personal history of working quietly in their field, without apparent political ambitions, before Covid happened and gave world-attention to their field of study

Then we could look at what they're saying, such as:

• Their communications are explicitly interacting with as many participants as possible, responding to points and challenges in fair ways
• They should be clearly changing their views if it is warranted, according to the latest, best evidence
• Given that we are not experts, we are not in a position to deeply judge the content subject-matter of what they say, however (and depending on our own critical thinking skills), we can, to some extent, evaluate the structures of reasoning in what they say

There is something of an iterative process to our evaluation.  The more we read (and read widely), the more experience we gain at evaluating what they are saying.  But it's important not to overstep our abilities.  It's important not to start thinking that we are equally competent to evaluate the subject matter.  To do so would be arrogant.  At best we should be evaluating the people who are evaluating the subject matter.

Someone who does something all day every day for decades is going to know significantly more than someone who has read several dozen articles on it during lockdown.  We can be pretty sure that if I (as a casual lockdown reader) have encountered a possible objection to what they're saying, more than likely they are very aware of it, and know the back and forth on it very well.  We can probably trust their conclusion; we shouldn't assume their conclusion is ignorant of our objection.

I hope it's clear that I don't think it should be an equal democracy.  Voting (on matters like this; not on everything) should be weighted according to how much individuals satisfy the sorts of criteria above.  On Covid matters, my vote should be close to zero.

Finally, once we have got a sense of who we think the expert community might be, we look to see if there is consensus among them.  There should be clear near-100% agreement on the solid, central issues, and some disagreements (with reasons and back-and-forth discussions) on the more cutting-edge issues.

When deciding on particular issues, we look for clear majority views.  While the minority may be right, all things being equal it is more likely that the majority is right.  While we should keep the minority opinions live and not ignored, we should go with the majority opinion if action needs to be taken.

How do we apply this to the Covid situation?

This is where I'm a bit conservative.  After spending 15 years at university (and being married to a university academic who spent 25 years there), I got to know quite a few academics in quite a few different disciplines.  On the whole, I think they satisfy the criteria of being trustworthy experts in their subject fields.  Yes, they have their quirks, and yes they aren't perfect, but on balance I think they're most suited to giving expert advice in their specific fields (though not outside their fields).

I've read some of the contrary views.  To me, they don't live up to the standards I think we should set for evaluating who we should trust.  They are not trustworthy.

I say trust the university academics and other fulltime professionals -- the epidemiologists, the statistical modelers, and so on.  Go with their community majority opinion.  Anything else would be arrogance on my part.

The details of the balance to be had between vaccinations, masks, social distancing, lockdowns, contact tracing, etc, is something that they are best placed to decide on.  Just let them do it, and I will go along with what they advise.  I trust that they are just as keen to get out of lockdown and return to normal life as the rest of us.  I don't buy that they are incompetent or in it for the power, etc.

Sometimes what they say may sound counterintuitive or not immediately obvious to us non-experts.  But that's the nature of complex issues.  Just because us casual readers don't "get it" immediately (or at all) doesn't mean to say that it's wrong.

As best I understand it (as a lockdown reader), the current best evidence from the experts is that unvaccinated and unmasked people really do harm others when they interact in public.  But because these harms are probabilistic and less direct, it may be not so immediately obvious to us non-experts.

The best I can understand is that these experts are saying that if we don't (and didn't) restrict freedoms in certain ways, then there will be greater harms to us all.  Restricting negative freedoms increases positive freedoms -- it allows us to socially participate safely, with fewer deaths, and without our hospitals being overwhelmed.  The restrictions that are advised are specific and targeted, and are there because they are beneficial at this time.  I also don't buy the "slippery slope" objections, that these restrictions are the first steps to more oppressive political control. 

As I see it, the negative freedoms that protestors are fighting about are not as important as the positive freedoms that we gain from the Covid restrictions.  In my opinion, Covid restrictions actually increase (valuable) freedoms.  The protestors have got their reasoning wrong (though I sympathise with their itchiness to go out and do stuff, and can understand their dislike of being told what to do).

And so, as I see it, it shouldn't merely be a personal choice for each person.  Respecting other people's choices may sound like the decent thing to do.  And it is when it comes to many/most choices in life.  But when choices harm others, we should not be respecting those choices or tolerating them.  We should respect the people and be kind to them (of course), but at the same time work to stop the harms that they are unintentionally doing to others.

(And yes, this was fairly uninteresting for me to write.  A lot of words to get to an obvious conclusion.  But, as always, happy to discuss further specific details to do with freedom and trust, and happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.)