[AKN #53] Distrust of experts and wildfire prevention
and getting ready for your Judo match in an empty conference center
Sup homies?
Welcome to the month of August! Really snuck up on us this year.
Honestly I still don’t really feel grounded in a sense of time. Something about this last year and a half really disconnected me from the concept of months.
But this last year of the newsletter has definitely connected me to the concept of weeks. Specifically when Tuesday of every week is coming up.
On to the newsletter!
LIVE: Distrusting the experts
A big motif during the pandemic is an erosion of trust of “the experts.” Which as far as I can tell is a catch all term we use to describe “the media”, “the institutions”, and “the establishment.”
As I sat here and tried to write up my own thoughts on this subject, I happened upon a thread that captures pretty neatly where I sit on this issue…
It just so happens that this thread was written by America’s favorite frozen beef sheet: Steak-umms.
To summarize some quick highlights of this thread:
Why do we mistrust experts?
distrust in institutions is complex. it's accelerated by people's access to infinite information, credible sources being paywalled, corruption, honest misteaks, or propaganda, but underneath it all is a cultural polarization dating back decades that won't be solved overnight
in the past year various experts and public figures have changed positions with new findings, made good faith errors, politicized the virus, spread misinformation, and had disagreements across institutions. every possible narrative on these occurrences has been amplified by media
Over the last year, we have watched experts get a lot wrong and we have watched bad faith actors jump at the opportunity to build a following on those errors.
The only way forward is for both sides to come back towards some mutual shared sense of reality.
How experts can restore trust
experts need to earn trust back by acknowledging misteaks and being transparent about their processes, what's known, and what's still being learned. they need to address valid concerns. they need to meat people where they are and deliver tangible benefits to improve their lives
Honestly, the fact that experts get things wrong does not frustrate me.
What grinds my gears is the certainty with which the public health community has been making their predictions.
Scientific conclusions are never as overly simplistic as what we are delivered.
Would really just love for the uncertainty to be communicated.
Confidence intervals. Trade offs. Gimme all dat.
How laypeople need to come back to reality
laypeople need to hold both their skepticism and trust of experts in an open hand. they need to acknowledge their limitations in accessing or interpreting fields or resources outside their expertise. they need to keep learning media literacy and grappling with empirical evidence
the shortcomings within experts and institutions don't make fringe sources equally credible or trustworthy. if a doctor gets something wrong, you try another doctor, not a plumber. if a study gets something wrong, you don’t rely on anecdotes for truth, you rely on better studies
I really think this piece is key.
Experts will get things wrong, but the appropriate response to experts getting things wrong is not to go listen to this guy:
Better way to challenge experts
the usefulness of skepticism in experts and institutions is strongest within competing experts and institutions, not outsiders. an outsider may have certain insights worth engaging, but they can't be weighed as equally credentialed as a relevant expert or institutional consensus
Ask yourself if who you are listening to has a credible opinion.
Why do they think what they think?
Is there some type of incentive for them to believe that?
Is this subject their specialty?
They may be an outsider with a completely reasonable question or an insight that breaks it all open. But lets be honest, those types of people are rare…
Main takeaway message
you can maintain healthy levels of skepticism while also extending trust where it's earned by empirical evidence and expertise. use critical thinking. work toward solutions with one another. and remember, this whole thread was an ad so please buy our frozen meat
Steak ums bless.
LAUGH: How to get ready for the Olympics
The Olympics are great, but it must be weird getting stoked for your competition when there are no fans.
Like what are you supposed to do to get ready for your Judo match when you can’t feed off the energy from the crowd?
Well they make a solution for that…
LOVE: Wildfire prevention
Ok. I promised it for a while, but now here we are: Fire prevention. Woot woot!
First, in case you missed it, you can catch my post where I break down the causes of fire.
Second, fire isn’t in the national news as much since it is not ravaging Los Angeles or San Francisco, but it is still raging in Northern California near Butte County.
Below is some satellite imagery taken a few weeks ago of the Dixie Fire.
These images blow my mind…
But the even more mind boggling thing is that this fire kept going.
As of August 3, the Dixie Fire has burned >250,000 acres of land. Making it the 11th largest wildfire in history.
If you follow fire closely, one conclusion you quickly come to is California is ALWAYS on fire. In fact, CALFIRE’s website reports that in 2021 Combined YTD (Jan 1-Aug 3 CALFIRE & US Forest Service) there were 5,998 fires and 542,584 acres burned.
So it is safe to say that this is a huge, recurring problem.
As we spoke about in the last article, when people talk about wildfires much of the focus is on climate change and the role it plays in this process.
However, the unfortunate reality is that climate change is simply a performance enhancing drug for wildfires. If you magically reverted the CO2 levels to acceptable rates to slow/halt climate change, we would still have massive fires in California.
So our focus needs to be on prevention.
Specifically, given that we know fires will occur, what can we do?
I originally envisioned this post to be this big listicle where I went through all of the different things we could do.
I would tell you about all the early fire detection services we could enable using artificial intelligence, satellite imagery, and camera technology.
I would tell you about how the government could take control of PG&E to stop one of the biggest offenders of human caused fires.
I would wax poetic about how we should get a new aged Smokey the Bear campaign going to reach the stupid people who still send off fireworks for gender reveal parties.
But honestly, those are all putting lipstick on a pig.
There is truly only one solution which will move the needle on fire prevention…
Prescribed burns
Managed fires which burn down the stockpiles of dry shrubbery/fire fuel are the most effective solution to managing wildfires.
To visualize why this is important, notice where the Salt Fire of 2021 stopped:
The simple truth is that you cannot burn things that recently burned because they are not easy to light on fire.
Indigenous Native American people who used to roam California knew this well.
Native Americans utilized “fire farmers” who used to deliberately set fires to burn off excess fuel and save settlements.
When Europeans came, we thought this was a perverse form of savagery. The type of ridiculous practice which civilized folk refrain from doing.
But in reality, Indigenous tribes knew that Western landscapes were always going to burn and when you keep putting the fires out, you are stacking up fire reserves.
Ends up that sometimes you aren’t smarter than tradition.
But I agree it is more fun to blame gender reveal parties than our ignorance.
Fire prevention via controlled burn is covered in an upcoming documentary “Bring Your Own Brigade.”
Watch the video below for a summary from the director and you will learn a bit more about prescribed burns as well as fun facts such as:
Wealthy people (such as Kim Kardashian) are hiring their own fire brigades to save their homes from burning to the ground. Thanks to these fire fighters for hire, it is not uncommon to see a few homes of wealthy celebrities survive fire season whilst their literal neighbors aren’t so lucky. Markets in everything…
Closing time
You don’t have to go home, but you can subscribe here:
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are strictly my own. Who else’s would they be?
Kev, loved this and so helpful. I get the self-loathe in my writing all the time and so good to know it’s normal from a newbie but seasoned plume like you!
Agreed. One cannot fix a misteak by drowning it in sauce and force-feeding it to everyone at the party.