Do not listen to this podcast. When is it permissible to ignore the voice of authority?

Things mentioned in this podcast:

• Whaley Bridge residents who refuse to move

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast, produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing when you should ignore official advice. Nick, can you kick us off, please?

Yeah, well, a couple of weeks ago, a town in Derbyshire called Whaley Bridge suffered some heavy rain and a nearby dam was damaged in the surge of water. So officials then evacuated about 1,500 people from part of the town, which was in danger of being flooded if this dam had broken. The RAF was on hand to plug the gap with sandbags and stuff, and they weren't sure it was touch and go, apparently. Anyway, the dam's fine now, but at the time, quite a few people- I was against the official advice. And I heard a debate on the radio about whether or not these people were selfish scumbags who were basically going to have to be rescued by someone if the dam broke, or whether, well, actually, it's perfectly fine. What do officials know what they're talking about? And I know my own life better, and so on. And I thought it was an interesting question. And obviously, the issue of official information and experts and the extent to which we trust them has been fairly live recently. And so, you know, that's the question, really. When does the official advice- when should we trust it? When should we ignore it? And are there some simple rules we can use?

I mean, is this about information asymmetry? Is that what it's about?

I think that is part of it.

Chris? Well, I was just going to say, on behalf of Aleph Insights, the time to ignore official advice is never, of course, on our say-so. So, you know, just to clarify. Our legal team would like us to point out. Our legal team has specified that this is a theoretical discussion. So, yes, if you are told to evacuate your home, please do. But yes.

Okay, so, yeah, I don't see where we're- let's see where we go with this. I think we can wrap this podcast up in five minutes, I think, because surely most of the time you should be- let's think of some times when officials have given out warnings and it's gone wrong. And in fact, and actually, in this case, it's not that it's gone wrong. It's just that what they thought could happen, and if it did happen, would have been, let's presume, catastrophic. Hey, it just didn't happen. And even the officialdom at the time would have said, look, we're hoping this won't happen. We're doing everything we can to stop it happening. But if, just in case it does, you need to do this. Yeah. Which seems like pretty good advice.

Yeah, I'm not saying that the people who went back to their house were right, but I'm also not definitely saying that they were wrong either. I mean, you know, certainly in this case, it seems to me it may well depend on why you have to go back. You know, you might have a dog you need to feed, or you might- it might be the case that, you know, you have some essential business you need to do, and your house is the only place you can do it.

You can only poo in your own loo.

Something like that. Some people are like that, aren't they?

It's backed up with flooding, though. It's going to be a mess.

Yeah. So, you know, those people, presumably, for a given level of risk, have a higher return to offset against that risk. And those people, you know, the kind of standard advice everyone gets out, given that the risk wasn't 100%, we know that because it didn't happen. So there was some level of risk, and those people may well have been rationally saying, well, you know, that I can- I'm taking account of that risk, and I'll go back.

Yeah. I mean, I suppose the problem is we are trying to make- The problem is that it looks like there's no downside to evacuating people because it looks like, well, you're helping them and if it floods or doesn't flood, well, it's fine. What's the cost? But there is a cost to evacuation. It's a massive pain in the ass. And I mean, there have been situations like in Hurricane Katrina, where the evacuation was a total catastrophe, where people were stuck in a stadium for days without any sanitation or food because they were told to go there, but the authorities were completely unprepared in terms of actually being able to get them out. And I sort of think, well, actually, the thing is that I probably, what I want, I want to be told what the risk is. That's what I want. I don't want to be told evacuate or don't evacuate. I want someone to say, we think there's a 40% chance this dam will break and this is what will happen if it does. And then I can make that decision. And I think part of the problem is that we've sort of got into an equilibrium, where the government assumed, the authorities assume we're stupid. And we behave stupidly as a result. You know, and so the government will say that this dam could break, we're evacuating you without really giving you the information about how likely it is. And then some people probably like me say, well, you know, I bet I could get back, I'll probably be all right. You know, and I don't really, I'm not really, there's probably a less than 50% chance of this happening, and I'm probably not going to die. So I've got to make those assumptions. And you know, I'll go back. And then if it does happen, of course, they will say, oh, well, look at these stupid people. They didn't evacuate. We can't give them, we can't rely on people making sensible decisions, because even when we tell them to leave, they don't. So I feel like there's a sort of fundamental problem there, which is, you know, it's almost like communication is deliberately dumbed down. And if you look at, you know, well, certainly a topic dear to my heart, things like medical advice about what you should eat, or how much booze you should drink, a lot of the time, you know, is massively oversimplified. And that's, you know, as soon as someone like me says, well, I can tell this is oversimplified. Or, you know, well, this is different advice to what it was five years ago. I start thinking, well, how do I know that this is any brighter than the last lot, you know? And so I think, yeah, I think the problem is that it is deliberately simplified. And as a result, I'm right not to really trust it that much.

I think one of the issues is that, you know, there are some people who act as rational actors. But a lot of the way people make decisions in these circumstances, you know, in relation to official advice, or advice from an authority, seems to be driven by their peer group, you know. So if people, you know, if smoke's coming out the top of the volcano, and you're in Pompeii, and nobody else is fleeing, then you might, you know, you might remain around. And, you know, you see that with things like the anti-vacca's, you know, and the sort of MMR scandal, you know, most of that was driven by sort of people realising that their, you know, some parent at their schools, their children's school wasn't doing it, and was, you know, espousing how it was a bad thing to vaccinate your children, and so on. And so I suppose they're just reacting to that, you know, that sense of, well, if we don't insist on this, and we don't mandate it, then, you know, once you get a few people who break it, others will follow them. So yes, it's a difficult.

Yeah, I'm slightly confused in, you know, thinking about this, when I take advice, official advice, when I don't. I mean, thinking, I'm sure all the time I take advice, like, for example, okay, it is the law now, but wearing a seatbelt, even if it wasn't the law, I probably would wear a seatbelt all the time still. But if it was 40 years ago, you wouldn't, you probably wouldn't. Yeah, and if probably not. And in fact, I remember when I lived in the Middle East, actually, I lived in a country where this is only 18 years ago, where I didn't have to wear a seatbelt. And

actually, I didn't. So really, God, I can't, I feel naked without a seatbelt. Yeah. But also,

but actually, I think these days, I probably would take the advice. I try not to smoke. You know, I tried to follow that advice. One bit of advice I tend not to. Yeah, but do you follow

it because it's advice? Or do you follow it because it's simply a fact that you're likely to get the latter? Yeah, you're right, the latter. But that's an interesting point, right? So what's the distinction? Because for most people, they don't have access to, or for a lot of circumstances, like if you asked, you know, if you provide, if you told an individual, this damn may or may not burst, they would feel sort of naked in their ignorance about that and not qualified to make a judgment about its probability, the impact of it, you know, how it might unfold, what the indicators would be that it was about to unfold, and so on. So the official advice becomes to them the best source of fact and knowledge that they have. And so they're trusting in the authority, not in the information itself, as such. Yeah, I mean, and there's the problem. That's in a sense,

why we have things like building regulations. Because in a free market, the sort of total free market solution would be to say, well, building regulations impose a cost. And it might be that some people are willing to accept that a risk, you know, by having, you know, unsafe electrical wiring or something, they can have a cheaper house, and there's a higher risk that they might die, but they might be willing to accept that. But I think the the principle of regulations is that it's actually very costly to acquire that information to, you know, you've got to go and get a kind of degree in electrical engineering, really, to be able to properly appraise these things. And, and so, you know, the reason we have these sort of slightly dumb regulations that just say, well, you have to do this stuff, you've got to have walls this thick, you've got to make sure that you've got, you know, wiring, which is insulated in this way, is because we don't, not only do we not trust people to be able to make those judgments themselves, but that we're right not to impose, you know, and we sort of think, well, if people are seriously sat down and looked at this, they'd make the same trade offs, by and large, people would say, well, actually, the additional cost, the five pounds, it costs me to insulate this wire is worth it, is worth it in terms of the reduction in risk. And so we make that judgment for people. And I suspect in this, in these sorts of cases, it's a similar thing. It's like, well, we could tell you all about exactly what's going on with this dam. And, you know, we could give you the structural information. And, you know, we could even tell you an assessment of how probable it is that it's going to break. But we don't think that any of you are going to be able to interpret that properly. And we, and we think that if you did, you would come to the same conclusion that you

should leave. And I think so. So that's where I think, you know, the nanny state kind of works, where I think the problem is, is in, in when they start to determine how much you care about the outcomes. So like the guy, the Mount St. Helens eruption that killed, I think, about 57, 57 people. There was a, there was a guy who became famous, Harry R. Truman. Oh, he was excellent, that guy. I ain't leaving. Exactly. I ain't leaving. But he was 83 years old. Right. And he, he probably made the judgment that Sorry, I'm 83. Sorry, I'm 83. So my life, you know, only has a certain value at this point anyway. But nobody can really, a government should not be telling people how much they care about things like, like that, you know, emotional decisions. Yeah. But I, but I, I mean, the trouble is that What happened to Harry Truman in the end? He died. Nobody ever found his body.

Oh really? Some say he's still there saying he's not, he certainly didn't leave.

I can't help but feel there's a moral in there somewhere.

No, I mean, I get particularly grieved by the British Medical Association, whose, whose aim is basically to try and keep everyone alive at any cost and to completely ignore considerations of the utility you get out of life. And they are always pressing for more laws about stuff, you know, to ban things that are higher, you know, above a certain percentage of fat or contain a certain amount of sugar, you know, and that drives me mad. And at the same time, I kind of accept all that it probably works. I mean, I was a huge opponent of banning smoking in pubs. But I guess it has had an effect. I mean, you know, my view was that if you don't like it, don't go into them. Don't spoil pubs for the people who like to go and have a pint on a fag. Yeah, that's my decision. I'm taking that risk. Even if I don't smoke, I'm taking, taking a risk by going in myself. I don't have to, no one's forcing me to go into a pub. You know, I'm taking on the risk, whatever risk there is with passive smoking. It's all well understood. Why are we having to ban it? And I get sort of, yeah, I have an instinctive reaction against, you know, anything which looks like, oh, they're going to ban bacon. I think, well, no, but I love bacon. You know, if they're going to start slapping taxes on it and stuff, I don't, it's then ignoring the fact that I'm willing to trade off some quality of life or length of life in order to have a life full of bacon, you know? And that's where it gets annoying. As Chris said, I think it's about that, making assumptions about your utility function or particularly overriding your utility function. And we're saying, well, you think you like it, but we think you shouldn't. You shouldn't like this. You should go and eat, you know, five portions of fruit and vegetables a day and not eat any bacon or eat bacon once a week or drink whatever absurd, absurdly low number of units you're supposed to drink these days. I think it's now 21 units, which is sort of works out at half a pint a day or something. Yeah, exactly. It's an absurd

amount. Okay. So where are we? I mean, sorry, just one final thing. Oh, well, there we go. I've got

that off my chest. I sounded a bit like Nigel Farage, which I apologise. But yeah, well, I've distilled what I think are some general rules actually. So when you should trust advice, it's when that person, because here are some things you should look for, right? To know whether you should, in general, should trust this, that the person has more access to information than you. And I think certainly in the case of the dam, you could certainly say the people who are dealing with the situation probably have some good information about its probability of breaking that you're not party to. You know, there are people who are structural engineers who understand what's going on more than you do. That there is enough of the right kind of data. So, you know, actually, there are some cases where the authorities are telling people what to do, but they themselves don't. Yeah, they're ignorant. They don't really know what's happening. If you look at something like Grenfell, the Grenfell fire, where a lot of the people who died were given standard advice to stay put, because, you know, in is a block of flats, block fires in blocks of flats are almost impossible. Given regulations, you know, that have been written in blood over the years that contain fires incredibly well within houses. But the problem here was that the fire was going up the outside of the of the building. And now, you know, that's not something because of this cladding and the authorities didn't necessarily know that, you know, understand that that was happening. So then and also that you're not in some way quite unusual because the advice is for everyone. Now, if you're a tail in some way, like if you and again, this comes back to the advice of to the to the idea that you might have a particularly good reason, you know, for for needing to be somewhere or doing something like travel advice

is a great example of that, where, you know, you've all the countries that are on the FCOs ban or not banned, but, you know, do not travel to this to this place like Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, all the places you might expect being on there. You Yes, you shouldn't travel to them, unless you know, you know a lot about that area yourself, for example, or if you're, you know, you're a terrorist, for example, wanting to go to that country. And in which case, you're probably perfectly safe there. And you're not going to get kidnapped or blown up because you'll be the one doing that. Yeah. So So yeah, I think that that exceptions to the rule is a is a good point. Yeah. Was there was there more on your list? Was that it? No, I think those are the

things that you should think about. But in general, you should assume that those things aren't true, right? So So this issue of Am I exceptional? Everyone thinks they are, I think this is part of the problem. But on average, most people aren't exceptional by definition. Right? So if everyone was exceptional, that would be normal. So So you should start with the assumption that you are probably in the same position as everyone else that your needs are not particularly greater that your the utility that you have is not particularly bigger or smaller than other people. That I think is something which is, which is very difficult to do. It's very difficult to sort of accept. Well, okay, this seems like a pain in the arse. But actually, it's a pain in the arse for

everyone. And sorry, well, there's one thing that we've not talked about, which is the the party giving the advice, the assumption that they're acting in good faith. Yeah. So for example, I think on maybe says not quite this, but I think on aeroplanes, you get told all sorts of stuff. But I think some of it is just to make life easier for the for the airline, I think, maybe this isn't exactly that. But I think this thing about turning off your mobile phone and stuff like that. That's all bollocks on on aeroplanes. And that's for different reasons.

Not necessarily. I think there is an absolutely minuscule risk or something. But now they don't even ask you to do that. But it's the same planes that we've had for 20 years. But mysteriously, now you don't have to turn your phones off. Right? So what changed? Yeah. Why did why should

we have trusted them before? And that's that's that's the thing. For me, the interesting thing is about the the orthodoxy and authority. And most of the time, individuals don't have the information the authority do. So, you know, look at things like the Catholic Church and Copernican planetary motion. Right. There was a stage when that was banned. And, you know, Galileo was tried for suspected heresy and convicted, you know, for preaching about about heliocentricity, you know, and so on. But at some point, the authority doesn't have the best information. There's there's there's the there's the case of Barry Marshall, who who won a Nobel Prize for that. He was the stomach ulcer guy who, you know, the the scientific orthodoxy said that this this was primarily caused by stress and environmental conditions. And he was tying it to this particular type of bacteria. And he made himself a concoction of the bacteria, drank it, gave himself an ulcer and cured himself using antibiotics and demonstrated to the scientific community that this was the case. But he was the only one he could he could he could test it on. But, you know, it's when when do we know like climate change is a great example, right? The orthodoxy state has a has a particular position. And, you know, most of us are inclined to go along with that position. But we're not doing the climate change science ourselves. We're seeing some fairly convincing evidence and so on. But when is it right to look at the orthodoxy, not having more information and dismiss it? And as Nick was saying, most of the time, probably it's not sensible to do that. But some sometimes it must be.

Yeah, I mean, I think I think what it almost always boils down to for me is don't just tell me to do something. Explain explain why that's the right thing to do. What is the data? What are the what is the evidence? You know, and that doesn't seem very practical to me, though. Maybe not in an emergency. I'm not necessarily saying you are standing at the door. It's more the lifestyle stuff. So I think it would be this would be more like, you know, the diet advice and medical advice. I mean, so medical advice really has changed significantly in a number of areas over the years, you know, from things like, you know, the I mean, just two examples that spring to mind was that the advice used to be for pregnant women to lay off nuts in case their baby was allergic to nuts. And, you know, and then and then it turned out that actually eating not eating nuts while pregnant is is is more likely to give your baby a nut allergy than if you eat the nuts while pregnant. So it's more dangerous. So the advice was flip round and flossing. Flossing used to be what all the dentists told you to do. And then they decided, I think, recently that flossing was unnecessary or harmful. Yeah. Now, I hate sounding like, you know, the sort of Daily Mail and, you know, now asparagus gives you cancer one week and then it doesn't the next week and all they don't know what they're talking about because these are isolated cases, but they are they do, you know, they do happen. It does. So but I always think, well, what's the study that is based on? You know, where is the evidence that shows that that, you know, having five portions of fruit and vegetables a day is causally related to a reduction in in heart disease? Now, if it's there, great. That's that's that's really it. That's all. And I think that's a reasonable thing

to require. I feel that we need to fuel this discussion further with a few pints down the pub with some fags. For sure. And except they won't let you do that anymore. You get arrested now if you try and have more than three, three units at a single sitting. Just round this off. I want to finish off. There's one bit of advice that I really enjoy flouting, which is film censorship stuff. So not censorship. What do they call it? Registry. What's the word? Classification. Classification. Certification. Yeah. So because there's loads of films I really enjoy and I'd like to share with with my kids as well. But they, they won't let you. They won't let you. Won't let you watch a fifteen at home now. Debbie Does Dallas. No, no, no. So, for example, The Revenant. I love that film. Okay. Oh, I love the beginning of it where all the Indians attacking and the bear and also Native American. Thank you. Sorry. And I've watched that with my kids. And to be fair, one of them was pretty traumatized by it. But one of them absolutely loved it. And yeah, no, I think that seems like it. And I often have these arguments with my wife about what films I'm allowed to watch with my kids or not. So I'm always pushing that, pushing that barrier, pushing that envelope. Yeah. As any, any, any regulations that you enjoy flouting? Well, I think for me, the one that I

enjoy watching people flouting is I live on the south coast and near places like Durdle Door and some of the sort of famous, you know, cliff scapes. Yeah. And you get a lot of tourists taking pictures by the edge of cliffs. And I always love watching that happen because, you know, every sort of few years, one of them, one of them falls off. And that one for me is just so, so self. I mean, yeah. Okay. So there's not obviously thousands of tourists do it. And only one drops off every so, so many years. But, but that just, I just, there's something sort of ironic about, about watching, watching that happen and just knowing how potentially dangerous it is.

There's something about that I quite like. There's that famous example in the last six months or so of this woman in America, I think at the Grand Canyon, taking selfies and everyone going, you shouldn't do that. And sure enough, suddenly someone, her boyfriend turns around and goes, where's she gone? Yeah, exactly. And, and I think there's photos of other people of where you can see her doing her selfie. Right. Yeah. Really close to the edge, but, but yeah. The phone survived.

Yeah. Yeah. Nick. Yeah. I don't, I don't, it doesn't really make much difference to me to be honest. I don't think my lifestyle is affected by official advice by and large. I don't do things because they are or aren't contained in official advice, but I do often, my daughter is obsessed with, she's terrified of breaking the law by mistake, you know, and, and if you, you know, you park in a space where there's nothing that says you can park, but nothing that says you can't, she'll say, are you sure we're allowed to park here? And, or we'll go be going on a, on a walk and there'll be a sign saying, you know, this is a permissive pathway. And she's like, oh, you sure we're allowed on here? So that's what I enjoy. I enjoy like in a completely safe way, uh, doing what she thinks is really risky, dangerous, illegal activity, like, like walking on a footpath or parking in a parking bay, which isn't clearly marked. Uh, so yeah, I get quite a lot of that without a very little cost. And actually, sorry, just to finish things

off in the same sort of vein I've got, um, at my house, the first thing you see when you come in my house is a periodic table, uh, on the, on the wall of, of swearing. Okay. And it's all these kind of made up swear and it, and it gets filthy and it's, and, and, and actually, sure enough, as, as sort of the, the atomic mass of swearing, um, is it gets heavier though the swear words and the combinations get heavier as well. And the reason I really liked that having that there is not because I, I'm a huge fan of swearing, although I am, um, it's, it's because you're not meant to do that. It's purely, you're not meant to swear, you know, and that's what I like about it, but, but yeah. Okay. Uh, well on that note, um, we'll, we'll finish off. Thank you as always for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Chris Wragg and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and until next week, bye-bye.