1. Here’s the real rub:

How can we know if the “fools” weren’t actually right?

We can’t.

Because this situation wasn’t managed from a frame of true / not true, which Harris is stuck inside of.

It was instead managed from a frame of “how can we drive behavior?”

THREAD https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/1248423654725054466

2. Remember when the World Health Organization said masks don’t work well so don’t get masks?

It was patently false.

So why did they say it?

They were attempting to drive behavior.

They knew there was a severe mask shortage and that if citizens thought masks would save lives,

3. there would be several negative downstream effects:

- a run in masks would drive prices up and encourage price gouging
- it would be harder to get masks for the health care providers who really needed it
-if the providers get sidelined from the illness, more people would die

4. Another example:

All the predictions that were absurdly high in Black Plague level number of deaths.

This drove more action - social distancing, economic fixes, etc - than would have been possible if it had been portrayed as a more typical flu.

5. Now, @SamHarrisOrg is correct *within his frame* but as with most things, the frame determines what can be true or not, and Harris doesn’t have a Universal Frame, despite his admirable attempts to find one and operate from it.

So in the end,

6. So in the end, were the people who disregarded the official messages fools?

Or did they correctly recognize that the official responses were driven more by the need to persuade than by the need for accuracy?