[note: this is a minor point, and not worth the electrons we’ve already spilled—I’m pursuing it because I don’t quite understand your position, not because I (necessarily) disagree. I value the post and conversation, and thank you for sharing very concrete examples of thoughtful decision-making. Feel free to ignore me if this is getting annoying. ]
That is, if an event is considering C they’re better off with at least one of A or B.
I don’t know how to read the “or” or “at least one of” that doesn’t lead me to the reduction that C<A and C<B, so a group at C would be better off by moving to A and would also be better off moving to B.
Let’s use (made-up, used for ordinal rather than cardinal values) numbers. C (mandatory but not verified) is effectiveness 2. A (mandatory and checked) is 5, say. I think that B (optional) is 1.9 (ok, I couldn’t avoid opining about magnitude). I’m reading your post and comments to imply that B is 2.1.
[ I agree that this is getting a bit silly, but happy to keep going if you’re interested ]
if an event is considering C they’re better off with at least one of A or B
I don’t know how to read the “or” or “at least one of” that doesn’t lead me to the reduction that C<A and C<B
I think this is the core misunderstanding. I take my quoted text as pretty clearly claiming that exactly one of the following is true:
C < A
C < B
C < A and C < B
I think you’re reading it as claiming only (3)? For my quoted text to claim only (3) I think it would need to be something like “if an event is considering C they’re better off with any of A or B”.
Interesting. It’s pretty clear that 1 is true. I think 2 is false, and therefore 3 is false. I don’t understand the inclusion or discussion of B (which seemed to be the bulk of the post), if no claim is being made about it.
Seemed to me that they weren’t so much objections, but reasons it wouldn’t be particularly effective. In particular, it didn’t seem to make the case that the actually implemented policy of B (no requirement) is the correct choice, when someone proposed a switch to C after eliminating A from consideration.
It would seem, in that discussion, that comparing B to C is the only relevant consideration. “both are ineffective and B is easier” is a fine answer, but didn’t seem to be your position. I read your post as “switching from B to C would be a mistake, because C is ineffective”, and perhaps-mistakenly assumed that this implied that B is not (as) ineffective. At which point I noticed I was confused.
Edit: if you were simply saying that “C may or may not be slightly better than B, but neither are good enough and we need to switch back to A”, then I get it, but I fully missed that on the first and second reading of the post and comments.
At the current time, I think C<A<B. When conditions were different I thought C<B<A. I have a lot of trouble imagining a situation in which I wouldn’t think C<max(A,B).
A decision procedure where you eliminate A and then decide between B and C even if you think C<A or B<A is a pretty bad one.
Ok, I follow. I read the intro paragraph as EXACTLY the (pretty bad) situation where the group had eliminated A and implemented B, and someone had proposed switching from B to C, and your analysis being mostly about why that proposal was wrong. Which caused my confusion when it didn’t compare B and C very directly.
I’m still a little unsure of your reasons for those current orderings (both A<B and C<B (transitively) surprise me, if considering only effectiveness and not convenience or other factors. Considering social equilibria, any ordering could apply to a given group). I would put myself at B < C < A.
The organizers considered A, B, and C, and chose B. An attendee asked why not C, and I wrote up my personal views on why I don’t think C is a good choice.
(I was trying pretty hard not to get into the object level stuff here, but ok, let’s go. On why I don’t rank A very highly, I think vaccination, especially the initial series, is great at protecting the recipient from the severe effects of covid. In terms of protecting others, which is the main thing that matters if you’re deciding whether to restrict some people from attending the event, I think someone who had covid three months ago is probably less of a risk to others than someone who was boosted nine months ago. Other people’s vaccination status just isn’t a very good proxy for how much risk they pose.)
[note: this is a minor point, and not worth the electrons we’ve already spilled—I’m pursuing it because I don’t quite understand your position, not because I (necessarily) disagree. I value the post and conversation, and thank you for sharing very concrete examples of thoughtful decision-making. Feel free to ignore me if this is getting annoying. ]
I don’t know how to read the “or” or “at least one of” that doesn’t lead me to the reduction that C<A and C<B, so a group at C would be better off by moving to A and would also be better off moving to B.
Let’s use (made-up, used for ordinal rather than cardinal values) numbers. C (mandatory but not verified) is effectiveness 2. A (mandatory and checked) is 5, say. I think that B (optional) is 1.9 (ok, I couldn’t avoid opining about magnitude). I’m reading your post and comments to imply that B is 2.1.
[ I agree that this is getting a bit silly, but happy to keep going if you’re interested ]
I think this is the core misunderstanding. I take my quoted text as pretty clearly claiming that exactly one of the following is true:
C < A
C < B
C < A and C < B
I think you’re reading it as claiming only (3)? For my quoted text to claim only (3) I think it would need to be something like “if an event is considering C they’re better off with any of A or B”.
Interesting. It’s pretty clear that 1 is true. I think 2 is false, and therefore 3 is false. I don’t understand the inclusion or discussion of B (which seemed to be the bulk of the post), if no claim is being made about it.
In which case a group should not choose C, because A is better.
My overall point with this post is that groups should not be choosing C.
The bulk of the post is about my objections to C, though?
Seemed to me that they weren’t so much objections, but reasons it wouldn’t be particularly effective. In particular, it didn’t seem to make the case that the actually implemented policy of B (no requirement) is the correct choice, when someone proposed a switch to C after eliminating A from consideration.
It would seem, in that discussion, that comparing B to C is the only relevant consideration. “both are ineffective and B is easier” is a fine answer, but didn’t seem to be your position. I read your post as “switching from B to C would be a mistake, because C is ineffective”, and perhaps-mistakenly assumed that this implied that B is not (as) ineffective. At which point I noticed I was confused.
Edit: if you were simply saying that “C may or may not be slightly better than B, but neither are good enough and we need to switch back to A”, then I get it, but I fully missed that on the first and second reading of the post and comments.
At the current time, I think C<A<B. When conditions were different I thought C<B<A. I have a lot of trouble imagining a situation in which I wouldn’t think C<max(A,B).
A decision procedure where you eliminate A and then decide between B and C even if you think C<A or B<A is a pretty bad one.
Ok, I follow. I read the intro paragraph as EXACTLY the (pretty bad) situation where the group had eliminated A and implemented B, and someone had proposed switching from B to C, and your analysis being mostly about why that proposal was wrong. Which caused my confusion when it didn’t compare B and C very directly.
I’m still a little unsure of your reasons for those current orderings (both A<B and C<B (transitively) surprise me, if considering only effectiveness and not convenience or other factors. Considering social equilibria, any ordering could apply to a given group). I would put myself at B < C < A.
The organizers considered A, B, and C, and chose B. An attendee asked why not C, and I wrote up my personal views on why I don’t think C is a good choice.
(I was trying pretty hard not to get into the object level stuff here, but ok, let’s go. On why I don’t rank A very highly, I think vaccination, especially the initial series, is great at protecting the recipient from the severe effects of covid. In terms of protecting others, which is the main thing that matters if you’re deciding whether to restrict some people from attending the event, I think someone who had covid three months ago is probably less of a risk to others than someone who was boosted nine months ago. Other people’s vaccination status just isn’t a very good proxy for how much risk they pose.)