"Protection" is a good label for bad deeds.
Milton Friedman "Freedom to Choose"
This text was obtained as a result of the analysis of some comments to articles и .
In interpreting any data and drawing conclusions, some commentators have made a typical "survivor's mistake".
What is a "survivor bias"? This taking into account the known and neglecting the unknown, but existing.
An example of the "cost" of a survivor's mistake, and an example of the successful overcoming of this mistake, is the work of the Hungarian mathematician Abraham Wald, who worked for the American army during World War II.
The command set the task for Wald to analyze holes from bullets and shrapnel on American aircraft and propose a way to armor so that pilots and aircraft do not die.
Solid booking could not be used - the plane turned out to be too heavy. It was necessary either to book those places where there were damages, where the bullets hit, or those places where there were no damages. Wald's opponents offered to book damaged places (in the picture they are marked with red dots).
Wald objected. He said that aircraft with such damage were able to return, while aircraft with damage elsewhere could not return. Wald's point of view prevailed. The planes were booked where the returning cars had no damage. As a result, the number of surviving aircraft increased significantly. According to some reports, Wald thus saved the lives of approximately 30% of American pilots. (I may be wrong about the figure, but the effect was quite significant. Wald saved hundreds of lives).
Another illustration of the “survivor’s mistake” is the story of Cicero about the words of Diagoras of Melos, who, in response to an argument in favor of swearing to the gods, because there are many “images about saving people who fell into a storm and swore an oath to the gods to make some kind of vow”, answered, that "however, any images of those who died at sea as a result of a shipwreck are missing."
And the first "survivor's mistake" in the comments to the article is that we do not know how many good, useful, brilliant ideas, creations, inventions, scientific works were buried by various "dislikes", "ignores" and "bans".
I will quote the wording of Mr. : “No one knows how many good ideas were leaked, not published, not developed for fear of a ban. How many attempts were there that quietly ended in the author's ban - too. What is visible now is how many successful ideas are recognized immediately or with a delay, how many unsuccessful ones are not recognized. If you rely only on what is visible, then yes, everything is ok.
This is true for any rating system based on the preferences of the majority. Be it science, social networks, search engines, primitive tribes, religious groups or other human communities.
Not always "ban" and "dislike" occur due to "malicious intent". The reaction of "outrage" to something new and unusual is a routine physiological and psychological reaction, called by the buzzword "cognitive dissonance" - it is simply a feature of the whole species of Homo sapiens, and not a property of any particular group. But each group may have its own irritants. And the "newer" and "unusual", the stronger the indignation, the stronger the dissonance. And you need to be very good at owning your psyche so as not to pounce on the “troublemaker”. That, however, does not justify the aggressor. The "disturber" only "outrages", while the actions of the aggressor are aimed at destruction.
The survivor's error is also found in the comments to the article. . And it concerns the certification of medicines.
A little lower I will quote from the book “Freedom to Choose” by Nobel Laureate in Economics Milton Friedman, but for now I will only note that for some reason, a huge number of clinical trials, certificates and other things do not convince all people to get vaccinated, drink prescribed antibiotics and hormones. Those. licensing and certification in this case "does not work". However, there are quite a few people who use dietary supplements or homeopathy who are not (to put it mildly) subject to such serious control as drugs. There are many people who prefer to turn to healers and traditional healers, instead of going to the doctor and drinking "chemistry", which has licenses, certificates and which has passed many controls and tests.
The price of such a decision is incredibly high - from disability to death. Quick death. The time that the patient spends on treatment with dietary supplements, neglecting chemistry and a visit to the doctor, turns into a missed opportunity to have time to cure the disease at an early stage, in the so-called. "lucid interval".
At the same time, it is important to understand that before a drug is sent for “certification”, a pharmaceutical company conducts many of its own tests and controls, incl. on people.
Certification only duplicates this procedure. Moreover, in each country everything is repeated, which ultimately increases the cost of the drug for the consumer.
It was a slight digression from the topic. Now, to cut it short, I'm quoting Milton Friedman.
«The organization of joint mutually beneficial activities of people does not require the intervention of external forces, coercion or restriction of freedom ... There is now considerable evidence that FDA regulation is harmful, that it has done more harm by hindering progress in the production and distribution of useful drugs than it has done good by shielding the market from harmful and ineffective drugs.
The influence of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the rate of introduction of new drugs is very significant ... now it takes much longer to get approval for a new drug, and, in part as a result, the costs of developing new drugs have increased many times over … to introduce a new product to the market, you need to spend 54 million dollars and about 8 years, i.e. there was a hundredfold increase in costs and a fourfold increase in time compared to the total twofold increase in prices. As a result, US pharmaceutical companies are no longer able to develop new drugs to treat patients with rare diseases. In addition, we can't even take full advantage of foreign advances, because the FDA does not accept foreign testimonials as proof of drug efficacy.
If you examine the therapeutic value of drugs that are not available in the US but are available in England, for example, you will come across a number of cases where patients have suffered from a lack of drugs. For example, there are drugs called beta-blockers that could prevent death from a heart attack - a secondary prevention of death from myocardial infarction - if these drugs were available in the US, they could save about ten thousand lives a year...
An indirect consequence for the patient is the fact that therapeutic decisions, which used to be at the discretion of the doctor and the patient, are increasingly being made at the national level by expert committees. For the Food and Drug Administration, risk avoidance is a top priority, and as a result we have drugs that are safer, but there are no more effective ones.
It is no coincidence that the Food and Drug Administration, despite its best intentions, discourages the development and marketing of new and potentially useful drugs.
Put yourself in the shoes of the FDA official responsible for approving or disapproving a new drug. You can make two mistakes:
1. Approve a drug, which has an unforeseen side effect that will lead to death or serious deterioration in health in a relatively large number of people.
2. Deny drug approval, which could save the lives of many people or alleviate great suffering and not have adverse side effects.
If you make the first mistake and approve, your name will appear on the front pages of all newspapers. You will fall into severe disgrace. If you make the second mistake, who will know about it? A pharmaceutical firm promoting a new drug that can be brushed aside as an example of greedy businessmen with hearts of stone? Several angry chemists and doctors involved in the development and testing of a new drug?
Patients whose lives could have been saved will no longer be able to protest. Their families don't even know that their loved ones have lost their lives due to the "caution" of an unknown official from the Food and Drug Administration.
Even with the best intentions in the world, you would unwittingly ban many good drugs or delay their approval in order to avoid even the remotest possibility of missing a drug on the market that would have side effects in the form of newspaper hype ...
The harm caused by the activities of the Food and Drug Administration is not the result of the shortcomings of people in responsible positions. Many of them are capable and dedicated public servants. However, social, political, and economic pressures determine the behavior of the people in charge of a government agency much more than they themselves determine its behavior. There are exceptions, no doubt, but they are almost as rare as barking cats.” End of quote.
Thus, the "survivor's error" in assessing the effectiveness of the regulatory body "costs" humanity 10000 lives per year for only one drug in one country. The size of the entire invisible part of this "iceberg" is difficult to estimate. And perhaps scary.
“Patients whose lives could have been saved will no longer be able to protest. Their families will not even know that people they love have lost their lives because of the “caution” of an unknown official”. Not a single negligent manufacturer did such damage to his fellow citizens.
Among other things, the certification service is quite expensive for taxpayers. Those. to all residents. According to Milton Friedman, the share of "gobbled up" by officials who regulate various social programs in the United States is about half of the total amount of taxes allocated to various social benefits. This half is spent on salaries and other expenses of officials from the social distribution and regulatory system. Any business would have gone bankrupt long ago with such unproductive overheads.
It's like paying a waiter for bad service in a restaurant a tip in the amount of the cost of dinner. Or pay for the packaging of products in the supermarket in the amount of their full cost only for the fact that they will be packed in bags for you.
The presence of an official in the chain manufacturer-product-consumer or service-consumer doubles the cost of any product and service. Those. the salary of any person could buy twice as many goods and services, if the official did not control these goods and services.
As Judge Louis Brandis said, "Experience teaches that liberty is especially in need of protection when government is pursuing beneficent ends."
Licensing, as well as other prohibitive ways of regulating (depressing) the economy, is by no means new and has been known since the Middle Ages. All varieties of guilds, castes, estates are nothing but licensing and certification, translated into modern language. And their goal has always been the same - to limit competition, raise prices, increase the income of "their own" and prevent "strangers". Those. the same discrimination and banal cartel collusion that degrades quality and raises prices for the consumer.
Maybe you need to somehow get out of the Middle Ages? Outside the 21st century.
Accidents on the roads are arranged by drivers who have rights and licenses. Medical errors are committed by certified and licensed doctors. Poor teaching, inflicting psychological trauma on students by licensed and certified teachers. At the same time, healers, homeopaths, shamans and charlatans perfectly do without licenses and exams and prosper perfectly, go about their business, satisfying the demand of the population.
At the same time, a lot of officials are fed from all these licenses and permits, who do not produce any goods or services useful to citizens, but having for some reason the right to decide for a citizen where he can be treated and study for his own taxes.
One can only be surprised that, despite the prohibitive vector of the work of officials, pharmaceutical companies still managed to register many drugs in the 20th century that saved millions of lives.
And one can only be horrified by how many drugs were not developed, were not registered, were recognized as unpromising economically due to the high cost and length of the licensing process. To be horrified at how many people the result of the prohibitive activities of officials cost their lives and health.
At the same time, the presence of a huge number of licensing, controlling, supervising and fining officials and authorities did not at all reduce the number of charlatans, folk remedies, all kinds of panaceas and magic pills. Some of them are produced under the guise of dietary supplements, some are simply distributed bypassing any pharmacies, shops and authorities.
Should we continue to insist on the wrong path of licensing and regulation? I think not.
If the brain of a heroic respected reader who has read the article to the end is not yet blazing with furious cognitive dissonance, then I want to recommend four books for "seed" written in very simple language and destroying many myths regarding capitalism, survivor's mistakes, economics and state control. Here are the books: Milton Friedman "Freedom to Choose" Ayn Rand "Capitalism. unfamiliar ideal, Stephen Levitt "Freakonomics" Malcolm Gladwell "Geniuses and outsiders" Frederic Bastia What is seen and what is not seen.
А posted another article about the “survivor error”.
Illustrations: , , .
PS Dear readers, I ask you to remember that “The style of polemic is more important than the subject of polemic. Objects change, but style creates civilization." (Grigory Pomerants). If I did not respond to your comment, then something is wrong with the style of your polemic.
Addition.
I apologize to everyone who wrote a sensible comment, but I did not answer. The fact is that one of the users got into the habit of downvoting my comments. Every. As soon as it appears. This prevents me from gaining a “charge” and putting a plus in karma and for the answer to those who write an intelligent comment.
But if you still want to get an answer and discuss the article, you can write me a private message. I answer them.
Addendum 2.
"Survivor's mistake" on the example of this article.
As of this writing, the article has 33,9k views and 141 comments.
Let's assume that most of them are negative in relation to the article.
Those. the article was read by 33900 people. Scolded 100. 339 times less.
Those. if it is very rough and with assumptions to round, then the author does not have data on the opinion of 33800 readers, but only data on the opinion of 100 readers (in fact, even less, since some readers leave several comments).
And what does the author do, i.e. am I reading the comments? Making a typical "survivor's mistake". I analyze only one hundred "cons", completely (psychologically) ignoring the fact that these are only 0,3% of the opinions. And based on these 0,3%, which is within the statistical error, I conclude that the article was not liked. I am upset, not having the slightest reason for this, if you think logically, and not emotionally.
That. Survivor fallacy lies not only in the realm of mathematics, but probably also in the realm of psychology and neurophysiology, which makes its detection and correction quite a "torturous affair" for the human brain.
Addendum 3.
Although this is beyond the scope of this article, but since the issue of drug quality control is rather vigorously discussed in the comments, I will answer everyone at once.
An alternative to state control could be the creation of private expert laboratories that will check the quality of medicines, competing with each other. (And such laboratories, societies, associations and institutions already exist in the world).
What will it give? Firstly, it will eliminate corruption, since there will always be an opportunity to double-check and refute the data of corrupt expertise. Secondly, it will be faster and cheaper. Simply because private business is always more efficient than public business. Thirdly, the expert laboratory will sell its services, which means that it will be responsible for the quality, timing, prices. All this will collectively reduce the cost of medicines in the pharmacy. Fourthly, if the package does not contain a mark about testing in an independent private expert laboratory, or even two or three, then the buyer will understand that the medicine is not tested. Or checked multiple times. And he will “vote with the ruble” for this or that pharmaceutical manufacturer.
Addendum 4.
It seems to me that it is important to take into account the “survivor error” when developing AI, machine learning algorithms, etc.
Those. to put into the training program not only known examples, but also a certain delta, perhaps even theoretical models of the “possible unknown”.
Using the example of “drawing” AI, this can be conditionally “van Gogh + delta”, then with a large delta value, the machine will create a filter based on van Gogh, but completely different from him.
Such training can be useful where there is a shortage of data: medicine, genetics, quantum physics, astronomy, etc.
(I apologize if I explained it "crookedly").
Note (hopefully the last one)
To everyone who read to the end - "Thank you." I am very pleased to see your "bookmarks" and "views".
Source: habr.com