COVID-19: Individual Exceptionalism

Governor Cuomo of New York appalled by groups of New Yorkers socializing in public after the lockdown order. Florida beaches full of spring breakers who inter-infect themselves, then quickly retreat to colleges everywhere in the country, spreading disease like terrorists. Red Rock Canyon, just outside of Las Vegas, closing not because of the shutdown but because the park has reached capacity. In Washington, D.C., a few yards from where federal emergency guidelines are being put in place, hundreds gather to see the cherry blossoms.

Finally, here is something in my professional gambling wheelhouse, something with which I have decades of familiarity. That something is the inability of most Americans to grasp or internalize or accept that probability applies to the self. I'm not talking about being able to do the math or understand the concepts of probability. I'm talking about the acceptance that not only are the numbers correct, but that what happened elsewhere can, if variables are similar, happen here in the country of the self. That it can happen in the town of the self. That it can indeed happen to the self. I'm talking about the basic inability of many Americans to subordinate themselves so as to view their actions and the consequences of those actions as being not special, not unique, not outside the probability purview in which "the others" function.

Probability can't be seen directly or touched or smelled. It is removed from our senses, yet all around us. The Greek aether was considered an unseen mechanism through which cause-and-effect manifested itself. Probability is our modern-day aether. Probability surrounds us, unseen and everywhere. We rejected the aether a long time ago. We tend to abide by probability unless we are asked to accept that it applies uniformly to us as well as others.

Gamblers can explain to exhaustion that this game has a particular house edge and that game even worse. We can nod our heads, yes, one need win just 52.4% of sports bets to profit, but maybe one person in a thousand pulls that off. And yet people still believe that they are either, without evidence, that one-in-a-thousand or that they are entirely exempt from the odds. It isn't as if these folks, when asked, state that they are exempt. They acknowledge they are not, then they go and behave as if they are. Whether that's due more to lack of impulse control or psychological compartmentalization or schizophrenic thinking, I have no idea. However the strategy through which they manage  to do it, they don't behave as if they are part of the probability panorama in which they perceive everyone else. And the bottom line is that they lose.


Individual Exceptionalism

I want to mention a few examples of individual exceptionalism from the psychological literature. First of all, Americans tend to radically overrate themselves regarding their abilities and competence. When polled as to where they rate themselves on intelligence, looks, or sexual skill, most people place themselves in the top fifth. Second, when put in situations over which they have no actual control or effect, people perceive that they have significant control. These are bad behavioral habits with which to deal with a pandemic. People overestimate their personal hardiness and their ability to influence events around them.

American consumer culture doesn't really help matters, either. As a number of economists have noted this past week, an economy that relies primarily on fulfilling wants rather than needs is going to suffer greatly in a war-time type of environment. Furthermore, a populace exposed to hundreds of want-based ads every day is going to have a very difficult time behaviorally shutting down their wants cold turkey. Instead of doing the smart individual and communal thing, people will squeeze every bit of irresponsible consumer "freedom" out of the situation until they are legally constrained from doing so.

Behavioral discipline 24/7 is absolutely essential for a professional gambler. If odds are +EV, you play. If odds switch to -EV, you stop. Not next month or next week. You stop now, this moment. It doesn't matter if you've been playing the same game every day for 20 years. It doesn't matter if it's the only game in town. You trust the math, and you come to a cold turkey, dead-on stop.  And that is what is required right now in the United States. Come to a physical social stop, preferably yesterday. Lives are at stake. It doesn't matter what you've done for 20 years. As Professor Robert Sapolsky said in "Our brains on coronavirus," people under duress retreat even further to routinized behaviors. If these routinized behaviors involve being physically social, you must shut them down. Fight against your own impulse to seek stress relief through routines that defeat our common purpose.

And there's a phrase, "common purpose," that in recent time has usually gotten one labeled as a lefty, a radical, or a libtard. Today, unfortunately, the connotations attached to the phrase create psychological friction that further impedes our proper course of action.


The Problem with Culture

We face a common purpose. At least some of us do. A handful of white nationalist groups have already decided that spreading COVID-19 is a serendipitous way of achieving their goals. It's also possible, I suppose, that American youth now wield a potent Freudian weapon against their elders. Let's assume, however, that most Americans agree with our "common purpose" of flattening the curve and saving lives. Why are they ignoring the probabilistic consequences of social gatherings in New York's parks or Red Rock Canyon? Why don't they get it?

Well, to state the obvious, if American culture wanted people to think probability applied to them, then people would think just that. My rather cynical take is that individual exceptionalism is largely taught by the cultural milieu. People in American culture are not encouraged to examine probability, but rather the possibility or the opportunity. American culture papers over the fact that probability, possibility, and opportunity are very different terms. Instead, these words, and therefore the concepts, get jumbled together as equivalents. When Jim Carrey's Lloyd in Dumb and Dumber asks about his chances with a woman and is told, "More like one in a million," he responds with "So you're telling me there's a chance! Yeah!!" American culture, in a sense, teaches us that same kind of optimistic response when we are faced with situations involving self.

We are all saturated with the idea that probability can be circumvented when it comes to us, that we as individuals somehow operate outside the probabilistic realm. If subordinating our behaviors in service of probabilistic outcomes was something the culture wanted us to do, then we'd be taught to do it. If we were supposed to know national vertical mobility rates and variables correlating to income, they would be taught in junior high. They're not. The United States is not really interested in a citizenry of probability savants. I think that this almost purposeful disconnect from probability has recently gotten worse. As income inequality in the United States has increased, the conflation of probability/possibility/opportunity has increased.

So when spring breakers shrug off probabilistic life-and-death consequences of their behavior, it shouldn't surprise us. They have not been trained to accept probabilistic outcomes as applying to themselves. They have been trained to think of themselves as individually exceptional. Unfortunately, COVID-19 disease models are accurate. Probabilistically irresponsible behaviors will have real world consequences. Unless we accept that our behavior has consequences as predicted, unless we subordinate those behaviors to the common good, additional tens of thousands will die.

March 23, 2020
Bob Dietz