Tragically, Dalkowski was defeated by not only his lack of control as a pitcher, but also his lack of control as an alcoholic. Nevertheless, for a short period of time, he was a good pitcher and almost made it to the major leagues. What was the secret? He slowed down his pitch and found more accuracy in throwing the ball over the plate. As they say in baseball, he gained some “command” of his pitches—he learned how to “pitch” rather than just “throw”. I would suggest that the same principle applies to 21st Century problem-solving. Our Dalkowski Theorem is that we must slow down our thinking if we want to be accurate—otherwise we will never make it to the major leagues! We need to thoughtfully pitch rather than simply throw hard (or solve fast)—otherwise we will remain a “bush leaguer”.
Now back to Cambridge, we join Kahneman and his behavioral economics colleagues. They write about the frequent use of Heuristics (simple, readily applied rules) that enable fast thinking to occur. Many heuristics serve us well in addressing daily-problems and making decisions about mundane and often reoccurring matters. However, they often get us in trouble when we face unique and multi-tiered problems—such as formulating policies regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. We might be inclined to “throw hard” and engage a simple values-based heuristic about saving the life of a single person: “Your failure to social distance is endangering the life of my mother!” The herd immunization option is immediately rejected, even in its more benign form: “This is nothing more than a Nazified decision to ‘let them bleed!’” We have polarized the discussion and sped up the response being formulated by our “opponent.” All of us are throwing hard and fast rather than engaging in slow, thoughtfully pitching.
In applying this heuristic to the Corona virus epidemic, we move immediately to the social distancing (and other preventative actions) solution and decide immediately to “stop the bleeding!” We make it quite personal: “people [including my mother] will live if all of us stay at an appropriate distance from one another.” Or “you don’t really give a damned about other people or about me when you refuse to wear a mask!” Through our fast thinking and uncritical acceptance of the basic assumption of compassion, we have won the day in many countries. Widespread support for a NPI policy grew during the middle months of 2020. The NPI heuristic was working somewhat effectively for a while in some countries – such as China, Singapore and New Zealand. Unfortunately, in many instances, this heuristic required a strong authoritarian mandate: “everything must close down—and this is an order from your government!”
