Absurd? Boy, I am sure glad the people who had to make the call on
whether to quarantine China during the SARS event weren't thinking as you
suggest we should. :-) Michael, epidemics *always* start small. It isn't
the number of cases that should draw your attention, it is the extremity
of their expression. Someone saying, "Statalisters, help me do this in
MSWord because I don't have time to read the manual" should draw attention
that discourages the behavior. Answering helpfully only encourages the
behavior. Similarly, saying, "It was only one incident," is only to serve
to delay action until there are additional incidents; if we wait too long,
we won't be able to prevent the incidents from overwhelming the list. It
would be like saying, "This person who died after coughing up blood in the
hallway is pretty sad, and we have no idea why that happpened but, not to
worry, it was just one case." Epidemics always start with a small number
of cases. Wise actors keep them from becoming epidemics by acting when
the number of cases is low. It isn't absurd, it's the most effective
response.
Unlike in medicine, which has various therapies and responses to maladies,
in social action, and in the commons, talk is about the only resource we
have to encourage helpful behavior and discourage non-helpful behavior.
No one paid you for your nice code, and no one pays anyone on statalist
for all the helpful advice. But your rep--talk about you--is positive,
because you've contributed to the commons. As a social scientist, I have
come to see such things are important. Talk may be cheap, but it is also
worthwhile. ;-)
Take care, from one east coaster to another, and to others on other
continents and coasts,
Sam
On Thu, 1 Jul 2004, Michael Blasnik wrote:
> I'm sorry -- I just think it's absurd to talk about an impending exponential
> growth in MS Word threads and associated disintegration of Statalist due to
> the onslaught of Word-related posts when there were just 2 threads on MS
> Word on Statalist in June out of hundreds of threads! I would think that 2
> threads per month is about the right number for the topic.
>
> Michael Blasnik
> [email protected]
>
> p.s. Your assertion about heading off this disaster by merely talking about
> it is pretty remarkable ;)
>
>
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