COVID-19, UNA OPORTUNIDAD PARA REFLEXIONAR SOBRE LA TOMA DE DECISIONES EN INCERTIDUMBRE

Abstract

In a health crisis, there are multiple agents that come together to define the course of events: health professionals, managers, politicians, economists, journalists, etc., and of course each of the citizens. Critical thinking (which we prefer to call "educated cognition") is a methodology that can be applied to decisions made in uncertainty, in order to improve their quality. In the present work we will analyze to what extent people with institutional responsibility (and other professionals involved in the present crisis) followed basic norms of critical thinking. And, likewise, we identify group and personal phenomena (among others: magical thinking, gregariousness, pensée unique, denial, privileged knowledge, circular persuasion effect, salubrious fury, representativeness bias, cost forecast) at the origin of low quality decisions. On the other hand, we describe how these phenomena can be compensated, at the group level (epistemic neutrality, selection of experts, transparency of high-level conversations, etc.) and personal level as well (perceptual training, explanatory models, privileged knowledge against evidence, belief calibration intensity, etc). Critical thinking can and should be taught as a touchstone of any regulated training, to ensure future quality decisions in any of the levels that we can consider.