On making hard decisions

A post from Rands about sharing information between neighbors and deciding whether to evacuate in the face of California’s wildfires.

When you’re trying to figure out whether to evacuate your home, you don’t need opinions. You need facts. Our lovely collective set of social media tools have given the unsourced single opinion a broad platform, and that’s fine until you are trying to make an informed decision.

Early in the fire, there is a distinct lack of information. Firefighters are rightly focused on getting a handle on the fire and not sharing information with the public. And what’s the rule? In the absence of information, humans make up the worst version of the story.