Daily Archives: September 26, 2020

Executive Summary

Sometimes during a crisis we dont know how bad the situation really is.Consider the following scenario involving a data privacy violations: A company discovers that sensitive data about a user is exposed in an unencrypted database for 24 hours. Has anyone accessed it? If so, what, if anything, can they glean from it? Firms facing the question of whether and how to communicate risk often err too far in either direction. When organizations alert their customers to every potential risk, they create notification fatigue. When firms wait too long to communicate in an effort to shield users from unnecessary worry customers interpret time lags as incompetence, or worse, as obfuscation. The answer is to trust that customers can process uncertainty, as long as its framed in the right way. Using techniques from behavioral science, the authors suggest better ways to communicate uncertain risks in way that will protect customers and foster trust.

Most organizations can cope with straightforward bad news, and so can most people. We absorb the shock, and move on. But what happens when we dont know how bad the news actually is?

When it comes to crises, the news companies must deliver is often potential bad news. How should a technology company react when it learns that it might have suffered a breach of your data, or a supermarket discovers it might have sold you contaminated lettuce, or a medical device maker learns that patients may have a defective hip replacement? Communicating about uncertainty what people call risk communications in practice has become one of the most important challenges faced by anyone who needs to convey or consume information.

Risk communications are more important than ever during the current pandemic. Scientists, policy-makers, and companies alike are uncertain of many basic facts about Covid-19 with crucial implications for personal and societal decisions. How infectious is this new virus? How likely is it to kill people? What will be its long-term economic, social, and cultural consequences?

Even before Covid-19 hit, communications were increasingly becoming an important part of corporate and organizational management. Consider the following scenario involving a data privacy violations: A company discovers that sensitive data about a user is exposed in an unencrypted database for 24 hours. Has anyone accessed it? If so, what can they do with it right now? What will they be able to do with it five years from now, with machine learning techniques that will be available at that time? The answers are typically, we dont really know.That is not an assessment that most organizations or individuals know how to deliver in an effective way. This has major consequences for individual firms and for firms collectively. The tech sector, in particular, has suffered a large and growing trust deficit with users, customers, and regulators, in part because tech companies struggle to communicate what they do and do not know about the side effects of their products in ways that are transparent and meaningful.

When we talked to experts across eight industry sectors, we uncovered a common dilemma: firms facing the question of whether and how to communicate risk often err too far in either direction. When organizations alert their customers to every potential risk, they create notification fatigue. Customers tend to tune out after a short while, and firms lose an opportunity to strengthen a trust relationship with the subset of customers who really might have been at most risk.

When firms do the opposite for example by waiting too long to communicate in an effort to shield users from unnecessary worry there is also a price. Customers interpret time lags as incompetence, or worse, as obfuscation and protection of corporate reputations at the expense of protecting customers. The more mis-steps firms make in either direction, the greater the trust deficit becomes, and the harder it is to thread the needle and get the communications right.

To make matters worse, individual firms have a collective effect when they communicate about uncertainty with customers and other stakeholders. The average citizen and customer is the target of many such communications coming from a variety of sources with a cumulative impact on notification fatigue and ultimately the level of ambient trust between firms and the public. Its an ugly bundle of negative externalities that compound an already difficult problem.

We believe it doesnt have to continue this way. Decision science and cognitive psychology have produced some reliable insights about how people on both sides of an uncertainty communication can do better.

The inherent challenge for risk communicators is peoples natural desire for certainty and closure. An experimental Russian roulette game illustrates this most poignantly: forced to play Russian roulette with a 6-chamber revolver containing either 1 bullet or 4 bullets, most people would pay a lot more to remove the single bullet in the first instance than to remove a single bullet in the second instance (even though the risk reduction is the same). Kahneman and Tversky called this the certainty effect, and it explains why zero-deductible insurance policies are over-priced and yet people still buy them.

But while they dont like it, people can process uncertainty, especially if they are armed with some standard tools for decision making. Consider the Drug Facts Box, developed by researchers at Dartmouth.

As far back as the late 1970s, behavioral scientists criticized the patient package inserts that were included with prescription drugs as absurdly dense and full of jargon. The drug facts box (developed in the 1990s) reversed the script. It built on a familiar template from peoples common experience (the nutrition fact box that appears on food packaging) and was designed to focus attention on the information that would directly inform decision-making under uncertainty. It uses numbers, rather than adjectives like rare, common, or positive results. It addresses risks and benefits, and in many cases compares a particular drug to known alternatives. Importantly, it also indicates the quality of the evidence to-date. Its not perfect, but research suggests that it works pretty well, both in extensive testing with potential users through randomized trials and in practice where it has been shown to improve decision making by patients.

So why arent basic principles from the science of risk communications being applied more widely in technology, finance, transportation, and other sectors? Imagine an Equifax data breach fact box created to situate the 2017 data-breach incident and the risks for customers. The fact box could indicate whether the Equifax breach was among the 10 largest breaches of the last 5 years. It would provide a quantitative assessment of the consequences that follow from such breaches, helping people assess what to expect in this case. For example: In the last five data breaches of over 100 million records, on average 3% of people whose records were stolen reported identity theft within a year.

Or, imagine a Deepwater Horizon fact box, that listed for the public the most important potential side effects of oil spills on marine and land ecosystems, and a range for estimating their severity. Weve come to the view that these two examples and countless others didnt happen that way, largely because most people working in communications functions dont believe that users and customers can deal reasonably with uncertainty and risk.

Of course, the Equifax breach and Deepwater Horizon oil spills are extreme examples of crisis-level incidents, and in the Equifax case, disclosure was legally mandated. But firms make decisions everyday about whether and how to communicate about less severe incidents, many of which do not have mandated disclosure requirements. In the moment, its easy for companies to default to a narrow response of damage control, instead of understanding risk communications as a collective problem, which, when done well, can enhance trust with stakeholders.

To start to repair the trust deficit will require a significant retrofit of existing communications practices. Here are three places to start.

Stop improvising. Firms will never be able to reduce uncertainty to zero, but they can commit to engaging with customers around uncertainty in systematic, predictable ways. A standard framework would provide an empirically proven, field-tested playbook for the next incident or crisis. Over time, it would set reasonable expectations among users and customers for what meaningful and transparent communication looks like under uncertainty, help increase the publics risk fluency, and limit the damage inflicted by nefarious actors who prey on the publics anxieties about risk. Ideally, this standard would be created by a consortium of firms across different sectors. Widespread adoption by organizations would level the playing field for all firms, and raise the bar for smaller firms that lack the required competencies in-house.

Change the metric for success, and measure results. Avoiding negative press should not be the primary objective for firms that are faced with communicating uncertainty. In the short term, the primary goal should be to equip customers with the information they need to interpret uncertainty and act to manage their risk. In the long term, the goal should be to increase levels of ambient trust and to reduce risks where possible. Communicators need to demonstrate that what they are doing is working, by creating yardsticks that rigorously measure the effectiveness of communications against both these short and long term goals.

Design for risk communications from the beginning. Consider what it would mean if every product were built from the start with the need to communicate uncertainty about how it will perform when released into the wild that is, risk communication by design. If risk communications were pushed down through organizations into product development, wed see innovation in user experience and user interface design for communicating about uncertainty with customers. Wed see cognitive psychology and decision science skills integrated into product teams. And wed see feedback loops built directly into products as part of the design process, telling firms whether they are meaningfully improving customers ability to make informed choices.

People are naturally inclined to prefer certainty and closure, but in a world where both are in short supply, trust deficits arent an inevitable fact of nature. Were optimistic that organizations can do better collectively by making disciplined use of the existing science.

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The Art of Communicating Risk - Harvard Business Review

Ocean Casino Resort was voted by Casino Player magazine readers as Atlantic Citys best overall gaming resort. Last years winner, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City, took second place, and Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa remained in third place for the second year, after years as No. 1.

Ocean also received first-place awards for best hotel, hotel lobby and rooms, as well as best comps and best pool. Ocean took second-place for VIP services and third-place awards for best hotel staff and suites, best casino, video slots, high limit room and non-smoking casino area.

In addition, Ocean was deemed Casino Where You Feel The Luckiest, followed by Golden Nugget Casino, Hotel & Marina and Tropicana Atlantic City.

Voters also recognized Hard Rock with first-place awards for best suites, spa, casino, players club, promotions, video poker, bingo, slot tournaments; second-place awards for best hotel rooms, hosts, comps, video slots and high limit room; and third-place awards for best hotel and craps.

In addition, Hard Rock was judged Favorite Casino Resort To Vacation At, followed by Ocean and Golden Nugget.

Among Borgatas other honors were best VIP services, table game and poker tournaments, high limit room, blackjack, and non-smoking area. Borgatas second-place awards were for best hotel and hotel lobby, and spa (Immersion), and third place for best hotel rooms, pool, carnival games, bingo and live poker.

Golden Nugget received four first-place awards: best hosts, roulette, carnival games and video slots. Among its second-place awards were best hotel staff, slot and poker tournaments, video poker, craps, bingo and non-smoking area. Third-place awards included best hotel lobby, spa, players club, VIP services, promotions, dealers, reel slots, blackjack and live poker.

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Ocean Casino Resort named best of the best | Mr. AC Casino - Atlantic City Weekly

Editor's note: Shortly after this editorial was first published, major news outlets began reporting that President Trump was expected to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

This week, as much of the country mourned the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, President Trump promised to nominate her replacement promptly. (His pick is expected to be announced tomorrow.) Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader who refused for nine months to consider President Barack Obamas nominee after Justice Antonin Scalias death in 2016, has promised a floor vote on this nomination by the end of the year.

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This nomination battle will be as contentious as any in history because it is the final payoff of the gamble large parts of the pro-life movement made in supporting Mr. Trump. It is yet more proof that Americans deep moral divisions over abortion cannot be addressed under the shadow cast by Roe v. Wade.

Last week, the editors of Americawarned that Mr. Trumps disdain for both implicit norms and explicit rules represents a unique danger to the constitutional order, as it subverts the very conditions necessary for debate, decision-making and public accountability in this republic, replacing them instead with a purely transactional politics of self-interest and advantage. The rush to push through a nominee on a party-line vote before the electionin the same week when Mr. Trump has twice refused to affirm that he would abide by the conventions that guarantee a peaceful transfer of power after a national electionfurther underlines this thesis.

Even though this nomination's outcome is not in much doubt, the way the fight is developing shows how deep this erosion of respect for constitutional order goes. Mr. Trumps presidency is a constitutional threat not because he is the sole cause of this erosion but because he is uniquely eager and indiscriminate in the way he exploits it, and because the Republican Party has proven itself unwilling to put any brakes on his efforts to do so, while their Democratic counterparts appeal to respect for norms can seem just as self-interested, though far less effective.

Rather than being clearly the fault of one party, the hypocrisy on display in fights over nominations to the Supreme Court is like a series of nesting dolls. It is about Mr. McConnells transparent abandonment of the principle he invented when he refused to consider Mr. Obamas nomination of Merrick Garland. But that invention was a response to the then-unique stakes, now being repeated, of replacing a justice who would tip the ideological balance of the court. Going further back, the Democrats nuclear option to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominations can be blamed, but that break with precedent itself responded to Republicans dedicated obstruction of a large number of Mr. Obamas nominees across two terms. And the conversation does not need to go on for very long before the argument turns to Democratic senators opposition, led by Joe Biden, to the nomination of Robert Bork in 1987.

What all of these concentric accusations of hypocrisy have in common is that they are largely, if not entirely, about abortion and support for or opposition to Roe v. Wade. Of course, many other important issues come before the court, but its resolutions of other epochal constitutional issuesfrom rejecting racial segregation to requiring the recognition of same-sex marriagehave helped usher in widespread societal acceptance of major changes. On the other hand, Roe v. Wade ignited a debate that has dominated American politics and deranged the process of Supreme Court appointments for more than 40 years.

[Want to discuss politics with other America readers? Join our Facebook discussion group, moderated by Americas writers and editors.]

The reason this editorial can be published even before Mr. Trump has made his nomination is that the one thing certain about the eventual nominee is that she will likely be a well-qualified jurist and also, as much as anyone can be certain, a reliable vote to oppose and overturn Roe v. Wade. (She will also, in the tradition of nominees during confirmation hearings since Mr. Bork, profess a formal adherence to settled precedent regarding Roe v. Wade that will neither satisfy those who want it preserved nor concern those who want it overturned.)

Depending on who is nominated and what schedule Senate Republicans adopt, the next weeks may be dominated by arguments over the nominees religious views or position on voting rights or proposals for court-packing. What these debates will have in common is that they will be largely beside the point. The fact remains that a critical moral issue about which Americans profoundly disagree has been reserved to the court, which has proven unable to find any resolution. The Supreme Court nomination process, therefore, has become an exercise in abortion policy by other means, a task for which the court is uniquely ill-suited.

Much of the pro-life movement has committed itself to a decades-long partnership with the Republican Party designed to reach this exact moment, where the court can be decisively tipped and Roe v. Wade at least hollowed out, if not overruled. Insofar as Roe has always been bad law and has utterly failed to settle the abortion debate, removing it as an obstacle and returning decisions regarding the legality of abortion to the states and to voters is a result to be welcomed.

But the costs of that strategic alliance, itself a consequence of the courts failure in Roe, will be felt for years if not decades to come. The pitched battle for the court has also incentivized political parties to pursue policy changes through the courts rather than legislation on a range of issues, furthering the dysfunction of Congress, as seen in the endless court battles over the Affordable Care Act.

This same dynamic has tended to increase the power of the executive branch, a kind of free-rider effect of the ideological filters applied to select judges ready to overturn Roe. Culturally, the willingness of some Christians to support the Republican Party at any cost in order to win pro-life victories at the court has subjected even basic evangelization to partisan division, at a significant cost to the credibility of Christian witness. When and if Roe is overturned, these obstacles will be more keenly felt in subsequent efforts to pass pro-life legislation at the state level.

Given the manifest failure of Roe and the ongoing reduction of U.S. politics to transactional advantage, perhaps the best that can be hoped for at this juncture is a relatively calm party-line confirmation of a nominee over understandable and justifiable protest from those who have lost in this round of Supreme Court nomination roulette. The eventual removal of Roe as an obstacle to legislative action on abortion may also be a necessarythough by no means sufficientcondition if the country is ever going to be able to walk away from the roulette table. If so, that will be something to be grateful for, though Americans will be paying off that gambling debt for decades to come.

[Read this next:Electing Republicans has not reversed Roe v. Wade. Its time to change our strategy.]

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The Editors: Abortion is the real reason the Supreme Court is broken. - America Magazine