Guiding principles for the years to come

first-must-burn
Sun, 02 Feb 2025 20:44:43 +0000

About why this is posted in ~health.mental
Preface: The YLE post is partly a reaction to the upheaval we're seeing in government data collection in the US as Trump's administration takes power. I think this upheaval is something those of us in the US are facing directly. And because of the US's place in the world, our problems are to some extent everyone's problems.
I debated with myself about posting this to ~society or ~life, but what I'm seeking is principles that might be a guide to action beyond the current moment, even if, as may be the case, they arise out of this particular moment. Maybe this topic is inherently political, in which case, please feel free to move it or relabel it.

This was inspired by a recent post from Your Local Epidemiologist, where she lays out a set of guiding principles for the blog going forward:

be a steady guide, trying to avoid whiplash

providing important context - a broader perspective

staying grounded in evidence

being clear about what we know and what we don't know

approaching issues with empathy

She also references the hazard + outrage framework for risk communication. I come from a safety / risk assessment background, so we usually think of risk = severity x likelihood. But as a communication framework, hazard + outrage seems pretty useful, as talking about risk to lay people is always difficult.

Thinking about one's guiding principles, writing them down, testing them in use, seems really useful to me as a way to be more proactive and less reactive in the way that I deal with the world. So then, the questions on my mind for the Tildes community are:

what are your guiding principles?

how did you come by them?

how have they evolved over the years?

Since this is a text post, I'll put mine in another post below so the responses can thread under it. And since I can never resist a quote, I'll close with:

If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values, they're hobbies.
~ Jon Stewart

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