The Only Man Who Has A Clue
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Henri Cartier-Bresson A visitor to the Forbidden City, Beijing 1948 Today, I’m going to try to show you how and why we know that in the case of
[See the full post at: The Only Man Who Has A Clue]In the very early 80s, Frank Herbert, author of Dune*, a work of fiction that was kind of an ecological manifesto for the rising Boomer sci-fi crowd, did an interview with Mother Earth magazine. (I wonder it it still exists.)
Regarding the ecology, a very very complex system, and humanity’s influence upon same, he said (paraphrase alert): ‘You can hardly see the road ahead because you’re creating so much unknown, largely invisible, asymmetric consequences by driving this enormous car with a two-mile long front end. If you’re going to attempt to reengineer the planet, this thing homo sapiens calls Progress toward a Better Life with humanity in the driver seat, you have to drive real real real slow-w-w-w-w. cuz you can hardly see the road and it takes forever to turn the thing around.’
*the movie Lynch/studios delivered was a disaster. Unless you’d read the book beforehand, you couldn’t even follow the basic plot. I think there’s a metaphor in this ability of a genius auteur (Lynch) and the enormous backing of a studio working and spending in great amount just to produce an overwrought flop.
Those with the inclination might be shrewd to begin crafting stylish, weather-compatible ‘street burkhas’. A mutant virus spreading in maximum Jet Set global culture is only one of countless ways that we as a society will find ourselves much more concerned about avoiding contagion than in the past.
There’s drinking water: Flint, MI., comes to mind. Our water supply will become increasing septic as well as chemically toxic, which toxins tend to weaken immune systems and general resilience toward infection.
Pathogenic resistance to antibiotics: self-explanatory
Food shortages due to global climate disruption, topsoil erosion/loss of soil fertility, overuse of chemical farming, GMO ‘mutant mission creep’, increasing immunity of pestilential horde insects to insecticides accompanied by a major decline, ironically, in other insect populations, many of which used to reduce things like locust populations, likewise a reduction in general in wildlife, most of which eat things like locusts, lowering water tables, rising cost of natural gas which is crucial to our fertilizer supply…
Political collapse messing with all of the above while inducing elevated chronic stress, boredom, depression, and hostility.
etc…
All of these will make us more susceptible to pathogens while increasing the population and diversity of pathogens.
dismissing the possibility of intentional release is like denying that the twin towers and building 7 were wired for demolition.
the key element is that wave 2 will be under someone’s control. there may be evidence which will confirm this (unusual death distribution in local areas as compared to influenza, for instance). this evidence is less likely to surface if we adopt your position.
@ Bosco: Frank & Mother Earth:
https://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/frank-herbert-science-fiction-author-zmaz81mjzrawRaul:
Everybody wearing masks (and gloves too) is too simple a solution for our leaders to grasp or get
It is sort of funny that engineers (those trained to apply science) seem to have a better grasp of risks than most scientists.
As an engineer I get convexity. Maybe that is because by training we often wonder what could possibly go wrong (Murphy’s Law) with our assumptions in the real world!
In the people mobility graph (graft?) above, Canada doesn’t exactly win honors for staying put! Sure Canada is a big space so social distancing should be easy, but the trouble is we are all crowded into a few big cities!
In Toronto, I would say about 2/3rds are wearing masks (plus many wearing gloves) now up sharply from a several weeks ago.
Social distancing outdoors seems to be understood by all. Indoors not so much!
Whenever I do break my quarantine, rarely, people give you a wide burth, evoking internal feelings that maybe they don’t like you, or maybe you just lit a big barn smell!
Bosco:
Obviously the movie studio didn’t understand “convexity”!
After it flopped, their balance sheet sure did!
Regarding spouse/child abuse increasing because folks are stuck together more often: when things change, things change.
Some spouses will find the desperation to harness up their courage and take a baseball bat to hubs while he’s asleep.
Some abused children will make that break for it and tell someone what’s really happening. Abusive parent might even find their momenbt with a baseball bat on their collarbone.
The elderly mostly need folks to look in on them. They did, in fact, before the virus wave. They’re old and sick and feeble and isolated too often. Right now, people are actually asking about their neighbors’ well-being sincerely, not in trivial social rituals (‘virtue-signaling’).
What the net benefit/damage to at-home abused will bes, who can tell? When things change, things change. Convexity, if you prefer.
“dismissing the possibility of intentional release is like denying that the twin towers and building 7 were wired for demolition. the key element is that wave 2 will be under someone’s control. there may be evidence which will confirm this (unusual death distribution in local areas as compared to influenza, for instance). this evidence is less likely to surface if we adopt your position.”
And what will we the people do with this information? Lead a mass revolution against our global overlords? While we’re scrambling to survive?
Currently, the problem is reducing contagion, not arguing Rubix-cube conspiracy complexities, which is what ALWAYS happens with topics like that. The inevitable search for the Smoking Gun will waste valuable resources that could be put to good use.
Knowing whom to blame (if, indeed, there is such a conspiracy, which is merely speculation with insufficient data to make firm conclusions) doesn’t provide solutiuons to the problems allegedly caused by said conjectural conspiracy, which problems are currently very real and just getting started.
There will be plenty of revolution as it is. Heads will roll*. The NWO is in full collapse right now. If they intentionally started this pandemic, that buttresses the notion that the CIC is too dumb to run a global empire if Gawdamighty Her Own Self handed it to them. This virus is killing them, jubilee or not. They won’t be able to hold on to their property*, which is mostly vaporware based on funny money they only get to call real so long as people can get enough of that money for themselves, which in turn requires the money have adequate value to buy necessary things.
Any financial reset/jubilee will invoke price discovery. The price of necessary things will then increase drastically once the perodollar swindle is terminated, and the purchasing power of the USA dollar is no longer supported by global oil demand. If the elites released this virus, they’re even stupider than I and other believe they are. I’m not sure it’s possible to be more stupid than I deem them. But maybe.
*”It shall be a jubilee to you; and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee to you. In it you shall not sow, neither reap that which grows of itself, nor gather from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You shall eat of its increase out of the field. In this Year of Jubilee each of you shall return to his property.” Leviticus 25:8–13
The Spanish Flu gave Woodrow Wilson great cover for his draconian Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918. This hardly means that he and his cronies caused the Spanish flu. Hell, they didn’t even get to capitalize on it. The Sediton Act was removed in 1920.
Not that the above proves anything. But just because, here’s Bill Gates in a superhero suit:
You can’t see his face but it’s him. See how he battles evil in goofy monster suits amid phony staged wreckage? THat’s Billy fer sure.
And:
“I think it’s vital that men and women learn to mistrust all forms of powerful, centralized authority. Big government tends to create an enormous delay between the signals that come from the people and the response of the leaders. Put it this way: Suppose there were a delay time of five minutes between the moment you turned the steering wheel on your car and the time the front tires reacted. What would happen in such a case?
“PLOWBOY: I guess I’d have to drive pretty slowly.
“HERBERT: V-e-rrrrrrr-y slowly. Governments have the same slow-response effect. And the bigger the government, the more slowly it reacts. So to me, the best government is one that’s very responsive to the needs of its people. That is, the least, loosest, and most local government.”
Coming soon to a dismantled governmental structure near you.
And what will we the people do with this information?
we can adjust our actions and protect ourselves to the extent possible. most of us would prepare/behave differently if we knew that an active bio-war was being waged against us.
Bravo Ilargi!
Wonderfully written; nailed every relevant point.
Probably the best essay on the CV-19 in print today.
Taleb is a treasure.
TAE rules…V. Arnold: “Bravo Ilargi!” Totally agree. I’m trying to figure out if my budget can handle another donation just now. Raul’s been doing a boat load of work over the past few months. Wish I were wealthy and could donate more often … oh, forget it. I’m going to donate again. Maybe if I run out of grocery money Raul can spot me $20.
And Bosco, damn, you nailed it again: “Currently, the problem is reducing contagion, not arguing Rubix-cube conspiracy complexities, which is what ALWAYS happens with topics like that. The inevitable search for the Smoking Gun will waste valuable resources that could be put to good use.”
I know a woman who spends every spare moment trying to figure out conspiracies (Kennedy, 911, Jekyll Island, you name it). I always ask, what difference does it make? Talk about wasted energy! And, btw, I agree that if releasing this virus was some great conspiracy to accomplish (I have no idea what), those in power are way more flocking stupid than even I thought they were.
Oh, yeah: what V. Arnold said. Attempting to write plain English after diving the deep waters of Taleb-speak, is a demanding job. Well done, senor!
Yeah, I think Raul earned some generosity. I might even do it online this time. I hear it’s the 21st century.
Dit is je “magnum Opus” Raoul, ik vind nooit dat juiste accentje, je zal het me moeten vergeven. En ik word donneur, zij het zeer bescheiden. L.B. op FB.
“we can adjust our actions and protect ourselves to the extent possible. most of us would prepare/behave differently if we knew that an active bio-war was being waged against us.”
How so? A virus is a virus is a virus. ONce released, the struggle is against contagion.
I have no prob with people believing this is biowar. I think it’s 50-50 myself that it’s at least the product of bioweaponry gone awry somehow.
But how, exactly, should we design anti-contagion protocols knowing they were released by Mini-Me rather than by accident or ‘merely’ the result of too many vectors swapping viruses between hominids and non-hominids? Are we supposed to overthrow the government first and then deal with the pandemic?
But all that aside: how are you going to sell the global populace, or even just us USA Americans, on this truth, if true it is? Are we going to commandeer the internet and broadcast Dah Troof to the entire populace?
You already believe it’s a master plan by the CIC, right? Does that change what the virus does? Does believing the virus is an intentional act by heavy players allow you to understand epidemiology and complex large systems better? Can you chart a better probability model knowing that Evil Men are behind it?
That sounds like action/disaster-movie plot outlining, not serious live/survival strategy.
I don’t know, Bosco, they’re saying we’re, like, almost 20 years into the 21st century? What the hell? When did that happen? I’m still living the way I was raised … by my grandmother who was born in 1892. (Not kidding). Interesting perspective …
Agree that masks seem to be a low-cost and sensible measure and it’s surprising that governments haven’t widely distributed them along with other basic PPE to their whole populations.
Expanding the discussion, this article posted on the NZ situation today:
Coronavirus economics and policy: from the mailbox
It is important and nuanced, on two important fronts:
1. The NZ government Covid modelling and response has cherry-picked catastrophic scenario data. The health “professionals” modelled several scenarios. The lower death scenarios (which turn out to be more in line with what we’ve actually observed *were simply excluded from theirreport*. Get that – they modelled them but didn’t like the results they produced, so simply didn’t report the scenarios. That’s a damn scandal right there.
2. There is a good argument presented that reductions in GDP/wealth are statistically correlated with average life expectancy. Proposed Covid interventions can also be modelled in terms of impact to average life expectancy. Using average life expectancy as a common denominator eliminates much emotion (ie the morality of “allowing” deaths to occur and provides a more rational way to compare the impact of various actions. As a comparator it also weights more heavily towards the younger population who will bear a greater (ie longer) impact over the course of their lives from both the current crisis and however we respond than will older people.Please do take some time to wade through the detail – it is vastly more nuanced and rational than most of the Covid discussion.
Test case: the whole world knows that the likes of Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton were all over Jeffrey Epstein’s girly gulag. There really isn’t a denialist defense movement for Jeffrey, and the implications are obvious.
Yet the politics of the natiojn remain inane. Trump vs. Biden? NYC residents haven’t stormed the mayor’s bastille for letting Jeffrey disappear on his watch?
I just don’t see the practical potential for knowing who to blame during a time when What To Do is of paramount importance.
How so? A virus is a virus is a virus. <b>ONce released,</b> the struggle is against contagion.
you are assuming that no more releases will take place. i am arguing that the very different outcomes (for instance, us v south korea or italy v germany) are the result of localized releases of a second, far more deadly agent.
future such localized releases would be very useful in keeping people in line and following orders.
Huskynut: “There is a good argument presented that reductions in GDP/wealth are statistically correlated with average life expectancy.”
Yup, poor people have lower life expectancy. Been proven statistically for many decades. Of course they die earlier. Poorer quality food, stress, depression, exposure to more pollutants and chemicals, etc., lead to chronic health issues. Poor people die younger. Most of the time no one cares because the people running the models aren’t poor.
“Proposed Covid interventions can also be modelled in terms of impact to average life expectancy.”
Yup, we can “model” this, too. If we reduce GDP, the life expectancy of people declines by x%. If we let Covid-19 run through the population then life expectancy reduces by y%. Look! Overall life expectancy reduces by LESS if we just let Covid-19 run through the population than it does if we reduce GDP!!
“As a comparator it also weights more heavily towards the younger population who will bear a greater (ie longer) impact over the course of their lives from both the current crisis and however we respond than will older people.”
Bye, bye Grandma and Grandpa. So sorry about your luck. We decided the model looked better for younger people if we didn’t reduce GDP so we let Covid-19 run loose.
There were actually times throughout history when we considered the wisdom and contribution of elders to be worth something. Now we mainly warehouse them in nursing homes and wait for them to die. Sometimes we visit our elder relatives once a month to make ourselves feel better. Nice of us, isn’t it?
Idk, maybe Covid-19 is a wake up call to begin appreciating something we’ve tossed to the side without a second thought. Anyone considered that?
Btw, a red flag in your “mailbox” item: “a careful discussion about trade-offs.”
Trade offs?? There’s little I can say to that aside from, how did humanity get so far off track? I imagine it started with discounting the value of plant, insect, and animal life, then discounting the value of people who live in dire situations throughout the world, then discounting the value of our own citizens … and now discounting the value of our own FAMILY?
Reminds me of that poem that goes: “First they came for the Jews. And I did not speak out. because I was not a Jew.”
If they intentionally started this pandemic, that buttresses the notion that the CIC is too dumb to run a global empire
“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!”
in two months they’ve collapsed the global economy, given themselves 4 or more trillion dollars, and placed hundreds of millions under martial law. a perfect setup for the introduction of a global digital currency. perhaps they’re not quite as inept as you think.
kimyo99: if you think they can successfully introduce a “global digital currency” in the US, you haven’t spent enough time here in the non-coastal enclave areas. Not. Going. To. Happen.
Upstater
“Bye, bye Grandma and Grandpa. So sorry about your luck. We decided the model looked better for younger people if we didn’t reduce GDP so we let Covid-19 run loose.”That, right there is a beautiful example of hijacking a rational discussion with a purely emotional dog-whistle, and sadly that’s exactly the widespread quality of debate.
Yes, there’s some ugly trolls out there saying exactly that. There’s also some us trying to establish a middle ground so we can have some kind of meaningful discussion on the merits of various options, and it’s generally highjacked by precisely your style of comment.
Medicine has *always* had to deal with the ethics of having inadequate resources to doing everything for everyone at all times. Its the basis of triage in it’s most simplistic form for instance. So please don’t shit on an attempt to build a bridge and establish some basis for a rational discussion with contemptuous generalisations like that.
This post makes wearing a mask and gloves in public plain simple common sense if you want to stay alive. That it isn’t, begs the question why not. Also, why hasn’t a crash program undertaken to do the following; 1) identify patients infected with the Wuhan Coronavirus, 2) provide effective adequate PPE to first responders and healthcare workers, 3) divert personnel and resources to keep the healthcare system functioning and 4) isolate the infected. This isn’t rocket science. How to control the spread of infectious diseases has been known for over a century.
What changed this century was public health was privatized and downsized in the West as part and parcel of cutting taxes on the rich and globalizing the economy. The very political leaders who the global system benefited now have to change their perspective. Joe Biden and Donald Trump can’t. Neither will rebuild and staff the public health system to track, isolate and treat all Americans. They will keep the current system and let the 90% fend for themselves and let thousands of Americans die for no good reason and leave the survivors deeper in debt.
Last week Dr. Anthony Fauci projected 60,000 death from coronavirus. This is more than the number of U.S. combat deaths in the Vietnam War. What comes out on the other side will be a different nation. No longer an empire, either the USA be a renewed democracy or a dying autocracy.
upstateNYer: a collapse in the value of the dollar, combined with a ban on physical currency will be a severe test of the resolve of the non-coastal enclave residents.
i 100% hope that you’re correct in your assessment. i suggest that some of these people already have dealt with the fact that norad stood down on 9/11 and its implications. perhaps their resolve will strengthen when they become aware of the cdc’s similar stand down this year. and strengthen further when they realize that ww3 is not between the u.s. and the axis of evil but instead pits the globalists against everyone else.
OTOH – it has helped me put my finger on something that’s been bugging me, and that I articulated poorly the other day.
I’ve been following TAE virtually every day for years now (and on that note – sorry Ilargi.. I really should stump up for a donation towards the running of the site). One of it’s primary attractions has been the quality of the economics – information, models and discussion of the various merits, costs, externalities etc. Which sounds horribly dry, but what I care about is the impacts on real people. All the articles and discussion around the Greek economic crisis for example drove home the impacts on ordinary Greek citizens of the perverse behaviours of the European elites.
But in the recent focus and discussions around Covid, I don’t experience this quality at all. Sure, its a frightening topic. Such data as does exist is limited, fragmented and often contradictory. People’s opinions are often driven by strong emotions built off exposure to limited and/or polarising information.
And to be fair, it’s not just here. It’s the same at Unz, and the Saker, and.. well everywhere else – deeply polarised and entrenched sides either lobbing projectiles at the other side or patting their own side on the back.
Maybe my expectations are all wrong, but from a position of government-mandated isolation (for everyone’s good I understand, before someone takes a crack at me..), submersed in incessant patronising MSM bullshit saturation, and with deep uncertainty around the future, I’d really like to find some online community capable of withholding judgement for long enough to discuss the relative merits of various actions, as it’s utterly clear to me this is not occurring almost anywhere I can see.
Genuine question – am I the only one sensing or reacting like this?“you are assuming that no more releases will take place. i am arguing that the very different outcomes (for instance, us v south korea or italy v germany) are the result of localized releases of a second, far more deadly agent. future such localized releases would be very useful in keeping people in line and following orders.”
I am making no such assumptions. Assuming what my assunmptions are seems rather assumptive.
I see no evidence in modern history that says this info will be useful. To change the scenario, one would have to stop the next wave from happening. Some kind of Mission: Impossible or mega Daddy Warbucks Saves the Day (shades of Bill Gates!), both of which concepts have sold many Hollywood movies but achieved no successful conflict resolution that I know of except minor incidents between highly trained armies of competing nations. USSR espionage ops vs USA espionage ops, that sort of thing. Whatever public awareness campaign one could do with the truth would face enormous obstacles in the public mind, since the same creeps who would release said virus would also be controlling the media, and that media has proven very adept at controlling the message even with the truth running around nekkid on both mainstream news and the more underground internet. Again: Jeffrey Epstein. (If I wrote the screenplay, the reason the virus was released when it was would be because the Epstein story was about to slip out of control. Gritty realism, just like in a goof Tarentino flick.)
You’ve spoken entirely in hypotheticals. You have yet to suggest a single practical means to use that info to significantly arouse the population to greater action.
I am NOT saying it can’t be done; I’m saying that the path from here to that achievement is a vast fogbank. Yes, it IS possible, but then, it’s possible that man will live on the moon. How has never been answered except as nice plots for sci-fi books of so-called “hard” science fiction (“hard” scientism, is all they really are). How it can be turned from possible to happening is a one-in-a-million Die Hard Returns Lethal Weapon in Mortal Combat the Awakening prospect.
So arguing that people like Raul should spend more time chasing elusive fey Smoking Gun data that no one knows what to do with other than enjoy the sense of vindictive certainty that blame allows, seems the oppposite of preparing for difficult times. It feels like an expenditure of discursive energy someone seeking to find their way through this mess can ill afford.
You know, I don’t just chatter here because I love the look of my text (if not the sound of my voice). I am way more egotistical than that. I also chatter here because I suffer the delusion that I serve a useful role in keeping the discussions here at least halfway on productive track toward some kind of greater communal understanding that can benefit us.
Even that much foolish vanity isn’t enough to will me to continue discussing this concept.
I wanna be happy.
It’s Great to be Here, It’s Great to be Anywhere
But despite my best attempts:
“I’d really like to find some online community capable of withholding judgement for long enough to discuss the relative merits of various actions, as it’s utterly clear to me this is not occurring almost anywhere I can see.
Genuine question – am I the only one sensing or reacting like this?”Speak to us. Tell us your mind. Articulate your thoughts. Don’t ask us to wade thropugh a detailed technical article. Explain it to us in summarized terms. JUdgment is withheld here by the more inquisitive. For example, Raul. He makes his case.
Make yours, please. Don’t berate Raul or us FOR NOT MAKING IT FOR YOU.
It makes heads asploe.
Here’s one for all of our sense of dire foreboding and lonely prophecy. It’s glorious to be confused about really serious shit! What else is life!
>>How so? A virus is a virus is a virus. <b>ONce released,</b> the struggle is against contagion.
>>I am making no such assumptions. Assuming what my assunmptions are seems rather assumptive.the assumption is clearly implicit in your original statement.
>>So arguing that people like Raul should spend more time chasing elusive
raul’s time is his to do with as he likes. i never suggested that he ‘chase’ anything.What the models tell us, in New Zealand and elsewhere, seem pretty irrelevant to Ilargi’s argument (backed up by Nassim Taleb):
“…at some point [I] realized that the coronavirus is an issue you can’t leave to epidemiologists and virologists, because there are far too many unknowns for them to create a working model, and without such a model they are lost… These people are useful for the knowledge they possess of past epidemics, not for predicting what will happen in the next one, certainly not if it’s caused by a virus which they -and we- simply don’t know enough about to build a reliable model. In that case, you need to step back and apply more basic principles. Lucky for us, those exist.”
Neil is a talented fellow, and has written some choice work, but he’s always cashing in on some worthy cause without adding any useful data. Lord have mercy:
Never mind, kim. I’ve torn apart enough logical fallacies, misreadings, and obstuseness for one day. Maybe all week. At least from one person.
***
Instead, I’ll post this, written quite a few years ago when I first started thinking I could maybe write a decent novel. Reviewing the first 15k pages today, I noticed how much this passage reminds me of places like here:
Ken arrived in Carlton’s life four months ago by way of an online political forum called Dao of the Average Jones, the kind of place where evil banking cabals and shadow governments are discussed with abundant credulity and wayward citations. A manifestation of the internet as the ultimate Gathering of the Nerds. Search engines have been helping odd ducks meet odd ducks since 1969, when a military industrial egghead first emailed another military-industrial egghead over the Arpanet.
Ken was mostly a lurker at the time, too awed by the spectrum of human weirdness revealed by peer-to-peer global networks to say anything, maintaining almost a wildlife photographer’s habitual hush, lest the dancing cranes or mating armadilloes be disturbed out of lens range. Not to mention the ability to google ‘mating armadilloes’ and probably find at least one image of just that.
Add the weirdness of watching new kinds of sex, sex never even imagined before, via online pornography. Cosplay porn, furry porn, BORG porn, anime porn (not to be confused with mere cartoon sex), NeoNazis Love Grannies, and enough bestiality to make a zoo administrator want to put electric fences on the people side of the cages. Even weirder was the documentary on Modern Bestiality, including interviews with the nicest looking, sweetest sounding people you could ask for, appearing no more nor less weird or attractive than straightahead normal people-fuckers, explaining their relationships with Lassie or Mr. Ed without seeming the slightest bit creepy, which was even creepier.
Dao of the Average Jones had been set up in 1998 by a Wall Street Buddhist who’d fled, running and screaming, from the industry in 1994 when Clinton dismantled Glass-Steagall. He’d survived the 1987 S&L stock market crash and knew what was coming. He’d intended it to be a voice for reform but was soon drowned out by doom’n’gloomers that he couldn’t justify banning because they usually had their facts half-straight even if many of them also suffered paranoid delusions. By 2002 he hardly ever visited anymore but kept it running because he was a nice guy.
Not that Ken arrived at the Dao to discuss politics. Out of the kind of whimsy only a search engine connected to a WorldWideWeb can inspire, he’d spun the wheel on ‘Thelonius Monk Plays Erik Satie’. He knew of no such record, but you never know. Google’s first search listing was a set of rambling sentence fragments bracketed by something Ken assumed was HTML code. He clicked and found himself on a three-month old discussion thread on the Dao.
Someone handled Tone Arm had written: “Monk adored his work. Satie was a huge influence on him. Monk would never play it in public because he felt his heavy-handed pianism was inadequate. But I never thought so.”
In only a few weeks the two became one of the Dao’s most infamous tag-teams. The two had great fun tossing verbal rotten eggs. Not quite trolling but more than willing to make fools suffer.
Soon they spent most of their time aboard the Dao hijacking thread topics toward jazz and Silent Era comedy.
By summer 2003 they’d abandoned Dao Jones but maintained frequent correspondence. By fall, Ken learned that Carlton was growing too frail to take care of himself. He invited him to come stay with him and his wife, Ada.
It didn’t take much to convince Carlton. Carlton soon pared his weak protestations down to one genuine problem:
“You’re my best friend, Ken. I’m 83?84? All my friends are dead, demented, or just plain doddering like me. We don’t have the energy to take a cab to the other’s house, and it’s, it’s too depressing to see each other. Old sacks of shit. We drain too much from each other even if we understand each other like fingers in a glove and share memories well up on the endangered species list. You’re the only fun I have anymore. I’m afraid that much contact with me will drive you away.”
Ken was smart enough not to refute this.
“You’re saying you’re kind of an asshole sometimes?”
“Yes.”
“Me too. We should get along just swell.”
“Just swell,” Carlton says, savoring the sound of an expression from his youth.
<end>Sleep tight, y’all.
Meanwhile,
Hot spots erupt in farm belt states where governors insist lockdowns aren’t needed
The only hospital in Grand Island, Neb., is full. The mayor has asked for a statewide stay-at-home order that the GOP governor insists isn’t needed. More than one-third of those tested for coronavirus in the surrounding county are positive — and there aren’t enough tests to go around.
Grand Island is the fourth-biggest city in a state President Donald Trump and his top health officials repeatedly name check for keeping the virus at bay without the strict lockdowns 42 other states have imposed.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/15/coronavirus-hot-spots-farm-belt-189272
Thanks for this essay. It is not paranoid when you have an enemy. And the bottom line is that the C19 is the Enemy. Not each other, not assigning shame and blame. We are all very highly charged in this time of Danger. Freeze, Flight, Fight. None of those gut reactions really do the trick.
The big question is – What To Do? Wear masks (and gloves) when in public, stay at home as much as possible, work on a garden (?), work around the huge Limits we have on us. These limits can give structure to preparing for and working with the worst case scenarios.
What to do? Be kind to yourself and to others. Be gentle. Be safe. If lonely, reach out to friends, listen to them. Helping others as best as we can is away forward. It builds that Social Capital that we know is more important than Being Right.
Maybe telling stories of how these Hard Times can be managed, of who did the kind supportive things that we humans can be so good at. How can we cooperate? Who has ideas for funny home made masks? (I want to decorate a sock mask for my grand son. Something to do when I’m not doing Zoom gatherings or gardening or doing taxes.)
Gloves – is that why my mother and grand mother wore gloves? had guest towels? to avoid germs in 1919?And the bottom line is that the C19 is the Enemy. Not each other, not assigning shame and blame. We are all very highly charged in this time of Danger.
Sadly, we do have other enemies — especially those who will try to propagandize us to readily accept and embrace putting people in harm’s way too soon. For their financial benefit, not ours. And we have enemies who are looting the country and only sending a few crumbs to the people.
I am all in favor of civil discourse, but that’s really really difficult when we are mired in so much propaganda. Here is a great warning piece “Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting” from a couple of days ago:
https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2020/04/14/gaslighting-coronavirus-julio-vincent-gambuto
And so we are about to be gaslit in a truly unprecedented way. It starts with a check for $1,200. And it will be a one-two punch from big business and the White House. Both are about to band together to knock us unconscious again. It will be funded like no other operation in our lifetimes. It will be fast. It will be furious. And it will be overwhelming. The Great American Return to Normal is coming.
“Speak to us. Tell us your mind. Articulate your thoughts. Don’t ask us to wade thropugh a detailed technical article. Explain it to us in summarized terms. JUdgment is withheld here by the more inquisitive. For example, Raul. He makes his case.”
Dude, I’ll certainly speak to the others. But the incredible irony of you suggesting I summarise my thoughts better when it is you that spends so much time here rambling semi-coherently and derailing discussions.. I’m. Just. Completely. Speechless..
“What the models tell us, in New Zealand and elsewhere, seem pretty irrelevant to Ilargi’s argument (backed up by Nassim Taleb):..”
Thanks Doc – your comment made me go and reread the post over again, realising I’d skimmed it too quickly in the first place.
Much of Taleb’s take rings true for me.. I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to make from an engineers/risk management perspective a very similar argument (albeit without Taleb’s encyclopedic knowledge) that we need to use first principles and a broad overview as much as narrow analytical views. Several of Taleb’s/Ilargi’s point have more nuance than mine, ie that in certain circumstances, we don’t need/can’t afford analysis at all, as the potential consequence of the outlying uncertainty/risk is so high that it can’t be entertained.
But here’s where I depart from his reasoning:
1. Reasoning that the potential ultimate risk of Covid is human extinction and thus mandates the most extreme of precautions is, well, useless. I mean in scientific terms then yes it’s technically true, but the same is true of other edge cases (including GMOs and climate change). There is no particular reason (that I’m aware of) that this risk should be uniquely or especially true of Covid vs a mutation of a pre-existing virus, or from one that emerges tomorrow, or from other scientific edge cases (physicists have speculated on a black hole produced by the Large Hadron Collider..). If there’s reason that Covid is indeed such a case (as opposed to we just don’t understand it yet), then sure, lets have the discussion. The burden of proof lies in both directions, else for every unknown situation with an articulable extreme edge case, we need to take extreme precautions every single time. Scientifically, rationally yes of course. But we’re humans, which segues nicely:
2. Politics (and these are all political, not medical or scientific decisions being made) has been widely stated as the art of the possible. Despite Taleb’s insights, this is simply not lived human practice/wisdom. He may be live and die being 100% correct in his rational risk assessment, but the likelihood of persuading a sufficient number of human beings to override their biological and social selves and behave according to intellectual wisdom is vanishingly small. Like most, I was an idealist when young.. in my mid 50’s now I assess the likelihood of success of a project before signing onto it. As an idealist, if a project failed I felt OK – at least I tried. As a realist, I understand that committing time to an enterprise without a reasonable chance of viability means that other, viable, things wont get done. So there’s that.
3. Lastly, there’s the potential for misuse. The form and mechanism of the lockdowns concerns the hell out of me. In NZ the data and rationale for the actions preceding and during lockdown is simply not public. We are told a decision will be made on next steps on April 20th, but there’s been no public data or discussion of how that decision will be made. The reality is it’s decision by fiat.
Now if the virus turns out not to be an extinction-level event (and the odds based on probability are extremely weighted that it won’t be), the political and economic costs will be realised regardless. So the tangible concrete cost of protecting ourselves from an extremely unlikely extinction is potentially huge, including the risk of subverting the entire basis of our democratic polities. It’s good to have this discussion, but, please – be honest and direct about the relative likelihoods of events.
And sure.. it is strictly rational to prioritise avoiding human extinction ahead of other more mundane concerns. And – human nature being what it is – it’s an ephemeral argument which smashes into practical reality as soon as you try to ground it.
Now in, say, a GMO case it’s a helluva lot simpler. There’s a financial player who stands to realise great benefits, and that we can task with spending their resources against their potential future gains. That should be a slam dunk. It’s not of course, but only because of political corruption. There’s no tough moral question at the heart of it. Climate change is a bit harder, but still very doable – we can identify the financial beneficiaries and tax them to provide protections for the affected. It’ll be imperfect and somewhat unfair, but it fits within the capitalist economic model fairly easily.
With Covid, it’s quite different, and extending thinking from the above cases crashes quickly into reality (and this is exactly where the emotional deflections seems to rise spontaneously to preclude debate).
There’s no financial benefactor who will risk applying their resources against present or future economic gains – in fact there’s the precise opposite (you might expect nations to want to protect their workforce, but the young workforce is not much at risk). There’s no way to escape it – the primary tangible beneficiaries are the greatest at-risk population ie the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions. The cost of mitigation (in terms of debt costs, deferred opportunity and reduced life expectancy) will be born disproportionately by the youngest (fittest, financially weakest) part of society. I’m not arguing to kill granny. These are just the basic facts.
I struggle with bringing Taleb’s argument into this context because in this context it feels so much like a rationalisation to avoid confronting the previous truths. Yes, if we face an extinction-level event, then it behooves all of us to pull together to avoid it, and humanity benefits in the meta sense. And maybe, if our societies operated in this way, on this basis in decision making day in, day out, year in, year out then for sure, that’s the agreed social contract that we act together for the benefit of society. But user-pays gutted that thinking long ago, and gutted the health care systems along with it. I hate that it did, but it did. And there’s something that rings entirely false about trying to resurrect a narrative of human solidarity where and when the tangible costs will be borne by the younger generations.
You know Taleb/Ilargi – when you can show me how this new morality will claw back the billions from the 1% to finance this humanity-embracing effort, rather than ditching the costs onto future generations, then I’m up for it. When you have the debt jubilees scheduled in, or the new taxes, or whatever it is that will prevent this proposed intervention from landing like yet another huge yoke around my 6 year old daughter’s neck, then yeah I’m up for it. But as long as it’s pie-in-the-sky theory with thoroughly skewed costs and benefits, then nah. It’s just like every other politician peddling snake-oil solutions. Focussing on the urgency and importance of implementing these policies, without negotiating the tangible effects, the winners and the losers is just wrong.
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