This process worked so spectacularly well that it eventually created human consciousness and the very concept of engineering... but I would never design a system that way because it killed version 1.0.
"With our results, we were not able to explain if COVID-19 mortality is reduced by staying at home in ~ 98% of the comparisons after epidemiological weeks 9 to 34."
"The low number of significant associations between regions for mortality rate and the percentage of staying at home may be a case of exception fallacy, which is a generalization of individual characteristics applied at the group-level characteristics"
"In conclusion, using this methodology and current data, in ~ 98% of the comparisons using 87 different regions of the world we found no evidence that the number of deaths/million is reduced by staying at home. Regional differences in treatment methods and the natural course of the virus may also be major factors in this pandemic, and further studies are necessary to better understand it."
'Finally, a recent CDC report indicated that, while the vast majority of excess deaths occurred among the elderly, the greatest relative increase in deaths occurred in the 25 to 44 age group.'
“ Much of our current social polarisation and conflict is not, as The Social Dilemma suggests, between those influenced by social media’s “fake news” and those influenced by corporate media’s “real news”. It is between, on the one hand, those who have managed to find oases of critical thinking and transparency in the new media and, on the other, those trapped in the old media model or those who, unable to think critically after a lifetime of consuming corporate media, have been easily and profitably sucked into nihilistic, online conspiracies.”
...
“ The film’s first chapter makes it
sound as though social media’s rewiring of our brains to sell us advertising is something entirely new. The second chapter treats our society’s growing loss of empathy, and the rapid rise in an individualistic narcissism, as something entirely new. But very obviously neither proposition is true.”
“German virologist Hendrik Streeck explains the final results of his pioneering antibody study. Professor Streeck found a Covid19 lethality of 0.36%, but explains that this is an upper limit and the lethality is probably in the range of 0.24 to 0.26% or even below. The average age of test-positive deceased was approximately 81 years. Professor Streeck argues that “waiting for a vaccine” is not a good strategy because both the feasibility and effectiveness of a vaccine are uncertain.
Biology professor and Nobel Prize winner Michael Levitt, who has been analyzing the spread of Covid19 since February, describes the general lockdown as a „huge mistake“ and calls for more targeted measures, especially to protect risk groups“
While I can understand some of these experts indicating that the lockdown was a mistake I think it ignores a larger world wide cultural issue that has come about. People have become increasingly risk adverse and expect experts to protect them. Let's not forget in Italy scientist were convicted of manslaughter for not knowing if there was going to be a earthquake and not trying to cause a panic based on their uncertainty.
When I reflect back on this meeting, it was a surreal experience. Everyone present discussed the idea of building a workplace panopticon with complete normalcy. The TCO managers claimed that monitoring workers was necessary for keeping them safe, or to prevent them from stealing. But it wasn’t convincing in the slightest. We knew that they simply wanted a way to discipline their low-wage Kazakhstani workforce. We knew they wanted a way to squeeze as much work as they could from each worker.
“They’ve been here before. A few years ago, the company introduced its Free Basics plan, which provided a primitive, less data-intensive experience of the web by funneling all traffic through Facebook and a few approved apps, essentially occluding the difference between Facebook and the broader internet.” ... “As the company said in a statement at the time, “Our goal with Free Basics is to bring more people online with an open, non-exclusive and free platform. While disappointed with the outcome, we will continue our efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the internet and the opportunities it brings.”
"There are three main factors that could be encouraging professional environmentalists in their denial that our societies will collapse in the near- term. The first is the way the natural scientific community operates. Eminent climate scientist James Hansen has always been ahead of the conservative consensus in his analyses and predictions. Using the case study of sea level rise, he threw light on processes that lead to “scientific reticence” to conclude and communicate scenarios that would be disturbing to employers, funders, governments and the public (Hansen, 2007). A more detailed study of this process across issues and institutions found that climate-change scientists routinely underestimate impacts “by erring on the side of least drama” - (Brysse et al, 2013). Combined with the norms of scientific analysis and reporting to be cautious and avoid bombast, and the time it takes to fund, research, produce and publish peer-reviewed scientific studies, this means that the information available to environmental professionals about the state of the climate is not as frightening as it could be. In this paper I have had to mix information from peer-reviewed articles with recent data from individual scientists and their research institutions to provide the evidence which suggests we are now in a non-linear situation of climactic changes and effects."
The neoliberal program was not simply a move in the distributional fight, but rather about establishing a social order in which distribution was not a political question at all. For money and markets to be the central organizing principle of society, they have to appear natural—beyond the reach of politics. For Hayek, the great danger to the market order was not the breakdown of social ties but rather conscious efforts to shape them. The danger he feared, was “not so much the law of the jungle as the law of the engineers.”
Property and its privileges are only safe in a world where the rule of money is accepted as objective, inevitable, and outside the scope of collective decision-making.
There are conspiracy theories and there are carefully considered theories about events that suggest a conspiracy. Adam Smith was rather good on how small groups of people can cohere to conspire against the public good in their own interest. Most of our public life is a complex interconnecting set of such small-scale conspiracies.
As to conspiracy theories, we should remind ourselves of their function and why they emerge. Like grimoires in Early Modern Europe, they are texts and ideas that explain the world to the uneducated but the uneducated cannot be blamed for this. They are left in the dark, given half-truthful narratives that they are intelligent enough to distrust.
Conspiracy theories emerge because there is a vacuum in social truth-telling and they fill that vacuum. The vacuum is created by those in power or dependent on power developing a theory for that hold on power that just does not fit as the 'whole truth'. The cracks show (Watergate, Gulf of Tonkin, whatever) and the official theory looks dodgy.
The entire of our society is built on a contestation of half-truthful narratives, stories we tell ourselves to justify our situation or our hold on power or our lack of power. If the 'deplorables' choose to fill a vacuum with their own tales, it is only because our tale lacks credibility for them and often should lack credibility for us.
The current crisis over the Salisbury nerve agent is typical. The Prime Minister jumps in with assertions and propagandists create narratives (on all sides) that are clearly a 'story' designed to get people behind particular tales of perfidy, She may be right but the assertions are premature. Alternative explanations are dismissed.
The lack of intellectual integrity in exploring the complexities of Russian state control of its assets past and present and the motivations and interests of the many parties involved and the opportunity to tell the public the facts without assumptions until investigation is complete is lost and creates the space for surmise and distrust.
From this perspective, a conspiracy theory is simply an act of defiance where you create your own falsehood as a story you chose over the incredible tales of those who are determined on not handling an issue with transparency.
