The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Rationality Is Not A Way Out Of Group Action Problems like Climate Change and Covid

One: “The system is interdependent and what I do is damaging it, but it doesn’t matter because I will die before it breaks in a way that hurts me.” This is rational. Rational thinking will not get you out of issues like climate change. Rational thought is a means, not an end.

Two: The system is interdependent and what I do is damaging it, but by doing so I am becoming more powerful, rich, or otherwise benefiting. If I was not damaging it I would not benefit as much, and might even suffer.

A lot of people worship rationality in our society. We think that rational is a synonym for “good” and that if we are rational, we will do the right thing.

This is incorrect for a variety of reasons, but it is extremely incorrect in group action problems. If 90% of society, and 95% of people born 50 years in the future will suffer because I do something, but I benefit greatly, it is entirely rational to cause that harm.

Covid has made the rich much richer, fast. Statista has a nice little graphic:

As for Climate Change, business as usual worked fine for the world’s elites. We really started paying attention to global warming in the 70s, and since then, by not just ignoring it but increasing it, they’ve done brilliant.

(The top .1% and .01% and .001% numbers have risen even faster.)

Rationality does not work for ethical decisions. It can help you determine means, “what’s the best way to do this” but it can’t determine ends.

It isn’t even that great for means. The rationalists (epitomized by Stars Slate Codex) tend towards hard utilitarianism: the most good for the most people, and sneer at virtue ethics.

Seems smart: what you want is the most good, right?

But the problem is that instrumenalism “the right thing is whatever gets you where you want to go” often doesn’t work because humans are both stupid and very good at motivated reasoning. “Well, people will obviously be better off if we tax rich people less, because rich people give jobs and they can give more jobs and pay more for them!”

Or, “if we pay people like CEOs more if they raise shareholder value, they’ll do more of the right thing!”

Or, in general terms, “people help others because of greed, not virtue, so we have to bribe them to do the right thing and micro-manage incentives.”

None of this stuff worked, of course. It never has, and it never will. The eras where you tax the rich heavily and keep executive compensation relatively low had better behaviour by executives than the post Thatcher/Reagan era. Faster economic growth, too. (Better isn’t necessarily the same thing as good.)

The problem with instrumentalist thinking, which utilitarianism tends to fall into, is that “means are ends.” If you bomb the village to save it, or invade the country, you’ve done a shit load of evil. If you lock people up in prison for victimless crimes, you’ve created victims: the people being brutalized in prison. If you let cops take people’s property without proving a crime, you’ve increased theft. If you torture, you’ve tortured. If you lower wages to increase efficiency, you’ve lowered wages. If you surveil workers to get the most out of them you know that’s bad (Bezos would never let someone else determine when he can take a shit.)

The means are always most of what we do.

We know that being greedy, or selfish, or cowardly, or sadistic are bad. We know that rape is always bad. We know that killing people is bad. We know that beating people is bad.We know that hunger is bad. We know that homelessness is terrible. We know lack of water kills. When the IMF removes food subsidies we KNOW more people will go hungry. When we sell bombs to Israel and Saudi Arabia, we know they’ll be used to murder innocents.

Instrumentalism and utilitarianism allow you to say to yourself “well, I know virtue ethics would say this is bad, but actually it’s good because it’ll lead to a better world.” Meanwhile there you are with policies that lead to the Amazon being clearcut and dumping so much CO2 and methane into the world that eventually the world’s forests just start burning down and permafrost methane starts exploding like bombs.

Virtue ethics and bars on behaviour like “no torture or rape ever” exist because we know we tend to find excuses to allow us to engage the worst parts of ourselves: to be greedy and selfish, to force others to do what we want, and to live like Kings and Queens because we exploited others. Bezos goes to space, workers in his warehouses piss into jars or wear diapers and walk around in shit before they pass out or die from heat stroke: these things are related.

Rationalism just says “how do I get what I want?” Virtue ethics and red lines say “you can’t get it by doing evil.”

This is why straight utilitarians and instrumentalists are either hypocrites or fools. Either they know that their ethics allows for monstrous behaviour and doesn’t guarantee results, or they know it produces subpar results for a lot of people, even most people, but they expect to be in the minority who benefits (which, by the way, is very rational.)

Don’t worship at the cult of rationalism or instrumentalism. Virtue ethics and red lines have their own problems, and there are reasons for being way of them too, but at the end of the day, if getting what you want requires you to hurt a lot of people, perhaps you aren’t doing it because you truly believe it’ll make the world a better place?


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47 Comments

  1. Jason

    I like this, but then I wonder if this too is ultimately falling into the binary trap Che Pasa mentioned the other day:

    Binaries = Death

    The opening into a discussion of over-rationality is a welcome one, however. One of the most brilliant treatises I have ever read on the subject is called “Science, Hegemony, and Violence: A Requiem for Modernity” edited by Ashis Nandy.

    A “hard” copy – even in paperback – is difficult to come by these days, but it is available online:

    https://archive.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu05se/uu05se00.htm#Contents

  2. bruce wilder

    “Rationality” in neoliberal parlance can mean selfish in a fairly extreme sense.

    “Rationality” can also mean, in the Enlightenment sense, relying on functional theories of causality, both scientifically and technologically and, also, socially or politically.

    The contrast with “rationality” in this second sense might be magical thinking or superstition. In general, the Enlightenment saw rationality partially displace and delegitimate worldviews that emphasize a moral causality in which meaning and intention drive physical and social developments.

    “Rationality” came to mean “selfish” in attempts to develop (and prescribe!) a functional analysis of social and political phenomena. Methodological individualism, if you know what that is, was a radical attempt to develop functional theories of social science.

    Meaning and intention do matter to human behavior, especially social behavior, even if god is dead. Meaning and intention matter and one way they matter is that the fact that they matter means people are very easily deceived and manipulated. People can be deceived by sleight of hand because they can be misdirected by gestures of intention and because they want to believe in narrative and magic.

    I think the myth of extreme selfishness by which modern political economy was constructed has no solution to our civilizational end-game problem.

    At the same time, a rational understanding of the earth system and civilization itself as interlocking systems of functionally interacting elements remains a key factor in making us somewhat aware that there is a problem and drives a search for “solutions” that can be explained functionally. Which is good if we are to avoid sacrificing virgins at dawn as an approach.

  3. Plague Species

    It is rational to avoid any mention of Growth when discussing the repercussions of climate chaos and habitat destruction. It is rational to pretend living in harmony with the living planet can be achieved via the current economic Growth model that holds humans in captivity. Conversely, it is irrational to suggest a massive contraction of the economy is the only logical response to climate chaos and habitat destruction.

  4. bruce wilder

    There’s a sophomore’s puzzle that gets at the point: what does the proverb, “the ends (do not) justify the means” signify?

    In one understanding of rationality, fitting and proportioning the means to the end is the only thing that makes sense. “Justice” fades into a background of technical craftwork.

    It is in a more mature sense of the messy nature of an uncertain world in which we do not know what we do not know and every intervention to control outcomes entails error, waste and inintended consequences, that we understand the need for ethical heuristics and self-constraint. Justice returns as a need to negotiate bargains of cooperation with fellow humans and, perhaps, the natural world which so graciously hosts our lives.

  5. bruce wilder

    I presume PS writes ironically. Rationality requires that we recognize that the mythical promises of progress through growth used historically to the present moment to finesse political conflict are, in fact, irrational in that the consequences now promise to become increasingly horrific.

    A sine qua non now is constraint on all energy use, all resource use. Not only or primarily even magic tech substitution on the way to Jetsons’ world.

  6. Purple Library Guy

    I generally agree with this. One caveat, though, is that it does not lead me to complete nonviolence. Nearly all wars are bad. But the only revolution I’m aware of that made a real difference and whose results are still operational was the Cuban one. Sometimes you have to put a dictator in the ground.

  7. Chipper

    I don’t agree with the idea that it’s rational to think only of yourself — that’s sociopathic, not some natural condition of human beings.

  8. Plague Species

    Is it rational to refuse the vaccine if there aren’t any legitimate extenuating health circumstances precluding you from receiving it aside from Big Pharma Scare Scam?

  9. Soredemos

    @Purple Library Guy

    Er, Russia and China? The 1917 revolution catapulted Russia into the 21st century, where it remains, despite the efforts of neoliberals both in and outside Russia.

    Same for China. China is, objectively, better off now than it was century ago. Both revolutions managed to kill tens of millions of people along the way, but their results have been permanent.

  10. Mark Pontin

    Bruce W: ‘I think the myth of extreme selfishness by which modern political economy was constructed has no solution to our civilizational end-game problem.’

    Neoliberalism in its pure form actively rejects all solutions that come from humans. Only whatever solutions eventuate from the Market, the Supreme Information Processor, are valid. This is tautological: if the Market provides a ‘solution’ — be it sacrificing virgins at dawn and billions dying as a result — that, by neoliberal definition, is the best solution.

    I get Ian’s point here about the ‘selfish’ definition of rationality being inadequate to the problems the human race faces, but it’s a rather circumscribed definition of rationality. It would have been far more rational not to blow up the world’s climate in the longer term.

  11. BlizzardOfOzzz

    if getting what you want requires you to hurt a lot of people, perhaps you aren’t doing it because you truly believe it’ll make the world a better place?

    global totalitarian dictatorship! (to maybe control the weather?)
    bring back concentration camps! (to maybe slow down the flu?)

    Rationality should never be defined so narrowly. We have the ancients as examples of how people reasoned in pre-Christian times (“what is justice”). Since Christ, our civilization has been bound up with our revealed destiny, and our acceptance or rejection of it. Chesterton said that the Gospel is related to rationality like the sun is to vision. If The Enlightenment meant to base society on rationality, then its legacy has been perfectly ironic: to remove the base that makes rationality possible.

    What is most notable about recent events it the total, overt abandonment of rationality by our elites. Crude propaganda along with naked censorship have replaced any semblance of persuasion or reasoned argument. “Trust the Science” and “Trust the Experts”, they all chant, but even a fool can see that science is not possible under totalitarianism, nor will experts be trusted who conduct themselves in this way.

  12. Plague Species

    Yes, Lenin, Trotsky too perhaps, is brimming with pride at what Russia has become. All they apparently loathed. And tens of millions killed and murdered in vain.

    Same goes for China. There’s a great scene from American Factory where the billionaire Chairman Cao reminisces about being a poor peasant. He pines for those halcyon days.

    Better off in some ways perhaps, but not so in others. Those days were not good days for techie types, that’s for sure. They would have been required to actually do something tangible.

  13. Hugh

    Is it rationality or rationalization? We live in an age where people believe whatever they are going to believe and come up with rationales to justify those beliefs.

  14. Willy

    Rational, rationale, rationalization…. seem like different things to me. At the end of the day it’s always the quality of the rulers that matters and not what any philosophers might say. Marcus Aurelius did after all, hand over power to his beloved, and well trained, Commodus.

  15. Temporarily Sane

    Excellent post.

    Hyper-rationality and worship of “science” eventually leads to social Darwinism and eugenics. We are on that road already and even many people on the left have gotten on board with the “rationality über alles” mindset and talk about things like IQ as if they are objective truths that determine how human beings should be treated.

  16. Temporarily Sane

    @Soredemos

    Industrialization was/is a violent process and has killed tens of millions, if not more, human beings and not just in China and Russia.

    But the west is incapable of self-reflection and an honest assessment of its brutal history so the blame is pushed onto convenient foreign scapegoats and idiots like Plague Species and deluded sociopaths like Hugh take up the call and repeat verbatim media and government propaganda as if it is divine truth.

  17. @ Plague species
    Lenin and Trotsky are dead and therefore it is impossible for them to have or lack pride in what Russia has become. Unless they are speaking from the grave.

    When considering if a country is a “shithole” or something to have “pride” in you’ll need a comparison.

    China is richer per person than Latin America (which started out several times richer in 1950). China’s per person economy is around 3 times larger than India’s (India was richer around 1950). China has higher life expectancy than Latin America and India.

    China did kill tens of millions of people during their industrialization and accession to power. Europe/America wiped out the native population on 3 continents, enslaved another and had its share of famine, forced labour, and killings. Europe/America killed far more people in terms of total numbers and a percentage of the world population.

    In the 21 century how many completely unnecessary wars has China started? How many countries democracies has China overthrown? What percent of Chinas population is imprisoned compared to America? On the world stage America has killed more people and overthrown more Democracies than China since the year 2000.
    But our oligarchs need a good distraction to avoid the discussion of their morality or lack thereof.

  18. “Is it rational to refuse the vaccine if there aren’t any legitimate extenuating health circumstances precluding you from receiving it aside from Big Pharma Scare Scam?”

    I can play that game as well.
    Is it rational to take the experiential vaccine when it turns you into a dementia patient with HIV and an inflamed heart aside from felating Pharma profits?

    Maybe if you want to pretend to be rational don’t go around using logical fallacies, double standards and following the ideology of, “If the corporation doesn’t test for it, it doesn’t exist.”

  19. Willy

    idiots like Plague Species and deluded sociopaths like Hugh

    They do no such thing. All you’re doing is making a case for Temporarily Sane.

  20. Purple Library Guy

    @Soredemos I’m willing to stipulate those, but they reinforce my point: Both were violent. They were not exercises in Gandhian nonviolent direct action, and Gandhian nonviolent direct action would not have been successful in those environments. Nonviolence has its place–indeed, many places, I think it’s very often a strong tactic. But I’m not willing to go for it as an absolute on the basis that ends don’t justify means.

  21. Ché Pasa

    I’m not sure I know any overly rational actors though I’ve probably been around them more than I know. People tend not to be completely rational, which some seem to consider a fault, like tribalism, that must somehow be corrected. Completely rational people wouldn’t have allowed climate change to accelerate, wouldn’t have repeatedly enabled financial crises, wouldn’t engage in pointless wars, and indeed wouldn’t do anything or even think about doing anything that would ultimately lead to harm to the individual or to the society within which the individual lives.

    But complete rationality requires perfect knowledge, and that, despite the god-like powers of some of our overlords, no individual has or can have. And at least in the West, gods are by nature completely irrational, chaotic, fickle and feckless.

    I would offer that perhaps some people — particularly in certain fields — may think of themselves as rational and thus empowered or enabled to (say) cause a great deal of harm to others in pursuit of their goals, but ultimately they are not particularly rational at all; in fact, they may be closer to the irrationality of the gods of yore.

    Morality and virtue, on the other hand, as Ian suggests, have their own problems not least of which is hypocrisy and believing one’s own morals and virtues are obviously superior to anyone else’s — leading too often to untold harm to others.

    Maybe (some) humans are just uniquely adept at shitting in their own nest and causing harm to others.

  22. bruce wilder

    “What is most notable about recent events it the total, overt abandonment of rationality by our elites. Crude propaganda along with naked censorship have replaced any semblance of persuasion or reasoned argument.”

    What is needed is rational thinking and goal seeking by the collective. Elites of a non-pathological kind would be leading the polity to collectively think through what needs to be done thru a deliberative politics. There was a time when the emergence of a effective, deliberative politics advantaged some states over rivals. We seem to living in a time where the reverse seems true, at least in American politics.

    I think the embrace of irrationality is related to the premium placed on manipulation by cartel parties using manipulative propaganda and the preference for catering to billionaires (who are so rich that they do not have to cooperate and discuss and compromise much with others — they can simply hire sycophants) to finance the propaganda.

    Apex actors in this system pay more attention to fashioning persuasive lies than rationally assessing reality. Finding truth or telling the (“whole” or objective) truth would not manipulate effectively; moreover collective investigation of reality would tend to distribute power away from those who had successfully concentrated resources for manipulation thru propaganda. Learning the truth in public would be disempowering. Much better to fill the public discourse with confusion and disinformation that makes the common people deranged, dispirited and deluded.

    Unfortunately, the polity with such a degraded information processor where a government should be is not capable of large-scale, distributed, specialized, coordinated action aimed at achieving great things in confronting shared problems common to all.

  23. Willy

    When sorting out the recent mess seen around here known as “the comment thread”, I think the one thing which everybody has in common, is a major distrust and hatred of big pharma. Instead of bickering over nuance and conspiracy theory, why not focus on the biggest DC pocketers of big pharma “donations” and go after them?

  24. Jason

    why not focus on the biggest DC pocketers of big pharma “donations” and go after them?

    How? By illustrating to the public at large that these pols are being tubefed a spigot of money due to years of deregulation and nothing they say should be believed?

    We’ve done that. No one seems to care.

  25. Plague Species

    What media and government propaganda have I taken up and repeated verbatim?

    Israel, for good and for bad, is a survivor. They have proven, collectively, they will do anything to survive and thrive. Such a mentality is not going to administer the vaccine to the majority of its population if it believes the vaccine will bring harm to them rather than benefit them. Logic tells us Israel highly vetted the vaccine prior to deciding to get out front in receiving it.

    Many Trump supporters are huuuuuge fans and supporters of Israel just as Trump is. This and this alone is a good enough reason for them to receive the vaccine coupled with the fact their Great Leader, McDonald Trump, also received the vaccine.

    Wouldn’t it be something if Israel was behind QAnon and this anti-vaccine and anti-mask crusade in America? I wouldn’t be surprised. Israel was behind Epstein afterall indicating Israel, like a cat who plays with a mouse, likes to play with American rubes psychopathically using them and abusing them and batting them around.

    Considering all of that, I’ll ask once again, is it rational to refuse the vaccine if there aren’t any legitimate extenuating health circumstances precluding you from receiving it aside from Big Pharma Scare Scam?

  26. Willy

    We’ve done that. No one seems to care.

    Few know how to care. If one is getting picked on by the boss, then taking it out on one’s own family solves nothing and will only create more problems. It really sucks, but one has no choice but to handle the problem directly.

  27. Willy

    This is a long story. Most people are too stressed and/or too busy or apathetic to read it. Most people know of far more serious stories. I certainly do. But it illustrates just how fucked up the MBA-dominated American medical/pharma business has become, all because of assholes like Milton Friedman, his friends at the Chicago school, economic libertarian supporters, and all the low-information idiots everywhere.

    My first ever ear infection was made worse by the incompetency of my so-called “doctor” (nurse practitioner) from my local big corporate medical clinic. I caught her googling my condition from her work station in the hall. She recommended “Ciprodex”, an incredibly expensive medication which treats both bacterial and fungal ear infections (the two kinds). Unfortunately my condition got worse and an in-house specialist was recommended. The recommended specialist told her receptionist who was refusing me service because they “were too busy” to “just fit him in”. I rolled with the busy specialist’s moods with my street smart social skills (such as they were) and successfully got her to admit that it was an obvious fungal infection and that Ciprodex was the wrong medication. The one she prescribed worked. Unfortunately I’ve been left with permanent tinnitus. Fortunately insurance paid for most of this debacle.

    I could’ve gone home and kicked the family dog and called it good. Instead, I educated myself and took actions which I felt comfortable with, knowing that every little bit does count.

    I learned about about nurse practitioners, Ciprodex, fungal ear infections, and the business practices of my medical clinic. I warn everyone who I think might be interested, in person and online, hopefully without coming across as a cynical misanthrope. I learned why Ciprodex is so expensive. I smear that clinic. I smear Milton Friedman and his Chicago school and economic libertarians and their fucked up system. I use a competent naturopath as my gateway doctor. I take care of my physical self to try and deprive our fucked up medical system of my business. I avoid prescribed drugs at all costs (besides the covid vaccine, an illness I cannot afford). I resolved that if I have no other choice but “doctors”, that I’ll research everything beforehand (therefore the covid vaccine) and let any medical business know that I’m not to be fucked with.

    Maybe I could’ve sued out of general principle, making a big stink, but I’ll save that for a more serous issue. If I was smart I’d be getting my ducks in a row right now for what seems like a certain eventuality, given the way things are going today.

  28. Plague Species

    What percentage of the wealthy elite have been vaccinated? Any guesses? Not that they will ever divulge that information.

    My guess is it’s a high percentage. I conjecture it’s approximately 90% and maybe eventually close to a 100%.

    For folks who are irrational, they sure do seem to do well for themselves and lead long lives in comparison to the dolts who lick their asses daily and that ass licking includes dutifully refusing to receive the vaccine just as Pavlov’s dog salivates at the sound of the bell.

  29. A major problem with modern day liberals is they use the stupidity and immorality of conservatives as an excuse to use logical fallacies, engage in censorship and take away people’s rights. In this comment section we have a liberal explaining how he assumes rich people use an experimental drug and therefore it is rational to use that drug. This liberal then pretends his ad hominem fallacies and fact free loaded questions are intelligent. Essentially in response to conservatives refusing to respect people’s rights and use logic he has decided to become more like them. These liberals then defend their lack of logic and despot behavior by projecting their adopting of republican values as an ad hominem.

  30. Plague Species

    Essentially in response to conservatives refusing to respect people’s rights and use logic he has decided to become more like them.

    Like the right of a woman to terminate her pregnancy thus avoiding bringing another slave into the world?

    Conservatives, like liberals, don’t give a shit about rights. They all want to do what they want to do and many times what they want to do is to prevent others from doing what they don’t like others to do.

    These are the same conservatives who brought Fuyao Glass America to Ohio and called it progress. Because they were so concerned about communism and workers’ rights.

    If only the vaccine was high fructose corn syrup. These dolts would be getting a shot not every day but several times a day and maybe even more than that.

    Killer Joe

  31. Willy

    That Fox News implemented a strict covid passport policy is no ad hominem.

  32. Jason

    Yes, Willy, we should all take personal responsibility. It’s interesting to note your vacillation between presenting your personal sob stories and then taking on the mythical Marlboro man persona to deal with all the horrors you’ve had to endure. Good for you. We all have to navigate somehow.

  33. Hugh

    Thanks Willy and Plague Species for fighting the good fight but more and more its against the white noise of lies, delusions, and conspiracies.

  34. Willy

    You’re a worthless waste of comment space Jason. I offer ideas about overcoming adversity and you project your own sob story nature onto it.

  35. Mark Pontin

    Willy wrote: ‘ I educated myself … I learned about about nurse practitioners, Ciprodex, fungal ear infections, and the business practices of my medical clinic … I take care of my physical self to try and deprive our fucked up medical system of my business. I avoid prescribed drugs … I resolved that if I have no other choice but “doctors”, that I’ll research everything beforehand .”

    Right on. All this is absolutely the correct way to go and if all Americans did these things then most of them wouldn’t be living with the world of hurt

  36. Such a mentality is not going to administer the vaccine to the majority of its population if it believes the vaccine will bring harm to them rather than benefit them. Logic tells us Israel highly vetted the vaccine prior to deciding to get out front in receiving it.

    Methinks you overestimate your own powers of ‘logic’, and/or the Israeli government and regulatory agencies’ capacity and willingness for rational decisions.

    While my own analysis of Israeli data was superficial, and the following information may also be superficial, it seems to confirm my own view that the Israel has majorly screwed up.

    From The Times of Israel

    “HMO: Early vaccinees are twice as likely to catch COVID as later recipients” @

    Israel prioritized the elderly, so we should not be surprised if their immune fitness fades more readily. However, the claim is made:

    Data released by the Health Ministry on Thursday suggested that people vaccinated in January were said to have just 16% protection against infection now, while in those vaccinated in April the effectiveness was at 75%

    Which is a pretty rapid collapse.

    Dr. Robert Malone’s tweet on this: “So, this pretty much nails it down. The durability of the Pfizer vaccine is not very long.”

  37. Soredemos

    @Purple Library Guy

    There’s a strong argument to be made that even Gandhi wasn’t actually Gandhian, in that his pacifism wasn’t ultimately what got Indian independence. The specter of violent revolution was ever present, most recently (in 1947) in the form of the collaborationist army that fought for the Japanese.

    I genuinely respect Gandhi (and by extension MLK), but pacifism is ultimately merely a tactic (as is violence). And it’s one that can only against an enemy that is willing to adhere to a certain level of restraint. In the context of Russia for example, the Okhrana would have eaten a purely peaceful movement alive.

  38. Plague Species

    What metamars fails to divulge is that the vaccine is still highly effective against severe disease, hospitalization and death.

  39. Soredemos

    @Plague Species

    That’s true, but covid is also a particularly nasty disease that tends to leave behind a lot of damage even when it doesn’t kill.

    When people like Biden and Walensky publicly lie about how if you’re vaccinated you’re immune and don’t need to wear a mask they’re doing nothing to help the already deep public trust and credibility problem.

    Based on my observations and personal interactions with doctors, there is precious little humility or self-awareness among them about how much the healthcare industry has fucked up over the last couple years. Instead the narrative has mostly shifted to blaming a supposed plague of ‘idiot Republican anti-vaxxers’ for vaccination having hit a wall. Such people do exist, and they’re immensely frustrating, but they’re far from the whole story on vaccine hesitancy.

    Also, if Liberals genuinely wanted to reach such people, they could start by acknowledging that Operation Warp Speed worked and that the current vaccines are in a sense ‘Trump’s vaccines’. But since the Liberal mindset is to hate anything and everything Orange Man did, they’re trying to memory hole it, which is counter-productive (the CDC eviction moratorium that’s about to expire was another good, and innovative, thing the Trump administration did).

  40. Plague Species

    Soredemos, I agree, this is why I’ve always said that vaccination is not enough. But it’s not nothing either. The key is to slow to a crawl the velocity of transmission and that in turn will greatly mitigate variants. Vaccination is a crucial part of that strategy, meaning vaccinating 80% to 90% of the population. Robust contact tracing and testing and masking and social distancing and quarantining is also crucial. And that’s just America. The whole world needs to do this concomitantly and I don’t see it happening. It’s possible a variant can arise, considering the global velocity of transmission, that is many times more transmissible and deadly than anything we’ve seen thus far to the point even China with its draconian but effective lockdown strategy will not be able to thwart or contain.

    My wife teaches 3-6 year olds. She is at her school right now and they are being told that Atlanta hospitals are full of children sick with COVFEFE-45. There is nothing in the news about this so I don’t know if she is being misinformed or disinformed or on the other hand, there is a conspiracy to cover this up and not report it because they don’t want people to panic. My wife is horrified and terrified.

  41. What Plague Species fails to recall is that 1 week ago, in the “Quarantine Matters” diary, I summarized the UK vs. Israel vs. US relative risk of hospitalization, of vaccinated to unvaccinated.

    According to Richard Fleming, rhesus macaque monkeys show prion damage in their brains from vaccines after only 5-6 weeks, so perhaps Plague Species’ lack of recall is quite forgivable. He may have troublesome prions clogging up his neural pathways. Already.

    For the community’s convenience, I repeat my results, of risk for vaccinated / risk for unvaccinated:

    UK: 11%
    Israel: 30%
    US: 1.9%

    I mocked the idea that the US figures are accurate. In a recent program, where he looked at the Israeli data, Chris Martenson also expressed skepticism about the US data; and, in any event, pointed out that the Israelis were at least taking data on who, amongst the unvaccinated, had already gotten the virus.

    In any event, perhaps the most important figure is one I didn’t include in that post. And that is, the Israeli relative risk from the previous month. I don’t want to re-calculate it, but from memory, it was something like 7%. So, the protection from hospitalization afforded by the Pfizer vaccine has been collapsing, rapidly.

    I also recently posted what happens if you project the deaths from vaccines, as per US whistleblower, onto Israel, and add their short-term vaccine deaths to their longer term vaccinated covid deaths. And then compare to unvaccinated covid deaths. That comment was also made July 21, under the diary “The Decision to Let Covid Go Chronic”

    If we redo my first calculate but add 92 killed by vaccine to 60 vaccinated who died from covid, we get a relative risk of

    (.15/.85) (60 + 92) / 26 = 103%

    I don’t know what sort of statistical uncertainty I’m dealing with, and will make no effort to look deeper. But, on the face of things, it’s not looking good for the vaccine proponents.

    Like with CO2 catastrophists, facts don’t matter, compared to their beloved narrative (unless said facts happen to support their narrative). And one can readily observe the same sort of irrationality with respect to covid. Bad news (contrary to the narrative) is denied, or not talked about, or obfuscated. Similarly, good news (contrary to the narrative) is denied, or not talked about, or obfuscated.

    Serious debate with qualified experts is not sought out. Instead, we see suppression and censorship of expert medical and scientific opinion re covid far in excess of what we’ve seen done to climate scientists.

  42. Willy

    Thanks Mark.

    My stories usually involve bad guys who everybody has to face someday, and what I was able to do, or not do, in whatever situation. I don’t have a problem with anybody wanting to add or subtract to whatever I say. But trying to score ad hominem points when the issue is (or I’d hoped the issue was) going after the big pharma donors in more effective ways, pisses me off. Because this is exactly the kind of behavior the bad guys always engage in.

  43. Trinity

    “The system is interdependent” is true (truth). Even Bozo admitted his 15 second orgasm was paid for by his customers and employees. But I think few in the US actually understand interdependence as truth. Quite the opposite in most cases. Within my circle of friends, interdependence is thought to be true only within their family, not between their family and the world, which is unfortunate.

    There is a reason the cult of Ayn Rand was embraced by so many and made its way into economic thinking.

    If you believe the system is interdependent (and it is) then that applies across time as well. Part of the problem with Western culture and Western thought is the enormous amount of trauma occurring in generation after generation going back a thousand years or more. Trauma resulting from events in Russia led indirectly to a cult of selfishness. Many people still embrace the idea that greed is good, and selfishness helps others.

    That same cross-generational trauma that resulted from centuries of bad policies and governance eventually arrived in the Americas, and like a drunken, childhood-traumatized husband, it wreaked havoc over two continents for centuries. Still is, matter of fact.

    Trauma messes you up, alters the way you view the world, and many other things such as thinking nice people are boring, bad people are exciting, and selfish rich people want only the best for us. In order to remain sane, many traumatized people become separated from their emotions and can’t fully experience a “felt” experience of the world, in addition to sight, sound, taste, etc. They cannot feel the difference between truth and lies for the simple reason it was difficult to discern anything within the chaos that was always unfolding. Does this sound familiar?

    This same phenomena is regularly illustrated in these comments, and all of this is yet another reason why most of Western history, most of its philosophy, all of its economic theory, and most of its “rational irrationality” should be filed in the “round” file forever. We need to look for answers elsewhere.

    Excellent post, Ian, thank you.

  44. Jan Wiklund

    I believe the Stalinists were the superior utilitarians. Send people to labor camps if they fail, always suspect sabotage if there is an inkling of a hint, kill all those who may possibly be guilty – and we will have a better world.

    but it didn’t work.

  45. Willy

    Something which made the rounds in conservative echo chambers was how Bolshevik revolutionaries had viciously turned on their own liberal elites who had mildly supported them. Their reasoning was that since Bolsheviks had engaged in the most vicious of terrorist attacks against liberal elites before and after gaining power, that this proved that leftism was irrational and deadly.

    So I asked, why can’t past behaviors be good predictors of future behaviors regardless of whatever proclaimed politics? If anybody resorts to terror before they gain power, why not assume that they’ll resort to even more terror after they gain power? And for the opposite, the same thing as well. Tree huggers would become even more tree huggy. Problem solvers would become even more problem solvey. And so on.

    Using metamars as an example along those lines, if he resorted to bizarre cognitive bias against 97% of scientists before he had power, why not assume that he’d fire 97% of all climate scientists and 97% of all virologists after he gained power?

  46. Plague Species

    This same phenomena is regularly illustrated in these comments, and all of this is yet another reason why most of Western history, most of its philosophy, all of its economic theory, and most of its “rational irrationality” should be filed in the “round” file forever. We need to look for answers elsewhere.

    Oh, good grief. I bet I know where we should look for those answers. To the East, right? How about this: there are no answers, only questions. So many questions. Too many to count.

  47. Soredemos

    @Trinity

    When you’re trying to explain the world through things like ‘trauma’, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

    Not surprised to see such a person advocate for discarding most of the Western canon though. Especially wanting to get rid of all economic theory. Oh yeah, Marx, George, Keynes, Veblen, Hudson, etc etc etc. None of them knew anything. /s

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