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I want to say something about our pandemic response and groupthink, especially as it relates to the current scientific discourse in the United States.
Stick with me here.
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Stick with me here.
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We’re in the middle of, as a social-political phenomenon, an “epistemic closure” of sorts. The type of which has been around as long as the history of science itself. (Think of Galileo being summoned to Rome by the Pope to renounce his conclusions.)
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Except at this stage in our technological advancement, we prefer to imagine that we’re immune to the same in-group/out-group dynamics. At one time, remember, the Ptolemaic system was the Prevailing Science, too. It took a century+ for heliocentrism to be widely accepted.
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The unwillingness of the left (of which I consider myself a member) to consider facts which challenge our external social allegiances is deeply concerning.
It was not something I expected to see at this scale from the academy: revered researchers, experts, practitioners.
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It was not something I expected to see at this scale from the academy: revered researchers, experts, practitioners.
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Initially doubling down on failed recommendations which cause enormous, grotesque collateral harms is something I expect from politicians — such is the nature of politics, the dynamics of power. But not from scientists. (And not from “my” team, to put it crudely. I was naive.)
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Tribal identities which supersede our disciplines, it turns out, run chillingly deep. We are all susceptible to the forces of being human. (And, today, to the economy of clickbait sensationalism delivered 24/7 onto our personal glowing rectangles.)
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And here is where “epistemic closure,” I believe, is in danger of becoming “epistemic collapse.”
Nothing like this — what we are living through in most deep-Blue metro areas, primarily — has been tried at this scale in the entirety of human history.
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Nothing like this — what we are living through in most deep-Blue metro areas, primarily — has been tried at this scale in the entirety of human history.
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NEARLY ONE YEAR of attempting to reprogram human social nature. Of stay-at-home orders, policies encouraging prolonged separation of families, and (18+ months, maybe longer, when this is all said and done, of) continuous full closures of some business and most schools.
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THIS is what is new and wholly experimental. Despite what many seem to think, 1918 flu restrictions were not at this scale. Not by many orders of magnitude, even. (And this for a virus with an average age of death of 28, versus 80 for our current pandemic.)
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We are in the middle of an unprecedented global social experiment.
At some point mid-March, the longstanding scientific consensus switched from mitigation to attempting permanent suppression through shutdowns. Something specifically recommended against for this IFR. Really.
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At some point mid-March, the longstanding scientific consensus switched from mitigation to attempting permanent suppression through shutdowns. Something specifically recommended against for this IFR. Really.
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We are permanently stuck in a doomloop from early Spring. Media sensationalism feeds public opinion, which is fed back into political (re)action by pseudo-responsive democratic elite and policymakers, which then stokes more media sensationalism which then... yeah.
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The collateral harms of what we are doing are enormous, and the benefit of abandoning previous knowledge remains wholly unseen.
Notably the extent to which blunt suppression disproportionately impacts the poor and those already on the margins, domestically and globally.
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Notably the extent to which blunt suppression disproportionately impacts the poor and those already on the margins, domestically and globally.
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Maybe we made the right decision, ethically.
But the deeply troubling thing is that we did it, accepting and implementing it, uncritically and without open discussion of tradeoffs and second-order effects. We marched immediately and in lockstep.
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But the deeply troubling thing is that we did it, accepting and implementing it, uncritically and without open discussion of tradeoffs and second-order effects. We marched immediately and in lockstep.
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I think a lot about something I read about early on in the pandemic by @pinboard. About how the cure for scurvy was widely known and demonstrated, but how, eventually, that knowledge was not only lost but discredited: https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm
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How did we end up here? Sometimes I feel like we entered an alternate universe around the time of the Lombardy lockdown.
The cure for scurvy was eventually rediscovered. And that gives me hope. But I fear the short- and medium-term.
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The cure for scurvy was eventually rediscovered. And that gives me hope. But I fear the short- and medium-term.
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We are entering a new era of repressive biopolitics and nationalism — except this time championed by those who formerly supported globalism and freedom of expression.
A Newton’s cradle of global hunger, poverty, death, and despair — cheered on as social justice.
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A Newton’s cradle of global hunger, poverty, death, and despair — cheered on as social justice.
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And we kinda just... fell into it. Like Alice down the rabbit hole.
I’m not sure how we can roll this back. Not sure we have the collective introspection to challenge the in-group dynamic, to admit that we behaved as nodes in a social phenomenon.
And that terrifies me.
/END
I’m not sure how we can roll this back. Not sure we have the collective introspection to challenge the in-group dynamic, to admit that we behaved as nodes in a social phenomenon.
And that terrifies me.
/END
