I've been a bit fried lately because of bureaucratic demands in support of sponsoring my wife to immigrate. I've got several stories in the pipeline, but I have a headache today and I've decided to take the rest of the week off. Hopefully I'll be back and "raring to go" next week.
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: by Prof. Greta Hultman, University of Uppsala
The world is now a very different place than it was when the Mikhail Bookchin organized the Climate Trials. It isn’t a Utopia---not by any stretch of the imagination. But if you had been able to show it to the people who lived back then some might have been excused for believing that it is. The world changes from generation to generation, sometimes in one way, sometimes in another. The rate of change sometimes slows down to an almost imperceptible crawl, sometimes it gallops like a runaway horse. Sometimes things seem to be getting better, sometimes worse.
It’s important to remember that “better” and “worse” are human categories that we impose upon the world around us. The world doesn’t care---it just “is”. Moreover, it’s important to remember that even though we talk about the “human race” or “the world” like it is one thing it really isn’t. What is seen as a catastrophe for one person or group, can be be a long-hoped-for change for the better by others.
The fossil fuel industry is a thing of the past. We travel on electric trains, buses, cars, bicycles, and, by foot. We don’t fly all over the planet anymore, simply because we haven’t yet learned how to do that without wasting huge amounts of energy in one form or another. This has been found to be no great loss anyway---tourism jobs were poorly paid, made housing way too expensive for the locals, and, tended to reduce local cultures to a sort of fake “Disneyfied” simulation of the real thing.
In exchange, people have learned to broaden their horizons through the growth of the World Wide Web, which has finally lived up to it’s potential as a means of spreading knowledge and bringing the world together. Once we broke up the tech monopolies and brought in regulations that destroyed it as a propaganda source what got left was on the whole much better.
Populist and Capitalist propaganda had convinced voters to support parties that fought tooth and nail against using the benefits of modern technology to benefit the masses instead of the elite. In addition to voter suppression, propaganda, “wasted” votes, and other “fiddles” that were inherent in traditional democratic societies, it was simply amazing how often people voted against their own best interests. Once people learned to vote more rationally, we got guaranteed annual income programs, the rich were taxed, housing declined in cost, and, the work week shrank. People realized that costly gee gaws were just shiny distractions that kept people from finding what they really needed---which was the freedom to find out just who they are and what they can accomplish if given half a chance.
And at the same time more and more parts of the economy transitioned away from artificially enforced scarcity to genuine abundance. The Open Source business model now generates half of the world’s GDP. And “General Purpose” Factories---based on 3-D printing technology---have sprung up everywhere. The need for huge amounts of capital to build commercial enterprises is drying up, and with it the need for wealthy capitalists. Computer technology linked up with the Web has finally given the edge to co-ops over corporations, art over marketing, craftsmanship over mass production, taste over price, and, wisdom over ideology.
This isn’t an end to problems---just the end to the old ones. New ones will arise after the first glow of “the Great Turning” is over. Dealing with them will be the task of future generations.
For now, academics have the task of recording and cataloguing the players who were there when the new world was born. Mikhail Bookchin and the Climate Trials were a visible player. He may or may not have been essential to what happened, but he was certainly a sign of what was going on. I am only glad that he---and what he represented---was there when we all needed him the most.
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Well, that's it for The Climate Trials. Next week I'll try to come up with something else for the literary supplement---simply because it seems to me that there were a lot of people who like it. If you like reading this blog, and you can afford it, why not subscribe? You can pay what you like (a dollar a month is fine), and Pay Pal and Patreon make it easy to do.
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In this part of my conversation with Marie Snyder I "zero in" on what I consider an extremely important issue.
I raised the issue of group decision-making because it is very closely entwined with critical thinking. I think it's important to emphasize this point because I don't think many people really understand it. One of the key issues that was identified by the ancient Greek philosophers was the importance of dialectic to the emergence of Truth. And that's just the label people use to identify a specific type of conversation between two or more people. It's key elements are: that people seek to find the Truth instead of seeking to "win", and, they do so by restricting themselves to only following the specific rules of deduction and induction. (Deduction is using logic to carefully parse-out the implications of things you already know---think math. And Induction is using specific rules to know what you can and cannot infer from physical evidence---think the scientific method.)
A lot of people have recently been really upset about the way the medical health officers around the world have seemed to change their minds about things like whether or not ordinary citizens should wear masks and whether or not a specific vaccine is safe to use. These folks are distressed because they don't have any exposure to how science works and expect the same sort of definitive statements of "fact" that they probably heard in Sunday school as a kid.
Every single piece of scientific knowledge and technology that we rely upon is the result of a conversation (or dialectic) between a group of experts who discussed a variety of issues on a given topic and came to a consensus about what was really happening. And in the case of the current pandemic, what people saw in the news were bits and pieces of this conversation (or dialectic) before a consensus had been reached. That's why it looks like Dr. Tam "flip-flopped" on the issue of masks and whether or not the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe enough to use. She was just following the conversation (dialectic) among the scientific community and making choices based on her particular read of the best available current evidence---before consensus had been achieved.
This is why teaching group decision-making is so important to critical thinking---it's integral to making any rational sense of the world around us.
This point was understood at the very start of the philosophy tradition. Plato recorded the conversations between Socrates and others in the form of dialogues. These record the back-and-forth between two or more people on an issue. One person makes an assertion and another makes a response. In the case of Socrates, he often offers a series of questions that help resolve an ambiguous point. And in the case of looking at that, we often begin to see important issues that had been missed in the previous conversation.
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It isn't easy to teach this sort of thing. I would suspect that the overwhelming majority of people cannot do it themselves, which would make teaching it to children very difficult indeed. One of the key issues can be illustrated with the following cartoon.
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| I got this image from a terrible website titled "City Raven", which probably got it somewhere else---but had no original citation. If it's yours, tell me. |
One thing I see in the above scenario is that there seems to be some sort of bond of mutual trust or respect between the two people---like a therapist and patient. From my experience, this is a very rare thing in normal human interactions. I've found that if I try to initiate a dialectic with another person I often quickly get attacked for being "picky", "nosy", or, "refusing to listen to my feelings" long before I would be able to get the other person to see that her problems are a result of bad choices in the rest of her day.
Moreover, there is a real time commitment necessary for this process. Most conversations nowadays aren't like that. Instead, people generally just want to "chit chat" for a few moments in a totally random, free-flowing way. And, if someone is "venting" about an issue, they generally don't want to spend much time or mental effort trying to understand what is going on.
That's because to be able to have a real conversation, there has to first be a commitment to the process by the people involved. And there are many different ways to sabotage that commitment. To really learn how to do dialectic well requires a lot of practice and a deep understanding of what is going on when we do it. That's why anyone who uses dialectic as a researcher---scientists, philosophers, and, other types of academics---generally spent years and years learning before they become experts in their fields. So, teaching the process to children is a very ambitious project.
That's not to say that it is impossible, just that it is not a trivial thing to do. It also means that you can't do it simply by assigning group projects to kids without making any effort to teach them how to work well in groups.
As Snyder says, there has been a decision made in modern education that says "learning how to work in groups is important", but the hidden, unspoken second part of it is "but not important enough to actually be taught or graded". It's like our educational system decided that it is important to teach children how to swim---but does so by throwing them into the deep end of a pool and expecting them to figure it out for themselves.
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Luckily there are smart people who have worked for years trying to figure exactly how you can teach children how to use dialectic to solve collective problems. I found a couple examples from YouTube, and rather than try to explain the process I think it would be better to share them with you.
The first one comes from Australia and shows what we would call a high or junior-high school class.
Here's another example from South Africa, only this one involves younger children.
Notice how the teacher works hard to teach the children a process that will allow them to work together to collectively learn. This is a totally different system than the way I was taught---which involved learning how to copy the teacher and regurgitate the lesson at will. In contrast, the one in the video prepares children for the way people really learn in the real world---which involves ambiguity, back-and-forth conversations with people who have a different point of view, and, making sense of seemingly conflicting pieces of information through a collective effort. I would suspect that if a child is taught using the system shown above, as an adult he or she wouldn't be surprised or off-put when the Chief Public Health Advisor seems to contradict herself because she adapts her policy to the latest available information.
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I think that this is enough information to assimilate for this week. Take care of yourself, wear a mask, socially distance (if you can) and remember to get the shot---(if you can). It won't be long before life starts to get towards whatever our new normal will look like.
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At that point Mikhi was asked to attend a small meeting at the Holy House.
There was no service or training session upstairs, so the usual crowd from the basement were set up on the main floor. Only a few others were there with Mikhi. Most were strangers, although he recognized Isabeau and Ian. The seating was a little more formal than he was used to---the group from the basement were sitting on chairs facing everyone else who were sitting audience style.
The tall Asian man with the tired eyes started to speak. “The Old Ones have asked you to come here because we think that it’s time we moved you on to another project. You’ve done good work and we want to know if you are willing to help build and preserve the institution so it will survive and continue to do good work into the future.”
“What we want you to do is undertake a trip in time. We want you to go back to the very founding of the organization called ‘the Old Ones’”. Of course, this brought out a startled response from the people in the audience.
“Of course, I’m not literally meaning that we want you to go back in time. What we mean instead is that we want you to immerse yourself in what we believe was the core cultural experience of being a member of the original Old Ones. We want you to live the life that inspired people to devote the rest of their lives to the multi-generational project that has built the organization. To be blunt, we want to learn if you are ready to join the leadership.” Oddly enough, this brought out if anything a slightly greater startle response than the idea that people were being asked to actually go back in time.
“What we are talking about is an intensive lived experience that captures the essence of what the original Old Ones developed in their communities back in ancient China. To do that, we will be asking you to pack a few things (we’ll give you an itemized list) and come back here on a specific set day. From there, you’ll be driven to a hidden location in the countryside. We’ve specifically chosen you because we know that you don’t have any on-going personal commitments right now, but if you have some needs that should be met (practical stuff---bills that need paying, plants watered, cats taken care of, etc) please write them out, email them to your contacts, and, we will have people who can ‘house sit’ for you. This isn’t going to be a long time commitment, just three weeks. So if you have to tell anyone, say a friend won a vacation trip and can’t take advantage of it because of their work commitments---so they decided to give it to you. We’ll give you some fake brochures that you can show people if anyone thinks that this sounds odd.”
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At that point, he sat down and the very white old woman with thick, black hair done up in two very thick braids rose to address the group. “That’s just the incidental, practical stuff. What we want you to attend is a monastic setting that will allow you to live in an approximation of an ancient, Elder community. We want you to see what the world would look like if all the annoying, stupid intrusions of superstition, capitalism, sexism, racism, etc, have been purged from society. Also, we want you to have a first-hand experience of what it would feel like to really live in harmony with nature on a day-to-day level. Finally, we want to help you to incorporate a useful mental discipline into your day-to-day life.”
The tall, thin black man with the short white hair finished up. “The value of this program is that it gives your life a ‘reset’ and will allow you start on the ‘first rung’ of the Old One ladder. To use a crude military metaphor, we’re offering you a position as a non-commissioned officer in the organization. When you come back from our ‘basic training’ you’ll be assigned to someone who can act as your mentor and who will work with you as you undertake your first assignment. As your abilities manifest themselves, and opportunities arise, you may end up being asked to do more and more important jobs. And there may be further educational opportunities. But ultimately, we hope that you won’t have any more ambitions than to just become a better human being and to make the world a better place. The Old Ones really don’t like personal ambition and we try to select against it.” He started to sit down, then hesitated and got back up again.
“We can tend to be a little dour in our presentations, so it’s important to understand that we aren’t talking about a life that is just work and no fun. Indeed, we think that---I think I can speak for everyone on this.” (There was a quick nodding of heads around him.) “We agree with the motto of Socrates that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. What we are offering is possibly the best life one can live. Life for a purpose worth supporting. Life involved with other people who have the wisdom and understanding to understand your own values and respect them. This is a community where you won’t have to spend most of your life biting your tongue or trying desperately to get people to do something that is very much in their own best interest. You won’t have constantly calculate how much of ‘the Truth’ this person is able to hear before their mind ‘clamps down’ and stops hearing what you have to say.”
“We know who you are. You’ve all spent your life tilting at windmills trying desperately to help the world become a better place. Well, we all started out where you did, and were once sitting in the same chairs that you are now, and, now we want to invite you to join with us in a chain of people that reaches back thousands of years to a group of individuals in a bronze-age culture, who sought to change a profoundly sexist, superstitious, violent, culture into something much better---both for themselves and for future generations.”
He clasped both of his hands into a fist. “WELCOME TO THE OLD ONES” He bowed deeply from the waist, smiled, and, sat down.
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Last week I wrote about the difference between arithmetic and geometric progressions, and the problem that some people have understanding how quickly things get out of control when they are expanding geometrically. Consider that article as an introduction which will get the average
reader to the point where I can start discussing the point of this one.
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| Dr. Epstein, from his website |
Epstein starts off his short essay by suggesting that people have become far
too reliant on describing the human brain as being analogous to a
computer. To illustrate the difference, he says that computers come with
a fully-formed operating system that tells the machine how it is
supposed to interact with users. In contrast, young children have a very
small number of built-in behaviours and they use those to interact with
and develop the way they think based on their interactions with the
environment. That's how children are able to learn different languages
and customs depending on what part of the world they find themselves
born into. In contrast, computers loaded with Windows or Linux all start off speaking the same language and following the same rules from the first time they get fired up.
In other words, when you buy a computer, you have to learn how to conform to the way it works. But when a baby gets born, it has to learn how to conform to the physical and social environment it finds itself in. The difference is enormous.
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He also talks about an experiment that he often performs with undergraduates. It involves asking a student to draw a picture of a dollar bill without being able to look at it. The result is generally a very basic, schematic drawing. Then he gives them a dollar and asks them to draw it again using it as a model. Here are the examples from his article:
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| From memory |
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| From an example |
The thing to understand about the above is that the reproduction is created in a totally different way from how a computer saves and reproduces something. Look at these two pairs of images. The one drawn from memory was recreated by using a symbolic "recipe". The student remembered the following:
The second example is "copied" from an example. But please notice that even this one isn't a photo-copy or a an exact rendering. Instead, it's still created by using a list of symbolic issues---but the difference is that the list of ideas is more accurate because the student isn't relying on her memory.
Now lets discuss how computers "remember" something.
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| Here's how a computer remembers a dollar bill. |
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| Here's how a degraded computer memory remembers a dollar bill. (I used a "photo-copy" filter on GIMP to modify the image.) |
Computers don't record visual info by creating a list of important concepts, instead they record a bunch of Cartesian co-ordinates on a grid and position pixels based on that grid reference. When memory degrades in a computer it can do it several different ways, but one of the ways can be by having "noise" destroy information uniformly across the entire image. In the case I've supplied above, the GIMP filter has changed the composition of pixels per square unit of area to mimic the degradation that occurs when you photocopy a copy of a copy. The result is a degraded image due a problem with the commands that the computer uses to render every part of the image.
As you can see, the memory of a human being is really, really, really different from a computer. This is hardly surprising, as the animal brain is made of organic tissue and it was created using natural selection. In contrast, computers are assembled out of electronics and are the result of conscious planning.&&&&
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From an evolutionary point of view, it's important to understand that human brains actually eat up an awful lot of our daily caloric intake. Believe it or not, the human brain burns about 20% of the food we eat. What that means is there is going to be constant evolutionary pressure on human beings to use their brains in the most economical way possible. And that means human beings will develop "work-arounds" that will help them make decisions with the least mental effort possible.
Moreover, one of the advantages that humanity has in the evolutionary arms race is the ability to use that expensive-to-fuel brain. Our ancestors used it to manipulate information in ways that allowed them to recognize potential threats and opportunities faster than others. And one of the ways to speed up the process was to pare down the information that was analyzed.
I suspect that these two factors are why we "remember" a dollar bill differently from a computer. The computer uses the energy to created a piece-by-piece rendering of the dollar bill. The human brain, on the other hand, just creates a list of the "bare bones" of what makes up a dollar bill---and nothing else. This saves the energy and time it uses whenever it needs to differentiate between a one and a fifty. That's why a bank teller can count money so fast without having to stop for a snack when counting out cash for you. If she had to analyze each individual dot and ridge on each individual banknote it would take a very, very long time for that teller to cash your cheque and she'd probably have to eat like a professional athlete!
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Epstein goes on in his essay to suggest that if it is the case that the human brain isn't a digital processor, the way it does work is by changing itself based upon the positive and negative feedback it's received during a person's life. That means if someone has been rewarded in life for following the math instead of their "gut instinct", they will tend to be able to understand the difference between arithmetic progressions and geometric ones. Similarly, if the opposite has been true, a person will simply ignore the nonsense that the "pointy-head types" spew and go with what his instincts say has to be true.
Much the same thing can be said about people who make the major decisions in their lives based on their emotions. If they get positive reinforcement for being hyper-emotional, they get more and more prone to excessive displays. If, on the other hand, they get rewarded for being stoic and showing a "stiff upper lip" people will become more and more calm under pressure.
On reflection, the above might seem to be a trivial insight. But Dr. Epstein believes that it leads to serious consequences. If people aren't computers that operate according to a standardized operating code, and instead are adapted to the specific conditions of their lives, then every person's brain will operate differently. That implication may well be that no matter how much his scientific advisors try to explain the nature of the pandemic to our Premier, he simply cannot understand what they are talking about. That could well explain why he is having such a tremendously hard time coming up with a coherent plan for the province.
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My significant other recently turned me onto a YouTube creator by the name of Johnny Harris who does medium-length, very high quality videos explaining a variety of topics. I recently saw one that dealt with people who believe that the earth is flat. I was surprised by the issues he pointed out---mainly that it is a relatively recent phenomenon that has only existed for about 100 years, and, that it appears to exist primarily as an emotional rejection of what I would call "big science". For those of you who have the time, here's the entire video.
If for one reason or another you don't want to go through the entire episode, here's the "key take-away".
And, if you just won't watch YouTube, here's the issue in a "nutshell". There are people in the population who find it extremely difficult to accept the consensus of the scientific community based on trust. Unless they can be shown simple, tangible, and, easily-understood evidence for a particular assertion, they tend to dismiss what they are told as being a conspiracy by a scary "cabal" of strangers.
As Harris points out, people who feel this way are in a decided minority. Moreover, they will probably have zero impact on science as a cultural and economic phenomenon. But unfortunately, they are visible and there are times---like during a pandemic---when the actions of the few can have an over-sized influence on the many. If enough of them reject vaccination and public health orders, they can create a lot of damage for everyone else.
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My key takeaway is to remember that people are different from one another. Not just in terms of their background, class, religion, etc; but in a deeply profound way that colours the way they react to the world around them. In my own case I've learned that I have a really, really hard time acting instinctively. I "over-think" just about everything I do, which---among other things---made me a terribly driver. I could never forget that when I was behind the wheel of a car that I was just a brief second's distraction away from killing or maiming either myself or someone else.
I've had to learn from other people that this is a very, very strange point of view. For most folks, driving is done pretty much unconsciously and without any appreciation of how inherently dangerous an activity it really is. (It's probably the most dangerous thing that most Canadians do.) In contrast, getting vaccinated by the Oxford-AstraZenaca Covid-19 is remarkably safe (if it wasn't, we'd have seen lots of problems in Britain already). And yet, hordes of people who are afraid of the shot think nothing of hopping into their car to get some aspirin at the pharmacy.
I suspect part of the reason why I don't have a problem trusting the scientific establishment is because I spent so much time at University both as a student and an employee, and know a lot of scientists, researchers, and, professors. They aren't mysterious to me. I know that they are bye-and-large extremely idealistic people who didn't get into their positions because they wanted money or power. Instead, the vast majority are motivated by genuine curiosity. Incidentally, the ones I got to know well were generally very decent people who wanted the best for everyone else in society. Knowing that, it seems absolutely absurd to think of them as being people who would support any type of conspiracy. But after researching this article, I now suspect that given a different life-history I might have become a "happy-motoring" person afraid of "big science" too. When I remember this, it helps me be a little more tolerant of the people in my circle who have gone at least some distance down Alice's rabbit hole.
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Having said the above, society still has a right to defend itself. And there are "loons" out there who are fully capable of spreading disease left, right, and, centre in furtherance of their screw-ball beliefs. I don't hate lions or bears---but I sure as heck don't want to get mauled by one. It might be that there are people you simply cannot reason with and in those cases all you can do is fine them into compliance or if that doesn't work either, lock them up in jail. Over the long haul, this probably won't be necessary. We just need to create and follow rules that say you cannot work at a variety of jobs, go to school, or, travel out of country without proof of vaccination. This is nothing new, as regulations like this for other diseases have existed as long as I've been alive. There may be some squawking, but I suspect that the overwhelming majority of Canadians will gladly comply with this sort of regime.
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Mikhi’s guest spot on the Tylon Talon show had been “hyped up” by the Raposa News, which meant that close to 100% of it’s regular viewers tuned into the Web news channel. The producers of the show were confident that they could keep control of the content and “build the brand” by “destroying” Mikhi. What they didn’t know was that the Old Ones had installed a shunt into their main video feed cable that sent their raw footage (ie: without the five second delay editing) to be recorded for their use. (It really doesn’t pay to treat your cleaning staff like crap---they have pass keys and are around when no one is looking.)
This meant that when Talon played his dirty debating tricks on Mikhi and he responded the way Wayne had coached him, the resulting “fireworks” might not have been on the original show footage---but it was on the stuff that the Elders put up on the Web. Moreover, because of their “white hat” hackers, they were able to create a very close copy of the original Raposa News feed that had the real footage, not the altered stuff. And they used their AI bots to push this footage to the point where the overwhelming majority of people who followed Raposa News on social media saw the Elder’s version instead of the real thing.
This created a “fire storm” among viewers because of the extreme cognitive dissonance. On one hand, they had been “programmed” to believe everything that they saw on the Raposa News, but on the other hand, this was about making Tylon Talon look foolish. This opened up a vulnerability in the minds of many of these fans, which the Old One’s psychologists took advantage of in one of those “cheap” projects that had been referred to at the Holy House. Some “crazy uncle Liberty” types actually lost their slave-like devotion to their goofy news sources. Some advertisers quit supporting the Raposa News channel. And more information was gained for future Old Ones projects. All around, a good time was had by all.
Except, of course, Tylon Talon. He heard through the “grape vine” that several wealthy “think tanks” that had been considering lucrative contracts for him now considered him too much of a liability for consideration. And the Raposa News owners decided to avoid renewing his contract. Instead, they told him that they’d keep him on a week-by-week basis and see how he did over the long haul.
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Eventually Wayne decided that the media circuit was at the point of diminishing returns. The invites to talk show were drying up and attention had moved away from the “Climate Trials” to the next “cause célèbre”. This just meant that interest went “underground” however. Now it was time to talk to academics and activists.
“These people are different and require a much different way of dealing with them.” Wayne had his Frye boots up on the table that served as his desk. (Mikhi was surprised that you could still buy them---he hadn’t seen a pair since the 1970s.) He had a bong in his hand and was even more casual than usual.
“Activists don’t generally set out to torpedo you, but you have to handle them very carefully. Some of them are very intense and tend to focus on minutia to the point of self-destruction. You can say the wrong word and they will instantly bracket you as ‘the enemy’ and then devote their considerable energy into tearing you down. That’s why people sometimes say that they form ‘circular firing squads’.”
“What we’ll do is create a program that will work you through some of the most common pitfalls. Things like learning the ritual that involves acknowledging the First Nations that lived on the land where the meeting is being held, dealing with people who have idiosyncratic gender identifiers---that sort of thing. These aren’t that important in the grand scheme of things and are usually based on real issues, but as a boomer you may find them strange and hard to remember. If you can avoid making a faux pas, you should be able to get along fine with these people.”
“Also, you are going to be interviewed by academics. As a general rule they can be trusted to not have any ulterior motives or extreme ideas about ‘political correctness’---but they can be very eccentric and obtuse. You have to be patient with them and accept that they know everything and their individual project is more important than whether or not the sun rises tomorrow. Once you get over that, you will do fine.”
This phase of the work went pretty much as predicted for the next two years. After that, the next fad came along and Mikhail found himself less and less in demand. Eventually the day came when Wayne announced that the project was finished.
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Our dear and glorious leader seems to have finally bowed to his science advisors---late is at least a little better than never---and put the province back into a lock-down. This sucks a little for everyone, but it and the disease sucks a lot more for a few---so remember to be both nice and responsible to people in different situations than yours. Try to keep a stiff upper lip, remind yourself that all pandemics eventually end, and, when the time comes roll up your sleeve and get vaccinated.
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I recently heard to an epidemiologist talking about the recent decision by the Ontario government to go back into some form of lock-down because of spiking COVID-19 variant infections. He mentioned that he thought the reason why Ford waited too long is simply because so many people have a hard time understanding geometric progressions. In effect, the only way to deal with things like this epidemic is by taking actions that would seem to a lot of people to be "over-reacting".
As I see it, there are two very important things working here. First of all, people need to understand that there are two very, very different ways that a natural process can advance: arithmetic progression, and, geometric progression. In a nutshell, an arithmetic progression is one where a quantity is built by adding a fixed amount over and over again: [{(A+X)+X}+X]+X and so on. A practical example of this would be someone who is using a shovel to dig a hole in the ground. The pile of dirt grows only one shovel-full at a time.
In contrast, a geometric progression is one where the amount that is added in each iteration changes based on the amount of the previous one. Let's use the example of cats having kittens. If one mother cat has a litter of six kittens and three of them are females, and each of them has three female kittens the next year, and those kittens grow up and have three females the year after, and this continues forever, we'd be tripling the population of female cats every year: (A+Ax3)+(4Ax3)+(12Ax3)+(36Ax3)+(108Ax3) and so on. It should be obvious that if all cats are allowed to reproduce and there isn't a massive "cull" of kittens (like there is in the wild), we could quickly end up with far, far, far too many cats. This is why all humane societies have "spay your cat" programs.
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| Sure, they're cute. But there can be too much of a good thing---. |
Well, what's the problem then? What this article is about is the fact that many people---like the king who played chess with Krishna---simply don't understand the implications of geometric progressions.
I sometimes meet people who don't understand how interest compounds on debt---which is another example of the phenomenon. Years ago I met someone who'd gotten an interest-free home mortgage from a wealthy uncle and he didn't seem to understand what a tremendous thing this was. This was back about 25 years ago, and at that time the five year fixed mortgage rate was something like 10%. If that sounds freakishly high, how about we do a very simple calculation at less than that, 7%, over 30 years.
I went to one of those on-line mortgage calculators and plugged in the following info:
The results were a monthly payment of $2,000 and total interest paid out over 30 years came to $260,000. At zero % interest, that changes to $1200/month and, of course, zero total interest.
(This is a classic example of how "inter-generational wealth" has a tremendous impact on the lives of middle and upper class people.)
As I hope people now realize, the result of exponential growth can be a lot more than people intuitively realize---like the interest on their mortgage being almost as much as what they paid for their house, or, a geometric progression of rice grains on a chess board can eat up the entire world's food supply.
There's one more thing that counters people's intuitive thinking: where the biggest hit kicks in. Consider the chessboard and rice example. I suspect a lot of people wouldn't realize that three quarters of the entire amount of rice that gets used up happens on the last two squares. That's because the second last square is double what came before, and the last square is double that. This means that the time for the Raja to kick over the board and have the chess master sent to the dungeon is when the progression is still just a few grains of rice on a square. By waiting until what is happening becomes obvious to everyone, it's just about too late to avoid bankrupting the kingdom.
It's exactly the same thing with the pandemic. If we wait until it is immediately obvious that the virus is getting out of control, it will totally engulf the province. That means that in order to avoid a catastrophe, the province needs to look like it is totally "over-reacting". That's just intrinsic to the nature of geometric progression.
And that's the problem with Doug Ford---as suggested by the unnamed scientist I mentioned in the beginning. He is obviously "going with his gut", and it is telling him that if he shuts down the province while there is still room in ICUs and only a few thousand people getting the bug every day, he's wildly over-reacting . But the truth is, by waiting so long, he is really wildly "under-reacting"---and this will create a lot of unnecessary misery.
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I was surprised to see that I've been putting out this news blog since 2016. Time seems to go by faster as I age---which is far from a novel observation. But it is a long time to be putting out stories on a regular basis. If you think these posts are useful---and you can afford it---why not subscribe? You get to decide how much you pay every month, and it's easy to do through Patreon and Pay Pal.
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It's always hard to ascribe motivations to public figures simply because you never really know what is going on between their ears. That's why many groups will immediately censor an individual for suggesting a reason why a person does a certain thing. But I'm my own person and sometimes why people do what they do is key to the story---and I think that this is one of those instances.
Watching the entire Ford saga from Toronto city Council to becoming the Premier I couldn't help but think that this is a classic example of someone who thinks he knows better than all those damn "pointy-headed experts". But to give the man his due, he is a successful politician who got elected Premier. That means he has his "finger on the pulse" of a lot of citizens in this province. More's the pity.
On one level I "get" what is going on here. I sometimes do calculations based on my research that produce results that I feel "in my gut" can't possibly be true. One example is a story I wrote about the real cost of "free" parking. I sweated over various calculations---including the one that suggests that that in Guelph the cost of below-ground parking adds something like $66,000 to the cost of the average condominium. I still feel a little weird using that number, but whenever I look at the calculations I can't find any mistakes.
But I think the difference between myself and someone like the Premier (I'm speculating here) is that I have learned to "suck it up" and live with the anxiety that I feel when my "gut instinct" conflicts with the information I see before me. I don't think the Premier worries about stuff like this. Instead I can only assume he is used to following his instincts and just bullies anyone who disagrees with him until they give up trying to change his mind. Unfortunately, he's the Premier of the province and we all have to live with the results of way his brain works.
I want to explore this issue in a little more detail, but this post is already long enough. Next week I hope to expand on the issue of why some people see the world so differently than others.
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Wayne was just as sanguine this time around. “We were specifically escalating in this dry run---but not unrealistically so. Tylon Talon really is an aggressive, obnoxious, fool, and the actor was doing a very good approximation of his methods. I liked the way you jabbed back instantly over the religious attack. I’m not sure that Talon would have hesitated like that actor, though. He’s really intelligent and has thousands of hours of tearing progressive voices to pieces.”
“Having said that, you do have the benefit of being someone who knows your subject like the back of your hand. Moreover, you don’t come from a position of privilege, so you know how to fight back instead of just crumpling or exploding when faced with someone playing dirty. I do think that your understanding of theology really is a nice card to keep in your deck. Generally, people on the left know nothing at all about religion. Even more useful is the fact that the vast majority of conservative Christians---and the people who ally with them---also know almost nothing about it. If you can sound like you know a lot and have some sympathies for church-goers, you can peel away a significant part of their rhetorical arsenal.”
“I do have a suggestion though---if you can remember it in the heat of the conversation. When someone like Talon throws a lot of fast-talking ‘what abouts’ at you, it’s often effective to turn his aggression against him. Don’t try to talk as fast as him, just deflect the question---preferably with a joke at his expense. You had the start of something like this when you said that there were a lot of questions. But you can’t telegraph this jab. You need to toss it off very economically and ambiguously so the producer monitoring the five second delay won’t weed it out. I’m not expecting you to come up with something on the fly. We’ll work some more with the actor so you can come up with a few snappy answers in this particular situation. I’d like to not have to do it, but this really is a tried and true way that the wingnuts take advantage of liberals and I think we should at least try to counter punch against it.”
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Mikhi went to the Holy House the following week and asked the conclave in the basement about how the Elders were able to find and fund such an enormous number of experts in such a wide variety of fields.
The tall, thin, elderly black man was the first to respond. “First off, most of our people have businesses and personnel that they put at our disposal when we need them. So whatever infrastructure you see is generally just being “re-purposed” from something much more mundane.”
The very white, elderly woman with very thick, frizzy hair in braids then spoke “More importantly, we have made it our job to carefully search out the ‘lost talent’ that our culture routinely squanders. The thing to understand is that only a tiny percentage of people who have incredible abilities ever get a chance to use them for the good of society. Everyone’s heard of Phds driving cabs and MDs mopping floors. But those are only the tip of the iceberg that is especially visible because these folks have diplomas that they can point towards.”
“For every one of these people there are thousands with equal expertise and creativity who lack some irrelevant other quality that means that they never get the chance to share their special talents with the world around them. Think about all the great works of literature that are languishing in the hard drives of shy authors who don’t have the connections to tell them how to market their work. Or brilliant students who can’t afford college, or get stuck with a crappy primary education, or have parents who are so dysfunctional that all of their energy goes into survival instead of learning. There are enormous numbers of brilliant, creative people who spend their whole lives grinding away at jobs they loathe because society just stupidly threw away their potential.”
The middle-aged Asian woman who managed the Holy House stepped in. “It isn’t hard to find these people if you try. And the Elders have the resources to help specific individuals take advantage of their potential. Would it be any wonder that most of them are willing to ‘step up to the plate’ and help out when they can?”
Mikhi stepped in at this point. “That raises another point. Where is all the money coming from for your infrastructure? Even this house had to be paid for, and this isn’t a cheap neighbourhood.”
The older Asian man with tired-looking eyes answered. “We aren’t adverse to using theft of funds as a way of dealing with problem individuals or organizations. For example, when that unfortunate individual tried to to kidnap you, we dealt with him by stealing a huge amount of his money, and, then made it look like the contractors he’d hired took it. The resulting war led to his quick demise and the end of the contract against you. What money we need comes our way through such situations.”
“Besides, most of the people working for us are unpaid other than whatever help we might have given them in getting on their feet in a world that treated them like crap. They are grateful and more-than-willing to help. Moreover, one of our three key values is frugality. We are careful with our money and have amassed a significant contingency fund that we can use when necessary. The Climate Trials is only one of many current projects---but it is one of only a few truly expensive ones. The rest are really quite cheap.” He smiled---and may have even winked---at Mikhi.
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