Follow-up to the previous Collatz conjecture post

 After reflection, it is in fact the case that if there is a loop that begins with a number other than 1, call it z, that the sequence of operations that cause z to loop around to z will in fact converge on z regardless of the number chosen as a starting point.  The number z is encoded in the sequence of operations and if that sequence is repeated any starting number will converge on Z.

The combination of operations that make up the Collatz conjecture, i.e multiplying odd numbers by three and adding 1 or dividing even numbers by zero, can be described by a linear function of the form

y = ax + b. 

More accurately, for the Collatz conjecture,  y = (ax + b)/c where a is equal to 3^N, where N is the number of odd numbers that appear in the loop, and c = s^ m, and represents the total number of divisions by 2 performed in traversing the loop.  The term b is a number that is determined solely by the sequence of operations and is only implicitly dependent on z. The equation above describes a line with slope a/c and y intercept of b/c.  This line will intersect the line y = x at the point (z,z); thus for any sequence that can be written in the form above, any starting number n will converge on the value b/(c-a). Also, all sequences, regardless of whether they terminate in a loop containing 1 or some other number, will converge on a number b/(c-a). For example, the Collatz sequence that begins with number 7 terminates at 1, can be described by the equation (243x + 347)/2048.  If you begin with any number n and repeat the sequence many times, the result will converge on 347/(2048-243) = 0.192243.  Likewise, if you take the sequence describing the loop based on 1; (3x+1)/4, begin with any number, not necessarily an integer and substitute each result back into the equation, the results will converge on 1.

This result is so because any number less than z will increase when substituted into an equation that loops, and any number greater than z will decrease..  This can be shown graphically.

Some thoughts on the Collatz conjecture

 

Problem:

 

One of the unanswered questions regarding the Collatz conjecture is whether there are any loops other than the sequence 1, 4, 2. The following argument suggests there are not.

 

Procedure:

 

Write any number in binary form, to make the calculations easier. Now divide the binary number at some random point into two parts; a “high” part and a low part. For example, the number 15 is 1111 binary and we can divide it 3 possible ways: a high part of 1 x (2^3) and low part of 7; 3x(2^2) and 3; or 7 x (2^1) and 1.

The original number is just the high part plus the low part. We make two columns, one below the high part and one below the low part.  Now the operation of (3x +1)/2 is performed by multiplying the value in the left column by 3/2 and performing the (3x+1)/2 operation on the right. For example if we start with 15 and divide it as 1100 and 11 binary, or 12 and 3 decimal for the left and right columns, we would perform the first (3x+1)/2 by multiplying 12 by 3/2 giving 18, and the right column would have (3(3)+1)/2 = 5. The sum is 23, the same answer we get if we just use (3(15)+1)/2=23.  We use the sum of the columns to decide whether we multiply by 3 and add 1 or divide by 2. Fractions are allowed in the two columns, and we can perform the (3x+1)/2 operation on even numbers in the right column. This process works for any starting number.

 

We notice a very significant characteristic of this approach: the ratio of the number in the right column to the ratio of the number in the left column increases as the process continues, but neither column ever reaches zero.  Also, once the process applied to the original number converges to whatever number the procedure produces we can continue the process indefinitely.  For example, if the starting number is 7 and we divide it as 1 x (2^2) +3, when we get to 1, the number in the left column will be 243/512, and in the right 269/512. We can continue the process. If we just used the number 1 we would get back the number 1, which does not tell us much. However, if we apply the same operations to the two columns, after one iteration we get 729/2048 in the left column and 1319/2048 in the right column. The sum is still 1.

 

Notice however that the ratio of the value in the right column to that in the left continues to increase, meaning that the right column eventually converges to 1, i.e. the same number to which the original number (15) converges. This is so because the operation (3x+1)/4 produces a smaller number if  x>1  and a larger number for x<1.

 

Argument:

 

If a there is a number, B  not equal to one, where B is the smallest odd integer in a loop, then if we perform the series of operations dictated by the Collatz conjecture we will arrive back at B.  Now if we write B as a binary number as above and choose an arbitrary point at which to divide into H*(2^N) + L, where the first number is the first element in the left column and L is the first element in the right, we perform the series of operations until the sum arrives back at B. HOWEVER, when we get back at B the values in the left and right columns will be different than when we started, AND the ratio of the value in the right column to that of the left will be higher than the ratio when we first started.  We continue this process any number of times we wish.  If there is in fact a number B such that it is part of a loop that does not converge to 1, the sums of the values in the left and right columns will also loop back to B, but with the right column becoming progressively larger than the left.  This means that the right column must converge to B.

 

NOW the sequence of operations is the same whenever we start with B, and is determined by B. BUT the choice of the number in the right column depends on where we arbitrarily decide to divide the original number.  We could have divided the binary number between the 1^st and second digit, or the 4^th and 5^th, or anywhere such that we had at least one 1 in each column.

 

This means that multiple numbers, using the exact same sequence of operations must converge to B, if such a loop exists.  This implies that if we start, in the most extreme case with 1 in the right column, the sequence of operations that caused B to loop back to B will also cause 1 to converge to B.  This seems to imply a contradiction: if you perform the same sequence of operations on different starting numbers, they nonetheless converge to the same end point.  Either that end point must be the same for all starting numbers (e.g. 1), or the sequence of operations that causes B to loop back on B (if there are any) will converge to B for any starting number. 

COVID: Different Types of Immunity

 Much of the information , recommendations, observations opinions etc. regarding COVID is conflicting and confusing. One reason for this is that the certain subjects, such as immunity, are spoken of in vague and ambiguous terms. When someone speaks of immunity in one sense, such as herd immunity, it is countered by a counter-example which actually addresses a separate issue. To avoid this, it would perhaps be useful to define certain types of immunity. He are some suggestions:

1. Epidemic-limiting immunity. This type of immunity would limit and eventually end the epidemic. It is a population-level phenomenon, rather than an individual one. Vaccinations would be relevant to this type of immunity if the vaccines were highly effective in preventing both clinical disease and spread of coronavirus. Herd immunity would be the theoretical end point, although our understanding of herd immunity is likely an over-simplification. Our current experience with vaccines, re-infections, "breakthrough infections," "surges," and so forth suggest that the current batch of available vaccines have little effect on establishing this type of immunity.

2. Symptom-limiting immunity. This type of immunity is individual immunity that has the effect of decreasing the severity of disease in clinically apparent infections. The reason that it might be a useful distinction is because of the possibility that a person may have this type of immunity and still be able to transmit the infection. The current crop of vaccines do seem to provide temporary immunity of this type.

3. Mortality-limiting immunity. This is related to symptom-limiting immunity, but is potentially a meaningful distinction because different coronavirus variants may have different different mechanisms of causing death, or have disproportionate effects in different patient groups. For example, certain populations may be at increased risk of mortality if infected with COVID because of an increased risk of thrombotic complications. Others may be at greater risk of pulmonary or cardiovascular or renal complications. Furthermore, if the baseline mortality from COVID drops below a certain level, e.g. a case fatality rate of 0.5%, then this would affect the risk-benefit analysis of vaccination. It is difficult to tell if the current vaccines have significant effect on this type of mortality, although current data suggest that they do.

4. Infectivity-limiting immunity. This is similar to epidemic-limiting immunity, but is an individual phenomenon. It is worth considering separately because even if a vaccine were perfect at limiting symptoms and mortality, the individual immune response may be insufficient to limit viral replication and shedding. Thus, people could be asymptomatic spreaders, even if vaccinated, and vaccination would be an ineffective or relatively ineffective means of limiting the spread of disease. The current data seem to suggest that current vaccines, that target only the spike protein of the virus, do not provide this type of immunity. 

Using the above a a guide, and referring to the earlier post on interpreting COVID data, it would appear that:

1. Current COVID vaccines provide temporary symptom limiting and mortality limiting immunity in the  general population. It appears that these vaccines provide peak protection after approximately 5- 6 weeks, and that the immune protection is not durable; it begins to wane with a half-life of approximately 5 months, thus requiring booster vaccines, or ongoing exposure to live virus to maintain levels of immunity. The significance of this is that immunity of whatever type is time-dependent, and it is quite possible that people who had asymptomatic exposure to COVID have symptom, mortality and infectivity limiting immunity that is superior to someone who was vaccinated, but whose immunity has waned.

2. The current vaccines do not appear to be effective at limiting the spread of COVID, likely because they do not provide a sufficient immune response to suppress viral replication in infected individuals. The surge in cases in highly vaccinated populations such as the United Kingdom and Israel seem to be consistent with this hypothesis.

3. There is likely much more environmental influence on the behavior of the virus than the current mask and vaccinate strategies acknowledge. This would explain for example the different experiences between South Dakota and other states. It also makes fallacious the idea that case numbers are primarily influenced by policy interventions. Masking for example likely has very little influence on the number of hospitalizations due to COVID.

What to Make of COVID Information

 The current state of information regarding the COVID pandemic, vaccine efficacy, Delta variant, mask mandates, etc., is nothing if not confused. Reports of "surges," breakthrough infections, booster shots and so forth leave the answers to such basic questions as "do vaccines work?" and "does mask wearing do anything?" uncertain. There appears to be either no source of reliable information regarding these questions, or such sources are few and hard to come-by.

First, there is no COVID information that should not be scrutinized for ulterior motives, insular agendas, and shaky foundation. The course of the pandemic has seen news media awash with anecdotes, dubious associations, unfounded claims, contradictory recommendations, inaccurate modeling and "unexpected" events. It is certainly possible that information regarding COVID is slanted to encourage compliance with "best-we-can-do" but still not very good interventions. It is also at least possible that political motives, such as interest of teachers unions in delaying return to in-person teaching affect the content and presentation of COVID information. Controversial topics such as vaccine passports, and the "right" of strangers to know an individuals vaccination status may be surrogates for other political or even cultural interests. What seems certain is that the simplistic models that are used to support things like six-foot social distancing, double masking, and lockdowns do not appear to be validated by actual experience.

There are several items of information that add confusion to the state of popular COVID knowledge, but which nonetheless may be used to understand the current state of the COVID pandemic and efforts to control it. Among these are reports of a significant number of "breakthrough" infections in vaccinated people, and exponential increases in the number of cases in places with relatively high vaccination rates such as the United Kingdom, Israel and the Seychelles. Other observations, such as a divergence in the case numbers and mortality rates, marked regional variation in case numbers that seem to be independent of vaccination rates, and the rapid rise and fall of infection numbers in India suggest that we are relying on incomplete understanding of the virus, immunological response and the influence of environmental factors. There are also intriguing observations regarding the quantification of virus found in vaccinated and unvaccinated people that may explain much of the confusing experience.

With specific regard to vaccinations, the rise in breakthrough cases and surges in relatively highly vaccinated populations suggests several possibilities. If we consider the state of vaccine information over the past year, we observe that vaccines were reported to have >90% efficacy in preventing COVID, that these vaccines were perhaps associated with blood clots, myocarditis, and hearing loss, that they were at least somewhat efficacious against the Delta variant, that boosters would be needed, etc. Much of these data seem to be unconfirmed extrapolations from limited observations, perhaps mixed in with wishful thinking and pubic relations spin. Again, the key to understanding this and resolving some of the apparent contradictions in this information is the observation that viral counts in vaccinated and unvaccinated people appear to be similar.

There are some straightforward but perhaps overly simplistic explanations for the COVID experience to date. One is that the vaccines do not work, which is likely at least somewhat true for the Russian and Chinese vaccines; that they work but the protection against infection decays exponentially, with a half-life of about 4 to 8 months (thus the need for "boosters;" or perhaps that the rational approach taken to develop COVID vaccines was based on an incomplete understanding of immunity against COVID.

We may take as true the following: vaccines are intended to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies against the coronavirus spike protein; the vaccines do in fact produce measurable antibody responses; these antibodies are not reliable in protecting against subsequent infection and viral replication, even if they mitigate the severity of a particular infection and perhaps reduce morbidity and mortality. Here is a hypothesis that may explain these phenomena: the important immunological response to COVID is not the production of antibodies directed against the spike protein. These antibodies may decrease the effective inoculation viral dose, but do not stimulate an immune response that prevents or hinders viral replication. This is why viral counts in vaccinated and unvaccinated people are similar, and if the hypothesis is true, explains why vaccinated people can infect others.

Our understanding of the immune response is that antigens are taken up by immune cells, which then present antigens that direct the immune system to stimulate a protective, and likely complicated response that combats the infection. It may be the case that the spike protein is not the most efficient, or competent antigen to stimulate an effective response. It may be reasonable to target the spike protein because that supposedly provides specificity with regard to the pathogen, but the assumption that one antigen is the same as another in terms of immune response is possibly fallacious. Therefore when we use a surrogate for vaccine effectiveness, such as antibody count, we miss what we are actually interested in: effectiveness at preventing the spread of infection. 

Since coronaviruses describe a large class of pathogens, it is possible that the human immune system is more efficient if it does develop lasting immunity to every coronavirus encountered during the course of a lifetime. In other words, there may be a sound evolutionary basis for why the immune response to coronaviruses is not durable. Whatever the case, breakthrough infections, "surges" in vaccinated populations and considerations of booster shots all suggest that vaccination does not provide durable immunity against COVID. This does not mean that vaccination is futile, or does not provide a benefit. It rather suggests that expectations for vaccine efficacy should be prudently tempered, and that widespread vaccination even if effective eventually hits a point of diminishing returns.

The upshot of all of this is that the apparently confused state of COVID Information likely has many causes, from spun and slanted reporting, to inappropriate extrapolations from limited data, to incompletely understood pathophysiology of disease and immune response. 

A Couple of Other Vaccine Thoughts

 The trajectory of cases attributed to the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 suggests that the available vaccines do provide some protection against infection, but that the protection is time-dependent and wanes significantly. This observation is supported by the recent observation that anti-body levels in patients who had received the Sinovac injection are not durable. Here are a couple of thoughts related to this:

It is possible that because corona viruses are ubiquitous that the body's immunologic response to them as a class is not durable. Immunologic protection possibly wanes over time regardless of viral mutation or antigenic drift because that is how the human body is adapted to deal with ubiquitous viruses. Again, the data suggest although, of course do not prove, that the protection provided by vaccines has a half-life; hence the consideration of the need for "boosters" and perhaps yearly inoculations. 

Measuring antibody levels as a marker of immunity is possibly a flawed strategy. It is perhaps the case that immunological protection depends more on T-cell response time rather the level of circulating antibodies at any one time. 

Taking the above two conjectures together, it is quite possible that immunity provided by vaccines is enhanced by repeated exposure to circulating virus, and that vaccinated people would be better off foregoing any strategies, such as masking, that are intended to avoid contact with coronaviruses. For example, if a person receives a vaccine and has the desired immune response, but the protection afforded by the vaccine begins to wane in a few months (assuming that this is because that is the evolved response to coronaviruses), the immune response is likely to be enhanced by exposure to the virus that current immunity is sufficient to prevent active infection. This is possibly why epidemics peter out on their own, and why the avoidance strategies do not seem to work well at the population level. The vaccinate-and-avoid strategy may be counterproductive. 

About the Vaccine...

The various waves of coronavirus infections provoke a great deal of dispute and angst about vaccines, vaccine hesitancy, skepticism and "science." An objective review of the available evidence suggests the following:

1. Vaccines do, in fact work. The mechanism is understood, although likely not as well as vaccine advocates claim.

2. The experience with the virus is unavoidably local. Environment has much more to do with it than a simplistic notion of R values.

3. From a COVID experience perspective, it is reasonable to ask if a person is better off being unvaccinated in South Dakota than vaccinated in Florida.

4. The trajectory of disease numbers in highly vaccinated United Kingdom and the rapid decrease in cases in India following a dramatic increase, suggests that vaccination is not an especially strong determinant of the course of the pandemic.

5. Vaccines probably do mitigate the severity of infection, even if they do not prevent them.

6. Assessing vaccine effectiveness by measuring antibodies seems to make sense, but is probably vitiated by invalid assumptions. The immune response likely has much more significant determinants than antibody counts.

7. The simplest explanation for the surge in cases in the United Kingdom, is that the vaccine is effective in suppressing infections but this effect wanes over time, There is likely a half-life to the vaccines effectiveness, which is measured in months.

8. Masks may affect whether a person gets infected with COVID on a particular day, but not whether a person will eventually get COVID. 

9. The Russian and Chinese vaccines provide some transient protection against COVID, but probably not enough to be part of a vaccination strategy. 

10. Vaccines are associated with auto-immune complications, the risk of which in particular people outweigh the benefits of vaccination. In other people the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks.

11. The discussion of vaccine has become so politicized that the "science" has been severely compromised. 

12. Some people will die of COVID complications. Some people can avoid these complications with vaccination. Nonetheless, some people who weigh the risks and benefits of vaccination and choose to not get vaccinated are making reasonable choices. For most people though, the benefits of vaccination, even if they are likely to be transient, outweigh the risk.

13. The science of virology is not nearly as advanced as its proponents claim. There is much more that we do not know, and show no interest in knowing if it compromises a political advantage, that we actually know. 

Can Communism Work?

 A sentiment which is common in current political discourse is that “communism has failed every time that it has been tried.” This certainly seems like an accurate assessment given the available historical examples, but does present the question of whether this is necessarily so. Is communism incapable of succeeding, or is it that is has simply been vexed by a run of bad luck?

The weaknesses of communism are contained in its assumption regarding “who” and “what.” The assumption, and a practical matter, the fallacy is that if you define the what the who is immaterial. This is exactly the opposite of the way the world works in practice, and the reason why communism has failed every time it has been tried.

The assumption behind communism, as well as any political doctrine that tends to result in totalitarianism, is that the details of daily life, regardless if those details are economic, political, social, legal, educational, etc., can be managed. This is the theoretical appeal of communism: it is possible to imagine any type of Utopian society, assuming that the right type of people can be found to manage it. This ideal fails in the real world for two reasons: 1) the process by which the leaders are selected in such societies favor the selection of those most adept at political intrigue rather than producing social harmony, and 2) the varied details of human life in any society are too diverse and idiosyncratic to be managed by anyone.

Mao Tse Tung was adept at acquiring power but relatively inept at using that power to produce desirable social progress. The same observations can be made of Castro, Stalin, Pol Pot, Tito, etc. Communism selects out “leaders” who have the capacity to aggregate and hold power, regardless of their ability to do anything else. As a practical matter, communism is a doctrine that provides an advantage for promoting those who are most effective at exploiting the theoretical benefits of totalitarianism, and whose political skills and ruthlessness are most useful. This is why communism fails, and will fail, every time it is tried. There may be selfless communists, who honestly believe that they are committed to social and economic justice, and who will not seek personal wealth, or dachas, etc. They will eventually , and inevitably, be supplanted by those who will, because the implementation of communism requires as a practical matter, a measure of totalitarian coercion. This is a huge advantage to those with totalitarian ambitions.

Even if it were the case that an altruistic communist, not prone to totalitarian excess, were to ascend to prominence in a communist regime, he would eventually have to confront the realities of human nature that make totalitarianism necessary in communist ideology. Furthermore, sustaining a communist regime, even if such were a practical possibility, would require a succession of selfless leaders, which is itself a practical impossibility.

Communism has failed every time that has been tried simply because communism requires a set of conditions that are not to be found in the real world, and which cannot be imposed by force.

Coordination in Messaging

Nikole Hannah-Jones recently said that Cuba is "the most equal, multiracial country in our hemisphere."

Previously, Ibram X. Kendi asserted that "The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."

Both of these statements cannot be true. Of course, both can be false.

Destruction and Spontaneity

 In the previously-mentioned discussion between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky, the former made the following assertion about Marxist revolution:

"What the proletariat will achieve by expelling the class which is at present in power and by taking over power itself, is precisely the suppression of the power of class in general."

This statement represents more sophism than philosophy. It contains an inescapable contradiction that is masked by a category error. Foucault asserted that if the proletariat (a class) took power and suppressed those who had been ejected from power (another class), that this would not be oppression of a class (which it is by definition) but "suppression of the power of class." In schematic terms, Foucault's claim is that if A oppresses B, what A is achieving is not oppression of B but "suppression of the power" that allows oppressing by class. This is non-sense.

The occult assumption in Foucault's argument is that destruction, e.g. by violent revolution, will result in spontaneous improvement. This is the dubious assumption currently in fashion among many progressives who advocate for "burning it all down," defunding the police, and denigrating established institutions. For his part, Chomsky had previously been impressed with his perception that the communist takeover of North Vietnam had resulted in spontaneous emergence of small democracies in villages and hamlets. The idea that destruction of current institutions will inevitably result in their replacement by "better" ones appears to be a widely held, if seldom defended assumption. It is something like believing that if one smashes a porcelain vase on the floor, the pieces will reassemble into a better vase, and not, say a figurine of a Confederate General.

This idea of spontaneous improvement after catastrophic destruction can be supported somewhat by the observation that human progress has proceeded despite calamitous ruin, for example after the fall of the Roman Empire, or the rebuilding of post-war Germany and Japan. To infer from this that improvement is inevitable however overlooks such events as the Red Terror or the Killing Fields of Cambodia. 

The fantasy that sustains the illusion of inevitable spontaneous improvement is noted in the Marxist idea of the state eventually fading away, of ideas of classless society, or of eradicating oppression. This fantasy is undone however by a point repeatedly made by Jordan Peterson, for which the empiric evidence is overwhelming: hierarchies emerge spontaneously. This is observed in the animal kingdom, in human societies of every type and size, and as Professor Peterson frequently points out, was present in human society at least as far back as the paleolithic age. Hierarchies are a fact of life. One encounters no difficulty in describing the hierarchies present in Chinese society, among the Khmer Rouge, in Native American Tribes, the management of Facebook, the Roman Catholic Church, etc., etc. Destruction is accompanied by spontaneous emergence of social structures, and will always be accompanied by the emergence of hierarchies. Whether these are improvement or not depends on what those hierarchies are. If those hierarchies are reprises of Lenin and Pol Pot, misery will follow and the revolution will fail, to be replaced by new hierarchies, and new institutions, and the cycle will repeat.

Foucault was wrong, perhaps deceptively so. Power held by one group does not negate the idea of power in general. Violence and bloody revolution does not inevitably result in the "suppression of the power of class," or any other change in the immutable factors that govern the relationships between groups of people. Power is power. A change in who holds it does not automatically guarantee the emergence of improvement.

Chomsky, Doctrines and Science

 In a 1971 academic discussion with Michel Foucault, Noam Chomsky made the following observation:

“…the fundamental property of behaviorism, which is in a way suggested by the odd term behavioral science, is that it is a negation of the possibility of developing a scientific theory.”

This insight is significant, especially if one infers from the specific case of behavior to the realm of doctrines in general. Professor Chomsky’s observation might be schematically presented as

“…the fundamental property of [subject of doctrine]ism, which is in a way suggested by the odd term [subject of doctrine] science, is that it is a negation of the possibility of developing a scientific theory.”

One may try this with any number of doctrines, or more colloquially, -isms. For example, the economic theory of distributism, which arose from Catholic social teaching and specifically is concerned with the just allocation of a society’s resources, would provide the following principle in Professor Chomsky’s formulation:

“…the fundamental property of distributism, which is in a way suggested by the odd term ‘distribution science,’ is that it is a negation of the possibility of developing a scientific theory.”

The same process might be applied to any number of doctrines; nationalism, socialism, supremacism, racism, classism etc. Professor Chomsky’s fundamental insight is preserved: the adoption and promotion of a doctrine impairs the ability to rationally assess the underlying conditions that give rise to that doctrine. Thus, for example, the preservation of a particular concept of “racism” impairs the rational inquiry into what might otherwise be considered “race science.” The doctrines surrounding the contemporary concept of racism puts many conjectures that would be assessed in a rigorous race science beyond consideration.

The validity of Professor Chomsky’s insight can be observed by how various doctrines of the middle ages impaired the advancement of science, and how social doctrines in early America impaired the scientific assessment of social problems. Defense of a doctrine involves defense of beliefs, regardless of the source of those beliefs. Doctrines are hostile to skepticism for this reason. This is contrary to the rational approach that is characteristic of science in which skepticism is, or should be a central part.

Consequences of the tension between doctrine and science, and more ominously the substitution of doctrine for science leads to dubious claims such as that any particular science is “settled,” or that “consensus” obviates the need for skepticism and further inquiry.

Doctrines, of all types, are congenial to politics and may be quite useful to political interests, but their inherent tension with science and rational inquiry leads to unfortunate result that politics often squanders the best opportunities for human flourishing.

Bias, Modifiers and Jargon.

The objectivity of the American media is a topic of ongoing dispute. News outlets that promote themselves as "trusted," or disinterested often produce material that contains an identifiable slant. The easiest way to identify this when it occurs is to examine the copy for adverbs and adjectives. Consider for example, this fictitious report of an automobile accident:

"A white pickup truck traveling at an excessive speed carelessly collided with a small sedan, causing horrific injuries to three people. Onlookers attempted to pull the injured victims, including a child from the heartbreaking scene."

The objective substance of the report can be succinctly stated as "Three people were injured when a pickup collided with another vehicle. Onlookers assisted those injured in the crash."

The modifiers in the first version; "excessive," "carelessly," "small," "horrific," "heartbreaking;" convey the subjective interpretations of the writer and therefore convey the biases of the writer.  A very common version that appears in mainstream media are the modifiers "controversial" and "bold." When a speaker, typically a public figure of some sort makes a statement of which the reporter approves, the accompanying, though unnecessary adjective is likely to be "bold," or some related term meant to enhance the power of the statement. Conversely, "controversial," when applied to the same statement conveys a subtle implication that the statement should only be accepted cautiously. Reporters and editors betray their biases in their choice of modifiers.

An analogous concept applies to many of the prevalent doctrines that are presented as though they are serious academic principles. In this case however, rather than being subjective opinions conveyed as superfluous modifiers, the issue is fallacies being masked by jargon. This is frequently seen in the neologisms and attempts to redefine words to have idiosyncratic meanings with the context of a particular discussion. Examples are "fragility," "misinformation," "systemic racism," "equity," etc. The issue is not that the terms are misleading, or necessarily refer to ideas and claims that are false, but that they are often used to obscure fallacious reasoning, and limit rational discussion by injecting subjective and emotional considerations when these have the effect of impairing rational discussion. A fallacy expressed in jargon is still a fallacy.

Two Basic Types of Satisfaction Driving Human Behavior

 An earlier post noted the difference between accomplishing and experiencing. It was noted there that a significant trend in modern society is to replace actual accomplishment with experiences that may or may not accomplish anything, and which may detract from more productive activities. This distinction may have more to tell us regarding why people are motivated to pursue certain ideological objectives, and why affluence and relative safety tend to skew preferences.

To begin, we may start with two common scenarios. Imagine first a television game show, or a college football game. Some desirable event occurs, and satisfaction is registered by the reactions of the participants, or their supporters. Observe the reactions that are associated with winning, or events that increase the chance of winning. This is the first type of scenario.

Next, imagine a park frequented by drug addicts and alcoholics. Observe their reactions to getting a fix, or consuming alcohol. This is the second type of scenario.

What the two scenarios have in common is that the activities described produce psychological perception of satisfaction. At a neurochemical level, a neurotransmitter in some brain structure is released, providing a reinforcing sense of satisfaction, or pleasure. In the first type of scenario, this occurs indirectly by awareness that a desirable event has occurred, satisfying some personal interest. In the second type of scenario, the sense of satisfaction or pleasure results directly from the effect of chemicals that produce the response. 

Experience demonstrates that the second type of satisfaction and pleasure is associated with accumulating episodes of misery and misfortune. Addiction tends toward tragedy and seldom if ever produces any type of beneficial side-effect. It predisposes to overdose, crime, poverty, homelessness, violence and depression. Forcing ones brain to release chemicals that produce a sense of pleasure or satisfaction is easy, and almost uniformly destructive. This is one of the perils of psychoactive substances: reinforcing destructive behavior.

The other type of reinforcement, i.e. the indirect type in which satisfaction derives from the perception of some desirable event, is dependent on two separate factors, both of which must be present. The event triggering the pleasurable or satisfying response must be perceived, and it must correspond to some interest of the person who experiences the response. The significance of this type of response lies in the source of interests that a person has. To the extent that human actions influence the occurrence of events, humans have an incentive to try and influence those events. 

Schopenhauer observed that a person cannot choose what he or she desires. These desires are generally the result of complex interactions between socializing instincts, personality traits and experience. From these human beings develop the desires that influence their political views and influence their behavior. Some people who have no experience of hardship or poverty adopt ideological perspectives that incline toward assuming that affluence is the natural state of humans, and any deviation is the result of malign characters. They achieve a sense of satisfaction from events that appear to chastise those perceived as responsible for the observation that not everyone enjoys affluence. Other psychological wants, such as the desire for social approval or power or revenge, lead people to ideological interests that are satisfied by events that are congenial to those interests. 

As in the case of experiences of pleasure or satisfaction that result directly from manipulations of brain chemistry, those same experiences that result indirectly from the perception of desirable events are reinforcing, and potentially destructive as well. The key point is that the perception of pleasure or satisfaction is independent of reason. In the case of cocaine or methamphetamine, the result depends only on biochemistry; in the case of political machination, the result depends only on the perceived state of ones interest at the time, regardless of whether this represents anything more than a transient fancy.

Social Media Suggestion

 Here is a suggestion for social media platforms:

There is certainly an argument that the "moderation," "fact-checking," suspensions, shadow bans that are par to f the experience on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. are net negatives for a free society. They may, perhaps do more harm than good, and it is inevitable that they will eventually produce more corruption than they inhibit. The issue is that, at the heart of every moderation, ban , suspension, etc. decision is a biased opinion. These are the opinions of the social media platforms: biased, uninformed, and risk averse.

Proposals to address this undesirable state of affairs, and to counteract the damage that social media causes with its short-sighted and unprincipled practices involve tinkering with section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, regulating the ability of social media to de-platform certain view-points, etc. These all involve the subjective judgments of a different set of people about what is and is not part of public discourse. Here is a suggestion for minimizing social media bias without additional government intervention:

Allow people to post whatever they want, but when they post they have to declare whether the content of the post is represented as fact or opinion. This should be trivial to implement; just have a check box on the post submission form. If the post is represented as fact, then there should be a mechanism to include a link to supporting information, so people can assess for themselves the validity of the claim. This will do two things. It will immediately put readers on notice that the content of the post is just an opinion. Imagine for example the claim that Trump colluded with the Russians during the 2016 election, or that hydroxychloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID. If the person posting such claims indicates that these are only his opinions, then the reader is apprised of the fact that the poster considers the claims to be opinions. If on the other hand, the poster indicates that the claim is fact, the reader can then assess the credibility of the supporting source. If something false is represented as fact, the poster would be subject to libel and slander actions, just as they were previously under common law. The great benefit to this proposal is that readers would bear the responsibility of deciding for themselves that something represented as opinion is worth believing, or that something represented as fact is true. The poster would in effect be producing his own content warning.

Make-Believe, Villains and Heroes

 Make-believe is an ingrained part of human experience. It is readily observed in the play of young children. It is observed in social conventions; it is expected that in many social interactions we are expected to behave as though something were true, even when everyone knows it is not. Make believe plays a role in how humans cope with misfortune, such as terminal diseases. Given the prevalence of make-believe, it is natural to consider whether it is innate, and more relevantly whether the capacity for make believe is useful, or even essential to human functioning.

As with any phenomenon that pertains to human cognition, one may surmise that make-believe is associated with the human capacity of awareness of the future. One of the ways that humans formulate plans is to mentally simulate processes that allow them to assess things will "play-out" in various scenarios, and this is a form of make-believe. Make-believe is an element of formulating models, which is essential to the human capacity to plan, innovate and anticipate in novel and complex environments.

Make-believe is also an element of mankind's socializing processes. The analogy of humans to actors playing parts is centuries old. It is almost universal that people behave outwardly in a manner to affect the opinions of others, whether or not this behavior is a faithful result of true personality. A lie is simply a species of make-believe. 

Make-believe is a part of the myth-making and narrative maintenance which are central to ideological movements. These types of make-believe tend to become more elaborate and, in many circumstances, more absurd. Social justice warriors, for example, engage in make-believe whereby they cast themselves as combatants in battles long since won, or contrive for themselves straw armies to vanquish anew. This type of make-believe is often found in mass-movements that produced some of history's worst atrocities.

An easy distinction in ideological make-believe separates those plot-lines in which people's pretensions apply to themselves, e.g. that they are heroic, or oppressed, or virtuous, etc., and those in which the make-believe is projected onto other people. The latter phenomenon involves make-believe, i.e. pretending that strangers are oppressors. or racist or backward or hateful, because it fulfills the psychological and ideological needs of the pretender. The former phenomenon, in which people engage in make-believe about themselves is universal, and for the most part, harmless and occasionally even useful. The later, in which people pretend that other people are a certain way because such make-believe is necessary to maintain an ideological myth and supporting narratives leads to discrimination, injustice, genocide and misery. When make-believe becomes indistinguishable from reality it becomes a delusion, and when this make-believe involves the bad character and lack of virtue of others, and affects how those others are treated, it becomes the excuse for great evil.

Election Fraud.

 Election fraud denies the benefit of elections to people who have the right to vote. If a person properly casts a vote for a given candidate or proposal and someone else casts an illegal vote in opposition, the legal vote is effectively canceled. 

There is an irreconcilable trade-off between access to voting and prevention of fraud. Constant complaints of abstract voter suppression ignore this fact. Addressing this circumstance dismissively by saying that there is "no evidence" of voter fraud enables voter fraud. 

It is more important that legitimate votes be protected against cancelation by fraudulent votes than it is that elections accommodate a theoretical class of people who are assumed to be unable to comply with even the most basic of voter requirements. 

Does Censorship work?

 As mentioned in an earlier post, censorship is not an effective way to prevent the dissemination of information. It can slow such dissemination and make it more inconvenient, but it cannot stop the spread of information. Phenomena such as samizdat, steganography and even double entendre can be used to circumvent censorship efforts. Censorship carries a negative connotation, evoking images of totalitarian repression, Nazi and Soviet excesses, and the misery with which they were associated. Censorship seems to be all downs-side, with little benefit.

Organizations such as social media companies, news outlets and academic institutions resort to censorship not to suppress information, but to delegitimize it. It is little more than a clumsy way to cast aspersions, i.e. engage in name-calling, with respect to competing perspectives. The goal of censorship, or its modern euphemistic incarnations such as “fact-checking” or “countering disinformation” is a primitive form of argument in which one side invalidates the other’s opinions by proclamation. The “fact-checkers” and social media platforms decide that certain ideas are undesirable, so they label them and pretend that those ideas have been objectively discredited when they have not. This tactic likely has some effect in the short term, but it can only be maintained at the cost of the censors credibility. Each instance in which information was suppressed and subsequently found to be legitimate, as happened with much Coronavirus information, detracts from the authority and influence of the platforms and institutions engaging in such suppression. The result will be that social medial companies, colleges and universities and news organizations will have squandered their credibility, and it will be unavailable to them when it might actually be needed.

Myths, Narratives and Make-Believe

 A previous post mentioned the role that make-believe plays in bot day-to-day human interactions as well as larger endeavors such as political movements. The hypothesis presented was that make-believe is an innate and largely useful element of how humans contend with competing socializing instincts and uncertainty associated with contemplation of the future. The post also referred to comments regarding make-believe by Eric Hoffer in his book The True Believer, and how make-believe was an essential component in motivating members of mass movements. Similar ideas were noted in the writings and philosophy of the syndicalist Georges Sorel.

Sorel, in his Letter to Daniel Halévy defines "myths" as "expressions of a will to act." The designation of myth makes no implication regarding factual content. The purpose of this post is to consider some current public discourse from this perspective. It is not intended to either affirm or refute current ideas.

Taking Sorel's definition as a starting point, we should immediately make a clarifying distinction: that between myth and narrative. If we limit a myth to Sorel's definition, i.e. an expression of the will to act, narrative consists of those vignettes and stories that support the myth and maintain it as it encounters real-world events and individual experience. From here we may give a few examples of current myths and contrast them with associated narratives:

Myths include: Manifest Destiny, American exceptionalism, systemic racism, gender as a social construction, "whiteness," climate change, the global community, etc. Again, the characteristic that makes these myths in the Sorelian sense is their capacity to motivate action, regardless of their factual validity. Narratives include those stories; e.g. discrete police shootings; election irregularities regarding late night vote dumps, educational discrepancies, etc. that are used to maintain the myth and sustain its ability to enable " a will to act."

Both Sorel and Hoffer used early Christianity as an example of the effectiveness of motivating beliefs, i.e. myths, in the growth of the religion. Both Hoffer and Sorel note the role that these beliefs had in the resolve and influence of early martyrs. It is interesting to note that Hoffer spoke of make-believe and Sorel of the imperviousness of myth to reasoned opposition. Sorel asserted that myths are used to defend movements against "objections to practical possibility." This particular attribute of myth helps explain why critics denounce particular movements as "religions" or "cults," as in the cult of global warming, or the religion critical race theory, or the cult of Donald Trump. Myths do not need to make sense; their purpose is not to persuade but to motivate.

Sorel claimed that a myth is the opposite of what he called a "utopia," and considered that utopias are intellectual abstractions that in themselves do not lead to action. Sorel noted however that all successful myths have "a utopian element," and this bears some resemblance to Hoffer's claim that all mass movements have a "millenarian" component. Hoffer suggested that the professed goals of a mass movement are always within the scope of imagination, but always just beyond realization. This again resembles Sorel's observation regarding "objections to practical possibilities." This phenomenon addresses one of the most striking paradoxes of modern political discourse: why myths that seem to produce actions that have desirable results generate counter-myths.

One may conceive that one of the most consequential myths of American history is the statement in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal." It is of course facially untrue as a general proposition although defensible against "objections to practical possibilities in more rigorously defined circumstances, for example "equal before the law," or "equal in the eyes of God." Nonetheless, the myth conformed to Sorel's definition, i.e. the expression of a will to act" that motivated the war of American Independence, the Civil War, the Civil Rights amendments, the Civil Rights Act, Brown v. the Board of Education, etc. When this myth seems closer than ever to realization, ideologies arise to replace it with myths that "equality" is an alibi for injustice that prevents "equity." This new myth has the characteristics identified by Sorel: an expression of the will to act, defense against against "objections to practical possibility," and a utopian element. Similar observations can be made regarding myths such as "gender is socially constructed," or that anti-social behavior is a result of poverty. 

That myths, narratives and make-believe have been a part of human history and played prominent roles in how society developed seems to be uncontroversial, even if one considers only the myths that accompanied the spread of the Great Religions. What remains to be determined is the role that modern phenomena such as social media; partisan, non-objective news media; and myths masquerading as scientific "consensus" have on history. There is also a question of whether the actions that myths, narratives and make-believe are presumed to motivate will have predictable outcomes, or simply provoke counter-myths in an unending series of human restlessness.

One thing to note is that, while myths do not have to be credible, narratives do. The more ridiculous narratives become the more they detract from, rather than support underlying myths. Thus, silly notions, such as that the word "picnic" is offensive, are likely to degrade the myths intended to organize collective will and produce collective action.

Censorship and Make-Believe

One of the current social phenomena affecting discourse on matters of public interest is the resistance to dissemination of particular classes of views. This phenomenon includes, but is not limited to classic censorship, e.g. removing books on particular subjects, to social media companies suppressing various ideas under the euphemism "disinformation," discouraging the expression of views through bullying and intimidation under the guise that some thoughts are "harmful." The fact that these phenomena exist is beyond dispute, so the relevant inquiries become will be their likely effects and what are the motivations for such practices?

The first question, related to the effects behind limiting the scope and content of public discourse, is related to the question of whether it is possible to ever suppress compelling ideas. Practical experience is that it is not. Even in the Soviet Union with its surveillance apparatus, the phenomenon of samizdat made possible the circulation of ideas in the setting of difficulties imposed by the state. Parents who initially believe that they can control their children's behavior by restricting what information those children are exposed to soon (for example with respect to vulgar language, drugs, sex, etc.)  find out that the world is far more efficient at disseminating information than is at first assumed. The early Christian Church was able to proselytize and grow despite government efforts to suppress and influence knowledge of it. Often, the attempts at suppressing information in itself conveys information, such as when newspapers omit information from a story to "discourage stereotypes." Humans are adaptable, and they adapt to efforts to control information in ways that frustrate those controls.

It does not take much sophistication to circumvent official or quasi-official efforts to control discourse. Information travelled quite effectively before the advent of information technologies. It does not take technical expertise to convey innuendo through the technique of double entendre, for example. Steganography is the process of concealing a message within another message or image. More commonly, ideas leak out into the wider society simply because humans have social instincts that make them prone to communicate interesting ideas to others, regardless of institutional assessment of those ideas. The institutions referenced here are those such as government, corporations and academic organizations.

Ultimately, it is the content of an idea that determines whether it will spread in a society. Weak ideas may spread with the help of large and powerful organizations, but this does not make the ideas influential. Strong ideas will spread due to the influence they have on the people who hold them, and regardless of efforts to suppress them. 

Suppression of ideas through censorship or other means is destined to fail if the ideas involved have value. Suppression of ideas requires constant energy that drains the organizations and institutions that attempts such suppression. The countless number of ways that ideas may be disseminated requires constant innovation and increasingly complex process to manage information, until the enterprise collapses under its own weight. More significantly, the efforts of a particular institution to manage ideas inevitably changes the institution doing so. Eventually Twitter, for example, becomes an echo chamber and not a valuable means of serious discourse.

Intelligent people know that efforts to suppress ideas are likely to fail over the long term, so one may reasonably ask the second question posed above: what are the motivations for such attempts? The obvious answer, that such efforts are undertaken to advance a political agenda, does not account for the historical futility of such efforts. While political manipulation certainly explains a great deal of information regulation, there are likely other motivations involved.

One of the sub-chapters of Eric Hoffer's book  The True Believer is headed "Make-Believe." Hoffer stated 

In the practice of mass movements, make-believe plays perhaps a more enduring role than any other factor. When faith and the power to persuade or coerce are gone, make-believe lingers on.

Hoffer's concept of make-believe is nearly identical to Georges Sorel's idea of Myth, and the more contemporary journalistic malady of "narrative." Make-believe, or play-acting or pretense is an innate human trait. It is the basis of much of the play that children engage in as they are exposed to and adapt to the world. It is how they practice growing up. Hoffer argued that make-believe was an important factor in preparing soldiers for the killing and dying associated with warfare, whatever its cause. Alfred Rosenberg's Nazi polemic The Myth of the Twentieth Century indicates the motivating power of make-believe right in the title.

The purpose of much modern censorship and information suppression is not really to eradicate ideas, or even keep them from spreading. It is to stigmatize them so that they do not interfere with the illusions that underlie the make-believe, the myths and narratives that give people the desired image of themselves. They are intended as much to maintain the illusion that the world is a morality play in which only certain people can be the hero as they are to change the world outside of that imagined world of myth and narrative. One reason information is suppressed, or discouraged is not because that information is bad for the world, or detrimental to abstractions such as equality or justice, but rather because it is inconvenient to the fanciful narratives that people create to flatter themselves. Hoffer noted that "Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience..." It is this striving for glory or public approval or even self-image that motivates much of our modern narratives, and is the reason why Facebook and Twitter and the news media and academic institutions are so eager to suppress information. Modern censorship is not so much an attempt to control the political opinions of people as much as it is to control people's moral impressions of other people. This is why affluent, educated, comfortable people approve of it. Censorship and suppression of ideas are more commonly used to maintain a narrative than they are to keep people from becoming aware of certain ideas, which is an almost impossible undertaking.

One should also note Hoffer's observation cited above: Make-believe lingers on when faith and the power to persuade or coerce are gone. Censorship and information suppression are not means to an end. Their relative prevalence among corporations and Universities may simply reflect the waning ability to persuade or coerce.

Will There Be Inflation?

 A very common economic concern at the moment is whether there will be significant inflation as the result of large federal spending programs as well as the injection into the economy of vast sums of money as the result of the Federal Reserve increasing the money supply by buying government bonds. There are even concerns that the United States might experience hyperinflation. Opinions on this subject vary widely with experts of differing backgrounds providing contradictory predictions and analyses. In order to sort through these and try to establish a foundation so that reasonably intelligent people with common sense can make their own educated guesses, it might help to begin with some non-controversial observations.

I. The value of anything is ultimately a matter of opinion

The first is that inflation is a phenomenon that reflects the value of money in relation to the value of other things. When money is considered less valuable, for example with respect to a list of consumer items, it takes more money to exchange for those items and inflation results. This observation is a specific example of the more general observation that the value of anything is a matter of opinion. IT may consensus opinion, or expert opinion or popular opinion, but anything is only worth what someone thinks it is worth. This was demonstrated quite dramatically when the value of Bitcoin dropped when Elon Musk expressed opinions about it. His opinions affected the opinions of others, with the result that Bitcoin lost about 40% of its value over a period of a few days. 

When pondering inflation, it is not only the opinion regarding the value of money with respect to something or class of things, but the anticipated future value of money with respect to those things. This point  is a source of much of the disagreement and difference of opinion regarding inflation. To male this point more concise, inflation is affected by the opinion of what the value of money with respect to some reference will be in the near future. It should be noted that another source of disagreement is what that reference is: it is quite possible for example that there will be inflation in price of some things and deflation in the price of others. The value of anything is ultimately a matter or opinion. When sufficient popular opinion, or authoritative opinion regarding something (such as Bitcoin or Blackberry devices) changes, the value of those things change. 

II. The supply of money interacts with other factors to produce inflation or deflation

The second point arises from limitations of the notion that increasing the money supply leads to inflation. This principle was not borne out by the experience of Japan in the 1990s, nor in the United States following quantitative easing associated with the 2008 financial crisis. Whether it will be true of recent injections of money into economy is the key inquiry at the base of contemporary inflation concerns. The explanation for the failure of quantitative easing to generate significant inflation is that the money that was being created was being injected into a liquidity trap. The money was not circulating in the economy because because people were hoarding it; that is inflation depends not only on the quantity of money, but also on people's willingness to spend it, i.e. liquidity. Liquidity, like value is as much a result of psychological factors as it is economic ones. This leads to the concern that "pent-up demand" will lead to a surge in liquidity and provide an inflationary stimulus that was lacking in 1990s Japan or subsequent to the 2008 financial crisis. 

Liquidity depends on willingness of people to spend money and this willingness is very sensitive to their opinions about future economic conditions. As with the idea of the value of money, differences in inflation estimates that consider liquidity rely on accurate predictions of people's opinions, and there is no way to reliably do this; hence we have widely divergent predictions for inflation from "low" to "manageable" to "significant but transient" to "high and persistent" to "runaway hyperinflation." The key concept is that inflation is highly sensitive to people's opinions and perceptions about the future and this is very difficult to accurately model.

III. The key psychological determinant of inflation is confidence, and this has provides conflicting inflationary pressures.

Confidence is really just a particular type of opinion, but it is actually the type that will determine whether there is significant inflation, and what type it will be. Confidence applies to different things and what those things are determine if confidence produces or inhibits inflation.

One can look at the experience of Bitcoin and consider that its price in U.S. dollars reflects confidence that 1.) it will hold its value, 2.) that it will remain liquid, i.e. that it will be easily convertible into other things of value, 3.) that it will be a secure and largely anonymous medium of exchange. Loss of confidence in any of these things will affect its price, as happened when Elon Musk implied that environmental concerns might influence it acceptability as currency. The disturbance of confidence affected the opinion of what the future value of Bitcoin would be; no one wants to hold an asset that is likely to plummet in value (which is highly sensitive to opinion) and be worth much less in the near future. The day-to-day value of Bitcoin as reflected in its market price is largely a measure of confidence.

The same principle applies to the U.S. dollar. Its present value is affected by opinions of its future value in terms of liquidity, stability, etc. and these in turn depend on confidence in government policies. Loss of confidence in government, particularly perceptions that governments are corrupt or ineffective is a common feature of countries afflicted with hyperinflation, such as Weimar Germany, and more recently Argentina, Zimbabwe and Venezuela. As with Bitcoin, the value of the dollar is a reflection of the confidence that people have that it will hold its value particularly against other currencies. One may note that the United States has a bit of a buffer in this regard given the dollar's status as the recognized reserve currency. 

All money is essentially backed by the value of something, and in the case of fiat money, that something is confidence. Money backed by confidence is worth more as confidence increases; i.e. the value of money with respect to other goods and services goes up as confidence increases and this is a deflationary effect. When confidence goes down, the value of money goes down and this is an inflationary effect. Economists can measure confidence at a point in time, but not in the future, even the near future. Even such metrics as bond prices and associated interest rates can give no more than an estimate of current opinion rather than future opinion. This results in a significant limitation on their ability to model inflation and explains the lack of consensus regarding what will happen in the setting of huge injections of cash into the U.S. economy.

Confidence in the government and its policies increases the value of money and is a deflationary influence, but lack of confidence in individual economic circumstances leads to hoarding money, lack of liquidity and is also a deflationary influence. Confidence is both deflationary, when applied to future government credibility, and inflationary when applied to an individual concerns regarding his own economic prospects. This is a complex interaction that cannot be easily modeled. 

Technological innovation tends to increase efficiency and therefore increases the supply of goods and services, resulting in a deflationary variable. It may also make a worker more anxious for the future of his job and also produce a deflationary effect. However technological innovation may create a sense of reassurance that considerations of scarcity are not thought of as existential threats, to the point that politicians might talk openly of universal basic income based on adding no value to the economy whatsoever. This encourages spending and would be expected to have inflationary tendencies. The amount of money per unit of work is conceivably infinite, which is definitely an inflationary state. 

IV. Other factors that influence inflation are ultimately dependent on opinions regarding value.

The remainder if this post is published on the LibertyZ.substack.com site.

Hypothesis

The most enduring changes are in response to excess. This is because the response to excess cannot afford to be capricious. Excesses tend to highlight those things that should endure and not be sacrificed in the interest of novelty.

Modern Trends

 There are several trends in modern life that might be expected to have significant economic and political effects. Three of the most prominent are:

1. The trend toward experiencing things and away from accomplishing things. Another way to state this is that there is a trend toward entertainment and way from production. This trend is facilitated by several factors: the prominence of mass media available on mobile devices, the progress of computer technology in creating virtual experiences, and affluence which makes the luxury of entertainment ore readily accessible. The distinction is illustrated by video games. When on plays a video game he is experiencing something; same as when he watches a movie; but it is a stretch to say that he accomplishes anything. Outside of his own personal experiences in the video game environment the world is little changed by his exploits. 

In general people tend to pay for experiences and get paid for accomplishments. Furthermore, the trend in favor of experiences, particularly virtual ones, distorts the perception of risk, in that most experiences are designed as to minimize obvious physical perils. There are also psychological consequences of this trend, as the effects on such things as self-esteem, goal-setting, satisfaction and even happiness are different for real-world accomplishments and manufactured experiences.

2. The trend toward substituting the subjective for the objective. This is seen quite prominently in conflicts that arise from how the speech or opinions of one person make another feel, and the notion that those feelings should create what are effectively legal obligations on the parts of others. The rise of this trend is simply the extension of childhood expectations about the world into adulthood, and accommodation of this extension that is enabled by affluence and security. It is, like entertainment, a luxury commodity that is unlikely to persist when the real-world consequences of this trend begin producing tangible harms. Subjective feelings cannot be squared with objective facts, for the simple reason that these feelings will vary from person to person and inevitably create conflicts that cannot be resolved. The short-term artifice of prioritizing feelings is doomed to failure over the long term, because the act of prioritizing will simply provoke other conflicting, subjective feelings. The prioritization is itself subjective and will invite resistance from those whose feelings are slighted by not being given higher priority.

This trend is the effluent of the fashionable politics of grievance and complaint. It is a trend that seeks validation of emotional wants and psychological needs in defiance of the natural consequences that the resulting indulgence provokes. 

3. The trend away from the scarcity of necessities. This trend, largely the result of technological innovation and economic progress challenges some of the presumptions inherent in long-established economic theories. No one in advanced societies die of famine anymore, and homelessness is not a matter of the inability to provide sufficient shelters. The economic theories that permitted practical modeling based on trade-offs in economic decision-making, and permitted at least first-order approximations between money and commodities are challenges by the decreasing fact of scarcity in bare essentials. A job market that would create employment in agriculture as a necessary effect of staving off food-shortages is no longer a given. One consequence of this, whether the jobs in question are in agriculture, manufacturing, construction, medicine, etc. is that employment and labor have a more tenuous relationship to scarcity, and a job is no longer essential to deal with the effects of scarcity. In some places, jobs become optional, inviting social and psychological consequences that are largely unknown. 

Biases and Education

 Seemingly lost among controversies regarding academic and corporate “equity” training programs is 1.) whether such training is the best way to accomplish its stated goal, and 2.) whether it works at all. In examining the first question, we may assume that “education” has some sort of universal application; that it possible for example to “teach” empathy, or any other emotion for that matter. It also assumes that education can over-ride or suppress inherent cognitive processes that appear biased but are in fact quite useful and potent in dealing with novelty and uncertainty.

Assuming for the sake of argument that educational and training programs can achieve such goals, one may reasonably ask if a particular doctrine or curriculum is an effective approach, whether it is the only such approach, and whether it is the best approach. Even if it is accepted that such training accomplishes something, there remains the issue of whether a particular curriculum or doctrine can be critiqued. An odd characteristic of anti-racism, for example, is that critiquing anti-racism doctrine is proof of racism. Obviously, the assertion is fallacious, as it would lead to the absurd conclusion that the inquiry as to whether there are better ways to achieve anti-racist outcomes is itself racist.

The larger issue is whether certain aspects of cognitive functioning, such as using analogies to fill in missing information, and recognizing patterns in data to draw inferences can either be taught, or more relevantly, can be unlearned.

A seminal question is whether a person can “learn” emotions that he otherwise would not experience, or not experience with significant intensity. It is reasonable to ask if a person can “learn” empathy, or merely learn to behave as though he had empathy. The same question applies to other emotions. Would we think of teaching someone to feel grief, or joy, or remorse? One obvious point that may be raised is whether people can be made to hate. The question is not, however whether a person who is incapable of hating can be taught to do so, but whether a person who is otherwise capable of hating can be made to direct that hatred to a particular object. The issue is not one of education, but one of manipulation and conditioning.

Emotions have purposes and likely also have sound evolutionary and social rationales. They exist for a reason, and that reason may be wholly unrelated to a particular social doctrine or ideology. In all likelihood, teaching someone, or simply conditioning someone to behave as though they have empathy or grief, or whatever, does not achieve the evolutionary purposes that the desired emotion has. It likely is not possible to teach empathy, only an ersatz, play-acting imitation of it.

Similarly, it is probably not possible to educate someone out of “biases” or other useful cognitive devices that are essential for dealing with novelty and uncertainty in the world. A quick thought experiment might be to imagine walking in a forest and encountering a large animal that you have never seen before standing in the path. Would you pet it? Regardless of how you respond, the answer will betray a bias. There is likely no way for this bias to be eradicated by self-reflection, confession, or role-playing. The issue is not one of good biases and bad biases, it is rather of biases and no biases, and no biases is incompatible with normal experience.

This situation is exacerbated by an ambiguity. In fact some biases can be learned, but again this is a matter of how the capacity for using biases as a means for dealing with a complex world can be manipulated for insular purposes. It is certainly the case that children can be taught things that are not true, and this applies when the subject of such teaching is other people or groups of people. Children can be taught that members of another race or religion are somehow bad, but this simply affects a given state of knowledge and can be changed. Beliefs about a subject which are instilled by education or indoctrination can be unlearned, without affecting the underlying ability to learn, believe or discern. There are functionally at least two distinct types of biases: those that are inherent and essential to cognitive functioning and decision-making in circumstances of novelty and uncertainty, and which cannot be changed by “training,” and those that are taught, in which case they are simply one item in the class of things that can be taught, and which includes their negation.

So anti-bias or anti-racism training is of limited use. It may be beneficial in highlighting issues, but cannot change anything more substantive than volatile beliefs, which are likely to be changed by the next social fad. 

Constraints on Liberty

 There is a new post on the LibertyZ.substack.com site regarding constraints on liberty. The purpose of the posts on that site are to present foundational arguments regarding the role of liberty in human flourishing, and why, for example, libertarianism does not require an individual right to own artillery pieces.

Coronavirus: Coda

 Now that the number of coronavirus cases worldwide seems to be in sustained decline, one may make some final observations:

1. Lockdowns did little to affect the spread of the virus or the final numbers of those infected. If one looked at the profiles of the number of daily new cases from various jurisdictions, it is impossible to tell which resorted to strict social-control policies such as business closings, mask requirements, school closings, etc. The biology of the virus, and its interaction with local environments had much more effect on the spread of the virus than did "public health measures."

2. The virus most likely was the result of a laboratory accident.

3. The scientific community and "experts" were practically useless. The early politicization of the corona virus response meant that a prime, and rare opportunity to understand the nature of viral pandemics, but the expert class was too self-interested, venal and short-sighted to take advantage of it. History will not be kind to them.

4. We don't know nearly what we pretend to about herd immunity, infection vectors, environmental factors or disease modeling. 

5. Much of the angst and panic regarding the pandemic response was the result of reactions to a news report describing how Italian physicians had to triage patients and decide which patients who needed ventilatory support would not get it. 

6. The China and Russia vaccines are not very effective, but probably better than nothing. The mRNA vaccines are generally safe, with somewhat less than advertised efficacy, but have the real but rare side effects of myocarditis and inner ear inflammation leading to tinnitus and occasionally deafness.

Liberty

 Here is the opening of a new post on liberty. The remainder of the post is on the LibertyZ.substack.com site. The next post will be on equality.

In the purest sense liberty is the capacity to behave as one would wish in the complete absence of interactions with other people. This idea of liberty is not particularly useful however, lacking a real-world relevance to those situations in which liberty is a practical concern. As with other concepts, such as privacy and empathy, liberty has no practical meaning outside the context of interactions with others. 

Foundation of civil society.

 There are many factors that contribute to the success of human societies. Some of these are manifestations of socializing instincts, others are institutions that have been found useful through experience, and tested by adversity. The essential basis of civil society is not empathy or tolerance or education or rule of law or civility, as useful as these may be. The foundation upon all functioning societies rest is the keeping of one’s word; of doing what a person says he will do. This is the essential condition that allows humans to form complex organizations that transcend the insularity of the tribe or clan.

The keeping of one’s word, the observance of vows is inherent in concepts such as social contracts, and other forms of government that rely on the assent of the governed. It is essential to the concept of trust and allows humans to use to use the remarkable capacity of cognition, planning, and creativity to produce human societies that progress and improve the lives of their members. The simple concept of doing what a person says he will do forms the rationale for considering as virtues such concepts as honor, duty and integrity. It also functions to strengthen psychological bonds that hold people and groups of people together. Keeping one’s word is an essential requirement of civil society for much the same reason that it is an essential element of friendship.

This was cross-posted at LibertyZ.substack.com

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Coronavirus: One possibility

There are many possible explanations for why the severity of COVID seems to be declining, and that the case fatality rate is plummeting. These include variations in susceptibility, genetic mutation of the virus, different strains, etc. Another possible explanation is that most of the COVID-19 deaths involved pneumonia. It is possible that the decline in mortality is a consequence of the the decline in pneumonia among those infected with SARS-CoV-2, and that this in turn is a seasonal phenomenon. Perhaps environmental factors in warming weather change the risk of developing pneumonia, and make late spring-early summer infections less lethal. Given that these may contribute to heard immunity, a spike in cases in the summer months, particularly among younger people, may in fact lessen the severity of COVID in the fall and winter.

Coronavirus: Dilemma

One possibility exists that presents a real dilemma for public health officials: that a greater number of infections in midsummer will mean a less severe resurgence in the fall and winter. It may be the case that the best management over the long term is to intervene as little as possible.

Another dilemma may arise from the strategy of waiting for a vaccine before relaxing interventions meant to control spread of the virus. What if there is a vaccine but it only has the same efficacy as the typical flu vaccine, say 25% to 30%? Is that good enough? What if the vaccine is needed more than once a year to maintain protection? Should behavioral interventions continue? 

Coronavirus: Second wave

There is a great deal of hand-wringing regarding the recent resurgence in coronavirus cases in the United States. There is also consequently a great deal of finger-pointing and claims of mis-management. Before getting too far into discussing how policy is related to the trajectory of corona-virus cases, one should quickly look at the number of cases in disparate countries such as Israel, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, etc. There has been an upswing in cases in locales representing the spectrum of interventions. The simplest explanation for this is that the virus gets a vote in how it spreads, and such spread is largely insensitive to interventions meant to control it. This, if nothing else, suggests that the interventions accomplish little.

As was mentioned several weeks ago on this blog, the expectation is that the severity of disease will decline prior to the pandemic abating. This is what is, in fact observed. the typical explanation of this is that the genetic mutations account for his phenomenon, but such is not essential to predicting that this would happen. We don't know why the severity of disease declines, but on possibility is that it is not a genetic phenomenon, but an epigenetic one. It may result from the interaction of the virus with the environment, humans, and communities. Whatever the case, this latest resurgence in COVID-19 does seem more characteristic of "a bad flu" than did the earlier infections.

Coronavirus: Lessons

At this point in the experience with coronavirus, we probably have enough information to begin sketching the outlines of some lessons to be learned from the pandemic. Of course, it is always possible to learn the wrong lessons from experience, but nonetheless it is important to at least examine where we have been and to try and sort out what we know, what we think we know, what we don't know. and what we think we know but don't. In this spirit, taking each of the posts in this series as a hypothesis based on the information available when the post was made, this seems to be the state of lessons learned, based on subsequent information:

1. There is confusion about how easily the virus spreads. This is easily explained by the notion that the virus spreads easily and does not spread easily. In other words, it does not spread easily in the most common environments, but its ability to spread is greatly enhanced in other environments. This seems obvious by looking at the differential experiences in discrete settings associated with outbreaks, specifically nursing homes and long term care facilities. This is easily understood with reference to the post discussing the probability of virus transmission varying with the type of exposure. Most exposures are very low likelihood of transmitting the virus, but the number of higher risk exposures increases dramatically in favorable environments. This accounts for the apparent anomaly in case rates, and why the rates are in general lower than expected in community settings, and also why there is such a discrepancy between various locations.

2. The models that have formed the basis of decision making are based on assumptions that are overly simplistic. The idea that infection is a process of a susceptible person encountering a number of virus particles and thereby getting infected skips a lot of necessary detail. For one thing, different people will have different susceptibilities. For another, the risk of transmission varies continuously with multiple factors. For example, in the discussion of masks, there is a lot of theorizing about the virus being contained in droplets of body fluids; i.e. saliva, phlegm, mucus, tears, etc. The notion that these droplets are passive conveyances for genetic material is probably too simple. Those droplets likely contain enzymes, antibodies, chemokines, and other factors that may enhance or retard infection of another person with the virus. When the same material is coughed or breathed onto a surface and the accompanying droplet evaporates or otherwise metabolizes, the combination of the virus and the environment in which it is encountered likely changes the risk of infection. Whether this is enhancement or diminution depends on still more factors. Masks probably do limit the number of virions that an infected person distributes to the environment, but there is not enough information to know if this is significant; e.g. does it depend on whether the person in symptomatic, does it vary with time of day or hydration status, etc.

3. Whether or not lockdowns work, lockdown orders do not. There is simply no practical way to affect the course of a contagion with all of the exceptions, non-compliance, and necessary exposures which are unavoidable. If you seal 85 %  of the leaks in a ship, it is still eventually going to sink.

4. The most obvious lesson to be had from looking at different case rates, case fatality rates and hospitalization rates between various places, and trying to correlate them with "responses" is a fruitless endeavor. The underlying assumption, that government response has a significant affect on common transmission of the virus, is false. This is the lesson of Arapahoe and Douglas Counties, which had the exact same responses and significantly different results. It is foolish then to try and determine whether the Swedish response is better or worse than the German one, or the South Korean to the Singaporean, etc. Viral biology gets a vote, as do a myriad of other factors.

The term "common transmission" in the preceding paragraph was used intentionally. It is unlikely that lockdowns, and social distancing, and other measures beyond those common sense precautions that people are apt to observe anyway, affect the risk of infection of the average person. This is not however the case with those situations involving high probability exposures, such as nursing homes. The government can make things better with wise policies and significantly worse with poor ones. For every life saved by government intervention, there  some lost to the same apparatus.

5. Data driven decision were made considerably more difficult because of competing considerations for use of such data. Some considerations required inclusive data, and biased counting methods in favor of diagnosis, and others required more certainty, biasing against it. This reflected competing scientific priorities, but once economic and political factors were allowed to infiltrate the process, the state of the collected data became a mess.

6. Some politicians do not seem to understand that respect for the rule of law and public authority is not unconditional, and that it requires an infrastructure of trust, respect and common sense. "Because I said so, and I get to make that decision" is incompetent, leads to reluctance by law enforcement to effect such orders, and loss of authority for both law enforcement and elected officials when they are seen to be arbitrary, excessive and foolish. Tone-deaf appeals to "science" do not rectify the damage, since it is becoming obvious that the science is not nearly well-enough understood to be convincing. The loss of respect for authority, the flouting of government orders and ridicule of law enforcement will have long-lasting effects that will persist long after the coronavirus has faded.

7. Yes, the severity of coronavirus cases decreases over time. There is no good explanation for why it does, but it does. Some suggestions from various places include genetic mutation of the virus, different symptom profiles related to changes in weather, partial immunity, etc.

8. The notion of relative susceptibility limiting the number of community transmitted cases, as discussed in the first few posts in this series appears to be holding up. It is consistent with otherwise seemingly inconsistent observations regarding disease prevalence, antibody testing, R0, etc. Also, the notion that spread of the virus occurs around points of equilibrium that are largely determined by environment seems to have held up reasonably well.

9. COVID-19, while caused by a single virus is actually a family of diseases.

10. There is a lot we don't know: how long has the virus been in the United States, is the virus that infects people on the West Coast significantly different than that on the East Coast, does hydroxychloroquine work, does zinc, what is the incubation period, do infected people develop immunity, does smoking help or hurt, how infectious are children, is there cross-immunity with other coronaviruses, is there a post-COVID syndrome, how many years of life life lost are attributable to the virus, is there a mechanism by which mechanical ventilators increase lung damage that would not occur otherwise, will there be a second wave, will the virus fade in the summer, why aren't homeless people dying in droves, etc., etc.

11. The most important lesson, for anyone thinking of ways to use the pandemic to their advantage; political, economic, career, etc.: Don't play games with things that you don't understand. You may not like the consequences that flow from what you don't know.