“Damn those negative emotions,” she said angrily.

Emotions can be real killers, sometimes literally.  We all have them and some of us are in much better control of our emotions than others.  I’d say the level of control depends on how one is wired. Some have pretty short fuses.  Others, it takes some serious doing to get them all riled up to the point of finally reacting negatively.  It’s all in the person.

Where do emotions come from?  What is their ultimate source?  Does it go deeper than our wiring?

Just to take a trip down Philosophical Lane, according to the theists, God is the fundamental source of who we are as a species, and further that humanity was created in “His” image.  Atheists would, of course, disagree.  But no matter your religion/non-religion, we all know of the God creation narrative.  And the bigger, overarching idea of “God the Entity” is as ubiquitous and cross-cultural as the oxygen we collectively breathe.

Whether you’re a denying agnostic atheist like me, a practicing theist of whatever stripe, or somewhere in-between, the idea of God is universally known.  And the going (common) idea is that God (e.g., First Cause) made us who and what we are; whether crawling up from the evolutionary primordial slime, or as a full-blown, packaged and ready-to-go human being.  (Work with me here on this, hardcore atheists/theists. This is not yet the question. ;)

Sooo, back to our emotions, that got me fantasizing and thinking about how great it would be to be able to “play God” and wipe out all those nasty emotions.  So here it is… your opportunity to play the role of God:

For argument’s sake, you, as God, get to un-contaminate humankind with one negative emotion.  You only get to pick ONE, that’s the caveat.  So which one would it be?  Would it be, for example, greed, hatred, jealousy, anger, envy, other?  Is there one overarching negative emotion that would “take care” of the others, all in one fell swoop?

Your challenge: Play along with this hypothetical.  What emotion, as God, would you fix/undo?

Thanks for posting and recommending.

Evidence That HHS is Corrupting COVID-19 Data for Political Reasons

Pillars of Creation in the Crab Nebula

The 24 minute video below describes how a scientist (astrophysicist), Jeff Hester, who is not an expert in infectious diseases or epidemiology analyzes the CODIV-19 data coming from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) up until July 16, 2020 and then by the HHS (Health and Human Services) thereafter.

Hester has peer-reviewed publications, e.g., this one about the Crab Nebula. He worked on the team that helped repair the Hubble space telescope. He was a tenured professor at Arizona State University. He is now a public speaker, 'Thought Partner' (whatever that is) and whatnot.

The reason Hester focused on July 16 is that it is the date the president required COVID-19 data to be sent to HHS for analysis and reporting, thus removing the CDC as the main federal data analysis and reporting agency. At the time of the transfer, various people were suspicious that the move to HHS was for the purpose of tampering with the data for political purposes.

Based on Dr. Hester's analysis, and assuming it is correct, it looks like the president has required that HHS manipulate the data for political reasons. Two main caveats are that (1) this is one person's analysis and it has not been peer-reviewed by experts, and (2) Hester is not an expert and thus not able to assess whether there are legitimate reasons for the inflection in the data beginning on July 16 that a non-expert might not be aware of.

The reason I am posting this is because of the stark change in data that occurred starting on July 16. It is hard to understand why the data would change so drastically the day that HHS started doing the analysis and reporting. It could be that HHS is doing a different kind of analysis but if I recall correctly, HHS claimed it was doing the same analysis that CDC did (can't find a link to that).

For people who do not want to watch the video, three screen shots below summarize the gist of what his analysis shows.

Screen shots

On July 16, the US infection rate stopped increasing sharply 

and it flattened off

The curve flattening happened only in states that voted for Trump in 2016

Trump has corrupted data before and lied to try to get away with it

Thanks to Larry Motuz for bringing this video to my attention. 

Coronavirus Update 12

Arizona patriots protesting in May against the tyranny 

and horror of social defenses against COVID-19

The New York Times reports on data from various experiments and anecdotal observations strongly suggesting that wearing a face mask could have two major beneficial effects for the mask wearer.

• First, wearing a mask appears to reduce the number of new COVID-19 infections in uninfected people compared to people who do not wear a mask

• Second, wearing a mask appears to reduce the number of viruses uninfected people take in and that postulated reduced virus dose (inoculum) appears to correlate with new infections being both significantly milder and less commonly lethal

Those two tentative hypotheses are not backed by enough evidence to make them proven to the normal standard of statistical confidence for ‘proven’ conclusions concerning infectious diseases. Nonetheless, evidence from various kinds of experiments and observations all strongly suggest that both of these observations are in fact true.

The evidence

At a basic level, common sense suggests that the first benefit is very likely true. That is because infected people who wear masks have been proven to reduce the number of uninfected people they infect. The only way to explain that is to postulate that masks trap some of the viruses that infected people shed into the air. If that is true, and it undoubtedly is, then there is no reason to believe that a mask an uninfected person is wearing would not also trap some viruses in the air, thereby reducing the virus dose and the likelihood of becoming infected.

If that reasoning is sound, then it also suggests that the second benefit is might also true. Some evidence indicates that lower COVID-19 doses tend to lead to less severe disease.

Experiments with animals indicate that when cages are separated by face mask material compared to no mask material, the transmission rate from infected animals in one cage to uninfected animals  in the adjacent cage dropped significantly.

The NYT writes:

“Some indirect data has been accumulating from people as well. Researchers have tentatively estimated that about 40 percent of coronavirus infections do not produce any symptoms. But when some people wear masks, the proportion of asymptomatic cases seems to skyrocket, reportedly surpassing 90 percent during one outbreak at a seafood plant in Oregon. Wearing a face covering doesn’t make people impervious to infection, but these trends of asymptomatic cases could suggest that masks lead to milder disease, potentially reducing hospitalizations and deaths.

Particularly compelling, Dr. Gandhi said, is the data from cruise ships, which pack big groups of people into close quarters. More than 80 percent of those infected aboard Japan’s Diamond Princess in February — before masking had become common practice — came down with symptoms, she noted. But on another vessel that left Argentina in March, and on which all passengers were issued surgical masks after someone onboard came down with a fever, the level of symptomatic cases was below 20 percent. 

The idea that face coverings can curb disease severity, although not yet proven, ‘makes complete sense’, said Linsey Marr, an expert in virus transmission at Virginia Tech. ‘It’s another good argument for wearing masks.’”

Once again, all of this points to at least two unhappy things. First, wearing a mask during the pandemic should have nothing to do with politics in any way. The fact that it is political for tens of millions of Americans shows an unforgivable failure of political leadership mostly (~90%) by the president, the GOP in congress and some GOP governors and state politicians. Instead of being politically neutral, our self-centered narcissist president and some (most?) GOP politicians are simply incapable of dealing rationally with the pandemic.[1] Their ideology betrays and blinds their minds to reality and reason.

Second, the presidential and GOP failure in putting politics over science and rationality has needlessly cost tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. All of these people should be impeached, removed from office, prosecuted for criminal negligence, fined into bankruptcy and imprisoned for at least 15 years. After all, that is just being fair and balanced.

Footnote: 

1. A NYT article today describes a planned school reopening in Georgia: “In-person classes without a mask requirement are scheduled to begin on Friday in Jefferson, worrying some parents, students and teachers as the state confronts the coronavirus. .... An online petition created by two Jefferson High seniors calling for a mandatory-mask rule has garnered more than 600 signatures. But a competing petition demanding that masks remain a choice for students has attracted more than 200 signers, some of whom have left comments that underscore the politicized nature of the disagreement. ‘Only liberals can get rona and I’m not a liberal’, wrote one, using a slang term for the coronavirus. ‘TRUMP2020 no mask fo me.’”

In some places, the politics of COVID-19 has gone from merely grossly incompetent to stupid and literally lethal. The rigid ideology and savage tribalism of most of conservative and populist American politics is mostly responsible for this colossal stupidity and the misery, deaths and costs it imposes on everyone. The ideologues who instigate this sort of anti-mask stupidity are responsible for the consequences of their acts.

Some of these patriots are going to get their wish -- 

unfortunately, they are going to kill some innocents as they 

joyfully exercise their freedom to live and die free 

(that freedom includes the freedom to kill innocents via stupid behavior)

STUPID BEHAVIOR KILLS

Bayesianism, Trump and Putin

Bayesianism, inductive reasoning and level of confidence

As discussed here before, being bayesian about reality and beliefs is a very good mental habit to have, especially for complicated and messy subjects like politics. Simply put, being bayesian means changing the degree of confidence a person has when they become aware of information they were not aware of before. That includes reasoning or logic. The new information can make the bayesian person’s confidence in a belief increase, decrease or even change if it is sufficient. In essence, the bayesian person is a more or less open minded person. That trait is usually accompanied by a mindset that tends toward rationality somewhat more compared to the person’s closed minded counterpart or doppelganger.

As all of us critical thinkers know, forming beliefs about most things involve inductive thinking and some degree of uncertainty in the belief. In politics, important but inconvenient facts, truths and reasoning are often hidden, distorted or denied as lies or nonsense. When that happens, as is usually the case, it is necessary to form beliefs with out important or necessary information. Sometimes we have to make guesses about what reality is using a some variable amount of circumstantial evidence or reasoning. That makes the belief uncertain to some extent.

I sometimes express some of my beliefs in terms of level of personal confidence as a percent, e.g., 60% confident the belief is true. Certainty in belief means 100% confidence in the belief. With politics, messy as it is, sometimes certain beliefs turn out to be false. That can happen if information is hidden, not known to the person and/or the person’s reasoning is flawed. Complicating this is the fact that beliefs often are based on subjective values and there is no single correct belief, e.g., abortion is morally acceptable or it is not.

Degrees of confidence: A person’s degree of confidence in a belief or opinion varies. It can range from ‘maybe’ to ‘more likely than not’ to ‘probably true’ to ‘certainly true’ or certainty. Certainty in belief means a person is 100% confident in the belief or opinion, while maybe tends to mean some range of likelihood or degree of confidence such as ~35-49%. More likely than not means a possibility or level of confidence of at least 50%. With politics, messy as it is, sometimes certain beliefs turn out to be or are false. Sometimes ‘probably not’ type beliefs turn out to be or are true.

Trump, Putin & treason

One of the things in the 2016 election that I found deeply concerning was the possibility that the president could be working with or maybe even for Putin. There was enough circumstantial evidence for me to form a belief that maybe the president was working with or for Putin and was thus a traitor (~35-49% possibility). After all, his campaign operatives had been caught trying to set up a secret line of communication with Putin or his operatives. Why do that?

There was other circumstantial evidence as well. For example, it was also known or suspected that the president (1) laundered money for Russian mobsters and kleptocrats, (2) was a serial business failure with six bankruptcies in his resume, (3) refused to show his tax returns, falsely claiming he could not because they were under audit, (4) was immoral in his personal life (e.g., Stormy Daniels) and broke campaign finance law to hide that fact, (5) the president’s businesses did a great deal of  business with Russian mobsters, and (6) was and still is a chronic liar. I also believed the president was a tax cheat (~90% confident), which explained why he hid his tax returns.

In the 2016 election (Politifact)

After the election, various things raised my level of confidence that the president was working with or for Putin to probably doing so (~60% likelihood). For example, (1) phone calls between him and Putin were not made public and no US officials were present to hear what was being discussed (this is unprecedented), (2) the president denied that Russians attacked the US election, taking Putin’s word for it that Russia had nothing to do with the 2016 election, (3) he publicly sided with Putin against US intelligence agency findings of major Russian interference in the election, (4) he fights tooth and claw in court to keep his tax returns hidden, (5) the Mueller report clearly showed that he obstructed justice at least four or five times to try to stop the investigation of Russian interference in the election, (6) the president solidified his track record as immoral and a chronic liar (100% confidence level) and a crook (99% confidence level), (7) he expresses publicly admiration for tyranny and tyrants including Putin, (8) constant authoritarian rhetoric and behaviors, e.g., attacking the press, and (9) secret phone calls with Putin that coincided with the president taking actions that Putin was wanted ever since he took power, e.g., withdrawing US troops from Germany. We only find out about the phone calls not from the president but from Putin. There could be more phone calls we will probably never know about and we will never know what was discussed in any of them (~95% likelihood).

The following 4 minute interview with Timothy Snyder, author of the book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century (book review here) has raised my belief that the president is a traitor (~98% confidence level). If one looks at what the president is doing from Putin’s point of view, the president is an incredibly useful operative because of his power, deep immorality and other bad personal traits.

Why would the president betray the US and its domestic and international interests? Because he is a crook and a liar, extremely thin-skinned and vindictive, deeply immoral, deeply corrupt, a tyrant wannabe, controllable, and mentally unsound to the point of being completely unfit for office, e.g., he is a self-centered narcissist. Putin has powerful tools at his disposal. Putin can bribe, blackmail and manipulate the president because he is simply not very bright. If the president owes enough money to Russians and they can call in loans and/or show evidence of tax evasion, that could bankrupt him once more and/or subject him to criminal prosecution. If there is evidence of other bad behaviors, e.g., the pee pee tape, Putin can “leak” it just like he leaked damaging evidence against Clinton in the 2016 election.

It appears to me that Putin holds the power here. It is not clear that the president can refuse what he is told to do, and apparently what he is already inclined to do.