Trying to Understand Another Person is Hard

Sorry, this is a long OP. It just strikes me as important and enlightening about what I believe is a deadly serious problem that just doesn't seem to get much attention.

Distrust in experts, government and/or anyone or group outside the tribe

Context

Minds disagreeing over most anything political rarely change. About the best one can hope for is to understand why there is disagreement. In my experience it is usually almost impossible to understand why another person thinks the way they do and thus why they believe what they believe. The level of American public distrust in both science and data is already shocking to the point of being literally terrifying. And, at least some empirical evidence indicates the plague is worsening, e.g., in the case of anti-vaccine beliefs, which are on the rise.

Given the seriousness of reality and reason disconnects, it seems important to try to understand the reasons for disagreement. People can at least see why disagreements exist on almost all political or politicized issues. The following two examples highlight how hard it is to try to come to a good basis for understanding. It takes effort, time and patience. And, I suspect that simply being persistent in trying to understand is often threatening to some degree. Persistence and focus tends to force people to examine their own beliefs and the basis in reality and reason for them. That psychological discomfort is probably why it is so difficult to come to a clear understanding most of the time (~95% ?).

On distrust in objective data

This comes from a recent discussion that raised the matter of political division that has led to both the president and the congressional GOP to single out and attack democratic states in both tax laws and federal spending.

Comment: Common sense informs you lower taxes leaves more money in pockets of tax paying families. An example of this is the California sales tax rate is 7.25% while in Oklahoma this tax rate is 4.5%. Applying common sense this is exceedingly easy to realize which population on a per capita basis enjoys more pocket change - rattle-trap pickup drivers on dirt roads! Data is endlessly available to you via Google research. However, common sense is more reliable.

My response: Common sense is an essentially contested concept. That is why I prefer data as the starting point to understand the reality of something. Thus, your example using sales taxes may be right or it may be wrong. It may be too narrow and focus only on money. Data is more objective than common sense. Political realities can be counterintuitive and this could be one such case.

 In terms of disposable income, CA ranks 7th and OK ranks 39th. The poverty rate in CA (13.2%) and OK (13.6%) are about the same, so higher taxes in CA don't seem to push a higher proportion of people into poverty.

For things other than just money, California ranks higher (30th) in provision of healthcare compared to Oklahoma (45th). In terms of happiness of residents, CA ranks 4th and OK ranks 43rd. For health of residents, CA ranks 17th and OK ranks 43rd.

I think your common sense assertion that lower taxes leaves more money in pockets of tax paying families is contradicted by facts, at least in the case of CA compared to OK. What do you think in view of the data?

Response to response: No response as of 5 days later.

On trying to understand the anti-vaccine mindset

When is distrust warranted, and when isn't it?

This is from a discussion on the rise of anti-vaxx disinformation and baseless conspiracy theories about a Covid-19 vaccine, which doesn't even exist yet. As far as I can tell, a basis in existing facts for such beliefs is nonexistent because the vaccine is nonexistent. Nonetheless, some intelligent, articulate people firmly believe something(s) is or will be bad enough about the Covid-19 vaccines in development that they seemingly will refuse to take it. That rigid anti-vaxx attitude is manifest regardless of bad effects on public health that it would probably lead to. Contrary data and reasoning in support of a new vaccine are almost completely irrelevant.

Comment 1: The problem with "trust the science" as a philosophy of politics is that nobody has a really satisfying answer to what happens when we do trust the science, and life ends up worse. At least we can hold politicians accountable when we don't fare well. Even when we cannot or do not hold them accountable, it's a bit easier to accept our misfortune for the simple fact that we put them there, and we made a mistake.

But I didn't have any say in who creates the epidemiological models. I don't have a platform on which to dispute what biochemists say about vaccination. If they say it's safe, my wants and needs, my self-determination and dignity, are of no consequence. And when the predictive models don't predict what they say they will, the argument is always "you can't hold us accountable, because we merely did what the data showed." And even if we were to still hold them accountable in our hearts and minds, in spite of their defenses, there's no way we can hold them accountable in action, because they exist and persist in a regime wholly insulated from public nomination or condemnation.

The reason I trust politics more than I trust science is because politicians have skin in the game. They, like scientists, look at the data. They weigh alternatives. They assess risk. And they create policy based on all of that.

But the difference between politicians and scientists is that when they make a decision, and they get it wrong, or the violate basic rights, they get punished via the criminal law, the ballot box, separation of powers, the courts, and in the extreme case, open rebellion or revolution. It may not be their fault they make bad decisions, but they have to pay the price anyway. It is one of the burdens of leadership. It is the price they pay for being instruments of the public trust.

That's why I supported the Italian courts for bringing the case against the seismologists. Because if science and scientists want a more active role in policy, if they want to be instruments of the public trust, they have to be willing to suffer the consequences when their science causes harm, or violates basic rights of person, or tramples long cherished customs and norms. If they want to replace politicians in a democratic system, they must become accountable to the deimos.

My response:

The problem with "trust the science" as a philosophy of politics is that nobody has a really satisfying answer to what happens when we do trust the science, and life ends up worse.

I think the answer is self-evident. When life ends up worse, fix it, learn from it and try not to do it again. That is the point of science. Science, like everything else that humans do is imperfect and will lead to lethal mistakes from time to time, e.g., thalidomide. So far, I think that there has not been a disaster of that magnitude in drug development since thalidomide. That looks to me to be a case of science learning from a mistake in the 1950s and trying to not make it again.

Steven Pinker's book, Enlightenment Now, makes a compelling case that the benefits of science progress far outweigh the downsides for hundreds of millions of people.

But I didn't have any say in who creates the epidemiological models. I don't have a platform on which to dispute what biochemists say about vaccination. If they say it's safe, my wants and needs, my self-determination and dignity, are of no consequence.

The models and data are made public. Unlike most of politics (~95% ?), most of science (~99.9% ?) is transparent (protocols and data are put online for everyone to rip to pieces, confirm or otherwise play with), open to expert and public criticism and subject to revision or reversal based on (1) new evidence and/or (2) compelling expert or public criticism. That is nothing like politics. Politics is mostly irrational. Science is mostly rational, at least to the extent that humans can be rational.

If experts say a vaccine is safe, then the existing data, not ideology, self-interest or motivated reasoning, indicates that the vaccine is safe. The FDA is there with trained experts to (1) review the data and arguments that a vaccine is safe, and (2) reject those data and/or arguments if it deems them to be not convincing. What else can fallible humans do?

Assertions of safety are not purely made up. They are based on the totality of relevant evidence. Drug and vaccine development is a sincere but fallible human attempt to empower people's wants, needs, self-determination and dignity, by keeping them alive and healthier than they would be without the drugs or vaccines. How does developing a new drug or vaccine undermine anyone's wants, needs, self-determination or dignity? Dead people don't have any wants, needs, self-determination or dignity.

But the difference between politicians and scientists is that when they make a decision, and they get it wrong, or the violate basic rights, they get punished via the criminal law, the ballot box, separation of powers, the courts, and in the extreme case, open rebellion or revolution.

I disagree. Empirical evidence make it clear that politicians are not particularly accountable in democracies. Voter memories are short and usually flawed due to bias, tribalism, self-interest, infantile reasoning and etc. In the book, Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do not Produce Responsive Governments, researchers comment on the human condition and politics: “. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.”

By contrast, when a scientist screws up by faking data and gets caught, they are usually severely reprimanded and often fired, a career-ending event. I see nothing close to the accountability imposed on politicians compared to scientists. The courts don't examine much of anything political, especially now under Trump and the Trump Party who have now significantly neutered both law enforcement and courts in the federal government and in red states. At least for most elected politicians and wealthy people and interests, the rule of law has degenerated into a politicized essentially contested concept. It is now just a sick joke to a large extent.

Comment 2: That the judgment was reversed in the Italian case doesn't mean they shouldn't have been brought to trial at all. The Italian people and the Italian state needed justice. A cynic would say they wanted vengeance, but whether we look at it cynically or not, simply saying "sorry, better luck next time" wasn't going to cut it.

Now perhaps you might say that the public outrage at the scientists was one of those infantile reasoning things, biased, self-interested, and so on, and ought to be ignored for the sake of enlightened progress and "the greater good." But that seems awfully contemptuous and callous to expect the people who suffered to do that for science's sake. To expect them to just let it all slide is a thing that I believe to be far more inhuman and unreasonable than human and reasonable.

Someone had to be brought to account. Due process was followed bringing the charges and securing the conviction. Due process was also respected by allowing the appeal for overturning the lower court's decision. Justice was served. And the alternative would have been far worse, with people (those infantile folks who don't think 'rationally') taking justice into their own hands, where due process matters less than getting one's due by any means necessary.

It's good of us to realize that science and scientists make mistakes. The problem is that, like I said, what to do when science does make mistakes is not very satisfying. Merely saying "fix it, learn from it and try not to do it again" is not good enough. People have got to pay a high price when they put their faith in somebody, or some institution, or some study, and they end up worse because of it.

To expect common people to just keep on forgiving technocratic elites, moving past it, giving people the benefit of the doubt all the time is, quite frankly, demanding that the people practice an overly Christian attitude towards science and technology purveyors that we can in no way rationally expect people to practice. And we ask common people to do this towards powerful and influential institutions that have the power and prestige of science, technology, and industry (and the three are more intertwined than not, making science anything but totally disinterested).

That sort of "forgive and let's do better, because science is self-correcting" is the same sort of argument of the Libertarians who say that the market is self-correcting, because if you aren't getting good service, you have the right to refuse to pay for more service. Sure, you can hold companies accountable by refusing to give them more dollars, but who or what is going to hold them accountable for the dollars that were already spent?

Government and politics. They are the ones who are held accountable when things go wrong, because--quite frankly--they are the only ones that we can, futile as it may be.

It won't be the medical experts, for example, that will have to bear the responsibility for the things the state does now on their behalf. It'll be the politicians. It'll be the police. It'll be the state.

But medical experts are not politicians. Their concern is with health, but politicians have to weigh more concerns than simply health. They have to be concerned with things like civil liberties, basic human rights, and the will of both the majority, and whatever minorities think differently than the majority.

You asked perhaps a rhetorical question of "How does developing a new drug or vaccine undermine anyone's wants, needs, self-determination or dignity?" Developing it isn't the issue. Making it mandatory is the issue. Requiring its use to participate in civil society is the issue. Because even if it was safe, and had no side effects, and could or would be very beneficial to public health, we have a long tradition in this country, and much legal precedent, that people don't have the right to require others go through medical procedures, or take drugs, or submit to medical care, even if there's very good reasons for the insistence.

Unreasonable? Perhaps. But that's our custom. The good thing is that we don't have to insist that people be wise in the way we need them to be in order for them to change. We can use due process too, just like the Italians used due process against the scientists.

My 2nd response:

That the judgment was reversed in the Italian case doesn't mean they shouldn't have been brought to trial at all.

I understand that and agree. That wasn't my point. The point I was trying to make is that the situation is complicated. Seismologists started bickering among themselves, which tells me that this is not a simple black and white situation, even for experts. If the experts cannot agree among themselves, how the hell are judges supposed to know more than experts about the underlying science and then apply a law that is probably ambiguous in its language? That was my point.

Now perhaps you might say that the public outrage at the scientists was one of those infantile reasoning things, biased, self-interested, and so on, and ought to be ignored for the sake of enlightened progress and "the greater good."

No, I am not saying that. What I would argue, again, is that things like this are very complicated and there is more than a little room for subjective judgments. For example, I bet the Italian law is ambiguous in its language making the original court judgment significantly or mostly subjective.

I do not ignore public sentiment, nor does my political ideology, pragmatic rationalism. In fact, pragmatic rationalism elevates public opinion to a higher position of influence than any other political, economic, philosophical or religious ideology that I am aware of. It is the only ideology I am aware of that explicitly demands real consideration of and accounting for public opinion, not mere lip service, in making and implementing policy. As far as I know, all the other ideologies are either silent about public opinion or they claim they are directly responsive to it. Science has shown the latter claim to be mostly lip service and a deflection from the fact that the ideology is more powerful and held in higher regard than mere public opinion.

It's good of us to realize that science and scientists make mistakes. The problem is that, like I said, what to do when science does make mistakes is not very satisfying. Merely saying "fix it, learn from it and try not to do it again" is not good enough.

Of course scientists make mistakes. How can they possibly not make mistakes? They are human. You argue that fix it, learn from it and try not to do it again is not good enough when scientists make honest mistakes as human beings inevitably will sooner or later. Fine. What protocol or method do you have that's better? I'm completely open to all reasonable possibilities. I would greatly prefer it if you did have a better and good enough way to deal with things like this. What is your better and "good enough" way?

Government and politics. They are the ones who are held accountable when things go wrong, because--quite frankly--they are the only ones that we can, futile as it may be.

Government should be held accountable for things under their control that go wrong. Right now, we are in a period where government under the GOP is withdrawing from transparency, accountability, competence and honest governance. I know the dem party had a hand in getting us to this dismal point. But right now, the populist and conservative right is driving this country toward some sort of semi-lawless, authoritarian kleptocracy tinged with an intolerant, vengeful Christian theocratic streak.

I know, that sounds insane to you. But it honestly looks exactly that way to me. That is only one example of thousands or millions of examples showing just how amazingly personal and subjective political reality and reasoning is in the real world in real time, right now. That is what modern cognitive and social sciences are uniform in showing about the human condition. Those experts don't even debate this any more. They have moved on to trying to understand it in increasingly higher resolution as more research data comes in.

..... we have a long tradition in this country, and much legal precedent, that people don't have the right to require others go through medical procedures, or take drugs, or submit to medical care, even if there's very good reasons for the insistence

I think there's a misunderstanding here.The original legal precedents were that government has the power to require people to go through medical procedures. At one time, states could force women to be sterilized if they could not afford to raise their offspring, were deemed to be "imbeciles", or etc. That has since been reversed.

The Supreme Court recognizes the 14th-Amendment due process right to protect people against arbitrary legislative actions. The test is a simple "rational review" standard. That means that legislation (1) cannot be unreasonable, arbitrary, or capricious, and (2) must have a substantial relation to the legislative objective, which is public health in this case. The courts give this only minimal scrutiny to see if the law is "rationally related" to a "legitimate government purpose." If it is, then the law is constitutional. Almost all laws meet this test. A law has to be so nuts and/or incoherent that it is a joke on its face before federal courts will strike it down. That is a very rare event.

Even for a law a state cannot think of a rational reason to have, the courts will think one up for them to find the law constitutional.

Also, the Supreme Court recognizes each states’ “police power.” That gives the states authority to enact all kinds of health laws to protect people, including quarantine and vaccination laws.

One source commented on mandatory vaccines: "In 1905 the Supreme Court addressed mandatory vaccinations in regard to smallpox in Jacobson v Massachusetts. There the Court ruled that the police power of a state absolutely included reasonable regulations established by legislature to protect public health and safety. Such regulations do not violate the 14th Amendment right to liberty because they fall within the many restraints to which every person is necessarily subjected for the common good. Real liberty for all cannot exist if each individual is allowed to act without regard to the injury that his or her actions might cause others; liberty is constrained by law. The Court went on to determine in Jacobson that a state may require vaccination if the board of health deems it necessary for public health or safety."

Comment 3: Pending at 1 day.


Questions: Is it not important to try to understand the basis for minds in disagreement, e.g., because people can just compromise without understanding the basis for disagreements (assuming both sides are willing to compromise)?

Is persistent, focused questioning about the basis in facts and personal reasoning unpleasant or unfair to the point of being (i) more personally or socially harmful than beneficial, or (ii) more immoral than moral?

The President's Not Surprising 2020 Campaign Strategy

An article in the New York Times analyzes the president’s campaign strategy for 2020. The assessment so far indicates that the campaign is likely to be much like that used for the 2016 election. That election consisted of an endless barrage of false and misleading assertions of facts and unfounded attacks on the president’s political rivals. His tactics included touting false conspiracy theories and playing on social divisions to foment unwarranted distrust in both political opposition and government itself.

The NYT writes:

“Even by President Trump’s standards, it was a rampage: He attacked a government whistle-blower who was telling Congress that the coronavirus pandemic had been mismanaged. He criticized the governor of Pennsylvania, who has resisted reopening businesses. He railed against former President Barack Obama, linking him to a conspiracy theory and demanding he answer questions before the Senate about the federal investigation of Michael T. Flynn. 

And Mr. Trump lashed out at Joseph R. Biden Jr., his Democratic challenger. In an interview with a sympathetic columnist, Mr. Trump smeared him as a doddering candidate who “doesn’t know he’s alive.” The caustic attack coincided with a barrage of digital ads from Mr. Trump’s campaign mocking Mr. Biden for verbal miscues and implying that he is in mental decline. 

That was all on Thursday. 

Far from a one-day onslaught, it was a climactic moment in a weeklong lurch by Mr. Trump back to ​​the darkest tactics that defined his rise to political power. 

His attacks over the last week on Mr. Obama have showcased Mr. Trump’s persistent determination to weaponize those tools to bolster a favorite political narrative, one that distorts the facts about Mr. Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser, in order to spin sinister implications about the previous administration. 

But Mr. Trump also appears to genuinely believe many of the conspiratorial claims he makes, people close to him say, and his anger at Mr. Obama is informed less by political strategy than by an unbending — and unsubstantiated — belief that the former president was personally involved in a plot against him. 

Over the last week, the Trump campaign has spent at least $880,000 on Facebook ads attacking Mr. Biden. 

Mr. Trump has also been warned by Republican veterans that his efforts to define Mr. Biden in negative terms so far have been slow or ineffective. At a meeting with political advisers this week that included Karl Rove, the top strategist for former President George W. Bush, Mr. Rove warned Mr. Trump that he had fallen behind in the task of damaging Mr. Biden, people familiar with the meeting said.”

Apparently, the top campaign priority is damaging Biden with a massive barrage of lies, smears and fabricated conspiracy theories. Another priority is fabricating baeless conspiracy theories about President Obama in an effort to discredit (i) the Mueller investigation, and (ii) the role that Russia played in getting the president to win the electoral college.

Facebook is not innocent

Lies and crackpot conspiracies will flow copiously from Facebook in the coming months. One can see why Facebook refuses to block lies and unfounded conspiracies in political ads that politicians buy. There is just too much money to pass up. Maybe as importantly, blocking the president’s political lies runs the risk of crossing a viciously vindictive, thin-skinned president. Facebook’s lack of moral courage in defense of profits will help the president further disinform, confuse, distract and polarize Americans. That damage is on Zuckerberg.

Commercial Loan Shenanigans: A Looming Financial Disaster is on the Horizon

ProPublica reports that a whistleblower complaint filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that fraud in loans on commercial properties is increasing. This echoes the fraud in financial residential real estate that lead to the 2008 housing market collapse. Back then, residential home values were often inflated and the borrower's ability to repay the loan was also frequently overstated. Those home loan were bundled into securities and sold. The securities collapsed leading to tens of billions in losses for investors who bought the fraudulent securities.

ProPublica writes:

“Twelve years later, there’s evidence something similar is happening again. 

Some of the world’s biggest banks — including Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank — as well as other lenders have engaged in a systematic fraud that allowed them to award borrowers bigger loans than were supported by their true financials, according to a previously unreported whistleblower complaint submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission last year. 

Whereas the fraud during the last crisis was in residential mortgages, the complaint claims this time it’s happening in commercial properties like office buildings, apartment complexes and retail centers. The complaint focuses on the loans that are gathered into pools whose worth can exceed $1 billion and turned into bonds sold to investors, known as CMBS (for commercial mortgage-backed securities).”

ProPublica looked at six loans in CMBS packages and found the whistleblower complaint to be accurate. In particular, past profits reported for some buildings were listed as much as 30% higher than the profits previously reported for the same buildings and same years. That is not supposed to happen. Regulators are supposed to flag anomalies like that and find out if fraudulent loans are being made. Given the virulently anti-government and anti-regulation attitude of the president and his appointees, one can reasonably believe that honest regulators have been ordered to allow fraud like this.

The shenanigans include wiping out of some expenses for a commercial building that were listed in earlier loan documents. No explanation is given for disappeared expenses. By falsely claiming lower expenses to operate a building, a fraudulent loan, the loan is more profitable for the lender. The problem is that the risk of default on the loan increases. If too many defaults happen, that can lead to another financial meltdown similar to that in 2008.

With trillions of dollars committed to bailouts, overvaluations in commercial real estate now constitute a much larger risk than before the pandemic slammed the economy. In fact, data from early April showed a sharp spike in missed payments to bondholders for CMBS that hold loans from hotels and retail stores. ProPublica comments that the default rate is expected to increase because of Covid-19 economic lockdowns.

Not surprisingly, the Trump administration is moving after lobbying by commercial real estate organizations to prop these loans up. Commercial real estate groups lobbied for federal support after warning about a possible commercial mortgage crash. In response, the Federal Reserve pledged to prop up CMBS by loaning money to investors and letting them use their CMBS as collateral. Once again, taxpayers could be on the hook for tens or hundreds of billions in bad loans.

Also not surprisingly, the Mortgage Bankers Association, representing institutions who make money on bad loans backed by taxpayers, claims they are unaware of any such fraudulent activities and have no other comments to make. Their comment: “We aren’t aware of this occurring and really don’t have anything to add.” So much for concern among financial institutions. Why should they care if bad loan risk is on taxpayers and not themselves? What have they got to lose? Under current political conditions, they have little or nothing to lose, but a lot of profit to gain.

After the 2008 disaster, this kind of corruption wasn't supposed to be able to happen again. Regulators were supposed to stop this kind of criminal activity before it became widespread. Regardless, it appears to be happening again. Coupled with corruption and incompetence, financial disaster is what a anti-government and anti-regulation mindset can allow. 

AN ETHICAL DILEMMA: In Israel, Modern Medicine Grapples With Ghosts of the Third Reich

A Palestinian surgeon, a Jewish patient, a Nazi medical text — and an unlikely bond.

FOR THE FULL STORY:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/12/world/middleeast/nazi-medical-text-israel.html

I AM MORE INTERESTED in addressing the moral dilemma a case like this presents.

SO - given that the best way to save a 13 year old Jewish boy's life, was to use a guide through the intricate nerve pathways produced by the Nazis, who did so by dissecting bodies of prisoners  "many experts believe that most of the prisoners were Austrians condemned in the courts."

SO - is it ethical to use medical practices perfected by unethical means to save a life?

Would YOUR feelings be different if looking in from the outside  or if the child was YOUR child?

Please weigh in.

The Covid-19 Vaccine Disinformation War is Heating Up

The New York Times reports that social media is being flooded with lies and misinformation about non-existent Covid-19 vaccines. The situation is characterized by a combination of crackpot conspiracy theories, flat out lies, pseudoscience and some things that are of legitimate political and social concern. The mixing of some truth with a toxic message indicates that the anti-vaxx community has become much more sophisticated and organized in its use of dark free speech to. Propaganda that contains at least some truth tends to be more persuasive because the truth tends to deflect from lies, deceptions and motivated reasoning by making them appear more plausible. The goal is, among other things, to deceive, confuse, misinform and foment unwarranted distrust and fear among Americans.

A crackpot video

On May 4, a 26-minute video taken from a longer video entitled “Plandemic” was posted on YouTube. In it, a discredited scientist, Dr. Judy Mikovits, 62, claimed that global elites including Bill Gates and Dr. Anthony Fauci are using the coronavirus pandemic to shield a plot to expand their wealth and political power. As is usual for crackpot conspiracy theories, the theory is not accompanied by any evidence of a conspiracy. What Mikovits alleged was that existing vaccines have damaged people's immune systems, making them susceptible to diseases including Covid-19.

In 2011, Mikovits was fired from the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease in Reno, NV, after her research into chronic fatigue syndrome was discredited.
The anti-vaxx community seized immediately on the crackpot science video and elevated Mikovits to what the NYT calls “a new star of virus disinformation.” The NYT writes:

“Her ascent was powered not only by the YouTube video but also by a book that she published in April, “Plague of Corruption,” which frames Dr. Mikovits as a truth-teller fighting deception in science. In recent weeks, she has become a darling of far-right publications like The Epoch Times and The Gateway Pundit. Mentions of her on social media and television have spiked to as high as 14,000 a day, according to the media insights company Zignal Labs.  

The rise of Dr. Mikovits is the latest twist in the virus disinformation wars, which have swelled throughout the pandemic. Conspiracy theorists have used the uncertainty and fear around the disease to mint many villains. Those include Dr. Fauci after he appeared to slight President Trump and Mr. Gates, a co-founder of Microsoft, as someone who started the disease. They have also pushed the baseless idea that 5G wireless waves can help cause the disease.”

The crackpots get organized and become sophisticated

In an analysis article for the NYT entitled, Get Ready for a Vaccine Information War, Kevin Roose discusses the growing sophistication of the anti-vaxx movement. Roose has been following the anti-vaxx movement for years. His concern is that, due to anti-vaxx conspiracy lies and pseudoscience, a significant number of Americans will refuse to take an effective Covid-19 vaccine if one can be successfully developed. Roose writes:

“I’ve been following the anti-vaccine community on and off for years, watching its members operate in private Facebook groups and Instagram accounts, and have found that they are much more organized and strategic than many of their critics believe. They are savvy media manipulators, effective communicators and experienced at exploiting the weaknesses of social media platforms. (Just one example: Shortly after Facebook and YouTube began taking down copies of “Plandemic” for violating their rules, I saw people in anti-vaccine groups editing it in subtle ways to evade the platforms’ automated enforcement software and reposting it.) 

First, because of the pandemic’s urgency, any promising Covid-19 vaccine is likely to be fast-tracked through the testing and approval process. It may not go through years of clinical trials and careful studies of possible long-term side effects, the way other drugs do. That could create an opening for anti-vaccine activists to claim that it is untested and dangerous, and to spin reasonable concerns about the vaccine into widespread, unfounded fears about its safety.”

Roose goes on to point out that if a vaccine is developed, it is possible that the Gates Foundation or the World Health Organization could have played a role. That would play into the conspiracy theories about what Gates or the WHO is really doing and why. Also, if a vaccine is developed, people may be required to take it, e.g., before flying on an airplane or going to a public school. That too would play into conspiracies the anti-vaxx community has voiced about mandatory vaccinations.

Finally, Roose checked with academics who study the anti-vaxx movement to see if there is empirical data to support his concerns about a rise in anti-vaxx propaganda. There is. A paper in Nature that published yesterday, The online competition between pro- and anti-vaccination views, reported that anti-vaxx propaganda and fake conspiracies “will dominate in a decade.”[1] The paper did not report how many people might turn against a Covid-19 vaccine if one is developed. The modeling data projects that although the number of people who are undecided about vaccines is huge, anti-vaxx messaging is predicted by one model to be dominant by about 2033. Time will tell if that modeling turns out to be correct or not.

The Vaxx, Anti-Vaxx and Undecided Online Ecosystem

A dark big picture

Arguably, a broader disturbing message can be taken from this situation. The new normal in American politics is a coalescence of the armies of dark free speech. They are unifying in their tactics and goals as they fight for what appears to be a generally anti-democratic, authoritarian, society and central government. Given the similarity in their tactics and generally anti-government tone, it appears that the anti-vaxx community can cooperate with most other conservative populist movement and groups or even formally unite with them. The similarities of the main conservative political movements, e.g., gun rights, abortion, free speech, anti-government, etc., appear to share a mindset that strongly rejects expertise, inconvenient facts and truths and rationality. This mindset, the 'irrationalist mind', has a strong affinity for fake truth, fake conspiracy theories and an intolerance of enemies (real or perceived) or disfavored groups. The out-people and groups are perceived, judged and attacked in intolerant moralistic, often bigoted terms.

If that analysis is basically correct, America's political and social situations are getting uglier, more reality- and science-detached and more intolerant. America is definitely going in the wrong direction.


Footnote:
1. The paper’s abstract: “Distrust in scientific expertise1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14 is dangerous. Opposition to vaccination with a future vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the causal agent of COVID-19, for example, could amplify outbreaks2,3,4, as happened for measles in 20195,6. Homemade remedies7,8 and falsehoods are being shared widely on the Internet, as well as dismissals of expert advice9,10,11. There is a lack of understanding about how this distrust evolves at the system level13,14. Here we provide a map of the contention surrounding vaccines that has emerged from the global pool of around three billion Facebook users. Its core reveals a multi-sided landscape of unprecedented intricacy that involves nearly 100 million individuals partitioned into highly dynamic, interconnected clusters across cities, countries, continents and languages. Although smaller in overall size, anti-vaccination clusters manage to become highly entangled with undecided clusters in the main online network, whereas pro-vaccination clusters are more peripheral. Our theoretical framework reproduces the recent explosive growth in anti-vaccination views, and predicts that these views will dominate in a decade. Insights provided by this framework can inform new policies and approaches to interrupt this shift to negative views. Our results challenge the conventional thinking about undecided individuals in issues of contention surrounding health, shed light on other issues of contention such as climate change11, and highlight the key role of network cluster dynamics in multi-species ecologies15.”

The researchers analogize the situation with warfare: “Support and potential recruitment of these green clusters (crowds) [undecided people] is akin to a battle for the ‘hearts and minds’ of individuals in insurgent warfare.”

UTILITY AND ALL THAT! Part 3

Arming You to Fight Mainstream Economic Theory by Reconstructing It Into What It’s Properly About--by Larry Motuz

Preface

This Part 3 is an unplanned-for detour prompted by many an intelligent comment which showed me such a detour was necessary.

What I will be outlining here can be summed up as: In production, the ‘utility’ of adding inputs to a fixed factor of production --like more feed to a cow-- is the increase of production -- gallons of milk-- arising from adding more units of the feed input to a fixed factor --er, the cow.

Diminishing returns will be observed as more units of the variable input {feed} are added to the fixed factor {a cow}. What’s generally see across all production, when more and more of any one variable input is used with a fixed factor of production, is an experience known as ‘diminishing returns’. Total production initially increases at diminishing rates of increase up to a production level that is a maximum. It then falls at increasing rates if more units of the variable input are then utilized.

There are, in other words, limits beyond which adding more of a variable input is not only not better but actually worsens production.

All this means is that, up to some point, additional installments of a variable factor to any fixed factor, are initially useful to raise production levels to a peak reached at some level of variable input utilization. This means that 'more is not always better’. There are productively optimal total additions of units of variable input to a fixed factor of production. Such productively optimal utilization of a variable input with fixed factors of production is not necessarily also economically optimal. {What's economically optimal depends upon the variable input costs and the expected revenues from the added output.)

In a nutshell, the same 'law' of diminishing returns was historically applied to consumption --the idea being that when more goods were added to a factor of consumption {the 'consumer': an implied person}, then the total production of subjective pleasure or satisfaction (measured somehow), just had to show the same kinds of diminishing returns up to subjective pleasure/satisfaction maximums.[See Note 1 below.]

Utility In Production

When the ‘utility’ of added inputs into production is defined as their contribution to total production, a benefit that is objectively measured, we can say that there appears to be a ‘law’ of diminishing incremental or marginal utility with respect to variable inputs applied to a fixed ‘production unit’.

Aside: A very serious set of issues arises when this law of diminishing returns --Viz., the diminishing returns of inputs in production when all other inputs, fixed or variable, are left unchanged -- is applied to ‘consumers’ who, in effect, ‘experience’ :: that is, internally produce :: levels of subjective pleasure or subjective satisfaction within themselves when buying goods. To be clear, when a good 'brings' subjective pleasure or satisfaction, it is necessarily the consumer who is producing that level of subjective pleasure or satisfaction within himself or herself. However, let's simply note here that this 'manufactured output' so to speak can neither be bought nor sold itself, so it is unlike objective production where both inputs and outputs have prices. Implicit notions that a 'consumer' is akin to manufacturers of objective goods and services sold in markets cannot apply. And, if we abandon that implicit notion, we must also abandon all of modern economic theory concerning the 'consumer' and 'consumer' welfare in aggregate.

The Shape of Objective Utility in Production

Utility in production is a value-in-use measure (a.k.a. a benefit-from-use measure). That's because utility in production is a recorded 'beneficial' change in output taking place when utilizing more units of a variable input when other production factors, fixed or variable, are unchanged. This is an 'other things being equal' condition also known as a ceteris paribus condition.

If we add units of fertilizer to an acre of farmland, these add more to the crop's size until a point where adding still more fertilizer begins to reduce the amount grown. Likewise, if you add more grave diggers with shovels to dig at a grave site, adding more diggers first helps. At some point, 'more' just get in each others' way. This adds to the time and monies spent digging this one grave if it gets dug at all.

So, and generally, adding more of an input to a fixed task or a fixed factor of production --like an acre of land or a machine-- leads to increases in total production only up to a point. After that, adding more decreases total production.

Let's get back to a cow and its feed for instance.

Kenneth Boulding in his book Economic Analysis, 3rd Edition,1955, illustrated how a cow's milk production (measured in gallons of milk) altered when a particular feed concentrate supplemented that cow’s diet.

That illustration (below) shows that adding units of concentrated feed initially led to increasing milk production and then to falling milk production.

Feed Concentrate (lbs)......0......4........8.......12.......16......20......24
Milk Production (gals.).....1......2.0.....2.8.....3.5.....3.9.....4.0.....3.9
Production rise (gals.)..... .0......1.0.....0.8.....0.7.....0.4.....0.1.....-0.1

Clearly, the cow’s total milk production rises in ever smaller amounts for every one 4 lb. unit of concentrated feed given to it.

Plotted on a graph, the total milk production per additional 4lb. unit of feed concentrate resembles a concave-downwards facing curve which rises from the origin (after adjusting for the +1 production before adding units of this input) to a maximum output of three gallons (4-1) when five units are utilized; and, falling to zero with more inputs (with 10 4lb. units utilized. [See Note 2 below.]

Obviously, this farmer would never give this cow more than five 4 lb Units of feed concentrate since the cow's total milk production declines when more is used. An economist would not only agree with the farmer but, also like that farmer, would also ask if the successive increases in revenues from sales of the increases in output equaled the additional costs of the feed concentrate feed. I.e., the farmer asks, "Is it worth my while?", which economists translate into, "Are the added revenues at the margin at least equal to the added costs of inputs at the margin? Both, in different ways, would say that the amounts to be used are ‘economically optimal’ only when the added costs of feed concentrate inputs are just equal to the added revenues obtained from the sale of the added output. (I need not get into how economists calculate this here but I will note that the 'marginal revenue product' curve for productive inputs is also the ‘demand’ curve business have for those variable inputs.)


All told, the rising sections of production curves show diminishing returns per added unit of the variable input, whereas falling sections show increasingly large reductions in total output per added unit. In practice this means that economists (and often engineers) tend to look at the former, rising sections when conducting analysis into the costs and benefits associated with variable inputs. [Only economists formally then derive 'demand curves' as such, however.]

Finally, objective utility for any producer is always measured as an increase in total output associated with increasing a variable input to a fixed factor of production while also holding other variable inputs fixed. This is its value-in-use, a.k.a. the benefit-from-use of variable inputs in this fashion.

I note here that marginal revenue product curve mentioned earlier measures the money value of the marginal gains in output when sold at market prices producers can sell for.

Subjective Utility in Consumption

These above matters become important when looking at how the ‘law of diminishing marginal utility’ has been shifted from being about producers’ demand for variable inputs into their production (always measurable units of output) to being about ‘consumers’ and their ‘demands’ for variable inputs :: goods :: which, upon their purchase, lead to their experiencing/(producing within themselves) increasing yet always immeasurable subjective levels of pleasure/satisfaction -- much like a cow producing invisible milk only it knows about and able to enjoy.


All people, including economists, agree that there is no objectively measurable unit of pleasure or satisfaction as an ‘output’ that ‘consumers’ produce within themselves when they buy goods. In effect, however, economic theory treats the consumer as a fixed factor of production, each of which then uses various goods as variable inputs to produce/generate subjective pleasures/satisfactions for itself by buying those 'goods'.{See Note 3 below.]

The ‘consumer’ uses variable inputs {‘goods’} by purchasing them. The 'consumer', in effect, is analogous to a farmer's cow to which feed is added or a machine to which variable inputs are added. All in all, the consumer is a fixed factor for the production of subjective pleasure/satisfaction.

Since this 'output', being subjective, can't be seen by anyone, it is simply presumed that 'diminishing returns' set in for such subjective pleasure/satisfaction production as can be observed for goods-production. Ignored in this transformation of consumers into fixed factors of production is the reality that there is no market for their subjective 'outputs'. Measurable benefits from the usages consumers have for the goods they purchase have vanished completely by assumption. And, of more than casual interest, somehow, values-in-use have become transmogrified into values-in-exchange despite the utter absence of any markets for the 'output' of the consumer.

Which means that whereas producers of commodities have a demand for variable inputs which is derived from their ability to generate sales for their outputs, for, for such producers, their marginal revenue from sales product curve, a.k.a, the marginal revenue product curves, are their demand curves for variable inputs, whereas consumers have no equivalent marginal revenues from sales for their 'outputs'.

All in all, this means that the demand for variable goods which consumers have must be very different from the demand producers have for variable inputs. If, indeed, a consumer cannot sell any of his or her 'subjective output', then this effectively means that some other way of constructing a consumer's demand curve for 'input' :: goods :: had to be constructed.

It was! It was an entirely fictional way of constructing consumer demand curves for goods, a way unlike any which might be applied to any producers of marketable goods. This was a construction that depended upon constructing seemingly plausible narratives which magically hid the problems work, much like the patterned distractions of magicians when performing tricks before their audiences. Such 'tricks' astound only as long as the subterfuge underlying them remain unrevealed.

Revealing the subterfuge is what the next installment, "Demand and All That!', will do.

This detour is over. I hope those commenters who prompted it now understand that I have not thrown out the 'law of diminishing marginal utility' except as it has been misapplied to consumers purchasing goods. The value-in-usages which goods have has been cavalierly set aside as if these are incapable of measurement or simply do not matter. They cannot be subsumed under headings like subjective pleasure/satisfaction when realizing these depends not merely upon preferences but also upon the measurable quantities of the various benefits being sought by consumers. And, though there are definite meanings to demand and to aggregate demand, those are not the meanings found in economic textbooks. An entirely new construction is required. It is one Keynes hinted at in his General Theory. It is one actually used practically, if only with a subliminal awareness, by many a practicing economist, especially 'unorthodox' ones who are always adjusting their 'blackboard economics'.

And it is one I intend to unfold.

NOTES:
Note 1. Today 'more is always better' in current consumer theory. There are no levels wherein consumers become, say, satiated, simply not wanting any more of a good. No limits as it were. No enough! No harm associated with passing any limits. Which means that somehow the current theory left its initial constructions of 'Utility' behind. Leaving that last issue for another day, I'll talk here only about the early construction of utility as subjective pleasure or satisfaction.)Note 1: Limits vanished because, uniquely in monetary economies, all goods are perfect price-substitutes for each other monetarily (if we can ignore possible transactions costs associated with finding buyers and delivering goods to them). The price architecture goods have in relation to each other and captured by their relative currency prices is a creation of monetary economies. This fact has not been fully appreciated by either orthodox or unorthodox economists. The misunderstandings this has caused so entered the modern analysis of consumer ‘choice’ behavior as to render it not merely useless, but also harmful to any proper understanding of consumer behavior, choice and welfare .]

Note 2. The formal shape which the plot traces is that of a curve which faces downwards: namely, a concave-downwards facing parabola. Mathematical functions having the form y = f(x> = ax*x + bx +c are either concave upwards or concave downwards. Concave-downwards facing curves which rise from the origin to a peak to then fall back to Zero at some greater value for x have the mathematical form y = f(x) = bx-ax*x (for ‘c”, a constant in all such cases, is zero). Since y = U = f(x> = bx-ax*x that, without any bells and whistles, is the general form of total production 'curves' when only one variable input is changing.]

Note 3. It is vital to all consumer theory in economics that, at the moment of purchase, the consumer perfectly foresees all of the future pleasures the 'good' will provide to him or her, bringing this foresight into the moment his or her decision is made about buying the 'good' or 'goods' up for purchase. It is vital because, without that assumption being made, the demand curve of the consumer relative to the prices that the consumer faces for 'inputs' cannot be derived. Therefore, if for any reason the consumer cannot see all of the future pleasures to be experienced with/produced by the 'good or goods, and if the total production of subjective pleasure or satisfaction does not exhibit diminishing returns, all consumer theory cannot provide any guidance to the levels of welfare consumers are said to have within the Theory of the Consumer. In short, if either is false, so is all of consumer theory.

Links to previous articles in this series:
1. Economics And All That! https://dispol.blogspot.com/2020/04/economics-and-all-that.html
2. Utility And All That! Part 1. https://dispol.blogspot.com/2020/04/utility-and-all-that-part-1.html
3. Utility And All That! Part 2. https://dispol.blogspot.com/2020/05/utility-and-all-that-part-2.html