The reported Fauci oppo memo has me feeling good about my argument here that our culture knows only two ways to relate to expertise — deference or defiance — and that this treats experts as having more political power than they should: newrepublic.com/article/158058…
If you have to release an oppo dump on your own scientific advisor, it means you have de facto given him the power of a rival political opponent, when instead if you don't like his advice you could just replace him or ignore him. It's a nice gift for Fauci.
To be clear, I believe Fauci, if hardly infallible, has a strong record during the pandemic and the WH should continue to take his advice seriously. But their attempt to publicly undermine the credibility of one of their own top advisors while keeping him on staff is cowardly.
—and self-defeating cowardice at that. If you strike him down, etc etc.
Note also that the Fauci oppo dump is the mirror image of this letter writer who thinks the most important thing is for him to #SpeakHisTruth. (And that both want him to step down on symbolic grounds.) nytimes.com/2020/07/10/opi…
Right. The president is so afraid of his own employee that his admin has to anonymously “drop” to the Washington Post ... public statements Fauci already made. And he’s so weak that he can’t handle just firing him. Sad!
If you try to protest against “Population Bomb” fears to mainstream wonks, you get a smirky “Yeah, we moved on from that decades ago.” But talk to any faithful NPR Boomer and they have absolutely not gotten the memo, and greet news of a shrinking Europe/Japan/NY with relief.
So there’s a weird effect where mainstream outlets are finally running birth/population decline stories — but after having run decades of *overpopulation* warnings, and then just quietly stopping without ever explaining why that was wrong. So of course the audience is perplexed!
There are definitely still devoted elite Malthusians, but I think it really has ebbed from the Ehrlich, Gore, and Greta-era peaks.
What we have now is mass, zombie Malthusianism. It's arguably harder to combat because it's attitudinal more than explicit.
I'm just home now and will write my impressions up. I'm writing just in my personal capacity as a witness, not a journalist.
For context: I live in north Alexandria, a couple miles from the airport. My drive home takes me right by the airport along the George Wash Parkway. I love watching the string-of-jewels effect of the planes lined up to land — so I'm always paying attention to them on this drive.
I remember hearing Nate Silver interviewed by a big-name reporter about the model showing Clinton with 65% odds. The reporter says "Okay, 65%, put that in context—how often does someone with that big a lead win?" There's an awkward pause. Silver says: "Well, 65% of the time."
Imperfect analogy, but this account of democracy feels like arguing that a marriage certificate not only constitutes a marriage, but is all that constitutes a marriage.
If you go to certain Melanesian islands and find long strips of pavement and wave your hands around in just the right way, will huge quantities of food drop from the sky? Well, sort of, yes! Under the right conditions. (Namely: If it's 1942 and you are a soldier for Tojo.)
In virtually every case where engineers view their life mission as "saving humanity," it's a huge win for society if they can be successfully diverted from it.
The scientists/engineers who've done the most for the survival of the species were driven primarily by ordinary careerism and a tinkerer's obsessiveness. The ones who set out specifically to "save humanity" wind up either trying to destroy it or founding a rationalist subreddit.
This article is based on a remarkable falsehood: "at nine weeks the nascent embryo is not discernible to the naked eye."
At 9 weeks of pregnancy, a human embryo is 3/4 to 1 inch long — med books compare it to a penny or a peanut. My naked eye can see that and yours can too.
Suggesting what @suzania argues here. It's not a small detail but the entire sustained claim of the piece — everyone's been duped that you can see embryos at that stage. Whether the error was deliberate or not, the article should be retracted.
Here are images of embryos up to week 8, with scale. At week 9 they are another 50% or so longer. By week 4-5 the embryo is easily visible to the naked eye.