There are certain types of ideas that are like viruses: they’re bad for the mind, but pretty good at spreading.
They prey on our mental weaknesses. Our brain can’t stop itself from craving novelty, mystery, randomness, sex, violence, external enemies, social proof, scarcity...
Look at our media: mindlessly reporting cases and deaths every day, instead of the details of keeping politicians accountable about contact tracing.
Reporting antimaskkers as a huge trend when they’re a tiny minority (physically and intellectually).
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Look at our politicians: More focused on appearing strong and thoughtful than on stopping the virus. With near infinite analysis resources, and yet unable to accept the basic fact that health and economics are one and the same when fighting the #coronavirus
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Look at our government agencies: letting millions die while we had a vaccine all along, just because they had to follow the due process designed for a completely different situation.
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Look at our social media: with outrageous claims rewarded with massive distribution, while their corrections get none.
In this war of ideas against the virus, YOU are the antibodies.
Promote good ideas.
Fight back the dangerous.
Don’t engage with stupid.
Insist. Insist. Insist.
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Apparently, its origin is unclear, and its usage polemic. So this is a thread about its origin, why, how it’s used, and a lesson about processes vs. goals.
Back in March, ppl had no idea what was happening. They took cases at face value. One of the big goals of the article “Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now” was to highlight how official cases was meaningless.
Then, ppl realized cases were not the entire picture. Testing was crucial too. No tests, no cases — but lots of hidden infections. So they started reporting cases and tests.
But these are meaningless numbers in a vacuum, so they sought a ratio.
We’ve been lucky though. In the 1918 pandemic, the 2nd wave was likely driven by a mutation that was both more infectious AND fatal.
We already knew this was happening back in March. This image is from The Hammer and the Dance. The only thing we didn’t know then is which variant was going to prevail. Details.
Capitalism vs socialism, markets vs gov... Most ppl think 1 is great and the other trash. That’s simplistic.
They’re tools adapted to different situations. We must understand them to know when to use them. Thread.
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Capitalism is great. It uses natural selfishness to push ppl to be as productive as possible, promising them wealth. The + you produce for others, the + you get.
That is achieved by incurring both the cost and benefit of your initiatives.
Here’s the pbm
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It creates a huge incentive to increase your benefits in ways that worsen society.
This happens in many ways. Eg:
1. Information asymmetry
You want cheap & delicious food. But what if it has ingredients that cause cancer? The producer knows it, but doesn’t tell you.
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One of the key arguments of Herd Immunity apologists like @ScottWAtlas or Anders Tegnell is that you can't stop the virus. That means it only stops killing people when 50%-80% of the population has caught it (66% in Manaus). nature.com/articles/d4158…
If it had taken us 5 years to get a vaccine, it might have made sense: it might be too hard to control the virus this long. But now we can guess that by mid-late 2021, enough ppl might be vaccinated to stop it.