what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Saturday, March 28, 2020

Critical Masses, Emperors and freebies

The last post ended with a question - picked up by my fellow-blogger Boffy whose reply (posted as a comment on my blog) deserves a spotlight –

It wasn't a conspiracy that led to Salem, and so on. Popular delusions and mass panics have their own dynamic….. Once a critical mass is achieved no one dare say the Emperor has no clothes, as Wobarg says (at the end of the video link)
In the past, I have written about the work of Milgram and others who showed how the natural human desire to conform - natural because it developed as a herd response so as to survive on the ancient grasslands - leads people to simply accept the current meme, no matter how insane. Its why people would accept and go along with the holocaust, or as Milgram showed why they would be prepared to administer fatal electric shocks to other human beings and animals, so long as an authority figure said it was okay for them to do so!

No leading scientist is going to stand out against the crowd in current conditions, because they would be crucified for doing so, and that applies equally to politicians who have been pressed into all channelling into the same course of action, which itself makes it all the more difficult for anyone to reject.
My guess is that, just as with 2008, there will in a couple of years time be plenty, however, who will write important articles in Medical Science and Statistical Journals saying how they were sceptical all along about what was really happening, and had in their own quiet way raised questions, and that if they had only had the grants they had previously asked for to conduct their epistemological studies they could have shown why what by then will be seen to have been a wholly avoidable crisis - both health crisis and economic and financial crisis - was indeed avoidable.

The point is well taken – I’m not a conspiracy theorist either. Actually Boffy’s reply starts on a note of appreciation for the “extensive, rational and supportive” nature of my last post - which had taken the trouble to copy and paste his 5 previous posts on Covid19 and then try to capture their essence. Clearly he has been the subject of some abuse for daring to challenge the prevailing wisdom on the subject.   

I would like to think that “Extensive, rational and supportive” captures the spirit of my blog. Particularly these days, tone matters – so does common decency and treating others with respect. Twitter has inflicted great harm on our discourse.

On a separate matter, Journals are offering some great bargains and freebies these days.
A week or so ago I took advantage of an offer from the famous FAZ newspaper for daily access during the next couple of months for only a dollar a month
World Literature Today showcases the all-too-often unappreciated work of translators and has just come out with a special offer of only 2 dollars a month - and the last 3 years’ archives
The New Yorker is on offer with the same deal and the entire archives - although my PC is having problems which didn’t allow it to take advantage of the offer. But I can access its special coverage of Covid19 which it’s making available free of charge

I had already mentioned that the UK Prospect mag has free access for the next month to its entire 25 year archive
And today I was notified by Bergahn Journals that all of their journals will be free for the entire duration of the shutdown. I’m on their mailing list because of the interest I had expressed in German politics and society and I see now that several other titles are of interest eg
Finally, Dr Campbell’s Friday video starts with a short video clip of a tearful Spanish doctor’s reaction to ventilators for older patients being switched off to emphasise the importance of the over 65s self-isolating


Addendum
I’ve just been reading Chris Grey’s weekly Brexit Blog – which makes a link between “denialists” and

what is reported to have been the PM adviser Dominic Cummings’ initial response to coronavirus and his (and others’) ‘disruptor’ view of Brexit. Both seem to grow out of an idea that any shock to ‘the system’ is to be regarded as desirable simply for being a shock. Adverse consequences are just so much collateral damage to be ignored if not, indeed, welcomed.
That’s not quite the same as the ‘disaster capitalism’ idea, in which massive shocks such as this pandemic represent an opportunity for economic and political exploitation - it’s more a kind of adolescent infatuation with instability as ‘exciting’.
And it links to the wearisomely predictable ‘contrarianism’ of the peculiar, yet peculiarly influential, leftist-libertarian Spiked Online sect who have lashed out against the coronavirus restrictions and who, of course, tend to be ardent Brexiters. One might speculate on the affinities between such an infatuation and the psychology of the “misfits and weirdos” who are Cummings’ preferred hires.

Tim Martin is one of the relatively small number of leading business people who vocally supported Brexit, who has made simplistic pronouncements about the coronavirus crisis. It links no doubt with the deep-rooted English aversion to intellectuals, who make things complex when they need not be, and also to a perhaps related machismo so that Martin is “happy to take his chances” with catching the virus.
The same attitude is evident in the comments of Paul Bullen, former UKIP leader on Cambridgeshire County Council and Brexit Party candidate. He thinks “the majority don’t care” about coronavirus and wants to just “get back to normal”. It might be called a ‘hand washing is for sissies’ mentality (which could have important consequences for coronavirus spread (£) given the higher infection and mortality rates amongst men). Another variant on the same theme is, like Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson, to condemn alarm about the virus as “scaremongering” just as she (and countless others) dismissed warnings about Brexit as ‘Project Fear’ (£).

I hold Chris Grey in very high respect but actually clicked the Spiked Online article and found it an eminently sensible piece - as is the Peter Hitchen’s extended analysis in the Daily Mail mentioned by one of the discussants of that piece.

Clearly accusations of exaggeration cut both ways….I don’t think it helps one bit in these times to label a journal a “wearisomely predictable… peculiar…. sect” 

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