It says something about expertise, and also about how our Expert Class views itself, that the Expert can set aside all logic and scientific principles as long as their conclusions line up with Expert Consensus. People say stupid things when they’re never really forced to create logical arguments, and our current system— from insular universities to polarized politics— simply isn’t forcing people to challenge their own beliefs and claims. It doesn’t seem to be an environment hospitable to science and yet it claims science as its highest idol.
Take teachers, some of the most hive-minded people in any profession there is. Get 5-6 middle-aged or younger school-teachers together, ask them if the school system need more reosurces. They all say yes. Then ask them if they know how the curves for spending looks, overlayed with the curves for staffing, pupils/students per class, staff per monetary unit, cost of location, and so on.
They don't.
Now show them that on average, schools in western (1st world) nations have never ever spent as much on school systems per staff, per pupil, and so on, as we do to today. Yet, the more we spend the worse results (on average) get. The more staff the more social problems in schools. The more extra-special-programs-anti-the current thing, the greater the problem becomes. And so on with that too.
And you know what?
Despite you showing them all this, sourced and proven using public offical records and reports?
They will still say they need more money, more staff, more modern gadgets and geegaws, and get better at the current pedagogical/didactic/metological trendy method.
Doesn't matter if it's grade school or university.
That Mothy Python scene, with the birthing woman (going to pat my self on the back for working that horrid wokeified phrase in correctly!) hidden behind half a dozen staff, admin, and machines that goes "Ping!" -that's where we're at now. In politics, societal discourse, normal life, what have you.
Yes! Rant away! One cannot rant enough on this subject. The other day my youngest was helping me with drywall repair, and your comment reminded me of the way he just kept on slopping more spackle. If I’d let him, he would have turned several minor imperfections into the Himalayas. Our schools, especially K-8, don’t need more spackle.
I present for approval the following imperfect hypothesis.
The human species possesses genetically encoded instincts for rapid assessment of dangers. Experience(s) inform each individual human being as to realities leading to superior assessment of dangers. We'll call this acquired knowledge/skill/ability intellect. When employed the human will more often than not arrive at correct conclusions. Occasionally even the most knowledgeable & intelligent human beings abandon logic/reason and revert to their baser instincts resulting in erroneous conclusions.
And sometimes no amount of acquired knowledge can overcome groupthink. ... You just can't fix stupid.
The higher the intelligence, the more ways to be stupid you have.
Sounds counterintutive? Well, since IQ is what we use to measure intelligence (which is about as exact and comprehensive as only using "apples" instead the names of each different kind) and IQ measures ability rather than content or anything even more vague, it seems reasonable to assume this is true for intelligence:
Low IQ: 1 way to be stupid, 2 ways to be normal smart, and 1 way to be clever.
Average IQ: 2 ways to be stupid, 3 ways to be normal smart, and 2 ways to be clever.
High IQ: 4 ways to be stupid, 5 ways to be normal smart, and 4 ways to be clever.
Not scientific, just a way shorter explanation than using real sentences. We could also expand this in more dimensions, adding "bloody stupid" and "fiendishly clever" as a separate category for the high IQ.
Also, the smarter you are, the easier you are to fool for a simple reason: you know you are smarter, and you associate with smart people, and you reinforce this as a group, meaning that it becomes invonceivable to you that anyone not of your group can fool you.
Epictetus is using conditional probability in the correct way. Explanations occur on the right hand side of the bar only. Consider M = "wore a mask", and three scenarios:
1. Masks are ineffective, i.e. you wearing one does not affect your chances of getting Covid.
-> P(C=0|M) = P(C=0), and P(M|C=0) = P(M) by Bayes
2. Masks are 100% effective, i.e. you won't get Covid if you wear one.
-> P(C=0|M) = 1, and P(M|C=0) = P(M) / P(C=0) by Bayes
3. Masks are actually dangerous, i.e. give you Covid.
-> P(C=0|M) = 0, and P(M|C=0) = 0 by Bayes
The observable quantity P(C=0|M) is a direct indicator of mask effectiveness (of course, one still has to check that the base rates P(M) and P(C=0) stay away from 0 and 1), and can be used to compare with other possible explanations.
In your example, you might of course exchange explanation by observation and compute P(wore a mask|C=0) and P(had natural immunity|C=0), but that won't help (e.g., consider the first wave of Covid where no one had natural immunity, and many people wore masks).
I disagree (whilst not disagreeing with the detail of what you write) 🤪
What is the probability question that's being asked here? What is being conditioned on what?
Is it "what is the probability of not catching covid, given I'm wearing a mask?" OR is it "what is the probability it was due to masking, given that I didn't catch covid?"
Epictetus is trying to address this latter question (he's talking about which explanation is more plausible and tries to infer that the mask explanation is much less plausible than other explanations).
Both are legitimate probability questions.
The latter question can only be asked within a Bayesian framework. If, as we know to be more or less the case, mask wearing has no impact then P(C|mask) = P(C|no mask) - in which case we have an equality here and not a "very much less than".
So what we're really asking is which of the possible explanations E1, E2, E3, . . . is most likely to be true given I didn't catch covid. The "given" here is not catching covid. We want to know which 'explanation' is more likely, given this fact.
Laplace, I seem to recall, used this line of reasoning when trying to assess which of various theories about planetary motion were most likely to be true.
But probability does my head in - like trying to reason out word statements in logic.
There's always a high probability I'm talking nonsense when talking about probability.
My intuition: the second question ("what is the probability it was due to masking, given that I didn't catch covid?") is actually concerned with causality, not probability. Some time ago, I read one of Judea Pearl's books ("The Book of Why" - a popular science account of the research into causality; I also bought a copy of the scholarly "Causality" but, as these things go, it is still waiting quietly in the bookshelf). Fascinating stuff! And it really seems to have started with Laplace. Here's a few lines from "Causality":
"Finally, certain concepts that are ubiquitous in human discourse can be defined only in the Laplacian framework [i.e., Laplaces idea that "nature's laws are deterministic and randomness surfaces owing merely to our ignorance of the underlying boundary conditions"]. We shall see, for example, that such simple concepts as "the probability that event B occured *because* of event A" and "the probability that event B would have been *different* if it were not for event A" cannot be defined in terms of purely stochastic models. These so-called *counterfactual* concepts will require a synthesis of the deterministic and probabilistic components embodied in the Laplacian model."
This idea of 'smart people can be dumb' speaks to how I felt throughout the ENTIRE scamdemic - being gravely disappointed, saddened and disheartened by my otherwise very intelligent friends and relatives who so easily fell into the mass formation psychosis. Even now I still can't believe how dumb they actually are.
I have the perfect opposite anecdote for the professor:
My unvaxxed wife and her mentally handicapped SIL spent two weeks with their unvaxxed mother who caught the rona, at an event my SIL went to too and where almost everyone else got it, most worse, even/in particular those who were masked and vaxxed, mainly to get my SIL taken care of food-wise.
They lived as usual, unmasked of course.
None of them caught it.
Unlike the professor, I am not stupid enough to allege that it was BECAUSE they were unmasked, though it and in particular being unvaxxed might have had its and many other benefits.
I spent 30 years working in military radar system engineering. Phased array system design, development, test, installation and support, missile fire control, safety cases, high reliability software etc etc . It was complex shit. We had more intellectual fire-power in our engineering team than most mid-sized universities. Claiming that one had a PhD didn't get any special attention.
But late in 2021 the Covid mind virus took hold. Not the Covid virus itself, just the insanity associated with it. Masking in the office, shut down of the staff brew room came first. Then masks only for the unvaxxed (me and a few others) like wearing a yellow star into the office every day. Then an email from the CEO stating that they were planning on mandating that all staff get vaxxed.
"Fuck this for a bad joke" I thought, and I left, embittered after 3 decades of loyal service to people I thought were my intelligent friends, but who turned out to be vindictive imbeciles.
Subsequently, about half of the staff have contracted Covid, including the elderly company founder who is in his 70s and caught it last week. I worked for him for 30 years, but I no longer care.
Just one minor personal catastrophe, amongst the millions of lives, careers and businesses that have been devestated as a result of our disastrous handling of this minor illness.
The supposedly very intelligent can behave in very stupid ways indeed.
I've been playing classical piano almost every day during the "pandemic" and haven't got the Dreaded Lurgy yet (to the best of my knowledge). So this proves that Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, and Chopin are safe and effective against SARS-CoV-2.
It says something about expertise, and also about how our Expert Class views itself, that the Expert can set aside all logic and scientific principles as long as their conclusions line up with Expert Consensus. People say stupid things when they’re never really forced to create logical arguments, and our current system— from insular universities to polarized politics— simply isn’t forcing people to challenge their own beliefs and claims. It doesn’t seem to be an environment hospitable to science and yet it claims science as its highest idol.
Group mind is like that.
Take teachers, some of the most hive-minded people in any profession there is. Get 5-6 middle-aged or younger school-teachers together, ask them if the school system need more reosurces. They all say yes. Then ask them if they know how the curves for spending looks, overlayed with the curves for staffing, pupils/students per class, staff per monetary unit, cost of location, and so on.
They don't.
Now show them that on average, schools in western (1st world) nations have never ever spent as much on school systems per staff, per pupil, and so on, as we do to today. Yet, the more we spend the worse results (on average) get. The more staff the more social problems in schools. The more extra-special-programs-anti-the current thing, the greater the problem becomes. And so on with that too.
And you know what?
Despite you showing them all this, sourced and proven using public offical records and reports?
They will still say they need more money, more staff, more modern gadgets and geegaws, and get better at the current pedagogical/didactic/metological trendy method.
Doesn't matter if it's grade school or university.
That Mothy Python scene, with the birthing woman (going to pat my self on the back for working that horrid wokeified phrase in correctly!) hidden behind half a dozen staff, admin, and machines that goes "Ping!" -that's where we're at now. In politics, societal discourse, normal life, what have you.
And another thing... (rants off into the sunset)
Yes! Rant away! One cannot rant enough on this subject. The other day my youngest was helping me with drywall repair, and your comment reminded me of the way he just kept on slopping more spackle. If I’d let him, he would have turned several minor imperfections into the Himalayas. Our schools, especially K-8, don’t need more spackle.
Excellently stated!
smart people are dumb as fk too!
The banal simplicity of modern life, has naturally selected for a growing population of simple banality.
Just because you are smart in one small specialisation or subject area doesn't make you smart in any other subject?
I present for approval the following imperfect hypothesis.
The human species possesses genetically encoded instincts for rapid assessment of dangers. Experience(s) inform each individual human being as to realities leading to superior assessment of dangers. We'll call this acquired knowledge/skill/ability intellect. When employed the human will more often than not arrive at correct conclusions. Occasionally even the most knowledgeable & intelligent human beings abandon logic/reason and revert to their baser instincts resulting in erroneous conclusions.
And sometimes no amount of acquired knowledge can overcome groupthink. ... You just can't fix stupid.
The higher the intelligence, the more ways to be stupid you have.
Sounds counterintutive? Well, since IQ is what we use to measure intelligence (which is about as exact and comprehensive as only using "apples" instead the names of each different kind) and IQ measures ability rather than content or anything even more vague, it seems reasonable to assume this is true for intelligence:
Low IQ: 1 way to be stupid, 2 ways to be normal smart, and 1 way to be clever.
Average IQ: 2 ways to be stupid, 3 ways to be normal smart, and 2 ways to be clever.
High IQ: 4 ways to be stupid, 5 ways to be normal smart, and 4 ways to be clever.
Not scientific, just a way shorter explanation than using real sentences. We could also expand this in more dimensions, adding "bloody stupid" and "fiendishly clever" as a separate category for the high IQ.
Also, the smarter you are, the easier you are to fool for a simple reason: you know you are smarter, and you associate with smart people, and you reinforce this as a group, meaning that it becomes invonceivable to you that anyone not of your group can fool you.
Epictetus is using conditional probability in the correct way. Explanations occur on the right hand side of the bar only. Consider M = "wore a mask", and three scenarios:
1. Masks are ineffective, i.e. you wearing one does not affect your chances of getting Covid.
-> P(C=0|M) = P(C=0), and P(M|C=0) = P(M) by Bayes
2. Masks are 100% effective, i.e. you won't get Covid if you wear one.
-> P(C=0|M) = 1, and P(M|C=0) = P(M) / P(C=0) by Bayes
3. Masks are actually dangerous, i.e. give you Covid.
-> P(C=0|M) = 0, and P(M|C=0) = 0 by Bayes
The observable quantity P(C=0|M) is a direct indicator of mask effectiveness (of course, one still has to check that the base rates P(M) and P(C=0) stay away from 0 and 1), and can be used to compare with other possible explanations.
In your example, you might of course exchange explanation by observation and compute P(wore a mask|C=0) and P(had natural immunity|C=0), but that won't help (e.g., consider the first wave of Covid where no one had natural immunity, and many people wore masks).
I disagree (whilst not disagreeing with the detail of what you write) 🤪
What is the probability question that's being asked here? What is being conditioned on what?
Is it "what is the probability of not catching covid, given I'm wearing a mask?" OR is it "what is the probability it was due to masking, given that I didn't catch covid?"
Epictetus is trying to address this latter question (he's talking about which explanation is more plausible and tries to infer that the mask explanation is much less plausible than other explanations).
Both are legitimate probability questions.
The latter question can only be asked within a Bayesian framework. If, as we know to be more or less the case, mask wearing has no impact then P(C|mask) = P(C|no mask) - in which case we have an equality here and not a "very much less than".
So what we're really asking is which of the possible explanations E1, E2, E3, . . . is most likely to be true given I didn't catch covid. The "given" here is not catching covid. We want to know which 'explanation' is more likely, given this fact.
Laplace, I seem to recall, used this line of reasoning when trying to assess which of various theories about planetary motion were most likely to be true.
But probability does my head in - like trying to reason out word statements in logic.
There's always a high probability I'm talking nonsense when talking about probability.
Norman Fenton just posted something in this context:
https://wherearethenumbers.substack.com/p/did-the-covid-vaccine-cause-stiff
My intuition: the second question ("what is the probability it was due to masking, given that I didn't catch covid?") is actually concerned with causality, not probability. Some time ago, I read one of Judea Pearl's books ("The Book of Why" - a popular science account of the research into causality; I also bought a copy of the scholarly "Causality" but, as these things go, it is still waiting quietly in the bookshelf). Fascinating stuff! And it really seems to have started with Laplace. Here's a few lines from "Causality":
"Finally, certain concepts that are ubiquitous in human discourse can be defined only in the Laplacian framework [i.e., Laplaces idea that "nature's laws are deterministic and randomness surfaces owing merely to our ignorance of the underlying boundary conditions"]. We shall see, for example, that such simple concepts as "the probability that event B occured *because* of event A" and "the probability that event B would have been *different* if it were not for event A" cannot be defined in terms of purely stochastic models. These so-called *counterfactual* concepts will require a synthesis of the deterministic and probabilistic components embodied in the Laplacian model."
A helpful article for the professor: "SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell immunity in cases of
COVID-19 and SARS, and uninfected controls", https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z In pertinent part: "Memory T cells induced by previous pathogens can shape susceptibility to, and
the clinical severity of, subsequent infections 1
. Little is known about the presence in
humans of pre-existing memory T cells that have the potential to recognize severe acute
respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Here we studied T cell responses
against the structural (nucleocapsid (N) protein) and non-structural (NSP7 and NSP13 of
ORF1) regions of SARS-CoV-2 in individuals convalescing from coronavirus disease 2019
(COVID-19) (n = 36). In all of these individuals, we found CD4 and CD8 T cells that
recognized multiple regions of the N protein. Next, we showed that patients (n = 23) who
recovered from SARS (the disease associated with SARS-CoV infection) possess
long-lasting memory T cells that are reactive to the N protein of SARS-CoV 17 years after
the outbreak of SARS in 2003; these T cells displayed robust cross-reactivity to the N
protein of SARS-CoV-2. We also detected SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells in individuals with
no history of SARS, COVID-19 or contact with individuals who had SARS and/or COVID-19
(n = 37). SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells in uninfected donors exhibited a different pattern of
immunodominance, and frequently targeted NSP7 and NSP13 as well as the N protein."
This idea of 'smart people can be dumb' speaks to how I felt throughout the ENTIRE scamdemic - being gravely disappointed, saddened and disheartened by my otherwise very intelligent friends and relatives who so easily fell into the mass formation psychosis. Even now I still can't believe how dumb they actually are.
I have the perfect opposite anecdote for the professor:
My unvaxxed wife and her mentally handicapped SIL spent two weeks with their unvaxxed mother who caught the rona, at an event my SIL went to too and where almost everyone else got it, most worse, even/in particular those who were masked and vaxxed, mainly to get my SIL taken care of food-wise.
They lived as usual, unmasked of course.
None of them caught it.
Unlike the professor, I am not stupid enough to allege that it was BECAUSE they were unmasked, though it and in particular being unvaxxed might have had its and many other benefits.
I spent 30 years working in military radar system engineering. Phased array system design, development, test, installation and support, missile fire control, safety cases, high reliability software etc etc . It was complex shit. We had more intellectual fire-power in our engineering team than most mid-sized universities. Claiming that one had a PhD didn't get any special attention.
But late in 2021 the Covid mind virus took hold. Not the Covid virus itself, just the insanity associated with it. Masking in the office, shut down of the staff brew room came first. Then masks only for the unvaxxed (me and a few others) like wearing a yellow star into the office every day. Then an email from the CEO stating that they were planning on mandating that all staff get vaxxed.
"Fuck this for a bad joke" I thought, and I left, embittered after 3 decades of loyal service to people I thought were my intelligent friends, but who turned out to be vindictive imbeciles.
Subsequently, about half of the staff have contracted Covid, including the elderly company founder who is in his 70s and caught it last week. I worked for him for 30 years, but I no longer care.
Just one minor personal catastrophe, amongst the millions of lives, careers and businesses that have been devestated as a result of our disastrous handling of this minor illness.
The supposedly very intelligent can behave in very stupid ways indeed.
I've been playing classical piano almost every day during the "pandemic" and haven't got the Dreaded Lurgy yet (to the best of my knowledge). So this proves that Brahms, Debussy, Ravel, and Chopin are safe and effective against SARS-CoV-2.