I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
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As I said: expertise is useful insofar as it can guide decisionmaking by providing a necessary perspective, but we've built a rigid and calcified scientific community in the West that spends most of its time protecting its own ideas, and less time dismantling them, especially in medicine.
In 2020, when circumstances demanded flexibility, dynamism and inference, the vast majority of the scientific and expert community failed to deliver.
Indeed, sometimes aggressively.
Look up AJ Leonardi, mask denialism, the "airborne" controversy, Long COVID denialism, "hybrid immunity", Great Barrington Declaration, and "immunity debt" if you doubt me.
These are all classic examples of how a community of experts, cut off from their comfort zones, made incredibly bad decisions based on out-of-date information or just full-stop made up notions. But still couched it in the language of expertise, which led to devastating policy errors.
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@johnzajac COVID actually did cause huge chaos and death early on, though, in some countries. China, Italy, Iran, US.
A fraction of what it would have caused had we not shut everything down, even for the (too short, inadequate, unenforced) 4-6 week period that things actually changed.
China and Italy had pandemics that were a *fraction* per capita of the US', which by far was the worst pandemic in the modern world. I'm not familiar with Iran's, so I can't comment.
We take the 1st place trophy in terms of devaluing life and putting the interests of capital ahead of those of people.
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@tuban_muzuru @johnzajac @koakuma That is pretty much what I do. After years of trying to disprove it and failing, I had to accept it.
A person is smart...
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@burnitdown @glent @johnzajac Industrial control systems, too, because COBOL is weirdly good for developing programmable state machines. Power companies used them (probably still do) for managing when substations go offline and others take up the load for maintenance.
@drwho @glent @johnzajac i'm not even sure how that works, i've only worked in the financial side of things, at the Canada Revenue Agency, and doing data entry for government employee health insurance, and was only an end-user of any of that code.
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@johnzajac worthwhile pointing out that many websites displayed an impossible time due to a Y2K issue in Perl. The world did not stop.
Also, the consulting companies made out like bandits. They used the concept of Y2K compliance to drive business.
Because of that I am always cautious about Y2K as an analogy.
@glent @johnzajac I worked for a software house at the time and we made a killing on Y2K, we even had people on standby over new year in case of issues who were essentially paid a load of cash to
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac Same with the ozone hole - it was addressed before it got worse, by international agreements, and that worked. And now some people think it was a hoax.
Same attitude towards vaccination - people think there is no need to vaccinate against measles, chickenpox, polio etc. because they are (were) almost eradicated - but only because so many are (were) vaccinated against it.
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
Why should my taxes pay for a "fire department"? My house isn't on fire!
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Look up AJ Leonardi, mask denialism, the "airborne" controversy, Long COVID denialism, "hybrid immunity", Great Barrington Declaration, and "immunity debt" if you doubt me.
These are all classic examples of how a community of experts, cut off from their comfort zones, made incredibly bad decisions based on out-of-date information or just full-stop made up notions. But still couched it in the language of expertise, which led to devastating policy errors.
So there are a few things here:
- Scientists deal with reality and our current understanding of it. To speculte beyond that is generally frowned upon as non-scientific, and spoken about in terms of probabilities
- Words have different meanings in the scientific language, best exampified by the word "Theory" which almost has opposite meaning between scientific and every day language.Given this, the mistake is to expect scientists to make political decisions.
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So there are a few things here:
- Scientists deal with reality and our current understanding of it. To speculte beyond that is generally frowned upon as non-scientific, and spoken about in terms of probabilities
- Words have different meanings in the scientific language, best exampified by the word "Theory" which almost has opposite meaning between scientific and every day language.Given this, the mistake is to expect scientists to make political decisions.
Science can inform, tell us what we know, what may be probable to happen. and what may be less probable.
Mask mandates are a good point to discuss this: early on, all the data we had for masks efficacy was from hospital studies, there were, to my knowledge, no large published studies on the effects of masks in public Areals.
The correct, scientific thing to say is "we have no data".
It's for politicians to gather data and make desicions.
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Science can inform, tell us what we know, what may be probable to happen. and what may be less probable.
Mask mandates are a good point to discuss this: early on, all the data we had for masks efficacy was from hospital studies, there were, to my knowledge, no large published studies on the effects of masks in public Areals.
The correct, scientific thing to say is "we have no data".
It's for politicians to gather data and make desicions.
When I hear you describe scientists, I hear someone describing an ideology, not a group of practitioners who have a body of knowledge and a mastery of a method designed to guide them in uncovering progressively more true aspects of our reality.
"Not making political decisions" is making a political decision, and especially in this era of "data is God" scientists are, whether they want to be or not, political.
That they are not taught this is a failure of their education
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When I hear you describe scientists, I hear someone describing an ideology, not a group of practitioners who have a body of knowledge and a mastery of a method designed to guide them in uncovering progressively more true aspects of our reality.
"Not making political decisions" is making a political decision, and especially in this era of "data is God" scientists are, whether they want to be or not, political.
That they are not taught this is a failure of their education
As I said, both hospital studies and RCTs are batshit dumb ways to "study the efficacy of masks", because masks are *engineered* and *thoroughly tested* for efficacy in absolute terms.
The way respirators protect from particles is well known and undisputed.
"Will people wear masks wrong" and "are masks effective" are categorically different questions.
One is a failure of training and execution. The other is an answered question of physics and engineering.
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As I said, both hospital studies and RCTs are batshit dumb ways to "study the efficacy of masks", because masks are *engineered* and *thoroughly tested* for efficacy in absolute terms.
The way respirators protect from particles is well known and undisputed.
"Will people wear masks wrong" and "are masks effective" are categorically different questions.
One is a failure of training and execution. The other is an answered question of physics and engineering.
But this category error - confusing execution failures with engineering specs - happened all the time during the pandemic
Yes, if a doctor is careless and "wearing" a masks incorrectly that they take off frequently, the mask will not be "effective", because the doctor is a fool misusing a tool.
To the same point, if a surgeon takes a scalpel and slashes around inside someone's body like they're pretending to be Zoro, it's not the scalpel's failure when the patient dies.
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac yeah, that seems like the last time things were taken seriously somehow.
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Science can inform, tell us what we know, what may be probable to happen. and what may be less probable.
Mask mandates are a good point to discuss this: early on, all the data we had for masks efficacy was from hospital studies, there were, to my knowledge, no large published studies on the effects of masks in public Areals.
The correct, scientific thing to say is "we have no data".
It's for politicians to gather data and make desicions.
But this is recapitulating one of the early mistakes about mask science. We _did_ have data - on the size of aerosol particles likely to carry viruses, and the size of particles caught by different filter materials. When you know the physics, you can deduce things directly about the efficacy of different types of masks, without having to wait for them to be used inconsistently by humans and then try to sieve the resulting signal out of the noise.
(Then of course we run into the denial that airborne was important. But quite a lot of people were right about that from day 1, and had data to strongly suggest it should be taken seriously. I've not forgiven the WHO for denying it.)
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But this is recapitulating one of the early mistakes about mask science. We _did_ have data - on the size of aerosol particles likely to carry viruses, and the size of particles caught by different filter materials. When you know the physics, you can deduce things directly about the efficacy of different types of masks, without having to wait for them to be used inconsistently by humans and then try to sieve the resulting signal out of the noise.
(Then of course we run into the denial that airborne was important. But quite a lot of people were right about that from day 1, and had data to strongly suggest it should be taken seriously. I've not forgiven the WHO for denying it.)
I will just say: what would have been a better approach.
Scientists are sometimes a weird bunch, only trying to state publicly what they are absolutely sure of, and hopefully only for the field they have expertise in.
So if you ask a virologist "do masks work" they will look for a study of reduced infectivity.
@johnzajac is right, we have good engineering data on masks, but that's engineering data, not scientific, and it would not be a virologist's expertise.
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I will just say: what would have been a better approach.
Scientists are sometimes a weird bunch, only trying to state publicly what they are absolutely sure of, and hopefully only for the field they have expertise in.
So if you ask a virologist "do masks work" they will look for a study of reduced infectivity.
@johnzajac is right, we have good engineering data on masks, but that's engineering data, not scientific, and it would not be a virologist's expertise.
The WHO is a different beast, that's a public health commitee, they're job is it to collect the available data and make policy proposals.
I guess that's where the gravity of the situation makes an impact: you see something coming that is large, do you cry "wolf"? How often do we see things that turn out to be nothing burgers? At what point *was* it obvious that mask mandates were the best first course of action?
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The WHO is a different beast, that's a public health commitee, they're job is it to collect the available data and make policy proposals.
I guess that's where the gravity of the situation makes an impact: you see something coming that is large, do you cry "wolf"? How often do we see things that turn out to be nothing burgers? At what point *was* it obvious that mask mandates were the best first course of action?
In January/February 2020, I was in New Zealand, and it was interesting to see that the Asian Population there started to mask upon the first news from Hubei, in fact, I remember first learning about it from a receptionist at a motel in Christchurch who wore a mask. That was in the last week of January, a full two months before any measures were taken back home in Germany.
I guess what I wanted to say is: I am not sure that it is that easy.
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In January/February 2020, I was in New Zealand, and it was interesting to see that the Asian Population there started to mask upon the first news from Hubei, in fact, I remember first learning about it from a receptionist at a motel in Christchurch who wore a mask. That was in the last week of January, a full two months before any measures were taken back home in Germany.
I guess what I wanted to say is: I am not sure that it is that easy.
Did you ever read this article about the aerosol / droplet argument? It's interesting.
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In January/February 2020, I was in New Zealand, and it was interesting to see that the Asian Population there started to mask upon the first news from Hubei, in fact, I remember first learning about it from a receptionist at a motel in Christchurch who wore a mask. That was in the last week of January, a full two months before any measures were taken back home in Germany.
I guess what I wanted to say is: I am not sure that it is that easy.
@pjakobs @unchartedworlds @syllopsium
The answer, of course, is "ask an engineer" or "yes", because ostensibly you'd know that answering outside of your knowledge level was, not to put too fine a point on it, foolish.
The entire purpose of the "precautionary principle" is to assume the worst and be proven wrong, because to assume otherwise and be proven wrong results in... 300+ million deaths and the worst mass disability and persistent chronic illness crisis in human history.
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@pjakobs @unchartedworlds @syllopsium
The answer, of course, is "ask an engineer" or "yes", because ostensibly you'd know that answering outside of your knowledge level was, not to put too fine a point on it, foolish.
The entire purpose of the "precautionary principle" is to assume the worst and be proven wrong, because to assume otherwise and be proven wrong results in... 300+ million deaths and the worst mass disability and persistent chronic illness crisis in human history.
@pjakobs @unchartedworlds @syllopsium
I mean, *basic decency* dictates that when you have a plague with a reported 1% CFR and strong potential for global spread you go hard with rhetoric.
Instead we got waffling and delays driven by politics and business.
It was politics and business that won the day, which is why Long COVID is the most common childhood chronic illness in the US.
I'm sure that'll work out fine, though. After all, I don't have a study in front of me that says "we're fucked".
