I don't know if you really want to read anything I wrote this month. It's just rants, at points nearly incoherent. This month has been especially trying in not letting the world get the best of me. I hope it is a low point and things swing up from here. My only hope is to continue to count my blessings, which I must remember are quite numerous. I hope next month to be in a more positive state of mind.
[Movies, TV, Music, Good Links] Entertainment Consumables
[Rant] The Late Slate Star Codex
[Rant] Coronatime, Month 4
Wednesday, July 08, 2020
[Movies, TV, Music, Good Links] Entertainment Consumables
Quick hits on sound and vision.
- Knives Out is weird. A solid drawing room style murder mystery, it made some waves because people assigned it socio-political meaning. I suppose there was possibly that intent, I don't know. I do know it was a very impressively-plotted mystery, speaking as someone who understands how difficult that is. What I think ultimately holds it back is the casting. There were a lot of high-end names associated with this, none of whom were particularly believable in their roles -- especially Daniel Craig. They do their level best but none transcend their miscasting. Not a bad bit of entertainment, but ultimately little more than a curiosity.
- Midway -- There have been two movies about the battle of Midway, one in 1976 and one in 2019. Both have been less than mediocre. This latest one has little to no character development, the pilots were so undifferentiated I couldn't remember why I was supposed to care about whom. Lip service to the wives back home was empty. Even the action scenes were unaffecting. It was mostly vanilla dramatizations of commonly known events. Skip this one. It's a shame. The Battle of Midway deserves a more Band of Brothers-y treatment.
- Theme Time Radio Hour -- Radio show, or perhaps a podcast(?), hosted by Bob Dylan as a sort of old school DJ. I've been working my way through the episodes. Dylan reaches way back, often as far back as the '30s, to find songs to match the theme. It's a good antidote to standard broadcasting or machine formed playlists.
- Sleep With Me, I may have mentioned this podcast before, but I've recently gone back to it to help me chill. Essentially it is a guy droning on, telling rambling stories, or absent-mindedly recapping TV episodes in a meandering, monotonous kind of way. If you are trying to follow the narrative, you are doing it wrong. It is amiable and aimless with the intent that it lingers at the edge of your conscious mind and eases you into sleep. It absolutely works for me.
- Perry Mason - the latest series from HBO. Old folks will remember Perry Mason as a TV lawyer played by Raymond Burr in the '50s and '60s. Here we go back to his origin as a skid row private eye in the '30s. The effect is a bit strained, as if everything was laboring to send a message or to make an important point. I also don't know if I buy Matthew Rhys as the lead. It's full of darkly motivated characters, as noirish as it gets, but feels a little too inorganic. Still, we're only three episodes in. If it pans out I may comment more.
- Wendover Productions -- Not strictly "entertainment", this is a YouTube channel that cranks out 15 minute videos explaining how some key and complex aspects of commerce work. How Airports make (or lose) money. How long-haul trucking works. The thing here is that these are short and to the point, versus, say, a Discovery Channel show that has to fill in 30-60 minutes. Nothing revelatory, just keenly interesting to those with active and inquisitive minds.
[Rant] The Late Slate Star Codex
I'd provide a link here to one of the finest websites ever, Slate Star Codex, but the author took it down in anticipation of having his real name published in the New York Times. A bit of explanation is in order.
Slate Star Codex is the blog of Scott Alexander (a pseudonym), a practicing psychiatrist and amatuer philosopher (I guess you'd call it). He wrote with great clarity, not just in his field of psychiatry but in book reviews and general commentary and was even skilled at fiction. He would deep dive into commonly held beliefs, by which I mean he would pull apart the research behind them, often discovering very tenuous bases in fact. He would dig into commentary until he finally reached the assumptions at the firmament. Honestly, if for some reason I chose to try to make this blog into something of enduring value, I would want to be just like his.
Needless to say, his blog became quite popular and influential in certain circles. This drew the attention of the New York Times who wanted to profile it. In the course of their research they discovered Scott Alexander's real name and intended to publish it as part of the article.
Now. Scott has any number of political beliefs, although it would be hard to pigeon-hole him as right or left. Also, whenever discussing them, which is a rarity, he always gives the impression that he knows they are beliefs and not undebatable truths. And he always gives the impression that, were someone to demonstrate an error in his thinking, he would change his thinking. (Imagine that!) All that is to say that no reasonable person would take gross moral umbrage with Scott's beliefs. We are not, however, reasonable people.
First, as a psychiatrist, it's incredibly important that he is able to maintain personal distance from his clients. Exposure would potentially destroy that. Second, and he doesn't outright state this, but I suspect there is a strong possibility of him losing professional contacts or being outright cancelled if it turns out he had come to an unfashionable conclusion on a topic that angered the wrong people. So he removed the site. Here it is from the horse's mouth.
Absolutely no good comes of this. I work very hard to try to understand the motivations of both, or all, sides in controversy or conflict, but I see no cogent motivation for the NYT to do this. They are claiming it's a matter of journalistic ethics, but that holds no water. No harm would come from withholding Scott's real name (and the NYT has a long history of being flexible on journalistic standards).
I suppose the good news is that it's not going unresisted. There is a great deal of displeasure being expressed across the web and some within the NYT. As respected as Scott is, I do hope there will be consequences for the NYT. Were I important enough, I would, at a minimum, refuse them access and quotes. I would also no longer link to their website. (Yes, I can and will do that but it's meaningless in my case.) The article hasn't been published yet so maybe NYT will back off.
I have for years been in the camp of claiming the world is, on average, getting better, however slowly and haphazardly it may be happening. As little degradations like this build over time, it's harder and harder for me to maintain that optimism.
Slate Star Codex is the blog of Scott Alexander (a pseudonym), a practicing psychiatrist and amatuer philosopher (I guess you'd call it). He wrote with great clarity, not just in his field of psychiatry but in book reviews and general commentary and was even skilled at fiction. He would deep dive into commonly held beliefs, by which I mean he would pull apart the research behind them, often discovering very tenuous bases in fact. He would dig into commentary until he finally reached the assumptions at the firmament. Honestly, if for some reason I chose to try to make this blog into something of enduring value, I would want to be just like his.
Needless to say, his blog became quite popular and influential in certain circles. This drew the attention of the New York Times who wanted to profile it. In the course of their research they discovered Scott Alexander's real name and intended to publish it as part of the article.
Now. Scott has any number of political beliefs, although it would be hard to pigeon-hole him as right or left. Also, whenever discussing them, which is a rarity, he always gives the impression that he knows they are beliefs and not undebatable truths. And he always gives the impression that, were someone to demonstrate an error in his thinking, he would change his thinking. (Imagine that!) All that is to say that no reasonable person would take gross moral umbrage with Scott's beliefs. We are not, however, reasonable people.
First, as a psychiatrist, it's incredibly important that he is able to maintain personal distance from his clients. Exposure would potentially destroy that. Second, and he doesn't outright state this, but I suspect there is a strong possibility of him losing professional contacts or being outright cancelled if it turns out he had come to an unfashionable conclusion on a topic that angered the wrong people. So he removed the site. Here it is from the horse's mouth.
Absolutely no good comes of this. I work very hard to try to understand the motivations of both, or all, sides in controversy or conflict, but I see no cogent motivation for the NYT to do this. They are claiming it's a matter of journalistic ethics, but that holds no water. No harm would come from withholding Scott's real name (and the NYT has a long history of being flexible on journalistic standards).
I suppose the good news is that it's not going unresisted. There is a great deal of displeasure being expressed across the web and some within the NYT. As respected as Scott is, I do hope there will be consequences for the NYT. Were I important enough, I would, at a minimum, refuse them access and quotes. I would also no longer link to their website. (Yes, I can and will do that but it's meaningless in my case.) The article hasn't been published yet so maybe NYT will back off.
I have for years been in the camp of claiming the world is, on average, getting better, however slowly and haphazardly it may be happening. As little degradations like this build over time, it's harder and harder for me to maintain that optimism.
[Covid19, Rant] Coronatime, Month 4
At this point it's mostly about the masks. Your identity is defined by how you feel about masks. Are you careful to wear one everywhere and call out those who don't? Do you not wear one unless told to? Are you a slave to our cultural elites or a nazi? Those are your two choices.
Two sentences: (1)There are not really any replicable and peer-reviewed studies that show masks do any good and note that, early on, we were told they were useless. (2) There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that they do work, and frankly it scores high on the common sense test. Which of those carries more weight with you depends on whether you are a slave to cultural elites or a nazi.
I don't know which is right so I have to do some risk evaluation. I default to wearing the mask indoors unless there is a good reason not to and I am pretty solidly distanced from others. I don't wear the mask in my gym, but it's less a gym than a personal training studio where clients are kept strictly away from each other, the trainers all wear masks, and the equipment is cleaned psychotically, and I need to breathe freely to work out. I didn't wear the mask the handful of times I dined out once I was seated, but on the way to and from the table I did. That's about it. Why do I do this? Not because I think I'd be a nazi if I didn't. It's just risk/reward evaluation.
If wearing the mask saves lives then I'll be glad I wore it. If it doesn't, well, I have been inconvenienced for no good reason. Seems like a good trade to make. Also, I try to be polite. If a place of business requests I wear a mask I do, for the same reason I wear pants. Nevertheless, if you are wandering around without a mask, I don't think that makes you a nazi. You just have a different risk profile than I have. If you are wandering around without pants I might take issue.
More worrisome to me is that political leaders have completely undermined their moral authority to put the brakes on any reopening by supporting massive public protests and rallies. I have the feeling they can make all the decrees they want, be it about masks or anything else but nobody is going to follow them and any attempt at enforcement by the demoralized police forces will be futile. However you feel about the protests, the fact is our leaders made an implied statement that if you really feel strongly about something, you don't need to follow our restrictions.
Here in Michigan, the governor lost (then won) another case. An association of gym owners sued to have the executive order keeping them closed lifted. They won. There is a lot of misrepresentation of what this actually meant, but essentially it is along the same lines as the suit brought by the Rebel Barber of Owosso, which I discussed last month. The courts were not allowing the closing of specific classes of businesses without evidence that the act of the business itself is especially risky. Something to keep in mind here: the courts were not saying gyms are safe, they were saying if you want to treat gyms separately from other businesses you have to show evidence that the acts of business that gyms are involved in are risky -- i.e. lifting weights, running on a treadmill, etc. This is roughly the same thing that happened with the Rebel Barber of Owosso. Also, this didn't mean gyms can open and run as before, it means they can open if they can find ways to adhere to the governor's broader safety guidelines. Essentially, the courts -- both a fed court in the gym case and a State court in the barber case -- seemed to be saying you can't single out certain businesses for different policies without evidence. Anyone who can adhere to safety guidelines should be allowed to open. Then, of course, the Governor won a last minute appeal, and so one day before opening, gyms found out they had to stay closed.
I have been saying that openings or closings should be targeted based on ability to implement safety protocols not by type of business for months just as a matter of good policy, so obviously I'm on board with the original court decision. Before anyone gets their jimmies rustled over this, I freely acknowledge that my opinion means nothing and my words will not convince anyone of anything. Yours too.
A couple of months ago I suggested that we are now a nation of people eagerly hoping that we can be the ones to say "I told you so" 6 months from now. You can see this gearing up with the reaction to re-openings and potential second waves. There are four possibilities:
State reopens fast / no second wave
State reopens fast / second wave occurs
State reopens slow / no second wave
State reopens slow / second wave occurs
I can pretty much guarantee every one of these will happen somewhere. Just point to the States or regions that justify your position and recite the appropriate: "I told you so":
State reopens fast / no second wave: I told you the restrictions did no good
State reopens fast / second wave occurs: I told you it was reckless to lift restrictions
State reopens slow / no second wave: I told you the restrictions worked
State reopens slow / second wave occurs: I told you the restrictions didn't matter
Of course, you know you are under no obligation to word it so reasonably. And feel free to add the appropriate insult to the group you are targeting.
As far as what we can believe, well, who knows? We've seen charts indicating infections are soaring with no sort of acknowledgement, except the finest of print, that it may be due to (hushed whisper) the mass protests since it seems the increase in cases may be mostly among the young. Conversely, the death rate dropping is another indicator that the most vulnerable are keeping safe. None of this is proven or disproven so you get to make it mean you've been right all along. If you're a nazi this just shows how wrong it was to quarantine the masses; if you're a slave to the cultural elites it shows how the nazis have made things worse by not wearing masks. The CDC now thinks that for every known infection there are as many as 10 unrecorded infections. Does that confirm or contradict your feelings? The answer to that will tell you whether the CDC is speaking the truth.
Here is a complicated article on something called T-cell immunity, which suggests we are not yet clear on how resistant people already are to COVID19. Here is an even more complicated Twitter thread on new things we have just begun to model about herd immunity. Here is another complex Twitter thread explaining that while the number of known infections have eye-poppingly soared, the number of deaths has been decreasing on both a relative and absolute basis, even considering the time lag between reports and deaths. Can you incorporate these into your feelings? Can you even understand what they imply? I'm not sure I can, but maybe you're smarter than me.
As far as I can tell, Tyler Cowen may be the only one besides me who is overwhelmed by how inconsistent and random outbreaks and infection rates seem to be. The reaction when you point this out is for someone to propose a possible cause of some dichotomy, usually a solution in which that someone was right along. This misses the point. There are so many different dichotomies, anomalies, and outright contradictions that it seems like there is something we are missing, something important.
The fact remains we simply do not know enough yet to draw anything but the broadest conclusions. In this atmosphere, we need to just do the best we can, which we are probably doing in our own haphazard, inefficient, and outright hostile way. Given the FACT of our uncertainty you would think folks would be somewhat understanding of people on the other side of an argument. You would think wrongly.
I once heard suggested that whenever someone expresses an opinion they should be required to put a percentage on it as to their certainty. Good idea, but it would be futile. Everyone would just put 100% and accuse anyone who disagreed of ignorance and stupidity.
Yeah, I'm a little down on humanity these days.
Two sentences: (1)There are not really any replicable and peer-reviewed studies that show masks do any good and note that, early on, we were told they were useless. (2) There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that they do work, and frankly it scores high on the common sense test. Which of those carries more weight with you depends on whether you are a slave to cultural elites or a nazi.
I don't know which is right so I have to do some risk evaluation. I default to wearing the mask indoors unless there is a good reason not to and I am pretty solidly distanced from others. I don't wear the mask in my gym, but it's less a gym than a personal training studio where clients are kept strictly away from each other, the trainers all wear masks, and the equipment is cleaned psychotically, and I need to breathe freely to work out. I didn't wear the mask the handful of times I dined out once I was seated, but on the way to and from the table I did. That's about it. Why do I do this? Not because I think I'd be a nazi if I didn't. It's just risk/reward evaluation.
If wearing the mask saves lives then I'll be glad I wore it. If it doesn't, well, I have been inconvenienced for no good reason. Seems like a good trade to make. Also, I try to be polite. If a place of business requests I wear a mask I do, for the same reason I wear pants. Nevertheless, if you are wandering around without a mask, I don't think that makes you a nazi. You just have a different risk profile than I have. If you are wandering around without pants I might take issue.
More worrisome to me is that political leaders have completely undermined their moral authority to put the brakes on any reopening by supporting massive public protests and rallies. I have the feeling they can make all the decrees they want, be it about masks or anything else but nobody is going to follow them and any attempt at enforcement by the demoralized police forces will be futile. However you feel about the protests, the fact is our leaders made an implied statement that if you really feel strongly about something, you don't need to follow our restrictions.
Here in Michigan, the governor lost (then won) another case. An association of gym owners sued to have the executive order keeping them closed lifted. They won. There is a lot of misrepresentation of what this actually meant, but essentially it is along the same lines as the suit brought by the Rebel Barber of Owosso, which I discussed last month. The courts were not allowing the closing of specific classes of businesses without evidence that the act of the business itself is especially risky. Something to keep in mind here: the courts were not saying gyms are safe, they were saying if you want to treat gyms separately from other businesses you have to show evidence that the acts of business that gyms are involved in are risky -- i.e. lifting weights, running on a treadmill, etc. This is roughly the same thing that happened with the Rebel Barber of Owosso. Also, this didn't mean gyms can open and run as before, it means they can open if they can find ways to adhere to the governor's broader safety guidelines. Essentially, the courts -- both a fed court in the gym case and a State court in the barber case -- seemed to be saying you can't single out certain businesses for different policies without evidence. Anyone who can adhere to safety guidelines should be allowed to open. Then, of course, the Governor won a last minute appeal, and so one day before opening, gyms found out they had to stay closed.
I have been saying that openings or closings should be targeted based on ability to implement safety protocols not by type of business for months just as a matter of good policy, so obviously I'm on board with the original court decision. Before anyone gets their jimmies rustled over this, I freely acknowledge that my opinion means nothing and my words will not convince anyone of anything. Yours too.
A couple of months ago I suggested that we are now a nation of people eagerly hoping that we can be the ones to say "I told you so" 6 months from now. You can see this gearing up with the reaction to re-openings and potential second waves. There are four possibilities:
State reopens fast / no second wave
State reopens fast / second wave occurs
State reopens slow / no second wave
State reopens slow / second wave occurs
I can pretty much guarantee every one of these will happen somewhere. Just point to the States or regions that justify your position and recite the appropriate: "I told you so":
State reopens fast / no second wave: I told you the restrictions did no good
State reopens fast / second wave occurs: I told you it was reckless to lift restrictions
State reopens slow / no second wave: I told you the restrictions worked
State reopens slow / second wave occurs: I told you the restrictions didn't matter
Of course, you know you are under no obligation to word it so reasonably. And feel free to add the appropriate insult to the group you are targeting.
As far as what we can believe, well, who knows? We've seen charts indicating infections are soaring with no sort of acknowledgement, except the finest of print, that it may be due to (hushed whisper) the mass protests since it seems the increase in cases may be mostly among the young. Conversely, the death rate dropping is another indicator that the most vulnerable are keeping safe. None of this is proven or disproven so you get to make it mean you've been right all along. If you're a nazi this just shows how wrong it was to quarantine the masses; if you're a slave to the cultural elites it shows how the nazis have made things worse by not wearing masks. The CDC now thinks that for every known infection there are as many as 10 unrecorded infections. Does that confirm or contradict your feelings? The answer to that will tell you whether the CDC is speaking the truth.
Here is a complicated article on something called T-cell immunity, which suggests we are not yet clear on how resistant people already are to COVID19. Here is an even more complicated Twitter thread on new things we have just begun to model about herd immunity. Here is another complex Twitter thread explaining that while the number of known infections have eye-poppingly soared, the number of deaths has been decreasing on both a relative and absolute basis, even considering the time lag between reports and deaths. Can you incorporate these into your feelings? Can you even understand what they imply? I'm not sure I can, but maybe you're smarter than me.
As far as I can tell, Tyler Cowen may be the only one besides me who is overwhelmed by how inconsistent and random outbreaks and infection rates seem to be. The reaction when you point this out is for someone to propose a possible cause of some dichotomy, usually a solution in which that someone was right along. This misses the point. There are so many different dichotomies, anomalies, and outright contradictions that it seems like there is something we are missing, something important.
The fact remains we simply do not know enough yet to draw anything but the broadest conclusions. In this atmosphere, we need to just do the best we can, which we are probably doing in our own haphazard, inefficient, and outright hostile way. Given the FACT of our uncertainty you would think folks would be somewhat understanding of people on the other side of an argument. You would think wrongly.
I once heard suggested that whenever someone expresses an opinion they should be required to put a percentage on it as to their certainty. Good idea, but it would be futile. Everyone would just put 100% and accuse anyone who disagreed of ignorance and stupidity.
Yeah, I'm a little down on humanity these days.
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