Previous Month | RSS/XML | Current

WEBLOG

June 17th, 2020 (Permalink)

Conspiracy Theories: A Complete-Enough Picture

Title: Conspiracy Theories

Subtitle: A Primer

Author: Joseph E. Uscinski

Date: 2020

Quote: "This short book is a primer…. While a book of this length cannot provide a complete picture, it does provide, I believe, a complete-enough picture. I cover the major terms and concepts, and attempt to dispel some of the myths that have developed around conspiracy theories. … Social scientists have made many discoveries about conspiracy theories in the last decade; I have catalogued those here."¹

Comments: Since this is a new book, I haven't been able to read the whole thing, but I have been able to read the preface, the first chapter, and part of the second. I make extensive comments below on those early parts of the book.

Joseph Uscinski is a political science professor who has written one previous book on conspiracy theories and edited another, neither of which I've read. Here's his description of what he's trying to achieve in the book:

[In Chapter 1] I have attempted to make the case that it is important to study conspiracy theories. In the next chapter, I will provide working definitions for the most frequent terms used to discuss conspiracy theories, starting with, of course, conspiracy theory. The remainder of this primer will introduce students to the latest research on conspiracy theories. In chapters 3 and 4, I will discuss the latest polling numbers and research by psychologists and sociologists. Chapter 5 addresses the political causes of conspiracy theorizing and the conspiracy theories endorsed by President Donald Trump and those surrounding his presidency. In the final chapter, I will discuss the effect of society's information-sources and address ways for mitigating the negative effects of conspiracy theories.²

As he indicates above, in the first part of chapter one, Uscinski argues that conspiracy theories (CTs) are important and that we should be concerned about them. I don't need any convincing of that, but one of the reasons he gives for their importance gives me pause:

Our epistemic authorities are not right all the time. Sometimes they are unintentionally wrong, but other times, they are wrong on purpose. In either case, the only way of ferreting out mistakes is through advocacy. … Conspiracy theories, even when they miss the mark, can make the case for increased transparency. … Over the long term, conspiracy theories could potentially incentivize good behavior: if the powerful intend to conspire, conspiracy theorists will be watching, investigating, and publicizing. This is a job that the press should be doing, but journalists have their own blind spots. Conspiracy theorists can bring to the fore problems that journalists miss.³

I'm skeptical about all of this except for the part about it being a job for journalists, who indeed often don't do it. I doubt it's a job for conspiracy theorists (CTists) for a number or reasons: For instance, suppose that a real conspiracy is stumbled upon by CTists; then the conspirators can dismiss the accusation of conspiracy because the CTists are not a credible source. For the same reason, many people would quite reasonably ignore the CTists' charges based on their past track record. Just imagine if the Watergate conspiracy had been uncovered by Mark Lane and Lyndon LaRouche instead of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein: who would have paid any attention except their acolytes? From the point of view of efficiency, it makes more sense to attempt to reform the practice of journalism so that reporters will be doing their job, rather than expecting cranks to do it.

As the old saying goes, a stopped clock is right twice a day, and if you believe enough CTs eventually you may hit upon a true one by chance. Uscinski would make a better case here if he could give even one good example of CTists exposing a real conspiracy. Instead, he claims that the CTs surrounding both the JFK assassination and 9/11 terrorist attacks increased transparency, and that we know more about them as a result. Instead, the CTs about these events, especially the Kennedy assassination, have muddied the waters and spread myths about them.

Uscinski goes on to do a good job, in this opening chapter, of explaining the extensive harm that comes from CTs. He also attempts to debunk some myths about CTs with mixed results:

• CTs are more popular or more numerous now than in the past.

  For journalists, it's always fashionable to report a conspiracy panic, but the reports…are based on little more than feelings. There is no systematic evidence supporting any of them.⁴

  I accept that there's no solid evidence that CTs are more prevalent now than they have been in the past, but I also share the journalists' feeling that there are more CTs and CTists now than in the past, and that the CTs have gotten loonier. I never heard of anyone doubting the moon landings until sometime probably in the '90s. Perhaps this was because everyone my age and older watched the various missions on television, and it's only younger people who are more distanced from the history who have trouble believing it. In any case, it's just a subjective impression, but my impression is that there are both more CTs and CTists, that CTs are more mainstream now, and that they are more extreme, which brings us to our next "myth":

• CTs are extreme.

  I've tried to condense this section below, primarily by leaving out the examples, because I'm unsure what Uscinski is claiming:

  Journalists often characterize conspiracy theories as extreme views, or as stemming from believers' extreme political ideologies. … But such claims depend first on how we define "extreme" and if we apply that definition consistently. … It is true that people on the political extremes believe conspiracy theories, but some conspiracy theories attract moderates. … People who have middle-of-the-road political views believe such conspiracy theories; the theories are therefore not strictly the province of society's political extremists.⁴

  If Uscinski is simply claiming here that CTs are not believed exclusively by extremists, then that's surely true. However, Uscinski goes on:

  We could define the content of conspiracy theories as extreme, but in order to do so, we would need an objective way to categorize some content as extreme and other content as not. However, such categorizations are often applied subjectively, if at all. …I do want to suggest that making clear distinctions…is a more difficult task than it first appears.⁵

  I'm not sure, but Uscinski seems here to be claiming that you can't use a concept objectively unless you can define it precisely. However, vague terms cannot be defined precisely except by arbitrary fiat, yet we have no problems using such terms to apply to clear-cut cases. For example, "bald" has no precise definition, but we can tell that certain men are definitely bald and others are definitely not. It's only when we come to men who are losing their hair that we cannot apply the term objectively.

  Similarly, some CTs are obviously extreme: those that claim the moon landings were hoaxes, that the earth is really flat, and that the world is ruled by reptilian aliens from another dimension, are held by small coteries of extremists. Such CTs are themselves extreme not merely because they are espoused by political extremists, but because they require such an enormous conspiracy that the conspirators must outnumber the small group of believers. Such CTs make the worst of the JFK assassination CTs look sober.

  Uscinski ends the section with the logically weak claim that making the distinction between extreme and non-extreme CTs "is a more difficult task than it first appears." I'll grant that, but only when you're dealing with difficult cases and not for the ones I listed above and similar ones.

• CTs are for the mentally ill.

  Many journalists dismiss conspiracy theories as a form of mental illness. Pejoratives like paranoid, crazy, and delusional are occasionally used. But there is little evidence to link conspiracy theories to any psychopathology (i.e., a mental or behavioral disorder). …[P]olls suggest that everyone believes in at least one or a few conspiracy theories. Unless we want to label everyone as mentally ill, then we should not suggest that conspiracy theories indicate a psychopathology.⁵

  I don't know whether I count as a journalist, but I've probably used all of those words about some CTs and some of those who believe them. Moreover, I am unrepentant. I would certainly not use such words to describe everyone who believes one of the various JFK CTs: I disagree with them, but I don't necessarily think that they're nuts. However, I don't hesitate to describe the CT that we are secretly ruled by inter-dimensional reptilian aliens who disguise themselves as world rulers as paranoid, crazy, and delusional. If you believe that CT, seek psychiatric help.

  Anyway, if all that Uscinski is claiming here is that not all CTs are crazy, nor all CTists paranoid or delusional, granted. But some are. The way I like to put this point is: you don't have to be nuts to believe a conspiracy theory, but it helps.

• CTs are believed by conservatives more than liberals.

  …[T]here has been little systematic evidence showing that the right is more prone to conspiracy theorizing than the left in the United States. …[P]olls show that people on the political left (in the United States) are just as prone to conspiracy theories as people on the right. … Each side believes in conspiracy theories more or less equally, but they tend to believe in different ones that accuse the opposing side. An important point is that there is nothing inherent in Republicanism, conservatism, or right-wing politics that makes people more conspiratorial in their outlook, so there is no reason [to] expect that people on the right would partake in conspiracy theories more than anyone else.⁶

  This is one that I strongly agree with based on long experience and observation. For instance, the JFK CTs are far more prevalent among liberals than among conservatives. Of course, some conservatives have their pet CTs too, such as the claim that President Obama was not born in the United States, or that global warming is a hoax. But I see no reason to think that the right is worse than the left in terms of CTs.

• CTs are more popular in the U.S. than in other countries⁷.

  This myth is both good news and bad news: the good news is that there's no evidence to suggest that CTs are more popular in the U.S. than anywhere else; the bad news is that CTs appear to be just as prevalent in other countries as they are here.

In chapter 2, Uscinski defines "conspiracy theory" by first defining "conspiracy" in an odd way:

A conspiracy involves a small group of powerful individuals acting in secret for their own benefit and against the common good. Use of the term both in common parlance and in this text (rather than in legal terminology) suggests a large-scale attempt to inhibit rights, alter bedrock institutions, and commit large-scale fraud, most of which goes beyond traditional legal definitions of conspiracy. Therefore, this definition excludes planning to commit common illegal acts such as robbing a convenience store, killing a family member for the insurance money, or illicitly dealing narcotics.⁸

Notice that this is a stipulative definition of "conspiracy" since most conspiracies "in common parlance"―"planning to commit common illegal acts"―do not count under this stipulated sense. I assume that he is trying to obviate the usual claim by CTists that a CT is just a theory about a conspiracy, so that the "theory" that 9/11 was committed by a group of Al-Qaeda terrorists conspiring together would be a "conspiracy theory".

Uscinski goes on to define the full phrase as follows: "[A] conspiracy theory is an explanation of past, present, or future events or circumstances that cites, as the primary cause, a conspiracy⁹"―that is, a "conspiracy" in his stipulated sense. This, of course, makes this definition also a stipulated one, rather than a descriptive definition of how people actually use the phrase. One consequence of this definition, which I think the author intends, is that there can be true conspiracy theories.

This is not how I would define the phrase, since I think the stipulated definition of "conspiracy" arbitrarily excludes most actual conspiracies. I'll give my own definition, below, after we examine what the book has to say about unfalsifiability:

For the same reason that it is difficult to prove a negative, it is difficult to refute a conspiracy theory and show that there is not a shadowy conspiracy avoiding detection. For the conspiracy theorist, the fact that we don't have good evidence of a conspiracy only shows that the conspirators are good at convering their tracks. … Thus, conspiracy theories are non-falsifiable. Falsifiability is a hallmark of scientific thinking: if there is no evidence that could disprove a claim, then the claim―according to some philosophers―should be ignored. This might seem counterintuitive at first: Why would not being able to prove a claim wrong make belief in it irrational? The reason―in the simplest terms―is that when evidence cannot prove a claim wrong, evidence can't prove the claim right, either. At that point, the claim enters the realm of theology.¹⁰

I'm one of those philosophers he refers to, which is why I define "conspiracy theory" as a quasi-religious, unfalsifiable theory about a conspiracy, where both words are used in their everyday senses. So, a CT is a theory in the common meaning in which a "theory" is contrasted with a fact―"that's just a theory"―rather than in the scientific sense in which a theory must be falsifiable. The fact that CTs are unfalsifiable explains why it is usually useless to argue with CTists:

When you discuss with conspiracy theorists the veracity of their pet theories, an immediate question regarding falsifiability is: What evidence can I show you that would convince you that you are wrong? If their answer is "Nothing," then I advise you to exit the conversation.¹¹

I second that advice.

Before ending this already long "New Book" post, I'd like to comment on the book's editing, which I think is an under-rated topic. This may seem like nitpicking, and a few nits are probably inevitable, but a lot of them makes for itchy reading. The excerpt that I read seems well-edited for the most part, but there's one egregious usage error in the following sentence: "One can even book a cabin on the annual Conspira-Sea Cruise, which allows passengers to not only heal from all of the conspiracies that have been perpetuated upon them but also watch for alien visitors in the night sky.¹²" All those conspiracies have been "perpetrated", not "perpetuated". "To perpetuate" means "to make perpetual", that is, to cause to continue indefinitely¹³. "Perpetrate" means to commit a crime, or other bad thing, such as a conspiracy¹⁴. The two words are so similar in spelling―they only differ by one letter―though not in meaning, that it's a tempting enough mistake to have made it into two dictionaries of common usage errors¹⁵.

Another annoying nit is that Uscinski uses the doublespeak phrase "sex worker" for "prostitute"¹⁶ in a discussion of CTs about sex trafficking¹⁷. It would be nice if editors would discourage the use of these kind of politically correct terms, but I suspect that they actually encourage it.

It may sound as if I'm being hard on this book, but it was very thought-provoking, as you can see by how much I wrote above about just the first couple of chapters. Minor criticisms aside, the part of the book I've read is well-written, especially for an academic book, and well-argued even when I disagree with it. I look forward to reading the whole thing.

---

Notes:

1. Pp. vii-viii, emphasis in the original; page citations are to the new book.
2. Pp. 13-14.
3. Pp. 5-6.
4. P. 11.
5. P. 12; emphasis in the original.
6. P. 12; there's an error in this passage which I have corrected in brackets: the text reads "is" but clearly should be "to".
7. P. 13.
8. P. 22.
9. P. 23; emphasis in the original.
10. P. 27; emphasis in the original.
11. P. 27.
12. P. 5; emphasis added.
13. "Perpetuate", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 6/11/2020.
14. "Perpetrate", Cambridge Dictionary, accessed: 6/17/2020.
15. See:
    1. Harry Shaw, Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions (Revised Edition, 1987)
    2. Bill Bryson, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide to Getting it Right (2002)
16. According to William Lutz, the phrase "sex industry worker" as doublespeak for "prostitute" goes back to at least 1988; obviously, the "industry" part has since been dropped. See: Doublespeak Defined (1999), p. 148.
17. P. 8.

---

June 10th, 2020 (Permalink)

21st Century Humpty Dumpty

Alice was returning in the direction of the wall on which Humpty Dumpty had been sitting when she had last seen him. To her surprise, H.D. was back on his perch, but he was criss-crossed with cracks and bandages. Apparently, the nursery rhyme was wrong and all the King's horses and all the King's men had been able to put him together again, and back on top of the wall.

"Oh, Mr. Dumpty," she said, "I'm so glad to see that you survived your fall!"

"No thanks to the police!" H. D. replied.

"What did the police do?" Alice asked.

"It's not what they did, but what they did not do. They never arrested that little girl who pushed me!"

"Why I―," Alice began. Could he possibly be referring to her? "I'm sure no well-behaved little girl would have done such a thing."

"She must have! How else could I have fallen?"

"Well, you might have slipped."

"Nonsense!"

"What was this little girl's name?"

"Oh, some stupid name that didn't mean anything like Mary, Anne, or Jane―something like that."

No wonder the police had not found her, Alice thought. "What did she look like?"

"Oh, exactly like every other little girl. Two eyes like this," he said, poking the air in front of him with two fingers. "A nose like this," he added, making a vertical line between the two eyes with one finger. "And a mouth like so," he finished, drawing a horizontal line in the air beneath the eyes and nose.

"I can see why the police couldn't find her," Alice said, suppressing a smile.

"Abolish the police, I say!"

Alice did not quite believe her ears. "Would you tell me, please," she asked, recalling her last conversation with H. D., "what that means?"

"I mean 'defund the police', of course."

"But 'abolish' doesn't mean 'defund'!" Alice objected, since she was a well-educated girl who knew what both words meant.

"When I use a word," H. D. said, "it means exactly what I want it to mean."

"Well, I guess they would come to much the same thing," Alice said, "there would be no more police!"

"Of course there would be!" H. D. thundered.

"Then, I guess I don't know what you mean by 'defund'," Alice replied, remembering her previous discussion with the talking egg.

H. D. smiled tolerantly. "Of course you don't until I tell you. Defunding the police means shrinking the scope of police responsibilities and shifting most of what government does to keep us safe to entities that are better equipped to meet that need¹."

"That's an awful lot to make three words mean," Alice thought. "The question is," she said aloud, "whether you can give words your own meanings that no one else understands. Words have to mean the same thing for everyone or we won't be able to communicate."²

"The question is," said H. D., "who is to be master. Good-bye!"

Alice remembered that in her previous visit H. D. ended their conversation abruptly, so she turned on her heel and left. "Well!" she thought as she walked away, "of all the unsatisfactory people I ever met, he's the unsatisfactoriest!"³

---

Notes:

1. Christy E. Lopez, "Defund the police? Here's what that really means.", The Washington Post, 6/7/2020. See, also:
   • Tessa Stuart, "A Practical Guide to Defunding the Police", Rolling Stone, 6/3/2020
   • Matthew Yglesias, "Growing calls to 'defund the police,' explained", Vox, 6/3/2020
   • Michael Balsamo, "When protesters cry 'defund the police,' what does it mean?", The Associated Press, 6/8/2020
2. See: Nigel Warburton, Thinking from A to Z (2nd edition, 2001), "Humptydumptying".
3. This story is based on: Lewis Carroll, "Chapter VI: Humpty Dumpty", Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There (1896). The illustration is by John Tenniel; the caption is mine.

---

June 5th, 2020 (Permalink)

Another New Four-Letter Word

We saw last month that MSNBC reporters were instructed not to use the word "riot" in describing recent demonstrations¹, and many reporters from other news outlets seem to also go out of their way not to call "a violent public disorder" a "riot"².

Now, an Associated Press reporter claims on Nitwitter that the AP gives the following advice to its reporters:

Limit use of the term looting. Some have long viewed the word as carrying some racial overtones, particularly in the wake of natural disasters. Sensitivity is heightened now in light of President Trump's "looting and shooting" tweet and the history of that phrasing dating to the civil rights era. Instead, use a few more words and describe the actions: Some protestors broke into the store and stole whatever was on the shelves, for example.³

So, apparently, "loot" is also a new four-letter word. However, I haven't been able to verify that the AP actually gave this advice, though the person who tweeted it is apparently a local AP reporter. If it is genuinely from the AP, it must be recent since Trump's "tweet" was on the 28th of last month. Presumably, it's from an email or some other internal communication to AP reporters, rather than in the AP's published stylebook, the most recent edition of which is from last year. This year's edition is not scheduled to come out until later this month, but I was able to use Amazon's search function to search it for the word "loot" without result. If the AP did indeed issue the above advice, then some of its reporters are ignoring it, to their credit⁴.

The advice admits that "a few more words" will have to be used if the new taboo is not to be broken. The example sentence given in the above advice could be rewritten with the forbidden word as simply: "Some protestors looted the store", which has eight fewer words. Wordiness, or "gobbledygook", is the third type of doublespeak identified by William Lutz, about which he writes: "…[S]uch doublespeak is simply a matter of piling on words, of overwhelming the audience with words, the bigger the words and the longer the sentences the better"⁵. Such doublespeak uses language not to communicate, but to obscure and obstruct communication. I don't suppose that that's the intention behind discouraging the use of such simple one-syllable words, but it can well have that effect.

Words such as "riot" and "loot" are not loaded words⁶, rather they are words that have negative emotional charges because of what they describe. Similar words are "war", "murder", "rape", and "arson". It's not only impossible to accurately describe a riot without using such words, it's undesirable because doing so conceals the reality being described. For instance, other such terms are "broke into" and "stole". Why doesn't the AP recommend that its reporters "limit use of" those terms in describing looting? Here's a more fully euphemized version of the AP's example sentence: "Some protestors entered the store and took whatever was on the shelves".

The AP's advice is so short that the rationale for it is obscure. The first reason given is that: "Some have long viewed the word as carrying some racial overtones, particularly in the wake of natural disasters." The word has more overtones after a natural disaster? First of all, the recent looting is not after a natural disaster, such as an earthquake, but after man-made disasters, namely, riots. Secondly, the fact―if it is a fact―that some have "long viewed" the word as having racial overtones does not mean that it actually has them.

As far as I can tell, the complaints about the use of the word "looting" go back to 2010 and news reports about survivors of the earthquake in Haiti that year⁷. I agree that reporters shouldn't use the negatively-charged word "looting" to refer to desperate people taking food or other necessary items from abandoned stores after a natural disaster. Whether such use at the time had a racial component I don't know, though it's plausible. However, there's all the difference in the world between a mother taking milk and diapers for her baby from a damaged store after an earthquake, and those currently taking advantage of chaos to steal TV sets and break into cash registers. The latter are rightly called "looters".

Secondly, the advice claims: "Sensitivity is heightened now in light of President Trump's 'looting and shooting' tweet and the history of that phrasing dating to the civil rights era." Is the AP alluding to the debunked claim that George Wallace used the phrase⁸? Or should the word "looting" be forever banned because some obscure southern sheriff used the same phrase a half-century ago that the President of the United States used recently? I could see a rule against the phrase "looting and shooting", except in a direct quote, but why pick on "looting" and not "shooting"? The AP's rationale makes no sense.

There are two types of lies: lies of commission and lies of omission⁹. A lie of commission is what we usually think of when we think of a lie, namely, an intentional untruth. Such lies violate the requirement when testifying under oath of speaking "the truth…and only the truth". In contrast, a lie of omission is the failure to tell a truth when it is required, as in testimony, where it violates the further requirement to speak "the whole truth". In other words, lies by omission are what are called "half-truths".

Now, most of us are not lying by omission when we hold our tongues about something, because we are neither under oath nor otherwise required to tell the full truth. Journalists, in contrast, have a duty not to report by half-truths. It's not the job of reporters to hide from their readers what's really happening, but to describe it accurately. At least, that used to be their job.

---

Notes:

1. A New Four-Letter Word, 5/29/2020.
2. "Riot", Merriam-Webster, accessed: 6/3/2020.
3. Kimberlee Kruesi, "Feels like a good time to post AP's guidance on the word looting:", Nitwitter, 5/31/2020; emphasis in the original.
4. For example:
   • Brian Melley & Kathleen Ronayne, "Newsom welcomes protest rage; decries violence and theft", Associated Press, 6/1/2020. Two occurrences of forms of the word "loot" not in quotations. However, "riot" only occurs in the form "riot gear", again raising the question of why the police put it on.
   • Jim Salter, "St. Louis officers shot, ex-captain killed during unrest", Associated Press, 6/2/2020. One occurrence of "looter" not in quotations, but no occurrences of "riot"―instead, we have the mealy-mouthed word "unrest" in the headline, despite the fact that four police officers were shot and one man killed by the looters. If that's not a riot, then there are no riots.

   I hope I don't get these reporters in trouble by pointing this out.

5. William Lutz, Doublespeak: From "Revenue Enhancement" to "Terminal Living" (1989), p. 5.
6. See the fallacy entry: Loaded Words.
7. See: Alicia C. Shepard, "Is Looting a Loaded Word?", NPR, 1/20/2010.
8. Dan Evon, "Did Trump and George Wallace Both Say, 'When the Looting Starts, the Shooting Starts'?", Snopes, 5/29/2020.
9. See: Philip Houston, et al., Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect Deception (2012), pp. 52 & 237.

---

June 2nd, 2020 (Permalink)

Puzzler's Syndrome

99% of the patients in a mental hospital ward have puzzler's syndrome. This is a dangerous disease in which a person becomes so obsessed with solving a puzzle that he or she won't eat, sleep, or do anything other than work on the puzzle. There are 200 patients currently in the ward. How many patients with puzzler's syndrome would have to be discharged from the ward so that only 98% of the total patients in the ward would have it?

Hint 1

Hint 2

Solution

---

June 1st, 2020 (Permalink)

Standing Athwart Hysteria, Shouting "Stop!"

I don't necessarily agree with everything in the following articles, but I do recommend you read them. Also, as is my standard practice, these readings are offered as an antidote to the hysteria that continues to be promoted by the mainstream media despite all counter-evidence.

The following article by the author of last month's "New Book", Expert Failure, is on the failures of experts in the coronavirus epidemic. There's so much that is excellent in it that it's difficult to excerpt, though I try below just to whet your appetite. Please read the whole thing.

• Roger Koppl, "The fallen state of experts", The Critic, 5/7/2020

  Epidemiologists tell us that if we do not hide in our houses with the door securely locked, hundreds of thousands will surely perish. Economists tell us that if we do not return immediately to work, civilisation will collapse. Good luck figuring out which expert has the better advice. …

  Expert fear-mongering did not begin with the pandemic…. [T]oday's epidemiologists and economists have rigorous scientific training, mathematical models, advanced statistics, and careful evidence all going for them. True. But today's scientists are still people. And that means they respond to incentives just like everyone else. … Even when the experts are trying to be sober, scientific, and scrupulously neutral, they will feel certain pressures.

  Think if it were you. You're an epidemiologist and the prime minister calls to ask you how many will die if we don't have a lockdown. What do you tell him? … Every number is a guess. If you give the prime minister a low number, there will be no lockdown. What if he accepts your low number and we have no lockdown? Maybe everything will be fine. But maybe there will be many more deaths than you predicted. You will get blamed. People will shame you as a bad scientist. And, because you are a good and decent person, you will feel guilty. Blame, shame, and guilt. This is a bad outcome.

  If you give him a high number, there will be lockdown. No one will ever be able to say that your estimate was too high, because your estimate assumed no lockdown. Even if a lot of people die during the lockdown you can say, "See? Think how much worse it would have been without the lockdown." Thus, if you give the prime minister a high number, you will get credit for saving lives. … Praise, pride, and innocence. This is a good outcome. The logic of the situation is clear. You have every incentive to predict doom and gloom if no lockdown is ordered. …

  Speaking of the limitations of experts on the coronavirus:

• James Freeman, "The Limits of Anthony Fauci's Expertise", The Wall Street Journal, 5/13/2020

  Does Dr. Fauci still regard life under lockdown as merely "inconvenient"? Of course economics is not his field, but presumably as a U.S. citizen he has noticed the gargantuan impact of the government response to the virus. Yet there he was again yesterday on television encouraging more of the same as he remotely addressed a Senate hearing. "Dr. Anthony Fauci warns senators of 'suffering and death' if states reopen too early," says a CNBC headline. "Fauci warns that 'consequences could be really serious' if states move too quickly to reopen," announces the Washington Post. It's important to understand that Dr. Fauci is only focused on one set of consequences…. Dr. Fauci is clear on the fact that Americans should not rely on him to conduct cost-benefit analysis of the policies he is recommending. …

  That's okay because that's not his job. Unfortunately, people have been acting as though it were. Also, while it's no doubt true that there will be "suffering and death" if states reopen "too soon", what's too soon? There will also be suffering and death if they reopen too late, and it's later than Fauci seems to understand. As Koppl explained in the excerpt quoted above, the incentives on someone in Fauci's position favor pessimism, which is why we continue to hear these pessimistic predictions which continue to be wrong. For instance, several states are reopening without a surge of "suffering and death", despite dire warnings:

• "Tracking what's happening in states as they reopen", ABC News, 5/29/2020

  To examine whether the spread of COVID-19 may have been affected by the easing of social distancing restrictions, ABC News looked at the first 21 states to ease restrictions. ABC News looked at data from the following states: South Carolina, Montana, Georgia, Mississippi, South Dakota, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wyoming, Kansas, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio. Analyzing seven-day averages, there were no major increases in hospitalizations, deaths or percentage of people testing positive in any of the 21 states. … Although the daily numbers of positive cases increased in some states as the daily counting of COVID-19 numbers resumed at full-speed following Memorial Day weekend, a seven-day moving average gives a clearer picture of developing trends. … Some states may be reporting increases in the cases they find even if the virus is not spreading, because they are running a lot more tests. … We have also used The New York Times data to look at all 50 states and assess whether new reported cases have declined each day over the past two weeks. By that measure, no states have seen a consecutive decline for 14 days in a row in terms of new reported cases. But we should note that this does not mean states are not experiencing a clear downward trajectory when considering the entire curve. …

• Michael Hendrix, "Let the Sun Shine In", City Journal, 5/27/2020

  …Rates of hospitalizations, cases, and deaths remain steady across Florida. … More than half of the state's known cases of Covid-19 are found in just four South Florida counties―the top out-of-state destinations for fleeing New Yorkers. As Politico recently concluded, "Florida just doesn’t look nearly as bad as the national news media and sky-is-falling critics have been predicting for about two months now." … In states such as Tennessee and Florida, where lockdowns are ending, infection rates are declining, not increasing, as JPMorgan Chase found, "even after allowing for an appropriate measurement lag." Rising case counts, where they occur, have more to do with increases in testing capacity than renewed outbreaks. This should encourage some humility from observers who feared the worst with reopening…. [Dream on.―Ed.] Florida's beaches and businesses are slowly opening, county by county, and life is returning to a semblance of normalcy. … The United States has reached a grim milestone: 100,000 deaths from Covid-19. In addition to its toll in lives, the virus has also ushered in an economic downturn as deep as the Great Depression nearly a century ago, with more than 38 million Americans having filed for unemployment.

  No, it's not the virus that "ushered in" the economic downturn, it's the response to the virus. Perhaps that response was warranted and the economic damage it's done a price worth paying, but that remains to be seen. For one thing, we don't yet know the full extent of either the epidemic itself or the recession created by the response to it, and we won't know until next year at the earliest.

  Also, instead of the "grim" but meaningless "milestone" of 100,000 dead, whose roundness is an artifact of our base-ten numbering system, an actually meaningful and important number is the fatality rate, that is, the percentage of those who die from the disease among all those infected. Last month, we saw why it's so difficult to determine that rate, but there has been some progress:

• Jacob Sullum, "The CDC's New 'Best Estimate' Implies a COVID-19 Infection Fatality Rate Below 0.3%", Reason, 5/24/2020

  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the current "best estimate" for the fatality rate among Americans with COVID-19 symptoms is 0.4 percent. The CDC also estimates that 35 percent of people infected by the COVID-19 virus never develop symptoms. Those numbers imply that the virus kills less than 0.3 percent of people infected by it―far lower than the infection fatality rates (IFRs) assumed by the alarming projections that drove the initial government response to the epidemic, including broad business closure and stay-at-home orders. …

  [T]he projections that the CDC made in March, which predicted that as many as 1.7 million Americans could die from COVID-19 without intervention, assumed an IFR of 0.8 percent. Around the same time, researchers at Imperial College produced a worst-case scenario in which 2.2 million Americans died, based on an IFR of 0.9 percent. Such projections had a profound impact on policy makers in the United States and around the world.

  …[A] problem with those projections, assuming that the CDC's current "best estimate" is in the right ballpark, was that the IFRs they assumed were far too high. The difference between an IFR of 0.8 to 0.9 percent and an IFR of 0.2 to 0.3 percent, even in the completely unrealistic worst-case scenarios, is the difference between millions and hundreds of thousands of deaths―still a grim outcome, but not nearly as bad as the horrifying projections cited by politicians to justify the sweeping restrictions they imposed. …[T]he CDC's current best estimates are surely better grounded than the numbers it was using two months ago.

  For comparison, this rate is three times that for seasonal influenza of .1%, but it's less than a tenth of the 3.4% "crude" fatality rate announced by the World Health Organization, which was indeed crude. In any case, it's now clear that one reason the early forecasts were so far off is that they were based on fatality rates that were at least three to four times the true rate.

Previous Month | Top of Page

---

If you’d like to learn more about manipulating cards in a casino, check out Bestonlinecasinos.com blackjack guide which includes extensive information on how to count cards.

Casino Bonuses are not easy to find on the internet. There are simply too many and their terms and conditions makes them difficult to compare. You can find the best bonuses at casinopilot.

Most online slot players have heard of the gamblers fallacy but we would suggest you simply do your homework before you play in order limit your risk. Sites like SlotsOnlineCanada are the go-to Canadian online slots portal on everything from new slot bonuses, slot game reviews and up-to-date news on the iGaming industry.

You will never be able to dispel the truth and reasoning behind the gamblers fallacy, however if you read these winning insights on pokies you may find that you gain a slight upper hand.

Don’t waste your time looking for worthy new online casinos, as https://newcasinouk.com/ already did all the hard work for you. Check out top lists with latest casinos on the market and register an account today.

If you want to play casino for free, you should check out freespinsnodeposituk.com for a complete list of casinos.

You can find the best casinos at MrCasinova.com as this website update online casinos and compare them on daily basis.

---

May 29th, 2020 (Permalink)

A New Four-Letter Word

What do you call a "protest" that "turned violent" with "demonstrators" "clashing" with police and "trashing" a building that the group of "unruly protesters" threw rocks at? Consider the following headline from the recent The New York Post story from which those words and phrases were taken:

Minneapolis protesters trash police precinct during clash over George Floyd's death

The story tells us:

A protest in Minneapolis over the death of a black man in police custody turned violent Tuesday night, with demonstrators clashing with police and trashing a precinct building…. Several hundred demonstrators at about 6 p.m. splintered off from a mainly peaceful afternoon rally and marched to the Minneapolis police department's 3rd Precinct to protest the death of George Floyd…. The group targeted the precinct because it's believed the four Minneapolis cops involved in Floyd's arrest―who have all since been fired―worked there…. Unruly protesters…tossed rocks at the building's windows and vandalized at least one patrol car…. Police in riot gear arrived and fired tear gas at the protesters, who took aim at the officers with rocks, water bottles and other objects…¹.

The only occurrence of the word "riot" in this short article is in the penultimate sentence where we learn that the police donned "riot gear", but why did they do that? Where was the riot in all this "clashing" and "trashing"?

Another strange thing about this report is that it contains an actual four-letter barnyard epithet that a few decades ago would not have been included in a newspaper story. Apparently, "riot" is the new four-letter word.

I don't mean to pick on The Post: this was literally the first article that popped up in my search engine. It's an egregious example, but apparently the word "riot" is now officially oldspeak, and the news media are not supposed to refer to what's happening as "riots" or those looting and burning down buildings as "rioters". Rather, the events are "protests" or "demonstrations", and the looters and arsonists are "protesters" or "demonstrators". For example, a much longer article from ABC News refers to what's happening as "chaos", but never once uses the four-letter word².

It's amazing how fast and far such newspeak spreads in the news media. There are still a few small news outlets that are willing to call a "civil disorder" a "riot"³, but they seem to be mostly local television stations⁴. This is a rare case when we know when and from where the memo went out:

NBC News came under scrutiny Thursday for allegedly telling its reporters to refer to the events in Minneapolis this week as "protests" and not "riots," according to one of its anchors. Craig Melvin, an MSNBC host and co-anchor of "Today," shed some light as to how his network is framing its reporting. "This will guide our reporting in MN. 'While the situation on the ground in Minneapolis is fluid, and there has been violence, it is most accurate at this time to describe what is happening there as 'protests'―not riots,'" Melvin tweeted Thursday morning.⁵

Presumably, it's not Melvin himself who issued this directive, but someone higher up at the network―Melvin just spilled the beans. Another MSNBC reporter, who obviously got the memo too, stood in front of a burning building while saying the following:

I want to be clear on how I characterize this. This is mostly a protest. It is not generally speaking unruly. But fires have been started.⁶

Who are you going to believe: MSNBC or your lying eyes? Notice the careful language: he tells us that he wants to be clear on how he characterizes it. Why does he need to be so careful about what he says? Because he's been told not to call it a "riot", so it's "mostly" a protest. What's the rest of it? It's "not generally speaking unruly"? Only the arson and looting are unruly. Also, notice the use of the passive voice: "fires have been started". Who started them?

You could say most of the above things about the Charlottesville riots of a few years ago: They were mostly a protest. They were not generally speaking unruly: only the fistfights and the guy plowing his car into a crowd and killing a woman were unruly. However, no fires were started. If the Minneapolis protests are not riots then neither was Charlottesville.

Given that the order came down from on high, it's no wonder that MSNBC reporters would make fools of themselves following it, but why have so many other reporters from other news outlets been so quick to adopt the latest doublespeak? This is not a rhetorical question: I really wonder.

---

Notes:

1. Kenneth Garger, "Minneapolis protesters trash police precinct during clash over George Floyd's death", The New York Post, 5/29/2020.
2. Ella Torres & William Mansell, "Minnesota protest live updates: Trump warns military could 'assume control' of protest response", ABC News, 5/29/2020.
3. According to William Lutz, the previous doublespeak phrase for "riot" was "civil disorder", see: Doublespeak Defined: Cut Through the Bull**** and Get the Point (1999), p. 62. Notice the four-letter word that is censored in the subtitle, which is the same word that is uncensored in the Post story. This is progress of a sort, I guess: we can't call a "civil disorder" a "riot", but we can call this what it is.
4. For instance:
   • "George Floyd Riots: Violence Spans Twin Cities: 3rd Precinct Overtaken & Burned, CNN Reporter Arrested", WCCO, 5/29/2020
   • Nexstar Media Wire & Associated Press, "Photos: Riots erupt in Minneapolis, other cities over death of George Floyd", Fox 8, 5/29/2020
5. Joseph A. Wulfsohn, "NBC allegedly tells reporters not to use word 'riots' in George Floyd coverage", Fox News, 5/29/2020.
6. Tim Hains, "MSNBC's Ali Velshi Downplays Riot In Front Of Burning Building: 'Mostly A Protest,' 'Not Generally Speaking Unruly'", Real Clear Politics, 5/28/2020. Note that the reporter is being interviewed by Brian Williams, and this interview is apparently from Williams' show The 11th Hour, which was the source of the claim that the Bloomberg campaign could have given every American a million dollars; see: Beyond Innumeracy, 3/7/2020.

---

May 22nd, 2020 (Permalink)

When Experts Fail

Title: Expert Failure

Author: Roger Koppl

Date: 2018

Quote: "Experts have knowledge not possessed by others. Those others, the laity, must decide when to trust experts and how much power to give them. We hope for a 'healer' but fear the 'quack,' and it is hard to know which is which. Experts may play a strictly advisory role or they may choose for others. … There is, then, a 'problem with experts,'…. When do we trust them? How much power do we give them? What can be done to ensure good outcomes from experts? What invites bad outcomes? And so on. … We rely…on the opinions of experts. We rely on experts even though we are conscious of the risk that experts may give bad advice, whether from 'honest error,' inattention, conflict of interest, or other reasons. The 'problem of experts' is the problem that we must rely on experts even though experts may not be completely reliable and trustworthy sources of the advice we require from them."¹

Comment: This book couldn't be more timely even though it was published two years ago. This is not the first book on expertise and its discontents that we've seen here, and it almost certainly won't be the last. While it's too soon to do a post-mortem on the failures of experts in the current epidemic, it's not too soon to realize that there have been failures―major ones. No doubt there should and will be books in the years to come examining the role of experts in dealing with the epidemic, and I look forward to reading them. However, it may be instructive to read one that was written just prior to the epidemic and, therefore, not influenced by the illusions of hindsight.

As I discussed a decade ago², the "problem of experts" goes back at least to Socrates. It's not really a single problem, though, but a group of related ones including:

• When do we need an expert, and when can we rely on our own knowledge?
• How can we tell the difference between an expert and a charlatan without being experts ourselves?
• What do we do when faced, as we often are, by conflicting advice from experts?

Hopefully, this book is not like the former "book club" entry Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us―And How to Know When Not to Trust Them³. A limitation of that book is that the "experts" that were "wrong" were largely pseudo-experts, especially those that appear on television or in other major media―for example, the quacks promoted by Oprah Winfrey. There is certainly a place for debunking such charlatans, but they're only a small aspect of the problem.

A more recent book that discussed another related problem was The Death of Expertise⁴, though it turned out that it wasn't expertise that had supposedly died, but people's trust in it. This is similar to the claim that we live in a "post-truth" era, in that the complaint is not that somehow there's no longer any truth, but that people allegedly don't respect it anymore. One thing that the current situation has shown is that, if anything, people trust experts too much, or perhaps they put their trust in the wrong experts.

Putting aside the snake oil salesmen, experts are human beings and, therefore, fallible. We can't reasonably expect them to always get it right, and when they are wrong bad things happen, such as bridges falling down⁵. For example, one of the expert failures of the current epidemic was the excessive concern that there would not be enough ventilators in the nation to handle the number of patients who would need them⁶. As it turned out, we were never even close to a nationwide ventilator shortage⁷, though there may have been some localized ones.

The failure in this case seems to have come from a single, early estimate made largely in ignorance by one expert, together with a failure to refine the estimate as more information became available. This particular failure had serious consequences in that it was used by politicians to justify "flattening the curve", which was itself used to justify shutting down the country's economy, and we won't know for months if not years the full extent of damage done by it.

Roger Koppl is a professor of finance, which isn't the most obvious basis for writing about the failures of experts, but there is no field of "expertology"―or whatever it would be called―that studies the problems of expertise. Even if there were such a field, we would still be faced with the same problem: How do we tell who is a real expert about expertise? At some point, we are all forced to rely on our own inexpert judgments.

---

Notes:

1. "Introduction".
2. New Book, Too, 5/12/2010.
3. See:
   • New Book: Wrong, 7/18/2010.
   • Book Club: Wrong, Introduction, 9/16/2010.
   • Book Club: Wrong, Chapter 1: Some Expert Observations, 10/30/2010.
   • Book Club: Wrong, The Trouble with Scientists, Part 1, 1/31/2011.
4. See:
   • New Book: The Death of Expertise, 2/28/2017.
   • Wrong, Again, 3/24/2017.
   • The Limits of Experts, 6/30/2017.
5. That's a picture of the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse on the front cover of the New Book, see: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Tacoma Narrows Bridge", Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed: 5/12/2020.
6. For details, see: How many ventilators do we need?, 4/17/2020.
7. Bill McCarthy, "Can anyone who needs a ventilator get one? So far, it looks like it", Politifact, 4/24/2020. This report was written about the time the epidemic and the demand for ventilators peaked in the United States.

---

May 10th, 2020 (Updated: 5/15/2020) (Permalink)

Invasion of the Murder Hornets

Some recent real-life headlines:

'Murder Hornets,' With Sting That Can Kill, Land In US¹

Monstrous 'murder hornets' have reached the US²

Like something out of a 1950s monster movie, the giant hornets are coming to get you. You can tell that the hysteria surrounding the novel coronavirus and the disease it causes is dying down because the news media are jumping on a new scare. The latest coming attraction is the invasion of the United States by Asian giant hornets, alias "murder hornets" or "hornets from Hell"³.

In fact, these hornets primarily murder honeybees, not human beings. Hopefully, these invasive pests can be prevented from establishing a permanent presence in North America but, even if they do, their main threat is to bees rather than humans. Nonetheless, the giant hornets could be a problem to people since honeybees are important agricultural pollinators, and they already have enough problems without marauding hornets attacking their hives.

If, like me, you're experiencing deja vu right now, it's probably because you're old enough to remember the killer bees. These bees were a hybrid of regular honeybees and African bees that was developed in a lab in Brazil, apparently by a mad scientist. Some of the bees escaped from the lab, rather as the coronavirus may have done, and then began to spread northward. Eventually, they did indeed make it across the Rio Grande into the U.S., but that was about it. It seems that they didn't like the colder weather up north so stayed mainly in the far south⁴.

As a result of all the media hype about the slow spread of the "killer" bees northward, there was a swarm of B monster movies about them that came out in the '70s, including "The Bees", "Killer Bees", "The Savage Bees", and―my favorite―"The Invasion of the Bee Girls". There was even a big budget one, "The Swarm", from "master of disaster" Irwin Allen, which was a disaster movie in more than one way: it flopped. Obviously, these horror movies capitalized on the morbid interest generated by the news media coverage, but they probably also contributed to it.

"Killer" bees didn't live up to their reputation, though people have occasionally been killed by them⁵. Africanized bees tend to be more aggressive than regular honeybees, and people may die if stung a large number of times. Also, some people are allergic to bee venom, and even a small number of stings might be deadly to them.

The hype about the "killer" bees and "murder" hornets comes not so much from misinformation, but from the way the news is spun. Take as an example the following article:

Potentially fatal 'murder hornet' spreads across the globe

Scientists in the US are preparing to try to eradicate a new, potentially fatal, invader from the east: a huge insect with a lethal sting. The Asian giant, or 'murder' hornet can grow up to two inches long with a sting that delivers a potent neurotoxin. … The hornet can sting through most standard beekeeper suits and delivers nearly seven times the amount of venom as a honey bee. Swarms have been known to kill people in Japan, even those with no allergic reaction, and it is there that the insect earned the grim sobriquet, the 'murder hornet'.⁶

Notice that the hornet is called in both the headline and the first sentence "potentially fatal", and the first sentence says that it has a "lethal sting". This suggests, if not outright claims, that you could die from a single sting from a single hornet, which may be true if you are allergic to its venom, but most people stung by these hornets do not die.

What's missing from this account is a sense of perspective: some people who are allergic can die from honeybee stings, though it might take more than one sting to be fatal. So, are honeybees "potentially fatal"? Do they have "lethal stings"? Yes, they are and they have, but can you imagine a news headline referring to "potentially fatal" honeybees with "lethal stings"?

The article itself indicates that it is hornet swarms that have killed people in Japan, including those who are not allergic. Similarly, it's multiple stings from swarms of native bees and hornets that are usually fatal to people here.

Despite its lurid headline, as the article goes on to point out, the main threat from the hornets is to honeybee populations and not to human beings, but you have to read past the scary headline and first paragraph to get to the good news. This is typical tabloid newspaper writing that now appears to be invading the mainstream news media just as the hornets are trying to invade North America.

One thing I'll say in favor of the news media is that there was an almost immediate debunking of the hornet hype by one mainstream outfit. Remarkably, it was the Associated Press, which five days ago published the first of the headlines shown above, then a few days later debunked its own hype:

Insect experts say people should calm down about the big bug with the nickname "murder hornet"―unless you are a beekeeper or a honeybee. The Asian giant hornets found in Washington state that grabbed headlines this week aren't big killers of humans, although it does happen on rare occasions. … Numerous bug experts told The Associated Press that what they call hornet "hype" reminds them of the 1970s public scare when Africanized honeybees, nicknamed "killer bees," started moving north from South America. While these more aggressive bees did make it up to Texas and the Southwest, they didn't live up to the horror-movie moniker. However, they also do kill people in rare situations. This time it's hornets with the homicidal nickname, which bug experts want to ditch. "They are not 'murder hornets.' They are just hornets," said Washington Agriculture Department entomologist Chris Looney, who is working on the state's search for these large hornets. … Looney has a message for Americans: These hornets are not coming to get you. "The number of people who are stung and have to seek medical attention is incredibly small," he said in an interview. … Asian giant hornets at most kill a few dozen people a year and some experts said it's probably far less. Hornet, wasp and bee stings kill on average 62 people a year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. … "This is 99% media hype and frankly I’m getting tired of it," said University of Delaware entomologist Doug Tallamy. "Murder hornet? Please." Retired University of Montana bee expert Jerry Bromenshenk said in an email, … "Do we want this hornet―surely not. But the media hype is turbo charged." … For people, the hornets are scary because the world is already frightened by coronavirus and our innate fight-or-flight mechanisms are activated, putting people on edge, said risk expert David Ropeik….⁷

Many of these news media scare stories follow the same template, whether they're about hornets, bees, or the coronavirus: an animal or disease that can be deadly to a small fraction of people is invading the country. The news media play up the scariness of the animal or disease as much as possible, then track its spread through the country and report every case. A running count of cases is frequently updated and seldom put in perspective by being compared to similar cases from more familiar animals or diseases, or cases from previous years. Occasional skeptical stories will be published, but for every such story several ones that follow the template will appear. Finally, a year or two later, the post-mortems will appear: scholarly symposia will be held, and issues of academic journals will discuss what went wrong with the reporting. Recommendations will be issued for how similar journalistic failures can be avoided in the future, but nothing will change and the next scare will be reported following the same template. Rinse and repeat.

Whether this new scare gets any traction in the coming months will depend both upon how quickly the current COVID-19 frenzy fades away, leaving a fear vacuum, and whether efforts to eradicate those hornets that have made it to North America succeed. If the hornets gain a foothold on the continent and begin to spread, you can bet your last buck there will be a slow but steady series of news stories tracking it. The first American to die from hornet stings will make the front pages of every newspaper in the country. There will be runs on hornet-killing bug sprays, and store shelves will be emptied⁸. This could turn out to be the "Summer of the Hornet" instead of the "Summer of the Shark"⁹.

Notes:

1. Nicholas K. Geranios, "'Murder Hornets,' With Sting That Can Kill, Land In US", Associated Press, 5/4/2020.
2. Mindy Weisberger, "Monstrous 'murder hornets' have reached the US", Live Science, 5/5/2020.
3. Brian Handwerk, "'Hornets From Hell' Offer Real-Life Fright", National Geographic News, 10/25/2002.
4. "Africanized Bees", Smithsonian Institution, accessed: 5/10/2020.
5. For a comparatively recent example, see: Danielle Elliot, "What makes 'killer' bees so deadly?", CBS News, 7/29/2013.
6. "Potentially fatal 'murder hornet' spreads across the globe", Sky News, 5/5/2020.
7. Seth Borenstein, "Bug experts dismiss worry about US 'murder hornets' as hype", Associated Press, 5/7/2020.
8. So stock up now!
9. If you're too young to remember the "Summer of the Shark", see: Jeordan Legon, "Survey: 'Shark summer' bred fear, not facts", CNN, 3/14/2003. The "Summer of the Shark" reporting did not follow the above template exactly, but exemplified most of it.

---

Update (5/15/2020): Here's more headline evidence that the news media are searching for a new monster to frighten us with:

Georgia warns of 4-foot-long lizards that 'eat just about anything they want'¹

Giant, 4-foot-long lizards posing a major threat to Georgia wildlife²

Large invasive lizard that can grow up to 4 feet long gaining foothold in Georgia, officials warn³

Let's check it against the template: Invasive? Check; just like the monster hornets, this lizard is a non-native species that originally came from South America⁴. Scary? Check; they're "giant", "large", and eat whatever they want. Spreading? Check; they're getting a foothold in Georgia, though two out of the three news stories don't mention that they're coming up from Florida, where they've been for nearly two decades.

That's just the start of the template, though. Like the hornets, the lizards are not primarily a threat to people but to native non-human animals. As far as I've been able to ascertain, unlike the hornets, they don't kill people, so it's likely that this scare won't be sustainable.

Just wait'll the news media find out that there are already up to a quarter of a million lizard-like reptiles in Georgia that can grow up to sixteen-feet long and weigh over 800 pounds. They also "will eat almost anything they can catch⁵", including pets and small children⁶. They're called "alligators".

---

Notes:

1. Leanda Gore, "Georgia warns of 4-foot-long lizards that 'eat just about anything they want'", AL, 5/15/2020.
2. Christina Maxouris, "Giant, 4-foot-long lizards posing a major threat to Georgia wildlife", CNN, 5/14/2020.
3. Caitlin O'Kane, "Large invasive lizard that can grow up to 4 feet long gaining foothold in Georgia, officials warn", CBS News, 5/143/2020.
4. Laurie Vitt, "Tegu", Encyclopaedia Britannica, accessed: 5/15/2020.
5. "Alligator Fact Sheet", The Georgia Department of Natural Resources, revised: 9/16.
6. Eliott C. McLaughlin, Joshua Berlinger, Ashley Fantz & Steve Almasy, "Disney gator attack: 2-year-old boy found dead", CNN, 6/16/2016.

---

May 2nd, 2020 (Permalink)

Hard Pills to Swallow

Paul Patient has a severe case of puzzler's syndrome. He has been prescribed two pills to treat it, and is to take one of each type of pill once a day at the same time. Both pills are tablets, but one type is red and the other green. Unfortunately, Paul is color-blind and not able to tell the pills apart by sight. However, the two types of pill come in two different bottles.

Paul habitually takes his medications before going to bed at night. One night, he opened the bottle of red pills, tipping one pill out onto the palm of his hand, and then opened the bottle of green pills. Momentarily distracted, he accidentally let two green pills fall from the bottle into his palm.

Now, Paul was faced with a puzzle. There were three pills in his hand: one red and two green. However, he could not tell one pill from another; all three pills looked the same to him. He was only supposed to take one pill of each color, and it might harm him to take two green ones.

Paul looked at the bottles and saw that the bottle of green pills was now empty, and there was only one remaining red pill. However, this would not solve the puzzle. He could show the three pills to some person without color-blindness who could tell him which pill was red and which ones green, but it was late at night. Paul didn't want to have to bother someone so late.

Being a patient with puzzler's syndrome, and now being past the time he usually took his medication, Paul was obsessed with the puzzle of the three pills. Is there some way I can take the proper dosage now without needing to ask for anyone's help later in identifying pills, he wondered.

Thankfully, Paul was able to solve the puzzle and take his medication without needing any help. How did he do it?

Hint 1

Hint 2

Solution

---

May 1st, 2020 (Permalink)

Mayday! Mayday!

As is usual with these recommendations, I don't necessarily endorse everything expressed in them, but I do think they are all worthwhile. Also, as is usual with these sources on the coronavirus epidemic, I am not including any exercises in fear-mongering. If you're a fan of horror stories and love to have the stuffing scared out of you, just access any mainstream media source. This round-up is intended as a counterweight to the on-going news media hysteria.

• Recommended Viewing

  The following two video interviews are from the Uncommon Knowledge series, hosted by Peter Robinson, with guest Jay Bhattacharya, a medical scientist doing research on the prevalence of the coronavirus in the United States. The first is almost exactly a month old and, so, is already out of date. However, it's useful to watch in comparison with the second, more recent, follow-up interview to compare how much we have learned since.

  1. "Questioning Conventional Wisdom in the COVID-19 Crisis, with Dr. Jay Bhattacharya", Uncommon Knowledge, 3/31/2020.
  2. "The Fight against COVID-19: An Update from Dr. Jay Bhattacharya", Uncommon Knowledge, 4/17/2020.
• Recommended Listening

  Why are we still unsure about the death rate due to COVID-19, and what is the best current estimate of it? Listen to the following short interview for the answers:

  • "Why The True Fatality Rate Of COVID-19 Is Hard To Estimate", NPR, 4/24/2020.
• Recommended Reading

  The following article is over a month old, so it's outdated already, but I include it because it's mentioned in the interviews, above. It discusses why the early reports of the case fatality rate were probably inflated due to selection bias:

  • Eran Bendavid & Jay Bhattacharya, "Is the Coronavirus as Deadly as They Say?", The Wall Street Journal, 3/24/2020.

    If it's true that the novel coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines, then the extraordinary measures being carried out in cities and states around the country are surely justified. But there's little evidence to confirm that premise―and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high. Fear of Covid-19 is based on its high estimated case fatality rate―2% to 4% of people with confirmed Covid-19 have died, according to the World Health Organization and others. So if 100 million Americans ultimately get the disease, two million to four million could die. We believe that estimate is deeply flawed. The true fatality rate is the portion of those infected who die, not the deaths from identified positive cases. The latter rate is misleading because of selection bias in testing. The degree of bias is uncertain because available data are limited. But it could make the difference between an epidemic that kills 20,000 and one that kills two million. If the number of actual infections is much larger than the number of cases―orders of magnitude larger―then the true fatality rate is much lower as well. That's not only plausible but likely based on what we know so far.

    Here's another old article that has held up:

  • John P. A. Ioannidis, "A fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data", Stat News, 3/17/2020.

    The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco. At a time when everyone needs better information, from disease modelers and governments to people quarantined or just social distancing, we lack reliable evidence on how many people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or who continue to become infected. Better information is needed to guide decisions and actions of monumental significance and to monitor their impact. Draconian countermeasures have been adopted in many countries. If the pandemic dissipates―either on its own or because of these measures―short-term extreme social distancing and lockdowns may be bearable. How long, though, should measures like these be continued if the pandemic churns across the globe unabated? How can policymakers tell if they are doing more good than harm? … Some worry that the 68 deaths from Covid-19 in the U.S. as of March 16 will increase exponentially to 680, 6,800, 68,000, 680,000…[ellipsis in the original] along with similar catastrophic patterns around the globe. Is that a realistic scenario, or bad science fiction? How can we tell at what point such a curve might stop? … In the absence of data, prepare-for-the-worst reasoning leads to extreme measures of social distancing and lockdowns. Unfortunately, we do not know if these measures work. … One of the bottom lines is that we don't know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. … [W]ith lockdowns of months, if not years, life largely stops, short-term and long-term consequences are entirely unknown, and billions, not just millions, of lives may be eventually at stake. If we decide to jump off the cliff, we need some data to inform us about the rationale of such an action and the chances of landing somewhere safe.

    As the next reading tells us, we now have the data. Perhaps at the time the decisions to shutdown the economy were made, in a context of ignorance and uncertainty, they were the right decisions. However, in hindsight we can see that such shutdowns were unnecessary and counter-productive except in localized hotspots, such as New York City.

  • Scott W. Atlas, "The data is in―stop the panic and end the total isolation", The Hill, 4/22/2020.

    … Tens of thousands of Americans have died, and Americans are now desperate for sensible policymakers who have the courage to ignore the panic and rely on facts. Leaders must examine accumulated data to see what has actually happened, rather than keep emphasizing hypothetical projections; combine that empirical evidence with fundamental principles of biology established for decades; and then thoughtfully restore the country to function.

    We have plenty of ventilators, but the courage to rely on facts instead of fear is in short supply among our policymakers.

  • Heather MacDonald, "The paranoid style in COVID-19 America", Spectator USA, 4/27/2020.

    To grasp the urgency of lifting the ubiquitous economic shutdowns, visit New York City's Central Park, ideally in the morning. At 5:45 am, it is occupied by maybe 100 runners and cyclists, spread over 843 acres. A large portion of these early-bird exercisers wear masks. Are they trying to protect anyone they might encounter from their own unsuspected coronavirus infection? Perhaps. But if you yourself run towards an oncoming runner on a vector that will keep you at least three yards away when you pass each other, he is likely to lunge sideways in terror if your face is not covered. The masked cyclists, who speed around the park's inner road, apparently think that there are enough virus particles suspended in the billions of square feet of fresh air circulating across the park to enter their mucous membranes and to sicken them. These are delusional beliefs, yet they demonstrate the degree of paranoia that has infected the population. Every day the lockdown continues, its implicit message that we are all going to die if we engage in normal life is reinforced. Polls show an increasing number of Americans opting to continue the economic quarantine indefinitely lest they be 'unsafe'. The longer that belief is reinforced, the less likely it will be that consumers will patronize reopened restaurants or board airplanes in sufficient numbers to bring the economy back to life. … We are in a race between the ideology of safetyism and the facts. The future depends on which side prevails. The data is clear. The coronavirus danger is narrowly targeted at a very specific portion of the national population: the elderly infirm, especially those located in New York City and its surrounding suburbs. It possesses minimal risk to everyone else. … To cancel most of the country's economy for a problem, however tragic, that is highly localized was a devastating policy blunder that must be immediately corrected. …

    Speaking of delusional beliefs, a few days ago I saw two children riding bicycles wearing bandanas over their faces. Maybe they were playing at being bandits, but I suspect that it was adults who made them wear the facial coverings. Adults should know better. In addition to the fact that the risk of catching coronavirus while cycling approaches zero, only a small number of children have died from COVID-19^*. Let the children play.

^*Specifically, nine children below the age of fifteen have died in the United States; see: "Provisional Death Counts for Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)", Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accessed: 4/30/2020.

Previous Entry | Top of Page

---

Read and write reviews of Casino Gods at TheCasinoDB.

A great German Casino for new players.

---

Information about the best Sweden Casino Online operators on CasinoHEX.se

Check out Casinofever.ca for the best comparison of casinos for Canadian players

CasinoAdvisers.com provides you with a great bonus list and also the best £10 casinos!

If you are looking for UK gambling sites - check this site for the best offers.

Find the best no deposit free spins offer on freespins.monster and keep your winnings while you play.

---

Advertise in The Fallacy Files

The Fallacy Files does not endorse products or services advertised here. Ads makes it possible to continue as a free site. You may help keep it free by supporting its advertisers. Thank you!

---

Support The Fallacy Files

---

Email the Fallacist

© Copyright 2001-2020: Gary N. Curtis

---

Permission is granted for non-commercial use and replication of this material for educational purposes, provided that appropriate notice is included of both its authorship and copyrighted status.