Shelf-Life

A pair of quotes:

If in fact the shelf-life for vigilance in the U.S. is only about 3 months, new surges may occur in the fall in previously hard-hit regions such as the Northeast—unless residents remember to stay afraid.
Professor Robert M. Wachter, Chair of the Department of Medicine at UCSF.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken, In Defense Of Women.

I understand the idea that for many people "you should be afraid of this" is really just a way of saying "this frightens me." American English has about a million (give or take the odd hundred thousand) such shortcuts, and the fact that they may make it difficult to understand what someone is attempting to convey doesn't appear to be able to change that.

But people actively and intentionally calling for people to be afraid strikes me as a relatively new phenomenon. (It is possible, however, that I wasn't paying attention earlier.) In the environment of the SARS-2 coronavirus outbreak, fear of disease or death has taken on the aspect of a social virtue; people who are afraid are taking their responsibilities more seriously than people who seek to remain unfrightened. But even though the hobgoblin that is the pandemic is not imaginary, I'm not sure that keeping the populace alarmed is the best idea.

Fear might best be described as a state of negative anticipation due to a potential future event that a person believes that they can neither change nor accept. And given that, I understand why there is a desire for people to be afraid; it helps make the case for taking what often come across as extreme precautions. Here's the rub, though, as far as I'm concerned. Firstly, people don't have to be in constant fear in order to take precautions. While my current car will nag me if I pull out without my seat belt being fastened, my previous one did not, yet I routinely wore my seatbelt when out on the road. And even my current car often lacks the opportunity to nag me, since I put my seat belt on before going anywhere. And given my tendency to go for a drive at the drop of a hat, it seems dubious at best to cast me as always being afraid of being in a traffic accident. Secondly, constant anxiety is simply bad for people. If people need to fear for their lives every day until this pandemic is finally dealt with, that's a real problem.

There is also the fact that H.L. Mencken was not the only person to suspect that the political establishment uses fear for its ends, rather than those of the public. This mistrust (which is starting to become something of a regular thing around here) makes portraying the outbreak only in terms of the worst-case scenario is a high-risk strategy. Mainly because if the pandemic were as universally bad as it's often portrayed, it might no be such a problem. A serious respiratory infection that routinely places people in the hospital has a difficult time spreading. It's the randomness of the illness, the fact that for many people the term "illness" hardly seems to qualify, that is creating the problem. Not acknowledging that when people can see it makes it seem more credible when people allege that their government is conspiring against them.

Complacency and carelessness are concerns, to be sure. But those things are also baked into human nature. Expecting immediate fears, rather than longer-term behavior change to combat them seems like a dubious strategy.

Invalidity

The tone of the article, and to a certain degree, its purpose, is set just a few sentences in. The author, The Atlantic's Olga Khazan, is relating her reaction to one older woman telling another that wearing a mask could be dangerous.

“OK Boomer,” I thought. I dismissed her as a random neighborhood conspiracist and swam my laps.

This dismissiveness permeates the rest of the article. Possibly because the editors felt that it would play well with the well-educated, somewhat center-left readership of The Atlantic, or maybe because they didn't really see it themselves. Or maybe they feel, as a number of people appear to, that some level of mockery is the best response to apparent nonsense. Lost in the "aren't anti-maskers stupid?" theme of the article, however, is an important point from near the beginning of the piece:

The horror of the idea was apparent even to me: the feds, in their hall-monitor stupidity, forcing you to do something that’s actually bad for you.

When Ms. Khazan lays out the gist of many of the theories that are circulating, the idea seems even worse. The federal government isn't displaying "hall-monitor stupidity;" they're being somewhere between actively callous and openly malevolent. Stories that purport to be an insider's knowledge that some or another piece of conventional wisdom is untrue carry a pretty clear point with them; that insiders have definite knowledge that the information under consideration is false.

And it's this angle that nay better explain the staying power of anti-mask conspiracy theories. The stories continue to circulate because they validate people's belief that they have an accurate understanding of the world around them; that this world is run by powerful people who are both unaccountable to the public at large and happily willing deal out harm, misery and death in pursuit of their narrow, selfish interests. And "government officials," most of whom were never elected by anyone and who only seem to pop up when things are crazy, are little more than the willing mouthpieces of these powerful people.

And the same can be said for the media. At one point in the piece, Ms. Khazan calls out England’s deputy chief medical officer, Jenny Harries, for a claim "that masks could 'actually trap the virus'." (Personally, I thought that this was somewhat the point, but I suspect that the contention here was that airborne viruses from other people would live on in the mask, making the object a reservoir for infection.) Harries, we are informed in a parenthetical, "did not respond to a request for comment." Of course she didn't. What point would there have been? She either a) offers up a mea culpa and abandons or walks back her earlier statement, b) cites changing information and being wrong then but correct now or c) stands by her earlier statement; perhaps with a clarification, perhaps as stated. Are any of these options in Ms. Harries' interests? I'm not sure that they are. After all, if The Atlantic's "request for comment" struck me as having no upside for Ms. Harries, I wouldn't be surprised to find that someone in her office reached the same conclusion. But more to the point here, one can make the case that the intent was to hold Ms. Harries accountable for the current conspiracy situation. To the person who believes that insiders have knowledge that "the élites" don't want getting out, putting people on the spot for information that hints to the suspected malicious activity is simply proof that the powerful people who own media companies are in on the scheming, and Ms. Harries is valiant in her refusal to comment.

Information about the world, whether that's objective fact or subjective experience, may be a lot of things, but it's rarely, if ever, self-evident. In their quest for understanding, people draw connections and create narratives that allow them to feel that they have mastered the environment around them. But it's an imperfect process; the way someone understands the world is may not comport with the way that they understand that it should be. And a lot of people's worlds are not as they should be. Conspiracy theories help bridge that gap. Far more important than the confusing guidance on masks and the earlier u-turn on wearing one versus not wearing one is the simple conviction that the current SARS-2 CoV pandemic is not the unforeseen result of trillions of separate interactions that happened to all come together this way. Rather, things are bad because someone is making them bad, and there are people out there who know the truth.

There is a sense in which conspiracy theories are a form of conspiracy theory themselves. They offer a narrative of stupidity, ignorance and deceit when simple fear and mistrust can explain things just as easily. They allow for clear villains in people who knowingly either spread misinformation or fail to suppress it, and make the lack of social trust into something designed, rather than emergent. But the lack of social trust the United States currently labors under is not an effect of misinformation, it's a cause. And until that's addressed, people can dismissively "OK Boomer," all they want, but the whispers will continue to spread.

Mind the Gap

I was reading "How The Two-Party System Obscures The Complexity Of Black Americans’ Politics" on FiveThirtyEight, and one of the points that was being made is despite the fact that an overwhelmingly large majority of Black voters regularly vote Democratic, the politics of the Black community is much more nuanced. Which is something that I suspect is familiar to anyone who understands how socially conservative Black people can be.

In any event, information from American National Election Studies was referenced, and one of the survey items mentioned was a question about whether the Federal government should be in the business of guaranteeing that citizens have jobs. The premise was worded this way on FiveThirtyEight:

Jobs Guarantee "The government should see to it that every person has a job and a good standard of living."

And there were two positions that people could take on this. A Liberal one: "Government should guarantee a living," and a Conservative one: "Each person should be on his/her own." When I first saw this, it struck me as odd to have these two options as the only choices. After all, it's not like they meet in the middle, or cover all of the possible options. And in looking at the graphic, this stood out for me: "On the jobs guarantee question, respondents were given a response scale, so we grouped responses."

I decided that I was better off finding the information myself, so I looked up American National Election Studies to get the information for myself. It turns out that they've been asking this question for quite some time, and in two forms. Interestingly, the first of them, Government Guaranteed Job and Standard of Living (1), yes/no 1956 -2002, is a simple agree or disagree (yes/no) formulation. The question had been asked this way back in the 1950s and 60s, before making a short comeback in 2002. Between 1956 and 1960, is was phrased as: "The government in Washington ought to see to it that everybody who wants to work can find a job." Presumably, Yes/No followed that. Between 1964 and 1968, the question was posed as was a two-parter, opening with: "In general, some people feel that the government in Washington should see to it that every person has a job and a good standard of living. Others think the government should just let each person get ahead on his own. Have you been interested enough in this to favor one side over the other." If the respondent answered "yes," a follow-up determined which side of the fence the respondent came down on. For 2002, it had been restored to a one-part question, abeit with more than just a yes/no answer: "Some people feel the government in Washington should see to it that every person has A JOB AND A GOOD STANDARD OF LIVING. Others think the government should just LET EACH PERSON GET AHEAD ON THEIR OWN. Which is closer to the way you feel or haven't you thought much about this?"

From 1972 onward, a second form of the question was /is asked, the response scale question that FiveThirtyEight references: "Government Guaranteed Job and Standard of Living (2), 7 point scale," The question is/was posed as follows:

Some people feel that the government in Washington should see to it that every person has a job and a good standard of living... Others think the government should just let each person get ahead on his/their own... Where would you place yourself on this scale, or haven't you thought much about this?

While I admit that the scaled version of the question allows for more nuance, it still comes across as an oddly binary choice; perhaps due to a need to keep the question similar to the one that had been asked starting in 1956. But it triggered a question for me... When we speak of the divide between opposing partisans, self-sorting into different areas and ideological echo chambers are the common culprits. But what if the way that neutral parties speak of partisans to other partisans is also part of the equation? If someone had told me that liberals believe that " the government in Washington should guarantee that every person has a job and a good standard of living," or that conservatives believe that "the government should just leave each person be on their own," I would have immediately suspected a straw man, especially given the weaselly "some people feel" framing. "Who are these 'some people'... precisely?" I can hear myself saying.

And while I hadn't really thought much of it before seeing this, it seems to me that a lot of descriptions of partisan positions works this way, phrased as stereotypically lefty/rightist, but also apparently divorced from any known policy platforms. I doubt that this is a serious problem, but then again, we don't really need any more minor ones, either. Political canvassing that's less inflammatory and more in line with the sorts of discussions that people actually have about the topics at hand certainly can't hurt anything. Of course, having partisans actually speaking to one another rather than sourcing their information second-hand would be ideal... But one can't have everything, unfortunately.

Okay, New Plan

So there's an off-ramp from the highway, where there is an island right where it meets the cross street. Left turns go to the left of the island, right turns to the right. Except for people who aren't paying attention and try to switch lanes at the last moment. They go into the barriers designed to protect pedestrians crossing the island. It seems that the barriers are replaced about once a month, someone is always running into them. If I remember correctly, there had been a bus stop there for a while... although I suspect that people quickly found it too nerve-wracking and/or actively dangerous to use.

There's a part of me that says it's only a matter of time until they redesign the intersection into something more standard, rather than constantly replacing the fences they've placed. But infrastructure can be stubborn, especially when tax receipts are are down. So we'll see how long it is until something is done. But it's going to have to happen at some point.

End of Year

I started Nobody In Particular back in the Winter of 2006. I'm not sure if that's not as long ago as it feels, or longer ago. It's a sign of being old, I guess. In any event, in my first full month of writing, January of 2007, I posted thirteen times. Which seemed like a reasonable number, so I decided that I would post thirteen times a month.

I don't claim to be the most logical person you'll ever meet.

In any event, for the first three years of the blog, I wound up with an average of 13 or more posts every month, but often feel short of that number on a monthly basis. July of 2007 was particularly sparse, with only 7 posts that month. For the record, I do go back and read some of them from time to time. Not the best idea in the world. I've changed a lot in the intervening timeframe, and late 2000s me wasn't always a pleasant person. Still, I suppose the only way to know how far one has traveled is to have a record of where one has been.

But back to the point. This is my first post for October 2020, and it's the one-hundred and fifty-sixth post of the year. Twelve times thirteen, or a bit less than a quarter ahead of schedule. I suppose that I could set a higher target cadence, but I will admit to liking being able to skip two days in a row now and again, even if I don't take advantage of it as often as I should.

The point behind Nobody In Particular was to make me a better writer. Or, to be more precise, to train myself to be better, and faster, as translating my thoughts into text. I've worked a lot of jobs that require me to write and/or maintain a good bit of documentation, and I've always thought of myself as a poor writer. And, to be honest, something of a poor typist. For all of my effort, I could never learn to touch-type. But it turns out that if one uses the hunt-and-peck method long enough, one gets to the point of having muscle memory for where all the keys are. I can type without constantly looking at the keyboard, while only using pretty much two fingers... well, as long as I'm on a "standard-sized" keyboard, anyway. I suspect that there's something farcical about that.

Has it worked? I have no idea. But I have learned what it takes to become better at something. Feedback. And I didn't really set myself up to get any on this platform. Back when Google Plus was still in operation, I would summarize things there, which did provide some feedback. But it was mostly of the "I like this" or "You're an idiot" variety, rather than commenting on how well or poorly it was written. But I keep at it. I'm not sure why. I don't know that I enjoy it as much as posting something nine days out of every twenty for well over a decade would seem to indicate. And, to be honest, I have no idea how much longer this will go. Not in the sense that I'll suddenly decide to stop, but in the sense that I don't have an end in mind; I don't know when the blog will accomplish what I want it to accomplish. I'll just have to see.