Author: tristero

I am not a scientist or researcher and I’m far from the smartest person I know. Yet I can easily read the chart above, which illustrates exponential growth. I can also easily grasp the implications of the concept of exponential growth for something like — oh, I don’t know — the spread of a highly contagious virus.

Exponential growth and it’s connection to the real world is not rocket science. I thought anyone with a college education understood this.

I was wrong.

Recently, I learned that one of the smartest and most successful people I know, someone with wide national if not international influence, could not grasp, despite repeated explanations, what exponential growth meant in the real world. Worse, that person’s colleagues — people who are equally smart and even more influential — find exponential growth so irrelevant to real life that they persisted in going into their crowded office (even though most of their work could easily be done at home) while tens of thousands in their city and even dozens of their own colleagues fell ill around them.

And so, as the first few cases appeared in their city back in late February, they looked at those early death-soaked statistics from the Wuhan outbreak and thought, “Look around, it’s just three or four people here. Nothing to worry about.” And just kept on keeping on.

The principle reason that over 150,000 Americans are dead today is that Donald Trump and his administration failed utterly in their response. But this breathtaking incapacity to understand the basic implications of a simple quantitative concept was repeated over and over again, not only by people who never went to college but also by some of the most highly educated people around.

To me, this conceptual blindness represents a failure of national educational policy in at least two ways. First, there is a national failure to teach non-STEM students even the basics of statistical analysis. Who needs stats, anyway, if you’re passionate about art history and don’t give a hoot about geology? Answer: you do. Proof? The pandemic.

The second failure is a failure — both in and out of the sciences — to teach even the basics of how to be creative in an effective manner. A technical understanding of exponential growth is one thing. But to understand what such a growth curve could mean in the real world? That takes a trained imagination plus creativity — not much, but enough to connect dots in a reasonable way.

Proof? It’s not just math-phobes who couldn’t understand what those awful charts implied. I know medical students and researchers — not conspiracy theorists but some of the most level-headed people in my circle — who couldn’t connect the 6 or 7 Covid cases they’d heard about in their communities with what they understood from their stats 101 class about exponential growth.

Some time in the future when we have rational leadership again — and let that time begin today with Trump’s and Pence’s immediate resignations — the way in which this country is educated needs a complete and thorough overhaul. All of us need a far better understanding of basic statistical thinking. And all of us also need a far better understanding of how to think imaginatively about how those stats affect our lives.

There is no way the New York Times would ever have printed an op-ed by Dr. Stella Immanuel. That’s because she holds indisputably insane ideas. Instead, the Times published a news article when her latest bumper crop of crazy notions about the coronavirus were irresponsibly re-tweeted by the (I just can’t fucking believe it) the president of the United States and his idiot son.

That is exactly the right way to handle extremist nonsense that rises to the legitimate attention of the public.

The problem is that the Times thinks Tom Cotton, who holds views just as nuts and as extreme as Dr. Immanuel, is someone the Times thinks does in fact deserve a Times opinion column. (The link is to a later version of the original op-ed that was sanitized by the addition of a disclaiming introduction.) Instead the Times (as an institution) strongly believes that publishing Cotton’s op-ed advocating violence against American citizens demonstrated their commitment to a wide and diverse range of opinion worthy of discussion.

The Times is oblivious to the obvious fact that Cotton is as disordered and dangerous in his thinking as Dr. Immanuel. I wonder why? It couldn’t be simply that Cotton is white, could it?

PS Trust me, despite Bennet’s resignation, nothing’s changed, culturally, at the Times’s top management. And it’s only a matter of time before more extreme right insanity appears in the op-ed pages.

Whatever it takes, no matter how boring, distasteful, or tedious:

Deep canvassing is when volunteers and organizers engage in extended, empathetic conversations, with the goal of combating prejudice and shifting beliefs. (The typical door-to-door canvasser, by contrast, gives a brief spiel, asks how you’re voting, and moves on.) A growing body of academic research finds that deep canvassing done in person and by phone can have a real, measurable effect on changing hearts and minds. And in a time when so many of our conversations feel shitty and shallow despite the embarrassment of platforms on which we can have those conversations, deep canvassing offers a promising alternative, a way to find common ground and make human connections in a time of political polarization and tribalism.

Even in a pandemic…

[Researchers] Broockman and Kalla ran experiments using the traditional tools of politics — short phone calls, brief door-to-door canvassing, and TV ads — and found that they typically had almost no lasting effect on changing the mind of a typical voter.

But the experiments that Broockman, who now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, and Kalla, who teaches at Yale, ran involving deep canvassing told a different story. They’ve now conducted half a dozen major studies and, each time, as the data come in, they find measurable effects on prejudice and certain public policies that last much longer than the TV ads and short-form canvassing. One of the key ingredients, they say, is stories — about a marginalized group of people, about a time you were treated differently, but really any personal story. Another was showing respect to the person on the other end of the conversation, no matter how much you disliked or disagreed with them. “We just kept finding in study after study these results,” Broockman says. “Every time we do this, we seem to find this again and again and again.”

That conclusion applies to phone canvassing. In a paper published in January, they found that deep canvassing done by phone also succeeded at reducing prejudice — specifically, in this particular study, transphobia. Although the measurable effects on reducing prejudice were slightly less pronounced than those seen in studies that used in-person canvasses. Those effects persisted for at least a month after the initial deep-canvassing conversation. “The conversations over the phone lasted just as long, in terms of efficacy, as a conversation in person,” Kalla says.

Heartened by the encouraging results of Broockman and Kalla’s research, George Goehl, the director of People’s Action, the populist grassroots group, told me that he and his colleagues had envisioned a massive ramping-up of deep-canvassing work in the 2020 election year.

Far be it from me to argue with valid empirical research. If it works, it works. But it sure sounds like a lot of effort for very little payoff.

As a liberal and progressive, I know I should be all for engagement, debate, and persuasion. But I’ve engaged KKK members one-on-one. I’ve engaged homophobes and Islamophobes. I’ve found them to be utterly dishonest debating opponents who lie, mislead and misquote. And, just when you think you have persuaded them, you find out they’ve been playing you for a sucker. They are perfectly capable of lying to a researcher that their views have changed.

But sure, there’s nothing wrong with being nice if it works. But if something else is demonstrated to be even more effective at defeating Trumpism — say, rallying the Democratic and liberal majority in this country with great proposals and great rhetoric — let’s not waste our time engaging the MAGA gang merely because it makes us feel good to do it.

Michelle Goldberg in the NY Times is, I believe, the first person in the Times to so much as mention the possibility that Trump resign:

…there’s no drumbeat of calls for the president’s resignation. People seem to feel too helpless.

I’m not sure that I agree about the “too helpless” part. Speaking personally, I don’t feel helpless. Instead, I’m flabbergasted at the cowardice, especially by the media and the Republicans, at their refusal to take Trump on. For all their faults, at least Pelosi, Schiff, and other Democrats actually did their job and impeached the motherfucker.

That said, it’s great that the subject of Trump being forced to leave office immediately is finally being openly discussed in the Times. Thanks, Ms. Goldberg, for getting the ball started.

PS, the rest of Goldberg’s op-ed is brilliant. So, btw, is Krugman’s. The Times has published (and publishes) some terrible opinion columnists, but these two are as good as it gets.

They don’t exist. The above table and the link are to the Gallup poll. As of June 8, Trump won approval from 91% of all Republicans. I don’t think any other national Republican enjoys anything close to this level of support.

The takeaway? Republicans are impervious to even the most basic forms of rational discerning. They can’t be argued with, but any political party that clueless can be defeated.

Under normal circumstances, I would sign the open letter printed in Harper’s in a heartbeat. It calls for an open, tolerant, robust debate on controversial issues and I am, like all liberals and progressives, 100% in support of such freedom of speech.

The problem is that a truly open, substantive debate is impossible to hold today in the mainstream media. As a result, this open letter distorts the situation and, while I agree with nearly every conceptual argument it makes, I wouldn’t sign the letter at the present time.

I’ll focus on one of their complaints as an example. The letter states:

Editors are fired for running controversial pieces…

This is, more than likely, a reference to the firing of James Bennett, op-ed editor of the Times, for running an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton who wrote, and the Times published, this:

One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. But local law enforcement in some cities desperately needs backup, while delusional politicians in other cities refuse to do what’s necessary to uphold the rule of law.

The pace of looting and disorder may fluctuate from night to night, but it’s past time to support local law enforcement with federal authority. Some governors have mobilized the National Guard, yet others refuse, and in some cases the rioters still outnumber the police and Guard combined. In these circumstances, the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to employ the military “or any other means” in “cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.”

This is the kind of “controversial piece ” we are supposed to tolerate: fullthroated advocacy of the US military to threaten and intimidate American citizens.

The problem is that this isn’t a “controversial” opinion. It’s simply the ravings of an extremist who should have no business with access to a mainstream editorial page. It is the equivalent of publishing a defense of the Rohingya massacres by Ahsin Wirathu. A responsible newspaper knows better than to disseminate such toxic trash.

The problem is that the mainstream discourse has become profoundly skewed to wards the publication of controversial far-right opinions without context or explanation. There is no “leftwing equivalent” to Cotton’s extremism that would ever see the light of day. To even provide a hypothetical example here would be irresponsible on my part.

If only the letter urging tolerance addressed the very real problem of irresponsible context-free publication of extreme rightwing ideas. If only it truly grappled with the complexities of publishing a wide range of genuine opinions when there are bad actors who seek to undermine the entire concept of a free, substantive, and open public discourse. But it didn’t and so, sadly, while I respect enormously many of the thoughtful people who signed the letter and agree in principle with much of what it says, I believe it is mostly irrelevant to the real issues of public debate we are facing today.

Being open to new, unusual, and controversial ideas does not mean I have to behave like a naive fool. I will not countenance the context-free advocacy of violent ideologies in mainstream media merely because some ambitious Republican wants to dogwhistle to his or her Neo-Nazi base. I will not excuse the propagation of dangerous lies and falsehoods about scientific facts merely because some Republican ignoramus promoted them.

It is not responsible to publish extremism in the way the Bennett did. He fully deserved to be fired for not properly vetting that reprehensible column. The problem lies not with those of us who reacted with disgust but with a media culture that permits Cotton (and so many other rightwingers) to get away with propagating their deplorable ideas.

He’s nowhere to be found on the NY Times this Fourth of July morning:

Nor the Washington Post:

And he’s not on CNN, either:

Who’s missing from the top of these mainstream news Web sites? The same person who was missing during the summer of 2016 more days than most:

The Democratic contender for president of the United States.

In 2016, I was counting: on average, the Republican nominee was mentioned more than 6 times as often as the Democratic at the top of the front pages. It felt as if exactly one person was running for president and when only one person is running, the election’s results are foregone.

It’s happening again.

This was a caption at the Washington Post today: “Trump backers hope anger at John Roberts will boost campaign.” And as I read it, I realized that I’d never seen a headline — and never will see a headline — that reads anything like “Biden backers hope anger at John Roberts will boost campaign.” And yet, you can bet that I’m not the only liberal/progressive out there who is throughly disgusted by Roberts’ voting record (with rare exceptions) as well as Gorsuch’s, Thomas’s, Alito’s, and Kavanaugh’s.

Why is that? Partly because Democrats don’t usually make a big deal about the Supreme Court during campaigns. But there’s more to it.

For some reason, major media outlets find it not newsworthy to report liberal/progressive dismay at the state this country is in unless people take to the streets. And even then, our concerns are under-reported unless crowds are immense — and even then, not always (I remember millions marching around the world against the Iraq War and that Sunday, not a single mention on the talk shows).

Terrific reporting on some upcoming studies demonstrating a direct link between misinformation propagated by Fox and others and the severity of the pandemic:

In recent weeks, three studies have focused on conservative media’s role in fostering confusion about the seriousness of the coronavirus. Taken together, they paint a picture of a media ecosystem that amplifies misinformation, entertains conspiracy theories and discourages audiences from taking concrete steps to protect themselves and others.

The end result, according to one of the studies, is that infection and mortality rates are higher in places where one pundit who initially downplayed the severity of the pandemic — Fox News’ Sean Hannity — reaches the largest audiences…

A working paper posted by the National Bureau of Economic Research in May examined whether these incorrect beliefs affected real-world behavior.

The authors used anonymous location data from millions of cellphones to explore how the popularity of Fox News in a given Zip code related to social distancing practices there. By March 15, they found, a 10 percent increase in Fox News viewership within a Zip code reduced its residents’ propensity to stay home, in compliance with public health guidelines, by about 1.3 percentage points.

Given total stay-at-home behavior increased by 20 percentage points during the study period, that effect size is “pretty large,” said Andrey Simonov, the study’s lead author…

Another recent working paper, by economists at the University of Chicago and other institutions, similarly finds that Fox News viewers are less likely to comply with public health guidelines than consumers of other media. But their paper takes the analysis two steps further: It finds that Fox viewers aren’t a monolith, with fans of some media personalities acting distinctly from others. It also provides evidence that those behavioral differences are contributing to the spread and mortality rate of covid-19 in certain areas... [italics added]

viewership was associated with changing pandemic-related behaviors (like hand-washing and canceling travel plans) four days later than other Fox News viewers, while Carlson viewership was associated with changing behaviors three days earlier.

Given the importance of individual behavior in curbing the spread of the coronavirus, it stands to reason that places where people were slower to take preventive steps might see more severe outbreaks. That’s exactly what the final step of their analysis shows.

“Our results indicate that a one standard deviation increase in relative viewership of Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight is associated with approximately 32 percent more COVID-19 cases on March 14 and approximately 23 percent more COVID-19 deaths on March 28…”

As anyone will quick to add, correlation doesn’t demonstrate causation. Striking, nevertheless.

There you are, the very center of a sea of faces. They’re all there for you, to hear you, to bask in your presence. They came from all over and they’re thousands of them screaming your name over and over, delirious with excitement.

As you look around and watch these twisted, transfigured faces, you realize with absolute certainty that two weeks from now a significant fraction of the people before you will begin dying a horrible, preventable death. Because of you! For you! Because they love you!

The intense pulse of this realization goes far beyond orgasm. You — you alone — have the power to introduce people directly to their deaths solely in order praise you.

It is a god-like power. God-like? Doesn’t God command life and death? No, you are not God-like: you are God…

If I believed that evil existed, this is what it would look like.