1a) Paths of Survival

1a1) 1. Cases are no longer falling

The news about Covid-19 has been mostly positive in the U.S. over recent months. The vaccines continue to work well against every variant, and the number of Americans who have gotten a shot continues to rise.

But the U.S. still faces two problems. First, the pace of vaccinations has slowed, and a substantial share of Americans — close to one third — remains hesitant about getting a shot. These unvaccinated Americans will remain vulnerable to Covid outbreaks and to serious symptoms, or even death.

Second, the Delta variant — which appears to be both more contagious and more severe than earlier versions of the virus — is spreading rapidly within the U.S., after having first been identified in India. It now accounts for about 10 percent of cases, according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former F.D.A. commissioner.

Many experts are concerned that cases will eventually start to rise as Delta becomes the dominant form of the virus. “We are vulnerable,” Dr. Kavita Patel of the Brookings Institution told Yahoo News. On Twitter yesterday, Dr. Robert Wachter of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote: “I’ll now bet we’ll see significant (incl. many hospitalizations/deaths) surges this fall in low-vaccine populations due to combo of seasonality, Delta’s nastiness, & ‘back to normal’ behavior.”

David Leondhart

1a2) From the viruses are weird column: the Delta variant is more communicable. OK. Understandable. Your hosts begin to smarten up and it's harder to spread. But why is it more virulent? Is it a byproduct of being more communicable? The best strategy would seem to be highly communicable, but mild. Like the common cold. That way, you can develop a symbiotic relationship instead of encouraging eradication. But then, with modern humans as disorganized as they are, maybe riding it out as long as you can is optimal. If you were aware you were coming to the end of your survival path, you might just start using cannon fodder to overwhelm progressing defenses. 

To be clear, I am not assigning agency to the COVID virus. More musing on how selection works to send a form of life down a path of hypothetical survival. The strategy might be, mutate and evolve and whatever strategy makes it the furthest is good enough.

Temporally, generation upon generation of the virus could survive over a short period of years, but long enough to form into a more symbiotic form of life. A compression of the life cycle to assume a form that manages to survive. Gut bacteria might have started in such a way. Kind of fascinating to think about despite the human suffering caused.

8a) See Post 051721_1a

8a1) Papers in leading psychology, economic and science journals that fail to replicate and therefore are less likely to be true are often the most cited papers in academic research, according to a new study by the University of California San Diego's Rady School of Management.
    Published in Science Advances, the paper explores the ongoing "replication crisis" in which researchers have discovered that many findings in the fields of social sciences and medicine don't hold up when other researchers try to repeat the experiments.
    The paper reveals that findings from studies that cannot be verified when the experiments are repeated have a bigger influence over time. The unreliable research tends to be cited as if the results were true long after the publication failed to replicate.
    "We also know that experts can predict well which papers will be replicated," write the authors Marta Serra-Garcia, assistant professor of economics and strategy at the Rady School and Uri Gneezy, professor of behavioral economics also at the Rady School. "Given this prediction, we ask 'why are non-replicable papers accepted for publication in the first place?'"

[...]

The influence of an inaccurate paper published in a prestigious journal can have repercussions for decades. For example, the study Andrew Wakefield published in The Lancet in 1998 turned tens of thousands of parents around the world against the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine because of an implied link between vaccinations and autism. The incorrect findings were retracted by The Lancet 12 years later, but the claims that autism is linked to vaccines continue.

    The authors added that journals may feel pressure to publish interesting findings, and so do academics. For example, in promotion decisions, most academic institutions use citations as an important metric in the decision of whether to promote a faculty member.

A new replication crisis: Research that is less likely to be true is cited more at Phys.org

8a2) Of interest is the memetic survival rate based on fitness. According to this study, the fitness of the meme is determined not by truth–as represented by replicability, but by different, and arguably non-scientific factors such as novelty, narrativization, media coverage, and the public's willingness to engage with the data offered. 

We might ask, what is the memetic fitness of this study?

1a) On the potential of multiverse NFTs

1a1) What is the potential of multiverse NFTs? With quantum computers on the horizon, could we communicate with alternate versions of ourselves? While certainly limited to the interest of variations on a single theme–all Melvillains spread across al universe for instance, would there be a market for trading NFT profiles across universes? It would be the ultimate narcissistic game of Pokemon. Gotta catch 'em all!

 

1a2) A short primer on NFTs for the uninitiated at The Verge.  

 

1a3) Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics at Wikipedia

 

1a4)

 

1a5) Many Rick and Morty episodes riff on the theme of the multiverse and the potential af variance in choice and action. Two of my favorites are: Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat from S04, and The Ricklantis Mixup/Tales from the Citadel from S03. "Same old Story. Mortys killing Mortys."

1a) Neoplatonism and the role of logos as perpetually eternal and infallible

1a1) Why do we assume that text is somehow fathomable and/or absolute in meaning? How do we propose to read the mind of the writer in their own spacetime? Do I know my own mind past the point of writing or typing a thought? On (re)reading and editing, do I not begin to narrativize from memory? The falsifiability of the empirical hypothesis can heuristically curb the outright falsehoods, but what about that frontier between noumena and phenomena?

1a2) Neo-platonism (or Neoplatonism) is a modern term used to designate the period of Platonic philosophy beginning with the work of Plotinus and ending with the closing of the Platonic Academy by the Emperor Justinian in 529 C.E. This brand of Platonism, which is often described as ‘mystical’ or religious in nature, developed outside the mainstream of Academic Platonism.

Neo-Platonism at The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

 

1a3) Gnosticism (after gnôsis, the Greek word for “knowledge” or “insight”) is the name given to a loosely organized religious and philosophical movement that flourished in the first and second centuries CE. The exact origin(s) of this school of thought cannot be traced, although it is possible to locate influences or sources as far back as the second and first centuries BCE, such as the early treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Jewish Apocalyptic writings, and especially Platonic philosophy and the Hebrew Scriptures themselves.

Gnosticism at The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

1a4) Language is a virus at Wikipedia

1a5) “Throughout our history,” Leto said, “the most potent use of words has been to round out some transcendental event, giving that event a place in the accepted chronicles, explaining the event in such a way that ever afterward we can use those words and say: “This is what it meant.”

Frank Herbert – God Emperor of Dune

7a) Biology, the State, and Vocation

7a1) Father Curtis: And this offends you as a Jewish person. 

Jerry: No. It offends me as a comedian!

7a2) The tension between accepting and transcending one’s givens is best captured through the difference between one’s family of origin and one’s family of choice. The tribes represent the idea that genealogy is destiny, or at least, that one has a responsibility (if not simply an involuntary compulsion) to pass on a lineage, to tell one’s family story, to carry on its values, temperaments, genetics and epigenetics. But, the reality of “conversion,” especially as expanded and illuminated by rabbinic Judaism, means that inclusion in the people is not determined exclusively (or even ideally) by biology or history, but by choice.

Unfamiliar Territory @Etz Hasadeh

7a3) “The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another, the ultimate assumption remains: “I feed on your energy.”

Addenda to Orders in Council – The Emperor Paul Muad’Dib, 

Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert

7a4) ...While avoiding the noble savage ideas of Rousseau, we can still hypothesize a sort of communal hierarchy in which the tribe rose or fell by the intent of the group, not the individual. But with the rise of a bureaucratic hierarchy that needed to collect taxes, build public works, and generally keep the members of the state repressed long enough to develop social cohesion, there was also a rise in specialization. It both created and suppressed the idea of the individual experience. 

I would posit that at this time the idea of the individual outside the group was a psychological anathema. Certainly individuals had their own experience. And it would have been enhanced in smaller group settings such as families, gender separation, skill sets, etc. but it was within the service of the group. The repression mechanism was survival. It was the noumena.

The state (phenomena) brought the complexity of anonymity. The state was gathered under a ruler charismatic or powerful enough to attract or capture people from tribal living to a more “civilized” way of life. What they didn’t realize is that they traded the relative freedom of small groups for the hierarchical repression of the bureaucratic state. It was not the they were subject to the ruler–which they were, it was that they were subject to being cogs within a bureaucratic machine. No longer able to recognize their family, their neighbors, their shamans or chiefs, they were nameless, faceless, automatons driving the ship of state. (See Lang’s Metropolis. And Herbert's God Emperor of Dune.)

It is possible that Moses and the Jewish law was a synthesis–in a Hegelian sense–to this problem. From one perspective, the law was a repressive mechanism meant to confound all but the most knowledgeable. This enforces the power of the priests over the people such that the people are essentially forced to follow the rules. Otherwise, disobedience produces consequences. But as a theocracy, the whole Jewish community was subject to the one God. The community rose and/or fell by the adherence of the community to the law that the God had given them. 

Prophets were instruments of the God, meant to keep the community from the consequences of disobedience–exiles and enslavements. Flawed as everyone else, these individuals often sought to subvert the burden the God had placed on them. But in the end, the God always wins and they fulfill his intent to keep the community together by being subject to his law. 

“Whom has ears to hear, let them hear...” We could also posit to the ones who cannot or will not hear the words of God in the mouths of prophets, these  words become “convoluted wording of legalisms.” The mistranslation and obfuscation of intent is not the fault or responsibility of the God or the prophet, but on the part of the people who have made the choice–out of ignorance or rebellion–to follow their own desires. 

In the end, the mechanism may be just as suppressive as the authoritarian king or emperor, but the intent is completely different. The people are both treated as a community, but as individuals capable of working together to decide their fate. The synthesis of thesis (tribe) and antithesis (state) has been accomplished through the God.