CV Pandemic Daily Notes, 200601, 200602, 200603, 200604, 200605, 200606, 200607
1. BradyOccult, 1.1. Black Elephants, Ignored Coming Disasters, 2. Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, 3. Climate Science, Legal Recognition or Legal Denial
-1. Brady (Slow) Occult (Hidden), are medical terms that are combined to described the characteristic of global biocalamity as extremely slow processes that takes multiple human generations, and the deterioration and agents are largely invisible to human perception, or ignored. That is until the process has accelerated (the cross over point from linear growth to exponential growth, a tipping point) [Chart]. At that point ignored or covered up becomes denial in the fact of evidence.
-A. Bradyoccult likewise can be applied to social evolution (which does not mean growth or improvement), where there is a lag between trends and consequences. In terms of human behavior there is usually a lag between recognition of consequences, and if the consequences are negative, taking corrective actions or exploiting the event for gain.
-B. In many cases corrective and mitigating responses are likely to be delayed. That results in costs in losses and corrective action, which are exponentially larger than if action had started before the transition when what was bradyoccult accelerated to Acute and eventually Overt (though denial will continue). This is the disruption [Chart] after the tipping point and before a new stability, the attention grabbing part of parademic. Parademic actually covers the whole curve from its first beginnings to it highest peaks and lowest troughs, to the end of its final tails.
-1.1. Black Elephant Disasters. A better term than Black Swan*. As I look back over the last 20 years, what all four of these global calamities have in common is that they are all black elephants, a term coined by the environmentalist Adam Sweidan [Photo =2= =3=]. A black elephant is a cross between “a black swan” (an unlikely, unexpected event with enormous ramifications) and the “elephant in the room” (a looming disaster that is visible to everyone, yet no one wants to address). Black Swan: A Rare Disaster, Not as Rare as Once Believed. Coronavirus Is Significant, but Is it a True Black Swan Event. [Meme].
-*A. Black Swan in modern times was coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and first applied to unexpected financial down turns and latter applied to the full range of unexpected events. However, the term as used was not what the author originally meant. Unexpected does not mean impossible, but rather implies that assessment, risk analysis, confirmation bias, cherry picking data and more resulted in conclusions that are unwarranted. Disasters, unintended consequences and could easily in hindsight be predictable disastrous consequences. In back it is rare after a disaster to not find literature that warns of the consequences, but were leveled out. Black Swan in usage is a term that excused those who caused the harm because it was unpredictable, even though there are indicators that some of these events were knows as it is common that people who caused the event profited by it.
-2. Just finished reading The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee =2= =3= =4= =5= [Cover]. Books are not experiences read independently of its context. A book about the collapse of a population and its cultures through disease, environmental destruction, internal conflict, gubergenic, an invasive other, technology ... by someone who has studied and experienced the interaction of these phenomena for decades, is informative but not a comfortable experience.
-A. Reading it during a low intensity global pandemic that originated with and was exacerbated by anthropogenic behaviors, the same ones that irrevocably change the pre Columbian people of North America, and are currently in process of destroying the society of the invasive others who accelerated the demise of the native peoples, gives it a context of meaning that the author likely did not anticipate.
-B. Heartbeat in this current context is depressing to read, and yet gives hope. The book’s epilogue includes Black Elk’s Vision, which is not dissimilar from an interpretation framed as the biosphere and socialsphere of interacting systems [Graphic]. It also asks the question: “What kind of country do we want to be”. That question is for something that is no longer. The question has evolved to, “What kind of world do we want to be”.
-3. US Courts Accept Climate Science. Can Trump and McConnell Undo That. A survey of court cases suggests there is now widespread judicial agreement that humans are indeed warming the climate. Will that agreement persist in the face of efforts by Trump and Republican Senators to appoint a record number of conservative judges. We Must Treat Climate Change as a Racial Justice Issue.
-A. Junk Science in the Courtroom. In the last 20 years I have been called to jury duty several times. Every time I was dismissed almost instantly, once I made it known that I am a professional skeptic. Apparently lawyers fear that kind of skepticism on their juries. It is unclear how best to interpret these anecdotes, but what is clear is that justice requires facts and needs to align optimally with reality. Falsehoods and pseudoscience do not generally lead to justice. It is for this reason that courtrooms have elaborate rules of evidence, and generally they work well.
Comments