CV Pandemic Daily Notes 201026, 201027, 201028, 201030, 201031, 201101
-1. Decisions, 2. Amazing Randi, Deceptive Skepticism, 3. Polio Resurrection, 4. Types of Chaos
-1. Decision making is risk taking. There is always the possibility of being catastrophic unintended consequences when making a decision. Decision making is gambling with incomplete information against unknowns and uncertainties. Without the possibility of being wrong what are called decisions are actually a best guess based on a selection of known probabilities of outcomes for each guess, or wishful thinking against the evidence of real previous patterns, outside the cone of uncertainty, and ignored consequences even after they happen. Guesses are intended to decrease the possibility of risk to those responsible for the choice.
-A. Decision making is not easy. One has to give an aura of confidence to those who will implement the decision, even when they are aware of the risks, the low odds of success against the high odds of unfavorable outcomes. Despite efforts to portray decisions as a rational process, decisions are very uncertain heuristic models applied to open systems. One needs to practice making difficult decisions when even with the best possible outcome are going to cause harm. Practice is critical before you have to make decisions. Decisions is not a process if logic where action directly lead to specific outcomes. Decisions are basically giving a direction into randomness, with fears, dilemmas, certainty of some of the costs, of accepting the responsibility that there will be criticism afterwards. It is always easier to see what would have been better decisions in hindsight.
-B. Biocalamities are one opportunity for complex decision making, where delay while things still seem ok will be more costly later, and success in prevention and protection will appear to be poor decisions because nothing bad happened. Parademic is the human complications to biocalamities. Making the decision to wait until the greater costs of inaction are clear to the public leaves one making decisions that only mitigate the level of harm. Taking decisive actions to avoid acceleration will draw opposition because of inconvenience and hardships. At this time on Earth homo sap is confronted with a significant opposition to action needed and prevention of various accelerating biocalamaties is no longer an option. Decisions will be forced as there are no other options, and so called leadership will no longer be able to decide for the majority of a society.
-C. Information and planning are both critical for dealing with parademic, but both will need to be reevaluated, discarded, changed, with each new parademic that may or may not be associated with a biocalamity, but are associated with politics, economics, grief, unreason (in hindsight). Study of each parademic is merely practice for the next, which is likely to be a mix of trends already in progress, but influenced by new unnoticed currents that were already building. #Book Invisible Influence: What Really Shapes Our Decisions [Cover].
-D. Though often associated by individual leadership, communities and individuals allowing others to make decisions is the more common form. This leadership person then tries to comply with the wishes of those who are perceived to have but them in power. In other words guessing what is wanted, and not making decisions to avoid risk of losing
-2. Did James Randi Destroy Skepticism. Unfortunately his arguments are not what I’d call Skeptical. Useful introduction to the concept of using the label of skepticism as a camouflage for deceit, which is often used at a negative parademic tool.
-3. The Campaign to Wipe out Polio Was Going Really Well ... until it Wasn't.
-4. First and Second Order Chaos. There are two main classifications of chaos. 1) First Order Chaos doesn’t respond to prediction. For example if you predict the weather to some level of accuracy that prediction will hold because the weather doesn’t adjust based on the prediction itself. 2) Second Order Chaos is infinitely less predictable because it does respond to prediction. Examples include things like stocks and politics.
-A. Parademic is the interaction between the 1st order chaos of the biosphere and the 2nd order chaos of the anthroposphere.
-B. #Book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind [Cover]. Interesting ideas and thought provoking book applicable to parademic concepts, but a bit heavy on the a priori cynicism and pessimism.
Comments