Posts Tagged ‘skepticism’

Pyrrhonism

October 5, 2022

This is heavily based on the writings of Doug Bates… it uses a lot of his words and was an attempt to simplify his writings.

Introduction: who is Pyrrho?

Pyrrho of Elis was a Greek philosopher, born in Elis, who lived somewhere between  about 360 – 270 BCE. Diogenes Laertius, with his usual eye for anecdotes, says Pyrrho:

joined Anaxarchus, whom he accompanied on his travels everywhere so that he even met with the Indian Gymnosophists and with the Magi. This led him to adopt a most noble philosophy, to quote Ascanius of Abdera, taking the form of agnosticism and suspension of judgement. He denied that anything was honourable or dishonourable, or just or unjust. And so, universally, he held that there is nothing really existent [true], but custom and convention govern human action ; for no single thing is in itself any more this than that….

 Ænesidemus says that he studied philosophy on the principle of suspending his judgment on all points, without however, on any occasion acting in an imprudent manner, or doing anything without due consideration…..

He would withdraw from the world and live in solitude, rarely showing himself to his relatives ; this he did because he had heard an Indian reproach Anaxarchus, telling him that he would never be able to teach others what is good while he himself danced attendance on kings in their courts. He would maintain the same composure at all times, so that, even if you left him when he was in the middle of a speech, he would finish what he had to say with no audience but himself

Lives of the Philosophers [another version]

We have no surviving writings from Pyrrho although, apart from the brief account in Diogenes Laertius, one from the Christian Eusebius, there is a lengthy account by Sextus Empircus known as Outlines of Pyrrhonism [1] [2].

What follows here is a radical simplification, which shows his philosophy as a way of life, more than a mode of making propositions.

What is Pyrrhonism

Pyrrhonism, like many other Greek philosophies, sets forth a prescription of how to live a life of eudaimonia (happiness, flourishing, and excellence). Pyrrhonists claim that achieving eudaimonia involves achieving a prior and consistent state of tranquility, equanimity, untroubled by unnecessary acceptance of possibly erroneous and troubling thoughts. The Greek term for this state is ataraxia, “without ‘disturbance’ or ‘trouble’.”

Pyrrhonists do not claim that ataraxia is objectively good or virtuous; they just argue that experience shows that ataraxia is more conducive to eudaimonia than are the states of being anxious, troubled, and perturbed.

Pyrrhonists observe that people are primarily prevented from gaining ataraxia (and hence gaining eudaimonia) is through belief in what they call ‘dogmas’.

A dogma is a belief in something “non-evident,” or an assertion about the truth of something which is non-evident, “Non-evident” means to be derived from something other than experience. For example we it is not a dogma to assert that being run over by car is likely to be painful. Asserting that people will be run over by cars because they are not virtuous is a dogma.

However, as there is no generally agreed upon criteria for resolving disputes about dogmas, and dogmas can shape our perceptions of reality, endless dispute is possible. In itself, this dispute shows that dogma can impede ataraxia.

[it is not always easy to be sure when a proposition is evident or not.]

To dispel belief in dogmas, and achieve ataraxia, Pyrrhonism prescribes a large number of the kind of things that contemporary French philosopher and student of ancient Greek philosophy, Pierre Hadot, terms “spiritual exercises” which may be classified into three broad categories: aporetic, ephectic, and zetetic.

a) The aporetic exercises help a person avoid coming to (premature) conclusions.

b) The ephectic exercises help a person suspend judgment, or withhold assent, on truth of the non-evident.

c) The zetetic exercises direct the mind to keep searching for more evidence, or arguments, to avoid sticking with conclusions.

To quote Mr.Bates:

In Pyrrhonism and Stoicism ataraxia is not a doctrine that tells people to avoid stressful things, such as a stressful career, but it is so in Epicureanism, which encourages practitioners to avoid stressful activities, such as participating in politics. In contrast, the Pyrrhonist approach is about achieving equanimity despite being in stressful situations, such as going into battle.

Bates 2022 Ataraxia A Key Pyrrhonist Concept

Pyrrhonism is not really just skepticism, which can be said to be about using doubt, but a form of practice which can involve skepticism, so as to help people achieve peace. As such it has been alleged, and I think plausibly, to have been influenced by Buddhism, especially if Pyrrho did travel to India.

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Skepticism and order

July 12, 2021

I’ve been interested in what happens when you don’t posit uniform order as the prime directive of the universe for a fair while now.

Almost all philosophies after Plato have been obsessed with imposing an order on reality, and seeing that as a guarantor of truth. This even affects the idea that a good scientific academic article presents a clear and coherent single argument, usually with a single causal factor/process. However, I am skeptical of the proposition that what we call order is inherent to the universe, is equivalent to truth, is unchanging, and that what we call disorder is negligible. This proposition seems contradicted by evolution to begin with. The world seems to be in constant flux and change, but I’m not dogmatic about this. I’m equally skeptical of the proposition that the universe is entirely random. Skepticism of one does not have to lead to the other.

I often find that people cannot understand what I’m getting at, which is interesting as its all rather simple.

  • There seems to be no perfect order in the world which is not disrupted or which does not self-disrupt.
  • Prediction always seems to have limits. The further ‘away in time’ the prediction refers to, the more likely it will turn out to have been incorrect. This is clearly demonstrated by most science fiction, and by economics.
  • Perfect order could be the same as death, as mess and unpredictability is associated with life.
  • To explain most events we may need multiple perspectives. Sometimes we may even need a single minded perspective.
  • Most, if not all, human understanding seems to involve degrees of uncertainty. Probably even mathematics, as attempts to find an impersonal non-subjective basis for mathematics, seem to have failed; but again my understanding is not certain.
  • Uncertainty should be recognised if at all possible. There may be specifiable or non-specifiable probabilities to the likelihood of accuracy.
  • We should not just be skeptical about things we already don’t believe, or don’t want to believe. I have noticed that many self-called skeptics are not skeptical at all about some political dogmas. “Directed skepticism” is not skepticism, it seems to function as another way of trying to impose order on the world.

‘Pre-platonic’ philosophy attracts me, because I don’t think it is as obsessed as post-Platonism with order as ‘truth’ or ‘life’. Take Heraclitus who asserts eternal flux and struggle (apart from the Logos, the meaning of which is unclear), or Sophism which asserts the importance of rhetoric to understanding. I was intrigued to find sophism seemed far more sophisticated than Plato claimed it was – that his philosophy seemed based on a lie, which made me even more skeptical of Platonism.
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My interest in Skepticism came about because it often is a skepticism about order and its importance. I began with David Hume, who is extremely hard to classify, and then went back again to its apparently underlying ‘base’ of Pyrrhonism. Looking at Pyrrhonism I have learnt many other things such as how the desire for theoretical order can produce misery and suffering – skepticism and uncertainty as a practical philosophy of life – which transformed my views of the possibility of skepticism. I also like the crossing between East and West because of Pyrrhonism’s apparent connection to Buddhism. Taoism is skeptical about humanly imposed orders and stability. Chavarka or Lokāyata is an Indian philosophy seemingly skeptical of spiritual order.

Order and chaos may need to be balanced as the Western Philosopher Michael Moorcock seems to be arguing, but perhaps without making them forces as such….
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Directed Skepticism Summarised

December 2, 2020

I want to return to a form of skepticism, which seems common in the contemporary world, which does not seem skeptical at all to me, and just summarise the other rather long articles on this blog [1], [2], [3], [4].

I’ve called it ‘directed skepticism’.

in its simplest form it appears as “I am a real skeptic. I am skeptical about everything, but I cannot speak to anyone who is skeptical of my positions, as those positions are true, and any skeptics of those positions are stupid and immoral.”

Another possible way of phrasing this view is:

“I do not like this information. It is unpleasant. It comes from someone I justifiably do not like or am suspicious of. I am very skeptical of it. I’m a real skeptic.”

The above statement then often seems to be followed by another implied statement of the form:

“This information I do like. It supports my side of politics. It is reassuring. It comes from someone I like. Therefore it is probably true. I’m still a skeptic, because if I can be convinced its false, then I never really believed it in the first place, even if I’m likely to believe it again if I hear it from another source I like. I’m always skeptical of its refutation, or of the good intentions of those who disagree. I am a real skeptic.”

In general, people might say they are skeptical because they use their senses but, in effect, often what they are saying cannot come ‘directly from their senses’ as the subject being discussed is too big for overall perception, and too slow for the changes to be perceptible, as with climate change, pandemics, the cause of wars etc..

In these cases, our perception is likely to be mediated by what we have heard from others, no matter how much we insist on our independent thinking. That is, what we think is opinion, not knowledge to use an old (and probably largely invalid) distinction. We only have hypothesis.

This might all sound like caricature, but lets look at a few situations….

Climate change.

It seems common for people to say that they are skeptical of climate change. They may even allege that it is obvious that climate change is not a problem, or that climate scientists are lying.

We could allege that the idea that one’s own ‘side’ is undermining one’s life and the life of our children is difficult. It is far more comfortable to believe climate change is not real, than that our imagined allies are killing us (deliberately or not). However, a skeptic might be skeptical about the idea that our side cannot be harmful to us….

I personally do not know how the fakery and harmlessness of climate change could be obvious. Climate change is a big phenomena. No one can observe directly everything relevant that is happening, so it seems odd for a skeptic not to accept even the possibility that climate scientists may be persuaded by the evidence, or the cumulation of evidence, even if they are still mistaken. Whether it is wise to assume they must be mistaken is another question.

However, those people skeptical of the information and motives presented by climate scientists often appear to have little skepticism about the information and motives of the people on youtube or in the ‘mainstream media’ or in their favoured political party who tell them there is ‘no problem’ or that it is ‘not that bad’, or that ‘we can solve it through [imaginary??] technology’.

The ‘skeptical’ person may argue that the consequences of climate change are bad for the economy, and we should therefore be skeptical of those actions and keep the economy going as we need it, and let the free market sort it all out. With this argument, there is no obvious skepticism directed at the idea that the free market will be able to solve all problems. This is not obvious. It would appear to be a dogma. IThe skeptic is showing no skepticism of the idea we need an economy which is destructive to us, or of the motives of those promoting this idea.

It may be that the people telling the ‘skeptics’ there is nothing to worry about are not climate scientists, and have no apparent long-term experience with the issue. These people may still be right, and climate scientists wrong, but it is not inherently likely that this is the case. It is possible, but are non-climate scientists the best people to trust? Can we be skeptical about deciding that people who are not climate scientists must know much more about climate than all those people who have spent years studying the subject? This is skepticism of non-climate scientists is generally not allowed by climate skeptics.

Acceptance of the ‘no case’ case also tends to demand acceptance of the idea that climate scientists are conspiring, or that science is now completely corrupt (when it conflicts with the skeptics dogma). Is it clearly the case that a world wide conspiracy of climate scientists and leftist politicians is more plausible than a conspiracy involving some fossil fuel companies (who directly benefit from ignoring climate change), and some rightwing media and politicians. If it is not clearly the case, then this could sound like choosing to believe what is comforting.

In my experience, directed skeptics may refer to scientific papers as evidence for their view, which they may not have read, as often the papers do not appear to say what they say they say, or perhaps they just wanted to hear something nice which confirms their skepticism.

The skepticism appears to be entirely directed at justifying a particular point of view. It is not applied evenly to the person’s own positions.

Covid

The same appears to be true of Covid. I, at least, met many people skeptical that Covid is real or dangerous. Diagnosing a new disease, and predicting its trajectory, is difficult. It is another process which seems beyond our direct sense perception – we cannot perceive every virus, and every infected person, all over the world as these develop. So there is every reason for being skeptical of the proposition that we know everything we should know, or need to know, about the disease. It could be something we can adapt to painlessly after a while.

However again, these directed skeptics seem largely unskeptical of people who say its a hoax, or a summer flu, or that the death figures for the US are made up, possibly by doctors to get money or to allow Joe Biden to form a dictatorship. Why should we not be equally skeptical of Trump’s claims that covid would just go away, and that it would disappear after the election, when there was no evidence of this at the time.?


Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump·

ALL THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA WANTS TO TALK ABOUT IS COVID, COVID, COVID. ON NOVEMBER 4th, YOU WON’T BE HEARING SO MUCH ABOUT IT ANYMORE. WE ARE ROUNDING THE TURN!!!

Twitter

These people may quote doctors worried that long term lock-down will probably have some bad psychological and health effects for some people, as being evidence that Covid is not really a problem, or that dealing with Covid is worse than ignoring it. Another conclusion might be more like recognising that doctors may well be right that there are problems with lock-downs, and these problems should not be ignored.

Again the skepticism seems to be directed at a particular and reassuring result – we are safe all of our family is safe, and the people we support are not sacrificing us.

News

I often seem to be being told that I should not rely on ‘mainstream media’ for political news. This seems good advice as again I cannot observe everything that happens politically as it happens (and I would need to interpret what is happening anyway, direct perception is limited), and the mainstream media has similar limited perception and comprehension. It also probably displays political and other bias, most likely in favour of its corporate or billionaire owners and advertisers. However, it then seems these people assume that Fox or Breitbart or some youtube channel, that appear to have noticeable political slants, can be trusted most of the time and despite their size and influence are not mainstream, corporately controlled media. This is odd. Surely these news sources are at least equally worthy of skepticism?

Elections

We are currently being told at great volume that we should be skeptical of the US Presidential election results (not the House or Senate results, only the Presidential election results). This is also worthy of skepticism.

Election results are often not representative. Electorates can be gerrymandered. Attempts at fairness, or unfairness, can mean particular parts of the population get more representatives than other parts of the population, as when smaller population states get to elect more members per head than do large population states. Small margins in some electorates can change the result of a whole election, which might otherwise have gone another way. People can be turned away from polling booths, some sections of the population can be disenfranchised by what could look like reasonable political action, voting machines could be hacked. There may be attempts to stop mail in voting, or pre-poll voting. ‘The people’ may not be as binary as the major parties claim. Voters can be ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ or ‘socialist’ and not support all the policies of the party they vote for. There is even a social theorem which states that a fair and rational voting scheme is impossible.

The idea that political parties in government always represent the ‘general will’ (or something) and have a ‘mandate’ to do whatever they like, deserves skepticism as few people are likely voting for everything the party has proposed or might propose in the future.

However, in this current case, we are just being asked to be skeptical about the voting system being accurate, and policed, enough to award Donald Trump the victory.

We are furthermore being asked to be unskeptical of a person who argued that he could only loose if the other side cheated. We are to be unskeptical that this person has good evidence of cheating which they have so far refused to present in court, where it can be tested, and perjury can be penalised. We are asked to be unskeptical of claims that the majority result of the vote must be wrong by close to 8 million. We are being asked not to consider whether the known frauds were equally, or even majorly, Republican attempts at cheating. We also have recounts which have not changed the results, and the Attorney General, who appeared to have misrepresented the Mueller report in favour of the President, also states there is no evidence of fraud. But we still have to remain unskeptical of a person who does not have a reputation for peacefully going down, or telling the truth.

At the moment, given who is alleging the claims of truly massive cheating, it would seem ‘rational’ to be skeptical of those claims. Especially given that he appears to want to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands (to millions?) of voters by not counting their votes, in order to win.

Conclusion

These directed skeptics, do not appear to have a sense that skepticism which is only directed in one direction is not skepticism – it is a form of belief which refuses to test its own desired truths.

In this case, directed skepticism seems to be being used to further particular dogmas.

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Directed Skepticism II

May 25, 2020

Previously I have suggested that there is a common form of skepticism, which is not a real skepticism as it is directed. It is only skeptical of particular positions, and because of this tends to be politically active, or result from politics. It is the kind of skepticism that is skeptical of the motives of climate scientists, but unskeptical of the motives of climate denialists. It appears to be motivated, although it is not always the user who is motivated; they main gain their motivation through the one sided skepticism of their exemplars. Sometimes the direction comes from what is socially accepted as common sense, and is thus not challenged, or from common defense against the possibilities of forthcoming pain. There is also a kind of cache in information society about being skeptical, even while you are apparently believing rubbish – directed skepticism is particularly useful in that situation.

In this piece I consider a skeptical argument, based on one proposed to me by a very smart guy, and attempt to show this skepticism is directed rather than general.

The post, also touches on interconnection and complexity; we can be skeptical of these views, but we should also be skeptical of views which do not take interconnection and complexity seriously. In a pandemic, everyone’s actions have the possibility of affecting many others, and many others through those others. An individual act has the potential to move outwards through society – a ‘humorous’ cough in someone’s face could spread the disease, even if the cougher does not feel sick.

1) I am skeptical that the current restrictions placed on the people of the world, which amount to a draconian dictatorship, are connected to the virus.

Response: I’m skeptical the restrictions amount to a draconian dictatorship, or that they have a specific aim other than lowering the disease.

Physical separation is the standard and historic mode of dealing with contagious diseases which are lethal. We try and keep healthy people away from sources of infection. We try and stop infected people passing on their infection. There is little that seems overtly odd about this. Diseases spread through social interconnection. We might be skeptical as to whether the proposed “social distancing” will work by itself, or that the consequences of this distancing are entirely predictable, but there seems little reason to think the rather diverse set of distancing regulations we observe are not primarily connected to a response to the virus. With the internet they certainly do not keep people socially isolated.

The death rate and the infection rate in Australia is way, way less than in the US, and the main difference is the speed and effectiveness with which the governments imposed distancing. So the better the isolation, it seems the better the result – at the moment.

As a rather trivial remark, I don’t know of people being executed for breaking restrictions which was the hallmark of Draco’s laws… And there is nothing I’ve seen to indicate the laws are coherent across the world. I’m skeptical that the relatively mild lock-downs in Europe, the US or Australia, are an indication of harsh dictatorship – certainly without considerably more evidence than is being offered. At the moment, these allegations seem over-emphasised.

It is true, that rather than making attempts to make distancing compulsory, it might be nice if we could persuade people to volunteer to cooperate in distancing, or for employers to decide everyone could work at home, out of the goodness of their heart, but I’m skeptical this would always happen. We appear to live in a society which does not always recognise a general good. However, there is always the factor of time. It appears that reaction to a pandemic must be reasonably quick to have effects.

However, the plausibility of distancing, does not mean we may not be able to find better solutions.

I am also skeptical that all those opposed to lock-down are necessarily proponents of freedom and liberty. Indeed, the organisations which seem devoted to diminishing human freedom and cultivating subservience to the corporate sector or State, such as US Republicans, British Tories, Australian Coalition, Putin, Modi, Bolsonaro, etc are generally trying to pretend there is no, to little, problem.

I’m skeptical of the idea that they do not anticipate benefit from encouraging skepticism about the disease and getting people to risk their lives on their behalf.

On the other hand, I don’t see who is benefiting politically from quarantine, other than ordinary people – if they get income support. The only underhand things that seem to be happening while the disease provides distraction, are the channeling of recovery money to wealthy people and established companies, and lessening restrictions on pollution and environmental destruction. That seems like business as usual, and apparently illustrates the idea that capitalist development requires ecological destruction.

2) Given that Governments are not dealing with severe problems, I’m skeptical that this is a serious problem.

Response: I’m skeptical of the idea that because governments do not deal with some major problems, they may never attempt to deal with major problems.

It does seem correct that governments are not dealing with severe problems such as climate change, ecological destruction, rising wealth inequality, or the growing dominance of the corporate sector etc. but it could be that the dominant classes think they can make money out of ecological destruction with no personal risk, while COVID-19 is potentially dangerous to them.

However the more COVID-19 effects the economy, and the more it does start to affect their wealth, then the more they appear to want to do nothing about it. They are also able to practice self-isolation to keep safe.

In this situation, I am skeptical that we will continue to deal with this problem. I suspect we will revert to the ways that we deal with other severe problems, by pretending they are not real or significant.

3) I am skeptical of anything in the mainstream media. The mainstream media is obviously fully behind the agenda of control. I place a question mark over everything I encounter in the media on both sides. I don’t trust any of the world’s government’s left or right.

Response: I’m skeptical of the idea the media speaks with one voice, or that what is reported by some media is always absolutely wrong.

If you don’t trust any of the world’s governments, then you should also be skeptical of the reasons given by those governments who oppose lock-down as well.

While saying “the media is arguing in favour of something” is always supposed to indicate that what those various sources are arguing for is suspect, it is possible they argue for things because they believe them to be true or strategically beneficial, even if they are not.

I am skeptical that because youtube channels, Q-Anon, or other mainstream news like Brietbart, may have ‘odd’ or different news, they are necessarily correct, or a voice of truth.

It also seems to be the case that not all media is fully behind lock-down, even if they were behind control. The Murdoch Empire for example, often argues in favor of whatever Trump’s position is at the moment, and generally of the disease being trivial. It is as mainstream and corporate as it gets.

I’m skeptical that people know about the world independently of media. Where else do they get their ideas about the wider world from? I am skeptical of the degrees of co-ordination required to fake a disease, across the world. I am skeptical of my own knowledge that would enable me to say the media is always wrong, even if it was uniform, which it isn’t.

There is lots of conflicting information but none of it, that I have seen, is able to imply that there is any logical ulterior motive in the way lock-down has been applied.

Lock-down may not be effective. That is a different question.

4) Even going by the highest statistics, the death rate is very small. I’m skeptical about this disease being harmful.

Response: I’m skeptical we know much about the disease as it is relatively new, and organisms and their interactions, and spread are complex. It may be deadly and destructive. It may not. It may be destructive enough. We will find out eventually.

Going on previous experience we can probably assume that humans will not have great defenses against a new disease, if this is a new disease.

My understanding is that the current medical understanding states that COVID-19 is more contagious than flu, and can be contagious before people exhibit notable symptoms. It is therefore likely to be fairly contagious. And, the closer together people are, the more likely contagion is. Which is not to say that we cannot do stuff to boost our immune systems, and cut down contagion, but we should be skeptical of claims this is enough.

At the moment the US CDC is estimating that in the 2018–2019 flu season there were 34,200 deaths from flu in the US . In 2017-18 there were 61,000 deaths, and in 2016-2017 there were 38,000 deaths

As of today, the current estimate of deaths in the US from COVID-19 is
98,004 and rising every day. There is little sign of a decline.

I admit these figures could be wrong, and COVID may turn out not to be as harmful as flu, but it seems unlikely at the moment…

Contagion rates and death rates do not have to be related. A disease can be highly contagious with an extremely low death rate, and it can have a high death rate but be mildly contagious.

Testing is difficult and often inaccurate with a new disease as well. So we would expect false positives and negatives, we do not know if these will cancel each other out.

The death rate certainly does not seem to be as high as originally expected.

However, some figures I’ve seen suggest that in many places people are dying at a far greater rate than last year, even after covid deaths are removed. Surprisingly this does not seem to be the case in Australia

There have been stories of significant undercounting of deaths, [2], [3], mistakes and of people being asked to revise figures downwards so as to get people back to work, and in the US until April 14 COVID-19 deaths had to be confirmed in a laboratory test while testing was not generally available, so where almost certainly undercounted.

We also now know that the doctors who were dying of heart attacks and strokes (which I was hearing about quite early on) were in fact dying of complications from corona virus, and were not counted.

There are now reports that children are getting rare inflammatory diseases, and that some people are remaining sick for a long time after infection [2]. So incapacity has to be counted as well as death rate.

At the moment some people seem to get the illness more than once. WHO has stated:

“There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from Covid-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection,”

This is not unusual with diseases probably because they mutate, but there may be other reasons. I’ve seen reports suggesting Covid mutates quickly and mutates slowly, which suggest large degrees of uncertainty.

What looks like small death rates can mount up. If 60% of Australians get the disease, and the death rate is 1% that is still in the region of 156,000 dead people, and if we add incapacity to that disease consequences could well be significantly disruptive in many ways. If the disease continues for years, then of course it will likely mutate and the healthy people will get it as well. So the total death rate is unpredictable in the extreme.

We will probably never know, the true death rates in countries in which isolation is more or less impossible for ordinary people, India, Indonesia etc., as they won’t be able to test the bodies.

Getting vaguely accurate figures will take a while. But if we don’t act when we don’t have certainty we could kill a lot more people.

5) In Sweden, where there has been little done about the virus, conflicting reports are being given about the infection rate there.

Response: Yes, it could appear that information about Sweden has been politicised, because they may have gone for ‘herd immunity’. That means we should not just be skeptical about reports saying it has a high death rate, we should also be skeptical of reports that its doing well.

However I find the Murdoch Empire reports… 21 May that “Sweden is suffering the highest COVID-19 death rate in Europe”

“Nearly 4,000 people have died from the virus in Sweden, a figure many times higher per capita than those of its Nordic neighbours Denmark, Norway, and Finland, which all imposed strict lockdown measures.”

Stefan Lofven the Prime Minister, has faith their system will work in the long run, and there will not be a second wave of illness. The strategy is also relying on the Swedish sense of self-discipline, and not suprisingly the government can say “We get figures now that people are actually increasing their adherence to our advice [about distancing], not decreasing.”

We could be skeptical about his faith. He is making a prediction in a complex system… it is not guarranteed to be correct, and it is not cautious or conservative.

Other reports suggest that it was not working that well. “Just 7.3% of Stockholm’s inhabitants had developed Covid-19 antibodies by the end of April.” This is well below what seems to be required, to make a population relatively safe. Annika Linde who was the Swedish state epidemiologist from 2005 to 2013, has also expressed doubts as to whether the strategy is working.

Sweden is an experiment, which is useful as it gives information, but which because of what Sweden is like as a nation, may not be replicable elsewhere. I am skeptical of sigificant real confusion in the reported death rates.

6) Hospitals in the US are being paid more to diagnose patients as having the virus. I saw an article on this which had been “fact-checked” by a snopes-type crowd and they had to reluctantly admit it was true. This might be justified in that they may need more money if it is the case, but it also opens the system up to the inevitable over-diagnosing for the cash-strapped institutions to gain more resources in general. So who knows what the real numbers are?

Response: Payments to US hospitals are complicated matters. For example I read

“There isn’t a Medicare diagnostic code specifically for COVID-19.” The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that “the average Medicare payment [is] $13,297 for a less severe hospitalization and $40,218 for hospitalization in which a patient is treated with a ventilator for at least 96 hours.”

And

“A COVID patient on a ventilator will need more services and more complicated services, not just the ventilator,” said Joseph Antos, scholar in health care at the American Enterprise Institute. “It is reasonable that a patient who is on a ventilator would cost three times one who isn’t that sick.”

There also do appear to be special bonuses for COVID patients, which were instigated to protect US hospitals from loss of their normal business.

As suggested previously, there also seem to be pressures leading to undercounting – such as the initial dismissal of heart attacks and strokes, and people dying outside hospital or in old people’s homes, or people wanting other people to go to work.

As I have said previously, I am skeptical that we know the exact figures, and I am skeptical that there is any reason to think deaths are significantly overcounted as opposed to undercounted.

It is also probable that if hospitals are over-counting then insurance companies and government auditors will likely sort this out, at some cost to the hospital and its reputation.

7) I’m skeptical that what ‘they’ are doing is necessary. Some professional doctors are criticizing the the idea of wearing masks and social isolation.

Response: I’m skeptical of all doctors, including those who say isolation is pointless. However, wearing badly designed or useless masks badly is probably useless.

Isolation may not be necessary, but as remarked earlier we have less dead in Australia per head of population than in the US, where the regime is more uncertain. A lot depends on what you think human life is worth, under various circumstances, as with old people, poor people, black people etc. This is a value judgement. I’m skeptical we will have agreement on this issue.

Another problem we face is that medicine is an empirical science of complex systems. As a consequence, there will often be disagreement about best procedure and likely results.

Most medical pronouncements are based on deductions from theory. We cannot know if the pronouncements are correct until after the event. However, unlike neoliberalism, they will likely be modified by failure.

Physical isolation is generally thought to be the best way of preventing transmission. Ideally if the disease dies in a person, or adapts to being harmless, without being transmitted to another person, then the problem is ended

8) What about Madagascar and WHO?

I’m skeptical of the relevance of this.

I read that WHO commends Madagascar’s fight against COVID. I also read that they are prepared to test a local herbal remedy.

I would be skeptical of assumptions such medicines work, before proper testing. If there is a remedy which works and is traditional, then wonderful, and even better if it becomes a source of income for the locals.

WHO did apparently say, in this context, that use of untested medicines: “can put people in danger, giving a false sense of security and distracting them from hand washing and physical distancing which are cardinal in COVID-19 prevention.”

Yes WHO are skeptical, but why not?

There only seems to be a problem if the supposed remedy is proven, and then outlawed, or we cannot make enough of it, or corporations won’t distribute it without the patent or something. And that has not happened, yet. It is freely being consumed by those who can get it.

9) I’m skeptical Bill Gates would be involved if there was nothing in it for him. It is highly suspect that all of a sudden he has started giving WHO advice. I’m skeptical he is a philanthropist of any kind. His organization is motivated solely for profit.

Response: I’m skeptical Bill Gates is particularly evil or incompetent. I’m skeptical he is more evil or incompetent than those politicians who disagree with him.

Anyone can give WHO advice, the question is whether they listen. The wealthier and more prone to be involved in global medical projects the person is and the more funding they can provide, the more likely such an organisation is to listen to them. I don’t know whether WHO has changed any policies based on what he has said, and I personally know very little about Bill Gates and his motives at the moment.

He does not seem to be an issue in this part of the world, except to people who think he is trying to mind control them through 5G.

It is one thing to be skeptical that 5G is absolutely healthy, but another to hold that it transmits viruses. If the latter is true, then we have had a major set of scientific breakthroughs which no one seems to know anything about… I’m skeptical enough of these propositions to wonder who is encouraging them and why?

Gates has been trying to support vaccination, and he likes orthodox medical science, that seems to be enough to make him suspicious to many. Especially to the active financial class.

It could be that wealthy people who don’t obey the party line and who might show another way is possible, get attacked, and lied about, by those who support the current order of power and wealth.

I’d also ask what’s in it for Trump and Boris Johnson, Alex Jones and all the other right wing media players, claiming there is little to no problem… they actually have a direct stake in the power game.

Bill Gates does not have to play power games anymore, but it does seem he has been worried about pandemics for a while, like many other people, and has warned against them. I’m skeptical that this is evidence he actively wants a pandemic.

10) If it is an emergency then where are all the requisitioned football stadiums being turned into temp hospitals? The whole “crisis” is being handled by the existing infrastructure.

Response: I’m skeptical health emergencies always overwhelm the existing infrastructure.

As far as I can tell hospital wards were stretched in the US, and Trump was boasting about the military erecting temporary wards, but I am pleased that minimal activity has saved the US from a true crisis.

I have read that hospitals in Northern Italy were overwhelmed, and doctors were discussing who should receive treatment and who should be left….

There were crises of body disposal, and it was clear that systems were overwhelmed. President Trump seemed troubled by this at one stage.

I would however add, that I am skeptical that the crisis is over, or has necessarily reached its peak.

Because the pandemic is an issue involving complexity, we may be able to say things like “without isolation, or without successful vaccination it is likely the disease will continue to spread,” but we don’t know how badly countries will be affected for some while, or even after the event. We do not know all the variables, or even the properties of the virus, as yet. So prediction is messy.

To only be skeptical that the disease is serious, is not real skepticism, it seems to be directed, possibly at continuing current life and fantasising ‘all is well’, when this may not be the case.

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Directed Skepticism and COVID-19

May 15, 2020

There seems to be a form of skepticism that seems politically alligned rather than general. It effectively says:

“I am skeptical of claims ‘this group’ is doing particularly badly.”

or

“I am skeptical that there is, or was, a way of doing better, or thinking better about the problems, than ‘this group’ is doing.”

When this position is consistent, it seems directed and perhaps even partisan – ‘this group’ often becomes ‘my side’, or ‘the group I like’.

We can see it in discussions about climate change, with people making statements that seem to translate as follows:

“I am skeptical that climate change is real, I am skeptical of the data, and I am skeptical of the motivations of climate scientists.”

Which might be fair enough, but these statements often seem coupled with another ‘undoing’ skepticism, which translates as:

“I am skeptical that those denying climate change could be faking, or cherry picking, data, or that they could be funded by the fossil fuel industry, or that this funding could have any consequence whatsoever. I am skeptical of claims that nearly all climate scientists are not socialist conspirators…”

Or in other contexts, we can see statements like:

“I am skeptical of government intervention in the economy. And I am skeptical of claims that free markets do not always deliver the best results, and of claims that free markets do not work the ways they are claimed to, or of claims there is no consensus in economic theory that allows us to categorically state that free markets are ‘best’ for most people….”

We can also see this style of skepticism in claims about the covid pandemic. for example in this New York Times article:

It opens claiming:

“In our actual pandemic, most of the institutions that we associate with public health expertise and trusted medical authority have failed more catastrophically than Trump has.”

I think that, while this claim could be seen as skeptical, it is also open to skepticism. It seems more probable to me that if anyone actually looks at Trump Administration’s behaviour and statements they would find the levels of failure and the refusal to listen to medical advice, pretty exceptional. This administration even pretended the previous administration did not have a plan for early response to emerging infectious disease threats. But then preparation for government was not apparently high on their list of priorities.

It is also not the public health authorities who issue or apply policy and rules, that is the government.

But we can suspend initial disbelief, as it is possible that the article might present lots of evidence, or be uniformly skeptical in more than just bursts….

However, as evidence of the idea that medical authorities have failed more than Trump, we are told that the world health organisation “followed its own political imperatives”

Well yes, what do we expect here? The World Health Organisation is a political body. It is part of the UN. Unless there is a specific reason for distrusting a member government it is probably generally going to accept what it is told, until the situation is overtly desperate, or the government is clearly wrong, otherwise it risks alienating support – a problem apparently demonstrated by the behaviour of Trump administration in attacking the organisation and cutting off US funding.

We are told WHO’s behaviour is corrupt in passing (“Less corruptly but no less disastrously…”) without any apparent skepticism, which is odd because making a mistake, in a constantly shifting new situation, is not always corruption – indeed we are later told (correctly I think) that mistakes are unavoidable. We could, however, be reminded that a certain world leader is busy blaming WHO for his own insistence that there was no problem although he often insists he did not insist that there was no problem.

Casually suggesting WHO is “corrupt” effectively operates to support this leader’s allegations, without any skepticism. Let’s not be skeptical of that leader’s claims, or competence…. let’s take him as truthful….

After all, on the 2nd of February, two days after WHO declared a global emergency, President Trump said:

“We pretty much shut it down coming in from China, We have a tremendous relationship with China, which is a very positive thing. Getting along with China, getting along with Russia, getting along with these countries…… But we can’t have thousands of people coming in who may have this problem, the coronavirus. We’re going to see what happens, but we did shut it down, yes.” 

Fox News 3rd Feb ‘Coronavirus: President Trump said US authorities ‘shut it down.’ Here’s what that means’ and
https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-interview-sean-hannity-part-1-february-2-2020

On February 24th President Trump praises WHO, tweeting:

The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!

Twitter

On the 14th April, he says:

“Today I am instructing my administration to halt funding of the World Health Organization while a review is conducted to assess the World Health Organization’s role in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,”

Remarks by President Trump in Press Briefing 14 May

Sure we can suggest that President Trump made a mistake, but he seems to avoid promoting that position altogether. Likewise, in a perfect world WHO would have behaved better, but it hardly seems to have failed more catastrophically than Trump.

One relevant question is how does it appear that an organisation behaves after it is clear it has not done the best job? If it attempts to get on with doing a better job then probably that is good. If it wastes time seeking to portray itself as blameless by blaming others, or pretending it never made a mistake, then this is probably not so good. That latter kind of organisation may be engaged in the processes we can describe as defense mechanisms, which means it pays more attention to soothing itself than to events.

Anyway, the article proceeds:

“But there is no definite pattern of outsiders being wrong and dangerous and insiders being trustworthy and good”

This somewhat dogmatic position (how is the author determining ‘dangerous’ and ‘good’) is arrived at with only two examples (outside WHO), with no consideration of the number of times that governments ignored medical warnings about the virus, which does seem heavily documented.

This is odd, for a real skepticism…

We then get given the “both sides are equally bad” argument.

This nowadays seems to be a popular argument when the supporters of a side which has done spectacularly badly wishes to diminish the effects of their performance.

In climate change we can occasionally get it in allegations that “both sides have blocked climate change action”. This is news to most people who are in favour of action. It is more correct to say, neither side seems interested in the kind of action which seems necessary, but only one side seems to be actively blocking any action at all. We often get a similar format in Republican claims to Democrats that the Democrats are as neoliberal as the Republicans – a claim not repeated to Republicans. So we get the next statement.

If one Medium post foolishly lowballs the disease’s contagiousness, another will make a cogent case for masking long before the C.D.C. did. 

There is no mention that the CDC has been effectively muzzled, marginalised and defunded by the Government, and no mention of how the government’s leaders actively promote not wearing masks, or of how the mask reserves where run down and medical authorities were alarmed at the end of January, when this was realised….

This form of skepticism seems consistently directed rather than universal.

“all of the rules we’re implementing are just rough and ready guesstimates.”

Well I’m not sure some of these rules have not grown out of appearances and experiences – but the suggestion is that we should be more skeptical of all of them, than of those who would dismiss them….

Lets look at how this works again….

“Yes, you should trust Anthony Fauci more than Donald Trump when it comes to the potential benefits of hydroxychloroquine.”

but we negate this immediately…

“if you’re a doctor on the front lines trying to keep your patients from ending up on a ventilator, Dr. Fauci’s level of caution can’t be yours, and you shouldn’t be waiting for the double-blind control trial to experiment with off-label drugs that Spanish and Chinese doctors claim are helping patients.”

So people should really listen to the President before they listen to the medical stories and testings that the drug can harm people…? Let’s be skeptical of Fauci but, in an emergency, not skeptical of Trump.

The article continues:

“Every single reopening will be its own unique experiment, with confounding variables of climate, density, age and genetics that are nearly impossible to model, and the advice of epidemiologists will only go so far. Governors and mayors will have to act like scientists themselves, acting and re-acting, adapting and experimenting, with expert advisers at their shoulders but no sure answers till the experiment begins.”

This is correct – but we are not asked to be skeptical of those officials who say that we should open anyway, or that the disease is going away, when the numbers are increasing. We are not asked to be skeptical that openers will follow this procedure.. Again the skeptical proceedure is directed.

Again we have the issue about ‘opening the economy.’ This is not mentioned in the article, but the political struggle over the opening, and how many people dying is acceptable, is a significant part of the article’s background.

Let us look at Fauci’s responses to questions from the Senate (long sorry):

I get concerned if you have a situation where the dynamics of an outbreak in an area are such that you are not seeing that gradual over 14-day decrease that would allow you to go to phase one. Then if you pass the checkpoints of phase one, go to phase two and phase three. What I’ve expressed then, and again, is my concern that if some areas, city, states, or what have you, jump over those various checkpoints and prematurely open up without having the capability of being able to respond effectively and efficiently, my concern is that we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks…..

most of us feel that the number of deaths are likely higher than [the reported] number because given the situation, particularly in New York city, when they were really strapped with a very serious challenge to their healthcare system, that there may have been people who died at home who did have COVID, who were not counted as COVID because they never really got to the hospital….

My concern is that as states or cities or regions, their attempt, understandable, to get back to some form of normality, disregard, to a greater or lesser degree, the checkpoints that we put in our guidelines about when it is safe to proceed in pulling back on mitigation. Because I feel if that occurs, there is a real risk that you will trigger an outbreak that you might not be able to control. Which, in fact, paradoxically, will set you back, not only leading to some suffering and death that could be avoided, but could even set you back on the road to trying to get economic recovery….

I have never made myself out to be the end all and only voice in this. I’m a scientist, a physician, and a public health official. I give advice, according to the best scientific evidence. There are a number of other people who come into that and give advice that are more related to the things that you spoke about, about the need to get the country back open again, and economically. I don’t give advice about economic things. I don’t get advice about anything other than public health. So I wanted to respond to that….

we should be humble about what we don’t know. And I think that falls under the fact that we don’t know everything about this virus, and we really better be very careful, particularly when it comes to children. Because the more and more we learn, we’re seeing things about what this virus can do that we didn’t see from the studies in China, or in Europe….

I think we better be careful if we are not cavalier in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects….

If you think that we have it completely under control, we don’t. I mean, if you look at the dynamics of the outbreak, we are seeing a diminution of hospitalizations and infections in some places such as in New York City, which has plateaued and started to come down, New Orleans. But in other parts of the country, we are seeing spikes. So when you look at the dynamics of new cases, even though some are coming down, the curve looks flat with some slight coming down. So I think we’re going in the right direction, but the right direction does not mean we have, by any means, total control of this outbreak….

it would seem that if you want to keep things like packing plants open, that you really got to provide the optimum degree of protection for the workers involved, the ability to allow them to go to work safely, and if and when individuals get infected to immediately be able to get them out and give her the proper care. So I would think when you’re calling upon people to perform essential services, you really have almost a moral responsibility to make sure they’re well taken care of and well-protected. And again, that’s not an official proclamation. That’s just me speaking as a physician and as a human being.

Dr. Anthony Fauci & CDC Director Senate Testimony Transcript May 12

This was President Trump’s response

 Q   Dr. Fauci yesterday was a little cautious on reopening the economy too soon.  Do you share his concerns?

THE PRESIDENT:  About reopening what?

Q    Reopening the economy too soon, some states.

THE PRESIDENT:  Look, he wants to play all sides of the equation.  I think we’re going to have a tremendous fourth quarter, I think we’re going to have a transitional third quarter, and I think we’re going to have a phenomenal next year.  I feel that we are going to have a country that’s ready to absolutely have one of its best years……

Q    Sir, when you say Dr. Fauci is playing both sides, are you suggesting that the advice he’s giving to you is different?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, I was surprised — I was surprised by his answer, actually, because, you know, it’s just — to me, it’s not an acceptable answer, especially when it comes to schools

May 13, 2020 Remarks by President Trump in a Meeting with Governor Polis of Colorado and Governor Burgum of North Dakota

And

And I just want to make something clear.  It’s very important: Vaccine or no vaccine, we’re back.  And we’re starting the process.  And in many cases, they don’t have vaccines, and a virus or a flu comes, and you fight through it.  We haven’t seen anything like this in 100-and-some-odd years — 1917. But you fight through it.  And people sometimes, I guess — we don’t know exactly yet, but it looks like they become immune, or at least for a short while, and maybe for life.  But you fight through it….

And if we don’t, we’re going to be like so many other cases, where you had a problem come in, it’ll go away — at some point, it’ll go away.  It may flare up, and it may not flare up.  We’ll have to see what happens.  But if it does flare up, we’re going to put out the fire, and we’ll put it out quickly and efficiently.  We’ve learned a lot….

But again, you know, it’s not solely vaccine-based.  Other things have never had a vaccine and they go away.  So I don’t want people to think that this is all dependent on vaccine, but a vaccine would be a tremendous thing.

May 15: Remarks by President Trump on Vaccine Development

So I ask you which of these positions sounds more dogmatic and less open to unexpected consequences and feedback from the world?

The article continues…

“So if you’re going to find your way out and up to health and safety, you have to be prepared to grope, to stumble, to make your own light, and sometimes to move by feel or instinct through the dark.”

This apparently is similar to the WHO pronouncement on 15 April:

“In the first weeks of January WHO was very, very clear; we alerted the world on January 5th. Systems around the world, including in the US, began to activate their emergency management systems on January 6th and through the next number of weeks we’ve produced multiple updates to countries including briefing multiple governments, multiple scientists around the world on the developing situation – and that is what it was; a developing situation.
The virus was identified on January 7th, the sequence was shared, I think on 12th with the world.”

WHO COVID-19 virtual press conference – 15 April, 2020

When we are in a new situation, or facing a new challenge, we cannot say we know the best path for sure. However it is going beyond evidence to assert that past experience and knowledge of similar challenges is as useful as, or less useful than, ignorance and apparent incompetence. Or that experts and non-experts are showing equal levels of catastrophic failure.

So we might also try to be skeptical of skepticism that is so consistently directed.

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Skepticism and Evident climate change

July 30, 2018

I guess everyone interested in climate change will have encountered people who state three things. One; that climate change is not evident, Two; that climate change has happened in the past and is part of the natural cycles, and Three; that we cannot predict exactly what will happen…

Changes that happen slowly are rarely evident to bare human sensory apparatus. We acclimatize, and declare it has always been this way – despite the record of above average temperatures we have been registering (and of course averages are undermined by people’s experience of variations, and by their desires to keep seeing normality and experience tranquility) People who move from cold countries to hot countries may soon feel that temperatures which would have once been ‘hot’ feel ‘cold’. Unaided senses may not always be accurate enough to detect climate change, that does not mean it is not happening. When we can detect climate change with unaided senses it will probably be too late.

After saying that Climate change is not evident, then people may point to previous incidents of climate change and imply it is relatively harmless, or that we cannot do anything about it, and it has nothing to do with us. While I think the idea that climate change has happened in the past is probably correct, the rest may not be.

I particularly have no idea how the concept that “the planet has been going through heating and cooling waves for millions of years” can be considered ‘evident’ in itself – especially if contemporary climate change is not evident. The concept of previous climate change is based on a whole lot of theory, interpretation and data gathering.

Most of that theory is part of the web of theory which also suggests that the current climate change (even if natural) will be rapid (in geological terms) and devastating for ecologies and human civilization.

Current climate change is also compounded with widespread ecological devastation from human sources (deforestation, over-fishing, chemical pollution, depletion of phosphorus etc.), all of which are likely to make the change even more violent and which were not present in previous ‘natural’ periods of change.

The further assertions that because the planet has had changes of climate many times before we should not be worried about it this time, do not seem evident at all to me. Especially as rapid climate change in the past does seem to have been harmful for species.

The third point about uncertainty of what will happen is true; the future is always uncertain. However, because the future is uncertain does not give us the right to assume that the least unpleasant events are the most likely. That is actually a refusal to accept uncertainty.

So what is evident? To me it is evident that we depend on ecologies, and creatures depend on each other (I do not live alone in a vacuum) – this is also backed up by many studies, which give what I would call evidence. Other people may deny this for whatever reasons. But if you accept that some kind of mutual dependence is evident, then continually messing up, destroying and injecting waste into these ecologies is evidently harmful to us all, and likely to result in catastrophic change past a certain point. So its probably best to stop doing it, and try something else. Harm may also result from these remedial actions, but that harm is not evident – it is supposition.

Is it evident that a bullet through the chest will kill me? No, not until it happens – and if it is evident, then there will probably be no me for it to be evident to. There is a level at which it may be best to work with some supposition.

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