What an interesting book this is! Van Badham, an Australian journalist who seems to know her way around the world of internet conspiracy theories, walWhat an interesting book this is! Van Badham, an Australian journalist who seems to know her way around the world of internet conspiracy theories, walks us through three recent episodes: Gamergate, Pizzagate, and, finally, QAnon. I thought I knew something about them, but I had underestimated just how crazy they were. I hadn't understood that Gamergate involved tens of thousands of men spending a large part of their time over months and in some cases years obsessively trying to bully a few women into killing themselves because they didn't like the style of videogames they were producing, or that tens of thousands of other people decided that the owners of an ordinary pizza restaurant in DC were torturing and killing children in its non-existent basement because they thought that references to pizza in stolen emails were a secret pedophile code. I didn't understand that many people really believe there are shape-shifting lizards among us, in fact believe it so strongly that in at least one case they have killed their infant children because they suspected these poor kids of containing "serpent DNA". And although I had seen many references to the infamous 4chan and 8chan/8kun sites, I hadn't understood what these sites were like, and that ironic, ambiguous, somewhat tasteless internet conversations not that different from what you see on Goodreads could rapidly evolve into straight-out psychotic behaviour.
I was appalled, but at least as often, I'm afraid to say, I was fascinated. This is the kind of social science experiment that no ethics board in its wildest dreams would consider allowing with three subjects under controlled conditions and a psych team standing by to help, and it was done, completely uncontrolled and with no safety net, using millions of fragile, vulnerable people. It was monstrous (what do I mean, "was"? It's still going on), but it has the potential to teach us a great deal about how we function. In particular, there is a gigantic amount of data here about what makes people believe things. I would not have thought it would be so easy to post implausible parodies of information leaks from disaffected insiders on a joke site and rapidly sever hundreds of thousands of people's connections with reality, but the QAnon experiment shows you can.
Evidently, a great many of us don't weigh evidence at all. If we see a narrative we find attractive, we can decide we believe it without any need for evidence, and then refuse to change our minds irrespective of what happens. Of course, we're used to people believing weird and nonsensical things when they're officially labelled "religions", and we have a special category for religious beliefs. Without stopping to consider, we tend to assume they're traditions going back centuries, which represent the accumulated wisdom of a culture. Well, some religions are. But the mechanisms seem to work just as well if it's something you read twenty minutes ago in an ungrammatical internet post, as long as you're the right kind of person and it's done in the right way.
What is that kind of person? What is that way? This book, which is remarkably analytical and non-judgemental, tries to answer the questions: the author thinks it's often connected to having something bad happen to you which leaves you permanently scared and insecure, and that certain kinds of simple black-and-white, good-versus-evil threat narratives can then become irresistibly appealing. It's only the beginnings of an answer. It would be good if we could use the QAnon experience to understood better how to defend ourselves against these psychological techniques. Because you get the impression that certain organisations who do not love Western democracy are becoming increasingly effective at using them. ____________________
Although, or possibly because, the world appeared to be ending, I had a good reading year and found some remarkable books. Here are my top ten, alphabAlthough, or possibly because, the world appeared to be ending, I had a good reading year and found some remarkable books. Here are my top ten, alphabetical by author, but it was hard to choose...
Anonymous, Völuspá. Tolkien's favourite poem. Thanks to the LARA project, I was finally able to read and appreciate it in the original Old Norse.
Ken Binmore, Natural Justice. A remarkably original piece of philosophy that should be more famous. It's fun to read as well.
Lucy Ellmann, Ducks, Newburyport. The daughter of Joyce's biographer shows you how to do female stream-of-consciousness right. Molly Bloom, eat your heart out.
Michael Ende, Die unendliche Geschichte. For some unfathomable reason, this mystical vision is usually referred to as a children's book.
Romain Gary, La promesse de l'aube. One of the most insane autobiographies I've ever come across, wonderfully written and completely unputdownable.
Stian L. Lybech An Introduction to West Greenlandic. Oh, if only I could understand this crazy language! Stian Lybech's book really makes me want to try.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Not easy to get through, but you'll feel like a better person.
Stuart Russell, Human Compatible. A terrifying glimpse of our possible near future. Anyone who's interested in technology really needs to check it out.
And now, if everyone who believes in literature claps their hands, Donald Trump will not find a way to destroy civilization before Jan 20......more
For some reason, most covid safety books contain little to no hot bisexual vampire unicorn threesome action, but I am pleased to say that this one is For some reason, most covid safety books contain little to no hot bisexual vampire unicorn threesome action, but I am pleased to say that this one is an exception. Available for free download here.
BTW, looking at the list of other Chuck Tingle titles at the end, I had missed the very existence of the "No Sex Tinglers" series. I am particularly keen to read Nice Guy Dinosaur Doesn’t Pound Me In The Butt Because I’m Not Interested And He’s Not Actually Nice He’s Just Annoying And Creepy And Doesn’t Respect My Boundaries When I Tell Him We’re Not On A Date....more
Well, I dunno. The idea of producing a multilingual children's book that will inform younger readers about COVID-19 is good, but I thought the actual Well, I dunno. The idea of producing a multilingual children's book that will inform younger readers about COVID-19 is good, but I thought the actual book was terrible. Apart from being dull and badly written, I was concerned that the advice given might be misleading. Why the constant reiteration of "one metre apart"? The normal recommendation is 1.5 m. And should the storyline really involve international travel? Ario the magic dragon has superspreader written all over him. I think Sara should be hanging out online and talking to her friends on Zoom... ______________________
At the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, recommendations about what to do were rather complicated. But the world is learning, and it's rapidly been boAt the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, recommendations about what to do were rather complicated. But the world is learning, and it's rapidly been boiled down to a single phrase: stay the fuck home.
Inspired by the excellent site staythefuckhome.com, Matt, Not, our Melbourne friend Noela and I have used the open source LARA platform to start putting together our own little effort: a multimedia page which gives you this invaluable sentence in as many languages as possible. If you have five minutes to spare and would like to contribute, fire up Chrome, go here, and use our online tool to record it in your own language. If that language isn't on the list yet, please post a comment or PM me and I'll add it.
Stay safe, stay the fuck home! ________________________
[Updates]
We've now got videos for 1011121315171819 20 languages on the live page. Take a look, and hover your mouse over words to see their literal meaning! You'll discover that people have found many ways to express this message.
If you are a native speaker of one of these languages and have (literally) five minutes to spare, please click here and record a video! Note: you need to do this in Chrome, and not on a smartphone....more
Since a surprising number of people, including many heads of government, apparently still have problems understanding wh[Original review, Mar 21 2020]
Since a surprising number of people, including many heads of government, apparently still have problems understanding what "exponential growth" means, here's a quick update on how to read those curves you keep seeing. There are so many of them that it's easy to get lost in the details, but the one I find most helpful is Worldometer's graph of the total number of COVID-19 cases outside mainland China, here. Today, March 21, it looks like this:
[image]
Now you can immediately see that it's going up really fast, which is already bad news. Switch it to "logarithmic", and you'll get a more precise picture. It'll now look like this:
[image]
There are two things to notice here. First, the vertical axis is rearranged so that each multiplication by 10 is represented by the same distance. That's what "logarithmic" is. Second, the curve has become, more or less, a straight line. That means each multiplication by 10 takes the same time. That's what "exponential" is. On February 18, there were 999 cases. On March 2, thirteen days later, there were 10,292 cases. On March 16, another fourteen days later, there were 101,609 cases. So we can see that about every two weeks, it gets ten times worse. If the trend continues unchecked, which is what it's still doing, we will have a million cases around April 1, ten million cases around April 15, and a hundred million cases around April 29.
We get the same exponential growth pattern with death statistics. Two weeks ago, we were getting roughly a hundred deaths a day. Right now, it's a bit more than a thousand deaths a day. Two weeks from now, if things continue on the current path, it'll be around ten thousand deaths a day. Four weeks from now, around a hundred thousand deaths a day. Six weeks from now, around a million deaths a day.
It's really simple math. If your local congressman or member of parliament still doesn't get it, maybe you can try explaining it to them. _________________________
[Update, Apr 1 2020]
When I posted this review two weeks ago, I said the curve predicted a million cases around Apr 1. We're now there, and the Worldometer site is currently showing 935,840 cases, a little less than the prediction. If you look at the updated logarithmic graph for "total number of cases outside mainland China",
[image]
you'll see that it is starting to curve down - but so far, not very much. Unfortunately, it seems like we're still looking at ten million cases around mid-April. The difference between the predicted and actual number of deaths per day is however larger. Two weeks ago, the curve was pointing towards something like ten thousand deaths per day by now, but in fact it's "only" five thousand.
Another positive aspect is that most heads of government do now appear to understand what's going on and are implementing active strategies to address the problem. That was quicker than usual....more
This book collects together fourteen papers about the Prisoner's Dilemma, the best-known and most paradoxical example in game theory. If you can't quiThis book collects together fourteen papers about the Prisoner's Dilemma, the best-known and most paradoxical example in game theory. If you can't quite remember how it works, here's the basic scenario:
Alice and Bob have been arrested, accused of nefarious crimes against the State, and are being interrogated in separate rooms. The police have no evidence, and they make each of the prisoners the following offer. If the person in question signs a confession, and the other one stubbornly refuses to talk, the one who confesses will be let out tomorrow while the other will get twenty years. If they both confess, they will each get five years. But if they both say nothing, they will only be charged with wasting police time and get six months. What should they do?
It seems obvious that they should both say nothing, but that's not the answer you get from game theory. The argument is simple. Alice thinks to herself: well, Bob can either confess or he can keep quiet. If he confesses, I will get twenty years if I keep quiet and five years if I confess, so I will do better if I confess. If he keeps quiet, I will get six months if I keep quiet and I'm out free if I confess, so I will do better if I confess. Hence, confessing can't lose, so I should confess. Bob follows the same reasoning. The result is that both of them get five years, but they would only have got six months if they had kept quiet.
You can see why people found this interesting, and over forty thousand papers have been written discussing the problem. One of the chapters here says that academics have got too excited over it, and that the Prisoner's Dilemma isn't worth so much attention, but Northcott and Alexandrovna are in the minority. Most of the contributors agree: it's very interesting, because it highlights, in a minimal form, the fact that acting selfishly doesn't always end up producing the best result for the group. Take that, Ayn Rand!
There are many related scenarios that are of immediate practical interest, in particular the different versions of the Tragedy of the Commons. When a large group can achieve some worthwhile goal by having a sufficient number of them invest their time in collaborating, the same reasoning applies. It may very well be the case that if enough of us pitch in and help, we can succeed. But if I only think about myself, I'm just like Alice. If there aren't enough people pitching in, then I'm wasting my time. But if there are already enough people, then they don't need me. The chance that it's exactly on the boundary between the two is vanishingly small. So from a game-theoretic point of view, my rational choice is to do nothing. Hence we do nothing, and we fail. Several of the contributors look at this kind of scenario, and they conclude that it's only rational to pitch in if there is some extra payoff associated with doing it, or conversely if there's an extra penalty associated with refusing to help. The payoff could be some version of being praised for your civic spirit; the penalty could be some version of being considered an undesirable antisocial element.
As it happens, we have a splendid example of this very scenario in today's news. In Australia, it's currently unclear how COVID-19 will play out. Here's the headline that got my attention:
[image]
The article summarises the results of a simulation performed by researchers at the University of Sydney, and their conclusion is very simple. If 80% of all Australians strictly follow social distancing recommendations and stay home for the next few weeks, infection rates will soon peak and then decline. If only 70% do it, then it won't work: numbers will keep going up. The graph looks like this:
[image]
Well, having read The Prisoner's Dilemma, I'm fully up to speed on the issues. I'm going to be as nice as possible to everyone who's got the option of staying home and is doing so. Conversely, if you could be staying home and aren't, I'm going to tell you to your face that you're an irresponsible asshole who might get us all killed. Sorry guys, but sometimes tough love is the only way. If I'm hypocritically polite to you, you won't have enough motivation to do what you know is right.
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