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Scientific Encounters
According to psychologist Gary Klein, confirmation bias leads us to:
Search only for evidence that confirms our beliefs
Prefer evidence that supports our beliefs
Best remember information in keeping with our beliefs
Interpret evidence in a way that supports our beliefs
Rely on favored beliefs to misunderstand what is happening in a situation
Ignore opportunities to test our beliefs
Explain away data that don’t fit with our beliefs
All the above countries have been hit hard by Covid, especially as colder weather set in, but Spain, Belgium, the UK, France, and Italy are managing to turn things around. Why not the US? What did the European countries do differently? Well, for one thing…
Before anyone assumes that remote workers moving from Blue to Red areas will change the politics of their new home, consider the opposite possibility: their new home may change the Blue transplants even more. That’s because political views aren’t fixed for life and where one lives can have a big effect on how one thinks about politics. At least that’s according to Jeffrey Lyons, a political scientist who studies why people change their political views over time. The rest of this post summarizes Lyons’ findings on factors that make some people more likely to change their politics than others.
Of course, schools shouldn’t be re-opened in areas with high rates of Covid infection. But what’s happening in many communities is that local residents are demanding schools remain closed, even when infection rates are low and well within state, CDC, and WHO guidelines for reopening schools.
According to the Hate Crime Statistics Act, hate crimes are incidents motivated by bias against the victim due to his or her race, ethnicity, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, religion or disability. Around half the hate crimes in the US are not reported to law enforcement and hence are not documented in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). However, the US Bureau of Justice National Crime Victimization Surveys (NCVS) supplement the FBI stats and provide a more comprehensive picture of hate crime frequency, victims, offenders and trends.
The US murder rate was 5.0 per 100,000 inhabitants, and the robbery rate was 81.6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019. Here’s what the five-year trend looks like: …
…Which got me thinking: if human experience and behavior is the product of gene-environment interactions, what does liberty even mean? The dictionary says liberty is “the condition of being free from control or restrictions”, but being a “product” of genes+environment doesn’t leave any room for being free from control.
Long story short: The US continues to be ravaged by the Covid beast. Sweden got off to an awful start but has regained the upper hand. Denmark and Norway hit back hard in the beginning, then eased up rather quickly. Now the Nordic kids are back in school while a good number of their US counterparts still have to contend with online instruction.
As for the relationship between inequality and happiness, it’s complicated. Inequality alone - that is, controlling for poverty and social mobility - does not appear to a strong, consistent or direct effect on society-wide levels of happiness. And in the US and elsewhere, surveys have consistently found that inequality simply isn’t a pressing issue for most people. Still, the very thought of inequality does makes some people very angry and indignant. But those reactions are often based on ideas, e.g. social justice or a zero-sum understanding of economics.
People often change their political minds as they get older. Adolescents and young adults tend to form political opinions that reflect those of their peers or are more extreme versions of their parents’ politics (as befits the intensity of youth). Then something happens: the intrepid fledglings leave home and school, enter the greater world of work and responsibility, and begin to doubt their old certainties about how the world is and should be. Or at least some do.
Gilens and Page also treat average citizens and economic elites as though they were two distinct groups. But they’re not. According to multiyear tax return data, over half of American householders reach the top 10% income bracket for one or more years by age 60 (over two-thirds reach the top 20% of the income distribution). If getting into the top 10% counts as being an economic elite, then over half of ordinary citizens become economic elites at some point in their lives (and over two-thirds get to be near-elites). Sorta muddies the water.
There is other evidence that one can be risk-sensitive and relatively unstressed at the same time. Take business owners, for whom sensitivity to risk is an essential job requirement. Yet personality studies have shown business owners to be rather emotionally resilient: risk tolerant, stress tolerant, adaptable, and tolerant of financial insecurity.
Of course, the reductionists could be partly right in some cases under some conditions. This is ultimately an empirical matter. The challenge is to separate sound studies from junk studies. Take Sapolsky’s assertion that a young child’s personality predicts her politics as an adult. What is his basis for such a claim? One measly study…
…And bring them back to school they did - at least in Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel , Japan., and The Netherlands (among others). Within and across these countries, schools have varied in their approach to limiting viral spread. Some mix in-person and online classes or allow only part-time classes. Most have small classes and limit children’s interactions outside the classroom. Children are often required to wear masks and practice social distancing. However, Austrian schools are “fully open and don’t even require young children wear masks.” Japan requires parents to take and report their children’s temperature every morning.
In the real world, we talk more of causes than rules, but the process of establishing a causal relation is similar to that of validating a rule: seek cases that disconfirm the proposition that x causes y. In other words, find cases of x without y and y without x (the equivalent of turning over the D and 7 cards in the Wason task).
…I’d start that investigation with Utah’s COVID-19 Response, which even Dr. Fauci has praised. Utah’s Covid infection mortality rate approaches flu levels (around .1%) when you factor in CDC's estimate that Covid-19 infections could be 10 times higher than confirmed cases. Yes, the state is relatively young, affluent, compliant and healthy. Then again, Salt Lake City is a big city and it has weathered the Covid-19 storm rather well.
The number of new cases have been rising in California , Florida, and Texas. This increase in new cases probably reflects the expansion of Covid testing over the past six weeks, as well as the easing of lockdown. It’s unclear why New York cases have plummeted in the last few weeks. Despite the increase in Covid cases, new deaths have been fairly flat or falling…
The virus is still leaving death and devastation in its wake. Let’s hope the summer weather tempers its spread and by the fall a vaccine is ready for widespread testing.
What’s going on here? The Covid-19 mortality rate in these countries range from .06% of confirmed cases to 14.53% of cases. Some possibilities….
While the Covid-19 rates in the above 32 states are based on only a few months of data, they appear to be on-track to a lower 2020 mortality rate than the influenza-pneumonia mortality rate in 2018. The following states are another story…