Friam

Biden beats Trump

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Biden beats Trump

It is. But in this case, not an acceptable solution.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of [hidden email]
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 11:20 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

But isn’t empathy ALSO a tool for arriving at solutions. I stupulate that it is not the ONLY such tool.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 12:50 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

It gives one the freedom to think outside the box on how to resolve the situation.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of [hidden email]
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 10:46 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

But Marcus,

What does your lack of empathy GET you?

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 12:35 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states. That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable. It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them. They made a deal with the devil. It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus

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thompnickson2

Re: Biden beats Trump

I think of empathy as a sensor that makes me more likely to predict the behavior of an antagonist. Think of martial arts techniques that involve giving your opponent what he wants. So if your opponent wants to rush forward with a knife, you help him along in that project until he is lying flat on his face on the ground. All action in conflict is based upon suppositions of what your opponent is up to. Accurate empathy could be a life-saving technique.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 1:27 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

It is. But in this case, not an acceptable solution.

But isn’t empathy ALSO a tool for arriving at solutions. I stupulate that it is not the ONLY such tool.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

It gives one the freedom to think outside the box on how to resolve the situation.

But Marcus,

What does your lack of empathy GET you?

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Marcus

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Biden beats Trump

Yes, my claim is that the sensor has sensed. Sure, more intelligence is always good. Acquire it, act on it, but do it without emotion.

I remember after the first go around on Trump, Van Jones had a series where he went out into Trumpland and interviewed people. It seemed to me he learned what he already knew.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of [hidden email]
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 11:37 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Cc: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

It is. But in this case, not an acceptable solution.

But isn’t empathy ALSO a tool for arriving at solutions. I stupulate that it is not the ONLY such tool.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

It gives one the freedom to think outside the box on how to resolve the situation.

But Marcus,

What does your lack of empathy GET you?

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Marcus

Stephen Guerin-5

Re: Biden beats Trump

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Marcus,

Do you have close friend or family member with strong character and high intelligence that is also a Trump voter? My brother-in-law is a submarine captain. It was helpful to have a 3-hour call with him last night.

I come away with the idea that his mental model is not opposed to mine...it's more of a dual to mine on which future Action can be defined :-)

-Stephen

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 11:35 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states. That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable. It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them. They made a deal with the devil. It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus

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David Eric Smith

Re: Biden beats Trump

So at some point, too, though, there are actual facts and things and events in the world, which aren’t just cut from the fabric of human impression and attitude.

Suppose the following; as I was walking thisPM, after finally watching the Van Jones TED that Glen circulated, it seemed quite believable to me.

1. Suppose what Van sketches is actually the plan. Trump plans to instigate a constitutional crisis. I think he is capable of planning to that degree of complexity and on that time horizon. And I have no reason in the world not to think Bill Barr would be down with the lark, and could advise him on the law to do it. I’m not sure Pompeo has the same background, but in character I expect he would think it is a great idea.

2. Then we wind up in congress. He doesn’t have a huge margin; there are only 26 republican representatives (or whatever the name is for them). So he really needs them all. That’s what the last four years has been for. Figure out who has any other levers besides greed of fear, and get them out. Keep Graham and Cruz and all the rest like them, who are amoral and predatory, and Collins and her ilk who can be terrorized.

3. Suppose people decide to object, and want to take to the streets. Really a terrible time to have Esper running DOD. He wouldn’t sic the US armed forces on them. So find some quasi-fascist brigadier general who thinks might is not merely right, but Everything. Of course, you have to goad people and try to provoke them, so that the lower-downs in the military will be willing to take orders, not because they think the orders are moral, but because they feel threatened and are trying to protect themselves and each other. That’s always how you co-opt soldiers.

I look at the footage of old civil rights protestors, singing, dancing, and clapping while being herded into paddy wagons, after generations of abuse, and I cannot imagine a large cross-section of Americans today with the discipline to do the same if provoked. So goading a few people into violence, and then using that to excuse a military lockdown, doesn’t seem out of reach.

Does anyone, anywhere, think the thing to make this unrealistic would be trump’s getting cold feet or having qualms? If so, then I think that person is on the wrong side of a factual evaluation that has nothing to do with values or character. One of the two positions is right.

The rest is really a calculation. How degraded are the other needed actors, and how wide is the margin of error for the ones who would try it? There people could have opinions deriving from their own characters or their beliefs in the characters of others, which I can easily see disagreeing. It also may not have a deterministic answer, but boil down to accidents of circumstance. So the disagreement could reasonably reflect this too.

Dunno. If you can read enough news to know that S. Korea exists, how can your intelligence lead you to believe either that trump and co have done this well, or that if they haven’t it’s no big deal? That to me does not seem to be a question about ideology.

Eric

On Nov 11, 2020, at 5:50 PM, Stephen Guerin <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus,

Do you have close friend or family member with strong character and high intelligence that is also a Trump voter? My brother-in-law is a submarine captain. It was helpful to have a 3-hour call with him last night.

I come away with the idea that his mental model is not opposed to mine...it's more of a dual to mine on which future Action can be defined :-)

-Stephen

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 11:35 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states. That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable. It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them. They made a deal with the devil. It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus

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Robert J. Cordingley

Re: Biden beats Trump

BTW, I worry smiling Pompeo wasn't in denial he was predicting a 'smooth transition to a second term'.

Meanwhile, PBS is showing the Rise of the Nazis see https://www.pbs.org/show/rise-nazis/. It took 4 years for the Nazis to destroy democracy.

-Robert C

On 11/11/20 4:11 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:

So at some point, too, though, there are actual facts and things and events in the world, which aren’t just cut from the fabric of human impression and attitude.

Suppose the following; as I was walking thisPM, after finally watching the Van Jones TED that Glen circulated, it seemed quite believable to me.

1. Suppose what Van sketches is actually the plan. Trump plans to instigate a constitutional crisis. I think he is capable of planning to that degree of complexity and on that time horizon. And I have no reason in the world not to think Bill Barr would be down with the lark, and could advise him on the law to do it. I’m not sure Pompeo has the same background, but in character I expect he would think it is a great idea.

2. Then we wind up in congress. He doesn’t have a huge margin; there are only 26 republican representatives (or whatever the name is for them). So he really needs them all. That’s what the last four years has been for. Figure out who has any other levers besides greed of fear, and get them out. Keep Graham and Cruz and all the rest like them, who are amoral and predatory, and Collins and her ilk who can be terrorized.

3. Suppose people decide to object, and want to take to the streets. Really a terrible time to have Esper running DOD. He wouldn’t sic the US armed forces on them. So find some quasi-fascist brigadier general who thinks might is not merely right, but Everything. Of course, you have to goad people and try to provoke them, so that the lower-downs in the military will be willing to take orders, not because they think the orders are moral, but because they feel threatened and are trying to protect themselves and each other. That’s always how you co-opt soldiers.

I look at the footage of old civil rights protestors, singing, dancing, and clapping while being herded into paddy wagons, after generations of abuse, and I cannot imagine a large cross-section of Americans today with the discipline to do the same if provoked. So goading a few people into violence, and then using that to excuse a military lockdown, doesn’t seem out of reach.

Does anyone, anywhere, think the thing to make this unrealistic would be trump’s getting cold feet or having qualms? If so, then I think that person is on the wrong side of a factual evaluation that has nothing to do with values or character. One of the two positions is right.

The rest is really a calculation. How degraded are the other needed actors, and how wide is the margin of error for the ones who would try it? There people could have opinions deriving from their own characters or their beliefs in the characters of others, which I can easily see disagreeing. It also may not have a deterministic answer, but boil down to accidents of circumstance. So the disagreement could reasonably reflect this too.

Dunno. If you can read enough news to know that S. Korea exists, how can your intelligence lead you to believe either that trump and co have done this well, or that if they haven’t it’s no big deal? That to me does not seem to be a question about ideology.

Eric

On Nov 11, 2020, at 5:50 PM, Stephen Guerin <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus,

Do you have close friend or family member with strong character and high intelligence that is also a Trump voter? My brother-in-law is a submarine captain. It was helpful to have a 3-hour call with him last night.

I come away with the idea that his mental model is not opposed to mine...it's more of a dual to mine on which future Action can be defined :-)

-Stephen

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 11:35 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states. That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable. It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them. They made a deal with the devil. It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus

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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Biden beats Trump

In reply to this post by David Eric Smith

People like Barr and Pompeo are happy to exploit the consequences of Trump’s financial desperation for their authoritarian agenda. Authoritarianism is not an uncommon personality trait – they would find support in the population. Trump just wants to be the winner, but at any cost. At some level it is just ridiculous. But he sees ruin on the horizon and his family sees ruin on the horizon. With the people around him, it is a dangerous situation. Hopefully Biden has deep allies in government from his long career and isn’t just bluffing with his current sense of calm.

To resist a plausible scenario like you lay out, enough people need to wake up and plan how to stop them. They would have to admit that norms have collapsed and their countrymen had just gone insane. It is stupid to be goaded into open violence, but if things really went off the rails, I think it is naive to believe violence could be completely avoided.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 3:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

So at some point, too, though, there are actual facts and things and events in the world, which aren’t just cut from the fabric of human impression and attitude.

Suppose the following; as I was walking thisPM, after finally watching the Van Jones TED that Glen circulated, it seemed quite believable to me.

Eric

On Nov 11, 2020, at 5:50 PM, Stephen Guerin <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus,

Do you have close friend or family member with strong character and high intelligence that is also a Trump voter? My brother-in-law is a submarine captain. It was helpful to have a 3-hour call with him last night.

I come away with the idea that his mental model is not opposed to mine...it's more of a dual to mine on which future Action can be defined :-)

-Stephen

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 11:35 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states. That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable. It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them. They made a deal with the devil. It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus

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Eric Charles-2

Re: Biden beats Trump

About time to look this up... https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/origin-bleeding-heart-liberal

Before the 20th century, the phrase “bleeding heart” was popular in the religious-tinged oratory of 19th century America. Throughout the 1860s, it comes up often in poetry, essays, and political speeches, as an expression of empathy and emotion. “I come to you with a bleeding heart, honest and sincere motives, desiring to give you some plain thoughts,” said one politician in an 1862 speech. The phrase comes from the religious image of Christ’s wounded heart, which symbolizes his compassion and love. It was a common enough phrase that London has a “Bleeding Heart Yard” (featured prominently in the Dickens novel Little Dorrit) which is named after a long-gone sign, once displayed at a local pub, that showed the Sacred Heart.

By the 1930s, though, the phrase had fallen out of common use and Pegler, who one politician called a “soul-sick, mud-wallowing gutter scum columnist,” recruited it into a new context, as a political insult. He was a master of this art.... Pegler first used “bleeding heart” in a column castigating liberals in Washington for their focus on “a bill to provide penalties for lynchings.” Pegler wasn’t for lynchings, per se, but he argued that they were no longer a problem the federal government should solve: there had only been eight lynchings in 1937, he wrote, and “it is obvious that the evil is being cured by local processes.” The bill, he thought, was being “used as a political bait in crowded northern Negro centers.” And here was his conclusion, emphasis ours:

“I question the humanitarianism of any professional or semi-pro bleeding heart who clamors that not a single person must be allowed to hunger but would stall the entire legislative program in a fight to ham through a law intended, at the most optimistic figure, to save fourteen lives a year.”

[hidden email]

.... “Bleeding heart” was revived in a political context in 1954, by another infamous right-winger, Joe McCarthy, who called Edward R. Murrow one of the “extreme Left Wing bleeding-heart elements of television and radio.” It wasn’t until the 1960s that it really started to come into common use, though... By the end of the decade, Ronald Reagan, then newly elected governor of California, had picked it up as a way to describe his political trajectory. “I was quite the bleeding-heart liberal once,” he told Newsweek. By 1970, he was known as a “former ‘bleeding heart’ Democrat.”

After that, the phrase was fully ensconced in political short-hand and quickly claimed by liberals as a positive trait.

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 7:49 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

People like Barr and Pompeo are happy to exploit the consequences of Trump’s financial desperation for their authoritarian agenda. Authoritarianism is not an uncommon personality trait – they would find support in the population. Trump just wants to be the winner, but at any cost.   At some level it is just ridiculous.   But he sees ruin on the horizon and his family sees ruin on the horizon.   With the people around him, it is a dangerous situation. Hopefully Biden has deep allies in government from his long career and isn’t just bluffing with his current sense of calm.

To resist a plausible scenario like you lay out, enough people need to wake up and plan how to stop them. They would have to admit that norms have collapsed and their countrymen had just gone insane.   It is stupid to be goaded into open violence, but if things really went off the rails, I think it is naive to believe violence could be completely avoided.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 3:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

So at some point, too, though, there are actual facts and things and events in the world, which aren’t just cut from the fabric of human impression and attitude.

Suppose the following; as I was walking thisPM, after finally watching the Van Jones TED that Glen circulated, it seemed quite believable to me.

1. Suppose what Van sketches is actually the plan. Trump plans to instigate a constitutional crisis. I think he is capable of planning to that degree of complexity and on that time horizon. And I have no reason in the world not to think Bill Barr would be down with the lark, and could advise him on the law to do it. I’m not sure Pompeo has the same background, but in character I expect he would think it is a great idea.

2. Then we wind up in congress. He doesn’t have a huge margin; there are only 26 republican representatives (or whatever the name is for them). So he really needs them all. That’s what the last four years has been for. Figure out who has any other levers besides greed of fear, and get them out. Keep Graham and Cruz and all the rest like them, who are amoral and predatory, and Collins and her ilk who can be terrorized.

3. Suppose people decide to object, and want to take to the streets. Really a terrible time to have Esper running DOD. He wouldn’t sic the US armed forces on them. So find some quasi-fascist brigadier general who thinks might is not merely right, but Everything. Of course, you have to goad people and try to provoke them, so that the lower-downs in the military will be willing to take orders, not because they think the orders are moral, but because they feel threatened and are trying to protect themselves and each other. That’s always how you co-opt soldiers.

I look at the footage of old civil rights protestors, singing, dancing, and clapping while being herded into paddy wagons, after generations of abuse, and I cannot imagine a large cross-section of Americans today with the discipline to do the same if provoked. So goading a few people into violence, and then using that to excuse a military lockdown, doesn’t seem out of reach.

Does anyone, anywhere, think the thing to make this unrealistic would be trump’s getting cold feet or having qualms? If so, then I think that person is on the wrong side of a factual evaluation that has nothing to do with values or character. One of the two positions is right.

The rest is really a calculation. How degraded are the other needed actors, and how wide is the margin of error for the ones who would try it? There people could have opinions deriving from their own characters or their beliefs in the characters of others, which I can easily see disagreeing. It also may not have a deterministic answer, but boil down to accidents of circumstance. So the disagreement could reasonably reflect this too.

Dunno. If you can read enough news to know that S. Korea exists, how can your intelligence lead you to believe either that trump and co have done this well, or that if they haven’t it’s no big deal? That to me does not seem to be a question about ideology.

Eric

On Nov 11, 2020, at 5:50 PM, Stephen Guerin <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus,

Do you have close friend or family member with strong character and high intelligence that is also a Trump voter? My brother-in-law is a submarine captain. It was helpful to have a 3-hour call with him last night.

I come away with the idea that his mental model is not opposed to mine...it's more of a dual to mine on which future Action can be defined :-)

-Stephen

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 11:35 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states.   That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable.   It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them.   They made a deal with the devil.   It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus

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Eric Charles-2

Re: Biden beats Trump

[hidden email]

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 8:03 PM Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:

About time to look this up... https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/origin-bleeding-heart-liberal
Before the 20th century, the phrase “bleeding heart” was popular in the religious-tinged oratory of 19th century America. Throughout the 1860s, it comes up often in poetry, essays, and political speeches, as an expression of empathy and emotion. “I come to you with a bleeding heart, honest and sincere motives, desiring to give you some plain thoughts,” said one politician in an 1862 speech. The phrase comes from the religious image of Christ’s wounded heart, which symbolizes his compassion and love. It was a common enough phrase that London has a “Bleeding Heart Yard” (featured prominently in the Dickens novel Little Dorrit) which is named after a long-gone sign, once displayed at a local pub, that showed the Sacred Heart.

By the 1930s, though, the phrase had fallen out of common use and Pegler, who one politician called a “soul-sick, mud-wallowing gutter scum columnist,” recruited it into a new context, as a political insult. He was a master of this art.... Pegler first used “bleeding heart” in a column castigating liberals in Washington for their focus on “a bill to provide penalties for lynchings.” Pegler wasn’t for lynchings, per se, but he argued that they were no longer a problem the federal government should solve: there had only been eight lynchings in 1937, he wrote, and “it is obvious that the evil is being cured by local processes.” The bill, he thought, was being “used as a political bait in crowded northern Negro centers.” And here was his conclusion, emphasis ours:

“I question the humanitarianism of any professional or semi-pro bleeding heart who clamors that not a single person must be allowed to hunger but would stall the entire legislative program in a fight to ham through a law intended, at the most optimistic figure, to save fourteen lives a year.”

[hidden email]
.... “Bleeding heart” was revived in a political context in 1954, by another infamous right-winger, Joe McCarthy, who called Edward R. Murrow one of the “extreme Left Wing bleeding-heart elements of television and radio.” It wasn’t until the 1960s that it really started to come into common use, though... By the end of the decade, Ronald Reagan, then newly elected governor of California, had picked it up as a way to describe his political trajectory. “I was quite the bleeding-heart liberal once,” he told Newsweek. By 1970, he was known as a “former ‘bleeding heart’ Democrat.”

After that, the phrase was fully ensconced in political short-hand and quickly claimed by liberals as a positive trait.

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 7:49 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

People like Barr and Pompeo are happy to exploit the consequences of Trump’s financial desperation for their authoritarian agenda. Authoritarianism is not an uncommon personality trait – they would find support in the population. Trump just wants to be the winner, but at any cost.   At some level it is just ridiculous.   But he sees ruin on the horizon and his family sees ruin on the horizon.   With the people around him, it is a dangerous situation. Hopefully Biden has deep allies in government from his long career and isn’t just bluffing with his current sense of calm.

To resist a plausible scenario like you lay out, enough people need to wake up and plan how to stop them. They would have to admit that norms have collapsed and their countrymen had just gone insane.   It is stupid to be goaded into open violence, but if things really went off the rails, I think it is naive to believe violence could be completely avoided.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 3:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

So at some point, too, though, there are actual facts and things and events in the world, which aren’t just cut from the fabric of human impression and attitude.

Suppose the following; as I was walking thisPM, after finally watching the Van Jones TED that Glen circulated, it seemed quite believable to me.

1. Suppose what Van sketches is actually the plan. Trump plans to instigate a constitutional crisis. I think he is capable of planning to that degree of complexity and on that time horizon. And I have no reason in the world not to think Bill Barr would be down with the lark, and could advise him on the law to do it. I’m not sure Pompeo has the same background, but in character I expect he would think it is a great idea.

2. Then we wind up in congress. He doesn’t have a huge margin; there are only 26 republican representatives (or whatever the name is for them). So he really needs them all. That’s what the last four years has been for. Figure out who has any other levers besides greed of fear, and get them out. Keep Graham and Cruz and all the rest like them, who are amoral and predatory, and Collins and her ilk who can be terrorized.

3. Suppose people decide to object, and want to take to the streets. Really a terrible time to have Esper running DOD. He wouldn’t sic the US armed forces on them. So find some quasi-fascist brigadier general who thinks might is not merely right, but Everything. Of course, you have to goad people and try to provoke them, so that the lower-downs in the military will be willing to take orders, not because they think the orders are moral, but because they feel threatened and are trying to protect themselves and each other. That’s always how you co-opt soldiers.

I look at the footage of old civil rights protestors, singing, dancing, and clapping while being herded into paddy wagons, after generations of abuse, and I cannot imagine a large cross-section of Americans today with the discipline to do the same if provoked. So goading a few people into violence, and then using that to excuse a military lockdown, doesn’t seem out of reach.

Does anyone, anywhere, think the thing to make this unrealistic would be trump’s getting cold feet or having qualms? If so, then I think that person is on the wrong side of a factual evaluation that has nothing to do with values or character. One of the two positions is right.

The rest is really a calculation. How degraded are the other needed actors, and how wide is the margin of error for the ones who would try it? There people could have opinions deriving from their own characters or their beliefs in the characters of others, which I can easily see disagreeing. It also may not have a deterministic answer, but boil down to accidents of circumstance. So the disagreement could reasonably reflect this too.

Dunno. If you can read enough news to know that S. Korea exists, how can your intelligence lead you to believe either that trump and co have done this well, or that if they haven’t it’s no big deal? That to me does not seem to be a question about ideology.

Eric

On Nov 11, 2020, at 5:50 PM, Stephen Guerin <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus,

Do you have close friend or family member with strong character and high intelligence that is also a Trump voter? My brother-in-law is a submarine captain. It was helpful to have a 3-hour call with him last night.

I come away with the idea that his mental model is not opposed to mine...it's more of a dual to mine on which future Action can be defined :-)

-Stephen

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 11:35 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states.   That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable.   It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them.   They made a deal with the devil.   It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus

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jon zingale

Re: Biden beats Trump

"bitch, you knew I was a snake"
- the little prince by way of natural born killers.

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jon zingale

Re: Biden beats Trump

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuHK8iROgJ0&ab_channel=emilbraun

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thompnickson2

Re: Biden beats Trump

In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2

Eric quoted:

After that, the phrase was fully ensconced in political short-hand and quickly claimed by liberals as a positive trait.

Really. I have always used it as a term of [self] mockery for a kind of low-cost left-wing concern for the disadvantaged. Whenever I use the word, I always hear bill Clinton saying, “ Ah Fail yoor pa-ayn.”

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 7:03 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

About time to look this up... https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/origin-bleeding-heart-liberal

Before the 20th century, the phrase “bleeding heart” was popular in the religious-tinged oratory of 19th century America. Throughout the 1860s, it comes up often in poetry, essays, and political speeches, as an expression of empathy and emotion. “I come to you with a bleeding heart, honest and sincere motives, desiring to give you some plain thoughts,” said one politician in an 1862 speech. The phrase comes from the religious image of Christ’s wounded heart, which symbolizes his compassion and love. It was a common enough phrase that London has a “Bleeding Heart Yard” (featured prominently in the Dickens novel Little Dorrit) which is named after a long-gone sign, once displayed at a local pub, that showed the Sacred Heart.

By the 1930s, though, the phrase had fallen out of common use and Pegler, who one politician called a “soul-sick, mud-wallowing gutter scum columnist,” recruited it into a new context, as a political insult. He was a master of this art.... Pegler first used “bleeding heart” in a column castigating liberals in Washington for their focus on “a bill to provide penalties for lynchings.” Pegler wasn’t for lynchings, per se, but he argued that they were no longer a problem the federal government should solve: there had only been eight lynchings in 1937, he wrote, and “it is obvious that the evil is being cured by local processes.” The bill, he thought, was being “used as a political bait in crowded northern Negro centers.” And here was his conclusion, emphasis ours:

“I question the humanitarianism of any professional or semi-pro bleeding heart who clamors that not a single person must be allowed to hunger but would stall the entire legislative program in a fight to ham through a law intended, at the most optimistic figure, to save fourteen lives a year.”

.... “Bleeding heart” was revived in a political context in 1954, by another infamous right-winger, Joe McCarthy, who called Edward R. Murrow one of the “extreme Left Wing bleeding-heart elements of television and radio.” It wasn’t until the 1960s that it really started to come into common use, though... By the end of the decade, Ronald Reagan, then newly elected governor of California, had picked it up as a way to describe his political trajectory. “I was quite the bleeding-heart liberal once,” he told Newsweek. By 1970, he was known as a “former ‘bleeding heart’ Democrat.”

After that, the phrase was fully ensconced in political short-hand and quickly claimed by liberals as a positive trait.

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 7:49 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

People like Barr and Pompeo are happy to exploit the consequences of Trump’s financial desperation for their authoritarian agenda. Authoritarianism is not an uncommon personality trait – they would find support in the population. Trump just wants to be the winner, but at any cost.   At some level it is just ridiculous.   But he sees ruin on the horizon and his family sees ruin on the horizon.   With the people around him, it is a dangerous situation. Hopefully Biden has deep allies in government from his long career and isn’t just bluffing with his current sense of calm.

To resist a plausible scenario like you lay out, enough people need to wake up and plan how to stop them. They would have to admit that norms have collapsed and their countrymen had just gone insane.   It is stupid to be goaded into open violence, but if things really went off the rails, I think it is naive to believe violence could be completely avoided.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2020 3:11 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

So at some point, too, though, there are actual facts and things and events in the world, which aren’t just cut from the fabric of human impression and attitude.

Suppose the following; as I was walking thisPM, after finally watching the Van Jones TED that Glen circulated, it seemed quite believable to me.

1. Suppose what Van sketches is actually the plan. Trump plans to instigate a constitutional crisis. I think he is capable of planning to that degree of complexity and on that time horizon. And I have no reason in the world not to think Bill Barr would be down with the lark, and could advise him on the law to do it. I’m not sure Pompeo has the same background, but in character I expect he would think it is a great idea.

2. Then we wind up in congress. He doesn’t have a huge margin; there are only 26 republican representatives (or whatever the name is for them). So he really needs them all. That’s what the last four years has been for. Figure out who has any other levers besides greed of fear, and get them out. Keep Graham and Cruz and all the rest like them, who are amoral and predatory, and Collins and her ilk who can be terrorized.

3. Suppose people decide to object, and want to take to the streets. Really a terrible time to have Esper running DOD. He wouldn’t sic the US armed forces on them. So find some quasi-fascist brigadier general who thinks might is not merely right, but Everything. Of course, you have to goad people and try to provoke them, so that the lower-downs in the military will be willing to take orders, not because they think the orders are moral, but because they feel threatened and are trying to protect themselves and each other. That’s always how you co-opt soldiers.

I look at the footage of old civil rights protestors, singing, dancing, and clapping while being herded into paddy wagons, after generations of abuse, and I cannot imagine a large cross-section of Americans today with the discipline to do the same if provoked. So goading a few people into violence, and then using that to excuse a military lockdown, doesn’t seem out of reach.

Does anyone, anywhere, think the thing to make this unrealistic would be trump’s getting cold feet or having qualms? If so, then I think that person is on the wrong side of a factual evaluation that has nothing to do with values or character. One of the two positions is right.

The rest is really a calculation. How degraded are the other needed actors, and how wide is the margin of error for the ones who would try it? There people could have opinions deriving from their own characters or their beliefs in the characters of others, which I can easily see disagreeing. It also may not have a deterministic answer, but boil down to accidents of circumstance. So the disagreement could reasonably reflect this too.

Dunno. If you can read enough news to know that S. Korea exists, how can your intelligence lead you to believe either that trump and co have done this well, or that if they haven’t it’s no big deal? That to me does not seem to be a question about ideology.

Eric

On Nov 11, 2020, at 5:50 PM, Stephen Guerin <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus,

Do you have close friend or family member with strong character and high intelligence that is also a Trump voter? My brother-in-law is a submarine captain. It was helpful to have a 3-hour call with him last night.

I come away with the idea that his mental model is not opposed to mine...it's more of a dual to mine on which future Action can be defined :-)

-Stephen

On Wed, Nov 11, 2020 at 11:35 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states.   That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable.   It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them.   They made a deal with the devil.   It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus
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David Eric Smith

Re: Biden beats Trump

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

All this, too, turns on things that are facts of the matter.

Roger’s post is of course both excellent and empathetic, and when I read it I wanted to just say thanks for it.

Marcus’s counterpoint I also agree with.

But at the end of the day, whether your decision is good or bad turns on what it accomplishes in the actual world of events, relative to other decisions you could make.

Fighting public health measures because you are bitter does not get you back to work sooner. Indeed, it does nothing materially good for anybody. That seems to be a fairly easy fact from which to start. Taiwan never had a shutdown. Japan never had a lockdown, and even in metropolitan Tokyo, where infection density was probably one of the worst two areas (the other being up around Sapporo, per million), there was about a month of business shutdown. One time. I forget or didn’t learn details about S. Korea, but I think they never had a broad or ongoing lockdown; maybe short local ones at most, and some business suspensions. Those countries will have public health costs, a period of broad-based business costs, and sector-specific longer-term severe business costs in areas like bars or nightclubs or karaoke parlors, etc. It will be heavy but it need not lead to a depression. If vaccines work, the duration of the really bad sector impact will be measured in years, but not be permanent.

The US, by refusing to spend 10G$ in mitigation at the beginning, followed by wallowing in indulgence of wounded vanities, has now spent 2.4T$ in extra unemployment, and probably needs to spend something on that order more. It will go on, in the best case, for a year from the start. Plus they need to pay the public health support costs, which are much higher than they were at the start. The ones with market power can push the exploitation curve harder and harder, so that the stock markets remain high while unemployment and all three of personal, business, and government debt climb and climb, but at some point no amount of market power will compensate for the reality that debt service has consumed all the income workers can generate, and they are not extended any more revolving credit. For the US government, I guess something like that will happen when foreign lenders compute that it will be mechanistically impossible for the US to repay any further loans they make to it by buying government debt. I have in mind the picture of core collapse at the end of the red giant phase of stellar lifecycles, that leads to supernovae. I don’t see anything that escapes from just these accounting identities, which turn on what has already been spent.

To be sure, there are better and worse decisions going forward. Money on testing is nearly money poured down a well when you have as many cases as we now do; the return is much less because you are dabbing your eyes with a hanky while standing out in a downpour. So some strategic and focused use, with emphasis on very low-cost surveillance tests, combined with heavy public health behavior pressure, is probably all that pays. All other money in public health goes into vaccine distribution supply chains, I guess.

The other major area, I take from one of Shubik’s themes. He always emphasized (as I have said on this list before) that the government has two roles in an economy. One is as the setter of rules of the game; the other is as large coordinated player in the game. So, e.g. monetary versus fiscal policy. Monetary is setting the rate of interest for central-bank borrowing, which doesn’t set the money in the society but affects the rates at which private actors can choose to change it. Fiscal is government spending, “quantitative easing” by buying troubled debt, issuing government bonds, and so forth.

Similarly, Shubik used to say repeatedly that there should be a Federal Jobs Program, which is not equally activated all the time, but is a source of emergency employment stability during down-cycles. One could pick things like discretionary infrastructure repair, which is not the highest priority during boom times, when some of that can be done through private companies, but is a useful thing to pay people to do during employment crises because it gives predictable income and gets something done that was needed anyway. I would put retooling to non-fossil energy storage and distribution systems, with worker re-training to do it, in that category too. Two birds with one stone.

To me, where that fits in is in parallel to the rules/player distinction. Supporting re-formation of collective bargaining to try to rein in the productivity-pay gap, or minimum wage laws, are regulatory roles. On the long term, they are necessary, but they are too slow to save this administration from being swamped again in a backlash midterm, and then getting replaced by the true antichrist in the next presidential. Direct hiring with a federal jobs program is the only thing I can see where the government can act fast enough, on large enough scale, to deliver to the blue-collar formerly-democratic voting bloc a real reason to support that administration.

Similarly, I have head complaining, but not done the work to know how much of it is true, that business loan-support is getting in significant part siphoned off by people who don’t really need it, to the exclusion of many who do. There is some new micro-data modeling consortium involving some Harvard professors and somebody else (heard in a snippet on NPR) to try to micro-target the next round of bailout money (unemployment and business support) to where it is really needed. But one could say that one way to avoid the overhead of skimming that comes with giving it to the private sector, is to try to identify areas where the government can just directly employ the privately unemployed. It then controls the wages and is sue they end up with the workers. That’s not a great solution, because it leaves the private business that employed them in the lurch, so some other layer would be needed to tide those people over in a sort of dormant or tun state. But in terms of cost per output, it seems that it recovers certain losses that have been major leakages in the style of spending done so far.

Not to claim that any of this is easy or that I see what should be done (I don’t have either the knowledge or the expertise). But it does seem that there are more mechanisms available than those being used. It also seems that distinguishing the timescales between the government’s impact as setter of rules of the game, versus as player in the game, gives a starting point when trying to figure out how to regain some electoral stability and give the Dems enough of a footprint in rural areas to be allowed to actually do work that would help anybody.

What I say above may or may not be correct. I put it forth as an example of a kind of argument that one can try to make, because SOMETHING is actually correct, and one can try to figure out what that is.

If the battleground or red-stater’s way of life is to be permanently angry, support the abusers who make their situations even worse, then get angrier as a result and support even worse abusers, they may be sincere, but I think it is a completely non-ideological thing to argue that they are not pursuing the best course of action that exists. And the existence of other countries (which one can read about on the internet!) is sufficient evidence that something is possible, that an ordinary person ought to be capable of knowing it is not a law of physics that things have to be exactly as bad as they currently are here. That’s where I attach to Marcus’s rebuttal that they can be understood for being angry and desperate, but they don’t get a pass for wallowing in it.

Anyway,

Eric

On Nov 11, 2020, at 1:35 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states. That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable. It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them. They made a deal with the devil. It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus
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thompnickson2

Re: Biden beats Trump

EricS,

Agreed, 99 and 44/100ths, except where you say,

That’s where I attach to Marcus’s rebuttal that they can be understood for being angry and desperate, but they don’t get a pass for wallowing in it.

At this point, any psychologist in the room will ask you (and/or Marcus), What is your moral judgment of THEM doing for YOU?

That’s NOT a rhetorical question. It has an answer. Presumably the answer has something to do with steeling yourself, not in Glen’s sense of that word. But steeling yourself against WHAT? If I never thought or felt that particular WHAT, would I need to steel myself against it?

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2020 6:59 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Cc: David Eric Smith <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

All this, too, turns on things that are facts of the matter.

Roger’s post is of course both excellent and empathetic, and when I read it I wanted to just say thanks for it.

Marcus’s counterpoint I also agree with.

But at the end of the day, whether your decision is good or bad turns on what it accomplishes in the actual world of events, relative to other decisions you could make.

Anyway,

Eric

On Nov 11, 2020, at 1:35 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states. That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable. It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them. They made a deal with the devil. It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus
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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Biden beats Trump

"At this point, any psychologist in the room will ask you (and/or Marcus), What is your moral judgment of THEM doing for YOU?"

It is important to have a clear categorization of whether a situation is a civil disagreement or a zombie apocalypse.

Marcus

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of [hidden email] <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2020 9:35 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

EricS,

Agreed, 99 and 44/100ths, except where you say,

That’s where I attach to Marcus’s rebuttal that they can be understood for being angry and desperate, but they don’t get a pass for wallowing in it.

At this point, any psychologist in the room will ask you (and/or Marcus), What is your moral judgment of THEM doing for YOU?

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

All this, too, turns on things that are facts of the matter.

Roger’s post is of course both excellent and empathetic, and when I read it I wanted to just say thanks for it.

Marcus’s counterpoint I also agree with.

But at the end of the day, whether your decision is good or bad turns on what it accomplishes in the actual world of events, relative to other decisions you could make.

Anyway,

Eric

On Nov 11, 2020, at 1:35 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states. That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable. It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them. They made a deal with the devil. It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus

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David Eric Smith

Re: Biden beats Trump

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

It’s not a moral judgement of anybody, Nick.

It is rather a sense that the world of human interconnection is a house of mirrors. It wants to be stable, but it can be stable on anything. Acknowledging Glen’s takedown of the Medium article on conspiracy theories and their adherents, I found the article thought-provoking, because it emphasized how humans need to be part of a fabric, but the self-reference in that fabric makes it really easy to detach from any particular mooring.

Given only that, there is no remedy for anything. So at some point, the requirement is to remain calm in an emergency, as Wendell Berry says, and ask where is the path out of it all.

And to that I say, at the end of the day, trying to solve problems is the path out. It is the only path out. To really do that is only possible through acting in good faith, so staying committed to solving something is also a stabilizer for acting in good faith. Everything else can rage around in emotional turmoil and conflict, and if you let go of the goal, you just get swept away in it all. So to keep one’s vision on solving a problem, and to test Am I being real? Is everything.

So in a simple practical sense, that is one standard from which none of us is freed. That’s what I mean by “not getting a pass”. I know it’s understandable that people behave self-destructively; we are familiar with people. But at the Darwinian end of the day, there is the spiral or there is the way out. That’s all.

Best,

Eric

On Nov 12, 2020, at 11:35 AM, <[hidden email]> <[hidden email]> wrote:

EricS,

Agreed, 99 and 44/100ths, except where you say,

That’s where I attach to Marcus’s rebuttal that they can be understood for being angry and desperate, but they don’t get a pass for wallowing in it.

At this point, any psychologist in the room will ask you (and/or Marcus), What is your moral judgment of THEM doing for YOU?

That’s NOT a rhetorical question. It has an answer. Presumably the answer has something to do with steeling yourself, not in Glen’s sense of that word. But steeling yourself against WHAT? If I never thought or felt that particular WHAT, would I need to steel myself against it?

n

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2020 6:59 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Cc: David Eric Smith <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

All this, too, turns on things that are facts of the matter.

Roger’s post is of course both excellent and empathetic, and when I read it I wanted to just say thanks for it.

Marcus’s counterpoint I also agree with.

But at the end of the day, whether your decision is good or bad turns on what it accomplishes in the actual world of events, relative to other decisions you could make.

Fighting public health measures because you are bitter does not get you back to work sooner. Indeed, it does nothing materially good for anybody. That seems to be a fairly easy fact from which to start. Taiwan never had a shutdown. Japan never had a lockdown, and even in metropolitan Tokyo, where infection density was probably one of the worst two areas (the other being up around Sapporo, per million), there was about a month of business shutdown. One time. I forget or didn’t learn details about S. Korea, but I think they never had a broad or ongoing lockdown; maybe short local ones at most, and some business suspensions. Those countries will have public health costs, a period of broad-based business costs, and sector-specific longer-term severe business costs in areas like bars or nightclubs or karaoke parlors, etc. It will be heavy but it need not lead to a depression. If vaccines work, the duration of the really bad sector impact will be measured in years, but not be permanent.

The US, by refusing to spend 10G$ in mitigation at the beginning, followed by wallowing in indulgence of wounded vanities, has now spent 2.4T$ in extra unemployment, and probably needs to spend something on that order more. It will go on, in the best case, for a year from the start. Plus they need to pay the public health support costs, which are much higher than they were at the start. The ones with market power can push the exploitation curve harder and harder, so that the stock markets remain high while unemployment and all three of personal, business, and government debt climb and climb, but at some point no amount of market power will compensate for the reality that debt service has consumed all the income workers can generate, and they are not extended any more revolving credit. For the US government, I guess something like that will happen when foreign lenders compute that it will be mechanistically impossible for the US to repay any further loans they make to it by buying government debt. I have in mind the picture of core collapse at the end of the red giant phase of stellar lifecycles, that leads to supernovae. I don’t see anything that escapes from just these accounting identities, which turn on what has already been spent.

To be sure, there are better and worse decisions going forward. Money on testing is nearly money poured down a well when you have as many cases as we now do; the return is much less because you are dabbing your eyes with a hanky while standing out in a downpour. So some strategic and focused use, with emphasis on very low-cost surveillance tests, combined with heavy public health behavior pressure, is probably all that pays. All other money in public health goes into vaccine distribution supply chains, I guess.

The other major area, I take from one of Shubik’s themes. He always emphasized (as I have said on this list before) that the government has two roles in an economy. One is as the setter of rules of the game; the other is as large coordinated player in the game. So, e.g. monetary versus fiscal policy. Monetary is setting the rate of interest for central-bank borrowing, which doesn’t set the money in the society but affects the rates at which private actors can choose to change it. Fiscal is government spending, “quantitative easing” by buying troubled debt, issuing government bonds, and so forth.

Similarly, Shubik used to say repeatedly that there should be a Federal Jobs Program, which is not equally activated all the time, but is a source of emergency employment stability during down-cycles. One could pick things like discretionary infrastructure repair, which is not the highest priority during boom times, when some of that can be done through private companies, but is a useful thing to pay people to do during employment crises because it gives predictable income and gets something done that was needed anyway. I would put retooling to non-fossil energy storage and distribution systems, with worker re-training to do it, in that category too. Two birds with one stone.

To me, where that fits in is in parallel to the rules/player distinction. Supporting re-formation of collective bargaining to try to rein in the productivity-pay gap, or minimum wage laws, are regulatory roles. On the long term, they are necessary, but they are too slow to save this administration from being swamped again in a backlash midterm, and then getting replaced by the true antichrist in the next presidential. Direct hiring with a federal jobs program is the only thing I can see where the government can act fast enough, on large enough scale, to deliver to the blue-collar formerly-democratic voting bloc a real reason to support that administration.

Similarly, I have head complaining, but not done the work to know how much of it is true, that business loan-support is getting in significant part siphoned off by people who don’t really need it, to the exclusion of many who do. There is some new micro-data modeling consortium involving some Harvard professors and somebody else (heard in a snippet on NPR) to try to micro-target the next round of bailout money (unemployment and business support) to where it is really needed. But one could say that one way to avoid the overhead of skimming that comes with giving it to the private sector, is to try to identify areas where the government can just directly employ the privately unemployed. It then controls the wages and is sue they end up with the workers. That’s not a great solution, because it leaves the private business that employed them in the lurch, so some other layer would be needed to tide those people over in a sort of dormant or tun state. But in terms of cost per output, it seems that it recovers certain losses that have been major leakages in the style of spending done so far.

Not to claim that any of this is easy or that I see what should be done (I don’t have either the knowledge or the expertise). But it does seem that there are more mechanisms available than those being used. It also seems that distinguishing the timescales between the government’s impact as setter of rules of the game, versus as player in the game, gives a starting point when trying to figure out how to regain some electoral stability and give the Dems enough of a footprint in rural areas to be allowed to actually do work that would help anybody.

What I say above may or may not be correct. I put it forth as an example of a kind of argument that one can try to make, because SOMETHING is actually correct, and one can try to figure out what that is.

If the battleground or red-stater’s way of life is to be permanently angry, support the abusers who make their situations even worse, then get angrier as a result and support even worse abusers, they may be sincere, but I think it is a completely non-ideological thing to argue that they are not pursuing the best course of action that exists. And the existence of other countries (which one can read about on the internet!) is sufficient evidence that something is possible, that an ordinary person ought to be capable of knowing it is not a law of physics that things have to be exactly as bad as they currently are here. That’s where I attach to Marcus’s rebuttal that they can be understood for being angry and desperate, but they don’t get a pass for wallowing in it.

Anyway,

Eric

On Nov 11, 2020, at 1:35 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states. That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable. It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them. They made a deal with the devil. It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus
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Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Biden beats Trump

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

"But steeling yourself against WHAT?"

The impulse to do the same thing. Being judgemental is so human that Jesus warned against it. I don't usually quote him but...

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 9:36 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

EricS,

Agreed, 99 and 44/100ths, except where you say,

That’s where I attach to Marcus’s rebuttal that they can be understood for being angry and desperate, but they don’t get a pass for wallowing in it.

At this point, any psychologist in the room will ask you (and/or Marcus), What is your moral judgment of THEM doing for YOU?

That’s NOT a rhetorical question. It has an answer. Presumably the answer has something to do with steeling yourself, not in Glen’s sense of that word. But steeling yourself against WHAT? If I never thought or felt that particular WHAT, would I need to steel myself against it?

n

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2020 6:59 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Cc: David Eric Smith <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

All this, too, turns on things that are facts of the matter.

Roger’s post is of course both excellent and empathetic, and when I read it I wanted to just say thanks for it.

Marcus’s counterpoint I also agree with.

But at the end of the day, whether your decision is good or bad turns on what it accomplishes in the actual world of events, relative to other decisions you could make.

Fighting public health measures because you are bitter does not get you back to work sooner. Indeed, it does nothing materially good for anybody. That seems to be a fairly easy fact from which to start. Taiwan never had a shutdown. Japan never had a lockdown, and even in metropolitan Tokyo, where infection density was probably one of the worst two areas (the other being up around Sapporo, per million), there was about a month of business shutdown. One time. I forget or didn’t learn details about S. Korea, but I think they never had a broad or ongoing lockdown; maybe short local ones at most, and some business suspensions. Those countries will have public health costs, a period of broad-based business costs, and sector-specific longer-term severe business costs in areas like bars or nightclubs or karaoke parlors, etc. It will be heavy but it need not lead to a depression. If vaccines work, the duration of the really bad sector impact will be measured in years, but not be permanent.

The US, by refusing to spend 10G$ in mitigation at the beginning, followed by wallowing in indulgence of wounded vanities, has now spent 2.4T$ in extra unemployment, and probably needs to spend something on that order more. It will go on, in the best case, for a year from the start. Plus they need to pay the public health support costs, which are much higher than they were at the start. The ones with market power can push the exploitation curve harder and harder, so that the stock markets remain high while unemployment and all three of personal, business, and government debt climb and climb, but at some point no amount of market power will compensate for the reality that debt service has consumed all the income workers can generate, and they are not extended any more revolving credit. For the US government, I guess something like that will happen when foreign lenders compute that it will be mechanistically impossible for the US to repay any further loans they make to it by buying government debt. I have in mind the picture of core collapse at the end of the red giant phase of stellar lifecycles, that leads to supernovae. I don’t see anything that escapes from just these accounting identities, which turn on what has already been spent.

To be sure, there are better and worse decisions going forward. Money on testing is nearly money poured down a well when you have as many cases as we now do; the return is much less because you are dabbing your eyes with a hanky while standing out in a downpour. So some strategic and focused use, with emphasis on very low-cost surveillance tests, combined with heavy public health behavior pressure, is probably all that pays. All other money in public health goes into vaccine distribution supply chains, I guess.

The other major area, I take from one of Shubik’s themes. He always emphasized (as I have said on this list before) that the government has two roles in an economy. One is as the setter of rules of the game; the other is as large coordinated player in the game. So, e.g. monetary versus fiscal policy. Monetary is setting the rate of interest for central-bank borrowing, which doesn’t set the money in the society but affects the rates at which private actors can choose to change it. Fiscal is government spending, “quantitative easing” by buying troubled debt, issuing government bonds, and so forth.

Similarly, Shubik used to say repeatedly that there should be a Federal Jobs Program, which is not equally activated all the time, but is a source of emergency employment stability during down-cycles. One could pick things like discretionary infrastructure repair, which is not the highest priority during boom times, when some of that can be done through private companies, but is a useful thing to pay people to do during employment crises because it gives predictable income and gets something done that was needed anyway. I would put retooling to non-fossil energy storage and distribution systems, with worker re-training to do it, in that category too. Two birds with one stone.

To me, where that fits in is in parallel to the rules/player distinction. Supporting re-formation of collective bargaining to try to rein in the productivity-pay gap, or minimum wage laws, are regulatory roles. On the long term, they are necessary, but they are too slow to save this administration from being swamped again in a backlash midterm, and then getting replaced by the true antichrist in the next presidential. Direct hiring with a federal jobs program is the only thing I can see where the government can act fast enough, on large enough scale, to deliver to the blue-collar formerly-democratic voting bloc a real reason to support that administration.

Similarly, I have head complaining, but not done the work to know how much of it is true, that business loan-support is getting in significant part siphoned off by people who don’t really need it, to the exclusion of many who do. There is some new micro-data modeling consortium involving some Harvard professors and somebody else (heard in a snippet on NPR) to try to micro-target the next round of bailout money (unemployment and business support) to where it is really needed. But one could say that one way to avoid the overhead of skimming that comes with giving it to the private sector, is to try to identify areas where the government can just directly employ the privately unemployed. It then controls the wages and is sue they end up with the workers. That’s not a great solution, because it leaves the private business that employed them in the lurch, so some other layer would be needed to tide those people over in a sort of dormant or tun state. But in terms of cost per output, it seems that it recovers certain losses that have been major leakages in the style of spending done so far.

Not to claim that any of this is easy or that I see what should be done (I don’t have either the knowledge or the expertise). But it does seem that there are more mechanisms available than those being used. It also seems that distinguishing the timescales between the government’s impact as setter of rules of the game, versus as player in the game, gives a starting point when trying to figure out how to regain some electoral stability and give the Dems enough of a footprint in rural areas to be allowed to actually do work that would help anybody.

What I say above may or may not be correct. I put it forth as an example of a kind of argument that one can try to make, because SOMETHING is actually correct, and one can try to figure out what that is.

If the battleground or red-stater’s way of life is to be permanently angry, support the abusers who make their situations even worse, then get angrier as a result and support even worse abusers, they may be sincere, but I think it is a completely non-ideological thing to argue that they are not pursuing the best course of action that exists. And the existence of other countries (which one can read about on the internet!) is sufficient evidence that something is possible, that an ordinary person ought to be capable of knowing it is not a law of physics that things have to be exactly as bad as they currently are here. That’s where I attach to Marcus’s rebuttal that they can be understood for being angry and desperate, but they don’t get a pass for wallowing in it.

Anyway,

Eric

On Nov 11, 2020, at 1:35 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states. That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable. It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them. They made a deal with the devil. It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus
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thompnickson2

Re: Biden beats Trump

Frank,

Ok, but, let’s look at that impulse. Is it the impulse to sympathize? Why is that so scary? Sympathy is informative, not paralyzing. Can one not feel sympathy for the rabid dog just exactly at the moment one kills it? Somebody ran over a cat in our yard, once, crushed it’s hindquarters. I felt tremendous sympathy for the cat, and so I killed it. For sympathy to be paralyzing, there has to be one more premise, and I cannot identify that additional premise. Anger, hate, contempt, etc., are assertions of an ought. Oughts only work in the context of trying to incite others to a common action. As commands to the self, they make no sense what so ever. So, unless you are standing in front of crowd, trying to get them to lynch somebody, these emotions are self-blinding. Now, I suppose, self-blinding is useful, when you just don’t want to fuck with subtleties of life, but nothing about them can be claimed as rational. Right? What is the additional premise that turns my empathy into something I should not feel.

Kim, help me out, here.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2020 10:53 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

"But steeling yourself against WHAT?"

The impulse to do the same thing. Being judgemental is so human that Jesus warned against it. I don't usually quote him but...

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 9:36 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

EricS,

Agreed, 99 and 44/100ths, except where you say,

That’s where I attach to Marcus’s rebuttal that they can be understood for being angry and desperate, but they don’t get a pass for wallowing in it.

At this point, any psychologist in the room will ask you (and/or Marcus), What is your moral judgment of THEM doing for YOU?

That’s NOT a rhetorical question. It has an answer. Presumably the answer has something to do with steeling yourself, not in Glen’s sense of that word. But steeling yourself against WHAT? If I never thought or felt that particular WHAT, would I need to steel myself against it?

n

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2020 6:59 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Cc: David Eric Smith <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

All this, too, turns on things that are facts of the matter.

Roger’s post is of course both excellent and empathetic, and when I read it I wanted to just say thanks for it.

Marcus’s counterpoint I also agree with.

But at the end of the day, whether your decision is good or bad turns on what it accomplishes in the actual world of events, relative to other decisions you could make.

Fighting public health measures because you are bitter does not get you back to work sooner. Indeed, it does nothing materially good for anybody. That seems to be a fairly easy fact from which to start. Taiwan never had a shutdown. Japan never had a lockdown, and even in metropolitan Tokyo, where infection density was probably one of the worst two areas (the other being up around Sapporo, per million), there was about a month of business shutdown. One time. I forget or didn’t learn details about S. Korea, but I think they never had a broad or ongoing lockdown; maybe short local ones at most, and some business suspensions. Those countries will have public health costs, a period of broad-based business costs, and sector-specific longer-term severe business costs in areas like bars or nightclubs or karaoke parlors, etc. It will be heavy but it need not lead to a depression. If vaccines work, the duration of the really bad sector impact will be measured in years, but not be permanent.

The US, by refusing to spend 10G$ in mitigation at the beginning, followed by wallowing in indulgence of wounded vanities, has now spent 2.4T$ in extra unemployment, and probably needs to spend something on that order more. It will go on, in the best case, for a year from the start. Plus they need to pay the public health support costs, which are much higher than they were at the start. The ones with market power can push the exploitation curve harder and harder, so that the stock markets remain high while unemployment and all three of personal, business, and government debt climb and climb, but at some point no amount of market power will compensate for the reality that debt service has consumed all the income workers can generate, and they are not extended any more revolving credit. For the US government, I guess something like that will happen when foreign lenders compute that it will be mechanistically impossible for the US to repay any further loans they make to it by buying government debt. I have in mind the picture of core collapse at the end of the red giant phase of stellar lifecycles, that leads to supernovae. I don’t see anything that escapes from just these accounting identities, which turn on what has already been spent.

To be sure, there are better and worse decisions going forward. Money on testing is nearly money poured down a well when you have as many cases as we now do; the return is much less because you are dabbing your eyes with a hanky while standing out in a downpour. So some strategic and focused use, with emphasis on very low-cost surveillance tests, combined with heavy public health behavior pressure, is probably all that pays. All other money in public health goes into vaccine distribution supply chains, I guess.

The other major area, I take from one of Shubik’s themes. He always emphasized (as I have said on this list before) that the government has two roles in an economy. One is as the setter of rules of the game; the other is as large coordinated player in the game. So, e.g. monetary versus fiscal policy. Monetary is setting the rate of interest for central-bank borrowing, which doesn’t set the money in the society but affects the rates at which private actors can choose to change it. Fiscal is government spending, “quantitative easing” by buying troubled debt, issuing government bonds, and so forth.

Similarly, Shubik used to say repeatedly that there should be a Federal Jobs Program, which is not equally activated all the time, but is a source of emergency employment stability during down-cycles. One could pick things like discretionary infrastructure repair, which is not the highest priority during boom times, when some of that can be done through private companies, but is a useful thing to pay people to do during employment crises because it gives predictable income and gets something done that was needed anyway. I would put retooling to non-fossil energy storage and distribution systems, with worker re-training to do it, in that category too. Two birds with one stone.

To me, where that fits in is in parallel to the rules/player distinction. Supporting re-formation of collective bargaining to try to rein in the productivity-pay gap, or minimum wage laws, are regulatory roles. On the long term, they are necessary, but they are too slow to save this administration from being swamped again in a backlash midterm, and then getting replaced by the true antichrist in the next presidential. Direct hiring with a federal jobs program is the only thing I can see where the government can act fast enough, on large enough scale, to deliver to the blue-collar formerly-democratic voting bloc a real reason to support that administration.

Similarly, I have head complaining, but not done the work to know how much of it is true, that business loan-support is getting in significant part siphoned off by people who don’t really need it, to the exclusion of many who do. There is some new micro-data modeling consortium involving some Harvard professors and somebody else (heard in a snippet on NPR) to try to micro-target the next round of bailout money (unemployment and business support) to where it is really needed. But one could say that one way to avoid the overhead of skimming that comes with giving it to the private sector, is to try to identify areas where the government can just directly employ the privately unemployed. It then controls the wages and is sue they end up with the workers. That’s not a great solution, because it leaves the private business that employed them in the lurch, so some other layer would be needed to tide those people over in a sort of dormant or tun state. But in terms of cost per output, it seems that it recovers certain losses that have been major leakages in the style of spending done so far.

Not to claim that any of this is easy or that I see what should be done (I don’t have either the knowledge or the expertise). But it does seem that there are more mechanisms available than those being used. It also seems that distinguishing the timescales between the government’s impact as setter of rules of the game, versus as player in the game, gives a starting point when trying to figure out how to regain some electoral stability and give the Dems enough of a footprint in rural areas to be allowed to actually do work that would help anybody.

What I say above may or may not be correct. I put it forth as an example of a kind of argument that one can try to make, because SOMETHING is actually correct, and one can try to figure out what that is.

If the battleground or red-stater’s way of life is to be permanently angry, support the abusers who make their situations even worse, then get angrier as a result and support even worse abusers, they may be sincere, but I think it is a completely non-ideological thing to argue that they are not pursuing the best course of action that exists. And the existence of other countries (which one can read about on the internet!) is sufficient evidence that something is possible, that an ordinary person ought to be capable of knowing it is not a law of physics that things have to be exactly as bad as they currently are here. That’s where I attach to Marcus’s rebuttal that they can be understood for being angry and desperate, but they don’t get a pass for wallowing in it.

Anyway,

Eric

On Nov 11, 2020, at 1:35 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states. That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable. It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them. They made a deal with the devil. It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus
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gepr

Re: Biden beats Trump

There's so much that's so wrong I can't let it go uncommented. Everything you say (in almost every post) seems to factor out *time*. When you say "As commands to the self, [anger, hate, contempt, etc.] make no sense what so ever", you're speaking as if the Nick of 20 years ago is the exact identical Nick as the present Nick, which is so wrong as to be laughable.

Your ill-expressed point is that the empathy/sympathy emotions for Trump supporters are not under your intentional control. And you seem to be saying that those of us who claim we shouldn't "spare" any empathy/sympathy are either in denial or self-blinding or somesuch. Again, that ignores *time*. Sure, I feel empathy for some of them, someTIMES. But I don't for others of them, at other times.

If you've ever extracted yourself from an abusive relationship, you should understand this episodic concept. If you have never had such a relationship, then you are the luckiest person I've ever met. The longer the idiocy goes on, the less empathy I feel, the fewer episodes of empathy I experience. The abuser only has so much time to change his ways before I explode and murder him in his sleep, my tears of sympathy mixing with his blood.

Maybe the additional premise is that there is such a thing as time and evolution? It's weird that someone who talks about things like MOTH would fail to understand that, though.

On 11/12/20 9:57 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> Ok, but, let’s look at that impulse. Is it the impulse to sympathize? Why is that so scary? Sympathy is informative, not paralyzing. Can one not feel sympathy for the rabid dog just exactly at the moment one kills it? Somebody ran over a cat in our yard, once, crushed it’s hindquarters. I felt tremendous sympathy for the cat, /and so I killed it. / For sympathy to be paralyzing, there has to be one more premise, and I cannot identify that additional premise. Anger, hate, contempt, etc., are assertions of an ought. Oughts only work in the context of trying to incite others to a common action. As commands to the self, they make no sense what so ever. So, unless you are standing in front of crowd, trying to get them to lynch somebody, these emotions are self-blinding. Now, I suppose, self-blinding is useful, when you just don’t want to fuck with subtleties of life, but nothing about them can be claimed as rational. Right? What is the additional premise that turns my
> empathy into something I should not feel.

--
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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Biden beats Trump

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

I think you should feel empathy and if you feel judgemental you should understand it's because of your own impulse to behave in the same way as the judged person.

In my opinion.

Frank

On Thu, Nov 12, 2020 at 10:58 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Frank,
Ok, but, let’s look at that impulse. Is it the impulse to sympathize? Why is that so scary? Sympathy is informative, not paralyzing. Can one not feel sympathy for the rabid dog just exactly at the moment one kills it? Somebody ran over a cat in our yard, once, crushed it’s hindquarters. I felt tremendous sympathy for the cat, and so I killed it. For sympathy to be paralyzing, there has to be one more premise, and I cannot identify that additional premise. Anger, hate, contempt, etc., are assertions of an ought. Oughts only work in the context of trying to incite others to a common action. As commands to the self, they make no sense what so ever. So, unless you are standing in front of crowd, trying to get them to lynch somebody, these emotions are self-blinding. Now, I suppose, self-blinding is useful, when you just don’t want to fuck with subtleties of life, but nothing about them can be claimed as rational. Right? What is the additional premise that turns my empathy into something I should not feel.

Kim, help me out, here.
N
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2020 10:53 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

"But steeling yourself against WHAT?"

The impulse to do the same thing. Being judgemental is so human that Jesus warned against it. I don't usually quote him but...

Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, Nov 12, 2020, 9:36 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:
EricS,

Agreed, 99 and 44/100ths, except where you say,

That’s where I attach to Marcus’s rebuttal that they can be understood for being angry and desperate, but they don’t get a pass for wallowing in it.

At this point, any psychologist in the room will ask you (and/or Marcus), What is your moral judgment of THEM doing for YOU?

That’s NOT a rhetorical question. It has an answer. Presumably the answer has something to do with steeling yourself, not in Glen’s sense of that word. But steeling yourself against WHAT? If I never thought or felt that particular WHAT, would I need to steel myself against it?

n

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2020 6:59 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Cc: David Eric Smith <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Biden beats Trump

All this, too, turns on things that are facts of the matter.

Roger’s post is of course both excellent and empathetic, and when I read it I wanted to just say thanks for it.

Marcus’s counterpoint I also agree with.

But at the end of the day, whether your decision is good or bad turns on what it accomplishes in the actual world of events, relative to other decisions you could make.

Fighting public health measures because you are bitter does not get you back to work sooner. Indeed, it does nothing materially good for anybody. That seems to be a fairly easy fact from which to start. Taiwan never had a shutdown. Japan never had a lockdown, and even in metropolitan Tokyo, where infection density was probably one of the worst two areas (the other being up around Sapporo, per million), there was about a month of business shutdown. One time. I forget or didn’t learn details about S. Korea, but I think they never had a broad or ongoing lockdown; maybe short local ones at most, and some business suspensions. Those countries will have public health costs, a period of broad-based business costs, and sector-specific longer-term severe business costs in areas like bars or nightclubs or karaoke parlors, etc. It will be heavy but it need not lead to a depression. If vaccines work, the duration of the really bad sector impact will be measured in years, but not be permanent.

The US, by refusing to spend 10G$ in mitigation at the beginning, followed by wallowing in indulgence of wounded vanities, has now spent 2.4T$ in extra unemployment, and probably needs to spend something on that order more. It will go on, in the best case, for a year from the start. Plus they need to pay the public health support costs, which are much higher than they were at the start. The ones with market power can push the exploitation curve harder and harder, so that the stock markets remain high while unemployment and all three of personal, business, and government debt climb and climb, but at some point no amount of market power will compensate for the reality that debt service has consumed all the income workers can generate, and they are not extended any more revolving credit. For the US government, I guess something like that will happen when foreign lenders compute that it will be mechanistically impossible for the US to repay any further loans they make to it by buying government debt. I have in mind the picture of core collapse at the end of the red giant phase of stellar lifecycles, that leads to supernovae. I don’t see anything that escapes from just these accounting identities, which turn on what has already been spent.

To be sure, there are better and worse decisions going forward. Money on testing is nearly money poured down a well when you have as many cases as we now do; the return is much less because you are dabbing your eyes with a hanky while standing out in a downpour. So some strategic and focused use, with emphasis on very low-cost surveillance tests, combined with heavy public health behavior pressure, is probably all that pays. All other money in public health goes into vaccine distribution supply chains, I guess.

The other major area, I take from one of Shubik’s themes. He always emphasized (as I have said on this list before) that the government has two roles in an economy. One is as the setter of rules of the game; the other is as large coordinated player in the game. So, e.g. monetary versus fiscal policy. Monetary is setting the rate of interest for central-bank borrowing, which doesn’t set the money in the society but affects the rates at which private actors can choose to change it. Fiscal is government spending, “quantitative easing” by buying troubled debt, issuing government bonds, and so forth.

Similarly, Shubik used to say repeatedly that there should be a Federal Jobs Program, which is not equally activated all the time, but is a source of emergency employment stability during down-cycles. One could pick things like discretionary infrastructure repair, which is not the highest priority during boom times, when some of that can be done through private companies, but is a useful thing to pay people to do during employment crises because it gives predictable income and gets something done that was needed anyway. I would put retooling to non-fossil energy storage and distribution systems, with worker re-training to do it, in that category too. Two birds with one stone.

To me, where that fits in is in parallel to the rules/player distinction. Supporting re-formation of collective bargaining to try to rein in the productivity-pay gap, or minimum wage laws, are regulatory roles. On the long term, they are necessary, but they are too slow to save this administration from being swamped again in a backlash midterm, and then getting replaced by the true antichrist in the next presidential. Direct hiring with a federal jobs program is the only thing I can see where the government can act fast enough, on large enough scale, to deliver to the blue-collar formerly-democratic voting bloc a real reason to support that administration.

Similarly, I have head complaining, but not done the work to know how much of it is true, that business loan-support is getting in significant part siphoned off by people who don’t really need it, to the exclusion of many who do. There is some new micro-data modeling consortium involving some Harvard professors and somebody else (heard in a snippet on NPR) to try to micro-target the next round of bailout money (unemployment and business support) to where it is really needed. But one could say that one way to avoid the overhead of skimming that comes with giving it to the private sector, is to try to identify areas where the government can just directly employ the privately unemployed. It then controls the wages and is sue they end up with the workers. That’s not a great solution, because it leaves the private business that employed them in the lurch, so some other layer would be needed to tide those people over in a sort of dormant or tun state. But in terms of cost per output, it seems that it recovers certain losses that have been major leakages in the style of spending done so far.

Not to claim that any of this is easy or that I see what should be done (I don’t have either the knowledge or the expertise). But it does seem that there are more mechanisms available than those being used. It also seems that distinguishing the timescales between the government’s impact as setter of rules of the game, versus as player in the game, gives a starting point when trying to figure out how to regain some electoral stability and give the Dems enough of a footprint in rural areas to be allowed to actually do work that would help anybody.

What I say above may or may not be correct. I put it forth as an example of a kind of argument that one can try to make, because SOMETHING is actually correct, and one can try to figure out what that is.

If the battleground or red-stater’s way of life is to be permanently angry, support the abusers who make their situations even worse, then get angrier as a result and support even worse abusers, they may be sincere, but I think it is a completely non-ideological thing to argue that they are not pursuing the best course of action that exists. And the existence of other countries (which one can read about on the internet!) is sufficient evidence that something is possible, that an ordinary person ought to be capable of knowing it is not a law of physics that things have to be exactly as bad as they currently are here. That’s where I attach to Marcus’s rebuttal that they can be understood for being angry and desperate, but they don’t get a pass for wallowing in it.

Anyway,

Eric

On Nov 11, 2020, at 1:35 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Roger writes:

< These people weren't voting for rascism, misogyny, narcissism, authoritarianism, xenophobia, gimp shaming, science denialism, or all that other baggage, they were overlooking it for reasons. >

Many of those that could not work due to COVID restrictions are often in battleground or red states. That’s the only way I can possibly begin to rationalize the 71 million. To me, overlooking those things is unacceptable. It’s not useful to exercise any empathy for them. They made a deal with the devil. It should have been a win by 50 million, not 5 million.

Marcus
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Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918

Research: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

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