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walkitoutWeirdly, this does NOT involve me having a meltdown today. No, this time, the complicated stuff about yelling is me wondering if there is any kind of pattern to the older / expert / male /professor emerita / Scientist Committed to a False Fact who bullies younger people in the field by putting their nascent careers at risk so everyone waits until he is dead to say Pluto isn’t a planet type of thing. It came up because I was reminded of the whole What Does Airborne Transmission Mean thing that we _finally_ put to bed during the unfortunate course of this pandemic, and I realized, hey, this has a lot in common with Einstein’s opposition to quantum wtfery, and the multi-decadal hiatus in using antibiotics to cure ulcers and so forth. I mean, there’s a pattern to _that_ list, sure, but it’s not like this happens Once in a Rare While. We all have examples of somebody who thinks they are Expert and they are giving Expert Info, but it’s dead wrong and often pretty obviously so, but Emperor’s New Clothes, we all play along until we don’t.
It’s _no good_ for anyone when this happens! We could really use better off-ramps for people who are inappropriately bullying people into continuing to believe something that everyone knows Just Ain’t So. And the thing is, I think a lot of these “bullies” actually know they are in the wrong while they are doing it. I was thinking of a quote, but could not remember it in enough detail, and when I went looking, I found that Quote Investigator had taken it on. Honestly, QI trying to trace the quote found a bunch of interesting angles on exactly this topic:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/
Anyway. Tomorrow is such a snow day, that martial arts, the swimming pool, and the restaurant we ate at tonight all pre-emptively announced that they are closed tomorrow, and of course, R. says that 7K flights on the east coast have already been canceled.
No sitter tonight or for most of next week; we went to Via Lago for dinner, where T. is such a celebrity that they kept trying to seat us separately because they didn’t realize we were with him. It was hilarious. They are a delight, and at least the bartender remembered me.
ETA:
Upon further reflection, I think this decompensation / yelling thing can illuminate a lot of aspects of a political-economic system. Totally flat systems fail once they get past a certain size — there’s always some kind of hierarchy so ideas can move from the bottom / front up to the top, and then be re-propagated back down to everyone. There is obviously tension everywhere, and that’s why every time you can increase democracy / transparency without simultaneously destabilizing the whole thing, the resulting group winds up out competing other structures. R. notes, “incrementalism”. Incremental changes basically don’t trigger this kind of response. An incremental change, with incremental impacts is absorbed within the existing structure. The problem lies with situations where the change (how do we prove that a pathogen creates a disease process; how do we think about aging in women; what do we do in response to a pathogen; how is the universe put together at the smallest levels ; etc.) reverberates broadly and deeply. Anyone in a decision making capacity at the top that can deal with incremental change will deal with incremental change, or they will be moved aside and replaced in an orderly fashion. But when a big change comes along, even a competent person at the top may quail at the scale of change implied, and thus resort to straightforward resistance / denial. Pressure builds and the entire system is placed at risk _whether the change is accepted at the top or not_, and regardless of when the change is accepted at the top. Delay can give you time to identify strategies for transitioning, so that when you finally do, parts of the structure have a plan, at least. But if you don’t use the delay time to generate those, it only gets worse. Extremely rapid adoption of a really big change causes its own disruptive aftershocks, as people are blindsided and had no idea that any of this was even coming.
So. YES, there’s an interest in not accepting something that is, pretty clearly, true. But the “interest” is not _just_ the salary, or paycheck or whatever. In the specific, egregious cases I have identified, there are structural consequences. And in the particular case that motivated me to engage in this analysis, the structural consequences were a lot bigger than I had realized. A _lot_ of people continue to lean in very heavily to the idea of antigen tests being an effective way to determine who can safety do what when. And so anyone sitting on the sidelines and in an uninvolved way saying, yeah, this particular match of test and pathogen isn’t actually effective so why bother — that person gets hammered.
I wasn’t wrong, and my proposed solution is pretty much exactly what the CDC was saying anyway (5+5, no tests needed to go in or come out). But there’s a really deep and broad commitment to “knowing”, so me saying, yeah, this isn’t gonna help you with that was much more disruptive than I had imagined.
It’s _no good_ for anyone when this happens! We could really use better off-ramps for people who are inappropriately bullying people into continuing to believe something that everyone knows Just Ain’t So. And the thing is, I think a lot of these “bullies” actually know they are in the wrong while they are doing it. I was thinking of a quote, but could not remember it in enough detail, and when I went looking, I found that Quote Investigator had taken it on. Honestly, QI trying to trace the quote found a bunch of interesting angles on exactly this topic:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/30/salary/
Anyway. Tomorrow is such a snow day, that martial arts, the swimming pool, and the restaurant we ate at tonight all pre-emptively announced that they are closed tomorrow, and of course, R. says that 7K flights on the east coast have already been canceled.
No sitter tonight or for most of next week; we went to Via Lago for dinner, where T. is such a celebrity that they kept trying to seat us separately because they didn’t realize we were with him. It was hilarious. They are a delight, and at least the bartender remembered me.
ETA:
Upon further reflection, I think this decompensation / yelling thing can illuminate a lot of aspects of a political-economic system. Totally flat systems fail once they get past a certain size — there’s always some kind of hierarchy so ideas can move from the bottom / front up to the top, and then be re-propagated back down to everyone. There is obviously tension everywhere, and that’s why every time you can increase democracy / transparency without simultaneously destabilizing the whole thing, the resulting group winds up out competing other structures. R. notes, “incrementalism”. Incremental changes basically don’t trigger this kind of response. An incremental change, with incremental impacts is absorbed within the existing structure. The problem lies with situations where the change (how do we prove that a pathogen creates a disease process; how do we think about aging in women; what do we do in response to a pathogen; how is the universe put together at the smallest levels ; etc.) reverberates broadly and deeply. Anyone in a decision making capacity at the top that can deal with incremental change will deal with incremental change, or they will be moved aside and replaced in an orderly fashion. But when a big change comes along, even a competent person at the top may quail at the scale of change implied, and thus resort to straightforward resistance / denial. Pressure builds and the entire system is placed at risk _whether the change is accepted at the top or not_, and regardless of when the change is accepted at the top. Delay can give you time to identify strategies for transitioning, so that when you finally do, parts of the structure have a plan, at least. But if you don’t use the delay time to generate those, it only gets worse. Extremely rapid adoption of a really big change causes its own disruptive aftershocks, as people are blindsided and had no idea that any of this was even coming.
So. YES, there’s an interest in not accepting something that is, pretty clearly, true. But the “interest” is not _just_ the salary, or paycheck or whatever. In the specific, egregious cases I have identified, there are structural consequences. And in the particular case that motivated me to engage in this analysis, the structural consequences were a lot bigger than I had realized. A _lot_ of people continue to lean in very heavily to the idea of antigen tests being an effective way to determine who can safety do what when. And so anyone sitting on the sidelines and in an uninvolved way saying, yeah, this particular match of test and pathogen isn’t actually effective so why bother — that person gets hammered.
I wasn’t wrong, and my proposed solution is pretty much exactly what the CDC was saying anyway (5+5, no tests needed to go in or come out). But there’s a really deep and broad commitment to “knowing”, so me saying, yeah, this isn’t gonna help you with that was much more disruptive than I had imagined.