Vaccines and Crying Wolf

Why aren’t people getting vaccinated for COVID? Misinformation and media echo chambers are part of the explanation, but there is also the low credibility of the public health authorities because of repeated dishonesty. First, they told us “masks don’t work.” That wasn’t true. Then they told us, “We will lock down for just two weeks to flatten the curve.” That wasn’t true. Then they told us that wearing the masks would eradicate the disease and end the pandemic. That wasn’t true. Then they told us that staying indoors would minimize the spread of the disease (e.g., California laws against going to parks and beaches). That wasn’t’ true. Then they told us that Texas was “neanderthal” for giving up its mask mandates and told us cases and deaths would spike in the coming weeks. That also wasn’t true. With so much crying wolf, is there any wonder that people don’t believe them now that the wolf is really here? Vaccines really do save lives and can end the pandemic, but repeated dishonesty from those telling us to get vaccines have cost them their credibility. Credulity on team read and deception on team blue are jointly responsible for persistent COVID deaths.

Why We Don’t Have Self-Driving Cars

It seems that many of the failed promises of technology are marked by an asymptotic trajectory, that is, it’s like a curved line in mathematics that gets ever closer to another line, but never quite touches it (or, like the proverbial traveler who goes half way to his destination, then half way more, then half way more for eternity, thereby getting microscopically close but never arriving). I’m guessing that many of the promises of artificial intelligence haven’t been realized and won’t be realized because of this “closer and closer but never getting there” problem we are encountering. My hunch is that “asymptotic” is a word we will hear more and more in the 21st century as the promises of technology, especially AI, fail to materialize.

Social Darwinism

I believe in social Darwinism only inasmuch as it applies to human artifacts, not to humans themselves. The term “social darwinism” triggers people and causes an instant recoil because they assume it means allowing (and even encouraging) the starvation and “weeding out” of less fit humans in the same way that less fit species go extinct in the natural world. This is obviously morally wrong, but it’s practically important to let the survival of the fittest logic apply to human artifacts (things humans produce), such as ideas, positions, companies, and products. If we are not weeding out and letting “die” worse ideas, then we are necessarily preventing better ideas from replacing them. If we are not weeding out and letting “die” bad theories (such as the four humors theory of disease), then we are preventing more correct theories (the germ theory of disease) from replacing them. We can’t let a knee-jerk reaction to the phrase “social Darwinism” or “survival of the fittest” turn us away from the important role that this process must necessarily play in social improvement. To anyone who thinks social Darwinism is always wrong, I ask, do you think a genocidal political leader should be “weeded out” and replaced in favor of a better president? If so, then you believe in social Darwinism in the correct sense: survival of the fittest applied to human artifacts, but not to humans. I’m also curious as to how atheists, who make no distinction between the natural and human world, can oppose social Darwinism but applaud natural if there is no distinction between the social and natural worlds (i.e., if humans are not “special” and are just animals like any other, then how can we logically oppose Darwinian logic in the realm of one animal—humans—but not in the realm of another—say, the first land animals?).