Stimulus for Tests

The Covid-19 problem is ultimately an epistemic problem. That is, the pandemic could end in a week if we simply knew exactly who had it. If every person infected with Covid gave off a big red glow, those people would quarantine themselves (and we would avoid them, literally like the plague), not infect anyone else, and then the virus would have no hosts to carry it on.

It’s for this reason that so many bright minds, such as Nobel Prize winner Paul Romer, have hammered home the importance of an efficient testing system. If testing were widespread enough, that would be a terrific substitute for lockdowns, closures, and masking. A possible proposal: instead of having the government send out stimulus checks with no strings attached, why not make them contingent on weekly testing? That is, you go to a testing booth (perhaps private contractors?) and in exchange for your getting tested for Covid, the government releases the check. That would both have the stimulative effect they are looking for by sending out the checks, but also have much of the epistemic “cure” for the virus that we are looking for.

1619 Project and Conservatism

Virtually every history textbook frames the American Founding in terms of right and left, calling the revolutionaries, such as Adams, Washington, and Jefferson, “liberals,” and those who opposed the revolution, such as Galloway and Dickinson, “conservatives.” Now that the 1619 Project has declared that the movement for independence was immoral, does that mean the “conservatives” were correct all along and that the 1619 project promoters are on the political “right”?

Genetics, corn, and free will

Geneticist Richard Lewontin made one of the best arguments for the importance of environment in human development by pointing out that if you take genetically identical handfuls of seed corn and plant one handful in Iowa and the other in the Sahara, you will get radically different results—healthy, abundant corn growing vs. no corn at all. The implication for humans is clear: environment matters and genetic determinism is incorrect. But what Lewontin didn’t consider that is every bit as telling, is that you can take humans who are genetically the same or close to it (siblings) and “plant” them in the same environment and get radically different outcomes. That doesn’t happen with corn or any other organism. The divergences of outcome among humans who share genetics that we don’t see in other organisms is powerful evidence for the essential, but invisible human trait—free will.