Look At It This Way (#LAITW)

Let’s try a little thought experiment. Einstein used thought experiments to uncover many of the discoveries he made.

It’s about face-coverings for COVID. Picture yourself wearing a typical face mask. You know it doesn’t make a really good seal between you and the open air because if it did you’d asphyxiate. So how good a seal does it make?

For starters, just observe a lot of face masks in action. Are the nose AND mouth covered? Are there gaps between the circumference of the mask and the wearer’s skin? Can you picture air getting out of any of those gaps?

OK, here’s the thought experiment. Imagine yourself in a large ballroom all by yourself in a corner, sitting on a chair, wearing a mask, and smoking a cigarette. I know, it would be terribly hard to smoke a cigarette without disrupting the mask-wearing, but that’s where your brain comes in – imagine that you could smoke a cigarette without constantly taking the mask on and off.

Do you think you would see smoke coming out either through or around the mask? Remember your observations about how masks are generally worn.

Now, imagine there’s another person in this large ballroom in the opposite corner from you. How long do you think it would be before that person smelled smoke? In other words, how long would it take for your smoke particles to get up that other person’s nostrils from many yards away?

Now realize that a coronavirus is smaller than a smoke particle on average.

Does thinking that through change your opinion on the efficacy of masks?

Next time we’ll ask… For whatever help masks provide, what is the price? How, if in any way, does wearing a mask do harm?

“I’m not going to do business with you because of my deeply-held personal belief that you need to do business with people despite your deeply-held personal beliefs.”

A Facebook post this morning said something <sarcasm>oh so meaningful</sarcasm> about how one should not have to pay for a mistake the rest of their life. A mistake just means we’re human.

So, assuming there is a cost associated with a mistake, who does get to pay for it until zeroed out? Parents? Siblings? Friends? Schools and/or Churches? Goverment? Society?

Sorry, Jack, you do get to pay for your mistakes. Whether accidental or intentional. Whether big or small. That’s why we (should) spend so much time raising children to learn what’s right and wrong and to appreciate the physics of careening downhill on two sticks of wood or carbon fiber. Consequences! The nasty bottom line is – even if you’re not to blame exactly, you get to pay for your own mistakes. Hopefully, folks learn their lessons early on in life when the costs are relatively cheap.

Well, maybe you can get someone else to pay. Ask a liberal. It won’t be me if I can help it.

“A businessman cannot force you to buy his product; if he makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences; if he fails, he takes the loss. A bureaucrat forces you to obey his decisions, whether you agree with him or not—and the more advanced the stage of a country’s statism, the wider and more discretionary the powers wielded by a bureaucrat. If he makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences; if he fails, he passes the loss on to you, in the form of heavier taxes.”

Ayn Rand

When capitalism is left alone to function cleanly, it works.

In the U.S., for at least 27 years now, capitalism has been hampered by all manner of government intervention and story telling.

“As documented in Parts 1-3 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), the Fed has generated a $50 trillion financial bubble since Alan Greenspan took the helm in August 1987. After 27 years, honest price discovery has been destroyed, thereby reducing the nerve centers of capitalism—-the money and capital markets—-to little more than gambling casinos.”

The real unemployment rate in the U.S. today is much closer to 42.9% than the reported 5.5%. Stockman’s approach to calculating this is very straightforward. How many potential work hours are available from the work-age population, and how many are actually fulfilled. If you have been paying attention at all, you would recognize that with 90+ million Americans no working, the real unemployment rate can’t possibly be 5.5%.

Read David Stockman’s article…

The Skeptics Guide to the Universe publishes this helpful chart:

I would add a “for instance”:
Science: Earth Science/Climate
Pseudoscience: Man-driven Climate Change (ala Al Gore)

Rush Limbaugh made an interesting point recently. What if the rules of politics were as respected and as adhered to as rules in sports? You break a rule in sports and you get penalized, almost immediately. Everyone respects the rule books. It’s what makes the game fair. You know, the “even playing field.”

Not so in politics. Politicians lie left and right. And with virtually no consequences. In fact, often to their advantage. One politician I could name owes millions to the IRS and nobody seems to care, nothing happens to penalize this politician.

What if… What if we demanded that our politicians play by the rules?! Say the rules of law including the Constitution. What if there were real consequences that set the offender back a few yards. I have a dream…

If a law is written and/or approved by people exempt from that law, whether outright or by practicality, we’re screwed.

“Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.” Albert Einstein

Why is that?

There are several traits that make up character, including Trustworthiness, Respect, Responsibility, Fairness, Caring, and Citizenship. One list of character traits includes 638 items!

I’d like to put Honesty at the top of the list for this discussion. Honesty with yourself, honesty with others, honesty with Nature, etc. There is no room for politically correct pussyfooting around. There is no room for fudging the data to make some point.

I was trained to be honest about (in fact, to point out) every counterpoint I could possibly imagine to any point I might be trying to make, to any theory I might try to posit. In today’s discussions, it seems to me, not only are too many scientists willing to ignore “inconvenient” facts, but also will use all manner of fallacy to dismiss anyone that suggests anything negative about their position.

It’s a shame. But it can help you spot junk science, and junk scientists.