Epstein assumes that all viruses have a spectrum of versions, from
virulent to mellow. He assumes as well that less virulent equals more
spread. Finally, he claims evidence for this by relentlessly
equivocating between traits of the virus and human behavior. When you do
all of that, you can indeed derive the conclusion that viruses get
kinder over time.
But if you give me the same degree of flexibility in making
assumptions, I can prove that all viruses devolve into economists.
Now the virus has evolved but all the strains seem to be about [equally virulent](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/25/820998549/the-coronavirus-is-mutating-but-that-may-not-be-a-problem-for-humans) and very similar to each other. This calls for an alternative hypothesis: The virus is being nice by not creating new wildly different and more difficult to cure strains. Economics!
The virus obviously wants to infect particularly affluent humans. Because of utility. So therefore it is modulating its behavior to encourage GDP growth. This is the conclusion to my new Austrian economic analysis: "The Invisible Crown: Spontaneous Viral Order and the March toward Freedom."
re "Epstein assumes that all viruses have a spectrum of versions, from virulent to mellow. He assumes as well that less virulent equals more spread."
Can well be other way around.
Smallpox had 2 strains, Variola Minor (2% death rate) and Variola Major (>30% death rate) and according to Wikipedia, the bad one was more common.
The vaccine was made with cowpox, that was very mild and failed to spread between people.
Ultimately if you have 1% lethal virus and there's another strain that is ~0% lethal, that in and of itself could only increase the spread by at most 1% (if the more lethal strain made 1% of people just vanish into the thin air and stop infecting others) which is completely negligible compared to what happens due to some changes in e.g. viral load or infectious dose or the typical symptoms (that need not be severe).
Basically the problem with armchair evolutionary arguments is that they presume some deterministic improvement towards an ideal where real life got something more akin to a slightly biased random walk that tends to rather ignore minor effects.
The ideal for a disease is you become immortal and forever remain extremely contagious, shedding some kind of ultra resilient spores all over the place.
Lawyers have to be my favorite wannabe polymaths. They’ll read five
books written for laymen in the summer before they start law school and
feel totally qualified to make grand pronouncements on evolution, or
economics, or philosophy (or all three!).
I haven't met enough lawyers (or maybe it varies between different nations), but I HAVE seen a couple of philologists who were all like "science is so much better than the humanities. I love science. I wish humanities were more like science. I'm a very scientifically minded person, unlike those pesky philologists (I'm a philologist, too, actually, I haven't done one academical year of any science, but disregard that. I'm so going to show those philologists how humanities are REALLY done)".
As to why they didn't go into science in the first place - well, one of them is still sad her mommy wouldn't let her major in biology (the person in question is a woman in her late thirties), and the other one... hell if I know. I mean, I do know (he wouldn't make the grade lol), but I don't know his personal rationale.
Dang, this is definitely one of the more embarrassing Chotiner
interviews. It’s hard to top some of the past ones but this might take
the cake.
EDIT: i’m going to use this:
You start off with this virus, and there’s a range, some of which are
very serious and some of which are less, so it’s a theory of natural
selection with a normal distribution set.
… in my statistics classes as an example of “bad appeals to
statistical modeling”.
Darwinians always assume that fitness is defined only by being a
ruthless, cutthroat motherfucker. No, it just means individual
reproductive success. Working together is often a great way of being
successful instead of being a dipshit “every man for himself” idiot who
will immediately be shunned by the rest of the group.
It's a point of contention whether you should zoom in really far and consider genes as the real protagonists in evolution, so individuals are just giant battlemechs that genes use to make more copies of themselves, or zoom really far out and think about selection at the level of entire groups of related individuals with some traits in common. But either way, the analysis doesn't tend to favor ~~selfish assholes~~ Homo economicus.
Regarding the claim that genes are selected for their role in reproductive success, I'm with Denis Noble, it can't be true because genotype is invisible to natural selection. If anything successful can be said to be selected for, it's phenotype. Only if you believe there is a one-to-one correspondence between the two types are the two statements equivalent. But by now we understand the relationship is much more complicated than that. DNA is not the particle of selection it's the particle of inheritance. Whether or not that helps economists or lawyers in the way they repurpose the metaphor I wouldn't know.
I know we're supposed to hate Dawkins these days but I don't think genes-as-protagonists is really contentious anymore.
And it shouldn't be.
It works against Social Darwinism because (1) it can explain evolution without having to frame all coexistence as "competition"; (2) it doesn't encourage the reification/essentialization of "individual" and "species", concepts that are socially constructed to a degree and that are basically impossible to define coherently.
Dawkins didn't come up with genes-as-protagonists; that was [Williams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation_and_Natural_Selection). Dawkins just popularized it for a lay audience.
But my point was that neither of the popular views frames coexistence as individual competition; only economists do that, which is why they embarrass themselves when they try to do biology.
> Dawkins didn't come up with genes-as-protagonists; that was Williams. Dawkins just popularized it for a lay audience.
I know that, thanks, but what's your point? Do you disagree that Dawkins' recent-ish dumbfuckery is one of the main reasons that the broader sneer community went from broadly favoring to strongly disfavoring the gene-centric view in recent years?
> neither of the popular views frames coexistence as individual competition; only economists do that, which is why they embarrass themselves when they try to do biology.
This is ahistorical. Biologists did conceptualize natural history as an eternal struggle of species against species and to some degree organism against organism. This did do enormous damage in terms of legitimizing Social Darwinism, the eugenics movement, and race theory. The gene-centric paradigm did play a major role in overcoming this problem for good. All of this has been extensively discussed by both Gould and Feyerabend and by pretty much every epistemology-of-science scholar except Popper and Kuhn. It was referenced by half the participants in the Science Wars, for crying out loud.
The idea that "only economists do that" is, for lack of a better word, blinkered. It wasn't primarily economists that Gould and Feyerabend were accusing of "scientism", was it?
There are approximately 17 shelf kilometers of books discussing the Universal Darwinism in Nietzsche, who I think is usually considered a *philosopher*.
Darwinism is mentioned in ever other introduction to Western legal theory, partly because of the crude early form of Legal Darwinism in Maine's seminal *Ancient Law* and partly because of its links to the genocidal half of the positivists.
And speaking of ancient, Guthrie points out that 20th-century *classicists* influenced by Darwinism were reading *20th-century race theory* into *Aristotle*.
Worse, people who didn't read the book but cheerlead for Science (!) merely so they are seen as being on the Right Team.
A leading exemplar it seems to me is Bill Maher.
I’ve worked on evolutionary theory for forty years in >>its
relationship to law.
So what? Covid-19 and halting it’s spread are inherently biological
problems, not legal. If Mr. Epstein’s criticisms of the prevailing
predictions regarding the course of this pandemic turn out to be
correct, it will be an example of dumb luck of a one off contrarian, not
the wisdom of an “evolutionary therorist.”
>I’ve worked on evolutionary theory for forty years in its relationship to law.
Read "I read some pop evo psych books and now I'm going to do epidemiology."
> He was initially wary of talking, and asked to record his own version of the call, which I agreed to.
and yet
> > I was just asking about—
> I’m saying what I think to be the truth. I mean, I just find it incredible—
> > I know, but these are scientific issues here.
> You know nothing about the subject but are so confident that you’re going to say that I’m a crackpot.
> > No. Richard—
> That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? That’s what you’re saying?
> > I’m not saying anything of the sort.
> Admit to it. You’re saying I’m a crackpot.
> > I’m not saying anything of the—
> Well, what am I then? I’m an amateur? You’re the great scholar on this?
> > No, no. I’m not a great scholar on this.
> Tell me what you think about the quality of the work!
> > O.K. I’m going to tell you. I think the fact that I am not a great scholar on this and I’m able to find these flaws or these holes in what you wrote is a sign that maybe you should’ve thought harder before writing it.
> What it shows is that you are a complete intellectual amateur. Period.
> > O.K. Can I ask you one more question?
> You just don’t know anything about anything. You’re a journalist. Would you like to compare your résumé to mine?
> > No, actually, I would not.
> Then good. Then maybe what you want to do is to say, “Gee, I’m not quite sure that this is right. I’m going to check with somebody else.” But, you want to come at me hard, I am going to come back harder at you. And then if I can’t jam my fingers down your throat, then I am not worth it. But you have basically gone over the line. If you want to ask questions, ask questions. I put forward a model. But a little bit of respect.
> Then good. Then maybe what you want to do is to say, “Gee, I’m not quite sure that this is right. I’m going to check with somebody else.”
This is the part that really gets me - Chotiner had these quotes on hand because *HE DID THAT WORK* and wants further clarification about the model.
How dare you, a dilettante journalist, think you can just read a few papers and think you found an error in well established work in the darwinian-evolvutionary-law-viral-epidemiology-medical-persuasion field.
Holy shit, dude thinks that “principles of Darwinian economics” can
be applied here, instead of, you know, evolutionary theory of viruses…….
wtf did I just read
So, I did a shitty back of the envelope calculation just how fucked
up doing nothing would be.
Given a doubling every 3 days early on, what I’m getting is over 1/3
of the infected population getting infected within the span of one
week. That is absolutely fucking horrifying.
How to derive: logistic curve f(x)=exp(x)/(exp(x)+1) , fit to early
doubling every 3 days, f(x * ln(2)/3) , first derivative at the peak
0.25 * ln(2)/3 (as a fraction of ultimately infected, per day).
Taking a difference across a week centered on the peak, that’s
fucking 38% :
2 * (0.5-exp(-3.5 * ln(2)/3)/(exp(-3.5 * ln(2)/3)+1)) (google works
as calculator)
Of course, in real life it isn’t going to be exactly a logistic
curve, but the point here is just how many people get sick at once if
nothing gets done to flatten the peak.
Epstein assumes that all viruses have a spectrum of versions, from virulent to mellow. He assumes as well that less virulent equals more spread. Finally, he claims evidence for this by relentlessly equivocating between traits of the virus and human behavior. When you do all of that, you can indeed derive the conclusion that viruses get kinder over time.
But if you give me the same degree of flexibility in making assumptions, I can prove that all viruses devolve into economists.
Lawyers have to be my favorite wannabe polymaths. They’ll read five books written for laymen in the summer before they start law school and feel totally qualified to make grand pronouncements on evolution, or economics, or philosophy (or all three!).
Dang, this is definitely one of the more embarrassing Chotiner interviews. It’s hard to top some of the past ones but this might take the cake.
EDIT: i’m going to use this:
… in my statistics classes as an example of “bad appeals to statistical modeling”.
Darwinians always assume that fitness is defined only by being a ruthless, cutthroat motherfucker. No, it just means individual reproductive success. Working together is often a great way of being successful instead of being a dipshit “every man for himself” idiot who will immediately be shunned by the rest of the group.
So what? Covid-19 and halting it’s spread are inherently biological problems, not legal. If Mr. Epstein’s criticisms of the prevailing predictions regarding the course of this pandemic turn out to be correct, it will be an example of dumb luck of a one off contrarian, not the wisdom of an “evolutionary therorist.”
I am so glad someone got Chotinered on this and as usual I’m impressed at the prestige level of his quarry
My god, what a brutal interview
Holy shit, dude thinks that “principles of Darwinian economics” can be applied here, instead of, you know, evolutionary theory of viruses……. wtf did I just read
So, I did a shitty back of the envelope calculation just how fucked up doing nothing would be.
Given a doubling every 3 days early on, what I’m getting is over 1/3 of the infected population getting infected within the span of one week. That is absolutely fucking horrifying.
How to derive: logistic curve f(x)=exp(x)/(exp(x)+1) , fit to early doubling every 3 days, f(x * ln(2)/3) , first derivative at the peak 0.25 * ln(2)/3 (as a fraction of ultimately infected, per day).
Taking a difference across a week centered on the peak, that’s fucking 38% :
2 * (0.5-exp(-3.5 * ln(2)/3)/(exp(-3.5 * ln(2)/3)+1)) (google works as calculator)
Of course, in real life it isn’t going to be exactly a logistic curve, but the point here is just how many people get sick at once if nothing gets done to flatten the peak.