I wouldn’t have thought that such a salient example of the hubris inherent in the modern technocratic managerial state would come courtesy of an apparatchik within the Trump administration, but it seems, in 2020, we will continue to “see the world turn’d upside down”. Enter Peter Navarro, Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy; an office created by President Trump in 2017 as part of his never-ending mission to reduce the size of the federal government and slash the economic regulatory state. In an interview today, Navarro stated that:
he was qualified to engage and disagree with Dr. Anthony Fauci on the use of an anti-malarial drug as a coronavirus treatment — which is not yet proven as effective — saying, “I’m a social scientist.”
“Doctors disagree about things all the time. My qualifications in terms of looking at the science is that I’m a social scientist, … I have a Ph.D. And I understand how to read statistical studies, whether it’s in medicine, the law, economics or whatever.”
I’ll pause for a moment to let you finish laughing.
While understanding the basics of formal statistical inference, as well as informal inferential reasoning, are valuable skills for anyone to have, it is absolute arrogance to claim that such knowledge alone is sufficient to make sound, valid, and informed decisions independent of subject matter expertise. Take the example of someone who, over the course of a few years, only succeeds in completing a task 34 to 36 percent of the time. At first glance, one might determine that this individual is of limited ability, perhaps a novice. Now, if I tell you that this percentage is someone’s MLB batting average, it is now obvious that this individual is now operating at Hall of Fame standards. For anyone who is not a crank, it is clear that the ability to understand statistical inference is impotent without the experience and intuition afforded by familiarity in the discipline of human knowledge in which the subject studied is situated.
Does this mean that Navarro cannot formulate an opinion on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine based on his understanding of the data we have? Of course not. In our everyday lives, we are forced to make decisions on matters in which we are not experts all the time. However, on the level of what the classical Greeks termed ethos, we should give more credence to an immunologist over an economist in interpreting of what level of statistical significance signals the efficacy of an intervention (without even getting into the difference between pharmaceutical efficacy and effectiveness). It is statistics’ dirty secret that effect size interpretation is arbitrary.
Likewise, when considering the economic impact of a public health intervention like a quarantine, we should give more credence to the economist over the immunologist. Yet, while medical education inculcates its students with an ethic of avoiding doing harm to one’s patients, such ethical training is often devoid in the curricula of economists, sociologists, political scientists and other Navarro-esque members of the American nomenklatura, who believe that Pearson’s r is the only necessary calculation for the navigators on the ship of state.
Now, I must admit to fibbing a bit in my first sentence – I wasn’t surprised at the source at all. Navarro’s pomposity lays bear the bankruptcy behind the paleoconservative Buchananite criticisms of the managerial state. For the past four years, the various mountebanks that have darted in and out of Trump’s inner circle, like flies flittering around a freshly defecated pile of dung (e.g., Kushner, Gorka, Bannon, Miller, Navarro, Scaramucci, Cuccinelli, Giuliani, Lewandowski, etc. ad nauseam), have made it clear that they never had any intention of reducing autocratic rule by executive power, of eliminating work-arounds of legislation through administrative rulings and executive orders, of ending the redistribution of wealth through taxation to politically favored identity blocs, and no longer justifying these overbearing actions through an appeal to moral superiority. In the end, after all the Sturm und Drang delivered through memes of cartoon frogs, the only thing that has changed is the ideological dress code for managers – from Brooks Brothers and Glen check to Carhartt and Realtree. The Technocracy still rules, formulating massive intervention and regulation of every aspect of our public and private lives through naive statistical models, blissfully unaware of their inherent ignorance.
But what do I know? I’m a social scientist.
First, and you are awesome.
Thank you for the kind words!
Fuck you for taking people out of my post! Come at me bro!
This comment section shall pass too.
It is the way of things.
So is…..your mom!
Mom jokes are the fucking best…
“like flies flittering around a freshly defecated pile of dung” poetry, sheer poetry.
What I’m dying to figure out, and to have a reporter ask my governor is, ‘When are we going to crash the state economy and shut down the government next? Is there a death threshold involved, does the federal government have to declare a state of emergency, or is it strictly an FYTY situation?” And is this even constitutional? I thought I had freedom of assembly.
I think the metric is how much it disproportionately impacts the generation that occupies the highest positions in all 3 branches of government.
Well, that’s not reassuring. It’s making me feel like digging up Logan’s Run from my dvd collection.
Well, Hello there…
/Seriously, though–if you weren’t cool before (and, you were), hot damn!
such ethical training is often devoid in the curricula of economists, sociologists, political scientists
It’s easier for doctors to see if they are doing harm to an individual. When you see the world as a group of people it’s easier to do individual harm for the greater good. Assholes.
Exactly. Omelets and eggs.
Gosh, Mr. Mulatto; you use your mouth prettier than a $20 whore. Seriously though, thank you for, once again, beautifully articulating what I also feel but can’t express so artfully.
It’s true.
I typed this post with my tongue.
Now you are just trolling for ladies to show up and show ass….
$100 whores will say “Sturm und Drang” while sucking your dick. And they’ll have a MAGA hat on.
Unless she’s a german, then you just piss on her.
I always thought you were supposed to yell “Sturm und Drang” while blowing your load.
I have a Ph.D. in whatever studies too.
So what do you think of the data for using elderberry for delayed ejaculation? smole pp value or big pp value?
It’s not the size of the correlation, it’s the motion of the distribution.
Wise.
A third party asks them, “assume a fair coin is flipped 99 times, and each time it comes up heads. What are the odds that the 100th flip would also come up heads?”
Dr John says that the odds are not affected by the previous outcomes so the odds must still be 50:50.
Fat Tony says that the odds of the coin coming up heads 99 times in a row are so low (less than 1 in 6.33 × 1029) that the initial assumption that the coin had a 50:50 chance of coming up heads is most likely incorrect.
The government has restricted your rights 99 times in a row. What are the odds that democracy will demand a right be protected the 100th time? Fat Tony knows.
And there are still people whining that we aren’t restricting rights hard enough. I’m getting tired of hearing reporters ask Trump when he’ll finally fulfill their dictatorial fantasies and issue a nationwide lockdown.
The irony of course being that the same reporters have ranted and raved about the existential threat from Trump’s authoritarianism, now he can’t become a real authoritarian fast enough.
I find it kind of funny that the only reporter that is asking Trump anything different than, “have you stopped beating your wife?” and “are you ready to admit that the coronavirus is entirely your fault” is that hottie from OAN.
You know when you’re on a group camping trip, dealing with a natural disaster, muddling through a minor problem and you got those people that freak the fuck out? Yeah, well, they are the ones in charge now and being encouraged by the cowards, deviants, nihilists, psychotics, neurotisc, failures in society at large. Of course this is going to turn out poorly.
I wish I could say you were wrong. I have a feeling we’ll all be moaning like we ate John Hooper’s stew before the end.
‘Hey Hitler, when are going to kill ze jewz like we told you!?” /The American Press 2020
Fat Tony didn’t have to calculate the odds. He’s had enough experience with fuckers who use trick coins that will get their fucking heads bashed in.
And also, he probably has used a trick coin himself from time to time.
Though I think he’s going down a garden path to Hell with his recent localism vs. libertarianism shtick, there is a lot to be gained from a study of Taleb.
I have The Black Swan sitting around the house somewhere. TBH, I got as much out of listening to his interviews on the book as I did from the book itself. I’d imagine that Skin in the Game is similar. Most likely means that I just wasn’t smaht enough to get his more nuanced points. Could mean that he obfuscates after making his clear and insightful observations a) in order to sound intelligent or b) because he’s kind of a grifter. Either way, I gave up after a while.
Kind of a grifter!? He’s a class A grifter, and so full of himself as to distract one form gaining any modicum of value he may have provided after sifting through his arrogance and BS.
Hey talking about Taleb on glibertarians is my shtick lately.
But on skin in the game as a concept is solid, although I would say it exits beyond Taleb. Although on his recent PP binge he did not mention it much on the twatter
Negative feedback is vital if the goal is a system that improves over time. I’ve been thinking about that concept a lot lately, seeing it everywhere. Call it skin in the game, creative destruction, survival of the fittest, or whatever else you want, but you insulate people and entities from consequences at your peril. How much of
the currentevery mess is a result of those making the decisions being insulated from the devastation they cause, while reaping any rewards of the risks they take? Killing the economy out of fear of a disease doesn’t make sense to me, but if you are among the power class you have the same risk from the disease that I have, and no (or at least apparently no) exposure to economic downturns. After all you get to decide who gets a bailout, so the financial risks are mitigated for you, or even turned into opportunities.skin in the game, creative destruction, survival of the fittest, – these 3 things are not the same concepts though
Perhaps not, but they are all getting at the same thing, negative feedback. Skin in the game is exposure to risk, in other words the chance that you will fail. Creative destruction, regardless of its roots, is the market equivalent of evolution. Survival of the fittest is obviously dependent on negative feedback, without death there is no evolution, only random mutation.
Skin in the game is exposure to risk, in other words the chance that you will fail. – no skin in the game is not the same as exposure to risk or the chance that you will fail. Exposure to risk can be as simple as taking a chance, starting a business. It may be something you encourage someone to do or not. Skin in the game is It is more like making sure one bears the brunt of the risk of their actions. It is not something to be encouraged or discouraged, it is something to be mandatory. I see it as a different concept.
I think I must be misunderstanding you here. How is skin in the game not exposure to risk? If you have no skin in the game you ave nothing at risk, that is the whole idea. The business may fail either way, but YOU the person with no skin in the game, will not lose out because you had nothing at risk. If you and I form a company, and each put up money, or efforts that would have earned money if applied elsewhere, we have skin in the game because we have each put up a stake. If, as increasingly happens, a bank puts up money, with a guarantee, either explcit or implicit, from the Government that they will be reimbursed for losses, they have no skin in the game, and no risk exposure. There is a nuance here we are seeing differently and I am not sure what it is.
exposure to risk is a very wide category. Skin in the game is more specific than that.
So are survival of the fittest and creative destruction. I’m not arguing that they are synonyms. I am saying they are examples of the effectiveness of negative feedback.
I will sit and tell you my story. Wonderful piece, HM. Hubris and arrogance goeth before the fall.
Oh, thought you were going here. I guess I might be more racist.
Why would I post terrible music? Does Ted remind you of a stunning Chinese ass?
Thanks for this, HM. I am so tired of and disgusted by them all.
It would be souper cool if I could start new posts without scheduling…a guy can dream…
You must purchase a Gold Membership for that function.
Or kill someone who has it. Those are the rules.
Likewise, when considering the economic impact of a public health intervention like a quarantine, we should give more credence to the economist over the immunologist. – I would give credence to neither myself
Also a non specialist good at statistics can tell if a certain statistic in his non-specialist field has mathematical errors or is insufficient to make a claim or other…
But what do I know? I’m a social scientist. – shame … shame …
Fair point.
Linguistics is traditionally placed under the “social sciences”, though I disagree with that. Theoretical linguistics has its toes in in the humanities, social sciences, and the natural sciences, all the while being the study of a formal system, like mathematics. Linguistics is linguistics, but you have to bow to social convention at times.
Linguistics is traditionally placed under the “social sciences” – so is eating ass, but you don’t have to be so open about it
I always thought that eating ass was more of a “social service” – but you do you.
An art, a science, and selfless service.
I would have figured that if you post here, you’re an antisocial scientist.
So, could experts be more wrong in each of their predictions during this crisis of not?
*I do the work and write reports that the experts then present as their own. Fortunately, I only have to estimate the things about the past–that’s hard enough–not make predictions about the future.*
I think the paucity of data combined with the pressure on the modelers to churn out a result for policy makers is what is dangerous here. I agree there is a danger that an expert can be more prone to error during a crisis like this because he or she has been trained to look at their subject in a certain way. However, I also trust the expert to overcome that more quickly than someone who only has a surface level understanding – which is what I was trying to get at with Navarro vs. Fauci. That having been said, I’m only commenting on Navarro’s claim concerning stats knowledge. I do think it is ethical and prudent to do expanded trials of hydroxychloroquine in a timely manner; Hippocrates, himself, stated that extreme illness warrants extreme remedy. The problem is, from what I understand from the few articles published, like Tamiflu, it is most effective prophylactically, or in the early stages of the illness. By the time someone is at the hospital, it is likely too late for it to be an effective treatment as the massive inflammatory response has already started. So, if it is prophylactic – how do you prove a negative?
how does one define expert though? Because that word is sometimes thrown around sort of easily.
Also there are different biases at play with experts and non experts, and depending on the situation the expert may be more prone to biased results.
Off course the hydroxychloroquine is a somewhat reasonably specific and testable thing. I have heard mixed things though, but at the very least in early stages it should be tried, and in a fewer cases in later stages given there is no medicine that clearly works. The idea is to first identify what works, not what works better.
‘Experts’ are always prone to bias towards their field, if they didn’t they wouldn’t be in that field.
Everyone is prone to bias. Experts are additionally prone to tunnel vision, it is hard not to see the world as a collection of nails sticking up when you spend you life wielding a hammer,
In this case, I would define expert as having a certain level of knowledge in a particular field. For example, Fauci could describe the mechanism of action for hydroxychloroquine without batting an eye; as he has no medical training whatsoever, Navarro couldn’t.
However, there are also two mentalities at play here. The reluctance of many in the medical field to go all in on HCQ is that even at known therapeutic doses, the drug can have serious side effects that outweigh the potential harm of the disease. If we give it to someone in the early stages the subject may avoid the 20 percent chance of becoming seriously ill but will have also damaged his or her eyesight.
I was under the impression the side effect were low since it is used as a malaria prophylactic
The side effects are rare but serious. Other than going blind, you also risk heart failure or serious anemia. Furthermore, while it’s not a side effect, remember it is an immunosuppressive drug. Taking it lowers your immune system, so you might be at risk of getting a different infection.
Also, it tastes like shit.
Sometimes, you have to eat the ass.
Have those talking it up provided an explanation of how/why it works? (I’m not suggesting that simple empiricism doesn’t justify experimenting, I am just skeptical given the low overall mortality from the disease when the argument seems to be “we gave it to x# of people at the onset of symptoms and they all lived”)
One theory is that it helps protect pulmonary surfactant which keeps the lungs breathing more easily, another theory is that it prevents the body from starting a runaway inflammatory response in response to the lung damage.
I know it’s late, and we’re all hurting from a lack of Opening Day, but I’m really disappointed that there has been no Sabermetrics kibitzing. I threw you some prime red meat.
WAR: best stat or complete bullshit? Discuss.
What is it good for?
A position-neutral way to describe a player’s overall contrib…..
Oh.
Baseball is the gay man’s cricket.
You want to talk about Brian Lara and my beloved Windies? We can do that as well.
Cricket is the bisexuals’ kickball.
Pretty sure the sport of the English Public Schools didn’t need a separate version for gay men.
If the English didn’t let gay men play sports then they wouldn’t have any sports.
who would win in a fight, a cricket team or baseball team (if one has a higher number, use only the lower number to have same numbers)
who can out drink the other a cricket or baseball team?
who can run more laps on a track without puking?
Baseball team would win in the fight, but the cricket team would drink them under the table. The baseball team would be able to run more laps.
The baseball team would be able to run more laps.
*looks at average match score vs baseball*
Yeah…
Superior defensive weapon- cricket bat or baseball bat?
Point taken.
I’m gonna come in from left field and posit that the hurley is a better improvised weapon than either the cricket or baseball bats.
I don’t see how l0b0t is wrong on this.
Jack Taylor agrees.
Guess who just joined a his company’s Zoom meeting and forgot to change his settings first? Fucking Doxxed Myself. At least they laughed.
I enjoyed that, even if I wasn’t present.
/when the hell did this post go up? i was watching those arrow thingies for hours!
Preach it, Daddio. This is one of those things I want to send people but know they’re the sort to poo poo things unless it’s from a “reputable” source (i.e. established media outlet), or happens to agree with their perception (at which point the standards change). However, I’m too much of a coward to link to Glibs.
Heh: https://babylonbee.com/news/turbotax-rebrands-as-turbotheft-for-libertarian-market
That’s wonderful! Surely the Bee is with us! ::glances around suspiciously::
Strange minds think alike.
Good morning, UCS! How are you and your corner of the world?
Well, I have a working water filter, and a massive influx of caffiene. Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten much written.
writing needs scotch and blow not caffeine
What makes you think the caffiene had anything to do with the writing? I need it to wake up in time for work.
Good [insert appropriate time of day], Pie! Are you still “at work”?
Is coffee your caffeine delivery system of choice? If so, have you noticed if your filtered water makes the coffee taste better?
As for writing, I’ve been in a looooooong dry spell. Trying to figure out a way to jump-start my muse.
It’s complicated.
I don’t normally drink coffee becuase the sheer volume of caffiene compared to my typical carbonated chemical water delivery system makes me stay up all night unless it is so far from bedtime as to be pre-work.
Prior to work from home, there was zero chance of me waking up early enough to brew and prepare a cup before having to leave. (Unless I wanted to spend even more money… but my coffee pot cost less than the coffee)
So it’s been so long since my previous cup that A: I can’t tell, and B: I can’t find that mug anymore.
The timer on a drip coffee maker is the greatest invention known to humankind.
There is one control on my coffee maker – an on/off switch.
I told you it was cheap.
You could always put the coffee and the water in the night before, then flip the switch when you get up, but to thine own self be true. (i.e., You do you.)
My boss drinks Pepsi in the morning, which I personally find barbaric, but as I dislike colas, I know that’s just my own personal prejudice.
You don’t drink cola in the morning, do you? If you say you drink Dr. Pepper, I could accept that.
Worse, I drink diet mtn dew.
Well, it IS citrus…ish, so acceptable. And hardcore.
I actually like Mountain Dew but usually avoid it because of the extra high caffeine content. (My first foray into carbonated beverages was drinking Mello Yello in college to pull all-nighters.) I bought a (regular) Mountain Dew from the office break room Friday, thinking I might drink it during the Zoom chat, but I lost my nerve. It’s still in the fridge.
Here’s a fun fact – per fluid ounce, Coffee has Five times the caffiene of mountain dew. So you would need to down forty fluid ounces of dew to match one eight ounce cup of coffee.
Wow! I honestly thought Mt. Dew had the higher caffeine content.
I will say, though, that Mt. Dew/Mello Yello belches will drive me to my knees.
This is still my favorite.
Hmmmm….I see no mention of him having pickle juice on his breath…
Mornin’, homey!
Sup, pimpness!
Time for me to go get ready for my commute – which is actually much easier & quicker at the moment. (Small consolation for all the other accompanying crap.)
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-dalek-patrols-streets-ordering-humans-to-self-isolate-11969126
Don’t make me come over there.
Someone needs to vadalize that thing.
Just on principle with regards to who’s running it.
*vandalize
https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/04/fbi-saw-record-3-7-million-gun-background-checks-in-march-amid-coronavirus-fears/
“The March sales represented the highest number of background check requests recorded by the system, surpassing the only other time requests exceeded 3 million, in the month of December 2015.”
?
Where did the 80% statistic come from? A bad game of telephone. TW: TOS
Just cause this has been stuck in my head this morning.
https://www.9news.com.au/world/giant-ocean-creature-looks-like-silly-string/db5615ef-79fc-4c3b-802c-b5cbafe44f4a
Paging Sea Smith. Sea Smith to the white courtesy phone.
Thank you Glibs! I not only learnd-ed from this post post but actually LOL’ed a few times.
Tried a new pair of shoes for last night’s venture. Total failure. I was limping an hour in. Need moar arch support.
Here’s the Boys’ Department of one of my go-to shoe shopping sites. You can even search by “Foot condition,” if you have a specific foot ailment you need to accommodate.
No worries. I’ve got four pair that are still in the box. I’ll find one that takes an industrial insert and go from there. Thanks, GT!