[FRIAM] The Self Case

Fri Apr 10 00:13:18 EDT 2020

Sounds like your department was mixture of clinicians and experimenters.

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, Apr 9, 2020, 10:01 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> OK, Glen, fair enough and stipulated.  I hope you know  how much I value
> your perspective.
>
>
>
> But ...One of the constant debates in my field (well, perhaps more
> accurately, in the field of most of the members of my Department, was
> between the "nomothetic" and the "idiographic".    Knowing you as well as I
> do, I know that before I get to the end of this sentence you will have
> looked those terms up and come to understand them better than I do.  But
> still, to bolt the argument to the ground, a bit, let me explain them
> myself.  It is like the difference between the graph in a scientific paper
> of the mean value of the independent  variable and the values of the
> dependent variable, as interpolated -- that's nomothetic -- and the picture
> of three individual subjects which represent the values of the independent
> variable -- that's idiographic.  Nomothetic study seeks to get at the laws
> that relate one kind of thing to another; the other seeks to capture the
> ... dare I say .... essence of a phenomenon through a single instance.
> Physics writing is often said to be nomothetic; history writing is said to
> be idiographic.  Psychology is said to be both.  Studies of rats in mazes
> are nomothetic in intent; we really DON'T give a damn for the individual
> rat.  But clinical case studies are definitely idiographic.  My field --
> ethology -- has often been torn between the two impulses, and the
> idiographic gave way in the end to the nomothetic.  To my regret, while I
> was on sabbatical in the Maddingley {ethological} Field Station in
> Cambridge, England I met a woman, Joan Hall Craggs, who had managed to
> record and sonogram all the song types sung by a single male black bird
> during his 18 year (could that be right?!) career.  She had binder upon
> binder of them in her office, all beautifully preserved, dated, and
> fieldnoted.  I am afraid, when she died, the whole lot went in the
> dumpster.  A nomothetical scientist would argue that such a record would
> tell one nothing about "blackbirds";  an idiographic scientist would claim
> that without such a record, we would never know what was possible for a
> black bird.  (By the way, a "black bird" in England is a very close
> relative of our American robin'\; robins, in  England are something else
> entirely.)
>
>
>
> Now, I have already stipulated that, in a sense my focusing on my
> individual case is to some extent narcissistic and, well, stupid.  However,
> focusing on a single case is not *necessarily* either.  And since I know
> my case best of all, and since the home church is living it right now, I
> think keeping the Santa Fe numbers before us GROUNDS us and helps us,
> perhaps, not to think of "cases" and "deaths" in the disembodied way that
> we do when we are performing as nomothetic scientists.  Every nomothetic
> case is an intersection of just a few variables of interest; every
> idiographic case is the intersection of an infinity of variables, any one
> of which may be of interest to somebody.  Thinking of the “self-case”,
> helps to keep that fact in view.
>
>
>
> Thanks as always for you insights,
>
>
>
> Hope to see you tomorrow.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
>
> Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2020 4:26 PM
>
> To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] covid19.healthdata.org
>
>
>
> OK. This is definitely a different message from what I thought you said. I
> thought you were saying their estimates were optimistic. And since their
> estimates include their uncertainty bands, that includes not peaking till
> much later than what their chart might suggest, maybe 4.5k deaths PER DAY
> at the peak,  125k dead overall, etc. If we consider the outside of their
> uncertainty, that's not optimistic at all.
>
>
>
> You can go back to MA right now. And if you're super careful, you can most
> likely do it without getting infected. So, your "pessimism" is not about
> the peak, total bed availability, or whatever. Your pessimism seems to have
> more to do with *you* (and your immediate clique). That you could go ahead
> and do what you need to do now, but won't, isn't pessimism about these
> estimates. It's fear for your own condition. That's understandable, of
> course, but not really about this estimate or its methods.
>
>
>
>
>
> On 4/9/20 2:49 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > Perhaps they seem optimistic to me only because mine have been so
> pessimistic.  I have assumed that I am immobilized here in Santa Fe for the
> next year.  I even put up a list on my wall of 365 days and have been
> crossing them off, one by one.  What I see on that site suggests to me that
> I might actually get  to  my garden in Massachusetts by early June.  I just
> heard an interview with Daniel Kahneman (who is in my age range) who says
> essentially that he expects to stay home for the rest of his life because
> of the disease.  I just heard from Dave West (He's fine!) who decided to
> make a run for home from Amsterdam and essentially had a 747 to himself.
> Perhaps now is exactly the time to make a run for MA.
>
> >
>
> > So, you see, my thinking about all of this is deranged and intensified
> by its personal implications.  So perhaps I ought to be keeping my thoughts
> to myself.  I have my favorite dog in this fight; too much skin in this
> game.
>
> >
>
> > My pessimistic  view is that until we are back to contact tracing levels
> everybody should stay home.  Others seem to imagine essentially eliminating
> the disease from the population by social distancing in the next month. and
> then going back pretty much to business as usual.  I WANT those "others" to
> be right, but I am having a hard time selling it to myself.  At the
> minimum, any restarting would require public health departments to have the
> power to snatch contacts off the street, throw them in sterilized vans, and
> cart them off to motels to watch Fox News for two weeks.  Apparently,
> people boarding airplanes in Wuhan, are doing so in hazmat gear.  I just
> don't see that happening, here.  Even at the current "peak", SW airlines is
> not screening passengers or taking temps at the gate.
>
> >
>
> > I read some where that Trump is losing a Billion dollars (a month? from
> the crisis.  Hey, every cloud has a silver lining.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
>
>
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>
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
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