[FRIAM] Rutt on Consensus v ideology

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

To the Covid19 obsessives on the list,

 

I want to call you attention to the latest installment of the Jim Rutt Show,


https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/extra-key-covid-19-decisions-with-john
-robb/id1470622572?i=1000472461724

 

There an idea is introduced that the rest of you are probably familiar with
but was a new for me:  that our politics has become not a red-blue politics
(which would be more ideological and therefore more stable) but a
consensus-reaction politics, in which, whatever consensus forms, a vehement
counter- reaction forms in response to it.  Rutt and his guest seemed to
agree on something that I had also sensed: that the nation went into
lockdown BEFORE anybody sent it into lockdown, i.e, a consensus emerged that
the politicians just tagged along after.   ("And then a miracle happened"?) 

 

There is also some interesting talk about the "Swedish experiment".  (Was it
here, or on the 538 thingy I sent you yesterday).  The idea is that you can
"safely" adopt a herd immunity  strategy in any nation where the average age
is under thirty.   Sweden does not qualify.  India does.  The metaphor* with
controlled burn is spookily apt.  Here's the 538 thingy again.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/model-talk-forecasting-the-toll-of-cov
id-19/id1077418457?i=1000472325708

 

I can't imagine that any of you have the time to sit and listen to these,
but I would love to hear comments if you do. 

 

Nick 

 

*Stephen may assert that this is not a metaphor, but they are the very same
thing.  I LUST to have that argument, but not on this thread.  

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

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