Great that it’s being retconned now (once again) to be that the experts were right all along regarding Covid-19, and anyone who says anything contrary to that — despite having screenshots and proof — is just someone who hates science and is a conspiracy theorist.
I realize that is the modus operandi of the powerful lately, but it gets tiresome. I guess it must work, though, because they keep doing it.
The idea of being concrete is abstract
— Devon (@devonzuegel) April 30, 2020
Further, the idea of being anything is abstract, because it requires conceptualizing one’s self as an entity separate from the world. Thus, the idea of “idea” is also abstract because a cat for instance does not have any ideas — it has observations, responses and actions. The same with a snail. In other words, being able to think of ideas as a phenomenon in the world at all means one has abstractions essentially from the bottom up. All of the mirrors are turned on one another, and where reality truly dwells and emerges from cannot ever be clarified.
However, a cat has a different predicament. It has no infinity mirrors, no ideas, no abstractions, thus no ability to reflect on and from anything other than brute reality. It’ll never get lost in a maze of abstractions, but it will also never escape a labyrinth that it doesn’t even realize it’s in.
Such a filmmaking flex pic.twitter.com/J6cfxB1QIL
— Matt Neglia (@NextBestPicture) April 30, 2020
Great filmmaking and use of CGI to express something rather than just have more stuff blow up on screen — but yes, also a major flex. That’s from Contact, by the way.
Here’s how that great shot was done.
Instead of ‘there’s so much to do here on Earth’ we should flip it around: no movies and video games and sports for anyone until we’ve conquered the galaxy.
— scientism (@mr_scientism) April 29, 2020
And I know just the guy to be your galactic overlord.
Hint: it’s me.
‘“I hope the lesson people take from this is not, Experts were wrong,” Tufekci says. “If you followed the right people, they were overwhelmingly right. We just didn’t put them in the right place so we could hear them.”’ https://t.co/01nK2BFLpw
— David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) April 29, 2020
As much as I like Zeynep Tufekci, this is clearly wrong and I disagree with her strongly. There were all sorts of actual experts 2-3 months ago dispensing all manner of incorrect information about Covid-19, the possible path of the pandemic, and responses. For instance, most of WHO, many epidemiologists in the US who were saying what was happening in Wuhan was nothing to worry about, and we should be far more concerned with the seasonal flu.
These were all experts proffering this nonsense.
Her point that “if you follow the right people” is completely useless when you have competing experts, some of whom are correct and some of whom are peddlers of utter flapdoodle. How is the average or even the above average person, ever supposed to operate in that environment? It’s just not possible. I can do it to some extent but I’ve devoted most of my life to being good at such things. There should be no expectation that a normal person be able to do this.
I understand where she’s coming from, but she’s one of the more highly-educated and intelligent people alive. She knows where to turn and who is likely to be correct. That is a skill that she’s severely underestimating because she is good at it (we all do this with things we are good at).