160 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2023
    1. It probably isn’t even a stretch to suggest that herds and flocks of many other animals use a form of direct democracy in making their decisions. Again despite the myths, “alphas” do not make decisions for others, “leadership” roles rotate regularly, the “law of two (or four) feet” tests the group’s readiness for consensus, and principles such as the “first follower” enable wild creatures to reach a decision in their group’s best collective interest. Dissenters and unpersuaded group members are free to go off and look for another group, except at critical times (such as breeding season, or when under attack), when all members of the group instinctively pitch in to share the extra burden or workload, or help work through the crisis or challenge. We’re not so different, or, at least, we weren’t.
      • for: animal decision-making
      • adjacency
        • animal herding behavior and
        • direct democracy
      • claim
        • herds and flocks of many other animals (other than human) use a form of direct democracy in making decisions
        • Alphas do not alone make decisions, as leadership often rotates
        • The law of "two feet (or four" tests the group's readiness for consensus and the "first follower" principle
        • dissenters and unpersuaded group members are free to go off and look for another group
          • except at critical times such as
            • breeding season
            • under threat
  2. Aug 2022
  3. Jul 2022
    1. Speculation, herd exuberance, irrational optimism, rent-seekingand the temptation o f fraud drive asset markets to overshoot andplunge - which is why they need careful regulation, something Ialways supported. (M arkets in goods and services need lessregulation.)
  4. Apr 2022
    1. Prof Francois Balloux [@BallouxFrancois]. (2021, December 9). This may have sounded somewhat naïve in early 2020, but by now, I would have expected that anyone with an interest in covid-19 might have acquired some basic notions in infectious disease epidemiology. 1/ [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1469063480334561285

    1. Humans’ tendency to“overimitate”—to reproduce even the gratuitous elements of another’s behavior—may operate on a copy now, understand later basis. After all, there might begood reasons for such steps that the novice does not yet grasp, especially sinceso many human tools and practices are “cognitively opaque”: not self-explanatory on their face. Even if there doesn’t turn out to be a functionalrationale for the actions taken, imitating the customs of one’s culture is a smartmove for a highly social species like our own.

      Is this responsible for some of the "group think" seen in the Republican party and the political right? Imitation of bad or counter-intuitive actions outweights scientifically proven better actions? Examples: anti-vaxxers and coronavirus no-masker behaviors? (Some of this may also be about or even entangled with George Lakoff's (?) tribal identity theories relating to "people like me".

      Explore this area more deeply.

      Another contributing factor for this effect may be the small-town effect as most Republican party members are in the countryside (as opposed to the larger cities which tend to be more Democratic). City dwellers are more likely to be more insular in their interpersonal relations whereas country dwellers may have more social ties to other people and groups and therefor make them more tribal in their social interrelationships. Can I find data to back up this claim?

      How does link to the thesis put forward by Joseph Henrich in The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous? Does Henrich have data about city dwellers to back up my claim above?

      What does this tension have to do with the increasing (and potentially evolutionary) propensity of humans to live in ever-increasingly larger and more dense cities versus maintaining their smaller historic numbers prior to the pre-agricultural timeperiod?

      What are the biological effects on human evolution as a result of these cultural pressures? Certainly our cultural evolution is effecting our biological evolution?

      What about the effects of communication media on our cultural and biological evolution? Memes, orality versus literacy, film, radio, television, etc.? Can we tease out these effects within the socio-politico-cultural sphere on the greater span of humanity? Can we find breaks, signs, or symptoms at the border of mass agriculture?


      total aside, though related to evolution: link hypercycles to evolution spirals?

    1. Dr Nisreen Alwan 🌻. (2021, March 14). Exactly a year ago we wrote this letter in the Times. We were gobsmacked! We just didn’t understand what the government was basing all its decisions on including stopping testing and the herd immunity by natural infection stuff. We wanted to see the evidence backing them. [Tweet]. @Dr2NisreenAlwan. https://twitter.com/Dr2NisreenAlwan/status/1371168531669258242

  5. Mar 2022
    1. george davey smith. (2021, December 28). Omicron is illustrating “herd immunity” as how it was introduced: A relative concept, that reduces the adverse outcome of infections within populations, not as an absolute threshold that stopped transmission; as @bmj_latest #covidunknowns webinar explains https://t.co/t8nPeL9V8r [Tweet]. @mendel_random. https://twitter.com/mendel_random/status/1475821583331700739

  6. Feb 2022
  7. Jan 2022
  8. Dec 2021
  9. Nov 2021
    1. Eliminating Covid-19 seemed theoretically possible, because the original 2002 SARS virus ultimately disappeared.

      Eliminating SARS-CoV-2 was deemed plausible, because SARS-CoV-1 had been eliminated.

  10. Oct 2021
  11. Sep 2021
  12. Jul 2021
    1. Regev-Yochay, G., Amit, S., Bergwerk, M., Lipsitch, M., Leshem, E., Kahn, R., Lustig, Y., Cohen, C., Doolman, R., Ziv, A., Novikov, I., Rubin, C., Gimpelevich, I., Huppert, A., Rahav, G., Afek, A., & Kreiss, Y. (2021). Decreased infectivity following BNT162b2 vaccination: A prospective cohort study in Israel. The Lancet Regional Health - Europe, 7, 100150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2021.100150

  13. Jun 2021
    1. Regev-Yochay, G., Amit, S., Bergwerk, M., Lipsitch, M., Leshem, E., Kahn, R., Lustig, Y., Cohen, C., Doolman, R., Ziv, A., Novikov, I., Rubin, C., Gimpelevich, I., Huppert, A., Rahav, G., Afek, A., & Kreiss, Y. (2021). Decreased Infectivity Following BNT162b2 Vaccination. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3815668

    1. Knock, E. S., Whittles, L. K., Lees, J. A., Perez-Guzman, P. N., Verity, R., FitzJohn, R. G., Gaythorpe, K. A. M., Imai, N., Hinsley, W., Okell, L. C., Rosello, A., Kantas, N., Walters, C. E., Bhatia, S., Watson, O. J., Whittaker, C., Cattarino, L., Boonyasiri, A., Djaafara, B. A., … Baguelin, M. (2021). Key epidemiological drivers and impact of interventions in the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in England. Science Translational Medicine, eabg4262. https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.abg4262

  14. May 2021
  15. Apr 2021
    1. ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: “There is a Twitter account for the Great Barrington Declaration. It is totally silent on what is presently unfolding in India. Is it really possible to watch the surge there and in Brazil and not feel challenged in your beliefs about herd immunity? For otherwise smart people?” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1384794607997890560

  16. Mar 2021
    1. Decerf, B., Ferreira, F. H. G., Mahler, D. G., & Sterck, O. (2020). Lives and Livelihoods: Estimates of the Global Mortality and Poverty Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic. IZA Discussion Paper, 13549.

    1. Stefan Simanowitz. (2020, November 14). “Sweden hoped herd immunity would curb #COVID19. Don’t do what we did” write 25 leading Swedish scientists “Sweden’s approach to COVID has led to death, grief & suffering. The only example we’re setting is how not to deal with a deadly infectious disease” https://t.co/azOg6AxSYH https://t.co/u2IqU5iwEn [Tweet]. @StefSimanowitz. https://twitter.com/StefSimanowitz/status/1327670787617198087

    1. Kenneth Fordyce. (2020, November 3). @devisridhar @georgeeaton Yet another article packed full of wise words: E.g., ‘in some ways, the people pushing for “herd immunity” are forcing us into these lockdown-release cycles because you end up in a reactive position by underestimating the spread of the virus and the hospitalisation rate’ [Tweet]. @FordyceKenneth. https://twitter.com/FordyceKenneth/status/1323544552112852992

  17. Feb 2021
    1. Youyang Gu. (2021, February 24). When can we return to normal? Forget about ‘herd immunity’. Below is my estimate for the number of susceptible individuals over time, as a proportion of the US population. Looking at this graph, what is the best point to go back to normal? Christmas? Fall? Or Summer? 🧵 https://t.co/V4uiFk5YcP [Tweet]. @youyanggu. https://twitter.com/youyanggu/status/1364627872233750543

    1. Yale SOM. (2020, October 27). Herd immunity is the end goal of developing a vaccine, @thehowie explains. But when government officials talk about relying on “herd immunity” as a strategy for slowing or stopping the Covid-19 pandemic without a vaccine, it’s a more dangerous approach. Https://t.co/aJ8VXos7zh [Tweet]. @YaleSOM. https://twitter.com/YaleSOM/status/1321150247503101956