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Prolonged Pandemic Protests

In May 2020, I wrote one of my last pieces focused on COVID: Pandemic Protests. In it I listed a number of ways COVID changed or was likely to change protests around the world:

“In many instances, top-down social distancing orders and bottom-up unwillingness of people to gather in large groups had similar effects. The large protests that we saw so much of in 2019 dwindled not because protesters won their demands or because governments cracked down hard, but because people didn’t go out as much.

“Protesters’ strength came from gathering in numbers. What to do now?”

And for a while in many places around the world, large, crowded protests did decline, or were replaced by social-distance versions.

The most notable of those declines for me, since I had also written about it several times here, was the impact on the existing protest movement in Hong Kong. That movement formerly drew anti-government protests of over one million people to the streets (in a city of 7.5 million). When COVID emerged, the cynical view was that the timing of the pandemic hurt the protesters (or helped the government). Continue reading “Prolonged Pandemic Protests”

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CEOs, Students, and Algorithms

Hummingbirds and flowers co-adapted over millions of years. As with the shapes of the flowers they take nectar from, hummingbird beaks grew to different lengths, some straight, some curved.

Photo: Sonia Nadales

However, some bees learned that they could access the nectar within tubular flowers by chewing a hole at the base and robbing the nectar from there. When that happens, the flower loses its nectar without getting pollinated.

We see this with humans and computers too. Continue reading “CEOs, Students, and Algorithms”

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Is the World Getting Safer?

It’s common to hear that the world has become safer. Likewise, a common criticism of those who disagree is that they are ignorant of the facts. According to some measures, we have seen decades or even centuries of improvement in the form or lower violence, with instances of war or homicides per capita often presented as relevant factors.

Let’s look at how this relates to studying systems and unintended consequences.

From a talk by Steven Pinker on the topic:

“Homicide rates plunge whenever anarchy and the code of vendetta are replaced by the rule of law. It happened when feudal Europe was brought under the control of centralized kingdoms… It happened again in colonial New England, in the American Wild West when the sheriffs moved to town, and in Mexico…. Continue reading “Is the World Getting Safer?”

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Blank Paper (How to Protest Today)

How do protest techniques adapt to changing laws, international public opinion, and online mobs?

Blank Paper

In an earlier essay on Pandemic Protests I shared an example of a “blank paper” protest from Kazakhstan. Police arrested a man holding a piece of blank paper on charges of “we’ll sort that out later.”

Kazakhstan is not a country associated with free speech. Neither was the former USSR. As the old joke goes (translated from Protest Folklore, by Andrey Moroz):

“A man throws leaflets on Red Square, they grab him and see that he is handing out blank papers. They ask: “Why empty?” – “So everything is clear.”

Continue reading “Blank Paper (How to Protest Today)”

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Fear, Fury, and Forgetting

Change often doesn’t happen smoothly, but rather in fits and starts.

Here’s a look at some mass actions over the past few decades that either caused fear or fury and (for some of them) how they were ultimately forgotten.

Since we’ve seen a year of fear and fury around the world, largely in the form of many types of large sustained protests and the impact of COVID-19, let’s look at some past examples and how change plays out (or doesn’t). What behavior and consequences emerge along the way?

Radon Gas. In the 1980s a report from the EPA and its reporting in media set off a radon gas scare in the US. The gas, naturally occurring in the ground, seeped into home basements and was blamed for cancer deaths. People suddenly became afraid to spend much time in their basements. But the risk was exaggerated in importance.

Radon gas as a cause of cancer is highly tied to smoking. Given that smoking has declined in the US over the last few decades before the recent creation of vaping, is radon really an issue? An EPA report estimates that 21,000 die of lung cancer caused by radon but 86% of them are also smokers.

With more knowledge, the fear dissipated like the gas itself.

Continue reading “Fear, Fury, and Forgetting”

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Changes in Value (Part 2)

While I discussed silver, tulips, and drugs in Changes in Value Part I, here I look at education, art, spices, chicken feet, and conformity. What systems influence the value of things? Why does value change?

At the end I provide suggestions to assess your own situations.

Education

I’ve been critical of higher education on this blog before, but for other reasons. When it comes to the the price of a college degree — and here I’m mostly talking of the price of American college tuition — we’ve seen a doubling in price, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years. A number of factors combine to drive up the price.

Continue reading “Changes in Value (Part 2)”

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Pandemic Protests

As with other sudden, widespread changes, there are many second-order effects from coronavirus. I’ve been slowly chronicling them on this blog. Today, let’s look at the impact on protest movements and tactics.

Over the past few months people around the world lost their ability to protest. Or, they lost the type of protest that had worked for them — the mass gatherings to show dissatisfaction and force government response.

In locations including Algeria, Bolivia, Chile, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Haiti, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Russia, Spain, Netherlands, Peru, Syria, and the US, protests have declined or have taken a different turn — due to COVID-19. What systems are changing and what is likely to remain changed after a vaccine?

Continue reading “Pandemic Protests”

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A Religion of Isolation (Pandemics Past and Present)

When a new topic overwhelms — as with coronavirus — it’s easy to take in a lot of noisy information. Information that isn’t helpful, accurate, or clear. With that in mind, and especially for those of you physically isolated in response to COVID-19, I present this (long) quote about the Dark Ages of Europe.

“Whatever reproach may, at a later period, have been justly thrown on the indolence and luxury of religious orders, it was surely good that, in an age of ignorance and violence, there should be quiet cloisters and gardens, in which the arts of peace could be safely cultivated, in which gentle and contemplative natures find an asylum, in which one brother could employ himself in transcribing the Aeneid of Virgil, and another in meditating the Analytics of Aristotle, in which who had a genius for art might illuminate a martyrology or carve a crucifix, and in which he who had a turn for natural philosophy might make experiments on properties of plants and minerals. Had not such retreats been scattered here and there, among the huts of a miserable peasantry, and the castles of a ferocious aristocracy, European society would have consisted merely of beasts of burden and beasts of prey. The Church has many times been compared by divines to the ark of which we read in the Book of Genesis: but never was the resemblance more perfect than during that evil when she alone rode, amidst darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath which all the great works of power and wisdom lay entombed, bearing within that feeble germ from which a second and more glorious civilization was to spring.”

Continue reading “A Religion of Isolation (Pandemics Past and Present)”

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On Campuses Reopening

Around the US, college campuses closed in mid-March. And they generally closed earlier in parts of Asia and later elsewhere around the world. When should they reopen?

The president of Brown University wrote an Op-ed piece in the NY Times (published April 26) to address this question.

I’ll only call out a few quotes and suggest you read it for yourself.

“Our students will have to understand that until a vaccine is developed, campus life will be different. Students and employees may have to wear masks on campus. Large lecture classes may remain online even after campuses open. Traditional aspects of collegiate life — athletic competitions, concerts and yes, parties — may occur, but in much different fashions. Imagine athletics events taking place in empty stadiums, recital halls with patrons spaced rows apart and virtual social activities replacing parties.

“But students will still benefit from all that makes in-person education so valuable: the fierce intellectual debates that just aren’t the same on Zoom, the research opportunities in university laboratories and libraries and the personal interactions among students with different perspectives and life experiences.”

But the paragraphs that might be called tone deaf are these. Continue reading “On Campuses Reopening”