Re: [tlug] GW projects

["Curt J. Sampson" <cjs@example.com>]

On 2020-05-02 13:41 +0900 (Sat), Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Raymond Wan writes:
>
>  > Not everyone needs to be a scientist; but the level of STEM of
>  > the general population isn't enough to sort of fact from fiction
>  > in the news (or Facebook, which is now considered news...).
>
> It's not really STEM, though.  It's civics -- how does government
> work, why does it work that way -- and why does it work at all.  And
> economics -- how does the economy work, why does it work that way, --
> and why does it work at all. ;-)  I grant that there are "trust but
> verify" issues with both...

Well, there's some of that, but much of it I think is due to a true
case of American exceptionalism: Americans do believe in the
(demonstrated) compentence of the U.S. government, and they also have
what many others would consider slightly sociopathic tendencies: a
much greater greater "I don't care about others: I want to get what I
can" tendency. (This is not considered sociopathic in American
society, of course; this is a societal norm there.)

This explains why Americans tend to have a higher belief in conspiracy
theories (there's a higher level of belief that large groups are so
incredibly competent as to be able to pull off implausibly complex
conspiracies) and why there's so much anti-government sentiment for
personal issues ("registeration gives them the power to take away my
guns") but not for issues where individuals can convince themselves
that they wouldn't be affected ("why would they bother to surveil me?").

> ...but look at the U.S. -- despite COVID-19 and
> the Trump Administration's active attempts to kill elderly voters,
> both are still functioning.  (As well as they ever do -- the same
> people are homeless, starving, doing without health care, etc.  I'm
> not saying that's good, I'm just saying that both market economies and
> large bureaucracies are far better at "keepin' on keepin' on" than
> most people are willing to admit.)

That's true enough, though that seems to me simply a matter of
momentum: plenty of non-market economies rife with corruption or
whatever carry on quite well for decades.

Regarding masks, here's my current undersanding of them:

> ...[masks] made out of cloth which are pretty much as effective (as
> long as nobody literally sneezes in your face)...

Wearing a mask like that is hardly more effective at stopping you from
getting infected when people aren't sneezing directly in your face
than when they are. But those non-N95 masks are highly effective on a
societal level: they greatly reduce the chance that _you_ will infect
someone else.

> ...and then somebody will invent a wash-n-wearable comfortable N95 mask...

Maybe _relatively_ comfortable, but there's no way an N95 mask can be
made as comfortable as even a regular cloth mask, much less no mask at
all. There's a reason, for example, that standard N95 masks used for
painting and suchlike have a valve to let air out. (Which of course
also lets out the virus.)

So what you want is people at high risk of infection (medical staff
and so on) wearining N95 masks and everybody else wearing pretty much
anything else (a cloth bandana is good enough) that keeps their
spittle and moisture from their lungs from flying about.

cjs
-- 
Curt J. Sampson      <cjs@example.com>      +81 90 7737 2974

To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
    - L Peter Deutsch