We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by Topper »

Court documents revealing the travel ban by Trudeau has it's roots in Cabinet Confidentiality not science.

Tellingly, days before the ban was to come into effect bureaucrats were scrambling for something the could go public with for a positive news spin. Nothing...
Among other things, the court documents indicate:
  • No one in the COVID Recovery unit, including Jennifer Little, the director-general, had any formal education in epidemiology, medicine or public health..
  • Little, who has an undergraduate degree in literature from the University of Toronto, testified that there were 20 people in the unit. When Presvelos asked her whether anyone in the unit had any professional experience in public health, she said there was one person, Monique St.-Laurent. According to St.-Laurent’s LinkedIn profile, she appears to be a civil servant who briefly worked for the Public Health Agency of Canada. St.-Laurent is not a doctor, Little said. (Reached on the phone, St.-Laurent confirmed that she was a member of COVID Recovery. She referred all other questions to a government spokesperson.)
  • Little suggested that a senior official in the prime minister’s Cabinet or possibly the prime minister himself had ordered COVID Recovery to impose the travel mandate. (During cross-examination, Little told Presvelos repeatedly that “discussions” about the mandate had taken place at “senior” and “very senior” levels.) But she refused to say who had given her team the order to impose the travel mandate. “I’m not at liberty to disclose anything that is subject to cabinet confidence,” she said.
  • The term “cabinet confidence” is noteworthy because it refers to the prime minister’s Cabinet. Meaning that Little could not talk about who had directed the COVID Recovery unit to impose the travel mandate because someone at the very highest levels of government was apparently behind it.
  • In the days leading up to the implementation of the travel mandate, transportation officials were frantically looking for a rationale for it. They came up short.
https://www.commonsense.news/p/court-do ... ingIn=true
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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by UWSaint »

Topper wrote: Tue Aug 02, 2022 4:36 pm Court documents revealing the travel ban by Trudeau has it's roots in Cabinet Confidentiality not science.
Sad.

Political control makes sense to say, hey, this risk that the scientists are telling us about and the marginal benefits from a travel ban they project aren't worth the other costs and values that are not in their purview (like economic effect or other benefits from traveling or just liberty). But political control of a ban without objective projections about health benefit? Well, that just means the politicians value either (1) control and/or (2) the perception that they are doing something about the problem more than the care about the costs.

We (meaning in this context the english speaking countries of the world) have had difficulty grasping core values or reason in the past 2 years.
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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by donlever »

My Spideysense says control.
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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by Meds »

donlever wrote: Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:35 am My Spideysense says control.
Yep. The other reason UW suggests (not saying he subscribes to it) doesn’t actually make sense…..to anyone with common sense.

Everything Jr. has done since he took office has been about control. Sometimes I wish we were a bit more Sri Lankan at times in this country of ours….
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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by Chef Boi RD »

Mëds which hillbilly are you?

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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by Strangelove »

Was that you at the 3:53 mark Dude?
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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by 5thhorseman »

donlever wrote: Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:35 am My Spideysense says control.
To what end? Something to think on while he pets the cat in his lap?
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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

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Exactly.
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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by 5thhorseman »

So he's disturbed? Too easy an answer.
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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by donlever »

...sometimes the easy and obvious answer is the right one 5th.
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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by UWSaint »

Mëds wrote: Wed Aug 03, 2022 5:39 pm
donlever wrote: Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:35 am My Spideysense says control.
Yep. The other reason UW suggests (not saying he subscribes to it) doesn’t actually make sense…..to anyone with common sense.

Everything Jr. has done since he took office has been about control. Sometimes I wish we were a bit more Sri Lankan at times in this country of ours….
Well, Mëds, I do lean "control" -- if not as a dominant motivation for each of the actors, a dominant motivation of system dynamics because those insisting on control who are willing to use powerful tools to maintain it (co-opt the professional boards, create a shaming culture towards dissent (or just ban or shadow ban it) as opposed to engaging it on the merits, seize a few bank accounts....) will "persuade" people who are in the middle or indifferent or who lean towards "action" for other reasons and with the presence of the "control" actors deploying strong strategies now have a strong incentive to go along.

Having said that, the idea that a politician or bureaucrat would "do something" in the face of an intractable problem (as opposed to do nothing recognizing actions won't have a meaningful impact on the problem) primarily for the purpose of being seen to be doing something about the problem makes perfect sense as a short term strategy when you have an office of public accountability. Because bad things will happen, and inaction makes you a target for blame whereas action allows you to say "it could have been much worse". And its really hard stuff for the citizenry to unpack, especially if the marketplace of ideas is getting fucked with.

There's a third explanation, too, I suppose. And that's that both the politicians and the technocrats suffer from path dependency, the sunk costs heuristic, and a sort of anchoring bias. Let's take the last one -- the idea is simply that the first information you hear takes on greater weight than subsequent information. Add to that the fact that new information might contradict (instead of simply confound) old information and the person has to admit error. That's hard, and a person will fight coming to the conclusion that they were wrong, not as a matter of gaslighting or malevolence, but simply because admitting error goes against instinct and is hard. In battles of pure science where there are competing hypothesis to explain a phenomena and some early research that might be used to support both schools of thought, if the data starts showing Hypothesis A is likely true and Hypothesis B is most surely false it takes a long time for the proponents of Hypothesis B to ever change their minds. Paradigm shifts often take many years to take hold as the dominant view; data regarding covid, its treatment, and the effectiveness of public health policies, etc., its both new and evolving. There hasn't been time for people to allow new data to overcome developed positions.

But let's get to control. 5th says "to what end." And that is exactly the thought I had. But 5th, you seem to think that fact this is a question means that control isn't a solid theory. Personally, I think Jr. believes strongly in state control for very traditional far left wing reasons, though I offer that thought humbly and tentatively as only an "hono_rary Canadian" who gets exposed almost only to the worst of him (that's the nature of "news"). To someone like that, control is valued as a mechanism for bringing about future change, and building the apparatus that can be deployed in the future to address a "crisis" in the present is a tactic as old as time. But Jr. isn't everyone exercising control.

There's a part of me that think government (particularly though not exclusively left of center governments and particularly though not exclusively "public health" technocrats) desire control for its own sake. Like a chiropractor sees cures in everything by doing chioropractry things government cures everything by exercising its sole unique domain -- lawful coercion. Whatever the problem, more control fixes it, that brain thinks. Sometimes it might be right, often it is not. It can't always be right due to the simple fact that there are always problems and humans can't be fixed like machines. But the "control" brain defaults to "we will fix as much as we can, because that's what we do."

The purposeful exercise of control (to bring about a communist state, to end global warming, etc.) is more rational insofar as we can understand it better. X leads to Y. And it can be far worse. See 20th c. The good thing is that because its rational, there's still a domain to counter that rationality with competing thoughts and ideas. You can argue X doesn't lead to Y. You can argue that Y isn't something to value. You can argue that X also leads to Z, which is undesirable. You can argue that X isn't consistent with Y and the ends can't justify means.

But control for its own sake, while likely less prone to catastrophic effect, is also a little harder to counter because (if my hypothesis is correct) it is something that's baked into the modern state with all of its "complexities" to be addressed by "experts." To be sure, some of these arguments are available, but institutional biases are quite strong, rarely perceived by the practitioners themselves, and might themselves be a necessary side effect of a complex state. At least to a certain degree.
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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by Meds »

UWSaint wrote: Thu Aug 04, 2022 9:26 am There's a part of me that think government (particularly though not exclusively left of center governments and particularly though not exclusively "public health" technocrats) desire control for its own sake. Like a chiropractor sees cures in everything by doing chioropractry things government cures everything by exercising its sole unique domain -- lawful coercion. Whatever the problem, more control fixes it, that brain thinks. Sometimes it might be right, often it is not. It can't always be right due to the simple fact that there are always problems and humans can't be fixed like machines. But the "control" brain defaults to "we will fix as much as we can, because that's what we do."

The purposeful exercise of control (to bring about a communist state, to end global warming, etc.) is more rational insofar as we can understand it better. X leads to Y. And it can be far worse. See 20th c. The good thing is that because its rational, there's still a domain to counter that rationality with competing thoughts and ideas. You can argue X doesn't lead to Y. You can argue that Y isn't something to value. You can argue that X also leads to Z, which is undesirable. You can argue that X isn't consistent with Y and the ends can't justify means.

But control for its own sake, while likely less prone to catastrophic effect, is also a little harder to counter because (if my hypothesis is correct) it is something that's baked into the modern state with all of its "complexities" to be addressed by "experts." To be sure, some of these arguments are available, but institutional biases are quite strong, rarely perceived by the practitioners themselves, and might themselves be a necessary side effect of a complex state. At least to a certain degree.
The majority of what we have seen this Liberal government do in terms of bills passed, as well as attempted, has been fraught with double-talk to explain away laws and regulations that will serve their own ends. The control they seek is simply the control to remain in power without contest and advance their political agenda.

The reason I find it troubling is because we supposedly live in a democracy, the point of which is that leaders and officials are elected and their mandate is to represent their constituents. By and large this doesn't happen. Instead they get elected and represent their party. Currently we have a government that is representing less than half the population in terms of actual vote count. To be forcing through an agenda that is unpopular with such a large percentage of people is a failure to represent the people of the country.

Hence the drive for control.

Such is politics at large though I suppose.
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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by donlever »

...but his cat is content.
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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by 5thhorseman »

UWSaint wrote: Thu Aug 04, 2022 9:26 am Having said that, the idea that a politician or bureaucrat would "do something" in the face of an intractable problem (as opposed to do nothing recognizing actions won't have a meaningful impact on the problem) primarily for the purpose of being seen to be doing something about the problem makes perfect sense as a short term strategy when you have an office of public accountability. Because bad things will happen, and inaction makes you a target for blame whereas action allows you to say "it could have been much worse". And its really hard stuff for the citizenry to unpack, especially if the marketplace of ideas is getting fucked with.
This, for me, is the most likely explanation. Locally there was already a lot of support to restrict travel. Small communities blocking access to outsiders. Covid outbreaks being blamed on partying travellers (eg Big White). Sounds like an easy decision for a politician to make.
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Re: We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

Post by Strangelove »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bow6_ZFtTfg



This Saudi ambassador dropped dead today at age 42, it seems a lot of people are doing that of late.

And it seems a lot of the people who are still alive are blaming the jab.

(read the comments, also Twitter)

I don't think it's the jab, so please don't shoot the messenger.
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