This is junk. Possibly even a case study exemplar of spurious correlations. Take a small set of units (high false positive rate, inter alia). Take some vaguely relevant sounding metrics (entry point for p-hacking). Does a bunch of regressions.
Here's the next paper from the group:
Distance from equator is predictive of authoritarianism. The more constant daily cycle causes a yearning for rigid routines, predisposing populations to authoritarian rule.
If you think I'm merely taking the piss, is it more or less plausible than the proposed causal mechanism here:
"Because many disease-causing parasites are invisible, and their actions mysterious, disease control has historically depended substantially on adherence to ritualized behavioral practices that reduced infection risk [9]."
Or maybe it's because we've already seen the data our whole lives, know which countries are authoritarian and can select any variable which separates democracies from authoritarian countries and bang, you've got p < 0.05.
Yup, or maybe it's the same "Global North" vs "Global South" thing where the rich countries of the world are predominantly in the temperate north. There's just not that much land in the temperate south.
In the middle you have the Caribbean/Northern Latin America, Central Africa and then like Indonesia out in Asia. A lot of warm, wet places with lots of history of malaria, other parasites, and terrible economic development.
What's interesting and cuts the other way right now is the small evidence that warmer and wetter makes COVID less infectious/effective. Have yet to see a good reason 'why' that's the case here, but it would be the first time you kinda want to be near the equator in order to avoid an infectious disease.
> What's interesting and cuts the other way right now is the small evidence that warmer and wetter makes COVID less infectious/effective. Have yet to see a good reason 'why' that's the case here
My understanding is that coronaviruses such as the SARS-CoV family or influenza die more quickly in warmer, more humid conditions. Some sources:
Looks like the measures for authoritarianism are taken from various indices for present-day countries. I wonder how this would hold up if we ask historians to rank historical civilizations by "authoritarianism" and then see how this holds up when extrapolated there.
This study gets absolutely demolished by the fact that all the major old world democracies were trade/citizen empires in the tropics and sub-tropics; Athens, Rome, Carthage, the Malaccan states, Phoenician states, Swahili city states, etc. While Northern Europe and China were the kinds of totalitarian states that the DPRK would envy.
Whatever the specific case here, I think we're hitting some sort of epistemological point with after-the-fact data analysis. Pseudoscience, basically. I realise that the term is inflammatory but ultimately it comes down to some fundamentals.
There's a reason why science as a philosophy places so much value on experimentation that makes predictions and tests them. Testability is a fundamental. Untestable theories are not just wrong, they're nonsensical to science. Take Ostrom's "Simulation hypothesis." Is it pseudoscientific? Depends. Is it testable? Is a simulated universe different in a testable way? A theoretically testable simulation hypothesis makes predictions. One that isn't, doesn't. A simulation which is 100% unknowable cannot be a scientific theory. This doesn't strictly mean that it isn't true, it just means we can't gain scientific knowledge of it. If it's masquerading as a scientific theory, then it is pseudoscience.
On the "softer" level, there's a reason why science as a cultural, intellectual institution places so much value on eliminating observer effects. Scientists own bias has always been a major detriment to science. Often in the history of science, generations have had to die off before bias can be shed and science advanced in some area.
Basically and practically, the "double blind" designs of experiments are the heart of this. People's objectivity is not to be trusted, not even scientists, not even a little.
Economics, sociology and such have shifted from one flavour of pseudoscience to another. Back in Popper's day, they would create big untestable "theories" that explained everything and nothing. Today, they make micro-theories after they analyze the data.
I think this may be peaking though. The way machines do "data analysis" is starting to shift the way we think on the margins. Machines make predictions, but not theories. They don't care which way causality runs.
"There's a reason why science as a philosophy places so much value on experimentation that makes predictions and tests them."
Exactly.
There's something that's always bothered me about the "evolution by natural selection is science and everyone who doesn't immediately buy into every aspect of it is an idiot".
I personally believe in evolution. It probably makes quite a few good predictions. And I'm sure some experiments have rigor.
But a lot of it seems pretty untestable. Add a stress to a population, and it will either die off or evolve to improve fitness. If it dies off, does that contradict the theory because no evolution happened? If it evolves, how much will it evolve? Will the population reach a smaller equilibrium, larger, or the same? Does any change count as "evolution" or is someone quantifying which ones actually improve fitness? What about changes that don't seem obviously connected to fitness, like ridiculous peacock feathers, would those be predicted? Are we coming up with falsifiable predictions before the tests, or just explanations afterward?
I'm sure someone with more knowledge of the field has answers to all of these questions. But my guess is that they are more nuanced than the "evolution is science and if you question any aspect you are an idiot".
I believe it's not just parasites -- it's also things like diseases and famine as well.
The reason it's called "parasite-stress theory" is not because parasites are so important for the selection of government, but because it's a reference to parasite-stress theory in biology.
It makes sense. If you don't even have basic healthcare or security, a strongman willing to swoop in and take decisive action does sound appealing. Unfortunately, though, they usually just make things worse.
It would seem to me that if you are sick or your health is suffering, several things can result:
1) you dont have the time or energy to consider what the (authoritarian) leader is doing as carefully (cognitive)
2) you may just be too tired/sick to do anything about it (physical)
You're lower on the hierarchy of needs. If you're afraid you're going to get killed or starve you don't care about abstract things like freedom of artistic expression.
I would agree... Because in my opinion it is the same as religious belief. People in first world countries are getting more and more secular because they have more time, more willpower to decide about life on their own. If you are poor or sick you spend all mental energy on caring about here and now and you let "higher power" to lead everything else.
"a strongman willing to swoop in and take decisive action does sound appealing"
Or maybe a group of people facing existential calamity actually do need fairly strong leadership?
Taiwan and especially Singapore might be characterized as much less 'liberal democratic' than the US, and they have already tamed coronavirus while the US flails and a lot of people are dying. Maybe that's not a perfect example, but it surely illustrates the point.
That's true. I'm normally very anti-authoritarian but these days I applaud when police come by and shut down public gatherings due to COVID-19. I think everyone is more comfortable with authoritarianism during this crisis. To be fair, there is a place for decisive action during emergency, as long as those emergency powers don't last forever.
However, long term, authoritarian leadership makes things worse due to lack of transparency and accountability to the people. They can clean things up short term, but then they hold onto power and rot society.
I guess there could be a place for temporary authoritarian governments to swoop in, sweep up the mess, and then hand over things to liberal democracies, but they don't hand over power easily.
A book I read on Vietnam (A Bright Shining Lie) floated the idea that communism never delivered on its promise to make society more equitable, but communist revolutions have played a role in eliminating backwards feudal governments and clearing the way for liberal democracies to take over. Kind of like a shock treatment, but with a very high price in terms of human suffering.
Anyway, we should all be very suspicious and ready to oppose authoritarian creep, because we're all susceptible to it right now, and it could stick around even after this virus passes.
I find it curious that in our current political climate / party system, liberals seem to be more okay with mandatory lockdown procedures, whereas conservatives are pushing back. The latter may be partially due to prior ideological commitments [0], but it's also somewhat counter-intuitive considering the known correlation between authoritarianism and germaphobia.
It may be that our two-party dynamic, being focused primarily around left vs. right, largely ignores the authoritarian/libertarian axis of the political compass [1], meaning both parties have authoritarian wings internally. In times of stress/shock, real and/or perceived, it seems that each political tribe is willing to cede power to its authoritarians, based on its values: currently, the left does so for health and the environment, and the right for border security and violence from the "other". And of course, these values can shift based on political winds and alliances of convenience; I'm watching HBO's "The Plot Against America", and from a modern perspective, it's strange to see the FDR economic progressives be the hawks, while the (original) America First-ers are the doves.
(While I lean libertarian on the political compass, I'm not a-priori judging all authoritarianism to be evil; there are arguably times such as a pandemic or a world war where some amount may be necessary.)
I agree with your post, and I've marveled at various perceived hypocrisies on both sides. I acknowledge that in some cases there is no actual hypocrisy, just nuanced views that don't fit a simple mold.
But I also believe that partisanship for the sake of partisanship is more important to many people on both sides than any kind of deeper ideological consistency or integrity.
Merely exercising state powers is not authoritarianism. There are other necessary aspects that must exist. If a popularly-elected government orders a curfew that is not necessarily authoritarianism.
It's a semantic argument, but I generally agree. I'd say authoritarianism is an extremist endpoint on a spectrum. It's become a dirty word for obvious reasons, but I'm using the term in a relatively value-neutral / non-pejorative sense.
restating a prior sentiment: such dichotomies--left/right, authoritarian/libertarian--and their cross-products are cognitive traps. they inhibit understanding and obscure solution pathways.
so don't worry about the axis affiliations and critique the ideas themselves (as you imply you already do by not judging a priori).
fear-driven decision environments (as with the current pandemic) are ripe for power seizures (even if just incrementally). we should remain vigilant against that.
afaict, most US residents are following governmental requests (like physical distancing, washing hands, and self-quarantining when sick) because it's a reasonable and prudent response to a virus that's still relatively unknown but has the potential to be bad, not because we're coerced by said government. those admonitions provide (sometimes sparse) evidence, information, and rationale for doing so, rather than mainly relying on force.
that force is held back by governmental units because of the threat of backlash by residents. this keeps their power in check. don't give that up.
>that force is held back by governmental units because of the threat of backlash by residents. this keeps their power in check. don't give that up.
You seem to be implying that, absent such a threat, the government would be employing force against citizens regardless of their compliance, simply because they could get away with it. If so, is it not more likely that restraint is due to the purpose of the state's monopoly on force being to coerce compliance, and as such is simply not necessary when the public is already compliant?
In other words, that the government is holding itself in check far more than the public is?
> left/right, authoritarian/libertarian--and their cross-products are cognitive traps
No dispute. It's a classic leaky-abstraction problem; some models can be helpful in reasoning, but they're always imperfect at describing messy complex reality. (While it too is imperfect, I'm rather fond of the 8-axis political compass! [0])
A lot of our weird tribal coalitions are byproducts of a First-Past-The-Post voting system, which necessarily results in two parties, game-theoretically. IMO there is no more urgent policy issue than electoral reform, to something like Ranked Choice or Approval, so that our representatives are more reflective of our preferences.
> fear-driven decision environments (as with the current pandemic) is ripe for power seizures
This is true; I'm a big fan of Chomsky's admonition that "the burden of proof is on state power to justify itself". While I'm grateful for how many people are doing the right thing voluntarily (I'm genuinely surprised at the trust of citizens in science, at least in my neck of the woods), I do think a pandemic is a situation where judicious use of state power can be justified (forbidding gatherings over N people, for instance). It's a balancing act, and we must be very vigilant to see that "emergency" powers do not persist indefinitely, as they so often do (Patriot Act, etc).
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Dupe: 17 days ago
Here's the next paper from the group:
Distance from equator is predictive of authoritarianism. The more constant daily cycle causes a yearning for rigid routines, predisposing populations to authoritarian rule.
If you think I'm merely taking the piss, is it more or less plausible than the proposed causal mechanism here:
"Because many disease-causing parasites are invisible, and their actions mysterious, disease control has historically depended substantially on adherence to ritualized behavioral practices that reduced infection risk [9]."
Or maybe it's because we've already seen the data our whole lives, know which countries are authoritarian and can select any variable which separates democracies from authoritarian countries and bang, you've got p < 0.05.
In the middle you have the Caribbean/Northern Latin America, Central Africa and then like Indonesia out in Asia. A lot of warm, wet places with lots of history of malaria, other parasites, and terrible economic development.
What's interesting and cuts the other way right now is the small evidence that warmer and wetter makes COVID less infectious/effective. Have yet to see a good reason 'why' that's the case here, but it would be the first time you kinda want to be near the equator in order to avoid an infectious disease.
My understanding is that coronaviruses such as the SARS-CoV family or influenza die more quickly in warmer, more humid conditions. Some sources:
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2014/the-reason-for-the-se...
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/av/2011/734690/
There's a reason why science as a philosophy places so much value on experimentation that makes predictions and tests them. Testability is a fundamental. Untestable theories are not just wrong, they're nonsensical to science. Take Ostrom's "Simulation hypothesis." Is it pseudoscientific? Depends. Is it testable? Is a simulated universe different in a testable way? A theoretically testable simulation hypothesis makes predictions. One that isn't, doesn't. A simulation which is 100% unknowable cannot be a scientific theory. This doesn't strictly mean that it isn't true, it just means we can't gain scientific knowledge of it. If it's masquerading as a scientific theory, then it is pseudoscience.
On the "softer" level, there's a reason why science as a cultural, intellectual institution places so much value on eliminating observer effects. Scientists own bias has always been a major detriment to science. Often in the history of science, generations have had to die off before bias can be shed and science advanced in some area.
Basically and practically, the "double blind" designs of experiments are the heart of this. People's objectivity is not to be trusted, not even scientists, not even a little.
Economics, sociology and such have shifted from one flavour of pseudoscience to another. Back in Popper's day, they would create big untestable "theories" that explained everything and nothing. Today, they make micro-theories after they analyze the data.
I think this may be peaking though. The way machines do "data analysis" is starting to shift the way we think on the margins. Machines make predictions, but not theories. They don't care which way causality runs.
Exactly.
There's something that's always bothered me about the "evolution by natural selection is science and everyone who doesn't immediately buy into every aspect of it is an idiot".
I personally believe in evolution. It probably makes quite a few good predictions. And I'm sure some experiments have rigor.
But a lot of it seems pretty untestable. Add a stress to a population, and it will either die off or evolve to improve fitness. If it dies off, does that contradict the theory because no evolution happened? If it evolves, how much will it evolve? Will the population reach a smaller equilibrium, larger, or the same? Does any change count as "evolution" or is someone quantifying which ones actually improve fitness? What about changes that don't seem obviously connected to fitness, like ridiculous peacock feathers, would those be predicted? Are we coming up with falsifiable predictions before the tests, or just explanations afterward?
I'm sure someone with more knowledge of the field has answers to all of these questions. But my guess is that they are more nuanced than the "evolution is science and if you question any aspect you are an idiot".
The reason it's called "parasite-stress theory" is not because parasites are so important for the selection of government, but because it's a reference to parasite-stress theory in biology.
It makes sense. If you don't even have basic healthcare or security, a strongman willing to swoop in and take decisive action does sound appealing. Unfortunately, though, they usually just make things worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasite-stress_theory
So I think that while the theory would be hard to prove, the power of parasites causing complex physiological changes should not be ignored.
Now that's not to say the paper is accurate as I am not a scientist, but it is to say I find it an interesting read.
Or maybe a group of people facing existential calamity actually do need fairly strong leadership?
Taiwan and especially Singapore might be characterized as much less 'liberal democratic' than the US, and they have already tamed coronavirus while the US flails and a lot of people are dying. Maybe that's not a perfect example, but it surely illustrates the point.
This seems like a dangerous meme right now
However, long term, authoritarian leadership makes things worse due to lack of transparency and accountability to the people. They can clean things up short term, but then they hold onto power and rot society.
I guess there could be a place for temporary authoritarian governments to swoop in, sweep up the mess, and then hand over things to liberal democracies, but they don't hand over power easily.
A book I read on Vietnam (A Bright Shining Lie) floated the idea that communism never delivered on its promise to make society more equitable, but communist revolutions have played a role in eliminating backwards feudal governments and clearing the way for liberal democracies to take over. Kind of like a shock treatment, but with a very high price in terms of human suffering.
Anyway, we should all be very suspicious and ready to oppose authoritarian creep, because we're all susceptible to it right now, and it could stick around even after this virus passes.
I stopped reading when I realized they meant microbiology.
It may be that our two-party dynamic, being focused primarily around left vs. right, largely ignores the authoritarian/libertarian axis of the political compass [1], meaning both parties have authoritarian wings internally. In times of stress/shock, real and/or perceived, it seems that each political tribe is willing to cede power to its authoritarians, based on its values: currently, the left does so for health and the environment, and the right for border security and violence from the "other". And of course, these values can shift based on political winds and alliances of convenience; I'm watching HBO's "The Plot Against America", and from a modern perspective, it's strange to see the FDR economic progressives be the hawks, while the (original) America First-ers are the doves.
(While I lean libertarian on the political compass, I'm not a-priori judging all authoritarianism to be evil; there are arguably times such as a pandemic or a world war where some amount may be necessary.)
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/opinion/coronavirus-trump...
[1] https://www.politicalcompass.org/
so don't worry about the axis affiliations and critique the ideas themselves (as you imply you already do by not judging a priori).
fear-driven decision environments (as with the current pandemic) are ripe for power seizures (even if just incrementally). we should remain vigilant against that.
afaict, most US residents are following governmental requests (like physical distancing, washing hands, and self-quarantining when sick) because it's a reasonable and prudent response to a virus that's still relatively unknown but has the potential to be bad, not because we're coerced by said government. those admonitions provide (sometimes sparse) evidence, information, and rationale for doing so, rather than mainly relying on force.
that force is held back by governmental units because of the threat of backlash by residents. this keeps their power in check. don't give that up.
You seem to be implying that, absent such a threat, the government would be employing force against citizens regardless of their compliance, simply because they could get away with it. If so, is it not more likely that restraint is due to the purpose of the state's monopoly on force being to coerce compliance, and as such is simply not necessary when the public is already compliant?
In other words, that the government is holding itself in check far more than the public is?
No dispute. It's a classic leaky-abstraction problem; some models can be helpful in reasoning, but they're always imperfect at describing messy complex reality. (While it too is imperfect, I'm rather fond of the 8-axis political compass! [0])
A lot of our weird tribal coalitions are byproducts of a First-Past-The-Post voting system, which necessarily results in two parties, game-theoretically. IMO there is no more urgent policy issue than electoral reform, to something like Ranked Choice or Approval, so that our representatives are more reflective of our preferences.
> fear-driven decision environments (as with the current pandemic) is ripe for power seizures
This is true; I'm a big fan of Chomsky's admonition that "the burden of proof is on state power to justify itself". While I'm grateful for how many people are doing the right thing voluntarily (I'm genuinely surprised at the trust of citizens in science, at least in my neck of the woods), I do think a pandemic is a situation where judicious use of state power can be justified (forbidding gatherings over N people, for instance). It's a balancing act, and we must be very vigilant to see that "emergency" powers do not persist indefinitely, as they so often do (Patriot Act, etc).
[0] https://8values.github.io/
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