I wrote an essay ten years ago about how the cure for scurvy was found and then accidentally lost again. I was provoked into writing it by a fascination with that sense of certainty. People are almost pathologically incapable of believing they don't know. https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm …
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Incidentally this is one reason I favor giving private sector surveillance data to health authorities. Let people be surprised! One of many things wrong with contact tracing apps is that even if the technology works as intended, too many assumptions are baked into the design
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The lesson from scurvy is that it's not enough to just have good facts or make appropriate inferences; if your mental model is wrong, all the data in the world won't help. And there are many more wrong mental models than right ones. But you also live in a brain that hates doubt
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Here's a journal article from 1910 about infantile scurvy. This was a problem for kids of the wealthy! In 1910! Here is medical science just a few years before the discovery of Vitamin C, with a correct diagnosis, correct analysis (the problem is dietary), but no way to cure it.pic.twitter.com/pl3DJqeauO
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Why were infant children getting scurvy in 1910? Because pasteurization, which finally made cow's milk safe to drink, denatured vitamin C, and the children of the wealthy were weaned later than poor kids. The undiscovered cure was a little bit of cooked potato.
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Does this mean you should drink bleach? No. Stomach acid makes the bleach useless against disease. Inject the bleach directly into your veins, and use Pinboard. (But sign up for Pinboard first)
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(Addendum—I misspoke upthread in a confusing way. When I say "weaned" I meant infants who were fed a diet of pap and pasteurized milk, not breast milk, which contains Vitamin C. Rich kids got pap for two years or more. Poor kids ate real food sooner, and got breast milk longer)
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My own suspicion is there is some confounding factor that will explain the huge regional differences in the impact of coronavirus, but I can't begin to fathom what it is.
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The New York Times is giving some attention to this story today. Note how all four theories put forward (weather, culture, age, and chance) are inconsistent with the facts laid out in the same article. Something odd is affecting the spread of this pandemichttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/03/world/asia/coronavirus-spread-where-why.html …
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I want to be clear that I'm not being coy—I don't have a pet theory about what is happening. But we need to be honest with ourselves that something *is* going on, because the uneven pattern of spread is not consistent with any theory of the disease so far put forth in public.
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(As a parenthetical, it's weird how all these articles fixate on bowing in Japan, as if we shake hands nonstop in America. If I was to fixate on a difference, I would choose eating in public, wearing shoes indoors, or talking on public transit. But nope—it's always the bowing)pic.twitter.com/orwk1tfP3v
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The idea that Indians keep a respectful physical distance from one another is also a treat for anyone who's ever been made sweet love to standing in an Indian queue. Sometimes it feels like the NYT learns about the world from an 1890 Baedeker guide chained to the editor's table
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People in my replies claiming that lockdowns explain everything—they do not explain Japan. This is an elderly, crowded country that was very late to adopt significant measures (other than school closings), with community spread since at least early March. And yet not so bad. Why?
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Anyway, just know that if you're not persuaded by the many explanations for why this virus has affected the world so unevenly, you're not the only fool out there in a sea of experts. Come sit by me (but not too close).
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One reason people are reluctant to admit doubt is a kind of purity thinking that takes hold in these situations. Psychologically, we want a sense of control; that if we obey the rules, wash hands, keep our distance, etc, we won't get sick. That is a painful belief to question.
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And let me be clear that I'm not questioning these measures, or being all woo about what makes people sick. I just think there's some additional factor in the mix affecting where it spreads.
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By the way, this facet of the story (the X factor responsible for uneven spread, beyond just randomness) is potentially extremely good news for the world. If we can figure out what inhibits the contagion in some places, or disinhibits it in others, we will have a powerful weapon
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