Author Archives: Arnold Kling

David Brin on Disputation Arenas

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Note: I am doing the opposite of what I did when I wrote daily about the virus crisis. I am stepping back and looking more deeply at issues of epistemology and institutional decay. Not quite twenty years ago, I wrote about a David Brin essay.

David Brin is a physicist, science fiction writer, and under-appreciated social thinker. His book The Transparent Society is an absolute must-read for anyone trying to sort out the issues of privacy and security that have become so salient since 9-11.

In Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competitiveness for Society’s Benefit, Brin en passant does a nice job of articulating New Growth Theory.

Consider four marvels of our age — science, democracy, the justice system and fair markets…for years, rules have been fine-tuned in each of these fields of endeavor, to reduce cheating and let quality or truth win much of the time. By harnessing human competitiveness, instead of suppressing it, these “accountability arenas” nourished much of our unprecedented wealth and freedom.

Brin argues that the “four marvels” combine “centrifugal structures” that allow people the freedom to innovate with “centripetal structures” where adversaries resolve conflicts and the best ideas win out. In a market, for example, every individual is free to try to build a better mousetrap, but the mousetraps that survive are the ones that consumers buy.

Brin says that in the world of political and social thought, we lack centripetal structures. Thus, ideas that are wrong can persist.

There is more at my old post and much more at Brin’s article. For example, Brin writes,

Our neo-western civilization throngs with “human T Cells” — educated, skeptical, independent-minded and ego-driven to pounce on some terrible mistake or nefarious scheme. Some are in government, but most aren’t. In fact, this description enfolds far more than news reporters, activists, and muckrakers. Any of you reading this can envision friends who exhibit certain traits:

Strongly held opinions.
Claiming to see patterns that others cannot.
Distrust of some (or all) authority.
Profound faith in their unique individuality.
Utter dependence on freedom of speech.

…the astonishing thing about all this raging individualism is how well it works at generating mutual and reciprocal criticism that is unavoidable even by elites. It is by far the best system ever created for discovering — and even preventing — errors that might cause real harm.

…What each of the older accountability arenas has — and today’s Internet lacks — is centripetal focus. A counterbalancing inward pull. Something that acts to draw foes together for fair confrontation, after making their preparations in safe seclusion.

Now some philanthropist might endow a series of televised debates concerning some of the major issues of the day. Say, abortion, or gun control, or the drug war. Speakers would be chosen not for their passionate radicalism, but for an ability to accurately paraphrase their opponents’ positions, showing that they listen well enough to at least comprehend the other side’s deeply felt concerns. Each party would then pose questions, with the answers judged by an expert panel for specificity, not polemical appeal.

Signing off

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I am demoralized. It occurred to me the movie we’re in.

Fauci plays Big Nurse.

Who plays Randle McMurphy? Trump? Rand Paul? Elon Musk?

Doesn’t matter. The ending is brutal. You don’t want to watch.

I’ll be spending my time outdoors. Not on the computer.

General update, May 12

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1. Christian Gollier writes,

In this paper, I suppose that herd immunity is the exit door from the pandemic. In the absence of a vaccine, attaining herd immunity requires to expose a fraction of the population to the virus, and to recognize that some people in this targeted population will die. Determining who should be exposed to the virus to attain the herd immunity is a crucial policy issue. . .Some individual characteristics such as the age or the existence of co-morbidity have been shown to have a huge influence on the lethality of the SARS-Cov-2. For example, Ferguson et al. (2020) report that the covid infection-fatality ratio is 0.002% for individuals less than 10 years old, and 9.3% for people aged 80 years and more. Given this 4650-fold difference in mortality risk, it may be desirable to expose less vulnerable people first in the hope of building the herd immunity before relaxing the protection of the more vulnerable people.

Pointer from the diligent John Alcorn. What is your guess as to when the lockdown debate gets shifted toward these terms?

2. Philipp Kircher and others write,

When the young engage in more risky behavior, they reduce the time until herd immunity is reached. The young then take a larger share in the infections needed for herd immunity, which is amplified if the old can shield themselves for short periods by voluntarily engaging in stronger social distancing.

Our calibrated benchmark indicates that the positive externality is indeed present in the absence of a vaccine/cure. This can limit and sometimes negate the effects policies such as temporary shelter-at-home policies. It also indicates that its strength is limited, as it is quickly overpowered through other channels, for example in extensions with scarce hospital beds which the risk-taking young exhaust through their behavior. The interactions by age indicate that it is an important margin to consider, that the effects are not trivial, and that age-specific policies might be warranted.

Another point from JA, and another example of where I think the debate needs to shift. Of course, I should not that this paper uses a simulation model, which I don’t think adds value to the discussion.

3. Daniel Klein and others defend Sweden.

Swedish authorities have not officially declared a goal of reaching herd immunity, which most scientists believe is achieved when more than 60 percent of the population has had the virus. But augmenting immunity is no doubt part of the government’s broader strategy—or at least a likely consequence of keeping schools, restaurants, and most businesses open. Anders Tegnell, the chief epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency, has projected that the city of Stockholm could reach herd immunity as early as this month. Based on updated behavioral assumptions (social-distancing norms are changing how Swedes behave), the Stockholm University mathematician Tom Britton has calculated that 40 percent immunity in the capital could be enough to stop the virus’s spread there and that this could happen by mid-June.

We could frame the “opener” vs. “closer” debate this way: openers wish to achieve herd immunity sooner rather than later, while closers wish to achieve it later rather than sooner.

Herd immunity is costly to achieve, in that some people will get sick and die in the process. Closers believe that we should not be trying to hasten to get to herd immunity, presumably because there is an alternative endgame that can be achieved within a reasonable time frame. As one commenter put it,

Which strategy we should pursue depends upon our wild-assed guess as to whether a vaccine or significantly better treatment will appear before civilization ends in economic ruin.

Why R we mindless?

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When it comes to virus policy, to whom should we assign status and credibility? I propose that we severely downgrade the status of anyone who speaks in terms of R, or R0. That concept is not helpful. A society could have R well below the “magic number” of 1 and still have a lot of elderly people dying from the virus. A society could have an R above 1 while insulating its elderly and thus having a low death rate.

I keep coming back to the Avalon Hill metaphor, in which what matters is the attack factor and the defense factor. The attack factor is the amount of virus particles that you get hit with. You get hit with more when you spend several minutes in a closed environment with someone who is expelling a lot of virus, especially by coughing or sneezing or singing or yelling. The defense factor is the strength of your immune system, which depends mostly on your age.

I want to focus here on the defense factor. If we had a vaccine, that could give everyone a strong defense factor. To the extent that people who have had the virus are immune, then they have strong defense factors. Young people have strong defense factors. People over 70 presumably have weak defense factors. People with heart conditions or compromised immune systems have weak defense factors.

Is there a rigorous way to evaluate my defense factor? That is something I would like to see researchers working on. If I knew for sure that I have a strong defense factor, then I could be a lot more relaxed about resuming some of my favorite activities.

Although the defense factor is likely to fall on a continuum, for simplicity let us say that there are people of type H and type L, for high defense factors and low defense factors, respectively. I can imagine linking people’s behavior to their defense factors and also to the defense factors of people with whom they must interact.

–If you are type L, then you want to avoid getting the virus. This means only being in places where you can be sure that no one has the virus. If you must be around people who may have the virus (say, you are a health care worker), then you have to follow extreme safety protocols involving personal protective equipment and sanitizing afterward.

–If you are type H and you do not have to interact with people who are type L, then you can interact with whomever you want. Your only responsibility is to try to avoid inflicting a high attack factor on someone. If you do not have antibodies, then you may have the virus, so that you should wear a mask while indoors around people with whom you don’t live. If you have antibodies, then you are harmless to others, even without a mask.

–If you are type H and you have to interact with people who are type L, then you have to be certain that you do not have the virus. You are good to go if you have antibodies. Or if you have been strictly self-quarantining for two weeks. Or if you have reliably tested negative for the virus.

This approach does not try to drive R to any particular value. If R is high among type H people, that could be a good thing.

Mass transit assessed

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Randal O’Toole does the assessment.

Most low‐​income workers have given up on transit as a method of commuting and have purchased cars. Instead of helping low‐​income people, transit’s major growth market is people who earn more than $75,000 a year. In all but a handful of urban areas, transit uses more energy and emits more greenhouse gases per passenger mile than the average automobile. Far from relieving congestion, transit agencies are seeking to increase congestion in order to promote their businesses.

Pointer from Timothy Taylor. Locally, the contractor for building the Purple Line of the Metro just pulled out with the project a couple of years away from completion. The impact on me, as far as I can tell, is that my favorite bike path, which was torn up at the very start of the project and which was supposed to be replaced when it was completed, will be out of commission indefinitely.

Anyway, suppose we use the intention heuristic, which says that you judge something by its intentions, not by its results. By that standard, mass transit is great, and we need to spend more on it.

Whose course will scale?

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Tyler Cowen writes,

My fall semester teaching was assigned to be online even before Covid-19 came along. The enrollment for that class – Principles of Economics – will be much larger, with hundreds more students, but with some assistance, I expect to handle it.

Suppose that none of the top tier colleges can have on-campus learning in the fall. If a lot of students are taking courses on line, then they should be able to choose courses from colleges other than the one in which they are enrolled. As an online student, your best approach might be to take econ with Tyler, engineering from someone at Carnegie-Mellon, journalism from someone at Northwestern, etc.

The online course market could end up looking like the textbook market. The per-student cost should fall to about the cost of a textbook. The market structure will tend toward winners-take most. If Tyler is one of the winners, he could have a few hundred thousand students.

In the online environment, having a good traditional brand, like “Mankiw,” will not matter much. Your competitors have been focused on the online product and persistently iterating and improving it.

With on-location college, the school can foist on you an inexperienced teaching assistant who can barely speak comprehensible English and charge your parents a fortune for the privilege. I don’t think that model will be viable if colleges go on line.

[UPDATE: Read Scott Galloway’s take, which is somewhat different from mine, but is still based on the view that online education scales differently from in-person education.

In ten years, it’s feasible to think that MIT doesn’t welcome 1,000 freshmen to campus; it welcomes 10,000. What that means is the top-20 universities globally are going to become even stronger. What it also means is that universities Nos. 20 to 50 are fine. But Nos. 50 to 1,000 go out of business or become a shadow of themselves.

}

General update, May 11

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1. How Portland is using the worst legislation in history to loot.

So Oregon’s largest district has hatched a plan to have its employees work four days a week for the remainder of this school year, and it is banking on its unionized employees agreeing to the deal. Employees would lose 20% of their pay from the district but would have that more than backfilled by receiving 20% of the weekly state unemployment benefit to which they are entitled under the state Work Share program plus the full $600 weekly federal match.

Pointer from David Henderson. Note that some private sector firms, such as Shake Shack, chose to refrain from looting. But our public servants have no such qualms.

2. Boris Johnson addressing the British people (video, pointer from John Alcorn). Lots of power rhetoric. To my ear, he doesn’t trust the people to make good decisions. He only trusts them to sacrifice and obey rules.

3. You can look up the track record of models, for U.S. states and other countries. Pointer from JA.

4. Ian Hall and others write,

it is important to observe that the 73% value is the prevalence of care homes with outbreaks and not the incidence. This means homes should expect to suffer multiple importations over time. These outbreaks will accumulate cases so the final attack rate within a home may be large due to a mix of explosive outbreaks and repeated importation.

Pointer from JA. The article is about the UK. I give them credit for at least focusing on the topic of nursing homes (care homes in Brit-speak). I believe that there are now thousands of research papers on the virus, but my guess is that about 10 or fewer of them focus on nursing homes, which is where such a large share of the deaths and large outbreaks have taken place.

5. Chris Pope discusses nursing homes in the U.S.

With schools closed, many long-term-care workers have children to look after and would earn more under the CARES Act by staying home than by going to work, where they may risk getting infected and infecting family members. As a result, many nursing homes are currently staffed at less than 50 percent—putting further strain on those workers who remain and causing safety standards to slip even further.

6. Bryan Caplan on the case for paid human experimentation. That would be voluntary. What we have instead is involuntary human experimentation, using lockdown protocols. And the results of these experiments is never clear.

7. Lars Christensen writes,

once the lockdowns come to an end people will be able to return to work – not necessarily to their old jobs and not necessarily in the sectors they used to work in, but the reason they haven’t been working is not that their reservation wage were higher than their productivity so there is little reason why we shouldn’t see the share of temporarily unemployed come down very fast in the coming few months.

Pointer from Tyler Cowen, who writes “Not my view, but happy to pass along.” As I see it, Christensen is applying conventional macro theory. Aggregate demand is not really damaged, because permanent income is not down. It is a short-term aggregate supply shock, and soon all will be well. I think of it in PSST terms, and once patterns of trade have been disrupted it takes a long time to discover new patterns. I hope he is right and I am wrong.