The pond freely confesses that, in its dotage, it sometimes makes enough of a meal to produce leftovers, which it then reheats in the magic science oven (even if leftover rice tends to go pear shaped). So why wouldn't the pond offer up some day old, reheated reptile? Especially when it's Killer Creighton ...
Nobody does it like our original Adam, and no doubt the reptiles thought they were cunning, slipping him in late at the top of the digital page yesterday, with a wretched image snatched from iStock.
What, no visit from the cult master, just a grubby cheap graphic? Well, if you're going to have grubby, cheap Killer Creighton, why not?
It takes a special skill to take a virus and climate science and mix them together, and somehow strangely manage to maintain the usual Killer Creighton logic ...
His argument about models takes the pond back to the Y2K days, which did pose certain sorts of risks. There were mockers who thought it all alarmist clapstrap, and after the apocalypse failed to happen, and planes didn't fall out of the sky, they were righteous in their indignation. But there had been diligent work done to minimise the risks.
Our Adam applies the same kind of a posteriori insight into models for the coronavirus. But with the exception of a few crazies (the Donald, Bolsinaro) and complete incompetents (Boris), most countries took diligent efforts to minimise the impact of the virus in terms of health, with some going to the point of total lockdown, New Zealand style.
So a model suggesting the results of a 'let her rip policy' is going to produce substantially different results to the subsequent reality of countries which took active steps to avoid such an outcome.
Ditto climate science. Some models work on the basis of doing nothing, or doing not enough. If the world takes steps to avoid the worst, sceptics of the original Adam kind will be on hand to say p'shaw, it was all a pile of nonsense in the first place. You know, climate science is crap …(and no, the onion muncher didn't think it was just the modelling that was crap, he thought that the science was crap, but that's what you expect from the fucked line of argument being peddled by Killer Creighton).
Now please note the oldest reptile trick …
See, a nice shot of coral, and all is well in the world, and the carefully worded phrasing "in the last 15 years parts of the reef have bleached on only three occasions .."
But the reptiles could have run other kinds of illustrations if they'd wanted to … like this one, here … featuring three events in four years ...
Never mind, we're in the land of illogical reptiles, so who cares a fig for actual observation, when a happy snap will do ...
How and why the reptiles keep on publishing our original Adam and pretending he's an authority on anything - ye ancient cats and historical dogs, "economics editor" no less - would be a much better line of inquiry …
And so to some good news.
It's no secret that for some time the pond has been worried about the bromancer's state of mind. He's been prone to anxiety attacks, and hysterical outbursts …
What a relief this day, with Killer Creighton devoured, to discover that someone has persuaded the bromancer to go on a course of Valium, or perhaps drop a little E before pounding out his column ...
Yes, the bromancer has gone all mellow yellow, with a trippy Jellett for company, doing a Carnaby street on the flag, but please, ancient cultural historians of the pop kind, don't reach for the dried banana skins just yet … just lie back and trip out … because our lad is going to do one of his favourite listicals, and what do you know, he'll start with white supremacy as his first reason to be happy ...
Now the pond hates to piss on the bromancer's happy parade (golly, those banana skins and white supremacy of the Celtic kind are good), but it is in fact Belgium who can boast of having the oldest existing compulsory voting system (1893), with Australia only managing the trick in 1924, or so the wiki says here …
But never mind delusions of innovatory genius, the pond is much relieved and pleased the happy pills are working.
Oh dear, he had to bring clap happy religion into it again … perhaps the pills were only a temporary fix … please, oh please, don't let him end on a religious note, or the pond will feel the therapy has failed and it's all been a gigantic waste of time ...
They start from a more stable worldview? What, like creationism, young earth, dinosaurs walking with Raquel Welch, bushes that burn and talk, speaking in tongues, and blather about Satanism, and happy chats with imaginary friends and the rapture just around the corner?
For a minute there, the pond thought the happy pills might have sent the bromancer in a more Wilcoxian direction …
Instead, what does a happy clappy bromancer do? Immediately devise military operations, and prepare for a spiffing war, and who knows, perhaps even join in the current border fracas between China and India ...
Oh dear, those pills … perhaps it was a mistake, but who knew they'd set off a bout of delusions of grandeur?
Luckily there's only one short gobbet of war-gaming to go, as crusading Xians are wont to do ...
Indeed, indeed, trust in the Donald, always trust in the Donald, and remember, when taking LSD, it's quite common for the trip to turn freaky and bad …
And so to the savvy Savva, because the pond must have its fix, whatever the distractions of the original Adam and the bromancer, and even though it concerns the Labor party, which the pond rarely takes any interest in ...
It's good for the savvy Savva to offer some wise advice, but the pond really has only one reason for running her piece, well actually two, and must get there quickly ...
The first reason the pond wanted to run the savvy Savva? It had a stray Wilcox hanging around, in need of a second home …
… and now, quick, speed through the next two gobbets for the second reason ...
Sure, the pond could have spent time with Smiley and Le Carre, but it was on a mission, and not just with the bromancer and the Blues Brothers, and so had to race through the next and final gobbet to get there … even if it meant there was no time to marvel at foul-mouthed Byrne escaping punishment …
Luckily the savvy Savva had relented, or run out of steam, so the gobbet was a short one ...
Ah, at last the second reason, though really there's always immortal Rowe to be found by bookmarking here … but will hand sanitizer help with gloved hands?
The book by Andreas Faludi, which GrueBleen commended to me through these pages, contains this gem -
ReplyDelete‘to describe something always means to simplify it, and models are no exception to this rule. Their advantage is that they are specific in the ways in which they simplify.’
For someone who claims an extensive background in higher levels of economics, the Adumbrate Creighton shows no self-awareness in his dismissal of ‘models’ as a genre. By not identifying particular models, nor the process behind them, Creighton avoids having to show the specific ways in which those models sought to simplify, so does not need to offer any useful alternative. ‘Negativity bias’ - anyone?
Yet his final sentence is just the kind of verbal ‘model’ that economists who write for the daily press are too prone to - ‘How and why authorities have overreacted so much, and how we can avoid doing so again, would be a better line of inquiry.’
Chadwick
I hadn't remembered that one, Sir C (not to be confused with Circe) so thanks for the reminder. It is a very concise and useful statement about 'descriptions' - and everything we discuss is basically just a mental 'description'.
DeleteBut don't try to tell it to Killer Creighten, he really doesn't want to think about models that way. And what a reptile doesn't want to think about, is by heavenly determination, unthinkable !
Killer's innumeracy has been done to death here so it's probably not worth going into any great detail, but I was as surprised as you were that he went down the Bromancer's path of claiming some modelling proves wrong therefore no modelling can be trusted. Doubly funny from a guy who claims the stats support his argument.
DeleteHow are rational decisions to be made? Observing the sacred chickens pecking at their grain? Goats entrails?
https://twitter.com/Rottoturbine/status/1273027725544939520?s=20
I am subscribed to the ‘natural_disaster_royal_commission’, as any other citizen with an e-mail can be. The secretariat delivers lists of witnesses, several days before they appear, and updates on what submissions and evidence have become accessible.
DeleteWith a quiet evening, and a local Tempranillo, I have now caught up on the last couple of communications.
The Adumbrate, in the last paragraph of his column, wrote (bear with me) ‘It’s a pity we are wasting resources on a royal commission into the bushfires. How and why authorities have overreacted so much, and how we can avoid doing so again, would be a better line of inquiry.’
Most of the organisations that have been called as witnesses, and the available transcripts, show that the Commissioners and Counsel are probing precisely the ways that authorities at all levels of government have reacted, the appropriateness of their reactions, and impediments they might have encountered.
To be able to make the comment in his column, the Adumbrate Creighton has either been following this Royal Commission most punctiliously, but has misunderstood completely what is happening before it, or he has not stirred so much as a keystroke to find out how it is going.
And this from one with the title of ‘Editor’.
Chadwick.
I'd favour the "misunderstood completely" line, personally. Though whether that is deliberate or just comes naturally is a question - its often a bit hard to tell with reptiles, since both laziness and cognitive blindness are their natural state.
DeleteAnother bright, sunny day, DP, starting with that shining light of science and human cognition, the 'Killer' Creighton. Trouble is, there's really very little to be said about him: he has all the cognitive blindness and information lack that would make him at one with such leading exemplars as Rupert Sheldrake, Edward De Bono and Peter Ridd. Not to forget Graham Lloyd, Paul ('Ned') Kelly and Christopher Monckton.
ReplyDeleteApart from your skilled dismantling of his 'over-reaction' over-reaction DP, there is the usual major problem with the reptiles: assumption of homogeneity. All models are the same, you see, so a model about the physical nature of climate and weather is, ipso facto, just the same as an inexact model of the 'worst case' spread of a global pandemic. The right-wingnuts and reptiles always exhibit strong belief in homogeneity: all "Lefties" are exactly the same being the classic example. All other political movements are just 'identity politics' being another.
Oh, and his gross ignorance simply doesn't let him understand that the model, and the data fed into it, are not the same thing - as the world turns, better and more reliable data is gathered and fed into the model which, oh so very surprisingly, modifies the predictions of the model. Say lavvie.
But the most amusing of Creighton's Crazies is this: "We were told the virus spread would be "exponential". It wasn't; transmission was falling before mandatory lockdowns scared the daylights out of people." It's interesting to know that there's no BRIM in Crazy Creight's world (Brazil, Russia, India, Mexico). But obviously Vlad Vlad Putin is a little lacking in daylight. I wonder if Creighton has seen the 'disinfectant chamber' that people have to walk through before being allowed into the hallowed presence of another one of those "just a little flu" believers.
What a hippy happy hoppy couple of sunshine rants by the Bromancer, DP. Religion and immigrants: such a wondrously happy marriage. And as to compulsory voting - introduced Federally in Stanley Bruce's reign in 1924, but in states at various times: Qld 1915, Vic 1926, NSW and Tas 1928, WA 1936, SA 1942, it was almost, if not totally, always introduced by conservative governments, many of which have subsequently tried to kill it. But about 2/3rds of us Aussies think it's great and still do.
Not much to say about Savvy Sav today, is there. The ALP "troubles" will play out over time without ever being resolved. As usual. But I'm curious about this: "This explains why Labor is where it is now, two weeks from a critical by-election." Now I for one am curious as to just how much a bunch of ruralish NSWers will be affected by some stupid piece of Labor discombobulation in Victoria, south of the Mexican-proof fence. About as much as Victorians were affected by all those Labor troubles in NSW (Eddie Obeid et al) - in short, not at all.
I’ll look up that book by Faludi.
DeleteCreighton’s piece got 1059 comments. He knows his audience. Models are hated almost as much as Greta Thunberg and electric cars. Don’t listen to the experts. Sorry, “experts”. Sorry, taxpayer-funded “experts”.
Models are used in really mundane fields, like stormwater drainage design, and work very well. (Except maybe in Toowoomba). On a another level the world geodetic system is just a huge, highly accurate model, and nobody complains about that.
Such an article annoys me because it implies there is another, better way, probably common sense, or an alternative science, maybe represented by Benny Peiser – a sports scientist.
It's quite amusing, NH, especially given that every single living human being carries a "model" - ie a simplified description - of the world around in their head. Though of course few, if any, of us can actually explicitly state the simplification implied by that.
DeleteBut clearly the wingnut "simplifications" are almost incomprehensibly different from yours or mine.
Just to add to your summary of compulsory voting, GB - not only was South Australia a little late to that piece of 'progressivism', but, until 1973, you had to show yourself a person of property to be able to vote for the Upper House.
ReplyDeleteChadwick
Lots of landed gentry in them thar hills, mate; it was never a penal colony you know. Even so: South Australia - but why would you want to go there ?
DeleteBRIM did you say?
ReplyDeletehttps://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-cases-covid-19?country=BRA~RUS~IND~MEX~AUS
Hasn't Bolsonaro done well?
Done nearly as well as we thought another "a little flu" believer would. Still, it's good to see that modest little Brazil - 6th biggest in the world by population - will soon be leading everyone in count of infections and deaths.
Delete