16 ms·

Contra Weyl on Technocracy

4 points by simonpure 6y ago

PaulHoule 6y ago
These people should read Habermas. I'd take issue with communiat leadership not being 'meritocratically chosen'. Roughly, a communist party gates access to the top 1% or so. You get there by a combination of being 'red' (right ideology) and 'expert' (good at what you do.) Yes people will form a 'circular economy' with their friends -- that's why Uncle Joe invented the purge. It is a flawed system but at least they can fire the top 1% if theu really screw up. See Habermas Legitimation Crisis and also Wintrobe's 'Political Econony of Dictatorship' if you want a rational take.
gus_massa 6y ago
> Technocrats used complicated mathematical models to determine that mass vaccination would create a "herd immunity" to disease. The SIR model is very simple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidem... At the beginning of the covid19 epidemic everyone and their dog was writing one and publishing a demo version. It was interesting/scary to modify the parameters and see how thing changed. Also, try to fix misinformation in the models, like a 50% death rate. Anyway, a SIR model can be programed in 20 lines of codes, and is pretty straightforward. Adding a vaccine is like 5 additional lines at most. Also, the main idea is very simple to understand. (Someone should write a tutorial of SIR in Excel/GoogleSheets, it's interesting to see the graphics.) The most simple models just assume that everyone meets everyone randomly. It's more complicated if you want to consider a more realistic model of how people move. For a decision about lockdown you need the complex model, but to understand herd immunity the simple model is good enough. For a nice explanation of more complicated models, there is a video of 3Blue1Brown: "Simulating an epidemic" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAaO2rsdIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAaO2rsdIs Note that he explains that the models in this video are not 100% accurate, some number are chosen to get nice graphics, they are only useful to get some insight but not get quantitative predictions.

4 points by simonpure 6y ago

These people should read Habermas. I'd take issue with communiat leadership not being 'meritocratically chosen'. Roughly, a communist party gates access to the top 1% or so. You get there by a combination of being 'red' (right ideology) and 'expert' (good at what you do.) Yes people will form a 'circular economy' with their friends -- that's why Uncle Joe invented the purge. It is a flawed system but at least they can fire the top 1% if theu really screw up. See Habermas Legitimation Crisis and also Wintrobe's 'Political Econony of Dictatorship' if you want a rational take.

gus_massa 6y ago

> Technocrats used complicated mathematical models to determine that mass vaccination would create a "herd immunity" to disease. The SIR model is very simple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidemiology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidem... At the beginning of the covid19 epidemic everyone and their dog was writing one and publishing a demo version. It was interesting/scary to modify the parameters and see how thing changed. Also, try to fix misinformation in the models, like a 50% death rate. Anyway, a SIR model can be programed in 20 lines of codes, and is pretty straightforward. Adding a vaccine is like 5 additional lines at most. Also, the main idea is very simple to understand. (Someone should write a tutorial of SIR in Excel/GoogleSheets, it's interesting to see the graphics.) The most simple models just assume that everyone meets everyone randomly. It's more complicated if you want to consider a more realistic model of how people move. For a decision about lockdown you need the complex model, but to understand herd immunity the simple model is good enough. For a nice explanation of more complicated models, there is a video of 3Blue1Brown: "Simulating an epidemic" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAaO2rsdIs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxAaO2rsdIs Note that he explains that the models in this video are not 100% accurate, some number are chosen to get nice graphics, they are only useful to get some insight but not get quantitative predictions.