Feeding My Ignorance

Its Chaos Theory time.  No - not when everything goes awry - although given the situation in the world today that could well be true(-ish).  I'm talking about the mathematical version of chaos - small changes in initial conditions make huge differences in outcomes - another subject that I have talked about often.  Its most 'famous' instantiation is perhaps Lorenz's "Butterfly Effect" - but as the title says we cannot blame the butterfly this time - or perhaps, more correctly, it is likely that no butterfly was involved - we cannot be sure.

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Recently "Good Omens" was serialised on TV.  The full title of the novel is Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch and the subtitle (and the plot) implies that Agnes managed to accurately predict things hundreds of years in advance.  Of course, elsewhere I have indicated that I am a big fan of Terry Pratchett - so its not surprise that I watched this show.

Despite the accurate prophecies - and therefore an underlying view that the events were deterministic - the book contained this rather apt quote.

It used to be thought that the events that changed the world were things like big bombs, maniac politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realised that this is a very old-fashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.

Well - in this case the storm that is ravaging Europe - and the rest of the world was triggered by a similarly small event (probably - there is still uncertainty about precisely what caused it).  Now this is apocryphal, but it does sum it up well.

Mental how some lad having a bat supper in China 3 months ago now means Elgin v Brechin is aff

Things do often have curious consequences

OK, so there was probably no "bat supper" involved and, as I understand it, it is probably more likely to be a pangolin at fault.  Although that said - I'm not sure the poor pangolin deserves any blame for being eaten by someone.  My brief research on the subject turned up the fact that pangolin scales are reputed to have medicinal effects, whilst the meat is a prized delicacy (although in times past was considered to be poisonous) so fault lies somewhere other than the animal.

Whatever - a chance encounter has led to a worldwide pandemic - including the postponement of Elgin City vs Brechin City who'd have though it.

Farnam Street has a much deeper description of the Butterfly Effect than what I am including here for anyone who is interested.

The point is that this shows - again - how everything is connected - and it is very difficult to separate out effects.  Various countries are trying variations on how to slow the spread of the virus - with varying results.  Again, it is likely that Chaos, in part at least, is responsible for the way in which different countries and regions are affected.  I suspect that many will be running "what if" scenarios to try to learn from it all in time for the next bug that comes along.

Often attempts are made to compare to past viruses - one of the most rapid changes between them is the speed of knowledge transmission - which is both a good thing (you can prepare) and a bad thing (you tend to worry about things that never happen).  Even when compared to the SARS outbreak (which was I think the last similar one) the way in which the world knows about it is greatly changed. 

Unfortunately, those that remain "low information" individuals (as I heard them described in relation to the US Primaries yesterday) will often get biased, wrong or partial detail.  This isn't always their fault - but there are plenty of people around who don't get the whole picture.  No doubt that is partially to blame for the fact that everyone seems keen to hoard toilet paper.

However, even those who are well informed still face a great deal of uncertainty - and a further problem which is that, on the whole, we deal badly with uncertainty because we don't recognise it as often as we should.  Too often we forget about the "unknown unknowns" even when we manage to come to terms with what we understand to be unknown.

Even when we "get it" that small changes can result in enormous differences in outcomes there remains a tendency to tinker with our interventions.  We see this when we compare the responses of different organisations and different governments.  It seems that no one actually knows what the effect of a particular intervention will be - and this is made horrendously worse by the fact that the effects of the original "bat supper" are manifesting themselves in all sorts of different domains - sporting events cancelled or curtailed; travel companies facing hugely difficult short term futures; financial markets reflecting the uncertainty; severe restrictions on ability to work in some areas; and, of course, a national (worldwide?) shortage of toilet paper

Solving one problem does not necessarily solve another - and, in the most tricky cases it may make another problem much more difficult to get to grips with.  Individuals will rarely have the capacity to understand all this - they will increasingly focus on their own local needs - advocating anything that benefits them in the short term.  Draconian measures may do little to solve the underlying issues.  Perhaps worst of all - the uncertainty involved in all of this is making the issue into a crisis when it might be much less.

I don't know any better than anyone else, but the signs are that the outbreak has passed its peak in China - most people looking at the data would probably reach the same conclusion.  Many people have died - although as a proportion of the population that number is still vanishingly small.  As far as I can see the problem with covid-19 is not the virus itself, but the fact that it is causing a (relatively) short term spike in disruption to a lot of different things.