160 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2023
    1. It probably isn’t even a stretch to suggest that herds and flocks of many other animals use a form of direct democracy in making their decisions. Again despite the myths, “alphas” do not make decisions for others, “leadership” roles rotate regularly, the “law of two (or four) feet” tests the group’s readiness for consensus, and principles such as the “first follower” enable wild creatures to reach a decision in their group’s best collective interest. Dissenters and unpersuaded group members are free to go off and look for another group, except at critical times (such as breeding season, or when under attack), when all members of the group instinctively pitch in to share the extra burden or workload, or help work through the crisis or challenge. We’re not so different, or, at least, we weren’t.
      • for: animal decision-making
      • adjacency
        • animal herding behavior and
        • direct democracy
      • claim
        • herds and flocks of many other animals (other than human) use a form of direct democracy in making decisions
        • Alphas do not alone make decisions, as leadership often rotates
        • The law of "two feet (or four" tests the group's readiness for consensus and the "first follower" principle
        • dissenters and unpersuaded group members are free to go off and look for another group
          • except at critical times such as
            • breeding season
            • under threat
  2. Aug 2022
  3. Jul 2022
    1. Speculation, herd exuberance, irrational optimism, rent-seekingand the temptation o f fraud drive asset markets to overshoot andplunge - which is why they need careful regulation, something Ialways supported. (M arkets in goods and services need lessregulation.)
  4. Apr 2022
    1. Prof Francois Balloux [@BallouxFrancois]. (2021, December 9). This may have sounded somewhat naïve in early 2020, but by now, I would have expected that anyone with an interest in covid-19 might have acquired some basic notions in infectious disease epidemiology. 1/ [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1469063480334561285

    1. Humans’ tendency to“overimitate”—to reproduce even the gratuitous elements of another’s behavior—may operate on a copy now, understand later basis. After all, there might begood reasons for such steps that the novice does not yet grasp, especially sinceso many human tools and practices are “cognitively opaque”: not self-explanatory on their face. Even if there doesn’t turn out to be a functionalrationale for the actions taken, imitating the customs of one’s culture is a smartmove for a highly social species like our own.

      Is this responsible for some of the "group think" seen in the Republican party and the political right? Imitation of bad or counter-intuitive actions outweights scientifically proven better actions? Examples: anti-vaxxers and coronavirus no-masker behaviors? (Some of this may also be about or even entangled with George Lakoff's (?) tribal identity theories relating to "people like me".

      Explore this area more deeply.

      Another contributing factor for this effect may be the small-town effect as most Republican party members are in the countryside (as opposed to the larger cities which tend to be more Democratic). City dwellers are more likely to be more insular in their interpersonal relations whereas country dwellers may have more social ties to other people and groups and therefor make them more tribal in their social interrelationships. Can I find data to back up this claim?

      How does link to the thesis put forward by Joseph Henrich in The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous? Does Henrich have data about city dwellers to back up my claim above?

      What does this tension have to do with the increasing (and potentially evolutionary) propensity of humans to live in ever-increasingly larger and more dense cities versus maintaining their smaller historic numbers prior to the pre-agricultural timeperiod?

      What are the biological effects on human evolution as a result of these cultural pressures? Certainly our cultural evolution is effecting our biological evolution?

      What about the effects of communication media on our cultural and biological evolution? Memes, orality versus literacy, film, radio, television, etc.? Can we tease out these effects within the socio-politico-cultural sphere on the greater span of humanity? Can we find breaks, signs, or symptoms at the border of mass agriculture?


      total aside, though related to evolution: link hypercycles to evolution spirals?

    1. Dr Nisreen Alwan 🌻. (2021, March 14). Exactly a year ago we wrote this letter in the Times. We were gobsmacked! We just didn’t understand what the government was basing all its decisions on including stopping testing and the herd immunity by natural infection stuff. We wanted to see the evidence backing them. [Tweet]. @Dr2NisreenAlwan. https://twitter.com/Dr2NisreenAlwan/status/1371168531669258242

  5. Mar 2022
    1. george davey smith. (2021, December 28). Omicron is illustrating “herd immunity” as how it was introduced: A relative concept, that reduces the adverse outcome of infections within populations, not as an absolute threshold that stopped transmission; as @bmj_latest #covidunknowns webinar explains https://t.co/t8nPeL9V8r [Tweet]. @mendel_random. https://twitter.com/mendel_random/status/1475821583331700739

  6. Feb 2022
  7. Jan 2022
  8. Dec 2021
  9. Nov 2021
    1. Eliminating Covid-19 seemed theoretically possible, because the original 2002 SARS virus ultimately disappeared.

      Eliminating SARS-CoV-2 was deemed plausible, because SARS-CoV-1 had been eliminated.

  10. Oct 2021
  11. Sep 2021
  12. Jul 2021
    1. Regev-Yochay, G., Amit, S., Bergwerk, M., Lipsitch, M., Leshem, E., Kahn, R., Lustig, Y., Cohen, C., Doolman, R., Ziv, A., Novikov, I., Rubin, C., Gimpelevich, I., Huppert, A., Rahav, G., Afek, A., & Kreiss, Y. (2021). Decreased infectivity following BNT162b2 vaccination: A prospective cohort study in Israel. The Lancet Regional Health - Europe, 7, 100150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lanepe.2021.100150

  13. Jun 2021
    1. Regev-Yochay, G., Amit, S., Bergwerk, M., Lipsitch, M., Leshem, E., Kahn, R., Lustig, Y., Cohen, C., Doolman, R., Ziv, A., Novikov, I., Rubin, C., Gimpelevich, I., Huppert, A., Rahav, G., Afek, A., & Kreiss, Y. (2021). Decreased Infectivity Following BNT162b2 Vaccination. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3815668

    1. Knock, E. S., Whittles, L. K., Lees, J. A., Perez-Guzman, P. N., Verity, R., FitzJohn, R. G., Gaythorpe, K. A. M., Imai, N., Hinsley, W., Okell, L. C., Rosello, A., Kantas, N., Walters, C. E., Bhatia, S., Watson, O. J., Whittaker, C., Cattarino, L., Boonyasiri, A., Djaafara, B. A., … Baguelin, M. (2021). Key epidemiological drivers and impact of interventions in the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in England. Science Translational Medicine, eabg4262. https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.abg4262

  14. May 2021
  15. Apr 2021
    1. ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: “There is a Twitter account for the Great Barrington Declaration. It is totally silent on what is presently unfolding in India. Is it really possible to watch the surge there and in Brazil and not feel challenged in your beliefs about herd immunity? For otherwise smart people?” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved April 25, 2021, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1384794607997890560

  16. Mar 2021
    1. Decerf, B., Ferreira, F. H. G., Mahler, D. G., & Sterck, O. (2020). Lives and Livelihoods: Estimates of the Global Mortality and Poverty Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic. IZA Discussion Paper, 13549.

    1. Stefan Simanowitz. (2020, November 14). “Sweden hoped herd immunity would curb #COVID19. Don’t do what we did” write 25 leading Swedish scientists “Sweden’s approach to COVID has led to death, grief & suffering. The only example we’re setting is how not to deal with a deadly infectious disease” https://t.co/azOg6AxSYH https://t.co/u2IqU5iwEn [Tweet]. @StefSimanowitz. https://twitter.com/StefSimanowitz/status/1327670787617198087

    1. Kenneth Fordyce. (2020, November 3). @devisridhar @georgeeaton Yet another article packed full of wise words: E.g., ‘in some ways, the people pushing for “herd immunity” are forcing us into these lockdown-release cycles because you end up in a reactive position by underestimating the spread of the virus and the hospitalisation rate’ [Tweet]. @FordyceKenneth. https://twitter.com/FordyceKenneth/status/1323544552112852992

  17. Feb 2021
    1. Youyang Gu. (2021, February 24). When can we return to normal? Forget about ‘herd immunity’. Below is my estimate for the number of susceptible individuals over time, as a proportion of the US population. Looking at this graph, what is the best point to go back to normal? Christmas? Fall? Or Summer? 🧵 https://t.co/V4uiFk5YcP [Tweet]. @youyanggu. https://twitter.com/youyanggu/status/1364627872233750543

    1. Yale SOM. (2020, October 27). Herd immunity is the end goal of developing a vaccine, @thehowie explains. But when government officials talk about relying on “herd immunity” as a strategy for slowing or stopping the Covid-19 pandemic without a vaccine, it’s a more dangerous approach. Https://t.co/aJ8VXos7zh [Tweet]. @YaleSOM. https://twitter.com/YaleSOM/status/1321150247503101956

  18. Jan 2021
  19. Dec 2020
  20. Nov 2020
    1. The Swedish Public Health authority has never admitted that the goal of their chosen strategy is to reach herd immunity. However, from an epidemiological stand point, all strategies depend on reaching herd immunity in one way or another. A vaccination based strategy also builds on getting to herd immunity, it just chooses a different way to reach it. At some point in the relatively near future, every country on Earth will have developed herd immunity to covid, either by letting the disease spread until that point is reached, or by vaccinating enough people to reach that point.

      All pandemic strategies end up reaching herd immunity.

  21. Oct 2020
    1. The working class must utilize the next four weeks and beyond to unify and coordinate its struggles against the ruling class’s policy of “herd immunity,” social devastation, war, police violence and authoritarianism into an independent and revolutionary movement for socialism.
  22. Sep 2020
  23. Aug 2020
  24. Jul 2020
    1. Fontanet, A., Tondeur, L., Madec, Y., Grant, R., Besombes, C., Jolly, N., Pellerin, S. F., Ungeheuer, M.-N., Cailleau, I., Kuhmel, L., Temmam, S., Huon, C., Chen, K.-Y., Crescenzo, B., Munier, S., Demeret, C., Grzelak, L., Staropoli, I., Bruel, T., … Hoen, B. (2020). Cluster of COVID-19 in northern France: A retrospective closed cohort study. MedRxiv, 2020.04.18.20071134. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.18.20071134

  25. Jun 2020
    1. Friston, K. J., Parr, T., Zeidman, P., Razi, A., Flandin, G., Daunizeau, J., Hulme, O. J., Billig, A. J., Litvak, V., Moran, R. J., Price, C. J., & Lambert, C. (2020). Dynamic causal modelling of COVID-19. ArXiv:2004.04463 [q-Bio]. http://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04463

  26. May 2020
  27. Apr 2020
  28. Mar 2017
    1. Porcupine caribou herd

      The Porcupine caribou herd is one of the largest migratory barren-ground caribou herds found in North America. The range of the herd spans over 250,000 square kilometers in the northern tundra. In the spring, the herd migrates between Alaska and Yukon’s arctic coast. In the winter, the herd ventures into Yukon’s Ogilvie Mountains. Although the majority of the land in the range of the herd is undeveloped, there are certain key areas which have been industrialized. Oil and gas exploration in the Eagle Plains basin interrupts the winter range of the Porcupine caribou herd. Also affecting the herd’s winter range are the Dempster Highway and mineral exploration in the Peel River watershed. The Dempster Highway connects Inuvik to Dawson City (Porcupine Caribou Management Board).

      Regarding population size of the Porcupine caribou herd, according to the Arctic journal, “migratory wild reindeer and caribou numbers have dropped by about one-third since populations peaked in the 1990s and early 2000s”. There are natural periods of abundance and scarcity among migratory tundra caribou herds. These increases and decreases in population size are likely results of “continental climate switches” (Gunn et al. 2009, iii). Since the first population survey in the early 1970s, the Porcupine Caribou Management Board has conducted a survey every two years and reports that the population size has fluctuated between 100,000 and 200,000 animals (Porcupine Caribou Management Board). A detailed graph estimating the size of the population of the Porcupine caribou herd is shown below.

      For further information, please consider the following link to The Porcupine Caribou Management Board (PCMB) webpage: http://www.pcmb.ca/.

      References

      Gunn, Anne, Don Russell, Robert G. White, and Gary Kofinas. "Facing a Future of Change: Wild Migratory Caribou and Reindeer." Arctic 62, no. 3 (2009): Iii-Vi. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40513303.

      Porcupine Caribou Management Board. "The Porcupine Caribou Management Board (PCMB)." Porcupine Caribou Management Board. Accessed March 08, 2017. http://www.pcmb.ca/.

    2. Bluenose caribou herd

      Many of the same concerns regarding the well-being of the Bluenose caribou herd in the Berger Inquiry are still being discussed today due to continued industrial exploration, specifically regarding oil and gas, in the Northwest Territories and the Arctic. Since oil and gas are still valued resources in our current societies, exploration continues in the North, as described by Anne Dunn and her colleagues in the 2009 Arctic publication. These concerns include changes of habitat due to the introduction or industrial development such as roads, oilfields, mines, etc. The attraction of job opportunity to areas surrounding the Bluenose caribou herd could potentially cause an increase in demand of caribou meat. Increased income as a result of employment for industrial exploration allows for the advancement of hunting methods regarding the locating of caribou and utilization of year-round roads implemented originally for industrial exploration. The concerns regarding the Bluenose East and Bluenose West caribou herds of the Northwest Territories result specifically from oil and gas exploration (Gunn et al. 2009, iii).

      Besides industrial exploration, there are concerns about the population and survival of the Bluenose caribou herd surrounding climate trends. Specifically, warmer temperatures will affect the environmental conditions in which the caribou rely on for sustenance. An increased temperature in the wintertime could correspond to more freeze-thaw cycles (Gunn et al. 2009, iii).

      Regarding population size, according to the Arctic journal, “migratory wild reindeer and caribou numbers have dropped by about one-third since populations peaked in the 1990s and early 2000s”. There are natural periods of abundance and scarcity among migratory tundra caribou herds. These increases and decreases in population size are likely results of “continental climate switches” (Gunn et al. 2009, iii). According to the Northwest Territories Environment and Natural Resources division, the Bluenose West caribou herd was estimated to have population of 112,000 in 1992. In 2015, its population was estimated to be approximately 15,000. The Bluenose East caribou herd was estimated to have a population of 104,000 in 2000. In 2015, its population was estimated to be between 35,000 and 40,000 (Northwest Territories).

      References

      Gunn, Anne, Don Russell, Robert G. White, and Gary<br> Kofinas. "Facing a Future of Change: Wild<br> Migratory Caribou and Reindeer." Arctic 62, no. 3 (2009): Iii-Vi. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40513303.

      Northwest Territories: Environment and Natural Resources. "Barren-ground Caribou: Northern Herds." Environment and Natural Resources. Accessed March 08, 2017. http://www.enr.gov.nt.ca/node/2979.

  29. Nov 2013
    1. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone.

      The duty to lie.