It's interesting that indigenous people don't seem to get as caught up in these memes. I would guess their connection and reverence for ancestors and what came before, along with connection to the earth, gives them a certain immunity. The more attached to technology and abstract ideology we become, the more susceptible we seem to be.
They do have memes like any other humans. But they tend to live in very conservative societies (which might be a meme in itself) so they don't adopt new memes so easily.
On the other hand, people like us living in industrial societies tend to think that new is better. We call it "progress". This is also a meme. And it's far to work in our avantage all the time...
Some particular ethnicities have seen the BS and genocide for a couple of hundred years, already, and view the memes of the dominant groups with appropriate suspicion.
I don't really understand your model. The second equation (I') looks fine to me. The first one (S') not so much. In my opinion S should decrease with the cured people alone, so I don't see why S' has this S multiplying.
I played with another model as I think it should be (of course, I can be mistaken). Luckily the looks of the plot is almost exactly the same. My model is:
S’ = -k3 I
I’ = k2 (S - I) I – k3 I
R’ = k3 I
And what I plot as Susceptible is actually is (S - I). S includes the infected, and this is not what I want to plot. For the same reason, I'm putting (S - I) in the I' equation.
I assume all the cured become immune. I guess the model could be set so that only a fraction of the cured became immune. Or, for memes, that each cured could immunize more people other than himself.
Once plotted it looks almost exactly as yours. So much so, that I suspect I'm reformulating the problem in an equivalent way, still not understanding yours and why it should behave so exactly as mine.
It is the way the SIR model is usually presented. The idea is that the number of new infections is proportional to BOTH the number of infected people and the number of susceptible ones. That is, S'=kSI. Also the second equation you propose is different from the standard SIR model. But I am sure there are many ways to model the system.
The only way to quit the susceptible club is to get infected. So now I see the oficial SIR model makes sense. Only, shouldn't k1 be the same as k2?
I suspect even more that I just reformulated it redefining S, that in my case was susceptible and infected altogether (thus the modification in I' equation).
Please stop using the inadequate and, in the end, flawed Cochrane mask study as an argument for not wearing masks to prevent airborne virus infection. It has long since been disproven and even the Cochrane people put, in their initial inadequate study, warnings as to their "conclusions". A follow-up had this to say: "The Cochrane review mentioned many of its own limitations and weaknesses, particularly with regard to face masks and its limited number of robust studies; it, therefore, cautioned against drawing any strong conclusions. Given the strong opinions expressed about the study, Cochrane further clarified that their review should not be used as evidence against mask efficacy per se, noting that the data were not definitive and that masks might be effective at preventing respiratory virus infection." There are many studies, easily found, which have established that properly worn N95 type masks are very effective in preventing airborne virus infection. And I do hope the stupidity associated with the MAGA meme is truly a short lived disaster.
This is exactly what the authors of the Cochrane review (Jefferson et al.) did. They did the research, examined the available results, and concluded that there is no evidence that masks have any effect on stopping the spread of the virus -- good science. Of course, masks are a political symbol, and the study was subjected to plenty of political attacks. But memes appearing on newspapers, blogs, or movie clips cannot disprove a scientific study. If the study had been disproved, it would have been retracted. But nothing like that happened -- the study remains valid and it has been updated. You can find it at this link: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full
Incidentally, Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan are two of the most experienced and respected epidemiologists in the world. They keep a blog titled (tellingly) "Trusting the Evidence" https://trusttheevidence.substack.com/. Highly suggested as a reliable source of data on these matters,
After a review of the somewhat conflicting studies, it appears that the Cochrane study, by their own admission as well, was incomplete compared to what it should have been. Theirs and some of the other studies seem to not differentiate between properly fitted N95 masks which ARE effective and surgical masks which usually are not. Please don't dissuade people from using one of the only tools we have against airborne viruses. If you see some proof that the N95 is ineffective I would be happy to stand corrected.
Well, Ugo -- I think you need a 3D interpretation of your network -- with grounding validity being added, in varying degrees, to independent nodes. This is the thing the intelligentsia cannot seem to grok -- that people's experience matters in how they filter reality. As you know, I've written an entire blog about this.
>>They note that it fails to deliver its promises or simply cease to believe in it.<<
Consider the belief that "If you're not 'born again', you're going to hell." This one is tougher to recover from because the promised effect is impossible to measure. But I do believe that more and more people are not susceptible to this idea.
It's almost impossible to demonstrate that a miracle didn't happen. Because the very fact that it happened prove that the rational arguments against it are flawed.
Thanks Ugo. I'm less interested in the meme, than I am in this LTG phase-transition phase we have entered, as we topped the roller-coaster at the very end of 2018, and we are about to feel the downward WHOOSH!
The last phase of postwar-normalcy was pushed past its normal limits after 2008, and now the supercooled water is about to do what you showed in the picture.
Trump is something of an accelerant, but most people are not good at moving inside of rapid change, and he seems to be. Minsky saw that, Soros seems to have that knack.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Hunter S. Thompson
Scientific research, climate change mitigation, sustainable economy, international law, social equity, health care for all, defending the poor, and many more. Some of these ideas strongly needed to be rethought and revised
Oh, you think they do? Which ones? As you point out they are already strongly being “rethought and revised” by some very malevolent people.
Really MAGA is quite an interesting meme, can be said that is core is "might make right"....
America first is both a son of egoism as of "manifested destiny", something visceral about taking anything you could beside how and consequences, something that is adapted to a failing empire trying to stay alive. America has a lot of issues that are both complicated and deep-rooted in the power it has, as an empire, have the strength of accumulated power both military and of knowledge and as a crumbling empire still didn't have a competing "way of life" evolved enough to oppose it so the "bully option" is still the most quick and favorable.
I suppose that is impossible to see America go through the Roman Empire process of trying to split up his power to conserve it, MAGA is quite the opposite!
Memetic infection is quite lasting, usually is strong enough to keep going until death of the infected, nature is still used to it so use death to get thing right. Memetic infection is also related to knowledge, so we could be that we are seeing something more like an adolescence crisis, a restructuring phase of our collective behavior: during crisis usually there is a step back phase that generate a new more complex order, during the falls of empires we see it as a "middle age" that is both more chaotic and more inventive that originate the "new normality" in the form of something more integrated and complex.
Reactionary forces usually are strong just before change, change is difficult and frightening so is normal, I hope to live enough to see the blossoming seed of tomorrow.
Meme theory and implications are truly fascinating.
And by the way, some memes spread just because they are perceived as original or different and are supposed to give those who harbor or display them some added value. And then they ebb when too many people are "infested" as it's not "fashionable" anymore.
In many respects, what MAGA (whatever it really means) oppose were often ways for people (and corporations too) to signal their supposed superior moral virtues to others. It might be just that the fashion changed...
Professor Bardi, please clarify what is covered by ‘meme’. Are all human thoughts memes, or just some of them? You refer to scientific research as an idea. Did you mean it is a meme? Is there no way then to test reality for specific outcomes, like for example, the level of satisfaction and health in a population with healthcare for all and one without?
Similarly, are there really no studies that measure the effects of what a person breathes in when they wear a N95 respirator? Thank you for your thoughts.
Well, big questions. For what I can say, "meme" is a useful tool to measure the spread of concepts -- should not be taken as the key to the human mind. But I think it is true that we, humans, tend to think heuristically, and a good way to do that is to rely on those ideas that are transmitted from human to human. The concept that "science leads to the truth" is a meme that many of us used to share before the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, we tend to be much more cautious. Maybe we should turn it into a meme that says "science leads to the truth when scientists are not corrupted by commercial interests". But many of us have simply turned it into an even simpler version: "science is bad".
About the other question, for what I know, there is no way to detect viruses when they are flying in air embedded in microscopic or nanoscopic water droplets. We don't even know for sure if this is the only way they spread. So, whether masks work or not can be observed only indirectly, from a statistical examination of how fast the infection spreads depending on whether people wear the mask or not. The Cochrane reviewers examined all the available studies and concluded that there is no evidence that masks reduce the spread of the virus. I think it is a reasonable conclusion on the basis of the data we have. More studies might lead to detect some effects, but it is hard to think it would change the assessment very much. The problem is that a virus is a truly small creature, nearly impossible to avoid completely unless you wear one of those "biohazard suits" which make you look like an extraterrestrial astronaut. And we can't be completely sure that they work as well as they are advertised to do.
BTW, during the pandemic, several people published images of droplets emitted by people breathing using cameras or similar instruments. Spectacular, but not very relevant. These methods can't detect the microscopic particles which are the most likely vector of the virus. Something better can be done with much more sophisticated equipment, Nano-Digital in-line Holographic Microscopy. See for instance:
It's interesting that indigenous people don't seem to get as caught up in these memes. I would guess their connection and reverence for ancestors and what came before, along with connection to the earth, gives them a certain immunity. The more attached to technology and abstract ideology we become, the more susceptible we seem to be.
Depends on whether they have TV and a connection to the internet.
They do have memes like any other humans. But they tend to live in very conservative societies (which might be a meme in itself) so they don't adopt new memes so easily.
On the other hand, people like us living in industrial societies tend to think that new is better. We call it "progress". This is also a meme. And it's far to work in our avantage all the time...
Some particular ethnicities have seen the BS and genocide for a couple of hundred years, already, and view the memes of the dominant groups with appropriate suspicion.
I don't really understand your model. The second equation (I') looks fine to me. The first one (S') not so much. In my opinion S should decrease with the cured people alone, so I don't see why S' has this S multiplying.
I played with another model as I think it should be (of course, I can be mistaken). Luckily the looks of the plot is almost exactly the same. My model is:
S’ = -k3 I
I’ = k2 (S - I) I – k3 I
R’ = k3 I
And what I plot as Susceptible is actually is (S - I). S includes the infected, and this is not what I want to plot. For the same reason, I'm putting (S - I) in the I' equation.
I assume all the cured become immune. I guess the model could be set so that only a fraction of the cured became immune. Or, for memes, that each cured could immunize more people other than himself.
Once plotted it looks almost exactly as yours. So much so, that I suspect I'm reformulating the problem in an equivalent way, still not understanding yours and why it should behave so exactly as mine.
It is the way the SIR model is usually presented. The idea is that the number of new infections is proportional to BOTH the number of infected people and the number of susceptible ones. That is, S'=kSI. Also the second equation you propose is different from the standard SIR model. But I am sure there are many ways to model the system.
Ok, I think I understand now.
The only way to quit the susceptible club is to get infected. So now I see the oficial SIR model makes sense. Only, shouldn't k1 be the same as k2?
I suspect even more that I just reformulated it redefining S, that in my case was susceptible and infected altogether (thus the modification in I' equation).
Correct. In the SIR model, k1=k2!
Please stop using the inadequate and, in the end, flawed Cochrane mask study as an argument for not wearing masks to prevent airborne virus infection. It has long since been disproven and even the Cochrane people put, in their initial inadequate study, warnings as to their "conclusions". A follow-up had this to say: "The Cochrane review mentioned many of its own limitations and weaknesses, particularly with regard to face masks and its limited number of robust studies; it, therefore, cautioned against drawing any strong conclusions. Given the strong opinions expressed about the study, Cochrane further clarified that their review should not be used as evidence against mask efficacy per se, noting that the data were not definitive and that masks might be effective at preventing respiratory virus infection." There are many studies, easily found, which have established that properly worn N95 type masks are very effective in preventing airborne virus infection. And I do hope the stupidity associated with the MAGA meme is truly a short lived disaster.
The fact that the Cochrane review was "disproved" is another meme that has little to do with the real world.
Do the research, it wasn't/is not good science.
This is exactly what the authors of the Cochrane review (Jefferson et al.) did. They did the research, examined the available results, and concluded that there is no evidence that masks have any effect on stopping the spread of the virus -- good science. Of course, masks are a political symbol, and the study was subjected to plenty of political attacks. But memes appearing on newspapers, blogs, or movie clips cannot disprove a scientific study. If the study had been disproved, it would have been retracted. But nothing like that happened -- the study remains valid and it has been updated. You can find it at this link: https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006207.pub6/full
Incidentally, Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan are two of the most experienced and respected epidemiologists in the world. They keep a blog titled (tellingly) "Trusting the Evidence" https://trusttheevidence.substack.com/. Highly suggested as a reliable source of data on these matters,
After a review of the somewhat conflicting studies, it appears that the Cochrane study, by their own admission as well, was incomplete compared to what it should have been. Theirs and some of the other studies seem to not differentiate between properly fitted N95 masks which ARE effective and surgical masks which usually are not. Please don't dissuade people from using one of the only tools we have against airborne viruses. If you see some proof that the N95 is ineffective I would be happy to stand corrected.
And with this, it is demonstrated that memes rule human minds. Nothing to do about that.
Well, Ugo -- I think you need a 3D interpretation of your network -- with grounding validity being added, in varying degrees, to independent nodes. This is the thing the intelligentsia cannot seem to grok -- that people's experience matters in how they filter reality. As you know, I've written an entire blog about this.
>>They note that it fails to deliver its promises or simply cease to believe in it.<<
Consider the belief that "If you're not 'born again', you're going to hell." This one is tougher to recover from because the promised effect is impossible to measure. But I do believe that more and more people are not susceptible to this idea.
Some meme have a kind of build-in resistance.
Think about miracle memes.
It's almost impossible to demonstrate that a miracle didn't happen. Because the very fact that it happened prove that the rational arguments against it are flawed.
Thanks Ugo. I'm less interested in the meme, than I am in this LTG phase-transition phase we have entered, as we topped the roller-coaster at the very end of 2018, and we are about to feel the downward WHOOSH!
The last phase of postwar-normalcy was pushed past its normal limits after 2008, and now the supercooled water is about to do what you showed in the picture.
Trump is something of an accelerant, but most people are not good at moving inside of rapid change, and he seems to be. Minsky saw that, Soros seems to have that knack.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Hunter S. Thompson
Scientific research, climate change mitigation, sustainable economy, international law, social equity, health care for all, defending the poor, and many more. Some of these ideas strongly needed to be rethought and revised
Oh, you think they do? Which ones? As you point out they are already strongly being “rethought and revised” by some very malevolent people.
Really MAGA is quite an interesting meme, can be said that is core is "might make right"....
America first is both a son of egoism as of "manifested destiny", something visceral about taking anything you could beside how and consequences, something that is adapted to a failing empire trying to stay alive. America has a lot of issues that are both complicated and deep-rooted in the power it has, as an empire, have the strength of accumulated power both military and of knowledge and as a crumbling empire still didn't have a competing "way of life" evolved enough to oppose it so the "bully option" is still the most quick and favorable.
I suppose that is impossible to see America go through the Roman Empire process of trying to split up his power to conserve it, MAGA is quite the opposite!
Memetic infection is quite lasting, usually is strong enough to keep going until death of the infected, nature is still used to it so use death to get thing right. Memetic infection is also related to knowledge, so we could be that we are seeing something more like an adolescence crisis, a restructuring phase of our collective behavior: during crisis usually there is a step back phase that generate a new more complex order, during the falls of empires we see it as a "middle age" that is both more chaotic and more inventive that originate the "new normality" in the form of something more integrated and complex.
Reactionary forces usually are strong just before change, change is difficult and frightening so is normal, I hope to live enough to see the blossoming seed of tomorrow.
Meme theory and implications are truly fascinating.
And by the way, some memes spread just because they are perceived as original or different and are supposed to give those who harbor or display them some added value. And then they ebb when too many people are "infested" as it's not "fashionable" anymore.
In many respects, what MAGA (whatever it really means) oppose were often ways for people (and corporations too) to signal their supposed superior moral virtues to others. It might be just that the fashion changed...
Professor Bardi, please clarify what is covered by ‘meme’. Are all human thoughts memes, or just some of them? You refer to scientific research as an idea. Did you mean it is a meme? Is there no way then to test reality for specific outcomes, like for example, the level of satisfaction and health in a population with healthcare for all and one without?
Similarly, are there really no studies that measure the effects of what a person breathes in when they wear a N95 respirator? Thank you for your thoughts.
Well, big questions. For what I can say, "meme" is a useful tool to measure the spread of concepts -- should not be taken as the key to the human mind. But I think it is true that we, humans, tend to think heuristically, and a good way to do that is to rely on those ideas that are transmitted from human to human. The concept that "science leads to the truth" is a meme that many of us used to share before the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, we tend to be much more cautious. Maybe we should turn it into a meme that says "science leads to the truth when scientists are not corrupted by commercial interests". But many of us have simply turned it into an even simpler version: "science is bad".
About the other question, for what I know, there is no way to detect viruses when they are flying in air embedded in microscopic or nanoscopic water droplets. We don't even know for sure if this is the only way they spread. So, whether masks work or not can be observed only indirectly, from a statistical examination of how fast the infection spreads depending on whether people wear the mask or not. The Cochrane reviewers examined all the available studies and concluded that there is no evidence that masks reduce the spread of the virus. I think it is a reasonable conclusion on the basis of the data we have. More studies might lead to detect some effects, but it is hard to think it would change the assessment very much. The problem is that a virus is a truly small creature, nearly impossible to avoid completely unless you wear one of those "biohazard suits" which make you look like an extraterrestrial astronaut. And we can't be completely sure that they work as well as they are advertised to do.
BTW, during the pandemic, several people published images of droplets emitted by people breathing using cameras or similar instruments. Spectacular, but not very relevant. These methods can't detect the microscopic particles which are the most likely vector of the virus. Something better can be done with much more sophisticated equipment, Nano-Digital in-line Holographic Microscopy. See for instance:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44172-023-00088-x
Let's say that it is promising, but we don't know if it can be useful.