Art, Pandemic and Illusion

Some cross disciplinary themes:

• When I was studying theoretic physics at university (a long time ago), I had to grapple with the notion of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. In the accompanying notion that to observe something on a molecular scale is to change it.
• I shifted to the Faculty of Humanities, I had to get to grips with the philosophy of art, and in particular to get my head around Ernst Gombrich’s point, in Art and Illusion, that the classifying any piece of art as great art is to change it in the minds of those who experience it. Such classification is rather more potent than intrinsic quality.
• The law is full of similar points. I think Donald Keating, for whom my Chambers is named, once said something along the lines of, “The truth is a multifaceted jewel. Our job is to let the light shine on it in a way most advantageous to our clients.”
• Similarly with ethics. There are behaviours that are considered pretty ordinary, unless and until society changes its attitude towards those behaviours, at which point they can become morally outrageous, in the common perception.

Against this background, I was particularly interested to read Dr John Lee’s piece in The Spectator yesterday. He notes that, unlike normal flus, Covid-19 is now a notifiable disease in the UK (I suspect his observations are

Scottish Whispers

When I was a boy, my father used to like to play golf, and I often would go with him. He called it “caddying” but in truth I was just a small boy walking the course with a father and enjoying his company. When I got a bit older, I joined the club as a junior member, and we would play together. My adolescent golf was even worse than my father’s game.

After the round, of course, we would go to the club bar, where some of the members with Scottish. My experience of these people was that they talked far too loudly, stood too close, had bad breath and were far too keen on putting a hand on my shoulder as they told me their golfing stories. I soon learned to keep my distance. It was mildly annoying that these people did not respect my personal space in the way that I would have liked, but no worse than that. It was less annoying than, for example, Latin homework.

To tar all Scotsmen with the same brush would, of course, be ridiculous, and I do no such thing. But I was reminded of those moments when reading the recent reports of Alex Salmond’s barrister, Gordon Jackson, having been recorded talking far too loudly about his client on a train. In fact, of course, Mr Jackson should not have been

What would the Other Jeremy Say?

Let’s take stock. Trying to estimate what is really likely to happen, rather than what you would like to happen. Let us forget, for a moment, what it is politically expedient to say, or politically correct to say, but try to draw some realistic conclusions from what we know so far, in a rapidly changing data environment.

The other day, I posted my estimate that we might be looking at about 39 million people in the world dying as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. That assumption is based on some assumptions: that about half the world’s population are affected by the virus, and that of those affected, around 1% will die[1]. It means that this flu epidemic will be about half as damaging – in terms of deaths – as the Spanish flu in 1918 – 1920.

The latest evidence seems to be clear that the deaths are almost entirely among the old, and people with a pre-existing condition (whatever their age). Further, it seems that young, fit and healthy people get the virus and shrug it off, either easily, or without even noticing that they have had it at all.[2]  And, at the risk of overoptimism, it seems that people who have got the virus and shrug it off are probably both immune from further infection, and no longer infectious.

That’s good. It means that

Good Judgment?

It is not as if I am short of things to do, workwise. But all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and having got a couple of predictions right on Good Judgment Open[1], I have accepted an invitation to join Good Judgment Project 2.0.

This is run by Professor Philip Tetlock and Barb Mellers of the University of Pennsylvania, and the predictions they are looking for are not by any means woolly. One has to ascribe percentage possibilities to possible outcomes across a wide range of world events. All very detailed stuff. Participants get marked according to the accuracy of their predictions. And the top 2% are entitled to call themselves superforecasters.

I’m expecting that it might well turn out to be a cogent lesson in humility! The field will include proven superforecasters, who will certainly be

Grandmamma Mia!

Last night, in an idle moment, I thought I would watch a few moments of the 2008 movie Mamma Mia! on Netflix. I’d never seen it, and was curious to see it was all about. Mesmerised by a number of bizarre things about the movie, I ended up watching all of it.

For the few people in the world who have not seen it, the plot can be simply explained. A wedding is being planned for the 20-year-old daughter of a single mum, who is barely managing to run a small hotel in Greece. The daughter discovers her mother’s old diary, from which she learns that, at the relevant time, her mother had sex with three men in very quick succession so as to be unable to know which of the three was the father.

You might think this makes the mother a bit of a slapper, but it is explained that she was really young at the time and these romances were just a bit of youthful exuberance. So she was maybe 18 at the time of these dialliances. The daughter is 20, and so the mother would have been about 39 at the time of the action of the movie.

So, was a 39-year-old actress chosen to play the role? No. The role was taken by Meryl Streep, who was born in 1949, and so was about 59 years old at the time of the movie. 20 years too old for the part.

Likewise, other members of the

It’s Bad, But So What?

Let’s do some very rough numbers with regard to the coronavirus COVID-19.

There are around 7.8 billion people in the world. Let’s suppose that around half that number get infected by the current coronavirus outbreak over the next couple of years. That’s around 3.9 billion people.

Estimates vary about the mortality rate. Estimates up around the 3 or 4% mark are probably exaggerated by the fact that it seems people are getting the virus, not even noticing that they have got it. At any rate, not sufficiently to get themselves tested and confirmed as having been infected. The young, in particular, seem to shrug it off pretty easily, or even without noticing that they have got it at all. So let’s say this purpose that the mortality rate might be around 1%, with the elderly and the sick being the worst affected. That means that about 39 million people are going to die over the next couple of years. So we are talking, roughly, about 20 million people dying a year as a result of this coronavirus.

The average life expectancy in the world is about 73 years. That means that, in the ordinary course of things, around 100 million people die (or will die) every year. Some estimates are less – around 60 million a year – because the world population has not yet stabilised.

If these figures are approximately right, that means that the number of people dying over the next couple of years might be up by about 20% or 30% as a result of this coronavirus outbreak. And, to a very large extent, that 20% or 30% will be found among

Unmasking

The lack of common sense exhibited by computerised machines (or more exactly, the algorithms that direct them) might be either infuriating, or amusing, according, I guess, to your mood.

The day before yesterday, the Telegraph put up an interesting and informative comment piece by my daughter Annabel: The truth about Asia’s face mask obsession. The general drift of the piece was that the ubiquity of facemasks being worn in public these days in Asia has got nothing much to do with any sound health reason. Indeed, they are generally useless or worse in preventing the spread of the coronavirus. Rather, there are cultural reasons why people in Asia like to wear them.

The Telegraph, like other newspapers, derives income from advertising, and I was amused to see that the advertisement that was put up bang next to Annabel’s article was advertising – you can probably guess what’s coming here – surgical face masks for purchased by the general public.

Something similar happens in the blogosphere. Readers of these pages might note that

Impaired Vision

All puppies create a certain amount of mayhem. Until now, the damage done by Mercutio has been pretty modest. He chews up cardboard boxes, and redistributes shoes around the house. That’s okay. Well, okayish.

But a couple of days ago, Mercutio ate my glasses. Well, chewed them up, to be more exact. I have been doing pretty well recovering from my recent hip replacement surgery, but I do need to build in some recovery time into my schedule. So, I settled down on the daybed next to the pool to finish off the last few chapters of  Philip E. Tetlock’s excellent book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. After a certain point, it being a lovely sunny afternoon, I put my Kindle and my glasses down beside me, and dropped off for a quick siesta. When I woke up, there was my Kindle. But where were my glasses? There were bits of lens scattered around me. I later found what was left of the frames on the lawn.