Of course, even if sheep aren't doing actual decisions to weigh up risk and reward to logically treat different people in a different way, evolutionarily they're applying what is a fairly successful cognitive formula. Approaching humans are an absolutely unnecessary risk because the thousand and first one, if not one before, will do you harm. It is effectively a heuristic, a tool used "to quickly form judgments, make decisions, and find solutions to complex problems" (Wikipedia). You might think they are being unfair and have a bias against humans. But if at the end of the day, it's an effective bias that ensures their lives, what's wrong with it? This heuristic had to precede their domestication, and probably was lessened during the process but still remains and probably still ensures their safety on a lesser extent from rustlers and predators.
A heuristic and a bias seem two sides of a coin, both are quick ways to make decisions and judgements, as there is a limit to what we can know or be sure of. There is connotation to both: a heuristic sounds like a smart, shorthand guide, or a rule of thumb; whereas a bias sounds like it is an overgeneralisation that leads you to error or a lack of equity. Profiling at the airport is probably an effective way to find the majority of illicitly brought it contraband; but there will be those of the non-targetted groups who bring it in with an unfair lack of scrutiny; and there will be a lot of innocent, rule-following members in the targetted groups that will cry foul. To cross the street because of the presence of a young Polynesian in a hoodie coming the other way would be racist; but like the sheep might actually be a heuristic to avoid risk. Murky, huh.
Pretty much any item of controversy is a clash between the heuristics/biases that people use. The easiest one to look at is political labelling, in New Zealand it often goes to the National / Labour brands or the left / right polarity (often at the expense of any awareness of the continuum underneath). Not much of the electorate of any country has the luxury to be completely aware of the exact distinctions between political options; but might know that people similar to them are more likely to vote one way, or benefit from one particular party, without knowing exactly how. When a judgement has to be made, it's easier to go with that party. It works in reverse, too, when your party or a political figure you support comes out with a policy, that is difficult to exactly understand whether it is allowing in migrants, "supporting medicare for all" (a US example) or shutting the borders. You're more likely to support it using your informal affiliations as a guide, that if you had agreed with them before, you probably should agree with this policy, too, even if it sets you up for all sorts of contradictions between this and your private self. Even if you were to think that you had reasons for your support for the policy, it might be because you've heard the arguments in favour that "made sense" and, as a bias, discrediting or underestimating the worth of those from the other side which might also make some sense.
There is a lot of talk about tribalism in politics but by extension in the way that the tribal evokes the primitive, it's the primal heuristics that are worryingly still present. The fear of strangers is a heuristic, but one that we learn to overcome in most circumstances. There seems to be a heuristic where people are ethically contaminated by association with those who do some sort of wrong, or have some sort of beliefs, no matter how intellectually clear in an civilised society that you should be able to have relationships, and that the fallen should be able to be redeemed. It's a simple heuristic to sort people: Person A does bad things. Person B has been his friend. Person B is thus also bad. Person A likes Person C. Thus Person C is not a reputable person. Person D dislikes person B, so they must be a good person. It's all black and white and not much grey. Heuristics and biases are indeed fast ways to generate a black and white certain answer, judgement or decision, in times when you are information-impoverished, or not inclined towards the effort that accuracy might demand.
At the end of the day, one person's heuristic is another person's bias. In this world of memes (which I'm using in the original sense of the word as transmissible ideas that spreads like genes), there will eventually be some culling of the poor heuristics that turn out to be self-defeating biases. And they must be self-defeating in some sense to be eliminated. Racism doesn't disappear because it is an unfair belief. It disappears when it doesn't confer an advantage. In New Zealand, in this "PC world" overt racism has already been made to be disadvantageous to your social and professional life, for example. In the metaphorical Black Swan event, those who have a collection of attitudes that, "rightly or wrongly" ensure survival are those that will prevail. Survival hasn't really been a big issue in the last 70 years because the human race hasn't been stress-tested for some time. It might be that you could do a regression of memes in societies that prospered (when there is an explosion of ideas, heuristics and beliefs) and then when the crunch came which ones lasted, not just because of fashion but brutal life and death distinctions. Ancient Greece, Rome and China all had periods of intellectual prosperity before circumstances caused their decline and also the culling of a whole bunch of ideas. Many of the ideas might have been idealist, but when the pressure is on the judgements they made in unique situations did not work. During the flourishing "anything can go" but in the eventual and certain unexpected adversity, the beliefs that work not just for the present but also for extraordinary times are the ones that suddenly become key and will survive.
Anyway. It's a Friday. A Good Friday for another landmark week. I quoted New York Governor Andrew Cuomo saying "New York is not Wuhan" and his words are become more and more true. New York City alone will double, perhaps even triple, the death rate of Wuhan. New York State has more infected than either Spain or Italy. The USA as a whole went from over six thousand dead to sixteen thousand officially dead in the space of 7 days. There was a bit of news about Sweden's alternative way where they try to use self-responsibility as the main principle in social distancing but otherwise keep things "normal". The rest of Europe, including the similar country Norway, did the now standard lock-down. Result: Norway has 108 dead since the beginning. Sweden had 106 dead yesterday.
New Zealand might be on the cusp of pulling off the perfect turn, if the perfect turn was to allow some spread and then pull it back in. Even with two regrettable deaths and possible a few other potential fatalities in the ICU's we might have played our cards relatively well. There is a "what next"-ness about the next step. And what of the world? And what of the border? It's extraordinary to think that here we are with barely any new cases, and countries where there are literally hundreds dying each day are saying that they have reached the peak and looking to allow people release from the lock-down.
The incredible thing to think about is that there are just 50 official deaths per million in the USA. For most people stuck at home, they will feel that the situation is overblown, a hoax, a conspiracy or a power grab to seize the freedom back from the citizenry. There is probably even a sense of that here too, with people feeling the cost of the lock-down outweighs the barely apparent epidemic. With 12 more days of Level 4, at least, to go, it will be an interesting time.
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