The reverse Arthur C. Clarke conundrum

 

The reverse Arthur C. Clarke conundrum



The late Arthur C. Clarke once wrote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Modern governments have twisted and turned that on its head, and are working according a new law: “Any sufficiently fudged set of regulations is indistinguishable from Technology”

If you listen to the authorities' spiel, you come away convinced that in Italy all actions taken by the government on COVID have been carefully crafted according to “science”.

Now, before some “Breaking Bad “ fan shouts out something embarrassing, let me say that this has not been limited to Italy: the strange interlude between EMA and the national medical authorities on the Astra Zeneca Vaccine side effects is no different than the alleged interplay between insiders at the WHO and Italian government official on the Report on pandemic plan effectiveness in the Italian case.

Moreover, the fudge between politics and scientific principle is also the fountain of other similar strange movements like Climate change, ESG, you name it. The rationale behind these catch-all acronyms completely puzzle many people, but for the sake of clarity, let's split the unbelievers into three groups:

  1. Statisticians, by which I mean REAL ones: people who span across the physical, philosophical and mathematical worlds in order to follow the dictum "Once you have eliminated the Impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" ;

  2. Any person with a firm scientific interest whose livelihood doesn't depend on bending the knee to the apparatus, which given that most science is government funded leaves out a large part of the academic world;

  3. Simple doubters, silly minds, generalized opposers etc.

By all means, there is some superimposition of states between the three groups.

Let me describe how the process works with an example: Japanese authorities have announced that they will authorize the release of treated waters from the Fukushima Nuclear plant into the sea1. 

The whole story of the Fukushima incident has been a great example of how political ends have distorted the “science” behind it: about 20.000 people died from the Tsunami, yet since the powers that be are out to prove that Nuclear Power is inherently unsafe there has been a storm of public misinformation, the most recent being about the potential harm of this water. The press campaign was enough to convince the fishermen that their business would be hit, since the people would not want to buy their catch afterwards. 

That is true, but only insofar the misinformation convinced the population that it would be unsafe, while a person like me checked and saw it was apparently due to the tritium content.

 Now, one of the unspoken mantras of the elites is that seeking profit is bad and conducive to all sorts of disasters, yet implicitly they think also that avid speculators are perfect idiots. I say this because Tritium is one of the costlier elements on Earth at 30.000 USD per gram2, shaming gold with his puny 1.700 USD per ounce, equivalent to 60 USD per gram. For a quirk of markets, one gram of Tritium costs about half a Kilo of Gold. 

So, since even critics would probably love to get half a kilo of gold for free, It should be expected that managers at TEPCO would have made all reasonable effort to salvage some money out of their effort. Yet, the concentration is SO low, even before the dilution they will undertake in order to reduced the “risk” perceived by the egged on population, that it's not worth the effort. 

Oh: Tritium is used a a marker in medicinal tests, but the more mundane use is in optical equipment since its faint radioactivity is used in luminescent watches / night sights.

So, was science in the driver's seat? NO, emphatically no. Was the general public led to believe it was? oh yeah, definitely. 

Hence, in a twisted turnabout, A person with a nice military style wristwatch might point his finger at me telling me I am "Antiscience", at the same time exposing me to a raw level of radiation roughly equivalent to buying a resort in Fukushima  with a seawater Jacuzzi AFTER the "radioactive water" has been released and spend all mornings in the bubbles, sipping daiquiris. Simply because his watch contains more Tritium that I would have in that water over an year.

That is per se bad, but it doesn't stop there: once you start this process you have to keep up the pretense, so if people want "radiation free zones" (which by the way would entail renouncing both Vodka and Bananas, which would  cause the wrath of any organization protecting monkeys attracted to the finer things in life), you will have to provide for them without letting on how idiotic the very concept is.

Something similar has happened in the EU vaccine saga. Italy, alas, has been at the cutting edge: we went from sequestration of Astra Zeneca doses bound for Australia, to forbidding use of the vaccine, thereby inducing a scare in the population which in turn is stubbornly refusing to accept the injection. Meanwhile, the various parties involved are picking nonsensical limits out of their noses in the hope that someone else steps forward to assume responsibility for the whole story.

The cases of complications are variously described as "possibly linked to the vaccine", "unrelated", or a combination of the two, in order to fool a scared and non numerate public opinion. And I say "non numerate" for a reason.

Imagine if you will the sky ripping over your head, to a thunderous sound, and a voice saying in a distinctly Mel Brooks voice: "Giovanni, This is the God thy Lord, commanding you to heed my words: those Astra Zeneca complications are in fact due to the vaccine!". having written those words on a stone tablet, you go to the medical authorities.. who already know that your information has nothing to do with what they did. Even if that was true, complications are a LINEAR consequence, i.e. if you double the people injected if the new subjects have the same rough age/sex distribution the number of people experiencing complications will double. BUT, COVID is not linear: if unchecked it follows an exponential law, meaning that people clogging ER rooms may MUCH MORE than double.

BUT, at this point the system is too compromised not to consider a "significant emotional event" for the past leadership if the population was effectively informed, on this and other aspects.

In a way, we are back to potions and spells: we are only calling them in a different way: "Science".


2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium

https://youtu.be/w556vrpsy4w

 

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