EMBRACE THE SUCK

 

EMBRACE THE SUCK

Dedicated to the many, MANY wonderful intelligent persons I met through twitter. In a world where my measure of men and women is “a good person to have in a storm”, I would want you all on my boat.

Italy is following hard on the heels of Macron's France in designing and enforcing Vaccine Passports internally instead of enforcing a COVID vaccine mandate. The intent, in both cases, is hampering the lives of citizens enough to “nudge” them into going in droves to vaccine hubs, arm extended.

And it won't work. And it will NEVER work, in my opinion. Sorry.

For that you need a spreadsheet. Imagine, if you will , that an unknown force transported you back in time to the early expansion of tribes of Homo Sapiens. You are given a choice: you can join one of two otherwise identical tribes of about 1.000 people, with similar territories. In One tribe, whenever the Council/Ruler/King/Shaman subsumes the wisdom of the tribe, everyone complies and acts in the prescribed way. In the other, there is a percentage no lower than X % that come hell or high water, will not obey orders: some might do the same things of the others on their own accord but no, they will not obey.

You are then told that, amazingly, your present self is the long descendant of the self of the prehistoric one. Which tribe do you pick?. And what tribe is MORE LIKELY to survive?

Let's Spreadsheet, people !

Members: 1.000

Let X be the unruly percentage

Let Y be the probability to encounter a disastrous event per generation

Let's assume a generation is 35 years, and the initial point be 5.000 year BC. That makes 7.000 years, i.e. 200 generations. Simplifying somewhat, If I set Y at 5%, after one Generation the probability to survive total destruction would be (1-5%) = 95%. That 5% works out at 0,14% per year, btw, not a huge risk as perceived by joe soap. Roughly, it would be 1 baddie every 700 years, to any European a pittance given WW I, WW II, thirty years war and plague, etc. (100% / 0,14% = 716)-

Yet.... look at this beauty:

	tribe 1	tribe 2
Members:	1.000,00	1.000,00
total years	7.000,00
yers per generation	35
total generations	200
Dire event prob% per generation	5%
rebels % in tribe 2:	15%
Total members by type	tribe 1	tribe 2
compliants	1.000	850
rebels	0	150
TOTAL	1.000	1.000
survival expectation probability	0,00351%

Interesting, isn't it? This is a very crude model, but apparently, the authorities pushing peasants to “Ford a creek 4 feet deep on average” according to THEIR extreme precautionary principles are fighting AGAINST Darwin's “Precautionary Principle” distant offsprings, which is basically telling all groupthtinkers that unless they can prove Ex Ante that the risk they are causing is less than 0,1% per event, they should refrain to force the entire population into anything. Nature wins.... or it has already won? We may not ever know if the equivalent of forced compliance of 100% of citizens ever existed, because more often that not a population so discipline would not survive. They would eat a juicy berry containing stricnine, jump off a cliff to avoid a fire, or some other behavior ensuring that we will never know them.

But now it gets even more interesting. What if whichever is the prevailing population, we give them an EFFECTIVE nudge power to convince the other side, in WHATEVER direction?

Well, the results are exactly the same as having a “drone” tribe. Hence my “embrace the suck” title: trying to convince the recalcitrant even with elaborate ruses like Vaccine passports is an utter waste of time: Nature beat everyone to the punch by hard wiring stubbornness in some number of people in order to ensure species survival, the ONLY metric nature measures us by. Nor, I must add, strategies like “ultima Thule” would work. I would bet dollar to donuts that sons and daughters of the most wise would revert to the percentages necessary to ensure survival, i.e. a number of your sons and daughters will end up being stubborn dolts.

So, whenever in these trying days you end up fighting verbally with someone you think understands a whole lot of nothing... remember God loves and needs you both. And embrace the suck.