Quite tired recently. This post is another one I've added-to here and there over the course of several days.

Got a few topics to cover today. I'm gonna talk about Covid again (venting about it here helps me get this out of my system, so I can avoid the topic in normal day-to-day conversations). And then I'm gonna muse a little about some dumb stuff I was thinking about while driving.

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So my company has changed their mask policy (again again). Now it's the case that you must wear a mask only if you're unvaccinated. Let's think about this a little... All this time, I've been told that wearing the mask doesn't prevent you from getting Covid, so much as it prevents you from spreading Covid (by sneezing on other people, etc). More recently, we're being told that vaccinated people still get the virus and transmit it, so (the impression I'm getting, from what I've heard is) the vaccine doesn't actually reduce infection rates, but it just reduces the severity of symptoms in those who get vaccinated. 

So, if vaccinated and unvaccinated people both tend to catch and transmit the virus, and if unvaccinated people are at higher risk for severe symptoms, then it is the unvaccinated people who need to be protected from the vaccinated people, not the other way around. If wearing the mask protects everyone around you, and not yourself, then it is the vaccinated people who should wear the mask, more than the unvaccinated people. This being the case, how should I interpret a requirement that unvaccinated people wear masks? Consider also the studies I showed before, where it was demonstrated that masks actually do not prevent spread of Covid, but cause harm to the wearers. What else can I conclude? It seems to me that the new company policy is less like a measure intended to protect people at large, and more like a measure intended to protect vaccinated people and punish unvaccinated people. 

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This has me thinking back on the history of the vaccine (or at least, my perceptions of the press releases as I saw them).... First, it was being rushed through approvals, and there was concern about it's safety. Then, for a while, it was simultaneously "safe and effective", and also "not approved for use in most countries", and also, "undergoing human trials in Africa", and also, "being charitably given first to those most in need, the Africans". Not long into that, anyone who repeated the concerns which we had at first, about it being untested, were conspiracy theorists touting misinformation -- liars; the science was settled; the vaccine was safe and effective, and ready to be delivered en masse. But then, several of the approved vaccines were found to be causing the deaths of their recipients, and some countries had to cancel their subscriptions to certain vaccine manufacturers, in spite of the fact that the vaccines were yet still safe and effective (I'll never forget listening to the radio broadcast where some foreign minister or delegate explained why his country was going to stop using the vaccines from a certain manufacturer -- that the vaccines were safe and effective, and yet caused a death rate higher than Covid, and so they were going to discontinue use of them, even though they were safe and effective). But then, we found out that the vaccines didn't produce a lasting immunity; the immunity wore off after about a year, but we would be ok forever if we got a booster after 6 months. No wait, immunity wore off after about 8 months. No wait, it wore off after about 6 months, and actually you need two boosters. No wait, it wore off after about 3 months, but we're still only giving you two, maybe three boosters, and those on a 6 month interval. Then it seemed that the vaccines didn't produce any immunity at all, and so didn't conform to the thus-far accepted definition of "vaccine", so the CDC changed the definition of "vaccine" from a treatment which produced immunity to a therapy which produced "protection". Now they think that the vaccine reduces severity of the symptoms of Covid, without reducing its infection rates or transmissibility. Meanwhile, (last I heard) the rate of adverse effects from the vaccine is about 1/10 the rate of long-term adverse effects from Covid.

So we look to Fauci, the hero of his own Netflix documentary in his lifetime; the voice of Science itself! Help us Fauci. Give us some advice. So what does Fauci recommend? Wear multiple masks, and ignore the tortured dogs and the gain-of-function-oh-wait-let's-change-the-definition-of-this-too research; ignore the burning economy, the global mental health crisis, and the adverse effects of treatment which (see the whole "release of lot numbers" debacle) were in large part predictable and avoidable. All the death -- the destruction of families and businesses -- it's all worth it if it saves just one life from coronavirus, and if you say otherwise then you're a cold, heartless, anti-science, misinformed, uneducated, liar.

I've got no reason to believe that the speculations declarations concerning vaccine effectiveness or benefit won't diminish again, as they have consistently done during the short life of this vaccine. And, seeing no clear benefit in it, but very clear possibility of harm, I see no good reason to get it, except that I might suffer political harm in not taking it. Thankfully, my company has recently issued a statement (it is only the "latest") stating there will be no vaccine mandates in the future, but as I said above, unvaccinated people will be required to continue wearing a mask.

Then again... my company flip-flops on Covid policies almost as fast as Science, which, at the rate it changes, either is not science at all, or the laws of physics and nature are so volatile now that experiments are reversing their results every month. Oh wait, there are no experiments. I guess science and the scientific method no longer keep company with one another. Science is philosophy in denial. "We're not philosophizing; our inclinations against this statistical data are empirical reality." 

I suppose I'd better be careful, lest I forget that "the science is settled!" and so lose all credibility.

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Speaking of science and inclination, I have noticed two simultaneous trends in my brief experience here on earth. Maybe this is nothing at all, but it interests me nonetheless to speculate about it:

Secular, empirical, epistemology (here I go generalizing) seems very much concerned with statistical inference. In theory alone, NonChristians don't gain certainty about a feature by seeing it, but rather they gain confidence about the feature by repeatedly testing their eyes against it in order to generate a statistical model. They perceive that there is an unknown or unknowable quantity of unknown or unknowable variables affecting the object of their perceptions (and consequently the truth of their inferences), and so rather than make significant effort to rule out every possible barrier to truth, they simply perform the test over and over and then aggregate the results into sets, sorted by statistical significance, and content themselves with formulating plans of action on the highest probability result.

And now, it would seem, so does popular Science (although, not all science). I recognize that there are still a great many fields performing their work with the most rigorous adherence to the scientific method (making a test in, as much as possible, a closed system, to achieve absolutely predictable results, in effort to disprove your hypothesis). However, I've noticed that most of the time when I see "facts" touted for argument or news reporting, the sources cited are not strictly repeatable scientific experiments, but rather they consist of aggregated data from a great many observations, with various formulas applied to help rule out known sources of error. They're built on an implicit understanding that statistical sets are the best we can do. 

This idea, combined with the understanding that science consists of theories, which change as new data arises, presents the scientists with a scenario where they may generate a high probability cause-effect relationship and then call it "the science" -- which is to say, it's the best information we have, and so it participates in the operating assumptions of the scientific community until further notice. This understanding is summarized with the word "science", and science has such an excellent reputation that it is interchangeably summarized with the word "fact". And so, if an observed effect occurs with high enough probability in a set of observations in an open system where outliers, as well as observations affected by known sources of error, are systematically ignored, it is considered to be the factual effect of a given cause. Worse, however, is that it is presented to the public as though it were the factual effect of a given cause.

Without going into extended detail about the very terminal problems inherent in pretending to have any confidence at all amid an unknown or unknowable quantity of unknown or unknowable variables... I take issue with the above system because it isn't Christian. The Bible teaches us that we may know things with certainty; particularly the things described in scripture, which on the whole are of consequence in real-world expectations concerning all other mathematical, natural, and physical laws.  The scientific method was designed with such epistemic certainty in mind, and it is the expectation of a scientist who employs that method, that all variables are knowable, and that as he eliminates variables in effort to produce a closed system for his experiment, unknown variables will become more apparent, until what variables remain yet unknown are truly inconsequential, and the repeatable result is the only possible result within the boundaries described by the laws which govern this universe.

A Christian who does science (not a "Christian Scientist" I am very loathe to explain: "Christian Science" is the name of a cult nearly as abhorrent as secular science, both being neither tolerably Christian nor tolerably scientific) seeks to find the truth of the matter in finality, and acts on the expectation that it is obtainable -- that a rigorous application of the scientific method is capable of generating actual factual information about the universe. Combine this with the most strict requirement for intellectual integrity, and a Christian should only say that a thing is fact if it is, indeed, fact. So we see, Philosophy and science are interdependent. 

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Speaking of being a follower.. since I moved to CT,  I have had an interesting experience a few times: While driving, I have found myself behind a car who drove agreeably and seemed to make all the same turns as me for a long while (my commute is about 45 minutes). And, I begin feeling emotionally attached to the car in front of me; the driver is a friend, and I take care to maintain comfortable space between them and me, for their sake. After some time of this, I begin to daydream on the road, as is startlingly common for me, though I am generally good at snapping out of it when something is amiss, and, thoughtlessly, I will follow that car into a wrong turn. Sometimes I catch myself quickly, but sometimes I'll follow for several minutes before realizing that I don't recognize my surroundings. The experience is usually rather surreal for me, and as often as not it is remedied by Google Maps, which is no less an example of the topic about which I here soliloquize than the strange car which led me astray in the first place. 

It gets me wondering, what other things am I following without really thinking about it -- on "autopilot", following the leader, or sticking to my tribe, without really paying attention to which way they're going?

The common accusation on this topic comes from religion or political theory, right -- "you blindly follow the Bible", or, "you blindly follow your political camp". But, honestly, I'm so saturated with challenges to self-asses and self-challenge my faith in God, coming both from Christians and atheists alike, that I do it all the time! In fact, I've done it so much, and so repeatedly found that I have no reason whatsoever to abandon God, yet every reason to remain faithful (by God's grace to me, upholding my spirit), I'm honestly tired of it. If there is something blind and unquestioned in my faith, then it is so deep and buried underneath other suppositions that I'm entirely unaware of it.

Those things are precisely the issue -- it does me no good to attack "Christianity" in myself over and over. It's better, rather, I think, to seek out the deep things, everything else, all my underlying suppositions, my buried thoughts, and question every one of them, and then measure the consequences of those contests against the greater structure which leans on the thoughts in question.

"I'm all aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! not only full of leaky casks, but those leaky casks are in a leaky ship...Yet I don't stop to plug my leak; for who can find it in the deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it, even if found, in this life's howling gale?"