The Awesome Science of Chinonomics

Once upon a time there was this Republic called Quirkistan. It was ruled by a hyper intelligent elite, possessors of the most shiny and reputed tokens. These tokens vested in them utmost respect and reverence, as only the most brilliant, capable, responsible, and deserving Quirkistanis were issued them. The tokens were granted with great pomp and circumstance by velour-robed Sages in solemn ceremonies, after listening to liturgy imparted by an elevated Sage in an annual ritual of initiation so full of symbolism and self-congratulation that for many, of the recipients the initiation represented the single most important day of their lives.  How could they think otherwise? That token granted them access to the upper echelons of Quirkistan. Attaining one was akin to the assurance of a life full of opulence, comfort, and the absence of suffering. The institutions that issued them prided themselves in hand-picking their future tokenholders from the most brilliant, meritoc...

Nobody can really  take credit for having solved a problem that never happened. Any attempt at it drags you into the realm of non-existent hypotheticals and becomes moot the moment you open your mouth. This is the position leaders around the world find themselves in when trying to fight this pandemic. It doesn't matter how informed, intelligent, prescient our leaders might (or might not) be, they face the same fog of uncertainty when trying to predict the future while making decisions to fix a problem this complex. For better and worse, we're equipped with minds that can only draw on history to construct patterns when trying to face the future. And in a Bayesian dance , all we can aspire to do is to  tinker with our course of action as that fog of uncertainty chooses to spit the next piece of evidence at us. There is no other way. Leaders (simple humans* that they are) fall prey to the same  Law of Small Numbers ; forced to take action in the face of clouded, sm...

You and I are going to die. That much is certain. And --hopefully not much-- before that, we will burden our society and our family with the responsibility of taking care of us. Historically, the burden was carried by the children. That is why many societies have instilled in their members (I can't think of one that doesn't) the value of respect towards their elders --a societal self-preservation mechanism that allows the ageing to finally collect a loan they originally extended to society in the form of productivity when they were young. Be it directly (via familial care) or indirectly (via tax collection), that debt is paid for by the work and effort of those coming behind --kin or not. Younger generations are thus, by definition, cursed (or blessed) by the genealogical accident that assigned them cosmic responsibility of their older generation. Their collective agency with regards to their generational responsibility is stripped from them the same way it was also stripped ...