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Living Polar Bears and Dead Frogs – My Learning Model

We learn best from experience that captures our imagination…

“A position that begins with an inflexible conclusion and seeks ‘evidence’ to support it is impervious to reason”

This is a quote that I have adapted from something written by Steve Cuno over five years ago. He has since removed the statement from his site, but not before it left it’s impact on my mind. I added the word “inflexible” to the statement so that it more correctly reflects truth.

This quote was the impetus for the creation of the following model. I’ve developed this tool to help explain how I prefer to confront new information that I am faced with.

At the top I have labeled “rigid”, and the bottom I have identified with “flexible”. A person can find themselves leaning toward one extreme or the other on any given subject. Dividing this line in the middle, on a horizontal axis, to the far left I have given the label “skeptical”, and to the far right, “accepting”. When presented with new information one can approach any given topic with a perspective ranging from being skeptical about it to being more inclined toward believing and accepting it. It is valuable to consider where you fall in this spectrum when confronted with new information.

The top of the model can be epitomized with this quote from Mark Twain:

“Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul.”

Or this one:

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

The top left quadrant I have identified as “blind skepticism” while the top right is labeled “blind faith”. Either way, it should be evident that neither method is considered a good approach to learning. A sincere student of truth should seek to orient him or herself toward the flexible end of the model. The bottom left quadrant I have designated “open skepticism” while the bottom right is “open faith”.

In LDS scripture we read:

And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith. (D&C 88:118)

What this tells us is that the preferred method of learning is by faith. But “as all have not faith”, then seek diligently to learn from best books etc., while still striving to employ faith in the process. In other words, learning from a skeptical frame of mind is still a useful model, as long as you can remain flexible and allow your thinking to be influenced by truth. Be willing to let go of what is false. Always approach learning with the intent to move toward the bottom right of the quadrant in the above model.

Another example of this idea is given by Alma in the Book of Mormon. What Alma is asking us to do (in Alma 32) is something different than how we are taught in school. Alma was saying, “Hey, why don’t you just experiment with this thing, and plant it as if you believed it. Plant it as if you had faith in it. So forget about the pros and cons, accept the Book of Mormon at face value, and let the Book of Mormon define itself; let the Book of Mormon be the source from which you evaluate whether or not it enlightens you, whether or not it appeals to your heart, to your soul, and to your mind.” Or, if you are not Mormon, use the Bible, or whatever other Holy Book that you trust as foundational to your faith.

For the non-Mormon Christian audience, we see ample evidence from the Bible that support these ideas as well.

For we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Cor 5:7, see also 1 Thes 2:13)
Apply thine heart unto instruction, and thine ears to the words of knowledge. (Proverbs 23:12)

There are a number of ways that faith can be defined. In the context of this model, I’m defining faith as a principal of action. Faith is the moving cause of all we do. The principal that excites or gives energy to any activity or pursuit, mental or physical, is motivated by what I am referring to here as faith. Would you exert yourself to pursue any activity unless you believed it would return the desired result? As Napolean Hill defined it in his book Think and Grow Rich:

Faith is the ‘external elixir’ that gives life, power, and action, to the impulse of thought.

To this I would add that faith, as a moving cause of action, is not limited to temporal concerns, but applies to spiritual concerns as well.

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. (Heb 11:6)

For these reasons I submit that the preferred method of learning is by faith, but that as long as you can be flexible in your approach, a skeptical frame of mind is still a useful model for discovering truth.

The top of the model could be represented simply with a period. The period closes the sentence. A period makes a statement, dot, the end. No more to be said, no more to learn, no more divine wisdom to be gained.

The bottom of the model, on the other hand, could be represented with a question mark. A question mark opens. It’s only when we ask questions that we get answers.

On the left is a skeptical approach to learning. Many fear (and justifiably so) being taken advantage of. The critical approach is employed to protect against this. The right side of the model represents an accepting or believing approach. This may seem counterintuitive to the skeptic, but it is precisely this approach that is encouraged in many religious texts and spiritual practices.

Read the following statement by Hugh Nibley and consider the top of the model where you see “blind skepticism” and “blind faith”:

If I come down and say, “I just saw a polar bear in Rock Canyon,” what are you supposed to say? “If you say you saw a polar bear in Rock Canyon, Brother Nibley, I believe you.” Well, that’s terrible. I don’t want to hear that. That takes all the wind out of my sails. I want you to go up and see for yourself. Or you might say, “Of course, there’s no polar bear. You didn’t see anything of the sort. No polar bears are found below a certain latitude. Polar bears just aren’t found in these regions, so you didn’t see any polar bear.” Well, I might have; there might have been one that escaped from the zoo. But you don’t know. The thing for you to do is not just take it because I say so, or not to reject it because you are being scientific and you don’t think it can be possible. Find out for yourself.

Hugh Nibley, Teachings of the Book of Mormon, Semester 2, pg 351-352

The bottom quadrants of the model encourage exploration and application. As John Seel writes:

We learn best from experience that captures our imagination and which we subsequently reflect upon analytically: hand, heart, and head.

The New Copernicans, page 23

The left bottom quadrant is where I would place the working principal of knowledge, as oppose to wisdom to the right. By way of illustration, there is value in the knowledge gained by dissecting a frog to learn about its organs, muscles, and bones. But approaching it from the bottom right quadrant, there is much wisdom gained from appreciating the beauty of the living frog – hearing its song, observing how it moves, or trying to capture its color on canvas.

Religious Convictions

I’m starting to think you don’t have to believe in God to be religious.

I like Mark Twain’s quote:

“Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul.”

The sad thing is when petrified opinions are given power to destroy:

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

Blaise Pascal

It seems clear to me the chaos we are seeing in 2020 is politically motivated. But what is most disconcerting are the politically motivated actions being discharged with such religious convictions.

Black Lives Matter

While I embrace using the slogan to show my love and support for black lives, we should recognize that not all who wave the banner “Black Lives Matter” are on the same page with what they mean when they say it.

Being a peacemaker at heart, and deeply disturbed by the anger and animosity on display in protests and riots in current and recent news, I was inspired by this Facebook post by songwriter John Stringer:

What if sharing #blacklivesmatter was a way to say “I love you” to the slaves that built this country but were never thanked? #blacklivesmatter

What if it were a way to say “thank you” to those who gave their lives to bring equality in human relationships, in civil rights, in education and economic opportunity? #blacklivesmatter

What if simply acknowledging #blacklivesmatter was one way to send love to the black ancestors and their descendant – the current generations; a way to say thank you for being the glorious children of God that you are and have always been? #blacklivesmatter

What if it were a simple way to support and encourage the descendants of those who were dehumanized, oppressed, demonized, lynched and murdered just for being black? #blacklivesmatter

What if it were a way to show unity, acknowledging that black lives deserve the same care and respect as ALL LIVES? #blacklivesmatter

What if it were a simple way to shift the collective consciousness of this world by shining a light of love and VALUE on something that has been systematiclly devalued, both consciously and unconsciously, intentionally and unintentionally? #blacklivesmatter

What if it were a way to put ointment on a wound that takes the collective love of humanity to heal? #blacklivesmatter

What if it were all of this and more just by you choosing it to be?

In this moment, that is exactly what it means to me. #blacklivesmatter

#limitlessloveandlight

The use of one simple slogan to say so much is an idea I happily embrace. Many who are unfamiliar with the history of what has been termed “anti-blackness” in America may be tempted to add “only” to the beginning of the slogan “Black Lives Matter”. And then dismiss it by responding with “All Lives Matter”. What the Black Lives Matter movement spends a lot of time trying to get people to understand is they are not saying that only blacks matter, but that blacks matter equally as much as all other lives. Instead of adding “only” to the front of the slogan, they suggest we add “too” to the end of it. I like the example one person gave by asking, “Do people who change #BlackLivesMatter to #AllLivesMatter run thru a cancer fundrasier going ‘THERE ARE OTHER DISEASES TOO’?”

Last year on my return trip home from visiting my daughter in Washington state, I made this note in my journal:
“I saw a red haired white man sitting across from me at the airport while I was waiting for my flight. He was wearing a shirt that said, ‘All Lives Don’t Matter Until Black Lives Matter’. Regardless of what I may think of the statement, I admired how he apparently cares about others outside his own race. What a beautiful sentiment. God bless him!”

“question

When used in this way, I agree with and readily embrace the idea the slogan Black Lives Matter promotes. On the other hand, showing support for the organization Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc is an entirely different thing altogether for me.

The Problem with Fighting Evil

From their About page (blacklivesmatter.com):

Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.

Browsing their site you will find statements encouraging a fight to “combat anti-Black racism across the globe“, create “a world free of anti-Blackness“, and “whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy“. The founders state, “We have fought like hell for our freedom and we will continue to fight like hell.”

“What on earth is wrong with any of that?” you say.

While I admit there is much good in these as ideals, I would respond with the same line of reasoning I used three years ago to question the value in fighting against porn. There seems to be something inherently wrong with attempting to eradicate evil. Ask yourself, doesn’t fighting against something, still encourage fighting?

I love this quote from Mother Teresa, “I was once asked why I don’t participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I’ll be there.”

Is it better to hate war, or love peace?

When you institutionalize a fight against evil, the organization becomes a machine that takes on a life of its own. Like wolves in nature that never fully consume the stock of prey it feeds on because it relies on it for its survival, the engine of the institution requires the resource that fuels it. In the case of “Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc”, that resource appears to be anger and racism.

Quoting from my post from three years ago:

Something about capitalizing on fighting against anything “bad” makes me tend to question motives (“non-profit” doesn’t mean that nobody is profiting from it). I’m reminded of the documentary, Pink Ribbons Inc., Capitalizing on Hope.
“The film documents how some companies use pink ribbon-related marketing to increase sales while contributing only a small fraction of proceeds to the cause, or use “pinkwashing” to improve their public image while manufacturing products that may be carcinogenic.”
(wikipedia article, Pink Ribbons Inc.)

I believe it is the nature of institutions to take on a life of their own. Over time they tend to protect themselves and fight to survive just like any other living thing. In the case of Fight The New Drug, for example, if any solution emerged that could actually eliminate porn, it would threaten the life of the organization. There are people whose livelihoods depend on the existence of the organization, and, because it’s mission is to fight against it, the organization requires the existence of porn in order to survive. (Perhaps Mother Teresa really does make a good point)

The story of the March of Dimes gives a better example of what happens when an organization, whose mission was to find a cure for polio, struggled to survive after the cure was found.
“In his book Essentials of Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach, sociologist Professor James M. Henslin describes March of Dimes as a bureaucracy that has taken on a life of its own through a classic example of a process called goal displacement. Faced with redundancy after Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine, it adopted a new mission, ‘fighting birth defects’, which was recently changed to a vaguer goal of “breakthrough for babies”, rather than disbanding.”
Greenwald, Howard P. (2007). Organizations: Management Without Control. Sage Publications, Inc. p. 369. (reference given in wikipedia)

What I am NOT saying when I say Black Lives Matter

While I embrace using the slogan to show my love and support for black lives, we should recognize that not all who wave the banner “Black Lives Matter” are on the same page with what they mean when they say it. What I do NOT embrace is the use of the slogan to promote an agenda that would turn the tables on oppression.

Nothing exemplifies this better than the controversy at Evergreen State University in March 2017 involving Bret Weinstein . He was a professor of biology at the time, but as a result of the events that took place there, Weinstein has since resigned. The story of Evergreen has important implications to what we see happening in the Black Lives Matter movement today, and I encourage the reader to research it more. For the purposes of this article I will only highlight some relevant points. Bret describes himself as a progressive.

“I lean left BIG TIME,” Bret explains. Then later he laments over the overt display of aggression witnessed on the Evergreen campus:

“The issue here is that the mere thought — the skeptic mindset — is being criticized… Since when is rejecting skepticism universal and acceptable? It seems identical to extreme right wing regimes, but should not be the case in liberal democracies.
Liberal minds simply cannot act this way… It needs to be okay to disagree on political matters and still remain to be civil with one another. That is what we should expect from a democracy.”

The Controversy of Bret Weinstein Explained — The Evergreen Scandal, Jakub Ferencik, Jan 8, 2018, Noteworthy – The Journal Blog

In a May 2018 speech to Students For Liberty conference in Vancouver, B.C., Brett remarked:

Were it the objective of this social justice movement to confront the much more difficult problems and to confront them at the full level of nuance, I would be interested in seeing those problems addressed. But I cannot sign up with a movement that is attacking those people who have come the greatest distance toward creating an equitable situation.

So what is it that this movement is actually trying to achieve? Now remember I’m arguing that there are actually two groups embedded in one movement. One of those groups is really hoping to achieve some kind of equality. Hopefully they’re pursuing equality of opportunity not equality of result. But nonetheless, equality is something I would guess everybody in the room here would sign up for as an ideal that would be worth pursuing. But then there’s the other faction. The faction that I’m arguing is actually driving the agenda of the movement. What do they want? Well it’s very uncomfortable, and in fact I got into big trouble for tweeting that the movement at Evergreen was actually involved in achieving black supremacy. Now it’s interesting, I must have been challenged 20 times over having used the term “black supremacy”. Not once did anybody tell me that that was not what they had seen unfolding during the protest at Evergreen. They told me effectively that that was an impolite term for it. But we had all seen it. We had all seen the circumstance where people would walk into a room and they would say, the food, the chairs, the water – That’s not for white people. If you’re a white person, stand in the back, don’t sit in the chairs, don’t eat the food. This was actually said out loud. So in some sense it’s undeniable that what was being pursued was a kind of supremacy. My feeling is I’m against any kind of supremacy. I would like to see everybody have access to the means to get ahead through achievement. I don’t want to see any population advantaged in any population disadvantaged. So I’m “anti supremacy”. And that means that I have to be offended – if I’m to be consistent with that principle, I have to be offended when any population seeks supremacy over everybody else. Nonetheless we find ourselves trapped in a situation where we can’t even use the terms that naturally apply.

Bret Weinstein, How the Magic Trick is Done, starting at 29:09 min

If the intent is to encourage diversity and inclusion in our society, then any suppression of speech, even if it’s in an effort to temper disagreements, will be counter-intuitive to the very objectives we are trying to promote. As President Obama said:

“[E]fforts to restrict speech can become a tool to silence critics, or oppress minorities… the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech.”

President Obama’s speech to the UN general assembly – full transcript Delivered to the UN in New York on 25 September 2012

In other words, it seems to me that in an effort to create a peaceful environment, it’s possible that an attempt to suppress conflict can engender a climate where people feel unsafe, rather than feeling safe, in expressing their views. I’ve recently become aware of something known as the shame of white silence, often embodied in phrases like “white silence equals white consent” or “white silence is violence”. The best way to ensure that people feel empowered to speak up, express their concerns, and try to understand others, is to allow for the expression of tolerant views, even if those views may offend or give insult to others.

In a speech given at TEDWomen 2018, Eldra Jackson gives an excellent example of how this kind of open and empowered expression of views is a powerful benefit. In his speech, Eldra attributes “24 years of a life sentence in prison for kidnapping, robbery, and attempted murder” on “a disease that has come to be known as toxic masculinity.” See Eldra Jackson – TED Women 2018, How to break the cycle of toxic masculinity. (starting at :38 min mark.)

Eldra found a cure through Inside Circle, an organization founded by Patrick Nolan to combat gang violence in the prison yard. Through an exercise called Circle Time — “men sitting with men and cutting through the bullshit and challenging structural ways of thinking” — Jackson learned that “characteristics usually defined as weaknesses are parts of the whole, healthy man.” It is because men can share candidly and openly without worrying if their words might offend that the program was able to make such impact in these men’s lives. Yet in our our society today this type of environment seems to be harshly discouraged rather than encouraged. It’s as if we’re saying that it’s OK for a bunch of men in a prison yard to be thrown into a situation where brutal honesty can bring reconciliation and healing, but we can’t allow it in society where some minority might be offended?

We may give lip service to ideas of exploring our differences in a safe, positive and nurturing environment, but how do we implement them in fairness to everyone when we place higher value on “not offending” over tolerance? Tolerance requires disagreement. Insisting on agreement is not tolerance, but its opposite.

The subject of free speech and safe spaces on college campuses was the topic of Bret Weinstein’s testimony given to congress on May 22, 2018. In his testimony Bret explained that the crisis isn’t primarily about free speech, and won’t be limited to college campuses for long.

Where others may suggest the culprits of injustice and inequality are an authoritarian wealthy class of elite masters of the global economy, Bret’s investigation of his experiences at Evergreen leads him to conclude the true culprits are not so easily identified.

“Am I alleging a conspiracy? No. What I have seen functions much more like a cult in which the purpose is only understood by the leaders, and the rest have been seduced into a carefully architected fiction. Most of the people involved in this movement earnestly believe that they are acting nobly to end oppression. Only the leaders understand that the true goal is to turn the tables of oppression. Something is seriously and dangerously amiss. At this moment in history the center does not hold. Partisan polarization and political corruption have rendered government ineffective, predatory, and often cruelly indifferent to the suffering of American citizens. Tribalism is the natural result.”

Bret Weinstein Testifies to Congress on The Evergreen State College riots, Free Speech & Safe Spaces

“The Worker is Never Wrong”

If people have the facts they will act responsibly… when people get the facts, and they trust the facts, and they understand the facts, they do the right thing.

Before I post about anything on my blog, I will have spent a fair amount of time and energy before arriving at some conclusion. There is always the chance that I could be wrong about my conclusions. But it is not without having spent sometimes considerable effort in researching the subject. On this ongoing debate over the COVID-19 crisis, I don’t remember when I have ever struggled so hard at trying to reason my way through something only to arrive, in the end, baffled.

Centuries from now when some alien race is sorting through the remains of our fallen civilization and they run across my journal entry from this day in the year 2020, they can be amused at my confusion over the COVID pandemic that seemed to mark the beginning of the end of the race known as humanly. Until then I write this for my own future reflection as I continue to hold out relentless hope for our species. 😊

First, to be clear, here is what I am NOT saying:

  • I am not saying that there is no viral threat.
  • I’m not saying that the threat of a pandemic should not be taken seriously or that we should not act decisively when such a threat presents itself.
  • I am not suggesting we ignore or downplay what should be learned from history.
    If our present circumstances inspire you to do nothing else, go watch or read up on the flu pandemic of 1918 to grasp how serious a thing a pandemic can be. This is not the kind of thing that should be taken lightly.

The horns of the dilemma I am wrestling with lie in trying to determine greatest threat between the current COVID-19 pandemic on the one hand, and the threat of loss to constitutional rights on the other.

Now, while you have your history book open, turn to 27 Feb 1933 in Germany. This is the date the Reichstag building was set afire. This was a critical point in German (and world) history where we see the beginning of a deterioration of important liberties for the German people.

I’m no historian, but having read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I am familiar with some of the dangers that one man in power can inflict upon humanity. A brief perusal of Nazi Germany on Wikipedia reveals some key points of history that we would be wise not to forget. As it relates to loss of liberties, see if you can identify any similarities from the following excerpt and what we may see in our current day:

“Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist, was found guilty of starting the blaze [of the Reichstag building that was set afire]. Hitler proclaimed that the arson marked the start of a communist uprising. The Reichstag Fire Decree, imposed on 28 February 1933, rescinded most civil liberties, including rights of assembly and freedom of the press. The decree also allowed the police to detain people indefinitely without charges. The legislation was accompanied by a propaganda campaign that led to public support for the measure…

In March 1933, the Enabling Act, an amendment to the Weimar Constitution, passed in the Reichstag by a vote of 444 to 94. This amendment allowed Hitler and his cabinet to pass laws—even laws that violated the constitution—without the consent of the president or the Reichstag…

On 10 May, the government seized the assets of the Social Democrats, and they were banned on 22 June. On 21 June, the SA raided the offices of the German National People’s Party – their former coalition partners – and they disbanded on 29 June. The remaining major political parties followed suit. On 14 July 1933 Germany became a one-party state with the passage of a law decreeing the NSDAP [Nazi Party] to be the sole legal party in Germany. The founding of new parties was also made illegal, and all remaining political parties which had not already been dissolved were banned. The Enabling Act would subsequently serve as the legal foundation for the dictatorship the NSDAP established.”

Nazi Germany, Wikipedia (emphasis mine)

The article goes on. I leave it to the reader to read into it further. It will not be time wasted. Some key takeaways in the above example are how one public crisis, in this case, the arson of the Reichstag building, was used as a impetus to immediately rescind most civil liberties, including rights of assembly and freedom of the press etc. A few weeks later their constitution was amended to allow Hitler and his cabinet to pass laws to further violate the constitution. History shows that things continued to go downhill from there.

There are those in the more progressive or liberal camp, who fear what they see in the person of Donald Trump. A quick Google search brings up numerous articles comparing Trump to Hitler. It’s not hard to find similarities. It’s not just the similarities between the two as persons that have given rise to concern, but the similarities in their rise to power. To this, you could add this recent statement:

“’When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,’ Trump said, referring to matters of public health and police powers inside the states. The assertion was dogpiled by legal analysts as a gross and wild misreading of the constitution.”

Trump claims ‘total authority’ and attacks media in chaotic coronavirus briefing, The Guardian

Though what he really meant by this statement has been a point of debate, the implication should concern us, no matter what side of the political arena you find yourself. A loss to any of our constitutional rights is a threat to all of them. What threatens freedom of speech also stands to threaten freedom of religion, freedom to peaceably assemble, and so on. Am I suggesting that Donald Trump poses a “Hitler-like” threat to the US? A better question would be, have we created any openings in the framework of our constitution that could allow anyone with ambition and an opportunity to pose a threat to the US?

If you turn back the pages of your already opened history book to the US Constitution and Bill of Rights you will find that having experienced the abuses of tyranny, the founding fathers included checks and balances to guard against it. How cautious should we be about situations that could threaten these checks and balances? How much can a little knowledge of history help protect us from such threats?

The question that arises for me, for those who are concerned about the threat Trump may pose to our liberties, is, why is there little outcry against loss of rights, but rather only voicing support of submitting to yielding to the imposition of lock-downs? The answer, I assume, has to do with the legitimacy of a greater threat that a pandemic poses to the safety of the people. On the other hand, for those in the traditionalist or conservative camp, the greater concern appears to be that once certain rights are given up, the precedent has been set that such measures can now be imposed upon the people even when the full gravity of a threat like this (or a future) pandemic is unknown or ill-defined.

In my last article, Why I Will be Joining the Protest Tomorrow, I made a point of how “extraordinarily speculative” the threat of this “ill-defined, unproven, unknown viral threat” is. I’m aware that these are bold statements. Though I may have used different words, they reflect no more and no less than what I have heard being said by those responsible for the lock-down measures that have been imposed.

These statements by Dr. Anthony Fauci confirm that the lock-down measures were not based on models:

0:10 Reporter: I’d like to start with the question of these models which are now getting a lot of push-back in terms of their reliability when the numbers have swung 33% in just a couple of days. What do you say to Andy McCarthy in that piece?

0:26 Fauci: Well there’s a certain validity to it. I have been, and still am, and will always be somewhat reserved and skeptical about models. Because models are only as good as the assumptions that you put into the model. And those assumptions that start off when you don’t have very much data at all, or the data that you have is uncertain, that you put these assumptions in and you get these wide ranges of calculations of what might happen. You know, 100,000 to 240,000 deaths. But then as you start to accumulate data, data that’s real data, likely being influenced heavily by the mitigation programs that you put in separations, that when real data comes in, then data, in my mind, always trumps any model. And you have to modify the model and the assumptions as you get data in. So I have no problem with people who are critical of modeling, because modeling is inherently, an imperfect science. So I don’t have any quibbling with that. And you just got to make, as you collect real data, you rely more on the data than you do on the model.

1:38 Reporter: Sure. All of that makes a lot of sense. But I think one of the problems is that those models were what were used to shut down the United States economy. The fear that those numbers, when we looked at 100,000 to 240,000 people, and then that was, I should point out, including mitigation and social distancing. That was with that factored in. So that number has dropped by 33%. So I guess, you know, what kind of model is so far off that it leads us to policy making decisions, that now are having such dire consequences.

2:13 Fauci: Yea, well first I think it’s important to point out that it isn’t the model or the result of the model, that really led to the decision to have such strong mitigation programs such as physical separation. You don’t even have to look at any model. Just take a look at what happened in China. Take a look at what happened in Northern Italy, how the hospitals were completely overrun, and the draconian methods that had to be taken in China to turn down their outbreak. So I mean if I never saw a result of a model, that alone would clearly indicate that something rather significant needed to be done to prevent the spread. So again, getting back to models. And I wouldn’t argue with anybody that has a problem with a model. I inherently have problems with models.

12:44 Fauci: … we don’t know a certain fact, that we’re not sure of, is what percentage of people who are infected are those who are completely asymptomatic. I mean are there people who’ve been infected, cleared the virus, never knew they were infected, never knew they were sick. Is that 10%, 20%, 50%, we don’t know that yet. When we get anybody testing that we can do serial surveillances, of representative sections of the population, then we’ll have a better feel for that. But until then, we don’t know.

Dr. Fauci on criticism of coronavirus modeling, Apr 10, 2020

Rather than speculative models, Fauci tells us the decisions of shutting down the United States economy were based on what was observed to be happening in China. So I ask, was it “ill-defined” to base these decisions by looking at what happened in China ?

2:23 Fauci: Early on, we did not get correct information. And the incorrect information was propagated right from the beginning because you know when the first cases came out that were identified, I think on Dec 31st, in China, we became aware of this, they said that this was just animal to human, period. Now we know retrospectively that there was ongoing transmission from human to human in China, probably at least a few weeks before then. And then when we finally did get the virus here, it became clear that when we started looking at what was going on, that that was misinformation right from the beginning. So whosever fault that was, you know we’re gong to go back and take a look at that when this is all over, but clearly it was not the right information that was given to us.

Fauci discusses how China’s disinformation increased coronavirus spread, Apr 11, 2020

I’m open to accept I could be incorrect in my conclusion that the decisions about the lock-down measures have been the result of “ill-defined speculation.” It is because of these “ill-defined contours” that I believe we are seeing a wide polarizing disparity of inconsistency and contention on both sides of the “Stay in Place” vs “Open Back Up” debate.

Can the people be trusted?

Once asked how it was that he was able to govern so many people in Nauvoo with such perfect order, Joseph Smith responded, “I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves.” (“The Organization of the Church,” Millennial Star, Nov. 15, 1851,339)

Last week I watched the April 26th press conference with New York Governor Cuomo. His trust in the people of New York to act responsibly when presented with the facts, reminded me of the this pearl of wisdom by Joseph Smith quoted above.

“If people have the facts they will act responsibly. But, they have to have the facts. They have to buy into the plan. And it really is an individual decision. Who’s taking care of your health? You are. We’re mutually dependent in that what I do can affect your health. But it really comes down to giving everybody information so people can make their own decision, and the great achievement in this period has been that when people get the facts, and they trust the facts, and they understand the facts, they do the right thing. And that is a lesson that I hope people remember when this is all over. But, we still have to remember the facts.”

New York Governor Cuomo Coronavirus News Conference, Apr 26, 2020, starting at 2:25min

This echos what Provo Mayor Michelle Kaufusi said on Sunday:

“My perspective over the last few weeks has been this: Our citizens and institutions have shown incredible trustworthiness… For now, I have been content to exercise the only power I’ve felt powerfully good about exercising in these circumstances: the power of persuasion.”

Michelle Kaufusi, Provo Mayor, Apr 26, 2020, Mayors of Utah Valley: Why no stay-at-home order, Mayor?

My opinion is that the reason we see so many hot-headed people acting erratically (on either side of whatever camp you may find yourself) are the the very reasons Cuomo explained. They either don’t have the facts, they don’t trust the facts, or they don’t understand the facts.

The truth of Cuomo’s comments can be validated by research done by Asher Israeli and Bradley Fisher titled “The Worker Is Never Wrong” (Oct 1989, Quality Progress). This research was quoted in training that I took a few years ago from the Institute of Process Excellence where they discussed how root causes for nonconforming products, rework, and so on, are often blamed on “workers” who lack discipline or do not care. The research in the article, however, notes that workers carry out their jobs well when given accurate and clear work instructions. The cause for nonconformances resides with the managers responsible for the process, not the workers. I believe there is a direct correlation to how we see workers respond to correct information and facts, and how we can expect citizens will respond to correct information.

“We arrived at this conclusion after exhaustively investigating causes of nonconformances — when workers are given accurate, clear, fully detailed work instructions, they carry out their jobs well.

Workers are responsible for the decisions they make within the framework of the work instructions. Thus worker performance is not evaluated — their decisions are.

Work instructions must be promptly updated because not following a work instruction is considered to be an improper decision.

Work instructions must be clearly written, leaving no room for misinterpretation. All elementary operating and inspection decisions are included. Criteria for acceptability are clearly stated.

This process was implemented at Israel Military Industries where 900,000 worker decisions were audited over a 27-month period. Only 205 were found to be wrong. Nonconformances dropped drastically and waiting time for process and inspection time was eliminated. For all practical purposes, roving and acceptance inspection has been eliminated.

Condensed from a 4-page article in Quality Progress

I believe Governor Cuomo was right. When people have the right facts, and they understand and trust those facts, they will act responsibly.

As I was wrapping up this post, someone shared with me an article that beautifully illustrates much of what I’ve been spending this last week trying to put into words. The article is from IntellectualTakeout.org published May 1, 2020 by Jon Miltimore titled WHO Declares Sweden’s COVID Response a Model for the World. Well worth the read. Here are a few excerpts:

Ryan said the biggest difference between Sweden and most nations is that the Swedes are encouraging voluntary participation with its citizens while focusing government resources on at risk populations…

As my colleague Dan Sanchez pointed out last week, this approach once was part of the fiber of the American system.

“Measures based on individual responsibility used to be part of the American model, too, as codified in the Bill of Rights. Yet we have developed a culture of reflexively giving up that responsibility and those rights whenever we get scared: of terrorists, of economic hardship, of a virus.”

Many seem to believe that voluntary actions are somehow less effective than government dictates, but this is simply not true. Human cooperation and voluntary action are essential ingredients to a vibrant, prosperous culture…

Whatever the future holds, the world owes Sweden thanks. The Swedes have shown us a better way. They’ve reminded us that the proper role of the state is to inform individuals and work with them, to seek voluntary action and cooperation instead of resorting to blunt force and edicts.

My hope is that the US can learn from history. There are things we should not forget. Like lessons learned from the Spanish flu in 1918, and Nazi Germany of 1933-1945. And thanks to Sweden, it looks like there are other things in this world that are worth repeating. Like giving people correct information and trusting them to voluntarily act in cooperation with each other and the state. My prayer, adopting the spirit of the famous Serenity Prayer, would be:

God grant that we may preserve the things that should not change,
Correct the things that need improved,
The courage to avoid repeating the errors of history that can destroy us,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Why I Will be Joining the Protest Tomorrow

More alarming to me than the threat of COVID-19, is the threat to our constitutional freedoms.

Last week I was invited by a friend to participate in a Freedom Walk this Saturday. This has forced me to consider if I’m truly willing to stand up for what I profess. I agree with the need to stand up for our rights, but trying to publicly justify why I’m doing it to has taken me the full week of my free time to compose my thoughts. This post is about 1680 words long, so if you want to skip all my reasoning below, I’ll give you the bottom line right here up front:

“question

More alarming to me than the threat of COVID-19, is the threat to our constitutional freedoms.

If you’re interested in my line of reasoning, read on.

First, how do I make sense of the numbers?

There are a number of mathematical models designed to predict the trajectory and seriousness of COVID-19. In researching these, I admit that some of them can be confusing for my simple mind to understand. So, let me try to narrow the problem down to the simplest terms. Lets start by saying that if I know that ten people have had this condition, and I know that one person has died (and these are the only numbers that I have), then I can use the equation that one out of every ten have died (or 10%) as the measure to base my predictions of what I might expect could happen going forward. Obviously this would be very bad.

But so far, we’ve got unknown numbers. To me it seems reasonable to assume that there is only a very small portion of the population that fall in the category of either being alarmed enough by their physical symptoms to go in and have a test done, or have taken up the offer of public testing. This leaves the denominator in the above equation as essentially unknown. We’re trying to come up with a statistical number for how great a threat this thing is, but we simply don’t know how many have had it. And it’s further complicated by the fact that many people could have had it, but they weren’t symptomatic. They didn’t get tested. They experienced it; it was mild enough that they dismissed it; they never went in and got tested; they haven’t been diagnosed; and there’s no way, therefore, to know that we ought to be including them in the denominator equation. What we do see is that as this thing has been further tested, the denominator has grown. So, where at first the prediction was that the death rate could be 4%, that number has been dropping as the denominator has grown. If you test a bunch of others and you find out that a hundred people have had it and only one person has died, then you know that the death rate that has occurred is 1%. But what if the number of people who’ve had it but dismissed it (and that number is significantly greater than anyone anticipated) turns the denominator into a thousand, and only one person has died? Well, then the death rate drops all the way down to .01%, and it’s no worse than typical seasonal flu.

It seems there is an abundance of ignorance about what the denominator ought to be. Furthermore, we have no assurance that whatever the denominator turns out to be that the history of what has happened is reliable as a predictor for what will happen. The amount of alarm over the personal threat this thing is to people is extraordinarily speculative.

But that just sets the stage. That’s the current cause of hysteria, but it’s the response to the hysteria that is particularly both unprecedented and very troubling.

Where is the greatest risk?

The way in which state and national government has responded in the United States (and national governments have responded in other countries) is more alarming to me than the condition that they’re responding to. To deny people the freedom of movement, to interfere with the ability to assemble, to compromise on rights that are spelled out in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights is particularly alarming as a coercive step by government. We’re reacting to what has been called a “pandemic” as if it were a sufficient cause for suspending civil rights and constitutional rights.

Our country divides largely into two political camps, both of them are highly charged. We have the progressive or liberal or Democratic side (which is a hodgepodge of different sorts of people), on the one hand, and the conservative or the Republican or the traditionalist group of people, on the other hand (although, again, that’s a really difficult generalization to refer to). I claim no identity with either end of this spectrum as, depending on the specific issue in question, my opinion may vary and can change as my knowledge about things changes.

Here I would like to point to the group that aligns itself with a traditionalist view, those who are satisfied that President Trump is one of them, that he’s for small government and in protecting their constitutional rights. My question is, where was the outcry from this group when we all sat and watched as Trump set in motion the measures that have been undertaken that we now see threatening the very rights that we assume he was supposed to be protecting? My guess is that they were probably sitting in stunned silence (as was I) without even being aware of what was happening to these liberties right before our very eyes.

It is interesting to observe, in retrospect, that the greatest encroachments to our freedoms in recent history have happened under Republican presidents. The USA Patriot Act, that has practically suspended our 4th Amendment, happened under George W. Bush. For those who might remember, the Patriot Act got pushed through, in an unprecedented three days, through both House and Senate (introduced in the House 23rd Oct 2001, passed in the Senate on 24th Oct, signed by George Bush on Oct 26th 2001). Watch carefully as this pandemic will also be used as justification to rush through legislation that could further threaten our liberties. For example, Utah’s bill H.B. 3009 that was recently introduced (16 Apr, 2020) and has fortunately been stalled for the moment. In essence what H.B. 3009 has proposed is to canonize, or make official, the very things that have been imposed on the public these last several weeks. In other words, this implies that the measures that have been undertaken these last several weeks were done unconstitutionally (in both the state and the nation).

I don’t point out that these encroachments to our liberties have take place under Republican presidents to accuse the conservative party as responsible for loss of our rights, but rather to show how the circumstances, with Trump as president, have played out as opposed to what we might expect if it were under someone else. Consider, for example, if the lock-down had been attempted by Obama. Would the conservative traditionalists submitted so quickly? Or would we have seen push-back and outcry at the outset? Because it was Trump, in whom there is so much trust by conservatives, his actions have been more easily tolerated.

Who to blame is not the point…

In the present circumstances, it should not matter to anyone that you trust a President. It shouldn’t matter if people consider the activities are being done by someone they regard as benign. Everything that’s happening at the moment is setting a precedent for what we can expect to see happen again in similar circumstances.

It’s our reaction to this ill-defined, unproven, unknown viral threat that has interfered with commerce, shut down businesses, confined people to homes, resulted in police going about telling groups of people that they have to break up. The idea of social distancing and crowd control isolates people and puts everyone in an extraordinary, vulnerable, and disadvantageous position because of the inability to assemble freely and the inability to move and exercise your liberties that are guaranteed by the Constitution.

Whatever it is that we think we are submitting to for necessary circumstances right now, if this proves to be no more threatening than the common flu in any given flu season, we’re establishing the precedent that public health and welfare can be guarded by the abrogation of constitutional and civil rights, in order to protect people against what may be a relatively small threat in the end. We simply don’t know what that end will be, but we’re acting as if the presence of the mere threat (with its ill-defined contours) is enough to justify all of the extraordinary measures that are currently being taken.

Because the submission to the authority of the state is “popular” — that is, the approval of President Trump’s handling of this is greater than 50% — what that means is the majority of the American people, at present, are willing to allow totalitarian steps to be taken in order to guard against an ill-defined and currently unknown natural threat that exists. That ought to alarm us more than anything else that’s currently going on. Democracy and freedom is a very delicate flower. It can be destroyed by conspiring men that we have been warned about in revelation (that addresses, specifically, the government of the United States). It may be that, in all of this, President Trump has the best of intentions. It may be that he can be trusted. However, trusting one man with the ability to do it (simply because his political views align with your political views) sets a precedent which a later President (that you do not trust and whose political views are greatly at variance with your own) can rely upon and point back to and pose the question, “Why, if it’s wrong, did you submit before? Why, if you didn’t expect this to be the role for the government to occupy in circumstances that require dramatic steps to be taken in order to guard public health, why did you not raise a protest?”
(Many ideas expressed in this article were taken from the podcast “Whipsawed“)