Are the covid vaccines really doing any good? (Spoiler: yes they are)

I recently saw it reported that out of all the UK people who have died (so far) from the Indian (delta) covid variant, a third were double-vaccinated. The article was from The Sun: it's not something I usually read (because it's trash), but I must admit that when I saw the headline pop up in my news feed thingy on my phone, I was both intrigued and horrified. I clicked it.

I have only had one dose of the vaccine so far, and I have been looking forward to my second jab (scheduled for July), believing that it'd be my ticket to immunity. And the more of us are immune, the more we can start seeing each other again. Hearing that a third of people who've died from the Indian variant in the UK was not what I wanted to hear. If the vaccine programme isn't offering much protection, then it's pretty pointless, I thought... for a few seconds, until I read the sensationalised story and gave it a little more thought.

The Sun is telling the truth, in this instance; this article in The Telegraph reports the very same statistics.

Image source: The Telegraph, 12 June 2021

Although it is sometimes useful to look at the proportions of something, as these pie charts do, it is not always sensible. Yes, a third of people who have died from the delta variant in the UK have been double-jabbed, but exactly how many people are we talking about here? The answer is twelve. Twelve double-jabbed people have died from the delta variant - that's out of 42 people in total who've died from it. This is not a large or worrying number. 

Why? Because no vaccine is 100% effective. 

Around 30 million people in the UK have received two doses of the vaccine. So, out of the 30 million people who have been double-jabbed, just 12 have died from it. It's a tragedy, of course it's a tragedy, but from a statistical point of view, it's insignificant. Twelve deaths out of 30 million is less than 0.5 people per million.

But shouldn't we be concerned that a third of the deaths were in double-jabbed people? That seems like quite a high percentage.

Well, no.

As more and more people get vaccinated, the number of double-jabbed people in the UK is increasing. Suppose we were to reach a point where every single adult had had both doses. This would mean that any deaths from covid - and statistically, we'd expect there to be a few - would be in a person who was double-jabbed. One hundred percent of deaths would be occurring in fully vaccinated people. Although that might sound alarming, it's worth remembering that many people will die from flu each year despite having had the flu vaccine. So long as the raw number of covid deaths is low, the percentage of how many of them had been vaccinated is immaterial.

Of course, we shan't reach a 100% vaccination rate, as some people can't have it, and some people refuse to have it for whatever reason. But the more people have the vaccine, the greater the proportion of all deaths could be among vaccinated people - because they're so populous. 

We still need to be vigilant. We still need to wear masks and keep our distance. And we still need to get vaccinated.

Why did I allow myself to be drawn in by the clickbait sensationalism of The Sun? I don't know. I'm just glad that a few moments' thought enabled me to see the statistics for what they are.

I want the pandemic to be over.

Collective restrictions

"Right, Lee, if you don't stop this behaviour right now, then the whole class will lose out on playtime.... ok Lee that's it, everyone is missing playtime, all because of you." 

I know I certainly experienced this sort of event as a child, when I, a generally well-behaved student, had my freedoms restricted because some idiot in my class was misbehaving. I felt the injustice of it then, and I still hear of teachers doing it today. It's wrong. 

Yet that is exactly what is happening with lockdown restrictions. I am staying home for over 23 hours per day. I haven't seen my parents in the flesh since Christmas; I haven't seen my elder sister in 6 months, and I've not seen my younger sister in a year. The last time I met a friend indoors was a year ago. This is not because I don't want to see my family and friends: in non-pandemic times, I'd see someone at least once a week, and partake in sports 1-2 times a week. I'm not doing the things I want to so because (a) The government have said not to do these things (b) I don't want to spread the virus (c) I don't want to catch the virus. 

I have curtailed my normal activities to such an extent that I don't think I could curtail them much more at all. My parents have not left the house in nearly a year, except to go to the doctors, or to have outdoor exercise. they order food and other products online, and haven't seen friends in I don't know how long. 

And yet, I hear on the news that lockdown restrictions aren't being successful enough, and that our freedoms may be curtailed further. I feel pretty sure that the continued spread of covid is not because of my behaviour, and I am certain that its not because of my parents' behaviour. 

There are people meeting in groups for weddings; organised sport and kids' sports clubs are still going on. People have been partying in pubs and in the street until the most recent lockdown. When I've driven through towns, I've seen large queues outside take aways and restaurants. So many people are still going into work, to work in non-essential jobs, and the number of kids in school is apparently around half of what it is when schools are fully open, and anecdotally, plenty of those kids have one parent who is a key worker, and another who is working from home, so the kids should really be at home, like the rest of us who are having to home school and do our work at the same time.

A lockdown would work, if people would actually lock down, and stay at home. But many people are not doing that. And so the government, like a teacher who is rapidly losing her rag, punishes the entire class rather than punishing the offender. But the thing is that if people are not adhering to current restrictions, why should we have any reason to believe that they'd adhere to more stringent restrictions?

If Lee - the naughty boy in the class I mentioned - doesn't do what he's told when the teacher says sit quietly and listen for 5 minutes, then when the teacher says everyone must sit quietly and listen during all of play time, would he suddenly reform his behaviour? Doubtful. Instead, the rest of the class - who had already sat quietly and listened for five minutes - now have to sit and listen for 20 minutes. And they do this, while Lee is still throwing a wobbler because he doesn't want to sit and listen at all. Nothing is achieved by forcing people who are already following the rules to follow more stringent rules, simply because some idiots were not following the first set of rules.

What really needs to be done is to get people to actually follow the rules and stay home. Because of the virus has an incubation period of about 7 days, and when people catch it they're infectious for 2-3 weeks, then really, if everyone could ACTUALLY lock down and self isolate for 3-4 weeks - or even 5 or 6 weeks just to make sure, then there should be no one infectious after that time, and the virus would be fully eradicated. Yes, it would be a right pain to be imprisoned like that, but it'd rid us of covid-19, and plenty of other communicable diseases too. 

Instead, those of us who are already isolating for alnost all day every day are now being told we need to isolate more. All the while, other people are partying, getting take aways, and going to non-essential jobs.

With that approach, this virus will be with us for a long time yet to come.

EDIT: Perhaps I hadn't given enough thought to the restrictions, as I was thinking that only essential workers should go into work. The restrictions say you must stay at home, but can leave for essential reasons, such as work or medical care. I was thinking this meant that people can only leave home for essential work, not nonessential work. So if a person worked in a factory sewing t-shirt sleeves together, they should stay at home and not go into work (because t-shirt sewing is not essential; the country won't grind to a halt without t-shirts for a few months). But now I come to think about it, there must be vast numbers of people who are using public transport and working in places, doing nonessential work. In a stricter crackdown, those nonessential workers should be stopped from working. The definition of a "key worker" is also pretty broad. Working in B&M Bargains, for example, makes someone a key worker. 

Why we shouldn't rush to get back to normal

Life has changed in 2020. That's stating the obvious, of course.

I enjoyed my life in 2019 and previous years a lot more than I've enjoyed 2020, and my heart is aching to get back to freely seeing friends and family like I used to. I'm sick of my own house. Now, with a vaccine being rolled out before Christmas in the UK, it finally seems like life might get back to normal again next year. I, like most people, can't wait for things to get back to the way they were.

But although I loved the old normal much more than I love the new normal, if we think about it rationally, we probably shouldn't rush so much to get back to the old normal. After all, the old normal provided the ideal breeding ground for covid-19, didn't it?

The Perfect Storm

What was it about the old normal that enabled covid-19 to conquer the world? Our exploitative relationship with nature allowed the virus to transmit to humans in the first place, and our relationships with each other allowed the virus to spread. Specifically:

Habitat destruction. It's pretty simple: when we destroy animals' habitats, they either move elsewhere or die. We know they're dying because of the mass extinction that's taking place, but animals are also moving further afield - into human-populated areas. When humans and wild animals live in close proximity, disease can spread from them to us more easily.

Live animal markets. I can barely begin to explain my disgust at the abhorrent live animal "wet" markets which take place throughout China and some other southeast Asian countries. Aside from the morally indefensible ways in which animals are treated in such places, such markets enable humans to mix with wild, exotic, domestic and farmed animals. This makes them perfect places for viruses to leap from one species to another.

Who would have thought that markets like this would lead to disease?
Image source: Bangkok Post

Densely populated cities. If people had lived in rural communities which kept themselves to themselves, the virus would have fizzled out very quickly. I imagine there are uncontacted Amazonian tribes who are totally unaffected by covid-19; for those of us who live in cities, it's a different story.

International travel. Without air travel, the virus that began in Wuhan would have taken a long time to reach our shores, or may not have reached us at all. But with international travel being what it is, people were freely flying in and out of Wuhan and around the world throughout January, and the virus was here in the UK within just a few days of the outbreak in Wuhan. 

Shared facilities. Humans live in large communities where we share transport, shops, places of worship, educational establishments, leisure facilities, and food outlets with one another. Shared facilities - especially those with limited cleaning and high footfall - are ideal places for viruses to spread.

Twenty-first century living is great in many, many ways... But humans' way of life has created the perfect storm: covid-19 has spread astonishingly quickly. To put it bluntly, human contact with animals enabled the virus to make the leap to our species, and our interconnected lifestyles in big cities enabled it to spread.

But covid-19 is an anomaly, right?

Well, no. You'd be forgiven for thinking that covid-19 is an anomaly: I myself have pointed out in a previous post that several other lesser pandemics (or almost-pandemics) have come and gone over the last 20 years. 

And apparently, scientists have long been "preparing" for a killer pandemic, ominously calling the hypothetical disease "Disease X". (Wowsers, if 2 million deaths and international omnishambles occur when the world is prepared, then I'd hate to see what might have happened if weren't prepared!) The scientists apparently speculated about Disease X a few years ago. I didn't know this until a few months ago. 

We are lucky that the fatality rate of covid is so low (around 1-2%); by contrast the mortality rate of Ebola and Bubonic Plague (the Black Death) is around 50%. And the worst part of it all is that scientists predict that there will be another, deadlier pandemic within the next decade. I hope they're wrong, but I fear they may be right. If the old normal was a perfect breeding ground for covid-19 --which evidently, it was -- then a return to the old normal will facilitate a new pandemic at some point in our future.

So what should we do?

Clearly, if we are to avoid future pandemics then something needs to change. But I - probably like everyone else - want to have my cake and eat it. I want to have MY old life back, but I want the rest of the world to change so as to prevent future pandemics. I imagine that everyone else feels the same. We all want our old lives back, whether our old lives consisted of going to football matches, university lectures, playing Bridge at a friend's house, or gutting live frogs in a wet market.

I am willing to make concessions such as social distancing or wearing masks in shops, but to have to avoid my family and friends for the rest of my life for fear they might die if I breathe near them,.. well, I don't want to live the rest of my life like that. 

I think the UK is over the hump of the pandemic now (though I'm sure many more deaths will occur - possibly a few million across the world, and it may get worse before it gets better for the people in countries which are slow to vaccinate). 

Image source: Stat News

But what about future pandemics? Well, I never believed that covid-19 would be a pandemic until mid-March and the deaths were skyrocketing, but now I'm (sadly) a convert: I think there will be future pandemics. if it can happen once it can happen again. and next time might have a far higher death rate or it might pick off kids instead of the sick and elderly. There's just no way to know.

Will we learn from covid-19? We might wash our hands a little more frequently, and people may continue to wear masks voluntarily after covid has gone - the way Chinese people have long since worn masks for any and every occasion. And maybe we'll keep our distance from strangers a tiny bit more than we used to. But generally, in the long term, I think we'll be very quick to forget 2020 and keen to jump straight back into our old ways of life, while the next pandemic is quietly brewing away.

The US election in Venn diagrams

Today is election day in the US. At times, it seems to dominate the news media more so than the UK election did! I thought it would be fun to do a post about the US election, told through Venn diagrams.

What happened in Texas

In Texas this week, Trump supporters ambushed a campaign bus of Democratic candidate Joe Biden, intimidating them and causing the bus to abandon their campaign events. Trump later took to Twitter to praise his supporters for intimidating the Biden campaign bus.

The central area of the Venn diagram is where such events occur: the intersection of far right leadership, an election, and guns. It's not entirely clear to me whether guns were used in the ambush, but certainly, in a country where gun crime and civil unrest go hand in hand, it is no wonder that the Biden camp were afraid of gun violence. It was in Texas too, a state well-known for its love affair with guns. 

Postal votes and fraud

Trump is concerned that postal votes are fraudulent. This is entirely independent of the fact that postal voters generally tend to favour the Democrat candidate, of course. If postal votes are included in the full count, this lowers the chance of a Trump victory. A strategy then for Trump is to try to undermine confidence in postal votes, and even going so far as to claim they should be ignored. He plans to claim victory before the postal votes are counted.

Studies have found no significant connection between postal voting and fraudulent voting - no more than in-person voting, anyway.

How I'll feel when watching the election results

The election seems to have been in the news for an eternity. Considering that the UK is not the 51st State of the USA, it's interesting to see that the media covers the US election with almost as much interest and passion as it follows our own elections. It's big and important, sure, but I would like it to be over now. But it'll be a while till it's truly over, because it takes quite a while to count all the postal votes. Why they can't employ more vote counters is anyone's guess, but apparently it can take "weeks" to count them.

Why we'll watch it

In spite of the above "is it over yet" mentality, I'm sure many of us in the UK will still check the news at frequent intervals to find out the results as they come in. Why? This Venn diagram shows why.

Any news that is unrelated to covid-19 (or Islamist terrorism in Europe) is like a breath of fresh air. A second big reason is that car crash gawping tendency we have; like watching a horror film through your fingers. I want to watch, but I daren't, for fear of what might happen. 

Public opinion

This last Venn diagram speaks for itself. The world is crossing its fingers.

Disclaimer:

These Venn diagrams are not scientific, and reflect only the sense I get from the news media. The internet is something of an echo chamber, and so it's very possible that the impression I've got from the news outlets I read is not the correct one. 

A final note on democracy

Democracy is great. When people vote, the people should get what they want. I've written elsewhere that the first past the post system is flawed. In the US 2016 election, for example, Hilary Clinton won more votes than Donald Trump, but Trump won the election. That doesn't seem right: I believe that whoever gets the most votes should win the election. Whether or not I like Trump is irrelevant; all that matters is whether the majority of American people vote for him. If they do, then it's right that he becomes President again. 

I've written elsewhere that we should respect politicians because they are, after all, only attempting to represent the views of the people. Trump has some abhorrent views, but if those are the views of the American people, then it's fair for him to win the election, because democracy is more important than getting what you want. This is particularly true for someone such as myself, who is not American; my opinion on US politics really counts for nothing.

EDIT: 4 Nov at 11.20 am GMT. So far, it's 238 electoral votes to Biden, and 215 to Trump. It's not over yet though.

EDIT: 5 Nov at 9.10 am GMT. Biden has 264 electoral votes, Trump has 214. I don't know how Trump's number of votes has gone down since yesterday, but it seems to have done so. So Biden looks almost certain to win. Trump, being a caricature of himself, is throwing his teddies out of the pram and squawking about fraud, and that he'll take it to the Supreme Court. In totally unrelated news, the Supreme Court is choc-full of Trump's buddies. 

Whatever the result of the election, civil unrest seems highly likely in th US in the coming weeks or months. Whether it comes from Trump supporters who believe fraudulent votes have been cast, or from Biden supporters who are angry that democracy isn't being respected, civil unrest seems almost inevitible. Civil unrest in a country where gun crime is already very high. Civil unrest in the country with the world's highest number of coronavirus deaths. Civil unrest in a country where the police and military are horribly heavy-handed. It ain't gonna be good.

EDIT: 6 Nov at 2.20 pm GMT. The result is still uncertain. Still 264 to Biden, 214 to Trump, according to Google. I think Trump is wrong to say that postal votes should be ignored, but he's absolutely right to be exasperated with the amount of time it takes people to count the votes. Jeez! It's simply unbelievable that the country which claims to be the pinnacle of liberty and democracy makes people queue up for 14 hours in order to cast a vote, then takes days or weeks to count the votes. I think kindergarten kids could count faster than this!

EDIT: 7 Nov at 7.35 pm GMT. Hallelujah! There is finally a result to the election! And it "only" took 4 days! What's more, it's the result I for one was hoping for. Biden has won. Not all the votes have been counted yet (wowsers, this counting sure takes a while) but Biden has won more than the magic 270 votes. It's 290, so far. Yay for democracy! Yay for sanity! That said, Trump has secured very close to half of the votes ("the popular vote") - around 48%. Even though I don't like his views, clearly a lot of Americans do, and I think it's only fair that they should have their views represented. Proportional representation is the fairest political system, and it's still fairest even when the person you meant to win is first past the post.

Will Donald Trump accept defeat graciously? If he does, I'll eat my hat.

Will people of the future tear down our statues?

Black Lives Matter protesters tear down statue of
slave owner Edward Colston

I've written elsewhere about why we shouldn't airbrush our history, and edit offensive bits out of old TV programmes. This isn't an Orwellian novel, where we edit our history to be the way we want it to be... or is it? In recent months, there's been much talk of how we deal with our history, particularly with regard to statues and street names. Several statues of historical figures have been torn down, including Edward Colston, whose statue was torn down in June during Black Lives Matter protests. Some historians have suggested that the removal of historical statues impoverishes history; other historians call such claims nonsense.

Here I'm going to defend the claim that if we think it is morally permissible to tear down the statues and rename the buildings which celebrate people whose views we oppose today, we must accept that it is also morally permissible for future generations to tear down the statues of people who we today celebrate and see as national treasures.

Imagine, if you will, a public figure of present day (ish) who is considered to be highly respected or a national treasure. Perhaps David Attenborough, Trevor McDonald, Michael Parkinson, Princess Diana, Bruce Forsyth, Captain Tom Moore, Claire Balding, or Jamie Oliver.

Let's go with Sir David Attenborough: I think he's fantastic and has done so much for conservation, and is well deserving of a plethora of awards. There is a nature reserve here in Nottingham named after him. There's a ship named after him (remember "Boaty McBoatface"?). There are even a few species named after him. I bet there are plenty of other things too - and deservedly so.  I think he's a national treasure, but if you don't agree, just insert the name of another all-round good egg in instead of him. As far as I know there are no statues of him, but let's suppose that one is erected, and it is there to celebrate all the great things he's done, and what a great man he is.

Now, suppose it's 150 years from now, in 2171, or thereabouts. The Attenborough Nature Reserve is still there, the HMS Attenborough is a museum ship, his statue is still there, and plenty of other things named after him are still around.

Let us suppose also that laws and social attitudes have moved on, and some things which are commonplace, legal, and generally considered permissible in 2021 are uncommon, illegal, and seen as morally wrong - even abhorrent - in 2171. For example, suppose the age of consent is 24, it's illegal to eat animals, and it's seen as just plain wrong to fly in an aeroplane for tourism or entertainment. I know that David Attenborough eats meat and flies by plane to different places; I'm less sure about his sexual experience, but let's say he has, as most people have, had sex with someone under the age of 24 at some point in his life.

How will future people view us? Source: Unsplash

So what would the people of 2171 have? They'd have a nature reserve named after a man who is celebrated for his "conservation" work with animals, and yet he munched down on dead animals on a daily basis. I can easily see how the people of 2171 could call this hypocrisy. There'd be a statue of a man who - wrongly and disgustingly in the eyes of the people from 2171 - had sex with "children" under the age of 24 (for example, a 22 year old). And there'd be a museum ship - itself a polluter of the seas - which was named after a man whose flights around the world contributed to the very climate change he spoke out against in his senior years. The people of 2171 are not happy: they see David Attenborough as a relic of a vile and barbarous past, and they see the man himself as a hypocrite in terms of his treatment of animals and the environment - added to which, he had sexual relations with people who were below the age of consent in 2171.

David Attenborough, so respected and revered during his lifetime, and mourned upon his death, is a figure representing beliefs and actions which are 'of his time', and the people of 2171 have no place in their hearts for someone who treated animals and the environment so badly (by eating them and polluting it, in their eyes), and in his sexual attitudes towards minors.

The fact that Attenborough has done a great deal for the environment, and that his views on meat eating and the age of consent are well-aligned with his contemporaries is lost on the people of 2171. They simply say "Eating animals, polluting the environment by air travel, and sex with minors, is wrong today, and it was wrong back then. The fact that many others in society also had the same values as Attenborough does not make it right. The fact that these things were legal does not make it any less morally objectionable." More 'active' activists tear down his statue, and demand that anything named after David Attenborough be renamed after another person with more palatable, less archaic beliefs and actions.

This is an entirely plausible future history, and is remarkably similar to the stories we see today about statues made in the image of particular historical figures, and the buildings, streets, and other things named after such people. Is eating animals and flying in an aeroplane as morally abhorrent as slavery? I don't think it is. But I do not have my beliefs in a vacuum; they are inherently linked to the time period in which I live. If I'd have lived in a different time, I am sure my views would have been coloured by the commonplace those around me. 

I don't know much about the men whose statues were torn down earlier this year. Maybe they really were monstrous villains who bought their way into the history books and did no good deeds whatsoever in their lives. Or perhaps, like all of us, they did some good deeds in the world, and others which have not stood the test of time, as the moral tides have rolled onwards. Perhaps - almost certainly - the people who we consider national treasures today will not be quite so treasured by future peoples. In all likelihood, our descendants will see us as immoral and uncivilised, the way we look upon our ancestors who supported slavery, and our descendants will be tearing the statues which we erect today.

We can shrug and say so be it: we in 2021 have a right to tear down the statues of slave owners, just as the people of 2171 have the right to tear down statues of anyone whose views or actions they see as morally wrong. But if we think that the people of 2171 would be misguided to tear down the statue of Sir David Attenborough and vandalise it, then we should probably view the protestors who tore down the Edward Colston statue in the same way. 

Human evolution. Source: Pixabay

Evolution continues, and it would be absurd and conceited to believe that we are the pinnacle - the finished product - of evolution. Similarly, our social attitudes are evolving and changing too. Slavery, sex with 12-15 year olds, and owning your wife were once legal and normal parts of life; meanwhile, homosexuality, inter-racial marriages, and sex outside of marriage were not just immoral but illegal. We might like to think that the moral codes we possess today are the right ones and the best ones, but our descendants will probably see us as backward and abhorrent as we today see our ancestors.

Lives versus livelihoods

Picture the scene... you're standing on the edge of a precipice. There's been an accident, and someone is hanging off the edge, barely able to cling on. But they're not the only thing hanging off the edge of the cliff. Nearby, someone's job is also hanging off the edge, barely able to cling on. You can save either the person or the job, but probably not both. It is not guaranteed that you'll be able to save either, but you can give it a go, though it will involve a bit of inconvenience for you to attempt to save either of them. So, which do you choose to save - the person, or the job?

It's a no-brainer, right? If we can ignore for a moment the fact that a job isn't a physical thing that can hang off the edge of a cliff, saving the person's life is still intuitively morally correct.

In case you're unconvinced that lives outrank livelihoods, here's another example.

Picture the scene... a building is on fire. Trapped inside is a person, breathing in the smoke, coughing - they will probably die if no one does anything. Also inside the building is someone's savings, or perhaps their business itself. There probably isn't time to save both the person and the business/savings. You'll have to choose. Saving either of them will be inconvenient for you, but won't place you in mortal danger.

Other things being equal, we would all surely say that human life should be prioritised over money or business. 

And yet, the "lives versus livelihoods" dichotomy which people would be so sure about if we were on the edge of a cliff or beside a burning building is apparently a lot trickier when it comes to covid-19.

A lockdown involving the closure of businesses, shops, and leisure facilities is detrimental for livelihoods, but it saves lives by slowing the spread of the virus. Contrariwise, keeping such places open allows livelihoods to thrive (or at least, to just about stay afloat) at the expense of people's lives - they die because the virus spreads so much. When places such as pubs, restaurants, cinemas and leisure centres are open, money changes hands (+ve for livelihoods and the economy) and viruses change hosts (-ve for lives and the NHS).

The difference, it seems, is whose livelihoods are at stake. Unsurprisingly, those whose livelihoods are most at risk from lockdown (small business owners) are the most vocal in criticising lockdowns. In terms of the analogies above, when S is on the edge of the precipice, and S must choose between saving her own business / savings and saving the life of an elderly stranger, S seems more inclined to save her own livelihood. Also unsurprisingly, those who have most to gain from a lockdown (say, those with elderly parents, or relatives with immune disorders) are the ones most in favour of lockdown. If S is on the cliff and forced to choose between saving his own relative, or the money of a stranger, S saves his relative. 

It seems that agent-neutrality has already fallen off the cliff, and plummeted to its death.

But when we are dispassionate and neutral - when it's a stranger's livelihood versus a stranger's life - I think (I hope!) that most of us would choose to save a person's life. That should give us the inkling that humans generally value lives over livelihoods. And for what it's worth, I think that's the morally correct stance to take.

A few weeks ago, when each covid-19 death in the UK was a news story in its own right, the media always pointed out the age of the victim (they were generally over 60), and whether they had any pre-existing medical conditions (they generally did). It was almost as if these were mitigating factors we could console ourselves with. 

"A woman has become the first coronavirus fatality in the UK"

"Ah yes, but she was in her 70s and had underlying health conditions, so was probably going to die soon anyway."

The subtext is one that suggests that people's lives are worth less (or worthless) if they are a bit old or are in poor health. I think many would agree that we should save the lives of children over the lives of the elderly, but to save jobs and money over the lives of the elderly or vulnerable is something else entirely. People who oppose lockdowns because of the threat to livelihoods are doing so in desperation; nonetheless, they really should re-examine their moral compass.

Another factor is proximity. Singer wrote a great paper (Famine, Affluence and Morality) about how we (wrongly) care more about seeing someone in danger right in front of us, than we do about knowing someone far away from us is in danger. Here's a quote from Singer:

"It makes no moral difference whether the person I can help is a neighbor's child ten yards away from me or a Bengali whose name I shall never know, ten thousand miles away. [...] From the moral point of view, the prevention of the starvation of millions of people outside our society must be considered at least as pressing as the upholding of property norms within our society." (Pp231, 237)

Singer's argument is a little different from mine as he argues that saving a life close to us matters just as much as saving a life far away from us, whereas I'm arguing for the more moderate claim that saving a life (anywhere) matters more than saving money. But if I'm right, the fact that the anti-lockdowners and the lockdown-rulebreakers don't see the deaths they have caused is at least partially what causes them to prioritise their own money over someone else's life.

If a person really was on the edge of a cliff with someone about to die if he does nothing, that situation is a lot more potent than knowing that somebody somewhere will die if he does nothing. I've written previously about people encouraging suicide online - something we don't generally do when a person is right in front of us. The same phenomenon is at play with covid 19 as it is with online suicides, and children starving in faraway countries. Business owners who defy lockdown and people who throw parties in defiance of lockdown are both "benefitting" ftom the fact that they don't see the damage they cause. They don't see the link between their actions today and people's deaths next month. They don't see people keeling over and dying in front of them, or a pile of dead bodies in their front garden. Because of that, it's very easy for them to think only of themselves and their lifestyle or livelihood.

The solution

There are no good solutions to the covid-19 pandemic: there are only bad outcomes. Thousands of people in the UK have died from the virus, and more will certainly die. Livelihoods have been and will be lost during the lockdown. So there are no 'good' solutions. All we can do is try to choose the least worst option.

Just as we would do if we stood on the edge of a cliff, or at the door to a burning building, we should save people's lives first and foremost, then worry about finances later. Money can be lost, and it can be regained. Someone who loses their business can set up another one, or take another job elsewhere. The person who loses their money will get second chances to make money and have a good life. The people who die get no second chance. So in the lockdown versus livelihoods contest, I believe lives should be prioritised.

How inductive reasoning failed me with coronavirus

In February, I began writing a blog post saying that coronavirus would turn out to be a storm in a teacup, and although a few people would die - I estimated no more than 10,000* worldwide - it would really be nothing to write home about. I was going to wait until the virus had blown over, then write a critical piece about moral panics and how the media should stop striking fear into our hearts unnecessarily. 
* 10,000 really isn't that many, when you consider that over 55 million people die each year anyway.

Swine flu symptoms
Source: Wikimedia commons

After all, over the past 20 years, swine flu, bird flu, SARS, MERS, ebola, zika virus, and other illnesses have come and gone - illnesses which the media warned could become deadly worldwide pandemics. The pandemics that we were warned about just never happened. Zika virus, for example, killed just 53 people. And so I concluded that covid-19, like these other illnesses, would be a minuscule problem which would not impact the lives of people in the developed world in any noticeable way. 

Goodness me, I was wrong. I was so, so wrong. 

Why was I so wrong?

The problem was that I used inducive reasoning:

A pandemic has never happened in my lifetime, therefore a pandemic won't happen now.

It sounds ridiculous when you say it like that, but that really was my reasoning. There have just been so many times - particularly in the last 20 years or so - that the UK media have spotted a new illness spreading in a faraway country and created a moral panic. They said that a deadly pandemic was on its way, and we should be afraid - very afraid. But then virtually nothing happened to us. 

Perhaps when I was a teenager or young adult I was more concerned by these warnings, but as these warnings kept occurring, and with little effect on my life in the leafy suburbs of England, I began to see these pandemic warnings as just more background noise from the media. Bad news is good news in the world of newspapers, and so of course they would leap on any virus and attempt to needlessly whip up the panic among us - it sells papers (or brings in clicks).

Deadly viruses are bad for the communities which suffer them, of course, and I have every sympathy for those who suffer. But so few of them touched the UK in any way that life went on pretty much as normal for us throughout the times of these other viruses, meaning that the UK media were simply scaremongering and sensationalising, as usual.

So by about 2010, any time the media warned about a pandemic, I mentally switched off. They had said that x would cause a pandemic and it didn't; now they were saying that y would cause a pandemic. Based on experience of x being a storm in a teacup, I could be reasonably sure that y wouldn't be a pandemic either.

So when a new coronavirus began spreading around Wuhan in January, and the UK papers warned of a worldwide pandemic, I thought it would be yet another pandemic-cum-damp-squib. I was sure it would fizzle out just as the others did, without any change to life in Little England. The media had 'cried wolf' so many times before with other illnesses that I just didn't believe their pandemic warnings any more.

I was wrong not to believe them. This time the 'wolf' was real, and it was about to huff and puff and blow the world down.

Now here we are, with nearly 30,000 deaths in the UK, and over 200,000 dead worldwide, and the virus is showing no signs of abating. Everything in the UK is shut, including schools, offices, shops, leisure centres, and entertainment venues, and we aren't allowed to meet friends or family. 

The failure of inductive reasoning

Inductive reasoning led me to believe there wouldn't be a pandemic, and even if there was, it wouldn't hit the UK. 

As philosophers, we know that inductive reasoning is weak. All swans are white until you see a black swan. But in life, our experience shapes our way of thinking, and helps us to extrapolate future events based on the past. If Paul has always lied in the past, it'd be silly for me to believe him now. If whenever I lend money to Bryan he doesn't repay me, it would be naive and gullible of me to keep lending him money. So we simply must learn from the past. I think it was George Santayana who said:

Those who cannot learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

I had learned that when the press warn of a pandemic, it doesn't occur. Now I've learned that sometimes, it does occur.

How bad will covid-19 be?

For the world and the UK, it's going to be horrendous. It already is horrendous, and few if any countries are over the hump yet. On a personal level, I'm just going to keep myself to myself, maintain social distancing, and self-isolate if I have symptoms. I doubt that I'll be in any real danger from the virus if I do catch it. After all...

I've never died before, therefore I won't die now. 

Techy or tacky: why social media is just about bearable

I joined Twitter this week.

Now, given that Twitter has been around for over a decade, you might think I'm coming a little late to the party, and you'd be absolutely right. This is no accident. I've been purposely avoiding Twitter under the impression that it's a platform where people go to snipe about the contestants on Celebrity Love Island having cellulite, or to spread disinformation about the 'dangers' of vaccines, to showcase their hatred of Jews and Muslims, and to share the general minutiae of their everyday lives with the entire planet.

I haven't changed my opinion in this respect; I still think that Twitter is the place to go to discuss celebrity cellulite, to spread disinformation, hatred, and minutiae - but now I'm willing to admit that there is (a little) more to it than merely this.

It's not just Twitter of course: Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Weibo (etc) are also guilty. Social media as an institution is predicated on the fact that people love to make snarky comments from behind the safety of the screen. I've written previous posts about people encouraging a girl to kill herself on social media (which sadly, she did), and people are oh-so willing to criticise politicians, celebrities, and indeed anyone via the wonderful internet.

I must admit I'm not above this sort of attitude - after all, in this blog post I have made (albeit implicit) judgements about people who watch Celebrity Love Island, oppose vaccinations, and so on. It's a human compulsion to criticise, and social media is the ideal place to do it: people can be vicious without (much) recourse, and reading the comments is a sure-fire way to waste away your life. That's why I try to avoid it.

You might be surprised that someone writing a PhD about AI and future tech shuns social media, but there is no reason to think that all tech is a force for good. We shouldn't just accept tech with open arms merely because it is new or techy. (Indeed, my thesis will serve as a warning as well as an attempt at a solution to the perils of new tech.)

I've not always shunned social media: I spent ten years of my life on Facebook, and it was not time well spent. I knew it was drivel, yet I found myself scrolling through it several times a day, often shaking my head at the banality of its content, but reading it nonetheless! 

I probably spent an hour a day looking at the chocolate-covered faces of the nephews of old school friends, or watching people I once met on holiday pour a bucket of ice over their head, or listening to the rants of people I didnt really consider friends, but felt social pressure to friend them on Facebook because they'd sent me a request and I sort of knew them. It took the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 to give me the push I needed to leave Facebook. 

So, I deleted my account.* The following day, there were several times when I thought to myself "I'll just check Faceb-- oh, I deleted it. Ok I'll do something else." Within a couple of days, I stopped thinking about it altogether, and didn't miss it at all. Now, it's just not a part of my life any more. It's something I wasted a lot of time on, and ditching it gave me more time to devote to other things (such as my son -- not just eBay, Pinterest and TV!)

* Social media being what it is, I understand that my profile was not really deleted, at least, not by Facebook. It'll never be obliterated, short of a planetary meltdown on the scale of the extinction of the dinosaurs.

After that watershed moment (not just leaving Facebook, but leaving Facebook and not missing it at all), I resolved to stay away from social media for good. In my humble opinion, Facebook is possibly the least toxic of the social media outlets: at least it's people I know writing about things in their actual lives. On the other hand, Instagram is probably rife with duck-pout selfies and photos of people's dinners (this is my guess; I must admit I haven't checked). Snapchat is the place to go if you wish to receive unsolicited "dick pics" (again, this is my guess, not an empirical fact). And as I wrote earlier, Twitter is primarily celebrity-bashing, banal arguments, and disinformation. Weibo I'm less sure about, but it is probably filled with posts of people wholeheartedly endorsing the amazing Chinese government. In a nutshell, it seems to me that social media platforms are the means by which humans disseminate the drivel which we would tune out if someone were saying it IRL (in real life). Or it is the written (photographic) manifestation of smalltalk which is palatable in tiny doses, but causes severe nausea and brain damage when taken as a regular part of one's diet. 

So why the turnaround?

If the above is my genuine opinion of social media (and it is) then why on earth have I just joined Twitter?

Well, I was convinced by my friend and fellow grad student Mo (I'm not mentioning their real name; I wouldn't want to be named on someone's blog without my knowledge, unless they were citing my awesome work, of course). Mo said that Twitter is a great place to find out about new research, to make connections with people writing about similar things, and to find out about conferences. At first I was unconvinced, but Mo made a compelling argument. Mo also said Twitter is a great place to self-publicise (although Mo noted that they hate soing this, as it sounds so arrogant and conceited).

I gave it a fair bit of thought, and decided that Mo was probably quite right - Twitter could be useful.

But how could I go on Twitter whilst avoiding the chatter about celebrity cosmetic surgery and the banal minutiae of strangers' lives? Further reflection gave me my answer, and I felt more than a little sheepish. Social media is an echo chamber: if my previous experiences were characterised by pointless trivialities, then I had only myself to blame. If my online friends had interests which I was/am so disdainful of, then why did I engage with it - and with them? I must have engaged with it, because it kept coming back! 

The Plan

This time around, on Twitter, my intention is this: 

1. Follow only people or organisations whose interests truly fit with my own

2. Don't engage with banality, should I happen to see it

3. Unfollow people who routinely post banality 

Will it work out? We shall see. If I don't complete my PhD because I'm too busy commenting on botched nosejobs and why a score on Strictly should have been an 8 rather than a 7, then we'll know the experiment failed.

Wish me luck.

Scholar's guilt

Today is the first day in years that I've had an entire day to myself. My son is away for the day and night with Beavers, and I had an entire day to do with as I pleased.

Obviously, I have day times when he's at school and I am at home, but this was an entire 24 hour period.

It was weird.

So what did I do with my time? Well, I did a few necessary tasks like laundry, then I decided no, I should make the most of having the day of freedom.

So, I got myself a glass of wine (it was 4pm; I never drink before my son's bedtime to this was an uncharacteristic indulgence), set up the hammock hanging between two trees in my garden, and lay back and read a book.

Sounds leisurely enough, right?

The book was an academic text which I think will be pretty crucial for my PhD (John Danaher's Robot Sex). I was highlighting and making notes too.

The incessant studying even on a day of 'freedom' is of course caused by a phenomenon that many students, professors and academics are familiar with: scholar's guilt.

Whenever I'm not writing/researching (and not parenting) I have a voice in my head which says "you should be working on your PhD". It's like a micro-managing pedant lives on my shoulder, forever checking up on what I'm doing.

That's not to say I'm always working - of course I'm not! In fact I found the time today to scroll through Pinterest while lying in the hammock - then accidentally dropping my mobile phone onto the floor and smashing the screen on it 😭 (and I was only a couple of gulps into the wine, in case you're wondering!) But I digress.

The salient point is that while I was scrolling through Pinterest- and later, Googling how much it costs to repair the screen on my phone (it costs about 75% of what I paid for for the phone 😭) - I had scholar's guilt all the while.

I suppose it's just something that people either learn to live with, or they somehow overcome it. I don't get the guilt when I'm with my son, as there is no conceivable way I could do any substantive work while he's awake... but whenever he's asleep or away from me, I feel it. The nagging feeling that I ought to be working. Even when I'm sleeping over at my mum's house, or on the few occasions when I wake up before my son, the scholar's guilt is there, telling me to get PhD-ing.

Then again, perhaps a little scholar's guilt is a good thing, or else I may spend my non-childcaring time just lazing around in a hammock and drinking wine all day long. Then I'd never complete the PhD - and it'd cost me a bloomin' fortune in smashed phones too!

Brexit, Boris, and the future of the UK

As I write this, it's been 3 years since the Brexit referendum, and a week since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister of the UK. It seems a reasonable time to pause and take stock of where we've been, where we're at, and where we're headed -- and how we should feel about it.

In short, as I'll detail below, where we've been is that we've been either unified and disunified at different times; where we are  now is a changeover period, and where we're headed is disunity (until another union!)

How should we feel about Brexit? Well, if you're anti-Brexit, then by all means feel a little bit annoyed or concerned; and if you're pro-Brexit, then by all means feel a little bit pleased. Any more extreme a reaction than that is an overreaction. Things rarely turn out as bad as the popular media and even the "experts" predict.

Impending doom

Remember Y2K? It was predicted that on the stroke of midnight on 1.1.2000 aeroplanes would fall from the sky, mobile phones and computers would stop working, and the world would be hurled into chaos. As it turned out, nothing much happened.

Remember when the UK declared war on Iraq and Afghanistan? The papers warned us that it could be the start of WW3, and an era of terror was upon us, but that didn't happen. Many people have died in the war, and that's terrible - but there is certainly not a world war going on. For most of us, life today is just the same as it was before the war began.

Remember the Labour landslide in the general election of 1997? I was just old enough to vote, and I recall all us youngsters went out wearing red t-shirts and singing Things can only get better, REJOICING that 18 years of Tory rule had finally ended. I felt sure that we were on the cusp of a great revolution... But as the months turned to years, I realised very little had changed.

Remember when Romania, Poland and Bulgaria joined the EU? The papers warned us that we'd suddenly be overrun with migrants from these countries... but that doesn't seem to have happened either.

Remember when they said swine flu / bird flu / MRSA / SARS / Ebola / <insert infectious illness du jour> was going to decimate the UK population in numbers similar to the Great Plague? In reality, more people in the UK died from using hair straighteners than from these illnesses*. So again, the news paranoia spread fear over something which just didn't take hold.
* I made up this claim about hair straighteners, but it's probably close to the truth.

What I'm saying is this: people - whipped up by news media - expect the worst, and reality seldom turns out to be as bad as the pessimistic forecasts would have us believe. Sometimes things do turn out bad, of course, but there are far, far more times when all-out chaos and apocalypse have been predicted, and instead, life has just ticked on as normal.

I realise our country leaving a union with other countries is wildly different from Y2K, the invasion of Iraq, etc. We might think that unity is really important for Britain - but it's worth reminding ourselves that unions have been created and dissolved throughout our history:

• 6000 BC: The island of Great Britain is cut off from continental Europe by the English channel
• 43 AD: The island of Great Britain becomes part of the Roman Empire
• 122 AD: Hadrian's wall built between England and Scotland
• 410 AD: Britain is no longer part of Roman Empire
• 927 AD: Various areas (Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia etc) unify to become the Kingdom of England
• 1284 AD: England conquers Wales and the two are unified into a single kingdom
• 1603 AD: England and Scotland join in personal union (have the same monarch)
• 1707: England and Wales form a union with Scotland to become the Kingdom of Great Britain
• 1800: Great Britain forms a union with Ireland (the whole island) to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
• 1922: Ireland (minus Northern Ireland) leaves the United Kingdom; the remaining countries become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• 1952: France, West Germany, Italy, and Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) form the EEC, which later becomes the EU
• 1973: The United Kingdom, as well as Ireland, join the EU
• 2014: Scotland holds a referendum for Scottish independence (but chose to remain unified within the UK)
• 2016: The UK decide, via national referendum, to leave the EU
• 2019: The UK leaves the EU?
• 202?: Scotland gains independence from the rest of the UK

The above is just a whistle-stop history of England, the UK and the EU. What it doesn't show is all the other unions which have been formed and dissolved elsewhere in the world over the past 1000 years. Even within the last century we've seen the breakup and reunion of Germany, and the unions and subsequent breakups of the USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. Plus there are many other newly-formed countries all over the world (Western Sahara, South Sudan, Kosovo, East Timor, Serbia, and Montenegro, among others). These new countries haven't arisen because new landmass has been created; they've arisen because an existing country has decided to split into two or more separate nations. The state of political union between countries is not static; it's more volatile than the tectonic plates on which the countries sit.

The pertinent question is whether these unions and breakups have been for the better or for the worse for the countries involved. I don't claim to be an expert in international relations, but from what little I do know, the answer is a resounding ... "it varies".

I know this may be hard to stomach, because it doesn't fit neatly with the polarised debates the media like to feed us. Unsurprisingly, we've seen sensationalised headlines on both sides of the debate. On the pro-Brexit side, weve seen headlines such as "The deadly cost of our open borders" (which explains how foreign criminals emigrate to Britain for crime sprees) and "Patients are at risk from EU doctors". On the anti-Brexit side we've seen "May likened to Captain of the Titanic" and headlines describing a "Brexit earthquake" - and if you do a web search for the words 'Brexit' and 'catastrophe' you'll find enough reading material to keep you going for life.

The UK public - by a painfully small majority - voted to leave the EU, and if Boris Johnson's rhetoric is anything to go by, we will be leaving within the next 4 months.

Leaving a union and going it alone does not signal automatic failure and catastrophe for a nation - but nor does it signal automatic success and prosperity. If we look at the examples of other countries who have left unions with other countries, and broken away to form their own country, as I noted above, the prognosis is a resounding "it depends". It's not fully clear what will happen to the UK.

My shocking post-Brexit prediction

Now I will excite and shock you with my prediction about what our lives will be like in the UK post-Brexit:

Things will be a bit difficult for a while, then they'll settle down and go back to normal.

Yes, you read that correctly. I think that the economy, the NHS, education, industry and almost all the other facets of our lives will experience a period of turmoil for a month or two, then dininishing difficulties for 1-3 years, then they'll get back to roughly the way things were before. Maybe not exactly the way they were before - the exchange rate might be 1.49 instead of 1.38, and the organisations might spend their money slightly differently, but essentially, for the vast majority of people, life will feel just the same as it did before.

I understand why people are concerned about Brexit, because the news keeps telling us that it's going to be bad, but I really think that within 1-3 years, things will get back to normal, and then the long term will take care of itself. You might think I'm in denial, but I think I'm taking the news with a pinch of salt.

Who is to blame?

In these uncertain times, the fear and panic which people feel can be slightly mitigated when they have someone to blame. So who should we blame? Maybe the Vote Leave campaign for their false claims about Britain sending £350m a week to the EU? Maybe we should blame the media for taking sides, exacerbating hostility towards migrants and fear of the EU? Or perhaps we should blame the British people for voting on an issue they knew little about? But there's a small group of people - and one person in particular - who seem to have escaped people's wrath, and I say they have a lot to answer for. Who am I talking about?

David Cameron, and the Conservative Party which he led. He was the one who called the referendum. He is the one who started the ball rolling. If you want to blame someone, blame him.

If Brexit is a catastrophic problem, then why on earth hold a referendum in the first place? I've heard it said that the British public voting Leave is like a turkey voting for Christmas dinner. But you know what? Turkeys are pretty dumb, and if given a vote, they might well vote to become Christmas dinner, because they don't understand what they're voting about! So if you really want to preserve the welfare of the turkey, don't give it the vote at all!

If it's true that Brexit spells disaster for the UK, and that it's painfully complex to understand, then leaving such a life-altering decision up to the ignoramuses  on the street is utterly ludicrous. So if you want to blame someone for the way things are, blame David Cameron and the Conservatives. 

It is probably true that the UK public were (and still are) woefully ill-informed about what Brexit will do to the economy, public services etc. Most people make voting decisions on tiny scraps of rhetoric and posturing, in some sort of knee-jerk fashion. Given this (possible) fact, and if Brexit really will be a never-ending nightmare, then why give the British public the chance to vote for it? David Cameron may have the answer, but I do not.

Final word

There are many wonderful times in life, and many terrible ones. The best times of your life are things like your wedding day, playing with your kids, times with loved ones, and parties with friends. The worst times of your life are things like your parents dying, getting Cancer, your child having mental health problems, suffering a disability, being attacked, or getting divorced.

Very few people will have Brexit up there on their list of best or worst things that have happened in their lives. Will you really look back on you life and see Brexit as one of the worst things that has happened to you? If not, then why worry? Get on with your lives, getting married, having kids, partying etc, and enjoy yourself. If, on the other hand, Brexit is really one of the worst moments of your life, then you have my every sympathy.

But I genuinely think that in a few years, Brexit just won't be a concern any more. As Elsa once sang:
"It's funny how some distance makes everything seem small, and the fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all [...] let it go, let it go..."

If ever we need to take the advice of a Disney princess, it's now. Brexit is but a mere tiny blip in our lives, and less still in history.

"They mustn't have had many good submissions" - impostor syndrome and negative assumptions

A couple of months go, I sent off an abstract to a CFP for a conference and this week I got an email saying I'd been accepted/invited to present my work there. "Hooray!" I thought - which was almost immediately followed by the thought "Maybe they didn't have many good submissions." I astonished even myself with my instantaneous self-doubt! "Maybe they're desperate for speakers?" I wondered, and "Maybe their reviewing procedures are biased?" I asked myself as I recalled the double-blind review procedure.

I can, through an act of will - and in defiance of my inner critic - insist to myself "No, my work was selected because it was good, not because they are desperate or careless with their selections", but it does sometimes feel forced and disingenuous to say that to myself. 

Of course, I recognise that my self-doubts are impostor syndrome, plain and simple (but if I recognise I have it, then I realise I'm good, and if I know I'm good then I don't have impostor syndrome!) 

Anecdotally, impostor syndrome seems commonplace among high achieving people. As kids, they see coming second as failure; getting 98% in a test just shows you weren't perfect; and no matter how well they do, still the feeling remains inside them that it's simply not good enough. Does this come from the school system? (I've seen the 'Two stars and a wish' strategy all over the place - ie each piece of work receives two positive comments and one suggestion for how it could be improved further.) I think self-doubt is perhaps reinforced by a school system which of course wants to push children to make progress. If my teachers hadn't reminded me that I needed to put capital letters after a full stop, I probably wouldn't do it now. But it can't be just the school who are to blame, as there are many kids who (outwardly, at least) aren't self-critical. But so often these aren't the kids who are getting 95% and just have a positive self-image; they are the kids who are getting 45% but just don't care that they're doing badly. There really does seem to be a correlation between high achievers and the feeling that one isn't (yet) good enough. 

Some self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy is probably what causes the high achieving - or at least helps it along. I work hard, achieve well, feel like it's still not good enough, and so work harder and achieve more. It's a good recipe for high achievement!

John Stuart Mill (I ❤️ Mill!) wrote that it's better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. In many ways, it seems to be true - the esteemed but sometimes dissatisfying life of high achievers does seem to be of a higher quality than the satisfaction a 'fool' gets from, say, reality TV and beer. I'd hope that achievement and happiness are not mutually exclusive, but if they are, then for my son I'd choose happiness over achievement every time. 

But what of my own impostor syndrome? Well, I suppose I really ought to heed the advice I've given to various kids about taking pride in your achievements and accepting praise and compliments with good grace. So I'll say this (even though it feels boastful and forced): if I've been chosen to speak at a conference, it's because I'm good enough to do so. I'm awesome!!

Why people encourage suicide online

Many philosophical issues - and many interactions with others - are not matters of life and death. But some are.

Please note that this post contains discussion of suicide, and why some people endorse suicide. If you think you will find this upsetting then you may choose not to read on.

One of this week's headlines involves a 16 year old girl who took her own life after she posted a poll on Instagram asking her followers or others to decide whether or not she should die; 69% of respondents voted that she should die... A few hours later she took her own life.

This is an utterly tragic story. Any loss of life, particularly one so young, is really sad. It's made so much more tragic when the cause of the death is suicide. And worse again that she did so upon the suggestion, encouragement and endorsement of others. Suicide is, in my opinion at least, the most overwhelmingly sad cause of death for family and friends of the deceased. Whenever someone dies it provides some small amount of comfort to know that "he had a good life" "he fought right till the very end" or "he made the most of his life" but these cannot be said when suicide is the cause of death, because the deceased was not just unhappy, but so immeasurably unhappy that they think there is nothing worth living for any more. My son is only young but I know there is no greater fear for a parent. It's the second leading cause of death in children and teens (behind car accidents) in the Western world. It can happen to anyone and is totally preventable and never something which should be encouraged or done flippantly as a result of a poll on Instagram. Suicide is not a hashtag; it ends the life of a person and ruins the lives of family and friends - particularly parents - of the deceased, and I hope if anyone close to me ever feels so desperate, that they turn to me rather than social media.

But this is not a post solely about the tragedy of suicide - the tragedy of suicide is fairly obvious. This post concerns the girl who took her life after the Instagram poll and asks the question: why did 69% of people vote that she should kill herself?

In some sense, people's motives are an empirical matter; their motive is what it is, and that's the end of it. But it's my blog so I can do it if I want, even if it's not "real philosophy", so I'll hypothesise and comment upon some possible reasons why someone might vote yes in a suicide poll.

So here are some possible reasons I think someone might vote yes to a suicide poll on Instagram. I think they're fairly exhaustive but maybe there are other motives too.
- they're using reverse psychology to save her life
- they think suicide is the ideal way for her to end her pain and suffering
- they think suicide is awesome
- they're evil, sadistic bastards
- they don't think she'll really do it
- the distant and impersonal nature of social media makes people say things they wouldn't normally say

Let's consider each of these:

They're using reverse psychology to save her life

Sometimes I can't decide between A and B, so I flip a coin to help me decide. Sometimes when it turns up A, I feel disappointed, and that tells me that what I really wanted was B, so I do B. Similarly, sometimes when you can't decide something, having another person suggest a course of action can actually persuade you to do the opposite; it makes you realise what you actually want. Perhaps some people were attempting this sort of 'bluff' to make the girl confront the reality of suicide so as to realise that she did in fact want to live, in the same way that sometimes telling a child to give up X-ing makes them try harder to X. It's reverse psychology at its simplest. So yes it's possible that people were trying to do this, but I don't think there are many people who would want someone to live and therefore tell them to commit suicide; it's too risky a bluff. But it could combine with another reason below such as they don't think she'll do it.

They think suicide is the ideal way for her to end her pain and suffering 

It's possible that some people voted 'yes' to the girl's suicide out of some sort of misguided sympathy. They saw someone in mental anguish and felt sorry for her; they wanted her pain to end. In the same way that someone might see a dog in extreme pain and conclude that it's better for the dog to be euthanised so its pain ends. This sort of mentality relies on the mistaken assumption that staying alive will be bad, and is almost certainly the faulty reasoning which suicidal people utilise. Even if something terrible has happened in your life, suicide is never the answer. There will be some bad parts of life but life is still precious and suicide only ruins the lives of others. Except in cases of painful terminal and degenerative illnesses, life is better than death. Most people know this, and enjoy most of life. I'm not trying to be flippant, as I've felt suicidal before, but life got better and now I have an awesome life.

So did people vote yes out of misguided sympathy, or giving the girl what she wants? This is possible, but highly implausible. If someone really cared about the girl, they'd urge her to seek help and go on living.

They think suicide is awesome

I suppose there are some people who think suicide is a good thing. Perhaps because it rids the world of sad people, and it's just basically cool and decadent, that it's done by celebrities, and a way of gaining notoriety. This is a ludicrous viewpoint. Anyone who thinks suicide is good is serously mistaken; it's the worst thing in the world. I don't think that any living person genuinely thinks suicide is cool and a great thing to do, but if they do they need to turn to family and friends and mental health services to seek help (some links are at the bottom of this post).

But do I believe anyone voted yes because they have this viewpoint? It's a distinct possibility. Social media can become an echo chamber and maybe her followers think that suicide is a good thing, as she did.

They're evil, sadistic bastards 

This is the go-to reason which most of us assume when we hear that people voted yes to someone contemplating suicide. There have been polls (I don't have any references though) where people have said that if murder was legal or they knew they wouldn't face punishment then they would probably do it. I guess many people who have that feeling are thinking it with a particular person in mind. They don't want to kill just anyone, they want to kill their ex or someone who bullied them, for example. But yeah there are undoubtedly people who just want the experience of killing. Maybe they've killed insects and small animals and enjoyed it and they fancy killing someone but they don't want to go to prison... but then up pops an Instagram poll and they get the chance to cause someone's death just for fun, and so they click yes. All the fun of a murder, without the prison time (however it's worth noting that encouraging or helping someone to take their own life is a crime in the UK.)

I think the "guiltless murder" mentality probably (sadly) accounts for some of the yes votes.

They don't think she'll really do it

Many people who see a poll about suicide probably doubt that the poster will really follow through, but that alone wouldn't explain them clicking yes. It would have to be teamed with another belief, like "I don't think she'll do it, so I'll call her bluff" or "I don't think she'll do it, so it doesn't matter if I click yes". Even so, either of these motives are taking a very risky and very flippant attitude towards life and death. Because it shows that the person voring hasn't really grasped the gravity of the situation. Yes the girl who posted the poll might be bluffing, but are we so sure that she's bluffing that we're willing to bet her life on it? If yes then we fall into the "evil sadistic bastard" group above, and if no then we would not click yes, just in case she means it. I doubt that the butcher would stab my mum, but if he's stood there with his knife and asks if I would like her to be stabbed, then I'm not going to call his bluff. We wouldn't risk someone else's life on the basis of a hunch unless we kind of wanted the death to occur, or simply didn't care one way or the other, in which case, we're evil sadistic bastards.

The distant social media effect

This is the notion that the distant and impersonal nature of social media makes people say things they wouldn't normally say, and although I think this is probably true, it still does not fully explain people's actions.

The Trolley Problem is a famous philosophical thought experiment involving a runaway train, where a person must make a choice: do nothing and five people will die, or pull a lever and you kill one person (saving five). Most people say they'd pull the lever. In a second scenario, a person must make a choice: do nothing and five people will die, or physically push another person onto the train tracks, and you kill one person (saving five). Here, most people say they wouldn't push the person -- even though the consequences and indeed the motives are identical to the scenario with the lever.

Why?

Probably some sort of proximity effect. Physical contact with the victim brings it much closer to home, and that makes us more mindful of our actions. Knowing that some people died in a faraway land is easier to cope with than knowing that some people died in a nearby area, even when we don't know the victims. News organisations are well aware of this, and the agenda is always local-centric. Translate this into social media and suicide and we might understand that the suicide of someone in front of you in the flesh is more shocking than the suicide of someone far away whom you never knew, and don't see them dying, you don't see their family grieving, and you don't see the aftermath of their death. Analogously, being mean to someone online is 'easier' than being mean to someone in the flesh.

But being mean is still being mean, and encouraging suicide is still encouraging suicide; would a person of good moral standing be mean or encourage suicide simply because they're online? I don't think they would. It seems to me that the anonymity of the Internet coupled with the ease of making comments without dealing with the consequences merely makes people say things they kind of want to say anyway, but they stop themselves because of social convention. Social media is a bit like a "truth serum" inasmuch as people who are nasty at heart show themselves to be nasty when online. Nice people don't encourage others to commit suicide simply because they've gone online. For example, before social media, when chat rooms and online forums were a thing, I frequently corrected people's spelling, grammar, and apostrophe usage, I pointed out flaws in their arguments, and I told them when they'd got their facts wrong. The Internet didn't make me become such a pedant; I am a pedant, and the Internet gave me the means to say the things I always felt like saying, but was (often) too inhibited. In other words, it showed me up for what I really am. Analogously, the people who endorse suicide online almost certainly have a nasty streak in them, and social media has merely brought it out for all to see. The distancing effect of the Internet does not on its own explain people who voted yes to the suicide of a girl. The idea that people say things online which they wouldn't normally say is only a partial explanation, and must be coupled with some underlying personality trait or belief such as the ones mentioned above (eg being an evil bastard, or thinking she won't do it) in order to be a full explanation.

Conclusion 

We're a highly evolved species, but for all our advancement we still have some very primitive drives within us. The drive to be successful, and to out-compete others is right up there with the drive to procreate as one of our most primitive urges. One way to out-compete others is by making yourself look better; another is by making others look worse. That explains bullying (in a very clinical and woefully inadequate way). When people think they can improve their social standing - eg by being nasty to someone else - they may take the opportunity to do so. And when people think there is no possible way for them to ever improve their social standing, they may perceive that there is just no point in anything any more. People are the best thing in the world, and the worst thing in the world. But there is never a good reason to encourage another person to take their own life, and there is never a time when suicide is the only or best choice. There is always, always something that can be done, and someone who can help.

Here are some useful links if you are feeling unhappy, depressed or suicidal, or you know someone who is:
The Samaritans website or phone 116123
Child line website or phone 0800 1111
Mind website
And of course, if you feel you can't keep yourself safe right now, call your GP for an emergency appointment, or 999.