Alex Dean in Prospect:

Unless you have studied philosophy, maths or economics, it is unlikely you have heard of Frank Ramsey. And if you have, it is probably as a minor character in stories about his celebrated Cambridge philosophical contemporaries Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

That’s a shame. Even as a teenager Ramsey displayed a genius to rival these figures. He was Wittgenstein’s favourite intellectual sparring partner. GE Moore revered him. AJ Ayer, meanwhile, once said it was a great pity that Cambridge philosophers spent the 1930s “chewing over Wittgenstein when they ought to have been chewing over Ramsey.” And he was revolutionary not only in philosophy and maths, but also economics: Keynes found Ramsey’s criticisms devastating and agonised over how to answer them. This is all the more remarkable given that Ramsey died at the age of 26 from a mystery liver ailment. 

Today there are professorships bearing his name not only at Cambridge but also at Harvard; there is even a Frank Ramsey medal. Even so, he should occupy a much more prominent place in the story of modern philosophy. Despite the posthumous publication in 2012 of a memoir written by his sister, Margaret Paul, there has never been a comprehensive biography—until now. In her important new work, Cheryl Misak, of the University of Toronto, finally gives Ramsey the consideration he deserves. Misak has access to previously unaired interviews with family members shared with her by documentary-maker Laurie Kahn, who had planned to write a thesis on Ramsey while a student. Her project is both to truly render the life of this little-known thinker and to put his work in its proper place. 

More here.

Sean Carroll in Preposterous Universe:

Everybody talks about the truth, but nobody does anything about it. And to be honest, how we talk about truth — what it is, and how to get there — can be a little sloppy at times. Philosophy to the rescue! I had a very ambitious conversation with Liam Kofi Bright, starting with what we mean by “truth” (correspondence, coherence, pragmatist, and deflationary approaches), and then getting into the nitty-gritty of how we actually discover it. There’s a lot to think about once we take a hard look at how science gets done, how discoveries are communicated, and what different kinds of participants can bring to the table.

More here.

Beth Mole in Ars Technica:

The clearest way out of the COVID-19 crisis is to develop a safe, effective vaccine—and scientists have wasted no time in getting started.

They have at least 102 vaccine candidates in development worldwide. Eight of those have already entered early clinical trials in people. At least two have protected a small number of monkeys from infection with the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, that causes COVID-19.

Some optimistic vaccine developers say that, if all goes perfectly, we could see large-scale production and limited deployment of vaccines as early as this fall. If true, it would be an extraordinary achievement. Less than four months ago, SARS-CoV-2 was an unnamed, never-before-seen virus that abruptly emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. Researchers there quickly identified it and, by late January, had deciphered and shared its genetic code, allowing researchers around the world to get to work on defeating it. By late February, researchers on multiple continents were working up clinical trials for vaccine candidates. By mid-March, two of them began, and volunteers began receiving the first jabs of candidate vaccines against COVID-19.

It’s a record-setting feat. But, it’s unclear if researchers will be able to maintain this break-neck pace.

Generally, vaccines must go through three progressively more stringent human trial phases before they are considered safe and effective.

More here.

Marla Broadfoot in The Scientist:

Among the many mysteries that remain about COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, is why it hits some people harder than others. Millions of people have been infected, but many never get sick. Those who do can experience an ever-expanding array of symptoms, including loss of smell or taste, pink eye, digestive issues, fever, cough, and difficulty breathing. Although the elderly, those with pre-existing conditions such as heart disease, and men are most likely to suffer severe complications, hundreds of young and previously healthy people have died from the disease in the US alone. In recent weeks, researchers have begun asking whether genetics could influence the severity of symptoms. So far, they know “basically nothing,” Wendy Chung, a clinical geneticist and physician at Columbia University, tells The Scientist. She is one of hundreds of scientists launching studies to interrogate the human genome for answers. Chung and her team are racing to “recycle” and bank nasal swabs and other clinical samples from COVID-19 patients across the New York-Presbyterian Hospital System, currently in the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.

The researchers plan to extract the patients’ DNA and scan the genomes for tiny sequence variations associated with symptoms listed in their electronic health records. Prior research has uncovered gene variants that can alter a person’s chances of contracting an infectious disease. The most famous example is a mutation in the CCR5 gene, which offers protection against HIV. Other variants can affect what happens once the virus is inside the human body, leading to strikingly disparate outcomes from one person to the next, says Priya Duggal, a geneticist at Johns Hopkins University. Duggal has previously shown that variants in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes, which influence the body’s immune response, may explain why some people spontaneously clear hepatitis C infection whereas others are left with chronic disease.

More here.

Dennis Overbye in The New York Times:

Patrick Heller in The Hindu:

The global coronavirus pandemic is a natural, albeit brutal experiment. Just about every part of the world has been impacted and the range of responses we are seeing at the national and subnational levels reveal not only existing inequalities but also the political and institutional capacity of governments to respond. Nowhere is this more so true than in India. The national government ordered a lockdown but it is States that are actually implementing measures, both in containing the spread and addressing the welfare consequences of the lockdown. A number of States have been especially proactive, none more so than Kerala.

Flattening the curve and how

Though Kerala was the first State with a recorded case of coronavirus and once led the country in active cases, it now ranks 10th of all States and the total number of active cases (in a State that has done the most aggressive testing in India) has been declining for over a week and is now below the number of recovered cases. Given Kerala’s population density, deep connections to the global economy and the high international mobility of its citizens, it was primed to be a hotspot. Yet not only has the State flattened the curve but it also rolled out a comprehensive ₹20,000 crore economic package before the Centre even declared the lockdown. Why does Kerala stand out in India and internationally?

More here.

David S. Wills in Quillette:

Fifty years ago today, Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman drunkenly negotiated the pitfalls of Louisville’s Churchill Downs, home of the world-famous Kentucky Derby. At the time, Thompson was a moderately successful writer who had published an acclaimed book a few years earlier about his time among the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang. Steadman was a talented young artist from Wales who had traveled to the United States in search of work.

For Steadman and Thompson, it would be their first meeting, but it was hardly Thompson’s first derby. He had grown up in Louisville’s Cherokee Park area and was familiar with the whisky gentry who would be in attendance. As a teenager, Thompson’s wit, charm, intellect, and surly insubordination had made him popular among the city’s wealthy young men and women. However, he had never felt fully accepted and, when he was arrested along with a couple of classmates for holding up a car just shy of his graduation, his rich friends abandoned him to his fate—two months in prison.

More here.

Michael Schulson in Undark:

Over the past two decades, John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine, epidemiology, and population health at Stanford University, has gained a reputation as a widely respected gadfly of global science. His work consistently highlights flaws in research methods, pushing scientists and physicians to be more rigorous in evaluating and applying evidence. Ioannidis’ most famous paper, “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,” has been downloaded millions of times and cited in thousands of other studies since its publication in 2005. A 2010 profile in The Atlantic stated that “Ioannidis may be one of the most influential scientists alive.”

Ioannidis’ latest work, though, has sparked pushback from many of his colleagues, with some suggesting that the researcher may be succumbing to the very sloppiness he has spent his career fighting. Since mid-March, Ioannidis has been arguing that the fatality rate of Covid-19 may be much lower than initially feared — and that, as a result, current public health restrictions could be overly strict. Last week, a Stanford-led study of Covid-19 infection rates in Santa Clara County, California, which lists Ioannidis as an author, seemed to offer some of the most forceful backing for that argument. The paper suggests that the fatality rate for Covid-19 may be 0.2 percent or less — lower than many other estimates, and much closer to the seasonal flu.

These arguments have earned Ioannidis widespread attention in conservative media, where many commentators are skeptical of the overall risk of Covid-19, and critical of the restrictions currently in place across much of the world.

In the past week, though, the Stanford study, and a related effort in Los Angeles, have come under fierce criticism from prominent statisticians and infectious disease experts.

More here.

Leanne Ogasawara in the Dublin Review of Books:

A bewildering beginning. A German man has a dream that his wife is cheating on him. He wakes up enraged and boards a flight to Tokyo. Why? He has no idea. Arriving in Tokyo, he encounters a young man trying to commit suicide. The German man, Gilbert Silvester, is an adjunct professor, specialising in the religious significance of beards in art and film. Because of his occupation, he can’t help but notice the young man standing precariously on the edge of the train station platform ‑ not because the young man seems in peril but because he has prominent facial hair, something Gilbert did not expect to find in Japan. Striking up a conversation, he learns that the young man is trying to commit suicide. To distract him, Gilbert suggests a trip to find a more poetic place to die. And so, this odd couple embark on a journey north to Matsushima.

People in Japan go to Matsushima for the scenery. Oysters too. But mostly it’s for the scenery. Countless pine-clad islands scattered around the bay make for an unforgettable sight. No less a figure than Matsuo Basho set off on his famous trip, recounted in The Narrow Road to the Deep North, because he “could hardly think of anything else but seeing the moon over Matsushima”. Basho travelled to Matsushima with his trusty companion Sora, much as Gilbert travels with Yosa Tomagotchi, the suicidal youth.

More here.

Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic:

Propaganda also works best in a vacuum, when there are no competing messages, or when the available alternative messengers inspire no trust. Since mid-March, China has been sending messages out into precisely this kind of vacuum: a world that has been profoundly changed not just by the virus, but by the American president’s simultaneously catastrophic and ridiculous failure to cope with it. The tone of news headlines ranges from straight-faced in Kompas, a major Indonesian news outlet—Trump Usulkan Suntik Disinfektan dan Sinar UV untuk Obati Covid-19, or “Trump Proposes Disinfectant Injection and UV Rays to Treat COVID-19”—to snide, from Le Monde in France—Les élucubrations du « docteur » Trump, or “The Rantings of ‘Doctor’ Trump.” The incredulous first paragraph of an article in Sowetan, from South Africa, declares that “US President Donald Trump has again left people stunned and confused with his bizarre suggestion that disinfectant and ultraviolet light could possibly be used to treat Covid-19.” El Comercio, a distinguished Peruvian newspaper, treated its readers to photographs of Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus-response coordinator, grimacing as the president asked her whether the injection of disinfectant might be a cure.

Quotations from the president’s astonishing April 23 press conference have appeared on every continent, via countless television channels, radio stations, magazines, and websites, in hundreds of thousands of variations and dozens of languages—often accompanied by warnings, in case someone was fooled, not to drink disinfectant or bleach. In years past, many of these outlets presumably published articles critical of this or that aspect of U.S. foreign policy, blaming one U.S. president or another. But the kind of coverage we see now is something new. This time, people are not attacking the president of the United States. They are laughing at him. Beppe Severgnini, one of Italy’s best-known columnists, told me that while Italians feel enormous empathy for Americans who have suffered as they have, they feel differently about Trump: “In this time of darkness and depression, he keeps us entertained.”

But if Trump is ridiculous, his administration is invisible.

More here.

Yuval Noah Harari in The Guardian:

The modern world has been shaped by the belief that humans can outsmart and defeat death. That was a revolutionary new attitude. For most of history, humans meekly submitted to death. Up to the late modern age, most religions and ideologies saw death not only as our inevitable fate, but as the main source of meaning in life. The most important events of human existence happened after you exhaled your last breath. Only then did you come to learn the true secrets of life. Only then did you gain eternal salvation, or suffer everlasting damnation. In a world without death – and therefore without heaven, hell or reincarnation – religions such as Christianity, Islam and Hinduism would have made no sense. For most of history the best human minds were busy giving meaning to death, not trying to defeat it. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the Bible, the Qur’an, the Vedas, and countless other sacred books and tales patiently explained to distressed humans that we die because God decreed it, or the Cosmos, or Mother Nature, and we had better accept that destiny with humility and grace. Perhaps someday God would abolish death through a grand metaphysical gesture such as Christ’s second coming. But orchestrating such cataclysms was clearly above the pay grade of flesh-and-blood humans.

Then came the scientific revolution. For scientists, death isn’t a divine decree – it is merely a technical problem. Humans die not because God said so, but because of some technical glitch. The heart stops pumping blood. Cancer has destroyed the liver. Viruses multiply in the lungs. And what is responsible for all these technical problems? Other technical problems. The heart stops pumping blood because not enough oxygen reaches the heart muscle. Cancerous cells spread in the liver because of some chance genetic mutation. Viruses settled in my lungs because somebody sneezed on the bus. Nothing metaphysical about it.

And science believes that every technical problem has a technical solution. We don’t need to wait for Christ’s second coming in order to overcome death. A couple of scientists in a lab can do it. Whereas traditionally death was the speciality of priests and theologians in black cassocks, now it’s the folks in white lab coats. If the heart flutters, we can stimulate it with a pacemaker or even transplant a new heart. If cancer rampages, we can kill it with radiation. If viruses proliferate in the lungs, we can subdue them with some new medicine.

True, at present we cannot solve all technical problems. But we are working on them. The best human minds no longer spend their time trying to give meaning to death. Instead, they are busy extending life.

More here.

Note from Echo

Narcissus, I no longer haunt the canyons
and the crypts. I thrive and multiply;
uncounted daughters are my new companions.

We are the voicemail’s ponderous reply
to the computers making random calls.
We are the Muzak in the empty malls,
the laughtrack on the reruns late at night,
the distant siren’s chilling lullaby,
the steady chirp of things that simplify
their scheduled lives. You know I could recite
more, but you never cared for my recitals.

I do not miss you, do not need you here —
I can repeat the words of your disciples
telling lovers what they want to hear.

A.M. Juster
from A.M. Juster.net

Linda Heuman in Tricycle:

When the Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi announced to his parents, secular Hindus, that he planned to convert to Buddhism and ordain as a monk, his father convened 76 members of his extended family to discuss the matter. Over several hours his relatives plied him with questions, an ordeal Priyadarshi calls “trial by family” in his memoir, Running Toward Mystery: The Adventure of an Unconventional Life, coauthored by Zara Houshmand. To understand his parents’ severe reaction, it helps to know that at the time of the interrogation Priyadarshi was only 10 years old. He had just run away from boarding school in West Bengal, India, and vanished without a trace. His family had spent two anguished weeks trying to locate him and finally tracked him down at a Japanese Buddhist temple in Bihar, nearly 300 kilometers from the school where he was supposed to be. At that moment, they were not feeling very sympathetic.

The members of Priyadarshi’s clan were familiar with spiritual seekers— this was India—but these were modern, educated, and secular Brahmins. One stated flatly, “Full-time religion is what people do when they have no education, no prospects, no other way to survive.”

More here.

Nouriel Roubini in The Guardian:

A fifth issue is the broader digital disruption of the economy. With millions of people losing their jobs or working and earning less, the income and wealth gaps of the 21st-century economy will widen further. To guard against future supply-chain shocks, companies in advanced economies will re-shore production from low-cost regions to higher-cost domestic markets. But rather than helping workers at home, this trend will accelerate the pace of automation, putting downward pressure on wages and further fanning the flames of populism, nationalism, and xenophobia.

This points to the sixth major factor: deglobalisation. The pandemic is accelerating trends toward balkanisation and fragmentation that were already well underway. The US and China will decouple faster, and most countries will respond by adopting still more protectionist policies to shield domestic firms and workers from global disruptions. The post-pandemic world will be marked by tighter restrictions on the movement of goods, services, capital, labour, technology, data, and information. This is already happening in the pharmaceutical, medical-equipment, and food sectors, where governments are imposing export restrictions and other protectionist measures in response to the crisis.

The backlash against democracy will reinforce this trend.

More here.

Sonya Aragon in n+1:

ONE OF THE LAST TIMES I saw a client in person, before New York City’s now-hardened shelter-in-place order, we met in an oddly decorated hotel room in downtown Brooklyn. It was our second meeting, but I had the keen sense that he would become a regular. This, because following our first meeting, we had begun the complicated dance of declaring our feelings—our “connection”—as being out of the ordinary for the transactional circumstances that brought us together. And this was true, to a degree, for me. At our first meeting, I’d earnestly wanted him, something I had never felt with a client prior. He was young and tattooed, a former anarchist punk. He still went to shows sometimes, he said; based on his description of a new DIY space, it seemed like we had attended the same benefit a couple months back. (My boyfriend had been convinced that the bottle of tequila he passed around that show, a bottle that, unimaginably now, twenty people must have sipped from, was ground zero for the flu we all caught in December—the one everyone retroactively seems to think was Covid, despite the improbability.) I liked the idea that someone I could have met as me—a me without the pretense of a different, more appealing me—was paying me, and I liked tracing the skulls and knives on his chest with my fingers, and I liked his implied antipathy toward authority, even if it seemed like he was probably aging into a quieter liberalism.

More here.