7th August 2020
My next TOI blog post: Pandemic, climate change: Why is the sky always falling on our head?
This.
1st August 2020
The problem of groupthink and the madness of crowds
A placeholder post. Some recent tweets:
WE HAVE A LONG WAIT AHEAD FOR HUMANITY TO RECOVER FROM COVID HYSTERIA – IT MAY TAKE MANY MONTHS, IF NOT YEARS.
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." pic.twitter.com/zyuhTo0ED2
— Sanjeev Sabhlok, Pope @Church of Reason & Liberty (@sabhlok) August 1, 2020
On 19 July I had suggested an incentive mechanism to reduce group think and collective madness.
Looks like others have beaten me to the post on this. I do believe that my suggestion is worth examining. This is where economic research should be directed.https://t.co/JXBQatDRXk pic.twitter.com/qTs3vsU2UV
— Sanjeev Sabhlok, Pope @Church of Reason & Liberty (@sabhlok) August 1, 2020
This is a good start but probably needs more work. We need a way to get to the truth – a complex incentive mechanism design problem.
How to get experts to stop repeatedly lying?
How to make bad experts accountable for the harm they cause? https://t.co/3FNAJ5tRQJ
— Sanjeev Sabhlok, Pope @Church of Reason & Liberty (@sabhlok) July 18, 2020
It looks like the wicked problem of epidemiology is not the identification of a pandemic but identifying its end.
– As well as the challenge of addressing the perverse incentives faced by its "leading" scientists.
We need to find a way to delink the science from politics.
— Sanjeev Sabhlok, Pope @Church of Reason & Liberty (@sabhlok) July 18, 2020
When ENTIRE NATIONS ARE BEING LOCKED DOWN BECAUSE OF MODELS, why are we not paying more attention to models, modellers, their incentives and the need to motivate the entire world's expertise to look at this urgent topic?https://t.co/DN26S6TpKB pic.twitter.com/P5NygYGC1Q
— Sanjeev Sabhlok, Pope @Church of Reason & Liberty (@sabhlok) March 31, 2020
I need to add this here – that ALL collective hysterias are started (and fuelled) by those who stand to gain **financially** from the hysteria – and are sustained by human primitive limbic emotions – of fear and greed. Anger, too, in some cases, but such hysterias die early.
— Sanjeev Sabhlok, Pope @Church of Reason & Liberty (@sabhlok) August 1, 2020
31st July 2020
One day I’ll say some more about this (re: Gurcharan’s legacy)
At the moment, just keeping a note for my quick reference in the future:
My FB post of 5 September 2018:
31st July 2020
The 2006 email that changed India (or, rather, will change India in the coming years)
In 2005 I had completely ended my India political project. Just finishing up a book, later to be called BFN.
But then Anil Sharma comes out of the blue – wanting to establish a liberal political party in India. Meghnad Desai connected him to Gurcharan Das and Gurcharan connected him to me on 7 February 2006. In seven years time, Swarna Bharat Party was born. Without Anil’s determination and persistence, there would be no liberal party in India today.
Given his insistence on having a liberal party and my experience that the greatest shortage is of leaders to kickstart the work, I resumed India-related (Freedom Team of India) to support Anil and find others like him.
We were able to find some superb leaders – like Dipinder Sekhon, Rahul Pandit and Kamal Sharma (and Ram Atri, who has, however, quit political work subsequently), as a result of which SBP was formed through a rather circuitous route that went via Baba Ramdev.
There were others who were initially part of the FTI journey but who fell by the wayside for their personal (e.g. health) reasons, like Supratim Basu, or who decided that short-term methods (like joining AAP, which a few like Somnath Bharti and Shantanu Bhagwat tried; others like LK Kandpal went on to support BJP) can work.
But by now, SBP is firmly established and is not going anywhere. And after its establishment, many outstanding leaders like Sanjay Sonawani, Sanjay Garg and Pankaj Das have joined. And superb young leaders like Rabi Kant Bharti and Mahesh Maurya have come up. There are tens of others, as well – all over the country, supporting this work in some way or other (you’ll excuse me if I don’t name all of them in this brief post).
The party is now on a roll. It is going nowhere. It is here to change India.
ADDENDUM:
I let the Liberal Party website lapse (can’t keep paying for so many websites). The page in 2005 looked like this: https://liberalpartyofindia.sabhlokcity.com/old-homepage.html
See: https://liberalpartyofindia.sabhlokcity.com/liberal-party-of-india-2005/