Tuesday 30 July 2024
No lessons learned
Max Lacour has a useful Critic reminder that the COVID-19 Inquiry is still grinding on. He offers us a brief survey of its first report.
No lessons learned from lockdown
Despite all the nuance and retrospective moderation, the Covid inquiry leaves us no closer confronting the failures of technocracy
“The state ceremonials of classical Bali,” wrote anthropologist Clifford Geertz, “were metaphysical theatre: theatre designed to express a view of the ultimate nature of reality and, at the same time, to shape the existing conditions of life to be consonant with that reality; that is, theatre to present an ontology and, by presenting it, to make it happen – make it actual.” Through its processions, royal cremations, and ritual extravaganzas, the 19th Century Balinese court both built and mirrored and a shared understanding of the cosmos and the Balinese people’s various roles within it.
Modern Western state rituals, like public inquiries, such as the UK’s COVID-19 Inquiry, often function in an analogous way.
The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of something which nobody paying attention will have missed. Lacour sums it up in his final paragraph.
Now, perhaps the second report will tackle these questions and open a public conversation about the proper role of models, science, and experts in our politics and our lives. And perhaps, after the first report’s surprising nuance, it is incumbent upon me to remain hopeful. But, dear reader, I am not. Technocracy tends to be ratchet-like and technocratic failure tends to prompt calls for better, brighter technocracy next time. 2020 thrust lockdown into the realm of the possible and, absent a wave of popular scepticism, there is no going back. And, based on this first report, it seems like all we can look forwards to is a future in which better, properly scientific lockdown is our common-sense policy-expectation.
As Lacour says, technocracy does tend to be ratchet-like and the response to failure is more of the same but better and brighter. In people such as Keir Starmer we have a technocrat who is already likely to fit Disraeli’s description of “one who practises the blunders of his predecessors.”
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6 comments:
How hard can this be?
Why don't the government simply get scientists to predict the progress of the most likely epidemics and public health scenarios - they are surely finite in number - and work out the most effective plan for each one?
The military spend all their time doing this. On a small scale, every organisation is familiar with this, and has a series of risk assessments. Even in the small college where I worked we had files on epidemics, strikes, flooding, power outage, etc.
If there was a bit of honest foresight and planning, I could forgive them anything. Life itself seems to be a series of potential disasters, we just have to do our best to avert them.
What the report ought to say.
The SAGEs were there to advise the politicians. The politicians were supposed to be the grown ups in the room, integrating the SAGEs advice into optimal policies. The politicians weren't up to the job; instead they proudly said they were following the science (powerful leadership there). The SAGEs insist that they were mere advisors. So, the blame avoidance machine is working perfectly; no politicians or officials suffered any avoidable harm. No need to change anything.
There's an argument that 'truth', in the sense of repeatable, objective, fact, is rarely to be found and that what we use to determine our actions are useful fictions. Derek Sivers has just released a short book Useful Not True ( https://sive.rs/u ) about it.
I recommend the book but I extend the argument from the individual to the collective. As an individual you could, say, choose whether or not to 'believe' in the truth of Lockdowns - but the gross effect of the State's Lockdown Useful Fiction was to bully most people into compliance with something that wasn't actually 'true'. And once the State adopts a Useful Fiction it takes enormous effort to find (the often contrary) truth.
Sam - as I understand it, they did have a plan, similar to the Swedish approach, but not for this virus. My impression is that government was too averse to that level of responsibility and the experts they leaned on weren't up for it either. Simple incompetence seems to be in there too.
decnine - I agree, the blame avoidance machine worked perfectly. Cowardice and incompetence do seem to have had a major role in it all.
DJ - Spinoza had a concept which he called "adequate ideas" which he thought were by far the most common ideas which reflect some aspect of truth but always have the potential to be improved. It sounds similar to "useful fictions" which is the kind of thing we need to rediscover.
A problem with government and politicians is that they won't allow the reality of uncertainty as a basic factor in almost all public debates, not unless it promotes an already existing agenda.
"they did have a plan, similar to the Swedish approach, but not for this virus"
The virus didn't matter: for all practical purposes the SARS-2 virus and the flu virus might as well be the same thing in the sense that the various policies recommended would have been equally valid for both and the policies adopted were equally stupid for both. The "Swedish approach" was simply lifted straight from the published British strategy of 2011.
dearieme - if the Inquiry were to focus entirely on that decision, who made it, when and why, then it might come up with a lesson for the future, but it's not something I'd put money on.
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