The 31st Block: A calculated risk
Vaccines, renewable energy, and cooking share something in common.
Close enough is sometimes good enough
Earlier this week, I shared online about my sleepless nights, troubled by the thought of moving to a faraway land soon where I will probably need to relearn how to cook intuitively. I wrote:
“All my sleepless nights lately have been about whether I will still be able to spontaneously cook food I enjoy cooking, whether my favourite brand of coffee or soy milk or soy sauce will be available, if I should have written down recipes instead of deciding what to cook based on what I see at the grocery stores and putting them together in a pan without much of a plan. Will I still get that impromptu spark of inspiration along unfamiliar aisles? Or do I have to follow a recipe closely and make a grocery list every time? Last night I woke up to furiously write an essay about our obsession with measurements. A cup of this, a spoonful of that, an ounce of the other for this many minutes at this particular temperature. I've never been so pressed about the thought of meticulous food preparation before.”
Some comments were reassuring, but others make me wonder how helpful is the label “Asian,” or is it meaningless if I don’t identify with the “Asian food” available in the “Asian grocery store” in the West because my kind of Asian food is a different kind of Asian food? In any case, that is an essay for another day; for now, here’s the essay I referenced in the preceding paragraph:
When we truly understand numbers and measurements, only then can we truly appreciate being set free from its parameters.
They say to develop a sense of the scale of numbers, consider that a million seconds is 11.5 days, but a billion seconds is 31.5 years. But let’s also consider that a minute isn’t 100 or 1,000 seconds, it’s 60. And an hour isn’t 100 or 1,000 minutes either, it’s 60. But a day isn’t 60 hours, it’s 24. Yet a week isn’t 24 or 60 days, it’s 7. And a month… Well, you get my point.
Whether we use the Imperial system or the metric system, whether it’s base 10 or base 60, we’re obsessed with counting and measuring – the time, the temperature, our height, our weight, our waist circumference, our age, our wealth, our wage.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a man* of science. Accurate calculations have helped us send people to space and erect skyscrapers and bake space cakes. But sometimes 10 cm to me is just the length of my index finger and a foot is the length of my forearm and that baggage is not overweight, it’s lighter than my warmup weights, you’ll be just fine at the check-in counter.
And I know it’s not precise – but close enough is sometimes good enough. Cooking can be an exact science but it can also be carefree without insulting the craft.
Math is often placed at the top of the hierarchy of sciences. But at its highest level, math is more of a philosophy. Lockhart even lamented that it is an art. In fact, in advanced math, you’ll often only encounter five numbers: 0, 1, e, i, and π. Sometimes it’s there (1), sometimes it’s not (0), sometimes it’s imaginary (i), and sometimes it’s limiting (e); and in the most irrational way it circles us (π) right back to the start: “When we truly understand numbers and measurements, only then can we truly appreciate being set free from its parameters.”
*I, in fact, identify as a woman, and my pronouns are she/her/hers. I don’t know why in my state of stupor, I called myself a man.
It’s okay to have questions about a COVID-19 vaccine. Here’s what to ask ($)
Tara Haelle for Elemental:
One of the challenges of making decisions based on scientific evidence is that the evidence is never complete — but you still have to make a decision.
“You never eliminate uncertainty, you just reduce it,” [Paul] Offit says. “So, when people ask the question, ‘Is it absolutely safe?’ No, nothing is absolutely safe.”
For example, it’s impossible to have data on long-term side effects from a brand-new vaccine. No vaccines licensed in the United States have ever shown long-term effects that weren’t discovered during clinical trials or within a year after licensure, but it’s still not possible to guarantee that will never happen.
“It’s never a matter of when you know everything, because you never know everything,” Offit says. “The question is when do you know enough? With the information we have now, do the benefits outweigh the risks?”
If you run out of complimentary reads on Medium, the appropriate questions to ask are:
Did the vaccine successfully go through all appropriate regulatory channels?
What was found during the clinical trials?
Where do you find the data?
How large were the trials?
Who was in the trials?
How effective is the vaccine?
What are the side effects?
What systems are in place to find side effects after approval?
How should I interpret the trial results as a layperson?
Why is trust in news eroding and what might be done about it?
New publication by the Reuters Institute by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen et al. on the perspectives on trust in news. Among the key findings condensed in a Twitter thread:
What is known about trust in news:
There is no single ‘trust in news’ problem.
Public understanding of how journalism works is low. Social media isn’t helping.
Some distrust may be rooted in coverage that has chronically stigmatised or ignored segments of the public.
Assessments of trust and distrust are deeply intertwined with politics.
What is not known about trust in news:
How are platforms damaging to news organisations’ brand identities?
Which audience engagement strategies build trust and which may undermine it?
How much is too much transparency and what types matter most?
Where do preconceptions about news come from? How can they be changed?
What I read, watch and listen to…
I’m reading Clio Chang’s article on CJR about whether Substack – the very platform that enables this newsletter to reach your inbox each week – created a more equitable media system, or replicate the flaws of the old one.
I’m watching this hilarious skit by Stevie Martin:
I’m listening to Christine and Ben of Simplynailogical discuss copyright and trademark infringement issues within the influencer market:
Chart of the week
From Max Roser for Our World in Data: Why did renewables become so cheap so fast? Visually plotted, it looks quite incredible. Find out how it happened.