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The Zeitgeist
Don’t Test, Don’t Tell
The CDC’s Don’t Test, Don’t Tell policy came crashing down last night. So did Trump’s “buh, buh the flu” and “Yay, Containment!” narratives.
Now let’s get to work preparing for the fight to come.
Not in panic. Not in fear. But with resolve, sacrifice and righteous anger for those who would use us instrumentally for their own political ends.
Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can’t lose.
The Fall of Wuhan
Containment has failed.
And so now we must fight.
That means doing everything possible to bolster our healthcare systems BEFORE the need overwhelms the capacity.
That means calling out our leaders for their corrupt political responses to date, and forcing them through our outcry to adopt an effective virus-fighting policy for OUR benefit, not theirs.
ET In Full
The Industrially Necessary Doctor Tedros
To date, WHO leadership has simply been part of the Chinese narrative machine.
It’s more than a disgrace. It’s more than a humiliation of the people who do good and important work through WHO.
It’s a betrayal of the entire world.
Body Count
China is fighting nCov2019 exactly like the US fought North Vietnam … with policy driven more by narrative control than by what’s best to win the war.
That was a disastrous strategic mistake for the US then, and it’s a disastrous strategic mistake for China today.
We Hanged Our Harps Upon the Willows
Because the danger of powerful memes, cartoons and narratives is not that they demand our acquiesence. It is that they demand our participation.
Stuck in the Middle With You
There is a median narrative theorem that can serve as a central pillar of a NEW approach to social choice theory, an approach less pedantic in its assumptions about human nature and less naive in its assumptions about modes of social power.
The median narrative theorem generates powerful predictive hypotheses about elections, hypotheses that predicted Trump’s Republican primary victory in 2016 and – if current data holds – predicts Sanders’ Democratic primary victory in 2020.
The Curious Case of Candidate Sanders
Everyone complains that their favorite candidate isn’t being treated fairly in the media. It’s the Bernie Bros’ turn…but are they right?
A New Road to Serfdom
There are many roads to serfdom, and they have all become faster and more perilous. We are walking down one of them now.
Archive Spotlight
Too Clever By Half
The inevitable result of financial innovation gone awry, which it ALWAYS does, is that it ALWAYS ends up empowering the State. When too clever by half people misplay the meta-game, that’s all the excuse the State needs to come swooping in and crush them, just as they are with Bitcoin today they did with Bear and Lehman in 2008. Installment #10 from Notes from the Field.
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ET Live!
ET Live! – 2.18.2020
This ET Live! is all about Coronavirus, except it’s not – it’s all about how institutions who solve for narrative outcomes invariably create bad results in the Real World.
ET Live! – 11.19.2019
It’s the November 19th, 2019 edition of Epsilon Theory Live! Be sure to join Ben and Rusty for a discussion of all things narrative in the world of politics and markets.