Todd's Mischief Blog

Public policy is only as good as public compliance. I suspect govts have recommended about twice as much as what needs to be done because they expect people will do about half of what they are told to do. Do I think this is good policy? Absolutely not! It undermines long-term trust for short-term results. I also think it has resulted in a caution-spiral. But it does mean that you can relax a bit when people around you don't follow the rules to the letter. This bungled policy approach has led us to a strange place where officials are urging the public to get a vaccine that they (the officials) say is ineffective. But the public doesn't dare repeat what officials say about the vaccine. That would be anti-vax conspiracy stuff.

Good convo in the DMs. Want to preserve the highlights. (My fellow conversant wishes to remain anon.) (ongoing, check back for updates) There is a lot of psychology behind masks, much of which hasn’t been thought through. The people in charge do not know what they are playing with. Getting people to wear masks is an easy psychological trick. We inherently crave security/safety. As long as we can obsess over the Masks, we feel a certain amount of control over this coronavirus, even though it is largely out of our control. However, there are side effects: (1) Masks disassociate people from themselves . This is ancient knowledge. Mask wearing as a part of ritual goes as far back as recorded history. The mask wearer put one on in order to become the thing represented by the mask. We still have an annual mask ritual today, Halloween. And we still wear masks for the same reason: To Become Someone Else. This isn't exactly something we have a choice in. Though I think ancients were more so...

(A riff on an old graphic design meme.)