But it is neither useful or journalism

A very interesting experience.  Yesterday I saw some tweet from James Surowiecki with a patently weak eveditary base leading to an illogical conclusion.   Surowiecki is one of those glib journalists with sufficient academic credentials to allow himself to think he is much smarter than most.  And then, like much of the Mandarin Class, he demonstrates to most that he is one of those epistemically closed intellectuals who isn't all that smart.  Or at least, more verbally dexterous than usefully intelligent.

I saw his tweet and thought to comment on it but then focused on something else entirely and lost track of it.  Going back today to find the offending tweet, thinking it would standout in his timeline, I discover that there are so many candidates that it is hard to distinguish which one was the more offending to logic, evidence and reason.

I think it was this one.

This is what's so often forgotten, or ignored, when people criticize vaccine mandates: because they work to get people vaccinated, they save lives. It's still fine to oppose them as too intrusive, but doing is saying it's better for ppl to die than to have to get vaxxed.

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) October 2, 2021

This is just ignorant propaganda masked as reasonableness.  It is hard to believe that Surowiecki has been paying attention to the perplexing data from the US, Israel, Scandinavia, etc. and yet is able to advance this assertion.

The fundamental weakness is that the average is not the individual.  I agree that the vaccines have been on average a benefit to most people.  However, they were marketed as a permanent solution and they are not, as we are seeing with all the breakthrough numbers in vaccine saturated populations.  But that is just a communication issue.  Vaxxers promised X and they failed to deliver X.  The vaccination might still be net beneficial.

Everyone, whether with natural immunity, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, is susceptible to further infection and death.  

Surowiecki's failing, though, is to not acknowledge that the data is sufficiently unclear that just about any interpretation can be supported.  Most importantly, it is overwhelmingly obvious that it is untrue that the vaccine hesitant believe it better for people to die than to have to get vaccinated.  That is a manufactured imputation based, it would seem, on a deliberate and malicious misinterpretation.

Between 50-100 million Americans have already had Covid-19.  As the studies come in, they are almost uniformly consistent that prior infection provides better inoculation to future infection than do the vaccines themselves.  For those 50-100 million to interpret the data to mean that they have no need for vaccination is perfectly reasonable.  They do not have to believe that "it's better for ppl to die than to have to get vaxxed."  They have better immunity than the vaxxed.  

Their equation would be something like - risk of future infection (the previously infected have the lowest risk) versus the risks associated with an experimental and novel vaccine (minuscule as they might be.)

Contra Surowiecki's glib assertion, these people do not at all have to assume that it is better for people to die than to have to get vaccinated.  The evidence is on their side and not on Surowiecki's.  Surowiecki comes across as an empty-headed propagandist.  

But in looking among his other glib tweets, there is the even more egregious (and there were many to choose from):

I keep reading people talking about stocks selling off, but every time I've looked over the past 3 months, the S&P has been between 4300 and 4450.

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) October 2, 2021

Again, is this ignorance of variability or is it deliberate misdirection?

People can perfectly reasonably expect that there will be a sell off.  Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that the forecast is unreasonable.  

In addition, the stock market has inherent variability, up one day and down the next.   If I check the stock market ten times in a three month window, it will be within some window of variability, in this instance, between 4300 and 4450.  That tells me little to nothing of its inherent variability.

The stock market is open 9:30am to 4:00pm, six and a half hours, five days a week.  That is 390 hours the stock market is open during that three month window.  23,400 minutes.  If it takes you a minute to check and you check ten times in the three months, then your sample size of 10/23,400 is vanishingly small and unlikely to be representative.  

The real issue is that there is nothing inherently improbable that there will be a stock market correction in the nearer term.  It is a widely held forecast.  Whether it is three months, six months or a year, is debated.  People are debating when it will happen, not if.

Surowiecki seems to be taking the position that past performance must be predictive of the future.  In contrast, the whole commercial world operates, even in stable times, with the mantra that "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."  What the stock market has done in the past three months provides no basis on its own as to what will happen in the next three months.

Since Surowiecki has been reporting on the financial sector since 1995, it is impossible to believe that he does not know that just because "every time I've looked over the past 3 months, the S&P has been between 4300 and 4450" has no bearing on what the market will do tomorrow.

So deliberate misdirection?  Inattention to what he is tweeting?  Momentary confusion?  An overpowering urge to score a point?  Who knows?

But it is neither useful nor journalism.