Jakl: people succumb to the delusion that governments are ensembles of specialists in assorted fields

An interview with Ladislav Jakl, an aide to the Czech ex-president Klaus

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Mr Jakl, let us talk about two important events. The first one was October 28th, an anniversary of the 1918 birth of the independent Czechoslovakia when the primary goal should be to remember that event, not just to hand out some awards. How do you view this special day and should the medals have been picked in person, as in previous years? Or is it right that the president has postponed this ritual?

Your question seems to imply that you have embraced the delusion, like a substantial part of the Czech journalists did, that the essential event that takes place at the Prague Castle on every October 28th is the Ceremony of Handing Out the State Awards or something like that. But don't despair: the current president Miloš Zeman has succumbed to the same delusion. So I would like to clarify these matters: the medals aren't the main focus of the holiday event at all. It is the Ceremonial Assembly Marking the National Holiday – the Day of the Republic. Something like the State of the Union address which they have in the U.S. The most important presidential speech in every year. The most important message of the head of the state to his nation. A speech exposing the balance sheet and evaluating the recent 365 days, proposing the president's views about the essential societal problems, his opinions about the main topics that are hot in the country, answers to questions that haven't been posed and a response to the public's worries. A speech where the president tries to capture the vital societal and political trends, expose the international context, attempt to redefine the idea on which the country was built, as shaped by the ongoing civilizational and cultural shifts and movements.

George Musser and the final solution to the black hole information puzzle

George Musser wrote a very informative article to the Quanta Magazine,

The Most Famous Paradox in Physics Nears Its End

which discusses several recent papers about "why and how the information gets out of the evaporating black hole", starting with the already well-known February 2020 paper by Marolf and Maxfield. When Hawking admitted that he had lost the bet and the information was preserved, he also offered a solution that no one considered kosher. That solution included some new, topologically distinct, configurations that contribute to the path integral and where the black hole is basically absent. The information doesn't stay confined inside the black hole forever because in the most relevant histories, the black hole doesn't really exist, he confusingly argued.

A new minister, a new hope

Fer137 recommended us a very nice article on lockdownism, a new totalitarian ideology (or religion) that is spreading like fire. It is an extreme form of germophobia that tries to pretend it is healthy instead of a pathology (which is what germophobia has been for centuries – and I say it as a former child germophobe although probably a lite version of Sheldon Cooper). It envisions an ideal world where people never meet let alone touch each other.

If you want to read a text demonstrating lockdownism at the intelligence level of a 2-year-old communist, check Tommaso Dorigo, a CERN physicist (!). Summary: All of us share commodities and fuel tanks because we live in an advanced communist society. Everyone can infect someone else which is an exponentially growing process. An exponentially growing process is infinite, an infinite amount of harm is being done, and that's why going outside is at least on par with shooting tons of people with a Kalashnikov. It follows that everyone is obliged to show the huge courage by staying home! I kid you not. I just can't believe Tommaso is serious because this is so incredibly stupid. I haven't ever met a baby who was actually this stupid.

(OK, Tommaso: the exponential profile doesn't last indefinitely and doesn't go to infinity. The rate of increases always naturally slows down. The total damages end up at shortening the average life by 0.5-2.5 days which is compensated by 5-25 days of the natural increase of the life expectancy which adds a year to the average life in every decade. And that shortening must be compared to the huge costs of the restrictions which are clearly larger, like 10% of the GDP or more in each quarter with these policies, plus the loss of freedom, culture, education of kids, and comfort. On top of that, the infection is largely unavoidable and an infection of Y by X may be a good thing because X usually makes Y immune – and capable of abandoning fear. It is BS that the infection is always a negative thing, too. Only clueless parasites in the ivory tower can afford moronic fairy-tales about the "moral justification of staying at home". Someone else must be working for clueless egotist Bolshevik parasites like you to survive, Tommaso.)

OK, the almost universally hated Czech minister of health, Prof Colonel Roman Prymula 007, a former apparent officer of the communist secret police, was finally replaced today, a day after he managed to receive the Order of the White Lion, Czechia's most valuable official award (despite his terrible results: in five weeks, he increased the Covid activity in the country by a factor of 15 and destroyed 50% of several industries, too). Note that the double-tailed white lion has been Bohemia's coats-of-arms since 1247.

Klaus: Let us not allow fear to take over our lives

Remarks of the 2nd Czech President commemorating the 102th anniversary of the birth of Czechoslovakia

One-hundred and two years ago, a free and democratic country was declared in this very building whose heir is the current Czech Republic. This anniversary used to be celebrated in a dignified manner, with a respect and humbleness towards the achivements of that bygona era, and with a confidence and faith in the future. Today, it isn't the case.



Pics (5), pics (31), iDNES, users' comments

The founding fathers of our republic didn't succumb to fear in the difficult wartime circumstances and they were capable of turning their intents into reality. Let us follow their example. Let us not allow ourselves to be paralyzed by fear that is being intentionally spread. It is only up to us whether we will be defeated by that fear.

Covid-19 shortened the average Swedish life by 2 days (over six)

In 2020, Sweden became a remarkable country because unlike pretty much all Western white nations, it responded correctly to a new variant of a flu-like virus: it imposed virtually no ad hoc (Covid-only) mandatory nationwide restrictions. People were encouraged to be careful and improve their hygiene; some vulnerable people were increasingly protected in special facilities. Public health officials were monitoring the situation and dealing with local events. In June, Sweden just allowed a far higher number of "cases" than the rest of Europe where the spring waves were artificially suppressed, "flattened", or prevented.

But all schools remained open at all times, no regular people were ever required to wear face masks anywhere, restaurants remained open, the border remained in both directions open most of the time, and so on. Some mass events were banned, however. The business in restaurants was lowered because of the people's individual decisions (a nice aspect of that is that the people who could gain by isolating themselves were more likely to isolate themselves – and they know about the need more than the government does). By doing the right thing, Sweden helped not only itself. It has also served mankind as a wonderful laboratory showing what Covid-19 actually is and what it isn't. Sweden has provided mankind with a wonderful template to follow – which no other government seems to be explicitly following even now when it is 100% clear that the Swedish approach was right and the opposite countries' decisions were the gravest mistakes in the world history.

It's been 94 days since Sweden reduced COVID-19 deaths to near zero without lockdowns or mask mandates. pic.twitter.com/MWuVEVOh6O

— James Todaro, MD (@JamesTodaroMD) October 27, 2020

The tweet above contains a graph from the lower right corner of the Swedish Covid-19 statistics page. The word "avlidna" means deaths, that's what you need to know. Well, while the peak of the deaths with Covid was 115 in Sweden (reached twice, on April 8th and 15th) which is already fewer than the Czech Near-Lockdown Republic's record (139 on Monday), the deaths with Covid-19 became infinitesimal over 3 months ago. Even though daily positive tests reached 1870 five days ago, the deaths safely seem to be in the 1-4 range or fewer. In the cooling weather, \(R_0\) is increasing and so is the fraction required for herd immunity but this will only cause a very slow "burning".

Does a unitary black hole evolution imply the absence of global symmetries?

I won't write a full-blown blog post because the benefits don't surpass the costs in this world increasingly dominated by morons but I will mention that a nice paper

Global symmetry, Euclidean gravity, and the black hole information problem

was written by Daniel Harlow (yes, that one) and Edgar Shaghoulian a week ago. It was dedicated to Leonard Susskind for his 80th birthday. Congratulations, too.

May America vote to ban fossil fuels?

In the last debate, Donald Trump was presidential, wise, and kind, the same Trump who brought Kevin back to his mother. Under normal circumstances, Trump and Biden would be two relatively close, standard, centrist politicians. Even Biden's corruption is somewhat widespread; and so is his attraction to younger girls. Do you know what is the name of the sexual deviation that makes a man attracted to 17-year-old girls, for example? It's called heterosexuality.

Y'all...

Please listen to the man when he PROMISES you he's going to BAN fracking.pic.twitter.com/Fuksc0cKxj

— J. Hogan Gidley (@JHoganGidley) October 23, 2020

But we are not living in the old-fashioned times anymore. Joe Biden relies and must rely on the grassroot support and the Democratic Party is basically run by the most extreme and unhinged leftists that the planet has seen for a long time, perhaps ever. So he is constantly switching from being a sensible mainstream candidate to being a would-be darling of these far left loons. It's a difficult game. Also, if this puppet were elected, those that made him elected will demand his suicide for greater good so that he may be replaced with a more radical politician, one from a more privileged group. And she would soon be replaced by an even more progressive one, and so on.

The distilled arrogance of power

And its personification, the lame duck Czech minister of health

The Slovak prime minister is a true believer. He seems to genuinely believe that his mission is to shut down Slovakia and to strip all Slovaks of their basic civil rights because of this "terrifying" disease. Well, as you may expect for Czechs in general, his counterpart, the "October minister" of health Roman Prymula, doesn't really believe anything and he's way more rational and pragmatic. He views his job of being the "master of the lockdown" as a great method to gain power and money. This apparent former colonel of the communist secret police is also selling face masks through a company he controls. He has an impressive Elo rating in chess.



The Last Supper. Click for more gold by TMBK

Fine, so Roman Prymula, the main (and perhaps only) "epidemiology expert" in Czechia who agrees with the Coronazis was appointed as the new minister on September 21st, succeeding Adam "Ken" Vojtěch, the handsome singer from the Czech American Idol. He immediately started to tighten the screws up to the "almost lockdown" that began yesterday. Such policies don't work and he doesn't really know how to do things that work so the Covid activity in the country increased by more than one order of magnitude during those 32 days. But it was a personal mistake that apparently removed him.

Slovakia becomes a regional leader in the Coronazi insanity

OK, so Czechia is going through a real Covid epidemic for the first time (the country surely has the highest number of cases per million people, having finally surpassed Andorra LOL), districts around my hometown of Pilsen are among the top 10 most active ones while the 3 larger (and largest) cities, Prague, Brno, and Ostrava, clearly see a significantly lower activity. They have already gained enough immunity of the people so that the rate of the acceleration has dropped. The previous minister of health Mr Adam Vojtěch resigned on September 21st when there were 1400 positive tests a day (and this number stayed almost constant for another week). His successor, Col Roman Prymula who couldn't get the paperwork confirming that he wasn't a colonel of the communist secret police (but no one seems to care), started to immediately tighten the screws. The result is the increase from 1400 to 15,000 a day. Such policies almost never work but the more they fail to work, the more the insane people escalate them.

As the world media write about the (non-existent) Armageddon in Czechia, our "allies" are giving us gifts to save the last lives that can be saved, like 12 mechanical ventillators from the EU or 28 doctors from the U.S. Thanks, it's funny. Czechia doesn't need either and if it needed anything, these tiny "gifts" wouldn't make a difference. My homeland still has some 1,000 spare ICU beds (also because some were added), 55,000 doctors (notice that the number is "slightly" greater than 28) are ready to deal with the patients (and indeed, Covid patients are the easy ones so non-infection specialists may do this job and are sometimes doing this job, too). 4,700 people are in hospitals but 40% of them have no symptoms whatsoever (no one wants to be with them, however), serious cases surpased 700. The capacities are large and medical students are used as doctors, too (sometimes even without compensation which is crazy). But the "gifts" create a great impression of a crisis which is great for harming the image of Czechia, for increasing fear, and for making the Coronazis stronger. These "gifts" are stupid gestures but their main consequence is the reduced sovereignty of the Czech Republic.

Optimistic cubic fits for log Covid hospitalizations

If you're worried about you and SARS-CoV-2, simply use a mouthwash (as simple as Listerine) for 30 seconds. It will inactivate over 99.9% of the viruses, a Penn State paper showed. A summary is here. Note that it is a good idea to do an experiment whenever Donald Trump invents a potentially great idea such as the drinking of bleach!



Sorry, sufferers from the Trump Derangement Syndrome but the Donald was basically and preciously right on this one, too.

OK, now when America was made great again and Covid-19 has been turned into a purely academic problem, let me show you a simple interpolation that makes some sense as a method to forecast numbers that tend to exponentially grow or decay. An infectious disease has the precise exponential growth and/or the precise exponential decrease as the most typical behavior, a zeroth-order approximation. On top of that, the exponential speedup is universally slowing down, the doubling times are getting lower, before the growth switches to a decrease. This optimistic evolution is unavoidable because every dramatically growing disease – whose graph resembles the Tesla stock or any other Ponzi scheme – is ultimately running out of victims, just like the Ponzi schemes do.

Here is a simple example of a cubic fit you may play with.

Michael Levitt disinivited from a conference building on his breakthroughs

The Coronazi terror respects nobody

Michael Levitt (now at Stanford) was born to a Jewish family in South Africa in 1947. His father came from Lithuania; his mother has lived in my Czech homeland. And I tend to think that the influence of the parents' geography on his thinking was nonzero although it is much smaller than the influence of the genes.

In 1968-1972, he was a PhD student in the British Cambridge. Not too many people were coding at that time but he already wrote an essential program to investigate molecular conformations. These are changes to molecules that may be obtained by rotating two parts of a molecule – which are connected by a single bond – around the axis of the bond, in your left and right hand.

The Old Town Square primarily saw a civil protest against the government

A commentary by Mr Ivo Strejček and a collective from the [Czech ex-president] Václav Klaus Institute



The Sunday October 18th 2020 demonstration at the Prague's Old Town Square was a civil protest against the government's anti-coronavirus policies. Most participants were regular citizens of various ages and occupations that represented groups across the whole society. The meeting didn't depend on any internationalist professional troublemakers who are recently making up a significant fraction of all Old Town Square demonstrations.

May WHO studies be trusted?

The Director-General of the World Health Organization is Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, a veteran of the Ethiopian Marxist-Leninist League of Tigrai and a supporter of (the Chinese communists, obviously, but also) the dictator Robert Mugabe who "provided health care to all". I was rather persuaded by some videos claiming that he belongs to the Hague.

One man is not the only problem. The whole organization seems to have a truly radical left-wing flavor and there have been good reasons to think that China has a disproportionate influence on the organization. I think it was a great decision for the U.S. to withdraw. The Covid events have unmasked the useless or corrupt character of this organization. The WHO has been wrong about pretty much everything: it said that Covid couldn't be transmitted from a human to another human, face masks didn't change anything, borders shoudn't be closed, it has made a U-turn on all important drugs, and even on the desirability of the lockdown. And I don't need to mention all the wildly ludicrously overstated WHO projections of the numbers of fatalities etc.

The mistaken tolerance of a gigantic debt

By Czechia's 2nd president Václav Klaus



The classic economics textbook view says – and it has been accepted for centuries – that the government's budget deficit is evil and irresponsible. It's also true that the larger the deficit is, the more evil it becomes. This is where an economist may stop and perhaps admit that exceptions such as wars may exist. But we need to remember that wars typically cause a complete financial havoc and tend to produce high inflation rates that are ruining the financial systems. In many cases, a political and societal breakdown follows, too.

Democratic Party voters already mentally live in a new Stalinist regime

I was intrigued by the unbelievable corruption in Joe Biden's family and especially shocked by the extreme left-wing Internet companies' efforts to censor the news and interfere with the U.S. presidential elections that are just 18 days away. It is my belief that these companies should be nationalized and the people responsible for the interference should be sent to jail for many, many years.

Hunter Biden was born in 1970 and he is dumb as a doorknob. But his father became a U.S. Senator in 1973 and Hunter enjoyed the treatment of a spoiled brat from a corrupt family of a (mostly left-wing) politician. Of course that the Senator's son must be admitted to a high school. Or even a college. A law school! Meanwhile, it is still the same Hunter Biden. So of course he becomes a drug addict with zero skills, no talent, and no desire to work and sells the only thing he can offer. "I am a beloved son of a powerful U.S. politician, so pay me for the contacts." Ukrainian folks only paid tens of thousands while the disappeared Chinese Big Energy entrepreneur was negotiating $10 million for Hunter Biden every year (for 3 years), just for the "introductions". This man is my father Joseph, also known as Joe. Ten millon! ;-)

A fun calculation of the maximum speed of sound

Let us spend some time by temporarily abandoning fears that Trump won't decisively beat the loons and domestic terrorists on November 3rd, and from our peaking Covid-19 infection in Czechia (which is almost reaching the level of epidemics in the first district, so for the first time, I have at least a "moderate" understanding for the online schools and some other changes, hopefully a very short-lived policy; I think it's great that Czechia avoided excessive preventive policies and only regulates the virus when it's arguably defensible). I could write lots of stuff about various news reported on my Twitter account but at the end, I think that most of these topics aren't deep enough to deserve a full-blown, extensive, penetrating TRF blog post. Or I am rather exhausted by the news about insanity from so many directions that is overwhelming us.

Willie sent me a fun article that just appeared Science Advances,

Speed of sound from fundamental physical constants

by Trachenko et al. The preprint is from April 2020 but I obviously don't systematically follow all cond-mat preprints.

We're not at war, we don't need draconian restrictions

Statement by the Václav Klaus Institute, October 13th



1. The evolution of the coronavirus epidemic mustn't be underestimated and we are not underestimating it, either. We are seeing the numbers supplied by the government but we see them a bit differently than Mr Hamáček [Czech minister of interior and leader of social democrats], Prymula [minister of health], and similar men. The interpretation of these numbers mustn't be left to the physicians; statisticians (experts in time series) must speak about them. And the conclusions must be made by politicians. We are – in harmony with a spectrum of leading Czech immunologists – convinced that Covid-19 is only threatening those who are already seriously ill. On top of that, we emphasize once again that the people with a positive test are infected, not necessarily ill.

Remdesivir, a target for loons, pseudoscientists, and conspiracy theorists

At this moment, Czechia is by far the most Covid-active country in the world, a fact that is caused by Czechs' not being afraid of this disease now, despite the efforts of the prime minister, minister of health, and a few others who would like to reignite the fear. We still had concerts, ice-hockey matches with thousands of fans etc. last night, the life is continuing normally. Culture, sports, and fun will be banned for two weeks from next Monday; after the totally free July and August, we basically added another month of almost complete freedom in which it was already clear that the disease was quickly growing.

It's nothing pleasant. This infection beating rates of positive tests that were seen anywhere in the world, ever, brings us first tangible negative stories. We know the first people around us who suffer from Covid and/or whose relatives and friends are not only positive but may be at risk; whose girlfriends lost their smell, and so on. We're afraid of the outcomes of their struggles.

With 8617 new cases on Friday, Czechia became #8 Covid-active country in the world in absolute numbers https://t.co/dinWCryDpr after India 73k, US 61k, Brazil 28k, France 20k, Argentina 15k, UK 14k, and Russia 12k (and by far #1 country per capita).

— Luboš Motl (@lumidek) October 10, 2020

Being the #8 power in the world (in absolute numbers; relatively, it's some 800 new cases per million inhabitants and per day) gives the Czech doctors some extra right to claim that they're experts. With those 8600 cases a day, we're still getting just some ~25-30 deaths a day in average in recent days.

President's illness and the sick America

By Alexander Tomský, a Czech publicist who has been a political scientist in the UK for many years

It is probably the first time since the Civil War when democracy in America finds itself at existential risk. The progressives have been controlling the Democratic Party for quite some time, much like the humanities at the universities, almost all media, and the large corporations. Building on their utopian demand for social justice, they are attacking the capitalist economic inequality, the "institutionalized" racial discrimination, the traditional family, as well as the churches and they are undermining the legitimacy of the foundational 1789 American Constitution.

Penrose, Genzel+Ghez share the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics

It's all about the black hole existence now, stupid

Roger Penrose has done a lot in mathematical and theoretical physics – and in the popularization of these fields (popular books etc.). Twistors and Penrose tilings (2D quasicrystals) are two very serious examples, I wrote a lot about both (including a proof of the completeness of the tiling, plus some code drawing them; the 5D definition was included in my and Zahradník's textbok on linear algebra, I am pretty sure that it's the only such an undergraduate linear algebra textbook in the world LOL). Quasicrystals could have deserved a Nobel Prize by themselves because they are far more "empirical" than most people think. Don't forget the Cosmic Censorship Conjecture, wildly inspiring, partly wrong (in the strong sense), but probably right in a weak sense and equivalent to the Weak Gravity Conjecture. Then the Penrose stairs and the Penrose triangle and the annoying beatle notation for tensors etc. ;-)

Of course, while many of his great ideas (like those in the previous sentence) are closer to recreational mathematics and/or non-empirical mathematical physics, many of these contributions have greatly influenced the adult physics world.

One-half of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Roger Penrose for the proof that black holes are really predicted to emerge almost everywhere, e.g. after the collapse of the heavy enough stars.

Specialization is sometimes wildly underestimated, often wildly overestimated

In the media, real experts are sometimes diluted by tons of non-experts; in other cases, most of the relevant experts are being censored and replaced by a tiny, politically convenient subgroup

I have wanted to make this simple yet important point for a long time. The media and the public err in both ways and hugely so. In some cases, especially in fields like theoretical physics, the media (and the part of the public that is brainwashed by the media) seem to think that the expertise doesn't matter and the opinions of a much broader spectrum of "pundits" are equally credible, to say the least.

When it comes to the research into quantum gravity and the unification of forces, some O(1000) people in the world are currently professionally involved with the research and competent at the same moment; about O(10,000) may be expected to have informed opinions about many questions. It's just a hard field that requires a very high intelligence as well as decades (time) to build a pyramid of knowledge that depends on the lower stories of the pyramid. However, this is also a field that is presented as something that is "collectively built" by millions of talking heads and the opinions of tons of talking heads – who clearly don't belong to the group of actual experts (e.g. just some media-savvy pseudoscientists or scientists who did their good research 50 years ago) – are being constantly sold by the media as if they were the "real science".

Trump's approach to his Covid condition is exactly right

OK, Donald Trump and his wife got their positive test some two days ago. At some level, it was almost unavoidable that a man who is exposed to so many other people would get infected, soon or later, and his history of "protection against the virus" may be said to be futile by now! ;-) Fine, he contracted it (unless it is a giant theater). He could have locked himself at the top of the White House but he decided to go on the offensive – by picking an army hospital he considers great.

pic.twitter.com/gvIPuYtTZG

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 3, 2020

You can see he is doing very well, speaking carefully, as a loving leader of the whole world, not just the U.S., and praising the drugs he is receiving: Regeneron's REGN-COV2 (8 grams, already on Saturday) and Gilead Sciences' Remdesivir (see recommended doses). I first promoted the latter on March 3rd; it is still not quite approved in the U.S. which is rather incredible after those 7-8 months of hysteria, given the clear evidence that it helps.

Mid-wits? What is the average IQ of the visible political opportunists?

And what are the actual causal relationships between the IQ, the immoral behavior, and the rise of the unhinged neo-Marxists?

Ganzrationaler Testudinadler asked me what I thought about the August 2020, 34-minute-long monologue by Edward Dutton,

The Psychology and Rise of the Mid-Wit

He argues, somewhat repetitively, that (currently) the neo-Marxist ideology is spreading due to the rise of the mid-wits, people whose IQ is about 120 in average which is just right for determining what the "dominant" ideology is, for figuring out that it's good for their material well-being to embrace it, and for embracing it. A higher IQ that is needed for meaningful scientific research is 130 or above, geniuses are 150 etc., and those typically have a higher interest in the truth regardless of its proliferation in the society.