Seven-Day Week: Fiction, Complexity & Covid-19

You know what’s spooky? The seven-day week! Way spookier than the Bunyip. I’ll return to the Bunyip, but for now just look at this bar graph:

What do you see? The grey bars show the total number of Covid-19 tests performed each day over the past five months in the state of New South Wales, Australia, until some time late in the afternoon on Saturday, 5th September 2020, when I took the above screenshot.

See how those grey bars have peaks and troughs? Count how long each peak-trough cycle takes. It varies a bit, sometimes six, sometimes eight, but what’s the average? Do you get seven, coz that’s what I get? Those peak-trough cycles — that’s the seven-day week staring right at you!

The seven-day week does not exist

Why is this spooky? Because the seven-day week does not actually exist! We invented it. We all pretend it exists, but it doesn’t really. And yet those bar graphs are testimony to its powerful effects! For something that doesn’t exist, the seven-day week has some seriously bad-ass causal powers!

How powerful is this imaginary entity? Well, here’s one example. 10,806 tests were performed on Monday, 17th August 2020. But by Friday, 21st August 2020, a whopping 32,580 tests were done. That’s over three times as many tests on a Friday than on a Monday.

What could be spookier than that? Even the placebo effect pales by comparison with the seven-day week! Something we imagined, but which does not really exist – at least not in the same way as buildings, roads, plats, animals, viruses, etc – has empirically measurable causal powers. Strewth!

More spooky evidence

In case you’re wondering if this is just something peculiar to New South Wales, then glance at the total number of tests, diagnoses, and deaths in Australia as a whole. Go on, scroll back up, click the link below the graph, and see for yourself. Count each peak-trough cycle, and you’ll get the same magic number. Behold, the seven-day week.

Here’s two more awful bar graphs with terrifying daily infection and death numbers — this time, for our entire planet:

See those familiar peaks-and-troughs? Do you know what they tell us? Death and Infection, just like everyone else, work to a seven-day roster!

Causal features of weekdays

The specific causal properties of different weekdays are evidently quite diverse. Consider the daily number of tests, infections, and deaths during the indicated period in August 2020:

Two notable features emerge. Firstly, the precise day of the week makes way more difference to tests (up to three times more) than to deaths (around 55% more) or to infections (only 35% more). Secondly, while Mondays are clearly the slowest days for all three – note the bolded numbers in the top row – the busiest day is not the same. Test has roaring trade on Saturdays, whereas Infection and Death have most transactions and close the most deals on Wednesdays!

To be up-front, I must confess to some glaring limitations of my analysis. For one thing, I haven’t poured over all of the data exhaustively. For another, I have not employed sophisticated data analysis techniques — usually, when I need that kind of rigour, I beg and plead until one of my psychology colleagues agrees to help me out with the stats. Also, there’s a sense in which I’m comparing pears and oranges — the numbers in the Tests column are for the state of New South Wales in Australia, whereas the numbers in the Infections and Deaths columns are for the entire world. Finally, why did I pluck out that particular week, rather than another week, and wouldn’t it be better to see what patterns emerge if we studied all weeks?

Yes, it would. I’d love to address those limitations, but please don’t judge me too harshly? I really tried. I searched for ages, but just couldn’t figure out how to extract the total Test numbers for the entire world from those different databases. Maybe my Google-foo is weak, or maybe I just didn’t look in the right place – who knows – but if you can help out with those figures, or any of the other limitations, then please shoot me an email. ☺️

However, even if those limitations were addressed, I’m pretty sure that the case I’m arguing would not be weakened, and it may even be strengthened. For instance, if we got the data for the number of tests in the entire world (rather than just in New South Wales), if this data showed that test, infection, and death numbers are all lowest on Mondays and all highest on Wednesdays, that would entail that the seven-day week is even more (not less) spookily powerful! On the other hand, if the data showed some other pattern for the “Test” column, this would still be consistent with my point. Namely, that the graphs you’ve been observing demonstrate the terrifying causal powers of a creature we invented – the seven-day week – which does not even exist.

The day of the week can make 56% difference to how many people die from Covid-19 on any given day. If you weren’t frightened of the seven-day week before, then now you should be.

Here’s one final graph, this time from Our World in Data’s Coronavirus page. I’m including it partly coz it’s colourful. Partly, also, coz it looks like the ECG of a heart beat, which you get when you land in hospital and the lovely nurses and doctors hook you up to all those fancy machines that go “ping”. Partly, also, coz it shows the fluctuating number of Covid-19 tests per day in several different countries:

But enough with the graphs, already. I’ve told you why they’re frightening. Death apparently follows the laws of our invented seven-day week, not just the laws of nature, of biology, or of whatever other science provides the lens through which you prefer to view the world. Now I’ll say more about why I find it so very spooky.

Fairytales have causal superpowers

Along with unicorns, dragons, goblins, Medusa, the Cyclops, and Santa Claus, the seven-day week, the weekend, and the five day working week are human inventions. Mythical creatures that sprouted and grew in the fertile soil of our powerful imaginations.

But if that’s right – these things aren’t real – then what’s next? Will Medusa and Cyclops – along with unicorns, dragons, and goblins – materialise too? How do imaginary things bootstrap themselves into existence? Oh, and will Barbie and Ken, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bulbasaur, Akira, Wonder Woman, Astro Boy, and My Little Pony also join us? Teleport from our imagination into our reality? If that’s what’s waiting in store, then I want the Bunyip! I’ll watch and learn its magic tricks. I too wanna know how to do that — to make something out of nothing!

I thought the world obeyed laws of nature, and that laws of nature influenced the behaviour of things that exist. I believed that if something doesn’t exist, then it can neither cause any effects, nor be affected by any causes. Until I saw the seven-day week staring at me in those bar graphs.

Now do you see why I’m so spooked by the seven-day week? Like, seriously, what is even going on here?

For Doubting Thomas

Before I explain what I think is happening here, I first want to raise an objection which, I think, Doubting Thomas might raise, and then I’ll offer what I hope is a decent reply.

Potential objection

I have argued that the seven-day week does not really exist, but that it nevertheless clearly has very significant and empirically measurable causal powers. The evidence I’ve cited to support this claim rests on the numbers of Covid-19 tests, infections, and deaths – as reported on the above graphs – which indeed appear to follow a seven-day cycle, which exhibits troughs and peaks that track the cycle of a seven-day week.

However, mightn’t there be an alternative explanation? Indeed, an explanation that’s simpler, not spooky, and that dumps my scare-mongering which, frankly, goes way beyond “kooky”. Here’s what Doubting Thomas had to say on this matter:

Like, seriously, Nicole — what were you thinking when you wrote this? Were you even thinking? Telling people that the seven-day week isn’t real, that it’s just our collective delusion, but that in fact the seven-day week does not exist,… and that unicorns (which also don’t exist) might just have real causal powers. Have you been taking your meds? Have you been taking other meds? Or are you perhaps under unusual stress? Really, you must stop that now. This kind of talk will only get you two things — first, you’ll be fired, and then you’ll land in an asylum!

Me, citing Doubting Thomas verbatim,… well, at least as I imagine him.

Here’s an alternative explanation. Mightn’t the actual numbers of infections and deaths stay relatively even throughout the week, but all that changes is the amount of recording and reporting? After all, fewer people work on weekends, so mightn’t it be reasonable to expect fewer infections and deaths to be recorded and reported on weekends than on weekdays? Is there really a difference in the number of deaths and infections that actually occur, or is it merely a difference in recording and reporting?

Preemptive Reply

You know what? That’s a good point. I don’t know. I yield to you, Doubting Thomas, you might have struck the nail right on the head!

Still, here’s a though. Regardless of whether what we observe in those graphs are fluctuations in recording and reporting – as opposed to the occurrences of what is recorded or reported – recording and reporting are real things that real people do. But the seven-day week remains not real. Our performance of the seven-day week is in every sense completely real, but the seven-day week itself — that is a spectacular work of fiction.

Also, catch this — the real records we keep and reports we make, when communicated to (e.g.) hospital staff, to government, and to the public, can have very real effects on how people behave, and people’s behaviour (you guessed it) is also undeniably real. So there, Doubting Thomas, what do you say to that? I’m still spooked out, and you should be too.

Here’s one more reply to Doubting Thomas, that builds on my previous comments about the reality of testing. Not only are variations in the numbers of tests performed on different days real things, but these differences can have very real, serious, and tragic effects. Perhaps because when people delay testing, they spread the virus around to more people, because they don’t start treatment till later, and because sadly they sometimes do not recover but pass away.

Complexity and Imagination

It’s time to end the suspense, and spill the beans on what I think is going on. Ready? Bonza, mate, then let’s get cracking.

What you saw, while looking at all those graphs, are physical manifestations of the power of our imagination. Imagination is not unique in this way, but it certainly is a potent source of the phenomenon known as “complexity”.

Rather than shrouding the topic of complexity in bullshit terminology, and throwing some additional jargon at you just for good measure, I’m gonna try to give it to you straight up, precisely as I think about it. I will not even draw a single causal loop diagram, model stocks and flows, propose and agent based model, or any of that stuff. In the section below I will introduce just two terms – “fallibility” and “reflexivity” – but you don’t really need to remember them, because complexity is really bloody simple.

So, the week is totally not real. It’s a figment of our imagination. However, we all basically think it’s real. And our beliefs are among the range of factors that influence our behaviour. Our actions, in turn, are among the factors that change the physical world. And so, in this manner, what we believe – even if it isn’t true – can alter what is true. If we invent a compelling enough fairy tale, and if enough people start believing it and start behaving like it is true, then that behaviour can bootstrap that fairy tale into existence and make it real.

Hurrah, Cinderella, fairy tales can come true after all!

Bootstrapping reality with imagination

You might now think that with this explanation for the above spookiness of the seven-day week, I’d feel less unsettled. Alas I don’t. I mean, sure, I get how complexity works, and if you didn’t before, then now you do too. Alas, none of this helps me sleep better at night.

As my favourite complexity theorist, George Soros, puts it, our knowledge of the world is fallible. What he means by “fallible” is that we can think we know, but actually we don’t — our beliefs can be inaccurate, wrong, completely loopy, etc. But yet, fallible knowledge – and, honestly, how can we know which of the things we think we know are true, and which ones are false – is just as effective at influencing our behaviour as accurate knowledge. And our behaviour – being a real thing in the real world – has the power to make change happen in the real world.

There’s a feedback loop here, right? There’s a world, we notice it, we assume the things we notice are true, we act upon what we think is true, by acting we change the world, and then we go back to the start of that loop and again notice a few more things in the world. George Soros calls this feedback loop “reflexivity”, but you can call it whatever you like. If you’d rather do away with the terminology, simply remember that causal chains of events – that is, things we call causes, which produce effects, which produce further effects, and they also cause more effects, etc – do not go in straight lines. Causal chains go round and round in circles.

What? How can causal chains go round and round in circles? What nonsense is this, anyway? Does causation summon Dr Who, they hop into the Tardis, travel back in time, and then they alter the chain of events. Nah — if only. Alas, it’s nothing nearly as fancy as that. Like I just said before, complexity is bloody simple.

When some event occurs, and its causal powers produce effects in the world. Those effects re-shape the previous environment – sometimes only slightly, other times profoundly – into a new environment, and it is this new altered environment that subsequent events will encounter. The history of causal interactions does not just disappear, but rather it inscribes itself in the always-shifting present moment. That’s what makes it possible for causal chains to go round and round in circles, to create those feedback loops, which in turn produce novel emergent phenomena — for instance, like these metronomes which start out all un-synchronised, but end up synchronising themselves:

How they do they synchronise themselves like that? And if you can answer that question, then here’s another one for you. How could you create a similar experiment, but one in which metronomes that start out synchronised, desynchronise themselves, so that each one ends up tick-tock-ing to its own individual beat?

Gratuitous Digression
Speaking of things tick-tock-ing to their own individual beat, do you know that scene from The Lobster, where everyone is dancing together in a forest,… except that they’re not? In fact, they are all dancing alone, each to their own tunes, playing through their own headphones. You haven’t seen The Lobster? I’m sorry. It’s clearly something must attend to with great urgency. Here — watch this trailer, and then watch the movie.

When I think about this topic for too long, it makes me dizzy and confused. This wasn’t what I learned at primary school, high school, or at university. My teachers told me that causation runs in a straight line. Man, hadn’t they heard of complexity theory? To avoid the dizziness and confusion, I highly recommend exercising a bit of self-restraint. Don’t keep thinking about it for too long in one session. Come back to it on a few occasions, each time thinking about it for a little bit – little bite-sized chunks – and then go away and have a cuppa, or take a walk, maybe chat to someone. But do eventually come back and think some more.

When imagination becomes too unhinged

By behaving in the real world, guided as we are by our potentially-fallible knowledge, we alter that world, and a little bit later – if we’re lucky and we don’t have a fatal accident, or catch Covid-19, or meet some other untimely demise; I’ll return to this point in the bullet points immediately below – we get to have another opportunity to (mis-)perceive the newly changed world, potentially come to hold yet more fallible beliefs, on which we act some more, and so on, and so forth. Now, here are some examples of what happens when we keep doing this for long enough, and our fallible knowledge starts departing from reality too much:

• we walk straight into a light pole and sober up to reality, or
• we try walking through a wall that’s really there because we’ve convinced ourselves it’s not really there, or
• we might get run over by a motor vehicle if we convince ourselves that cars don’t really exist, or
• we catch Covid-19 because we’ve decided it’s all just a conspiracy to keep us locked up in our homes and there’s no way we’ll wear a mask, or
• we invest in dot coms moments before everyone else changes their mind, stops believing that collective delusion, and there go your savings, or
• we convince ourselves there’s going to be a run on the banks, so we all rush out and head to the bank, withdraw as much cash as we can (preferably all of it) so we can stash it under our mattress or wherever money is stashed these days, and then, as if by magic, once enough people do this, we get a self-fulfilling prophecy — there is indeed a run on the banks, and a financial crisis emerges in reality, or
• we convince ourselves that there’s about to be a shortage of toilet paper, so we all run out to supermarkets and buy up all the toilet paper rolls that we can’t possibly use in a year, and then in the fallout – when our panic hoarding/buying has caused a shortage of toilet paper – we’ll turn around and say “See? Told ya! Prepare yourself for the worst! The end is nigh, so you’d better be ready!” Apparently the way to prepare for the end of the world is to stock up on toilet paper.

Setting aside toilet paper humour, my point is that if we believe hard enough in our collective fairy tales, and if we all behave as if they were true, then we can bootstrap them into existence.

What I just said above is important, so I’m going to repeat it below.

We can bootstrap reality into existence by collectively believing in a fairy tale and behaving as if it were true. This is why it’s important that we pay attention to what collective fairy tales we make up, believe in, and act as if they were true. If we think the wrong things, we might just bring on a pandemic, experience grave difficulties in trying to control the pandemic, or cause a shortage of toilet paper!

Complexity and the blooming obvious

I love the simplicity of George Soros’s account of complexity. Just two concepts — fallibility and reflexivity. No bullshit, like I promised. The guy is a rigorous philosopher, a philanthropist, and he just happens to be a billionaire. Here’s what I think I’ve learned from his work, partly as it applies to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Our tacit belief in the seven-day week (that is, an epistemic causal factor) has an impact on the real world (that is, an ontological effect), through our action — which the philosopher Donald Davidson defines as behaviour (an ontological thing) for a reason (an epistemic thing).

In one sense, all of this is completely banal. My original Ph.D. supervisor at The University of Adelaide once warned me to stop doing what he humorously called “philosophy of the blooming obvious”. I never heeded his warning because I think that the blooming obvious is often – like right now, when I find myself writing about the banal topic of the seven-day week and how it’s not really real and yet it causes real effects – incredibly interesting and remarkable!

(Just to clarify who, precisely, I’m talking about, it’s Gerard O’Brien who told me that. I originally started my Ph.D. with Gerard because I thought that I would write a dissertation about the philosophy of mind. Later, though, I switched topics as well as supervisors, and under Garrett Cullity’s supervision I wrote a dissertation about the philosophy of tort law. They’re both lovely humans and top-notch philosophers.)

Back to the pandemic

In the case of our pandemic situation, though, understanding complexity sometimes fills me with unease! All of the above stuff about complexity doesn’t tell me what collective fairy tales we’re all currently in the grip of right now. And yet those collective fairy tales are so powerful that they can shape the direction of this pandemic. It also doesn’t tell me how to change those fairy tales, how to alter the narratives, when the narratives are steering us in a crappy or even deadly direction.

We behave as if the seven-day week were real, even though it’s not, and this has empirically measurable effects on the world. As I argued elsewhere, we also spectacularly fail to notice enormous parts of the real pandemic situation we’re in – we see it as if it were a medical problem, and we throw endless resources to develop medical solutions – even though, beyond the medical, its causal factors also include values, as well as political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental, and undoubtedly many other categories of factors. In light of this, two questions haunt me:

1. What are we seeing that isn’t really there?
2. What are we not seeing even though it really is there?

These questions lead me to ponder on how our collective delusions – our perception of things that are not real as if they were real, and our failure to notice things that are real – are shaping the way this pandemic unfolds?

The fairy tales we tell ourselves and that we live by have real effects on the world we inhabit. If that doesn’t frighten you, then I don’t know what will. The Bunyip, maybe? Or perhaps My Little Pony?

Your Homework

There is, however, a positive side to the above story, so let me share it, and end on an upbeat note. Imagine if the fairy tales we told ourselves didn’t completely suck. What if we behaved as if those non-sucky fairy tales were real? Could the future unfold in a more desirable way?

Finally, here are some questions. Feel free to answer them if you wish, but no pressure:

• What things around you, that you treat as if they were real, are in fact collective delusions — things whose existence we sustain by believing in them and acting as if they were real?
• What effects is that having on the future we create?
• What physical manifestations of our imagined entities can you spot around you?
• What other fairy tales might be better, how might we invent them, bring ourselves to believe them, and act as if they were true, in order to bootstrap a preferable future into existence?

I reckon money, and the idea that money has value, is one of the currently less-than-helpful shared delusions. Can you think of other examples?