The late Stephen Toulmin. Studied something I think fundamentally important to getting ourselves out of the…

The late Stephen Toulmin. Studied something I think fundamentally important to getting ourselves out of the mess societies are now in, with Covid and elsewhere. Casuistry, or casuistic reasoning. Case-based reasoning. Much, much more important that it may sound. /1 https://t.co/xze4jrc7oH

It doesn't matter what field you work in or what area of life you're involved with, a dominant conceptual framework will be the distinction between the specific and the general. The micro and the macro. The local and the global. Case-based reasoning rejects *all* of that. /2

It's most easily seen in the law, which uses case-based reasoning extensively. Every legal case is both highly specific, and also universal in that it draws upon universal principles, and the 'global' set of precedents relating to that case. /3

The decision in a case can then in turn create universal or global precedents and principles, for other cases. At no point is there any real distinction between the specific details of the case, and the more 'general' aspects. The case collapses them into a single thing. /4

You can look at Covid in a very different way, using case-based reasoning. We've all seen case graphs a lot in the past 3+ years. Our prejudice and training says it's only by aggregating thousands or even millions of cases that we see the real pattern of what's going on. /5 https://t.co/nrvPEaxafp

The problem is, the cases themselves disappear when you do that. Again our training tells us that all of the rich explanatory data is at the aggregate level, and anything at the individual case level is anecdotal at best. Qualitative. /6 https://t.co/yn3ZLUxPvK

I can't emphasise enough just how wrong that is. The idea that individual cases (of anything, not just Covid) are localised, separable atoms which only have meaning when combined with other cases is probably our greatest intellectual blindspot. /7 https://t.co/iioMBjk48j

As with the law, every specific case is as general as it is specific. The distinction doesn't even exist. A person who contracts Covid in a school, if you examine their specific case, will unfold *everything* throughout that connected society that led to that infection. /8 https://t.co/KKY1xLBPBd

This is the reason politicians have been happy to stick to these aggregate graphs, because the case details are explosive. Tabloid newspapers have always known this, they focus obsessively on specific cases, to draw *general* conclusions. /9 https://t.co/c26ERab5Th

This is also key to the apparent distinction between society, and economic markets. In a market, every individual is an isolated, benefit-maximising consumer. But in a society, every individual is connected to every other individual, in every 'specific' thing they do. /10

Those things are never specific, or general. They're both, at the same time. Each individual has a view of how the *entire* society works, which shapes their thoughts, feelings and behaviours. They're not isolated atoms at all. /11

I've Tweeted before that detailed Covid case stories are the most powerful weapon against Covid minimisers. Try it, watch how those stories attract immediately explosive interest, from others. Minimisers will bluster about how it's all anecdotal. Bullshit. /12

Every Covid case connects to every failing of our public health system in this pandemic, if you look at the details. In that explosive way that again tabloid media understand very well. The key to debunking the parasitic vampire squid 'economy' that took over our societies.../13

...is to focus on cases in all of their glorious details. That will reveal society again, the thing the economic politicians desperately want us to forget about. They say it doesn't exist. It not only exists, their economy would be dead without it. /14

It's that huge network of social ties that looking at each case reveals, which are the interactions that generate societies. Economic transactions are just a small handful of those connections. Social connections. /15

Economic believers when talking about their beloved (fictitious) economy always refer to statistical aggregate measures. This is why, it's the only place that fairy take exists. Even 'micro' economics won't go as far as individual cases. It would expose the myth. /end https://t.co/VXxdWZCH8s