The standing ovation at Wimbledon stands out to me as hopeful… like maybe someone with influence over the PA system at a big sporting event had a coherent theory of optimistic credit assignment and managed to use it to let a hopeful crowd show respect for good actions in a relatively selfless way?
I found the video and it is interesting how they announced numerous people and things, like various categories of NHS employees, and then some random social media fundraising stunt was the the “final name” they announced (like in an “end on a good note” motion?)…
But the first in the list of honored people were “leaders who have developed the anti-covid vaccines”. The scientists themselves were never named and maybe that was them… or maybe not? Then the audience seemed to want to cheer for the creation of the vaccine and that was all they were going to get, so that’s what they just wouldn’t stop clapping about, they just kept clapping and clapping and then standing up and clapping some more for the thing that was as maximally decisive and meaningful as they were going to get from the PA system. Smart audience <3
Googling and searching more, it looks like the biggest name there (though never mentioned by name) was a scientist/entrepreneur who was “knighted” in 2021 as Dame Sarah Katherine Gilbert.
Highlights of her life: lots of academic career stuff in the 1990s. In 1998 she gave birth to triplets who were raised by her househusband. All three are currently studying biochemistry in college, so he seems to have done a good job as a parent. She founded Vaccitech in 2016. She heard about a pneumonia cluster in Wuhan on Jan 1, 2020 and had the vaccine candidate for it designed within two weeks. As wikipedia notes:
As of January 2022 more than 2.5 billion doses of the vaccine have been released to more than 170 countries worldwide.
The standing ovation at Wimbledon stands out to me as hopeful… like maybe someone with influence over the PA system at a big sporting event had a coherent theory of optimistic credit assignment and managed to use it to let a hopeful crowd show respect for good actions in a relatively selfless way?
I found the video and it is interesting how they announced numerous people and things, like various categories of NHS employees, and then some random social media fundraising stunt was the the “final name” they announced (like in an “end on a good note” motion?)…
But the first in the list of honored people were “leaders who have developed the anti-covid vaccines”. The scientists themselves were never named and maybe that was them… or maybe not? Then the audience seemed to want to cheer for the creation of the vaccine and that was all they were going to get, so that’s what they just wouldn’t stop clapping about, they just kept clapping and clapping and then standing up and clapping some more for the thing that was as maximally decisive and meaningful as they were going to get from the PA system. Smart audience <3
Googling and searching more, it looks like the biggest name there (though never mentioned by name) was a scientist/entrepreneur who was “knighted” in 2021 as Dame Sarah Katherine Gilbert.
Highlights of her life: lots of academic career stuff in the 1990s. In 1998 she gave birth to triplets who were raised by her househusband. All three are currently studying biochemistry in college, so he seems to have done a good job as a parent. She founded Vaccitech in 2016. She heard about a pneumonia cluster in Wuhan on Jan 1, 2020 and had the vaccine candidate for it designed within two weeks. As wikipedia notes:
Well played :-)