Apparently this idea of the 27 Club - that famous and talented people all die at age 27 - is not, in fact, true:

It began when Brian Jones, founder of the Rolling Stones, was found motionless in a swimming pool on July 3, 1969. He was 27 and when three other superstar musicians — Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison — died at the same age over the next two years, the idea took hold that this cluster of premature celebrity deaths could not have been a pure fluke.

A study has now interrogated the urban myth of the “27 Club” and found that while there’s no truth to the idea that notable people are more likely to perish at 27 than other young ages, the notion that they do still has an impact in the real world.

It’s not true yet people believe it, which then makes it in human terms actually true. Because people act, research, look up, as if it is true and therefore, as a human belief, it is true about humans.

This is a useful and important point. The Labour Theory of Value is not true but many believe it is. Therefore, in terms of how society works - or doesn’t - it is useful to at least consider the LTV as being true at some level in a human society (Reader: no, really, it isn’t).

Or, more generally about politics, what matters is not truth but belief. What people believe to be true is what determines their actions, not what is actually true. It is only possible for people to act in accord with reality if they have that explained to them and falsehoods - like the LTV - debunked that society will work optimally or even usefully. Which is as useful an explanation of our existence at the ASI as you’ll come across, explainin’ that reality.

As to the 27 Club we’ve never really believed it ourselves except in one sense. Truly great talent does exist and it makes itself known pretty young too. It’s then lavished with fame and an amount of cash to make Mssrs Gates and Bezos blush. Plus all the opportunities for self-destruction that a teenager plus oodles of cash offer. From which we draw the conclusion that booze’n’drugs ‘n’ staying up late and all that - the rock’n’roll lifestyle - take about a decade to kill you. That is, given what they’ve been doing for ten years, dying at 27 is evidence of the fortitude of the human constitution. Entirely contrary to the pecksniffs who insist that a second doughnut will murder us all in our beds.

But, you know, maybe that’s just us.

Tim Worstall