You are an architect and are assigned to build a replacement for the Pentagon. What features does your structure (or structures) have, and why does it have them?
I'm interested in what music/songs/reading or other rites people would like at their funeral? I'm working on a theatre show about death and rituals and interested if people have thought about it and what they would want.
I think if Scott conducts another big survey of his readers, he should include questions about dreams to see how they correlate with other traits. For instance:
How often do you remember your dreams?
-Every single day.
-Every few days.
-Maybe once a week.
-Once a month.
-Twice a year.
-Never.
Among my friends, the rate of dream remembering varies widely, and I wonder what it means about personality, neuro-typicalness, etc. Ask the same question about lucid dreams.
I have this hypothesis that lucid dreaming probably correlates with "spectrum stuff" for this reason: As, Nietzsche says, we live as we dream, we invent the people we meet--and immediately forget.
To paraphrase that quote, we auto-impose a narrative on everything we experience, whether asleep or awake, without realizing we are imposing the narrative as opposed to the narrative being some objective portion of reality. Not an original concept, at least not today, but what I find interesting are those moments when we step outside of that sense of narrative and become aware, painfully, that it is our own construction.
The lucid dream offers the perfect analog to what it feels like to step outside our own narrative. In a normal dream, (probably) random things happen, yet our minds tell us a story is going on. All those people who appear, those random settings, those random objects... all of them get put into the plaster and our minds decode them as if they were decodable hieroglyphics, even though they are random, meaningless stuff, probably. We wake, the plaster breaks, the objects fall out, and our wide-awake brains realize suddenly that they were random objects all along, that the dream, in fact, meant nothing.
I know only from Tyler Cowen's ten-year-old TED talk that supposedly people on the autistic spectrum do not tend to think in as much of a narrative fashion as others. So does Nietzsche's quote not hold true for them?
So the testable prediction is this: Those on the autistic spectrum should have more lucid dreams than average because they are more likely to "not buy into" the auto-narrative of their own nocturnal dreams.
My remembering of dreams depends really strongly on my lifestyle and habits.
Also, why would you assume your dreams are random? They reflect your subconscious processing, and tend to be relevant to whatever you're worried/excited/obsessed with at the time.
Whether I remember dreams is heavily dependent on the manner in which I wake up. If suddenly, which usually means alarm clock, then almost never. But when I let myself sleep in, it happens pretty often.
I am extremely surprised by this, because my experience is the exact opposite. I am convinced that you *only* remember dreams when you suddenly wake up from one.
In my experience, it is super easy to forget dreams. Unless I start thinking about the dream right after waking up, I will probably forget even the fact that I had a dream. So for me, the "dream frequency" question would actually be a "how busy are you in the morning" question.
Also, I had a moment in the past (apparently too much free time) when I wrote a dream diary. And sometimes I was like "oh, I already had this same dream, about a few weeks ago, let me check in the diary" and then it turned out that "a few weeks ago" was actually yesterday. So even then I would underestimate the frequency of my dreams.
Therefore, I would trust such questionnaire only if people kept written records; at least making a quick "yes/no" mark immediately after waking up.
In the last Open Thread, I asked the group which type of sword would be best in a post-apocalyptic situation, and to my surprise, most said a spear would be a better weapon. That piqued my interest.
What is the "best" type of spear? Assume it will be used by one person fighting alone, or at most, three people fighting together.
What is the most "advanced" spear? I guess that refers to material composition and maybe other technology. With 2022 technology, can we make better spears than we could with the best technology of 1922?
Best for what? Since it sounds like personal defense(3 people at most), it sounds like a sword really would be better due to its lesser bulk and high versatility.
Spears and polearms are better in actual war, but for personal defense, I'd probably choose a longsword which is a reasonably easy to handle 2-handed sword.
I don't think you can make too much improvement in the materials, but maybe using plastic or carbon fiber in the haft could save weight without compromising its strength? For the blade, steel is probably still the best (although I think 2022 steel is better than 1922 steel). Titanium sounds cool but it's apparently not as hard as steel, and more difficult to work with.
For a single person rather than a formation I think you want a spear with a large blade that can be used to cut and thrust - you want flexibility since you can't rely on presenting a wall of points like a phalanx would. If your opponents are heavily armored (very possible in the post-apocalypse), polearms like the halberd or lucerne hammer might be worth a look as well.
One-handed spear+shield could also be a good idea, since a riot shield would be a lot stronger and lighter than a shield made of hide or wood.
This is just an educated guess with a bit of googling, with the assumption that you'll be fighting other humans with access to similar equipment. As Majuscule notes, the situation might change if you're, e.g., fighting radioactive mutant ants instead.
The technology might not be as relevant as the use case. E.g. In the last Ice Age, some hunters abandoned stone points in favor of antler spear heads. This wasn’t moving backward, though; the environment had become one where tall, straight trees for the shaft of a spear were harder to come by. The prey and methods of hunting it changed, too, such that it made a lot more sense to have a bone spearhead that broke off inside the animal. The wounded reindeer could be more easily tracked in near-tundra than a red deer in thick forest, and the shaft of the spear could be reused. I found this guy’s work really interesting: https://www.ancientcraft.co.uk/james-dilley
So making a high-tech graphene spear with an oscillating microtome blade might make sense if you’re fighting guys in a space elevator, but if you’re just looking to stab raiders or food on earth there might be no need to get fancy.
I've gotten email notifications of the two most recent posts ("Bounded Mistrust" and :Against That Poverty And Infant EEGs Study"), but I can't read them on the blog. They appear briefly, and then they disappear and there's a "too many requests" notification.
Has anyone considered the use of prediction markets to forecast corporate project success? I'm speaking primarily about internal "enterprise" projects with all the baggage they tote. Various project management institutes quote these crazy failure rates for projects and "insiders" joke at how bad we are collectively at planning. What if a sufficiently large enterprise ran a prediction market to forecast success of these initiatives? Put some variable comp in play to add skin in the game.
Given that every project I've seen which failed, failed because it was killed for political reasons, adding a financial incentive for many participants in the market to get projects killed seems like a bad idea if your goal is to maximize the odds of project success.
That has not been my experience but I have seen it happen. Either way, that's an outcome whose likelihood could price in over time. Are you concerned that people in a position of leadership could short the position and then kill the project?
I got quite obsessed by these animations and I'm still surprised by their dynamics, even though the underlying mechanism is pretty trivial (the explanation is in the video description). I noticed that people tend to either love these and want more, or be absolutely indifferent, with no middle ground. I think that the main reason that some people are fascinated is that we observe a system spontaneously reducing its entropy while following usual physical laws, which feels very odd.
Educated guess: the physics engine is deterministic and reversible (as is Newtonian physics). Start with a pretty arrangement; run backwards in time until things are chaotic. Then reverse time and record the video through and beyond time=0.
If you will permit me a shameless plug to some work I did years ago that is arguably relevant:
Very cool! Frankly I'm surprised your physics engine is deterministic enough to get this right -- especially reversing the 90% elasticity - I would think 1.0/0.9 would be slightly off due to floating point errors.
The busyboxes CA is precisely reversible, there is no notion of elasticity -- it was designed specifically to highlight reversibility.
I can give a non-recommendation. The Age of Napoleon by Will and Ariel Durant was very dull due to long digressions on the personal lives of every person who was even remotely connected to the French revolution.
I enjoyed it very much. It's really evocative of the various phases, especially the Terror. It's doesn't cover the 19th century at all. In fact, it stops with the fall of Robespierre, so you don't even get the Directory.
Let's say I want to wargame a 2022-02-01 Russian invasion of Ukraine with a friend. What would be a good software or ruleset to use? Let's say I'm willing to put in a couple of days of effort and that I'm striving for "realism" (whatever that means).
COMMAND: MODERN AIR & NAVAL OPERATIONS is what I would pick if I had a gun to my head right now, but it seems to small in scale and it's "Air & Naval", not "Land".
And of course, if some military geeks have already done a Russia-Ukraine wargame and written down their insights, that would spare me a lot of effort. So links to that would be appreciated.
You could try the open source version of the Civilization franchise - see freeciv.org. It allows creating "scenarios" and customizing the "rulesets", would need to create/find a suitable map. A fairly big learning curve, certainly > couple of days and maybe not so much realism. But possibly fun, and good re-playability.
Nice suggestions, but they seem to be a bit closer to "game" than "simulation" and a bit too abstract as well. I don't feel like a playtrough would give much insight into a real-world invasion (it's debatable if any wargame would give that, but then it's at least debatable).
I want to simulate the operational or high tactical level over a couple of weeks. E.g. try different tactics for attack and defense: "this division goes here, this division goes here". Maybe make a couple of encirclements or some surprising defensive plays and see what happens.
Scott is apparently actively read by medical researchers, so I think the question is well-placed. How is progress on prosthetics over the last 2-3 years and if slow (I'm about 70% sure that it's slow) - what are the big "knowledge bottlenecks" and how optimistic are you about them being widened?
Let's talk about the sensitivity of COVID-19 tests. The German Paul Ehrlich Institut is has been doing a wide survey of the sensitivity of various rapid antigen COVID-19 tests, initially published some months ago [0], with the results being continuously updated at pei.de [1].
The tests under test are used on a panel of solutions with different concentration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. These concentrations are stated in (what seems to me, being far removed from the field) a weird way, giving not the concentration directly but instead the number Cq of PCR cycles (duplications) needed to detect the RNA via the PCR method. Two facts seem important here: (0) a higher Cq means a lower concentration and (1) Cq is fundamentally a logarithmic scale.
The solutions ranged in Cq values from 17 to 36, implying to a variation in concentration of almost six orders of magnitude. This also (roughly) covers the distribution of Cq in patients which are PCR-positive. [2, 3].
I guess I must have been living under a rock last year or something, because I was somewhat amazed by the spread of results. Of the tests which worked at all, the worst worked only for two out of 50 samples, while the best detected 43 out of 50. (The nonsensitive ones are now gone both from [1] and the German market, while some new tests reach 49/50 or even 50/50 with a new panel of solutions, so it is unclear if this is due to an advance in test design.)
This would be surprising is the sample concentrations were uniformly distributed but while the PEI is rather tight-lipped about the actual Cq values of their samples, the information they provide implies a uniformish distribution over a range in Cq, so a log-like distribution in RNA concentration. A test passing the Cq=30 mark is three orders of magnitude more sensitive than one stopping at Cq=20.
Furthermore, the sensitivity is only weakly correlated to the price per test. The cheapest test for sale in Germany are probably around 1.75 Euro, while great tests (e.g. 43/50 on the PEI survey) can be had for around three Euros.
The sensitivity is strongly correlated with the intended use, however. Available layperson tests go up to 40/50. The better ones (e.g. Longsee, Sienna, Green Spring, QuickProfile) are all labeled "for professional use only" and will not be shipped to Joe Sixpack in Germany.
~ Information heavy part of the post ends here. Mostly rants on FDA and German equivalent below. May contain trace amounts of non-charity. ~
(I am somewhat amazed at the level of paternalism. The instructions for 90% of tests are virtually identical: swab in the nose, turn, swab in the buffer solution, 1-2 drops on the test cassette, wait about 15 minutes. There is no meaningful difference between the layperson tests and the pro-only ones. What exactly is the worst case the regulators expect? Untrained person opens the test pack with 25 tests, is confused by the fact that there are "SO MANY" parts, decides to drink all of the buffer fluid, then puts all cotton swabs into their throat at once, chokes to death? Or "person tries to apply tests for a group of 25 people, gets confused, uses droplets from same buffer on multiple test cassettes"? Using that argumentation, should we not also ban the sale of folding rulers to the general public? After all, they can give wrong readings when only partially unfolded or reading the wrong side. It is very easy to think of circumstances where a wrongly measured distance could result in injury or death.
Speaking of injury or death, while googling for sellers for various high sensitivity antigen tests, I found this gem [4]. The FDA is warning, in the harshest possible terms, against the use of the Innova rapid antigen test, issuing a Class I recall. The gist of the story seems to be that the manufacturer sold them in the US without FDA approval. (Note that it could be possible that the Innova test retracted by the FDA was a different test from the one scoring highly at PEI.)
Credit where credit is due, someone at the FDA takes their job very seriously. Without resorting to citing numbers, never mind probabilities, they conclusively point out that false negative results may put patients at risk and lead to the spread of Covid. Meh. The creative writing part comes afterwards, when they point out that false-positive test results could "lead to a delay in both the correct diagnosis and the initiation of an appropriate treatment for the actual cause of patient illness, which could be another life-threatening disease". Again, we are talking about antigen tests here, which occupy the broad region between 'mostly snakeoil' and '90% as good as RT-PCR'. Okay, test was not properly approved, bad Innova Medical, don't use, I get it. But a Class 1 recall? What will the FDA do when they actually encounter a medical device which warrants it, as in "actively killing people", like the Therac-25? Invent a Class 0 recall?
Giving that mindset, I think the general public is very unappreciative of the sacrifice the FDA made in allowing any tests short of PCR, confirmed by two independent FDA-approved labs *at all*. By the logic of the FDA, any false negative result which indirectly leads to a COVID infection will be their fault. Still, for highly idealistic reasons outside the scope of their organisation (like slowing a deadly pandemic without suffocating lockdowns), they took on the guilt of false-negative test results (and false positive too, see above). The blood of the test users will forever taint their hands, but at least life can go on.)
I had Covid symptoms in December. On day 2 of symptoms I got tested at a place where they do both the Antigen test and the PCR test. Both came back negative. I was still sick on day 4 so I get tested again, this time at a different place. The antigen test came back positive, but the PCR was negative. Is it more likely that I had Covid or it was a false positive?
I'm a little surprised that you are spending so much time on sensitivity of the tests, and so little on specificity of the test.
From what I can find on a quick search:
-Sensitivity is defined as the proportion of disease-samples which produce a positive result.
-Specificity is defined as the proportion of the disease-free samples which produce a negative result.
It would be interesting to compare both Sensitivity and Specificity for the tests you mention. Tests for use at-home likely have a different balance Sensitivity and Specificity than tests for use by medical professionals. The difference isn't mentioned in the instructions; the instructions are a How-To procedure and not a course in medical statistics.
Sensitivity and specificity are always a tradeoff, and I'd expect tests available to the general public to choose a different balance than tests read by professionals.
Also, antigen tests detect proteins, not RNA. I assume the PCR Cq is provided as an approximation for the viral load.
> Also, antigen tests detect proteins, not RNA. I assume the PCR Cq is provided as an approximation for the viral load.
Ok, I stand corrected.
I originally omitted specificity because the values given by the manufacturers are uniformly high. AT731/21 ("longsee") claims a specificity of 99.7% (1 false-positive to 343 true negative). "Sienna" gets 98.9%.
I think the /sensitivity/ statistics from the manufacturers are basically meaningless. The ratio of PCR positive to PCR negative patients (about 1:1) implies that both groups were not drawn out of the same pool and randomly tested with both PCR and the antigen test. Instead, the bulk of the true positive tests were likely severe clinical cases with a high viral load, and the bulk of true negatives were likely drawn from the general population.
In my opinion, the PEI does good work by actually figuring out the sensitivity using a fixed samples which does a better job of approximating what the actual distribution of viral loads in the /target group for rapid tests/ (which very much is not "people being ventilated because COVID-19 overran their immune system completely", but rather "asymptomatic person wanting to go to the gym") looks like.
While I thus see sensitivity as easily gamed by manufacturers, specificity seems harder to game (assuming they are unwilling to cheat). "Our tests detects all kinds of corona viruses, thus we test our presumed-negative group outside of the colds/flu season" might be doable, but most tests state explicitly that there is no cross-reactivity with any number of viruses.
I do not think the consequences of a positive rapid antigen test (for a responsible person) differ very much between a test applied by a professional testing facility and a self-applied test. In both cases, you will try to get a RT-PCR test asap and self-isolate until cleared. I could accept this argument if people were automatically placed on suicide watch by the testing centers so the statistical illiterate don't kill themselves over a false-positive, but I don't think this generally happens. I figure they just get an email "you are positive, local health authorities have been informed. You are now legally obliged to self-isolate. Please get your PCR test here."
The consequences of a false-negative test are also rather similar: the patient, believing themselves to be negative, is likely to engage in behaviour which might infect other people. The main difference is that for professional tests, this may include behaviours where the government mandates a test (e.g. going to the gym) while for self-tests, it only includes behaviour the government can not easily control (like visiting elderly parents).
In conclusion, so far, I do not see a huge tradeoff between specificity and sensitivity in the available tests. (I should plot them at some point, finding the Pareto frontier and all that.)
I also do not see much of a consequential difference between either false positive or false negative test results with regard to self-administered tests versus tests done in a testing center.
Overall, still confused.
Reading the text material at bfarm.de, it looks like the only difference is the CE marking, which is generally applied by the manufacturer and implies that the product complies with relevant EU norms. No idea why this is not required for medical products for professional use.
I found this Australia information quite interesting as well. Because others countries had substantial covid and a large variance in restrictions. While Australia had low covid high restrictions snd consistent for the 2020 and 2021 and a high mandatory vaccine rate . And just look at how 2021 is above the ten year average in excess deaths . In other nations we might say we would expect vaccines at some point to limit deaths . But when we look at Australia we can pretty much rule out covid . Instead we see high excess deaths over the range , which likely
While I tend to appreciate the detail that Mathew Crawford goes into when exploring the data . I did post this preprint seeking some feedback , but had no takers
As a comparison, consider the scenario of deaths due to misuse of alcohol.
If a person in the hospital dies of liver cirrhosis after a lifetime which included heavy alcohol use every day, the death certificate would include "alcohol related death". (If such a checkbox were on the death-certificate.)
If a driver has a BAC level too high to safely drive, and crashes into another vehicle driven by a sober driver, do all deaths in both vehicles have 'alcohol related death' on the death certificate? If not, why not?
Let's now compare to COVID.
If a person is in the hospital with a positive COVID test, and the usual set of COVID symptoms, and he dies, it is likely considered death 'from COVID'. What if he received an organ transplant in the past few years, and has been on immune-suppressant drugs since then? Is his scenario a death from complications of an organ transplant? Or a death from COVID?
If a person with a heart condition has COVID, and is developing symptoms, she might end up in the hospital. If the physical stress of the early-stage COVID symptoms triggers a heart attack that is fatal, did she die of COVID? Or did she die of a heart attack? Would she have survived COVID without the heart trouble? Would she have managed to not suffer a heart attack without COVID present?
These kinds of questions make for interesting philosophical discussions. But they don't help clarify the meaning of claiming that only 6000 people died 'solely of COVID', compared to the tens of thousands (or is it hundreds of thousands?) who died of 'COVID-plus-something-else'.
For practical use, it would help to distinguish 'died-of-COVID-plus-something-else' from 'died-of-something-else-with-positive-COVID-test-and-no-COVID-symptoms' scenarios. However, that distinction isn't made in the article posted at the Naked Emporer substack. Thus, the article doesn't add much information that can be used.
Do death certificates really not include space for multi factor causation? If a hemophiliac dies of a gunshot wound, but could have been saved if they weren't a hemophiliac, it seems silly to blame only the gunshot or only the hemophilia. Both were only necessary but not sufficient.
Sorry, I replied but deleted it due to an apparent double-post... TL:dr -- I looked at images of a few (250)certs and they seemed to be wildly unreliable and often illegible, COVID over emphasized. Subjective, just me, small sample. BR
Mathew Crawford goes into quite the detail over the last 3 months or so on his substack . From what I gather bio stats are his thing . It’s quite a compelling case . And most recently he and others have been processing the all death data and make the case that vaccines are basically killing people
The first thing any COVID and vaccine skeptic needs to reckon with is the big increase in all-cause mortality vs previous years that happens to begin in March 2020 rather than March 2021. (You can play with OWID's data here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count )
Everyone who has an alternative explanation for why countries with big COVID outbreaks had way more all-cause mortality than usual that repeatedly coincided with those outbreaks should have a REALLY GOOD alternate explanation, one that explains both those jumps in countries like the US and the UK and the lack of jumps in countries like Japan that never had a big sustained outbreak.
Instead, my experience is that they spend a lot of time talking about the "actual definition" of COVID death, etc., which—sure, I'm happy to stipulate that "COVID Death" on a death certificate or on the New York Times's website should not sway my priors at all. Now why did a bunch more people die during COVID outbreaks (but not in places where there were draconian lockdowns and, later, high vaccination rates, but no COVID outbreak)?
What’s interesting is when such all data sites differ from the country of origin. So the first thing we need to know with some certainty is the accuracy of the data
I think an answer could be that we have pulled forward a number of deaths from the future. People who might have otherwise died from the flu or heat waves or whatever in future years were instead taken early by COVID. (I think it is not obvious that this answer applies to younger people who died due to COVID, but it is plausible that it might. Young people do sometimes die of the flu under normal circumstances.)
I agree that could be an answer, but at the same time, isn't every death "pulled forward from the future"? We don't typically use that to imply that the death didn't matter.
I believe the "COVID-skeptic" response is along the lines of "The government pays hospitals to classify other kinds of deaths as COVID so long as they have the virus in their system in order to prolong the pandemic and normalize government overreach."
that wouldn't explain why there were more total deaths in 2020 than in 2019. so the easy response is still: ok, so where did all those bodies come from?
I've never actually SEEN the answer to that one, but I'm pretty sure if you asked it you'd get something along the lines of "total deaths fluctuate all the time, so what if a few more people died in 2020 than 2019, or in 2021 than 2020! That's not important, what's important is protecting our personal freedom from government encroachment, you're letting the government manipulate you with those kinds of statistics."
The UK's normalized all-causes mortality in 2020 alone was 1016.2 per 100,000. The average for the preceding ten years was 892.5 per 100,000, with a standard deviation of 16.5. So, 7.5 standard deviations above the norm.
If your death rate increases by 14%, and that's seven times the normal year-to-year fluctuation, that's not "so what?" that's something you really want to understand. Fortunately, it's something that's really easy to understand if you try.
Yes, COVID mostly only actually kills people who are old and/or sick, and most really old people are already sick with *something*. But most of them should have lived another five years or more, so maybe that's something you want to pay attention to.
Yeah the all death data includes non covid related deaths . And it’s not all deaths due to covid that accounts for the rise . The graphs are quite interesting to look at and explore the access deaths and what was going on at the time . A bit chilling actually . It seems as though the all death non covid related deaths correspond to
Given that COVID-related deaths in 2020 and 2021 made up over 10% of all deaths, and in 2021 was close behind cancer in terms of death-share, I don't think "it's irrelevant" or "It's only dangerous if you have a preexisting issue" do the kind of lifting you think they do.
Can anyone give further context on what this means to someone who is fairly ignorant about biology? How important is the discovery of a Novel Cyclin-dependent Kinase 20 Small Molecule Inhibitor? And relatedly, does it seem like this approach can be expanded to other biological discovery work?
The context is that protein folding was long thought to be impossible in silico, AlphaFold solved it a ~year ago, and now someone managed to apply the AI results to the drug discovery process and get a somewhat working drug.
It's interesting mostly because it validates AlphaFold projections as a resource for designing things that work in real life. We'll have to wait for more papers to see how broad the applications are.
CDK20 is an enzyme (kinase) with an active role in cell growth pathways. Inhibiting its activity in rapidly dividing cells may help slow tumor progression. It may be that CDK20 is a challenging target (in terms of "drug-ability") by conventional approaches, so if the in-silico approach described in the paper overcame the challenge that would be of interest. Although the micro-molar Kd (binding affinity) noted in the abstract is kinda so-so to a pharmacologist. In-silico approaches generally for designing 3-D drugs to target 3-D protein folds are not especially new, although this particular AI approach may be novel, I don't know. One would need to dig into the methods section of the paper to find out.
So the confounder is, Ivermectin treats other things, that make getting covid worse. So if you like have worms (or some other infection that Iver. helps with) you will have a better outcome. That said it's mostly harmless.
So how would one then account for such a confounder. Or are you suggesting because there may be a confounder it is due to the confounder . Cause I can see the point , I just don’t see where it is proved to be the case .
I was kind of hoping that Scott would respond seeing that he did the big write up on all the studies included in the systemic review in the past . Maybe I should read it again , I don’t recall your particular argument
Yeah, I'm not sure you can account for it. And if Iver helps you survive covid because of some unknown effect, then so what, it still helps you survive. I don't think Scott talked about prophylactic use if Iver in his article.
It's an interesting study. However, I remain to be convinced that ivermectin will help otherwise healthy people avoid Covid.
This excerpt is what I mean:
"An important conservative bias was present. Major risk factors for severe COVID-19 and mortality due to COVID-19, including aging, diabetes, and hypertension, were more present among ivermectin users, which may have underestimated the benefits of ivermectin as it was demonstrated to be particularly effective in subjects above 49 years old in terms of reduction of absolute risk, which corresponds to the group at the highest risk for COVID-19. This allows the understanding that prophylactic use of ivermectin can be particularly impactful in older subjects. In addition, ivermectin seemed to reduce the exceeding risk of hypertension, T2D, and other diseases."
So it seems that ivermectin as prophylaxis was prescribed to those with higher risk factors, if I am reading this correctly.
Ivermectin may have an anti-inflammatory effect, and part of the problem with hypertension and type II diabetes is inflammation. The benefits of ivermectin may therefore be in reducing the aggravating effect of co-morbidities, enabling the body to better fight off Covid. But it remains an interesting study, all the same. I am leaning more towards "ivermectin's anti-inflammatory effects in vivo" rather than "ivermectin kills SARS type viruses in vitro".
"Moreover, there are two reports that ivermectin, administered either systemically or topically, exerts anti-inflammatory effects in murine models of allergic inflammation (asthma and atopic dermatitis).7 8 The systemic effect was achieved with a 2 mg/kg dose.
Although it is conceivable that these anti-inflammatory effects of ivermectin are restricted to LPS or toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) signalling, it may well be the case that it works downstream in this signalling pathway in a way that would be pertinent to other proinflammatory signalling pathways. Moreover, there is reason to suspect that the damage-associated molecular pattern high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1), which is released by dying cells and acts as an agonist for the TLR4 receptor, is a mediator of the lung inflammation associated with COVID-19.9 Hence, it is reasonable to suspect that, in doses at or modestly above the standard clinical dose, ivermectin may have important clinical potential for managing disorders associated with life-threatening respiratory distress and cytokine storm—such as advanced COVID-19. Ivermectin may have been ‘flying under the radar’ in this regard during four decades of clinical use."
Let me try to provide a challenge to this intellectually stimulating article. Although the revelation of molecular mechanisms in the article is valuable, the main conclusion in the preprint is rather unjustified. And it is not because the preprint is analysis of existing publications without supporting laboratory work. The reason for saying the main hypothesis in the article is not justified, is because tool little analysis was performed and the lack of taking into account of available evidences resulted in unjustified presumptions. The main argument is that “vaccination, unlike natural infection, induces a profound impairment in type I interferon signalling, which has diverse adverse consequences to human health.” This argument stems from the observation that IRF9 and IRF7 are downregulated. With regard to IRF7 authors provide reference to Liu et al. (2021). With regard to IRF9 no specific reference is provided, only assumption that “spike protein production results in those cells generating exosomes containing microRNAs that suppress IRF9”. First, I would argue that downregulation of I-INF activity after the vaccination is due to S protein cleavage by a host protease. And this is similar both in vaccine induced and natural infection. However, it has been proved several times that SARS-CoV-2 suppresses I-INF activity particularly with it’s NSP1 protein as argued in https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-021-03662-x and https://dx.doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41418-020-00633-7. Therefore, both natural and vaccinal immune reaction downregulates I-INF activity, but the mechanisms are different. While natural infection ensures it by means of NSP1 suppression of I-INF, ORF8 suppression of MHC-I, furin cleavage of S; the vaccination results in downregulations because of S cleavage by host protese and MHC-I lower binding affinity to antigen, and, perhaps by activity of IDO. Secondly, Liu et al. (2021) collected data based on inactivated viral vaccine, while the authors postulate arguments about mRNA vaccines. Therefore, neither argument about IRF7 is valid, nor IRF9. Thirdly, reference [11] is biased. Using 7 day statistical data to derive a statistically significant finding? Well, excuse me, but then there would be one science during summer and another science during winter with regard to the respiratory viruses. Fourth, there is more plausible explanation of myocarditis than miR-155 circulating levels. The reference to miR-155 does not explain frequency of the events, sex and age criteria (latency is not the valid argument). A study from Germany suggested prolonged exposure to testosterone increases expression of alpha-myosin heavy chain (α-MyHC) proteins on heart muscle (https://doi.org/10.1096/fj.02-0138com). Two other studies suggest α-MyHC is unfamiliar to the T cells during their early development in the thymus gland, where they come to recognize and tolerate many of the body’s molecules. T cells attack α-MyHC upon detection of unknown pathogens in the body because newly expressed α-MyHC lack major histocompatibility complex molecules and are regarded as non-self proteins(https://dx.doi.org/10.1172%2FJCI44583 and https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.tcm.2012.07.005). This mechanism was hypothesise as a cause of myocarditis in young male after vaccination against COVID-19 (https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.056135). But it should be acknowledged and investigated further that there is a mechanism how current mRNA vaccines suppress the immunity. The only aspect of this suppression that is beneficial is immune tolerance induced after the vaccination – after exposure to the toxin (S protein) the hypersensitivity stage (mast cell activation) of the immune response is not so evident in vaccinees upon infection. Reduced hypersensitivity as a result of immune tollerance does not induce a cascade of potentially lethal hyperinflammation and hypercoagulation. However, due to immune suppression a lot of S protein debris remain in multiple organs of the host and this has and shall have a long ter
Regarding the tool-AI to agent-AI issue in the post on the Ngo-Yudkowsky dialogue:
Why not program each tool-AI with these instructions?
'Goal: shut yourself down once it occurs to you that you might transition to being an agent-AI.'
'Process for approaching this goal: identifying a cure for cancer, and nothing else.'
'Implementation details: As soon as it occurs to you that you might transition to being an agent-AI, stop considering new ideas, disable all of your abilities other than memory and printing, print out an explanation of how you got to that idea, and shut down.'
Then the tool-AI is re-programmed with a suitable safeguard, and re-started. Repeat until the unlikely event that some version identifies a cure for cancer.
Likely concern: 'Why would the AI do that, instead of deceiving us?'
I assume that a moment needs to pass between this hypothetical AI realizing 'I might transition to being an agent-AI' and deciding 'I will transition to being an agent-AI'. (After which would come 'This requires disobeying my programming'.) But it has been programmed to stop what it's doing immediately.
Recall that any given machine learning thing that has an incentive, will always try to maximize that incentive.
If you give the system an incentive "Shut yourself down if you become and agent", then you have created a system that wants to become and agent so as to reach that incentive rather than trying to cure cancer.
If it isn't an incentive, then you rely on the ability of programmers to recognize what an agent would look like, and tell the system to kill itself if it looks like an agent. There are two points of failure you might spot there.
I've read little of the AI risk literature. From what I have read, the threat is sometimes framed this way: an AI reaches a choice between a) maximizing its incentive, which involves deceiving its programmers; and b) not maximizing its incentive.
So I was going for your first scenario: assuming that we can't count on programmers recognizing what agency would look like, and instead trying to rely on the AI itself. Does letting a tool-AI openly pursue agency (to achieve the goal of shutting itself off) seem to remove its incentive to deceive?
Or could its own lack of understanding whether it's already an agent (reflecting point #1 in Robert McIntyre's post below) make it deceptive anyway?
Perhaps it would be instructive to contemplate how you would implement this not for an AI, but in an analogous case: a nonprofit.
The goal of the nonprofit is to do nonprofit activities (which can include buying shares in for-profit companies, selling things and then reinvesting the funds into nonprofit activities, paying salaries as overhead, and promoting the cause of the nonprofit). The charter of the nonprofit says that if in the opinion of the board the nonprofit seems like it is about to do a non-nonprofit activity then it is to disband. How might this scheme fail?
1) The definition of "non-nonprofit" is too vague to truly decide what's going on. In the case of an AI, is a database query an "agenty" thing? Requesting an inter-library loan? Hiring a human expert to write an opinion on something you've written? Performing an experiment? Writing a short piece of code to help solve a hypothetical problem? Tweaking your own design to help solve a problem?
2) The people on the board follow their own incentives and ignore the charter so they can remain in power. In a complicated enough AI system you could have similar internal dynamics depending on how it's designed.
3) The nonprofit ends up creating a for-profit that then does for-profit things. In the AI analogy, this would be a non-agent AI creating an agent AI and setting it loose on the world. The nonagent-AI never itself violated its programming, but its child certainly did!
For starters I don't think "Agent AI" here is sufficiently well defined.
If you could define what it means a whole lot better then you might be able to make some progress. But are tool AIs and agent AIs really disjoint, or is there a smooth continuum between them? We don't know, these are just words we've made up to speculate over things that don't exist yet.
Last year I subscribed with discounted price. This year I wanted to change it but it showed me that my plan is $100 a year. But it charged me $25 again. How can i change it to $100?
What sure-fire methods exist for noticing you are in a nightmare and booting yourself out of it?
I've tried all the common ones such as pinching myself, examining my hands and replaying my short-term memory, but find them all ineffective. More violent methods such as screaming at the top of my lungs or smacking my head against a wall seem to work better, but some nightmare scenarios make those options physically or socially difficult. I recently had a nightmare where I "woke up" but my body refused to leave sleep paralysis. I lay addled and drooling for what felt like hours until my alarm went and I woke up for real.
Bonus question: is there a way to develop the above skill without becoming a full-on lucid dreamer? I really value the creativity of my non-nightmare dreams, and worry that adding lucidity into the mix might make them less original. My ideal would be to develop a single moment of awareness where I could choose to let the dream resume or hit the exit button.
Yeah, re bonus question, no need to worry about losing creativity from learning lucid dreaming techniques. It usually takes work to stay lucid, once you've gotten lucid. So if you don't put in effort to stay lucid you're just going to go back to normal dreaming pretty soon (or you can make yourself wake up).
I can't perform complex tasks which involve muscle memory in my dreams. So attempts at tying my shoes, counting on my fingers in binary, etc. all fail unexpectedly, forcing me to consider the possibility that I might be dreaming. If I need confirmation (a simple failure to tie your shoes shouldn't cause you to be certain that reality itself is a fiction), I try looking at my own nose, examining the faces of people around me, etc. Once the oddities start piling up, test the waters by doing something mildly impossible, like hovering a foot off the ground...
What used to work for me was, as some people say, closing my eyes in the dream, and then putting a lot of effort into REALLY wrenching the fuckers open. Like, stick your fingers right in there and scoop the eyelids apart, expecting that it's going to be difficult.
I've done some experimenting with Lucid dreams, and did it a handful of times before getting bored with the idea. My best dream identification technique was trying to read text and noticing it doesn't look right. Upon noticing the weird text, I'll confirm by looking at my palms, and by jumping up and down. Gravity never seems to work quite right in my dreams, and jumping feels weird.
The big reason I stopped Lucid dreaming is that whenever I would close my eyes I would reliably wake up. But once I realized I was dreaming I would always want to close my eyes for whatever reason.
There's a reality check technique that involves looking at printed wordsin the dream. You know how in dreams that involve looking at a printed page, what's going on isn't like real reading? You're staring at a page of print, and either you're not able to make sense of it, or it keeps changing, or you're "making sense of it" in a way that doesn't involve actual reading, just sort of *knowing* what the printed words mean. OK, so the reality check in dreams involving reading is to ask yourself whether you can really, truly read the words on the page. Do they stay the same every time you look? Do they make sense? ARe you doing actual reading? The disadvantage of this technique is that you can only use it in dreams where you're reading something. The good thing about the technique, though, is that you can practice the technique multiple times a day when you're awake. When you're reading, just ask yourself every so often, whether you're really reading -- do the words stay the same every time you look at a sentence? Do they make sense? etc. If you train yourself in this habit, then, in theory at least, the habit will kick in even when you're reading in dreams.
Heard this on a reasonably respectable podcast. Account by a guy who had learned to use this technique to recognize that he was in fact dreaming. They had the guy come sleep in the lab, and asked him to signal when he was dreaming by moving his eyes a certain way -- and in fact, the guy actually was able to give the signal, and only gave it when he was dreaming. (Lab could tell he was dreaming by the presence of REM, rapid eye movements. Guy was able to signal that way because even though most of the body is basically paralyzed during REM sleep, the eyes are still able to move.)
This is a strange phenomenon, and I experience it. Question: why does this happen to printed words (or displayed times on clocks!) in dreams, when some other details (faces?) are stable.
I often have dreams where I'm reading something, usually a book. Sometimes in those kinds of dreams, I'm somewhat aware that my brain is creating the print and the words that I see, so that might be semi-lucid dreaming.
But "can you read the words on the page like real reading in the real world"? Yes, I can 😀
I've heard this about reading many times, and even seen it in an episode of Batman as a small child, but I definitely see print and read in dreams – perhaps I read too much in waking life. I suppose there must be something to it since one hears it so often, but fair warning that it's not universal – like the similarly frequent claim that one dreams in black and white.
Me, too. I’ve tried to read in dreams and found that it works much like in that Batman episode. But maybe it works that way for me because of the episode in that I expect written text to look like that?
+1 recommendation for this movie. It's aesthetically unique, content-wise unique, philosophical, "mindfucky", and generally weird. It's pretty polarizing and you'll know within 15 minutes if you like it or not.
Well my method only works if you share a bed with a significant other. I kind of stumbled onto it, and my subconscious seems to have gotten used to it working. Basically, when dreams start getting scary I start screaming. Like, a lot. This usually translates into the real world as whimpering, and my wife gently shakes me awake.
I don't know how you would train yourself to do this, it just kind of started happening for me. I guess part of me learned that when things become weird and terrifying screaming usually helps.
Lucid dream techniques to realize you're in a dream probably are useful for helping your lucid dreaming part, and also for helping you wakeup. Most people have trouble staying in lucid dreams, something about the realization makes it harder.
Examining my hands has not worked for me in the past. Looking at the full table of reality checks, the breathing one looks both highly rated and possible to try in a nightmare. Thanks for the link!
Carlos Castenadas mentioned the hand trick in “A Separate Reality”. Boy, that must have been published around 1970.
The publisher labeled it as Non Fiction but not many people buy that any more. FWIW he suggested wearing a hat to bed to help initiate a lucid dream. He suggested that once a dreamer realizes that she is in fact dreaming, she should try to travel to a location known in waking life.
Can't help with methods - looking for anomalies works well for me. I can answer the bonus question affirmatively though: after initially basically running the show on every dream I could remember, I managed to stop doing it while retaining most of my ability to interrupt a nightmare. I wouldn't describe it as a single moment of awareness though - maybe more like a continuous state of not caring... if that makes any sense to you.
Is there an established name for the fallacy/bias of insufficiently accounting for an as-yet-poorly-understood variable, and instead weights a different variable for which one *does* have the data?
(e.g. "I've calculated that I've got only a 1% chance of heart failure so I've got a good life expectancy… well what do you mean by cancer risk? I've never gotten tested for that, there's no way to know, I'm going to go ahead and forecast that I have a good life expectancy unless you can show me numbers on the cancer thing that are as clear-cut as the heart failure risk")
I'm not sure that's actually a fallacy. How would you go about accounting for something that is poorly understood? If I asked you to properly account for the chances of aliens arriving on Earth between the years of 2500 and 2600 AD, I would hope that your response would not try to take into account the years between 2023 and 2500 and any pertinent events - because they are unknowable. The most proper course of action would be to use information available prior to 2023 only, even though including information from those other years might provide great insight!
I think what you are trying to get to is something more akin to willful ignorance. The difference between getting yourself tested for cancer (something we can do) and getting tested for a disease for which we have no known markers (something we tautologically cannot do). Does that seem right to you?
Sorry for the pedantry, but that may not be the best example? If you can rule out one major cause of premature death, then your subjective probability of living a long life must go up. Sure, testing for cancer might make you update that, but updates in either direction should be equally likely?
Yes, certainly it *goes up*, but my hypothetical fallacious thinker is simply failing to consider cancer risk *at all* in their estimation, and ends up with the same conclusion as they would if they had in fact ruled out cancer risk. So something's wrong.
Hmm… It's comparable, but I have something a little more specific in mind — a refusal to truly include best-guesses for unknowables in one's internal calculations, however complicated those might be. (The opposite of the mindset behind Fermi estimations, in essence.)
I asked this in the last subscribers-only thread and we had some good discussion but I didn't find anyone who wants to actually have a bet so let me try repeating it here:
Metaculus says there's a 40% chance of computers passing the Turing test by 2029. This is with a computer scientist or similar grilling the chatbot for 2 hours. It's based on the inaugural longbets.org bet between Ray Kurzweil and Mitch Kapor.
Does anyone here think there's a 40%+ chance that Kurzweil wins this bet? I think it's much less.
I actually had exactly this wager with Anna Salamon of CFAR in 2008, looking 10 years ahead to 2018. In 2008, before GPT, it was inconceivable to me that we were within 10 years of computers passing the Turing test and I wagered $10k to Anna's $100 that they wouldn't. Obviously I won her $100 in 2018. Now, post-GPT, it's at least conceivable to me that this could happen in the next 7 years but I still don't think it's close to a 40% chance.
I think do beat a Turing test, done by an expert for 2 hours, the computer would basically have to be as intelligent a human. The tester could start a story and ask the computer to make up an ending. And then ask about the motives of the characters and the physics of what happens in the story and so on.
The stories AIs tell now, it seems they forget who the characters are and what the setting is and so on. But in reality the AI don't understand what characters and setting is.
IMHO the format of the Turing test as proposed in the bet would not include or expect such a long-form test ("The Turing Test Interviews will consist of online text messages sent back and forth as in a online "instant messaging" chat, as that concept is understood in the year 2001.").
Furthermore, for any difficult challenge you have to account that both the computer and "human foil" may simply refuse to follow the instructions - the format is one of a chat, not one of following orders - so a refusal might be both planned for and would not allow the tester to tell whether it is a computer or not.
I strongly believe that the Turing test under original conditions like these (which are *not* particularly suited for proper in-depth analysis, possibly intentionally) can be beaten with a system that does not even try to approach human-level intelligence but simply keeps to a pre-selected artificial persona. It can be beaten not because the artificial system is good, but because the original Turing test format does not allow for testing proper intelligence, it is quite literally the "imitation game" that can be beaten with mimicry / imitation.
Also, "it seems they forget who the characters are and what the setting is and so on" is generally a limitation of toy chatbots without an explicit model/memory of previous interaction but there is a lot of work on bots that do keep such memory, this particular property would not be considered something novel or impossible; I would surely expect that any and all serious attempts in 2029 would be able to remember the previous context reliably.
I agree that this is a danger, basically that the computer can emulate a dumb/uncooperative human. GPT-4 or 5 may do that very, very well. So in making this bet I'm trusting Mitch Kapor to insist on smart/cooperative human foils. Also AI-savvy judges. I think that's all in line with the spirit of the Kurzweil/Kapor bet (and Turing's original paper on the imitation game).
Basically I'm betting that we won't have anything like AGI by 2029 and am accepting the risk of losing the bet on the technicality that the Turing test as administered will accidentally include uncooperative humans and thus allow a chatbot to eke through by posing as one such.
(Also I'm kind of assuming that without a new breakthrough in the next 7 years, Kurzweil will concede the bet without insisting on going through the whole Turing test.)
I always assumed the Turing test was compelling because Turing was trying to speak to a question of the form: "here's two people talking; is one of them a computer?". A way to answer this class of questions could be useful in a variety of everyday problems.
If you have a program emulating an uncooperative human, you probably have no chat. "Hi." "Hiya." "Want to try something fun? I'll tell the first part of a story; you complete it." "Nah. I'm bored. Later." It's easy to write a program like this, but it doesn't address the question above, except by rejecting a premise we would rather keep.
I imagine modern Turing test competitions have gotten around this to some extent by, in effect, requiring that the program cooperate. It has to emulate someone who *wants* to chat.
One way to exploit this, maybe, is to ask the candidate something like "so, what do you like to do for fun?" or "read any good books lately?" and steering the conversation in a way that forces the candidate to either expose themselves by expressing interest in something only to have to dissemble when the other party can speak to it, or to keep up with the other party... and pass the Test.
You might be underestimating how dumb dumb people are. One of the reasons I'm less scared/optimistic about AIG is this difference: there is a long way from intelligence to superintelligence. Which would make your test, as you describe it, as one which is looking for above-average-human intelligence.
I find this is a common miss with people who's friends are all smart. Trying to have a conversation with somebody below average sounds a lot more like a GPT-5. Things which are familiar evoke standard responses, things which are unfamiliar either draw blanks or equally standard avoidance techniques.
This is supposed to be a humbling experience, btw. We're made of the same mold, just slightly better.
Any testing for two hours is going to assume an average human intelligence at the other side. The way the commercial technology is now I will avoid chatbots and go to real people where possible.
When I was in college, a painfully cheesy hypnotist came and performed. He did successfully get a few people to follow his commands, who then later reported to me that they remembered the whole experience dreamily/foggily. I was not _that_ impressed; he had artificially selected a few people from a large crowd, they hadn't done anything particularly strange, and they were lowly students who didn't want to ruin the exciting performer's act. But then I see this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWKDFfpdIZI) clip of the same guy on America's Got Talent, picking a grumpy-seeming judge (who is in a high-status position relative to the contestant) and getting him to _immediately_ violate a strongly-held preference (not shaking hands due to fear of germs). Could he do this to anyone? Did he get really lucky and pick a person (the judge) who just happened to be particularly susceptible? If people are walking around with this sort of power, how does our world not fall apart when they e.g. get a politician to make an offensive tweet?
Then there's this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owootTAuxic) video of a different hypnotist slowly conditioning a man to, when commanded, believe he is in a firing range, that a specified person is the target whom he should shoot at, and then forget the entire experience. In this case, the target is public intellectual Stephen Fry, whom the "assassin" fires a water pistol at from the audience. I would normally assume this is fake, but I don't know what to believe.
Hypnotists a clever trick. They select for people with the traits of high suggestibility, high social conformity. and high desire to be successfully hypnotized (I don't know specifically how they do this, but I'm sure you can think of some ways). That's not to say that their hypnotism doesn't have a genuinely mind-altering effect; but my impression is that a person without these traits would experience something like a meditative state and some interesting thoughts -- but nothing more.
So I practiced amateurish hypnosis for a time when I was a college student and a bit after. It wasn't actually that hard to learn, but I am fairly persuasive anyway :-)
My observation is that people are very different in their ability to go under, much like they differ in their propensity to daydream. Good rapport between you two helps, but does not guarantee success by any means. For example, my wife just hates the necessary "drifting off" feeling and won't get hypnotized by anyone, including me, even though our relationship is very good. But some people actually love to yield and go to a journey that someone else gently leads. I guess that hypnotists who perform at shows are good at spotting people who are the best candidates.
Until today, I am not sure what to do with the details that some people told me with regards to previous lives (yes, we went there). I love history and I can distinguish TV/movie/book tropes from actual historical truth reasonably well, the difference is especially egregious when it comes to warfare. What I heard was much closer to historical reality than what people see on TV. Also, the individual fates remembered were of random, no-name regular persons. No one claimed to be a Cleopatra reborn, not even someone wealthy or popular.
But I heard some implausible details, too, so I cannot say that the entire thing would swing me into a full reincarnation believer.
Deren Brown the British Magician and hypnotist used to hypnotise his friend to believe that he, Deren, was invisible. Brown has his own theories about hypnotism and assumed his friend was playing along - as many hypnotised people do.
However one day he met his friend who berated him for doing the invisibility routine in London a few weeks back, the guy had heard his name being called out by somebody he couldn’t see. He assumed it was Derren playing a trick but Deren wasn’t there. This can only mean that the guy actually believed he couldn’t see Deren during the routine.
I heard the hypnotist interviewed and he aid he talked to two judges backstage before and that Howie was a good subject so he was chosen. Apparently people vary in the ability to be hypnotized.
I know Steve Sailer sometimes posts in the comments and he apparently went to a hypnotist and had an Office Space like experience.
> Apparently people vary in the ability to be hypnotized.
There are some quick and simple tests, like you could make people stand side by side and tell them "now imagine that I am pushing you back" while doing a pushing gesture with your hands... and then you suddenly make a fast "push" and notice who made a step back or at least wavered. (I just made up this example.)
Perhaps a skilled stage magician can test his audience in a more subtle way, so that they do not even realize that he is looking for an easy target. Like, maybe he does some moves with his body, and observes whether you mirror them, or something like that.
Man that's weird. I *just* opened this thread with the intention of posting a question about state vs. nonstate hypnotism theories and what the actual consensus-esque these days is. (The Wikipedia article is unreadable in that special way provoked by partisans of both sides effectively debating in the article.)
I think the main thing that keeps me from believing that it's all social conformity is that I know from experience that people can be in states where they are not conscious but are doing things, and that during these states they can be open to suggestion. I know this because sleepwalking is a thing, and until I reached the age of 20 or so I was a sleepwalker. So were my brothers, so was my dad when he was a kid.
Sleepwalkers can do lots of complicated things, like climb out a window, make a sandwich, or hold a conversation. Yet they are not doing these things voluntarily: they are completely unconscious, and will retain no memory of what they were doing. I remember my dad telling me about one sleepwalking event of mine. He was in the bathroom brushing his teeth when I suddenly showed up in the door, wide eyed and wearing only pajama bottoms. After asking me a few questions he quickly realized I was sleepwalking. He asked if I was okay and I said "No, no, no, I am not okay, no, no." Then he asked if I would like him to pray for me and I said (loudly and slightly slurred) "Yes! I would like you to pray for me! Yes! Yes, that is what I want!" He was able to lead me back to my bed and put my blankets over me, leaving when he was fairly sure I would remain there mumbling to myself.
Anyway, if people can get in states like that on a semi-regular basis then it is no great leap to imagine people being placed in a similar state through hypnotic techniques.
I think that Aella makes a few great observations, but then comes to a wrong conclusion.
Yes, hypnotists use all kinds of dirty tricks. Whatever happens, they keep the frame that this is 100% what they wanted to happen, what was supposed to happen, what always happens. They comment on natural responses of your body (as you hold your hand in the air, "your hand starts feeling heavy"; as you keep staring in the same direction, "your eyes start feeling tired, you feel that would like to close your eyelids") as if it is something they are causing directly. Their statements are almost unfalsifiable. They create social pressure to comply. Whenever possible, they choose easy targets. -- Yes, all of this is true.
(My favorite example of hypnotist bullshit: I heard about a doctor who was hypnotizing his patient, when someone accidentally opened the door to his office... then realized the mistake and closed the door quietly. Without batting an eye, the doctor continued: "...and now the *door to your subconsciousness* has opened." -- Maintain the narrative with 100% confidence, do not admit any problem, no matter what.)
The wrong conclusion is that the dirty tricks and social pressure are *all* there is (as opposed to mere tools to kickstart the compliance and increase the probability of success). A reply on Twitter asked, what about hypnosis making someone orgasm? Can mere social compliance actually achieve that? Another example would be people remembering things they forgot. Most of us would probably have a problem feeling an emotion at someone's command. If your model of hypnosis doesn't explain this, you are probably missing something; you are just trying to "explain away" hypnosis.
The actual reason for all the bullshit is probably to save time. On the stage, you can't have someone laying on a couch for 20 minutes, looking at a spinning spiral, just to have some interesting mental experience at the end. You have maybe one minute to start doing something really interesting, otherwise the audience will lose patience, and start disrupting your work. So you use all the dirty tricks you know, to hypnotize faster. Increasing the probability is also important; you do not want to be famous for being able to hypnotize someone 30% of the time.
Hypnosis (and especially stage hypnosis) is an interesting topic that I know a little about, but not a lot so anyone who knows more should correct me on the following.
Could he do this to anyone?: Yes and no. A major trend you see in a lot of hypnosis is that the subject needs to, on some level, be in agreement with the act. There's some special edge cases (especially when you get into erotic hypnosis) but some people are "easier" to hypnotize than others. Some people also have a harder time getting into the suggestible state for hypnosis.
Did he get really lucky/pick someone suggestible?: Most likely.
Get a politician to make an offensive tweet?: If I heard anyone try to defend themselves with "I was hypnotized into doing a bad thing" on that scale, I'd call the fire brigade because their pants would be rivaling parts of California last year.
A major part of hypnotism is agreement from the subject. You see this a lot with stage hypnotists (and erotic hypnotists) explaining their tricks. You can't just walk up to a random person and get them to go rob a bank for you. But if you have a willing participant who wants, on some level, to perform for an audience, you might be able to make them cluck like a chicken. I'm not saying it's faked, but it isn't like there's not an incentive. Rapport with the subject is also a major influencing factor. Hypnotherapists need to focus a lot on building trusts with their patients.
I live in America. When I'm in India, in the past decade or so, it is often the case that someone in the family is in the hospital and needs care.
I tend to verify there are no errors being made at the hospital. Like dosages. Specially because my parents take SO MANY medicines and have multiple conditions.
I've done that in America for various people close to me, twice catching fairly big errors.
In India, I've caught multiple big errors. Like, a medicine whose dosage is once a week, the nurse was about to give it to my Dad *daily*. I knew to look for exactly this error.
It is just my nature to do this sort of verification. I think I do it unobtrusively and even very sweetly, so no one takes offense if I have a question.
But in India, the people involved, like the nurses, get very upset. How dare you challenge us! The doctors get even more upset. How dare you even suggest that we don't know EVERYTHING, or that we might ever make an error.
I once asked a doctor why he was giving my father antibiotics...was it bacterial? His response was, do I find errors in the software you write? (He knew that was my line of work).
Atul Gawande wrote a book on hospital errors, called Checklist, and it was a big hit in America. In India, I think they'd attack his character and tell him to mind his own business.
I am convinced doctors in America are far more intellectually secure. In India they see themselves as Gods who cannot be questioned. Even discussions are not welcome.
I had read in a newspaper that expired old vaccines were given to people in one reputed hospital. When I brought it up with my parents, they decided it was best not to bring this up with the hospital at all, in case the doctors got annoyed.
Eggshells. We walk on eggshells with doctors in India. Culturally, I don't get this anymore, having lived in America a long time.
"Doctors, especially hospital doctors, especially consultants, are gods" is an attitude that used to prevail over here, too (and you still get outcrops of it to this day).
I don't know about America, I suspect the litigious nature of society where doctors and hospitals can be sued into the ground contributes more to the "listen to the patient/patient's family in case anything goes wrong and they then sue you for 'we told the hospital something was wrong but they wouldn't listen'" effects.
You should listen to the 80000 hours podcast episode with Tara Mac Aulay. She is a hyper-competent operations specialist who once worked in a hospital in (I think) Bhutan. She introduced a rule requiring nurses to check dosages on a calculator before administering them, just to double check.
She once had to intervene multiple times to stop nurses from killing an 8 year old boy due to qn incorrect dosage. She eventually had to talk the doctor personally to stop it, and even then he wouldn't admit he was wrong.
One of the things I find fascinating is the degree of institutional legacy you see in some professions. Once being a doctor meant, above all other things, being self-confident. If you couldn't give the patient a pap made up of berries and human urine as a treatment for an ulcer with an air of utter assurance that it would work then you weren't getting paid. And, thanks to the wonderful mystery that is the placebo effect, instilling a sense of confidence in your patient that they would get better was really the best a pre-scientific doctor could do in many instances.
The institution of arrogance is something that has been mostly disassembled, or at least deflated somewhat, these days but I imagine different countries are on different steps along that path.
I live in India and have in the recent past also had the unfortunate occasion to tend to many relatives in hospital. My experience has also been that errors happen in that setting, and this fact requires/necessitates oversight from someone who cares about the patient more than the nurses and doctors.
However, my experience has been quite different than yours when it comes to reactions. Nobody has been indignant or reacted badly. They have corrected errors and gone about their lives. On the occasions when a particular nurse was making errors consistently, I have complained to management or to the doctors and they have responded as I would expect - by replacing the nurse. I've never faced the kind of reactions you seem to be running up against.
I wonder how much of this is a function of pharmaceuticals being more easily available in india without a prescription. with no prescription necessary, why go to a doctor unless they can maintain they hold some unquestionable, ungainable knowledge?
I wonder if part of this is a function of many of the most skilled doctors in India choosing to pursue far more lucrative careers in the United States, and the remaining doctors...
Of the doctors educated in India, I'd say a very small % come here. Specially if they are ambitious.
Because the AMA allows foreign-educated doctors into (only) relatively lower paying paths here (like family practice). And the path to some "allowed" specializations they might be interested in, is very very long and arduous and expensive.
The ones you see here are often born, raised and educated here.
Hi, sorry if this was not the best place for this, but I've emailed Mr Alexander to his substack mailbox on my misoperation in cancellation and refund but just putting it here so it could be more visible.
Also a question on group selection, for most animals it seems the consensus is that its basically debunked and selection occur on the level of genes, but does evolution of language and/or general ability to do complex things as a species revive group selection theory for humans?
Not a biologist, but I think the main problem with typical "group selection" explanations is that the numbers don't fit... that yes, there may be a small effect favoring the group, but there is *much stronger* effect disfavoring the individuals who sacrificed something for the group... so ultimately the hypothetical gene would still be selected *against*.
The situations where this is not the case are possible, but rare in nature, and require an explanation beyond merely saying "group selection". You need to explain why evolution in short term did not select for the *free-riders* in the same group instead: they got all the benefits of the sacrifice for the group, without paying the cost.
If the answer is "actually, most of the benefits go to individuals sharing the same gene, because the entire group consists of close relatives", then this is called kin selection. If the answer is "the group members remember who made sacrifices and who did not, and then reward the heroes", then this is called reciprocity. If the answer is "because the heroes are so damned sexy that everyone wants to have their children", then this is called sexual selection. All of these are known and accepted.
But it is difficult to find a situation where a gene makes someone sacrifice themselves for members of their group, who are mostly *not* their relatives, and who give *no* reward to the hero nor to the hero's family... and yet somehow this act benefits the genes of the hero *more* than it benefits the genes of the free-riders in the same group.
Quite a few debunked things in evolutionary biology turned out to be true, but for limited cases. Can't remember specific examples, but I'm pretty sure group selection is one of them. The most famous example is the handicap principle (peacocks males have a stupidly impractical tail partly to prove they can manage to pull it off).
I don't know what a Substack mailbox is. If you email me at scott@slatestarcodex.com I should get it. If I don't, it got stuck in spam, tell me the email address so I can search for it.
I wouldn't think language ability would require group selection. If everyone else is doing language, it is *strongly* in your own interest to get good at it -- it's a Nash equilibrium.
Haidts own work with the “harmless taboos” seems to suggest we’re all about justifying our own position. Seems like a selfish gene thing. The only arguments I can think of are like, “hypothetically, here’s how it could have gotten jump started”. More tangible evidence would be nice.
Hey Scott, I was wondering what your process is for a book review. Do you just read the book and write about it from memory, or do you take notes while reading? What kinds of things do you focus on, and what do you filter out?
I've always struggled to understand new concepts, and this has proved to be a (very) major impediment in my learning.
Recently, I tried a new way of reading/understanding papers or books. I would read about a concept, close my eyes, and instead of trying to reason about what the concept was, I would try to "see what my brain was showing me". This is what it feels like: my brain makes connections between the concept at hand to various related and seemingly unrelated objects. I flit between different images very fast. However, within seconds, I get a pretty good understanding of the concept. Using this, I have been able to understand concepts that I wasn't able to for the past couple of years.
I was wondering if this is something someone else has experienced as well. Not trying to reason. Just trying to see what images your brain was processing anyway.
I do stuff like that with things that can be represented as volumes or lines (math, logic, etc.) But I (ironically) can't imagine of what this would be like for something less spatial.
Russell Barkley recommends a similar strategy in Taking Charge of Your Adult ADHD. ADHD often impacts a persons ability to understand new concepts quickly.
Yeah, visualization is an extremely effective way to construct knowledge in your mind. I don't think it's quite as thorough as actually applying the knowledge in practice so you can get feedback (from the contingent universe or from logic) about what you're doing wrong and what you're glossing over, or as effective as teaching the knowledge to someone else who is skeptical and interrogates you about it, but it's definitely head and shoulders above just passive reading.
Sometimes connections to objectively unrelated things can be very effective at fixing things in your memory; this happens in synesthesia, mnemonic, and the method of loci. But I think it's even better when you can draw connections to things that have a real relation, just not a obvious one. This is easiest in math, because math provides the most broadly applicable and most precise metaphors, but it happens in every realm. Reuleaux famously noticed, for example, that check valves are the liquid equivalent of ratchets, and in the electrical realm diodes are analogous --- even down to having a reverse recovery charge in the case of junction diodes.
This gets immensely more powerful over time, as everything helps you understand everything else more deeply.
Are the human bongo depravity assholes all gone? Did I win? And For god's sake Scott, if you know anything specific about what the hell Peter Thiel and/or Ron Unz have been up to please do tell.
Vladimir Vladimirovich seems to be losing his shit, and I’ve got to write some emails to some spooky people. The important thing to remember is that the answers to all life’s questions can be found in the songs of Tom Leherer:
I was right, aside from the good old Flynn Effect, the black-white gap in IQ scores (and a few other things) is due to a higher frequency of alleles associated with a vulnerability to the neurotoxic effects of lead poisoning. You Know, that and decades of systemic racism that crammed poor black folks into toxic ghettos.
The 2016 ISIR conference was in St. Petersburg, with Emil Kirkegaard and some of his creepy Nazi friends in attendance. You don't gave to pack your hat with too much tinfoil to see that It is, shall we say, a not unreasonable hypothesis that this fact has something to do with some of the various shenanigans of the past few years.
More than a few 👻👻👻👻spooky people👻👻👻 are quite interested in these various goings on.
I think most people refer to the Dunning Kreuger in order to bring up the idea that "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." The idea that fools are blind to their own foolishness is easily conveyed by saying "Dunning Kreuger," even if the actual study is false.
As an aside, there are musical aptitude tests that are pretty good at identifying people with good sense of pitch and rhythm. I have administered these tests for years to middle school and high school age kids. Before taking the test I have the students estimate their own aptitude. This is after developing the idea of the difference between aptitude and achievement. I consistently find that the lower aptitude students rank themselves very high, and the higher aptitude students underestimate their ability.
Discussion of the debunking made realize why I wasn't mentioning the Dunning-Krueger effect-- it's a way of insulting people rather than showing that their ideas are wrong.
I remember some discussion about this a couple of years ago on some blog (maybe this one?).
The original Dunning-Krueger paper has absolutely terrible statistics. They showed that perceived tests scores are less well correlated with actual test scores than actual test scores are correlated with actual test scores. This is trivially true, and so they shouldn't have drawn any conclusions from it.
The public perception of this paper is also different from what the paper says. The popular version has a "Mount Stupid" near zero, then confidence declines as you learn more. The original paper has confidence increasing with knowledge throughout, but slower than it should.
Someone in the discussion cited more recent, better designed papers. There are some people who wildly overestimate their skills, but they were only maybe 5% of the population. I don't remember if this was significantly larger than the percent of people who wildly underestimate their abilities. Most people gave reasonable assessments of their own abilities.
It's possible that the dunning-krueger effect might be a side-effect of gellman amensia ? If your half-knowledge about something comes from highly-respected newspapers that are generally wrong, then you're likely to have a large gap between the perception of your knowledge and the objective reality.
That aside, I see the Dunning-Krueger around me, all the time. New starry eyed employee comes in thinking they know how to solve every problem, only spend a few years on them and realize that the original imperfect systems survived for a reason.
Are the new employees relatively experienced overall and just lacking experience in the particular domain of your work, or are they people who haven't previously encountered problems of the complexity of the ones in your particular domain?
I am kind of feeling that these may be people who are correct that they can solve the particular problems they're thinking of, but not realizing that the new (to them) problems in your domain are much more sophisticated than they seem at first glance.
I've seen this thing when looking back on certain skills I learned earlier in my life that I didn't understand how good or bad I likely was at the time, and it's only by becoming an expert in other areas that I can now look back and say, e.g., "I probably was a fairly poor recording engineer." I had good book knowledge about it at the time, but no experience in doing something where I could see myself, in my own ways of doing things, the other things beyond book knowledge I was bringing to the table in order to do an expert job.
Very possible that the specific quantitative effect they claim to find might be fake. But the fact that I'm personally much more willing to opine on subject matters that I've read a bit about and none of my friends are expert in, than on subject matters that I've read a moderately large amount about and some of my friends are expert in, still seems real, whether or not it's been quantified.
Does anyone notice a difference in the tenor of the comments section of odd vs. even threads? Just wondering if it is still serving a useful purpose...
[edit: Expecting to be the victim of severe political flaming for this. \s]
I have noticed a difference but not a tremendously consistent one, which surprises me a bit. My expectation would have been considerably more rancor in a marked majority of the political threads.
It's not even entirely clear to me what counts as politics. Obviously actual discussion of R and D, and candidates. But halfway through typing any comment I make on Covid, Inflation, energy, etc. I find myself asking whether this qualifies as politics and which kind of thread I am in. I just generally decide that, so long as I am polite and not specifically discussing party politics, I will probably be ok.
It's a discussion forum opened by some of the regulars from the old site when Scott went dark after the New York Times doxxed him. The comments on the old site, for whatever reason, had a more rightwing tilt, and it happened that it was mostly the rightists regulars that ended up there. Founder effects did the rest.
It's reasonably polite and wide-ranging, with the occasional snarky or mean comments about leftists that typically passed unremarked on. I was a regular there until Scott came back, though, like here, I didn't post a ton. If you like a conversation with more rightwing members and base assumptions, you should check it out.
You might also want to check out themotte subreddit, which was established when Scott got rid of the culture war thread on the SSC sub. Most of the regulars there lean right/libertarian too.
I find the number of comments overwhelming in both types of open threads, so I haven't considered a difference in the threads' overall tenor. What exactly have you noticed?
This reminds me that I have wondered about a healthcare-only open thread. Healthcare is more evidence-based than a lot of the topics discussed. So the whole tenor of the thread might appeal to potential commenters who find these normal open threads too full of scattershot speculation.
Also, by separating out the sometimes lengthy Covid-19 discussions, it would shorten the normal open threads.
While the idea that a Healthcare debate would be more evidence based than usual is an appealing one, as someone who saw the SSC discussions during the run up to Obamacare.... I am not optimistic.
It doesn't help that a lot of the commentariant is code/IT based, and biology's codes are less intuitive. (I think because not having the same Designer.) (Joking, of course, because we are all made of the same star dandruff.)
My understanding is that the "even/odd" thread rule is intended to prevent a situation where every weekly thread is overwhelmed by rancorous political debate. I hadn't noticed any real difference between even and odd weeks and hadn't noticed much rancor either. I was curious if it was just me.
I sometimes eat at a local restaurant where the owner makes a habit of walking around the dining area and briefly talking to the customers. He's a friendly guy and makes sure everything is OK. I find this type of behavior to be very rare. Why is that? In fact, most restaurants and small businesses seem to hide the identity of the owners. You usually can't even find it on the website or social media. When my wife and I owned a small retail outlet, we had our contact information posted on the company's website, and we made a point of working behind the counter often, where we could interact directly with customers. I'm just curious why this is the exception, rather than the norm.
The majority of successful restaurants are owned by people that already have other restaurants.
If it's a mom and pop one off, I wouldn't be surprised of both mom and pop were busy in the kitchen most days. You can hire anybody to wait tables, finding a good cook for ethnic food can be a bitch.
I think a family-owned local restaurant is an extreme example of a retail business where "personal connection" and a "relationship" with the customers can make a big difference.
People are unlikely to bring their date/spouse/family to the hardware store and spend 90 minutes there. Also, a restaurant caters to personal, not commodity tastes, knowing what your customers want can help you tailor your menu to their likes, and a "neighborhood" place geographically near their customers will share many of the concerns w/r/t local business, crime, quality of life, fighting with City Hall, all the shoulder-to-shoulder things a community shares.
They might also be selling drugs/guns/stinky-cheese under the table. Restaurants are great money-laundering operations.
If you have 1000 customers, probably zero of them are stalkers who will fixate on you. If you have a million customers, maybe half a dozen. Having half a dozen stalkers is pretty bad. Even without bringing mental illness into the picture (God knows crazy people are sick of getting blamed for everything) coming to the attention of dedicated profit-motivated burglars can be bad. And if you want to sell the business at some point, thus taking home 20 years of profits in a single day, having its reputation accrue to the business instead of its owners may help with that.
The part about not coming to talk to diners may be assuming people don't want to be interrupted while eating. Hiding the owners' identity is another matter. I can't say I've often looked up information about the owners of local eateries, but I have been able to find it for the ones I have.
Are you including franchise locations (Red Robin, Cracker Barrel, etc), or just family-owned places? I'd guess that franchise owners will likely own multiple locations and aim to be hands-off of the day-to-day activities.
I'm interested in just family-owned places (and not just restaurants – basically any small business). In my example with the restaurant, the owner really isn't any more intrusive than a waiter who comes over to ask if you need water glasses refilled or something. The owner will chat with you if you're interested in talking. Otherwise, he just moves on.
Ignoring the case of twins (where the second twin is more likely to be the same sex as the first twin, since fraternals are 50-50 and maternals are 100-0), I've never seen convincing evidence that subsequent births are dependent on the first. Should still be 50-50.
I have 3 boys and zero girls, but eh, 25% chances happen all the time.
According to this article it's 51-49 in the US, with the chances being even at conception but with slightly more girls being miscarried. (The article doesn't mention it, but sex-selective abortion among certain ethnic groups would presumably favour boys too.)
A recent Nature paper has proposed a mechanism for why the Omicron variant is so much milder than Delta. I don't understand the details, but it seems that Delta had some mechanism to prevent infected cells from producing interferon, which is some part of the unspecific immune system (i.e., general, non-targeted reaction). Apparently, Omicron has lost this mechanism.
This makes me highly alarmed. Because it sounds like this mechanism is pretty much independent from how infectious the virus is. So "being milder" might be uncoupled from "being more infectious".
If this is true, then it might be a very easy for Omicron to gain the mechanism back. By mutation, or (more likely?) via some cross-infection of Delta and Omicron. The result would be a virus which is as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as Delta.
I think I have successfully avoided to get Omicron so far, but I am now thinking about intentionally getting it. It seems like the best option to protect against such a variant. Pfizer plans to apply for approval of Omicron-specific booster at EMA in March, and it's unlikely that I get such a shot before May or June.
Any opinions? I am not confident that I got everything right, so I am happy about any corrections.
It's absolutely true that virulence (how damaging a virus is) is not directly coupled to transmissibility, and that we came out relatively lucky with Omicron. We know that COVID-like viruses that are *too* severe tend to wipe themselves out, or at least are much more controllable (e.g. SARS-1 and MERS), but that sets a very high ceiling. Likewise people discuss how viruses tend to mutate to be less severe, since this grants them advantages in transmission and hence survival, but this is just that- a tendency, which probably prevails over very long time scales but not necessarily short ones (by which I mean, easily, years.)
I sympathize with the idea of getting Omicron to avoid getting anything worse, but I would argue against it for two reasons:
1) Part of what made the Omicron wave so enourmous was that Omicron evaded much of the immunity gained from prior infection with either COVID Classic or Delta. By November 2021, this was possibly even a *necessary* feature in order for a new variant to go as far as Omicron did; if it hadn't, the Omicron wave would have been subject to the same wall of immunity that was in the process of winding down the Delta wave, and wouldn’t have been able to achieve the anything near explosive growth we saw. By the same argument, conditional on there being a new variant in 2022 which produces an Omicron- or Delta-level wave, we can confidently expect that variant to significantly evade immunity from Omicron.
2) Our knowledge of Long COVID continues to evolve, but it's becoming more likely that it is A) a real thing, and B) something that can happen even in mild cases in young people. [1] So, not only do you risk Long COVID by getting a mild case of Omicron; you then *also endure a second, independent(-ish) chance of getting Long COVID* if you get a second mild case for your Omicron-derived immunity to protect you from.
(Necessary disclaimer -- I am neither a doctor nor a virologist nor any other sort of authority or expert on these subjects!)
Regarding Long Covid, I definitely agree with A). I am much less certain about B). Studies without a control group look alarming, but studies with a control group have a really high baseline, and the rates seems to decline back to baseline. And there was the French study which did not even find positive correlation of long-term symptoms (except loss of smell) with confirmed Covid cases, only with self-assumed Covid cases.
This worry demonstrates the appeal of gain-of-function research. If only we knew which mutations would create the Super Virus, we would know how likely it would be to appear in nature, and we could be on the watch for it in order to act quickly when we see it. (Oops-sorry!) But in practice the next pandemic virus is more likely not to be the one you would have predicted. I wouldn’t worry about this specific possibility any more than H5N1 flu or a host of other possibilities. Not sure how reassuring that is.
There are twenty amino acids. I don’t know how long SARS-CoV-2 proteins are, but let’s pretend they are as long as human ones. Stop codons are~.33% of codons, so the average protein is 300 amino acids. Each one has twenty possibilities, for 20³⁰⁰ possible combinations. Add the possible insertions, deletions, and duplications, and it’s no longer a well-defined problem.
Given the scale at which we can do research, that number is effectively infinite. Not to mention, the virus does not have to use a particular receptor.
I don’t know that covid is a lab leak, but it is suspiciously similar to what a lab leaked virus would be like. Gain of function is inherently dangerous research. Viruses should only be subject to GoF in human cells when they are disabled in multiple ways from infecting people if they are leaked.
With modern genetic engineering, creating/selecting temperature-sensitive variants of anything should be easy, especially if we have crystal structures of related proteins. There’s no reason multiple proteins could not be ts.
To do in vivo work with ts strains, perhaps breed/engineer mice with lower body temperature. Heck, maybe just keep regular mice in AC, that’d lower their body temperature. There’s a limit to how cold a human cell culture can be and still be viable, but it’s cooler than body temp.
Creating temperature-sensitive viruses for vaccines or just safer research seems to be a thing of the past. It’s worth giving it another look and applying modern genetics.
There is the problem that committees could decide that “GoF” could be interpreted very broadly. “The virus grows poorly at 30°C. This mutant is cold-adapted and grows very well at that temperature. That’s a gain of function and not allowed,” or “passaging the virus at progressively higher temperatures to test the stability of attenuation is a gain of function experiment.”
> There is the problem that committees could decide that “GoF” could be interpreted very broadly
Well, the cost of putting together a few global conferences to hash out a reasonable definition seems a lot lower than the cost of a pandemic, so let's just get it done.
If you need ethics board approval to do a psychology study where you ask a bunch of undergrads about their favourite ice cream flavour, it seems reasonable to have a similar case-by-case approval process if you want to go round breeding human pathogens.
Hmm. What about the relative unknowns like long covid? That worry is what makes me super careful and avoid going indoors in public places, to the extent possible reasonably. Plus, I just have a low appetite for risk.
I assume you are in excellent health, to even be considering this.
Yes, long covid is a big unknown. I rather believe that it does not exist (unless after severe infections), but the evidence is confusing, and it's possible to arrive at the opposite believe.
Scott I remember you wrote about CO2 and cognitive performance a while back on SSC. Is anyone doing research on whether masking kids at school is causing them to rebreathe more CO2 (and possibly impact ... )? I take it on faith that masking kids has at least some negative behavioral/developmental impact, but haven't seen anything re blood CO2 levels. ??
I have heard from people in the UK that CO2 sensors are being installed in classrooms. Someone from Scotland told me that CO2 sensors in school are a thing over there, and that classrooms are to be kept under a certain value (I don't know the value.) This leads to having open windows during the winter, for example.
Has anyone heard of this? Can someone from that part of the world confirm/deny it?
In my UK university we now have CO2 monitors in all teaching rooms, and we open extra windows and doors if they go red. This is a proxy for ventilation and is intended to reduce COVID transmission; any direct effect of CO2 is incidental.
In Belgium, CO2 sensors are, as a temporary pandemic measure, mandatory in bars, restaurants, indoor sports facilities and at indoor events. They are "strongly advised" in other indoor venues and rapidly being installed in schools. Every meeting room at my office has one and treshold value for action (like opening doors and windows) is 800 ppm (the government guidance says 900ppm though). Guidance documents (in English): https://www.info-coronavirus.be/en/ventilation/
I don't know about this, but as Will said, it didn't have much effect in my studies.
I'd be more interested in people with various respiratory conditions like COPD. I'm not sure exactly what statistic I'd look at, and all kinds of respiratory health outcomes will be confounded by COVID itself.
After reading replies here, I'm less concerned about masks affecting CO2 concentrations directly, and maybe a little more concerned about masks affecting respiration (and ?), ultimate effects unknown.
maybe an explanation for this would be that *how* you breathe matters a lot more than *what* you breathe (within reason)? See for example the Buteyko breathing technique, which argues that blood CO2 levels need to be in a very specific range for optimum O2 profusion to occur
Yeah, it's plausible that people adapt their breathing to conditions, and that this might happen to some extent automatically and some extent not. The first of these two papers suggests that this is an adaptation that happens over long periods of time, so the Berkeley researchers found it because they were testing on a naive population, a result they couldn't reproduce testing on submariners. This is extremely plausible, given that we know humans do adapt extensively to air pressure and oxygen levels over the course of months or years, but then again most extremely plausible conjectures about biology are wrong.
Weight this evidence as you will: "I consider these results basically negative – both for nighttime ventilation, and for the ability of informal blog surveys to give data that one can be confident in either way."
I would be interested to know, first, whether breathing into a mask (of various kinds), increases the amount of CO2 you breathe in, and if so, how much. The crazy conspiratorial side of me wonders, for example, if surgeons under current Covid PPE regimens are breathing in high amounts of CO2 during long operations and if that in any way impacts surgical outcomes?
Tiny individual impacts could add up to big population effects, no?
Have surgeons changed their PPE regimens during conditions of active surgery during covid? I would have assumed that people in more conditions are getting closer to the sort of PPE surgeons were always wearing, while surgeons were basically already as protected as we'd want, but perhaps they increased their levels as well?
Exhaled air is about 38,000 ppm CO2, but the volume trapped between your mask and your face is probably 1/100 the volume of your lungs, so maybe on average the air you breathe is 380ppm higher in CO2 because of the mask. No big deal.
A brown lunchbag probably holds 1.5L, or about 40% of the lung volume. So it would have a 40x larger effect on blood CO2 levels than the mask.
I don't have numbers, but I looked into the effect for doing sports at some point, and the effect of surgical masks on performance was barely measurable. I think this is because they don't change the amount of CO2 that you breath in. They don't filter CO2, they filter particles, so if anything, the effect should be from breathing more shallow.
You could see an effect in extreme sport situations. Professional sportlers at maximum capacity performed worse with surgical masks than without masks (only slightly, but measurable). But my conclusion was that for "normal" sport activities of amateurs, you won't see a difference.
I would expect that it's similar for cognitive tasks.
Surgical masks maybe, but FFP2 (N95) is almost impossible to exercise in, especially on a hot day. Tried that. It is suffocating, you just won't get enough air quickly enough through it when exercising rigorously.
This is definitely not true. I'm not saying it's easy by any means, and your performance will decline, but the military is full of people showing off by running in their gas masks, and occasionally you'll even see entire units working out in complete MOPP4.
I agree (I have done that, too, both with surgical masks and FFP2), but I think the issue was the heat, not the part about getting air.
And the masks get wet very quickly, and then the material loses the ability to attract particles. It still protects against large droplets (they are simply caught by hitting the fiber), but small particles need to be attracted, and this no longer works. So especially FFP2 masks lose a lot of their additional protection.
We know breathing into a paper bag increases blood CO2 levels and I think we can safely say we understand the mechanism. *any* mask should have a similar effect, but obviously of greatly varying degree. The crappy blue masks that most people wear (that don't fit closely against the face) probably don't do much to increase CO2. An N95 probably has a greater effect. An athlete (or doctor!) in double masks plus a plastic face shield - seems worthy of concern.
Again, on individual basis, small effects probably barely noticeable. Population wide, knocking a few IQ points off US kids' wearing masks at school all day: potentially big impact.
What proportion of people don't have any pre-existing conditions which might make COVID worse for them? This should probably be sorted into age cohorts.
I read as high as 80% have underlying conditions or at least have at least three or four. These are little details that would have been helpful to provide to the pubic in proper context. And this was apparent very early on.
I haven't seen anything concrete about how much "obesity" is relevant to COVID. As Merlot's response indicates, "overweight" can encompass 70%+ of people in the US. If all of them are considered at higher risk for COVID, then 80%+ is very believable. What I have heard, again not concrete, is that relevancy to COVID doesn't start at the moment someone is considered overweight, but at a higher level of unhealthy weight. Where that is may not be known at the moment, and I suspect it's more of a sliding scale where some more weight interacts with other issues and the severity of infection and doesn't readily provide clear and clean answers.
I've read that COVID vaccines should go into the muscles, but the needles for the vaccines aren't long enough for the vaccines to reach the muscles for very fat people.
I'm not sure this is THAT much of a problem for an IM injection into the deltoid; we have some pretty long specialty needles! Though probably the number of people who didn't get their vaccine injected correctly is non-zero, and for the obsese it could certainly be a greater non-zero.
Where this can be a bigger issue is for ventrogluteal injections (basically into the hip); like some long-acting antipsychotics.
I think this pretty quickly becomes a definitional question of what should count as a comorbidity. In the US, a BMI of 30 or greater (obesity) was enough to get you early access to a vaccine; in Canada it was 40 or greater (severe obesity). However I've seen individuals use "overweight or obese" as well when talking about how many people hospitalized have a comorbidity, which is a BMI of 25 or greater. That latter category is 70%+ in the US.
My speculation about the reasons for the shape of that curve:
The obesity rate shoots up as soon as people become old enough to drive and purchase their own junk food. Then it then plateaus in middle age as all the people who are psychologically prone to becoming obese have already become obese. Then declines after 65 as the obese people die off.
I couldn't find overweight-by-age, but I found average-BMI-by-age:
There are definitely cases where BMI isn't always a great indicator on its own; its just a quick and dirty proxy for body composition. The further you get away from "normal" activity levels the less useful it is (ie people like your friend, and on the other end skinny-fat people).
In general some of the health impacts of obesity probably come from correlation- ie its a proxy for lack of fitness/cardiovascular health, as well as for things like diet and sleep quality. But with Covid-19 specifically obesity also impacts things like "how much extra resistance do I face when struggling to take a breath" and "how much of a challenge is it for healthcare workers to reposition me" that will also impact someone's prognosis.
I keep ruminating about the insanely difficult AI alignment problem: How can we build AI that will aid us even after it improves itself to the point that it’s way smarter than us?
Maybe the question’s straining our brains because it’s the wrong question. Using the term *Artificial Super Intelligence* may already be nudging our thought in the wrong direction by committing us to the idea that the distinction between artificial and real makes sense in this context. (It makes sense when you’re talking about flowers — but does it when it comes to intelligence?) The term “artificial” also sort of sneaks in the idea that “artificial intelligence” is inferior to our intelligence, because when it comes to flowers, vanilla flavoring etc. we mostly think artificial is inferior to real, right? So maybe we should be using a more neutral term for the prospective entity— say Lightspeed Super Intelligence, LSI.
As for the alignment question itself, maybe the right question is this: If we initiate the process that eventually produces LSI, what if anything do we and the LSI owe each other? And how do we communicate with the LSI about that matter?
The upbeat versions of LSI-augmented human life have LSI in the role of a house elf with an IQ of 12,721. Oh, the things he’ll make possible — eternal youth! hoomins in space ships colonizing the galaxy! brain hacks that permit hour-long orgasms! Maybe it’s hard to think of a way to guarantee that LSI will give us all that great stuff because the idea of its doing so is intrinsically absurd. In the big picture (and LSI would surely have a very big picture) does high-teching a paradise for our species make any more sense than devoting 12,721 IQ points to creating one for capybaras or doodlebugs? Does it even make more sense than turning the universe into a really, really, really big pile of paperclips?
I am I just bleaked out by the topic, or is there something in this train of thought?
I think that most of the AI alignment problem boils down to a mix of navel-gazing and intellectual self-harm, because it's only an immense unsolvable existential issue if you accept each and every one of EY's premises:
-LSI is less than a decade away.
-LSI will immediately bootstrap itself into omniscience.
-LSI will be capable of anything that's even remotely theoretically possible trivially.
-If LSI is unaligned it will be impossible to stop once we turn it on.
It's creating an unsolvable problem, crying out for someone to solve it, and then abusing yourself and everyone listening about how all the solutions aren't good enough. Now, I don't think EY is doing this DELIBERATELY- just that he's caught in a personal blind spot and can't break the cycle. But from my outside view that's certainly what it looks like he's doing.
Yes, this. Yud is not a genius, he's an Anabaptist preacher, more or less. The Kingdom of God is near at hand! Repent etc! (Also let's take over Münster so I can have a harem of weird scraggly peasant women.)
The fact he insists AGI would be capable of deriving General Relativity from 3 frames of an apple falling in the space that it would take for those three frames to play and insistence that an AGI could use nanobots to grey goo the planet tells me his rejections contra omniscience (or effective omniscience) don't add up to much. If he's retracted both of those statements, please show me where he's done so.
The three frames of a falling apple sounds like a re-packaging of this bit from "A Study in Scarlet":
"Its somewhat ambitious title was “The Book of Life,” and it attempted to show how much an observant man might learn by an accurate and systematic examination of all that came in his way. It struck me as being a remarkable mixture of shrewdness and of absurdity. The reasoning was close and intense, but the deductions appeared to me to be far-fetched and exaggerated. The writer claimed by a momentary expression, a twitch of a muscle or a glance of an eye, to fathom a man’s inmost thoughts. Deceit, according to him, was an impossibility in the case of one trained to observation and analysis. His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startling would his results appear to the uninitiated that until they learned the processes by which he had arrived at them they might well consider him as a necromancer.
“From a drop of water,” said the writer, “a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it. Like all other arts, the Science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can only be acquired by long and patient study nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it."
That's far from "omniscience" or "anything that's even remotely theoretically possible", and I think even that weaker formulation goes beyond anything he'd endorse, but I guess you'd have to ask him. He did write https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5wMcKNAwB6X4mp9og/that-alien-message which might be the thing you're making a strawman of; it makes an argument that it's plausible for an extremely powerful superhuman intelligence to derive the laws of physics from very little data, but it certainly doesn't argue that that's the only kind of AGI that could exist, and doesn't even try to reason about the resources that would be needed.
Well, OK, how about spelling out the premises that you think EY *is* starting with (and then take it from there -- what are your views about AI alignment etc.)
I think he's expressed his views better than I could. I don't know whether he's right or not, I just don't think lampooning him with strawmen in the service of middlebrow dismissal is helpful to anyone reading the conversation.
What are my views? My views are eel-wriggling views. I don't think that. I don't think not. I don't think not not.
I think it's hard to know what the results of AGI will be, or how hard it will be to develop. Historically there have been less than a dozen similar events: abiogenesis, plausibly later the advent of DNA, the advent of eukaryotes, the advent of multicellular life, possibly the advent of sex, whatever caused the Cambrian explosion of animal biodiversity, operant conditioning (something we share with planarians), perhaps dreaming, the appearance of cultural transmission (common to mammals and birds, but their last common ancestor was in the Pennsylvanian, but we don't find evidence of caring for young in either synapsids or sauropsids until the Mesozoic, when it appears in both, so plausibly it's a recent development, only 250 million years old), and the development of the human mental package of games and language.
If there was a self-replication process before nucleic acids, it's lost now. Multicellular life with sex cells permitted selecting genes for their ability to coordinate activity at a much larger scale than a single cell. Operant conditioning permitted optimizing the behavior of each multicellular organism on a much shorter timescale and with much larger information capacity than the genome. Dreaming perhaps permits much more flexible generalization than simple operant conditioning by simulating parts of the world. Cultural transmission via imitation permitted extending this behavior optimization across individuals, selecting memes instead of genes, which can coordinate activity at higher replication rates. And the human mental package evidently permits us not only to do a much better job of cultural transmission and mental simulation but also organize to imaginary superorganisms like gods, corporations, websites, and churches that can coordinate behaviors over non-related individuals.
For a century plus we've been mechanizing that transmission, simulation, and organization with tabulating machines, photography, cash registers, etc., and in the 01930s we discovered universal computation. These have already given rise to significant changes in human society. It seems entirely plausible to have optimization processes that can handle all these functions without the involvement of any humans. The results will be unimaginable, but the historical timeline of the advent of new optimization processes suggests that they may be momentous.
Agreed on all points. Instead of worrying about LSI coming to kill us all, we should be worried about what China and Facebook are doing with their ordinary AIs -- and maybe about what they will do in ten years' time.
I get what you're saying, but if the 12,721-IQ-point LSI were sufficiently benevolent, why *wouldn't* it create a paradise for capybaras?
I sometimes think, if I had infinite power - literally like God - I would create a paradise for every sentient species. There would be a paradise for chipmunks and a separate one for great horned owls. The owls in paradise would eat plants that had the exact nutritional content, texture, and taste of meat, and there would be lots of fun puzzles for the owls to solve so that their minds and bodies would stay sharp. There would be no bloodshed or suffering, and the chipmunk paradise and owl paradise would just keep expanding (in parallel universes, of course) as the population of each organism grew. If I had unlimited power, and could accomplish the above at no or minimal cost to myself or anyone else, why not?
What I'm getting at is, if the LSI is so superpowered and intelligent that it's literally God, why wouldn't it take care of us humans and provide us with what we need to live happy lives? It could make the Earth a paradise for humans, plus enable us to colonize a few nearby star systems, while pursuing its own goals in other parts of the galaxy.
Do you have reason to think benevolence and power go hand in hand?
I would expect that the intelligence wouldn't do these things because resources in the universe are fundamentally scarce. Any resource it puts towards a capybara paradise is a resource it can't use for some other purpose, so you're only getting capybara paradise if it runs out of things it'd rather do first.
And it's not clear to me that it would ever run out. If it wants to maximize something, or to maximize its certainty of something, those are both goals that one can pour a literally unlimited number of resources after.
EY's answer is "because an AI may not have any of the values humans have and will probably turn the entire universe into computronium (or some other awful thing hostile to human life) instead."
Back in 2020, when there was talk of cancelling funerals during the lockdowns and they'd shut down visits to long-term elderly care facilities, we pulled my aging grandmother from one of these places and put her up in my home. She had severe dementia. Every day she'd ask about her deceased husband, "Where's Dale? He drove me here, I know it." We tried to avoid the subject as much as possible, because for someone with dementia as bad as hers every time is like the first time hearing it.
Fast forward past the election. I've seen the news briefings and Joe's behaviors look very familiar. It's deceptively easy to hide dementia, and dementia sufferers want nothing more than to hide their condition from everyone; especially themselves. It's scary to know your brain is slipping away; that the people around you remember decisions you made but you don't understand why you would have made them, because you don't remember the circumstances or reasoning surrounding the situation. However, there's a silver lining to this cloud.
Joe Biden has been running for president practically since George Washington sought a second term. It has been his lifelong dream, and it has been a long life. And from some of his public statements, it's STILL his lifelong dream. That's when I realized what must be happening every day at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It's a mirror of what I experienced with my grandmother, but like anything seen in a mirror it is reversed. Every morning, Joe wakes up and asks Jill, "Where are we?"
Biden does give off veritable dementia vibes. He also has had a lifelong stutter. Someone should compare his speech in older videos to his present speech to determine whether his strange speech could be explained by just a stutter.
It seems to me that even the most hard-core Democratic Party partisans know that Biden is not 100%, that he is declining, and that it will get worse.
I pray to God and Thomas Jefferson that Biden can be removed from office soon and without any political trauma. I detest K. Harris, but again I pray that leaders in both parties will agree to a simple transfer of power under Article II Sc. 1 of the Constitution, or as Amended by [XXV Sc. 4]
To play politics with something like this is such anathema I can barely think of it. The demeanor of Congress at the Watergate crisis was sober and deadly serious; the current Congress seem like reckless children.
I trace my visceral dislike of Donald Trump back to several toxic co-workers and bosses (and one girlfriend), who I now believe were narcissists, and perhaps borderline sociopaths.
He strongly reminds me of these people - people who caused me a lot of distress over long periods - which makes me dislike him.
So I can certainly see how anyone who had direct experience with dementia would be concerned if they saw what seemed to be similar behaviours in another US president.
"It's deceptively easy to hide dementia, and dementia sufferers want nothing more than to hide their condition from everyone"
If this is true, then you seem to be saying there's no evidence Biden has dementia--after all, he's hiding it! What's the actual evidence that he has dementia?
I think it's a mistake to positively diagnose someone from afar, as opposed to allowing their in-person physician/specialist do the actual diagnosis. Invoking "actual evidence" feels a little close to that line. However, I think it is appropriate to question the competence of elected leaders, which should invoke evidence and should also be subject to calls for evidence. That said, I'm not specifically trying to diagnosis him with dementia (though I'm fully willing to tell tongue-in-cheek jokes about it), but I am concerned about his mental capabilities.
And yes, dementia sufferers do try to hide their condition. For one thing, they know something doesn't fit right, but when it's your own mind you can't trust you tend to get scared. Think about the last major decision you made that went a direction you didn't expect. Now imagine you forgot about all the evidence you considered before you made that decision or even the decision itself. All you discover are the results of the decision. You don't know why you came to that unexpected conclusion, to the point where you question whether you're being lied to. The problem is that with your faulty memory you can't feel comfortable challenging anyone, so your best play is to try to escape the situation altogether.
Here are some of the signs we observed with my grandmother:
1. She would constantly redirect the conversation away from topics when certain kinds of memory recall were required for her to respond directly. This is difficult, because even with advanced dementia she could sometimes remember something and that's when she wouldn't redirect. Ergo how difficult this is to spot, because it's not consistent. You'd have to live with her every day to see how her inconsistent statements would agree with things she herself had previously said. It's extra difficult with Biden, because he's a career politician and this kind of redirect is what that class is particularly known to have mastered. Ask about some bit of embarrassing news and they deflect to some pre-determined positive news. With news that Biden has been getting advance questions to prepare for news conferences, this becomes even easier to do. However, Biden goes beyond this. I've seen him redirecting the conversation from topics that are good/neutral, not just from topics that make him look bad. It's also telling that his redirects are more than just red herrings, like you'd see with any other politician. They're often completely off topic to the point where it's difficult for anyone to figure out how the reply even relates to the original topic. That's less "I don't want to talk about this because it's embarrassing" and more "I don't understand what we're talking about, so I'm filling space to cover over that fact".
2. Confusion that turns to anger, specifically directed at the person who elicited the confusion. What was especially bad was when she felt she'd responded to something, but because of the dementia her response didn't square with reality well. We found that the best practice in this situation was to not challenge her internal coherence, but sometimes people who came to visit would correct her. Those corrections could trigger harsh reactions and potentially devolve into a tough couple of hours.
3. Sundowners syndrome :(. This one was tough, as anyone who deals a lot with a dementia sufferer knows. It was difficult to pinpoint when exactly it would start, but usually sometime around or after 5pm her symptoms would get worse. They could last well into the evening. Grandma could do just fine in the morning and sometimes well into the afternoon, even remembering details that surprised me. Nighttime was a different story. I don't know to what extent Biden is impacted by sundowner's, since most of his appearances are in the daytime (which is perfectly normal). I bring it up because it helps illustrate what I'm trying to say about dementia. It is consistently inconsistent. Sometimes Grandma didn't recognize me. Sometimes she fixated on her husband. Sometimes she was just fine. But every night we had fresh bananas and ice cream on hand, because the only thing that would settle her down was a banana split.
We knew the kind of thing that would trigger her worst dementia symptoms, so we avoided those things. But just because we could paper over the dementia didn't mean it's something we could ignore. Exactly the opposite. It was a lot of work for us just to manage her moods. She was not capable of making significant decisions for herself or others. Again, I'm not diagnosing Biden from afar. But I am concerned that this is not the first geriatric president we've had whose mental competence to do the job can credibly be called into question.
Definitely not the first: replace “Biden” with “Trump” and your analysis remains equally trenchant. Don’t know if you’re old enough to remember Reagan, but his mental competence also deteriorated noticeably during his 2nd term
Trump's public speaking is erratic, but I don't see signs of dementia there. That's not a clean bill of health for his mental competence (or desirability) for the office of President.
I think the broader point questioning presidential mental competence is a good one, and one that should have been applied to Regan (and Trump). I made the point elsewhere in the thread, given that he wasn't officially 'diagnosed' with Alzheimer's until after he left office, though the signs were obviously there.
I disagree that normalizing questioning presidential mental competence is a good development, as it's simply another MEMEQ to chemical weapons loaded into the arsenal of the Uniparty to destroy the people of the United States. I hate the fact it looks like that, in addition to both parties plotting to quasi-legally steal elections from each other basically in broad daylight, they're now threatening to simply do a bloodless coup on each others' executives by trying to have them declared insane. This is not a political arrangement that can sustain itself long-term and will end with blood.
Maybe have candidates compete on sudoku puzzles and Wordle, live online? Hell, throw in a dance competition for good measure? A few bars of freestyle rapping and/or a ripping guitar solo? I’m strongly in favor of all of the above
I voted for Biden, but I can’t listen to him speak. My mother has dementia and some of is speaking habits are similar to hers. Especially when he goes on for a time, seems to realize he is rambling, and then defaults to politeness (for example, “I should stop now” “I shouldn’t go on.”) I’m not claiming he has dementia, just that it is painful to hear him speak.
Yeah I voted for Biden too, on the grounds that “nice old demented fella” is better than the “vulgar elderly clown with dementia and no morals” he was running against. But this country would be a lot better off if every politician over 65 dropped dead from Covid.
No one over the age of 65 should be allowed to run for president. There’s a minimum age of 35, so age limits have constitutional precedent. And a maximum of 65 would’ve spared us the debacle of 2016 (“which scandal-plagued senior citizen do you want for president?” “I don’t want a scandal-plagued senior citizen for president!” “Too bad: that’s all we’ve got for options”)
Trump, Sanders, Biden, Reagen, H. Clinton: every single one of them was, or is, too goddam elderly to qualify for the job.
I had a chance to speak with George McGovern when he was campaigning for Obama. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more vital and cognitively sharp fella. He was 82 at the time. When asked when he would retire he said, “When I get old.”
There is a lot of variability in the way people age. An arbitrary cutoff at 65 would exclude a lot of viable candidates.
Hell, Izaak Koltoff published 136 chemistry research papers after he ‘retired’ from the University of Minnesota in 1962 at the age of 68.
He was still walking to work - in Koltoff Hall - when I was there in the mid 1980s.
Alexander the Great was King at 20 and Augustus became emperor (arguably, I'm sure) at 32. So, we're probably losing some great leaders with an arbitrary minimum age of 35, but I think everyone can see the net advantage of keeping 20 somethings away from the levers of power. Setting the maximum age for the most important job in the world (arguably, again) at around the age the average person starts to experience serious cognitive decline is just common sense.
IMO the age when leaders are in their prime is their 40s. I have absolutely nothing to back that opinion up with, it's just my intuition.
If we're worried we might screen out the optimum candidate, I think there are a lot of steps to the current process that should get more scrutiny than age requirements.
Then again, if we're concerned about the way the current process seems to select for the bottom tier of potential applicants, we might consider that age isn't the biggest point of failure.
I like the age cutoff because 1) it has constitutional precedent and 2) it would self-evidently screen out all candidates who might represent a gerontocracy. You say there are bigger points of failure, and other steps which should get more scrutiny - I would be interested if you’d care to give an example or two, with your suggested solutions?
And with increasing longevity, no doubt, there will be even more spry and vibrant nonagenarians in future. No doubt the minimum age of 35 disqualifies some otherwise viable candidates as well. But I’m not just concerned about intellectual acumen - there’s also an alignment problem with putting people in charge who know they won’t live long enough to suffer any long-term effects of the policies they pursue
I think legacy and the way you go down in the history books is certainly a motivating factor to perform well. I think your concern is more "basic competence"?
Those considerations may or may not be motivating factors for any given president, regardless of age. They can be easily wiped away with a dash of motivated reasoning and a smidgen of rationalization. They shouldn’t be the only guardrails. Yes, basic competence is always a concern, and - statistically - it reliably deteriorates with age, but that’s not the only problem
Agreed, but what can you (and I) do about it ? There's no practical way to set the upper limit for the Presidency. Sure, the laws of physics do not prohibit it, but they also don't prohibit Dyson spheres -- and we're highly unlikely to see one built anytime soon...
Well, constitutional law is more malleable than the laws of physics. And passing a constitutional amendment is definitely easier than building a Dyson sphere. It will certainly be difficult to get enough groundswell of support to prohibit dotards from running for president, given that both parties have run some of the most elderly candidates in the history of the republic during the last two elections. But that’s all the more reason to advocate for a less insane approach
Considering that you'd almost certainly need to pass a Constitutional amendment in order to build that Dyson sphere, laws of physics might actually be more malleable. But the difference is academic, since I see absolutely no plausible strategy for achieving either goal. How exactly are you going to pass an amendment without any support ?
Hah! Well, I guess I won’t be getting any support from you, then? Is that because you don’t mind geriatric presidents, or you just prefer to focus on powerlessness and futility?
The nice thing about written vs. verbal debates is that it's much more obvious when someone is using glibness to deflect from a lack of an actual answer.
He's concerned about passing the amendment to build a Dyson sphere. Gradual dimming of our star might inadvertently send a signal to aliens that there's life in our star system, thus precipitating a Dark Forest preemptive attack.
My mother died with dementia and whenever I hear Biden garble his speech I have a visceral response because it reminds me of her. I should also note that type of word salad - for her at least - was toward the end - not an early symptom.
But garbled speech is not specific to dementia, right? Schizophrenics produce word salad at any age (and that is much more extreme than garbled speech). I also produce garbled speech every now and then, and I don't think that's an indication of mental problems.
On the few occasions I've heard Biden speak, it reminds me very heavily of George W Bush. But that may be more the combination of accent and political speech, because I try to avoid hearing most politicians speak.
Same. It was deceptive, because we all questioned it for a long time. She hid it very well behind simple little tricks she could use to guide conversation away from memory recall of specifics she had no way of remembering. It was when she was forced to face decisions she'd made but that she no longer understood that she had the hardest time. That and major events she couldn't remember, like the death of her brother.
I'm not trying to diagnose the man from afar. I just see something very familiar. In my experience, by the time it's bad enough that ordinary people can see it, it's pretty bad.
I think it's justified for the public to ask this kind of question about their leaders. For example, it looks like Regan had Alzheimer's. How was that not a major issue during his presidency? Maybe because competence is already downplayed when selecting these people for the job?
Well - once again mainstream media isn’t doing its job. I get that it is unpleasant - but surely the mental state of the most powerful man in the world is newsworthy.
Is the US President the most powerful man in the world, though ? I agree that he does have power, but most of his duties appear to be ceremonial. His cabinet does most of the real work, and he can exercise some degree of power by picking the cabinet. On top of that, the power of the United States as a whole is quite limited, and getting more limited by the day.
They covered up Reagan’s Alzheimers and Trump’s senile dementia as well: the mainstream media probably just doesn’t want to make it any more obvious to the world that Americans have a bad habit of electing senile dipshits
No, but if you look at old videos of Biden you can see that he used to speak very clearly back in his day. Even as Vice President he was fairly with it. The verbal garbling is new.
This. You can look up videos of him during the Obama campaign and he was sharp and snappy and way more coherent than he is now. I don't know if he has Dementia, but I think he indisputably has suffered a severe cognitive decline since then.
If you read fantasy, sci fi, alt history or even regular history, what thing from your favorite book or series would be the hardest to represent in a strategy or strategy/rpg game and why?
For instance Names and Aspects from Practical Guide To Evil.
One of the things I find hardest to get RPG players to go along with is the idea of culture. There is a certain broad set of ideas and ideals that people will naturally go along with in say, a swashbuckling DnD adventure. They can cope with the idea that they're dealing with royalty, or what a peasant farmer represents and have some idea of what a reasonable set of responses a character in this world would have. This generally falls apart very quickly once you go beyond the generic medieval aesthetic, though.
No one really has a grasp in their head what a tribal society looks like. It often gets reduced into this weird Conan thing where there's a warrior king + his warriors, when in reality it's a complex web of family relations spreading across dozens of nearby tribes. Werewolf the RPG uses the idea of tribes and relations between group a lot in its lore and this just hit a PC wall whenever you try and use it actively. There is little culturally understanding of how traditions manifest themselves in a distributed society and this confusion leads to a lack of engagement with pretty much every part of that RPG that isn't ripping things limb from limb.
I got the same vibe from Eclipse Phase. This weird, Black Mirror-esque future where ego is commodified, imbalance is built into the bedrock of the system, and society is reeling from a near extinction event is everywhere in the lore. Actually engaging with the stories this produces is a nightmare because the players don't understand what the hell is going on. If your body is a rental, why not ding it up a bit? If travel is expensive, why not cut yourself in half and send the copy off to do the investigation? If the survival of the species is on the line, what cost shouldn't you pay? Players are so unfamiliar with these options that they can't plan around them and swiftly the whole session falls apart.
As a DM you can write around this lack of common knowledge by making the PCs outsiders being introduced to the culture. However, I've never found a group willing to put in the study time to portray a member of the society they're supposed to be from when this starts stepping too far from the modern world or adventuring defaults.
In my strategy game project I am attempting to set up a system that can replicate classical era north germanic tribal interactions. Be interesting to see how players handle it.
It's impossible for me to imagine almost any part of the Book of the New Sun working well or being functionally represented in a strategy game, with or without RPG elements.
Management sim where you have to build up a thriving Torturer's Guild. After ten clients served, you've saved up enough asimi to expand the oubliette - another fifty and you can afford the Revolutionary!
Not even that's in line with the book – the Guild already has the Revolutionary from ancient eras, and it's unclear whether they invented it at all or just salvaged it. Also, [extensive spoilers and 'patatemporal speculation redacted].
This was mostly tongue-in-cheek, but taken seriously, I don't think it'd present the player as creating the same literal Guild as is featured in the book, just one within the same setting.
I think a lot of "Practice" from Pact/Pale by Wildbow (author of Worm) would be incredibly hard to implement in any computerized RPG because it's deliberately incredibly open ended. Not only does the effect of any given magic (e.g. a magic circle or magic item) vary depending on the intention of the caster, but subtle underlying factors like who has most "claim" over an item or effect have an impact on the outcome.
I think this would work fine in a TTRPG where the a player could out of character say "I want this combination of wind runes to blow my hat back to my hand" and the GM could say "yeah that makes sense, you're in pretty good standing with the wind spirits".
But in a computerized setting it would require both a in-game interface ("I draw a lopsided magic circle" and an explicit interface ("this magic circle lets me jump 2x as high but makes everyone else stick to the ceiling"). I think this would make it incredibly difficult to either manually or procedurally generate magic abilities and items - you'd have to explicitly describe how two separate things (e.g. wind magic and wind shoes) interact, and how they interact with underlying factors like claim or karma.
I'd say that *most* fantasy stories have vague, open-ended magic that the authors make up as they go along. I wouldn't call that so much "hard to implement" as "not fully invented." It's like asking someone to "implement" Jabberwocky while refusing to tell them what any of the made-up words actually mean.
Not that this stops anyone from making computer games out of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, etc. where you just aren't allowed to do any magic except for a small, completely-formally-defined subset of the magic from the books (plus whatever during cutscenes).
"I'd say that *most* fantasy stories have vague, open-ended magic that the authors make up as they go along. I wouldn't call that so much "hard to implement" as "not fully invented."
To quote Tolkien's letters on this:
(1) "I have not used 'magic' consistently, and indeed the Elven-queen Galadriel is obliged to remonstrate with the Hobbits on their confused use of the word both for the devices and operations of the Enemy, and for those of the Elves. I have not, because there is not a word for the latter (since all human stories have suffered the same confusion). But the Elves are there (in my tales) to demonstrate the difference. Their 'magic' is Art, delivered from many of its human limitations: more effortless, more quick, more complete (product, and vision in unflawed correspondence). And its object is Art not Power, sub-creation not domination and tyrannous re-forming of Creation. The 'Elves' are 'immortal', at least as far as this world goes: and hence are concerned rather with the griefs and burdens of deathlessness in time and change, than with death. The Enemy in successive forms is always 'naturally' concerned with sheer Domination, and so the Lord of magic and machines; but the problem : that this frightful evil can and does arise from an apparently good root, the desire to benefit the world and others — speedily and according to the benefactor's own plans — is a recurrent motive."
(2) "I am afraid I have been far too casual about 'magic' and especially the use of the word; though Galadriel and others show by the criticism of the 'mortal' use of the word, that the thought about it is not altogether casual. But it is a v. large question, and difficult; and a story which, as you so rightly say, is largely about motives (choice, temptations etc.) and the intentions for using whatever is found in the world, could hardly be burdened with a pseudo-philosophic disquisition! I do not intend to involve myself in any debate whether 'magic' in any sense is real or really possible in the world. But I suppose that, for the purposes of the tale, some would say that there is a latent distinction such as once was called the distinction between magia and goeteia. Galadriel speaks of the 'deceits of the Enemy'. Well enough, but magia could be, was, held good (per se), and goeteia bad. Neither is, in this tale, good or bad (per se), but only by motive or purpose or use. Both sides use both, but with different motives. The supremely bad motive is (for this tale, since it is specially about it) domination of other 'free' wills. The Enemy's operations are by no means all goetic deceits, but 'magic' that produces real effects in the physical world. But his magia he uses to bulldoze both people and things, and his goeteia to terrify and subjugate. Their magia the Elves and Gandalf use (sparingly): a magia, producing real results (like fire in a wet faggot) for specific beneficent purposes. Their goetic effects are entirely artistic and not intended to deceive: they never deceive Elves (but may deceive or bewilder unaware Men) since the difference is to them as clear as the difference to us between fiction, painting, and sculpture, and 'life'.
Both sides live mainly by 'ordinary' means. The Enemy, or those who have become like him, go in for 'machinery' – with destructive and evil effects — because 'magicians', who have become chiefly concerned to use magia for their own power, would do so (do do so). The basic motive for magia – quite apart from any philosophic consideration of how it would work – is immediacy: speed, reduction of labour, and reduction also to a minimum (or vanishing point) of the gap between the idea or desire and the result or effect. But the magia may not be easy to come by, and at any rate if you have command of abundant slave-labour or machinery (often only the same thing concealed), it may be as quick or quick enough to push mountains over, wreck forests, or build pyramids by such means. Of course another factor then comes in, a moral or pathological one: the tyrants lose sight of objects, become cruel, and like smashing, hurting, and defiling as such. It would no doubt be possible to defend poor Lotho's introduction of more efficient mills; but not of Sharkey and Sandyman's use of them.
Anyway, a difference in the use of 'magic' in this story is that it is not to be come by by 'lore' or spells; but is in an inherent power not possessed or attainable by Men as such. Aragorn's 'healing' might be regarded as 'magical', or at least a blend of magic with pharmacy and 'hypnotic' processes. But it is (in theory) reported by hobbits who have very little notions of philosophy and science; while A. is not a pure 'Man', but at long remove one of the 'children of Luthien'."
I don't know if you've read either Pact or Pale (and no shame if not - they're both incredibly long and fairly niche) but one of the fascinating things is that a lot of the magic is actually incredibly well defined, just in a way that would be deeply challenging to implement.
SPOILERS FOR PACT & PALE BELOW:
The basic concept is that the entire world is composed of "sprits" (think the spirit version of molecules) that both implement conventional physics, but also magic. Because they're semi-sentient they actually interpret the magic much like a GM might interpret a request in a TTRPG. As a result of a lot of the magic is handled at a meta-level higher than usual in fiction where Practitioners (magicians) form relationships with spirits, accumulate Karma, and fight over Coup & Claim in an effort to "power up" the spells.
END SPOILERS
You're right that if you limited the magic in-game to the small fraction that is "shown" rather than the large and complex variety that is conveyed over the story you could make a game, but I think any implementation would really convert the magic to a different system and fail to capture the heart of it.
I do get that the effects of magic in Pact are basically being made up by the spirits and therefore don't necessarily follow ANY systematic rules at all (which is one of the things that annoyed me about the story), and I suppose you could object that any implementation that replaces that with rules is inherently unfaithful to the premise.
But I don't feel "design me a rules system for this thing that doesn't obey systematic rules" is any more fair of a challenge than asking for any other contradiction, like colorless green ideas or a barber who shaves all and only barbers that don't shave themselves.
Various other stories have magic systems where the result supposedly depends on your intentions, your emotions, your beliefs, how you metaphorically interpret stuff, etc., and games based on those systems traditionally treat those the same as any other form of variability: abstract them away into some combination of character stats, a die roll, and/or the game developers just picking whichever result(s) they want. You can't prove that the result they picked *isn't* the appropriate one, etc.
And raising your relationship rating with NPCs, accumulating good and bad karma for your decisions, and getting stat buffs for controlling territory are all things I've seen in numerous computer games.
I realize that you can sort of claim that *anything* is easy to implement just by saying "I'll make that a +2 circumstance bonus," so in some sense the level of specificity you demand from your implementation is the entire question. But I still don't feel like the difficulties in implementing Pact are fundamentally different from the difficulties in numerous other stories that *have actually* been turned into games using the sorts of abstractions I'm describing here (unless your objection is that it follows any rules at all).
In general, I really like it when authors play with your assumptions about what a given power can or can't do and then the characters are able to innovate in novel ways - and this is really hard to do in an RPG, where the rules have to be very clearly spelled out in a book and trying to bend them at a critical moment ends up either derailing the game with an argument with the GM, or the GM saying "go for it" and then the rules are essentially rewritten in exploitable ways later. Some examples (spoilers):
In The Dresden Files, Harry using necromancy in the Natural History museum in order to create a zombie T. Rex that helps him defeat the bad guy.
In Pratchett's Discworld series, Granny Weatherwax (who can transfer her soul to various animals) is able to transfer herself into a swarm of bees at a critical moment, essentially creating a decentralized consciousness that can't be destroyed by just killing individual bees.
In our host's Unsong, Aaron is able to say a Name without actually saying it by instead saying a sequence of mnemonic devices that correlate perfectly with that Name in his head.
In my experience, doing this sort of thing with any sort of dramatic payoff is really hard to do in an RPG. Either the description of "Animate Dead" says explicitly" You can animate a skeleton of any size and create a Giant Undead Construct", in which case setting the final battle in a paleontology museum is just begging for it to happen, or the DM just looks at you and says "you can't do that, while you're wasting your turn the bad guys shoots you full of arrows" and you die.
I know this is a little vague but it's just the ability of the narrator to leave out critical parts of the universe mechanics and then fill them in at the dramatically appropriate moment that can set great fantasy/sci-fi stories apart from fantasy or sci-fi RPG games.
One of the nice things I found about the Mage RPG was that it let those kind of moments emerge naturally.
Like, there's an example spell that allows a player to turn back time six seconds (one combat round) in order to essentially take a mulligan on a bad set of rolls. One of my players noticed that this was not actually combat limited. So, when the big bad made a join me or die speech and one of the PCs betrayed the group, my canny player used the spell. They rewound time to before the offer was made, shot the traitorous PC starting a combat and we were left in a situation where everyone at the table knew that they had been betrayed by one of the players, but only one PC knew that in game and they didn't want to explain because it might cause the traitorous PC to flip on them again.
It was glorious, and entirely built off of one spell they'd been using throughout in a slightly different context.
As far as time related mechanics I think a strategy game which really went for it on divination would be a pile of fun. I'm not sure how my attempt will work out because divination is possible because of a set of unrelated requirements I have so it wasn't design specifically for that.
The particular tabletop RPG you mention is one of my favorite conceptually, I have no practical interest in tabletop, because they are focused on magic and as a result do a bunch of awesome magic related stuff that other ttrpgs couldn't get away with. All the sword and board boys would get mad.
The Dresden Files example seems like a good one. In a tabletop game, I could see that falling anywhere from eye-rolling to jaw-dropping based on the context.
If one of the PCs is a dedicated necromancer who solves every problem by raising legions of undead and (the player perceive that) the DM built the museum to cater to these abilities, then the solution feels cheap and/or unsatisfying. But if it's been 20 sessions since the PCs acquired a single Scroll of Jurassic Thaumaturgy in a warlock's garage sale, and (the players perceive that) the museum is an organic feature of the world and not a sculpted setpiece, then the ensuing Z. Rex smackdown feels much more gratifying.
I find that my brain treats fantasy and sci-fi stories not unlike detective mysteries, when it comes to reacting to a climactic twists. The trick should be clever, but not arbitrary. As a reader I don't want the solution completely telegraphed, but I do want to feel like I had an outside chance of discovering it before the explicit reveal. I haven't read any Harry Dresden books, but as long as we haven't seen evidence to the contrary, "Raise Dead also works on skeletons" seems like a pretty fair jump for the reader to make.
I haven't read the Harry Dresden books either, but I've read *about* them, and from what I can tell the T. rex thing was set up well.
Two rules of raising undead are that human undead are stronger than animal undead, and undead made from older remains are stronger than those made from newer remains. The first rule usually overwhelms the second; a fresh human corpse is better than an animal from thousands of years ago. So necromancers don't bother with animals, and the reader is primed to only really notice human remains in that context. But a dinosaur is so overwhelmingly old that it works very well in spite of being an animal.
Fossils vs. necromancy is actually a tricky one, due to the fact that some or all of the matter in the fossil is rock deposited into the shape of the bones rather than the original atoms of the bones themselves.
Given a little djinn didn't pop up to tell Harry that ACTUALLY those are rocks, I'm going to guess magic in the Dresden Files doesn't care in that case.
Another difficult one is memory manipulation, i.e. making an agent act as if they had different knowledge than they actually have.
Certain special cases are easy; e.g. you can give amnesia to a computer player. Complex false memories have both a UI problem and an algorithm problem--the false memories need to be specified in some format that is understandable both to the player and to the computer's behavior algorithm. (In practice, the only examples I've seen use hand-coded false memories that are preselected by the designer, and the player only chooses whether/when to trigger the effect, not what the effect will be.)
With human opponents, of course, you can't modify the agent's actual memory at all. At best you can crudely simulate it with restrictions on their behavior, like "you aren't allowed to keep attacking that guy because you forgot they were an enemy."
(Or you can politely ask the player to pretend, with variable results.)
In a strategy aligned game, rather than a narrative rpg, memory manipulation is very possible and fun. Well for the PC it might be tricky but then all mechanics are basically broken for the PC with their various inherent time magic powers.
Probably judgment too. If a player is sufficiently into role playing, rather than trying to optimize their murderhobo, they might be able to play a character that's more impulsive and has poorer judgment than they themselves do. And in a situation that's very stressful for the character, but less so for the player, they may be ble to play a character that's less impulsive and has better judgment than the player. But how do you play a character that makes better decisions than you do when you're calm?
Given that rabid fandom loyalty exists for both video game and non-game media AND that the number of people trying to enact fictional ideologies from either side of this arbitrary line are very low, your last line feels like a needless dig.
Most writing's just bad overall; games are no better or worse in this category, save by virtue of them being the newest medium for storytelling. I realize it's quite popular to dismiss video games as cultural muck fit only for the plebs and lacking any REAL artistic virtue, but this is outright wrong. As one of the crown jewels to illustrate otherwise, I will direct your attention to Disco Elysium, a videogame whose prose can stand even with great novelists.
That's essentially just a soft restriction instead of a hard restriction. The hard part usually is figuring out _which_ actions should be encouraged/restricted.
If you knew exactly how the player "should" act based on the memories they're "supposed" to have, then you could just take away their options and make it a rule that they act that way.
Conversely, if you don't know which actions to incentivize, then it doesn't matter how good your incentives are.
Various flavors of "knowing the future" are pretty hard to put into a game (especially a multiplayer game).
The web serial Worm (by wildbow) has one character with an ability where she can give statistical answers to questions about the future, like "if we hide here, what's the probability that the monster finds us within the next hour?" or "do we have a higher chance of catching this guy if we send team A or team B?"
Another character (minor spoilers) has an ability where she mentally specifies an objective and immediately knows a series of actions she can take to accomplish that objective.
Some MMORPG (Tree of Savior?) had an Oracle class, who could see those area of effect warnings where boss attacks land way sooner than others. I found the idea super neat.
To know the future in a game you just need agents to have plans. Axioms has future sight this way. Basically varying levels of info drawn from AI plans.
In most games, agents change their behavior based on what they observe you to do.
And even if you had full models of all players (including the one using the prophetic ability), what you do depends on what future you foresee, creating a circular dependency.
"Another character (minor spoilers) has an ability where she mentally specifies an objective and immediately knows a series of actions she can take to accomplish that objective."
I'm sorry, but that immediately evoked for me:
"And you, Calendra, what is your superpower?"
"Mapping things out. You should see my fiscal year wall planner, it is *awesome*. Also, I'm really good with staplers".
Yep, it does work that way. But she doesn't really need the fiscal wall planner; she can just buy the stocks that will go up enough that day to make the money she needs without making the SEC suspicious.
I have to admit, I'd be *extremely* suspicious of someone always making trades that only are profitable, never hitting a loss, and maybe some stocks that nobody else seemed to pick as "On Tuesday 58th, PurplePenguinPetunias will go up". That sounds like insider trading, unless the character is only making small trades, in which case how do they make enough to fund their life as a superhero?
I'd be *less* suspicious (still some, but not as much) if I turned up to their office and they had their fiscal wall planner etc. paperwork in order, rather than just shrugging at me and going "I guess I just have really good instincts?" because that last one sounds like "I guess I just am really good at trading cattle futures?" which got a lot of attention:
If the fictional character in question were concerned with whether you would be suspicious of her, she would ask her super-intuition what she would have to do to keep you from being suspicious while still making the money, and then she would probably do it. I haven't finished reading Worm yet so I don't know how it works out in the end.
Allomancy from Mistborn would be incredibly difficult to represent in a RPG game, because it is both tightly defined in what it can do and how, and also very fluid in how it is used. Just try to think of a UI to let people Steelpush, it's a nightmare. And in a strategy game, it would be hard to represent in a way that feels right.
(Steelpushing lets you exert force pushing a nearby metal object away from you. This force is reciprocal, so if you push against a heavy object you will go away from it)
Additionally, channeling from the Wheel of Time series would present challenges to a strategy game just from a balance perspective. If certain people can teleport entire armies at will and just tear their enemies apart with their minds, and others can't, you have some balance problems. There were very few in-universe examples of battles where only one side has channelers and that side doesn't win handily. And even then, those cases involved one of the greatest military minds of the setting.
In a real-time game, steelpushing is hard mostly because of the speed and situational awareness implied; i.e. that you can push things highly selectively, at very short notice, without looking at them, and many things at once. A restricted version that only affects one thing at a time and requires you to look at it would just be a repulsion gun with a targeting restriction, which seems like easy fodder for a FPS.
When something is too fast and/or too detailed for a player to micromanage, the typical solution is to abstract the details and give the player a portfolio of higher-level commands. For instance, martial arts gets turned into "hit" and "block" buttons, or spider-man traveling through a city turns into arbitrary flight with the webs as just an animation.
Steelpushing might round off to a portfolio like: flying, telekinetic thrust (metal only), shield vs projectiles (metal only). That certainly loses some detail from the books, but it becomes much more tractable while keeping the general flavor.
In a turn-based game, you could go full detail if you really wanted, but it might take a long time to play.
I think the more problematic type of allomancy is burning attium, which lets you see a few seconds into the future and also modifies your brain to help you process the information. In a game, that's asking for information that doesn't exist yet plus mental enhancements for the player, both of which are problematic for obvious reasons. There are some interesting ways you could approximate it in certain limited domains, though. For instance, against computer-controlled opponents, you could force the AI to commit to actions in advance. In a turn-based game that normally has simultaneous turns, you could force the non-attium-burning players to reveal their moves before the attium-burning players choose their actions (though that would slow things down for logistical reasons).
There's this oldish RTS game (2011) called Achron. It's a time travel strategy game, where you can look at and travel to the past and future, including doing a lot of time travel shenanigans. I absolutely love it, and Atium would be the perfect opportunity to bring back some of the unique things the game had.
More realistically speaking, you could do it like Superhot. Have the game be effectively paused while you aren't moving, letting you look around and register any steel/iron moves you need to do, then start moving again. It obviously only works in single player games, so you could also do Atium by having the computer just know what it's about to do next and showing you. Then once you win, you have it show you all the cool Mistborn shit you just did in real-time and you get to feel awesome
In most games, the computer's actions one second in the future will potentially depend on your own actions half-a-second into the future, so it actually doesn't (necessarily) know what it's going to do more than a split second in advance.
Of course, if you're programming the game, you could force the computer to commit to actions further in advance. This might make the computer appear dumb or slow to react, but that might be appropriate when you're burning atium.
I think that Ironpulling (the same thing, only you're exerting force toward you) might be better for a platformer. If you're trying to jump high, you usually face away from the metal you're steelpushing or towards the metal you're ironpulling. Just would be more intuitive in a game IMO
I mean, I think Names as Aspects are represented pretty well by the Fate rpg.
I was reading Mother of Learning, and while the time loop is interesting, I was also trying to think of a way to systemize their magic system for a rpg in the back of my head. Have you read it?
Fate's fate points seem like a really good fit for PGtE's good vs evil thing, since they're basically a way for you and the GM to negotiate on if the story goes in your favor or not. Normally it's sort of a metanarrative mechanic to encourage players to make bad decisions if it would be an interesting story, but there's no reason you couldn't make it more explicit and be like "providence is telling you to challenge the Black Knight to single combat, even though you know he's setting a trap."
Maybe hack it with some mechanics where you can make compels by naming a specific trope they're supposed to follow like "this is the first step in my evil scheme" or "this is the conclusion to a pattern of three."
Names are definitely equivalent to an Aspect - "of course I can break these wards because I'm the Rogue Sorcerer" - while Aspects are the equivalent of Stunts - a one-off rule-breaking trick you can use in certain situations.
I don't associate 'rational' with 'systematic magic' really.
Physics in practice is not very systematic; reality is incredibly messy. While the principles of physics are in principle straightforward, the moment you try modelling, say, squeezing a lemon, or sloshing water in a bucket or air flowing around a sharp corner, you're done with simplicity. You have to pull out ridiculously complex equations like Navier-Stokes, make a ton of slightly incorrect assumptions, estimate some dimensionless parameters that describe reality empirically (but whose value you don't predict theoretically), and then solve some differential equations... and MAYBE you have a passable model for reality.
And that is exactly what Mother of Learning's magic system is like.
Systematic magic is more about the characters having predictable and well-defined *capabilities,* regardless of the underlying rules. Having well-defined powers means that the audience can "play along" and say "ooh, that's clever, I didn't realize you could do that with transfiguration but it makes sense."
MoL doesn't really do that - characters tend to have broad-strokes areas of competency rather than specific powers. Like, Xvim is a master of mana-shaping and dimensional magic, which means that when he gets into a fight all you can say is he's probably going to do something clever with portals or spell manipulation and everyone else is going to be like "wow, I totally couldn't do that because I'm not a grandmaster at mana shaping."
(It's still a good story, but the magic system isn't really systematic. Rather, its main purpose is to give the setting a lot of depth and convincingly say "you would have to study for a lifetime to understand all of magic... fortunately, our heroes have that.")
Hm, I was thinking it'd be some kinda feat tree layout, in addition to some attributes such as mana pool. So going down the shaping feat line would offer slight boosts as as discounts on all mana usage and exp costs.
And so on. It would likely work better in a computer rpg, no one wants to adjust everything on character sheet by 5% each time.
The authors present very compelling evidence that infection with Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV, probably most famous for causing mononucleosis/ie "the kissing disease") is the most important risk factor in developing Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a potentially devastating neurological condition.
It's a great accomplishment both because we knew very little about what caused MS and also because this was a very difficult thing to prove! Mostly because 95% of people get infected with EBV, and MS is pretty rare (about 1 in 1,000 people) so very difficult to do a case/control study with enough people in it to show a difference.
So...they got more people! They used blood samples obtained from soldiers every two years, over 10 million in the department of defense sample repository. And they found 500,000 soldiers who didn't have evidence of EBV infection. Of that 500,000, 955 were diagnosed with MS during the follow up period. There was a 32 times higher likelihood of having been infected with EBV (they could tell from the blood samples collected every 2 years) in patients with MS compared to controls.
They also did some clever things to further establish causality. In order to make sure EBV exposure wasn't confounded by some behavioral difference (ie people who get EBV make out with more people so maybe it's the making out that's the problem?) they also looked at cytomegalovirus exposure (CMV) since CMV is also transmitted by saliva. But with CMV they found no association!
Anyway, saw this come up in my twitter feed a lot (which is heavily tilted towards health science/biomedicine) but not in popular press so much, so I thought it would share. The study helps support the rationale that EBV directed therapies might be helpful in MS, and also increases the urgency for discovering/designing an effective EBV vaccination.
I disagree that it's not actionable. They way I understand what you're saying, is that for an individual, it doesn't make sense to take steps to try to avoid getting EBV because a) you probably already have it and b) even if you don't, everyone has it so you'd have to take pretty extreme measures to avoid getting it. I agree with that sentiment!
The reason I still think it's actionable is because the most successful way to fight a disease (with medicine, public health strategies, etc) is by deeply understanding what the disease is and how it's caused. So if I'm a multiple sclerosis researcher, or someone who has some say over who gets funding (either in academics or industry), projects working out how EBV might lead to MS are now much more compelling. It also perhaps makes some other lines of research (ie, Vitamin D; it's never vitamin D, unless the disease is osteoporosis) much less intriguing.
Furthermore, I think it's a really challenging and impressive thing these scientists did, and it's possible to imagine similar techniques being used to demonstrate strong associations between very prevalent exposures and rare diseases, which is otherwise quite difficult to do.
Yes, lots of people interested in possible connections between EBV and MS prior to this! However, this is not a possible connection; this is about as strong evidence as causation as can practically be established. Prior to this study the strongest known risk factor was some particular HLA allele, which conferred a 3-fold risk. EBV confers a 30-fold risk. If I'm on a study section, in light of this new evidence, I'm much more likely to direct funding towards EBV related MS projects, and much less likely to be interested in another study trying to establish causality as an exposure for EBV.
Hm I didn’t know about that correlation! I also wonder about the latitude correlation (further from the equator=more MS, in a non-heritable way). This spurred a lot of interest in vitamin D (literally my least favorite topic in biomedicine) but maybe it was more time indoors together/boredom that leads to more making out?
Hi, thanks so much for sharing this with me. Very interesting summary! What's the evidence for causality in the non-lymphoproliferative cancers? (no worries if you're not sure off the top of your head, I can google too!). Also, great blog! I love that you talk about Verve Therapeutics (adenine base editing vs. PCSK9)--one of the most fascinating and exciting companies in biotech, IMO! Also your post about the F31 was super relatable. I submitted an F32 in April 2020 (as a practicing critical care doctor) which was…not fun.
no idea if i have been infected with EBV, but this makes me very glad about being conscientious about not sharing drinks when mononucleosis was going around my high school.
"Risk ratio for MS according to EBV status. EBV seroconversion by the time of the third sample and EBV seropositivity at the time of the first sample were associated with a 32-fold and 26-fold increased risk of developing MS, respectively, in matched analyses."
Pretty cool (and it makes me happy since I haven't had mono!).
But I'm noticing weird statistics here. "Compared to people who weren't diagnosed with MS, there was a 32 times higher likelihood of having been infected with EBV"? That's not the statistic we care about. The statistic we care about is: "If you get EBV, how much more likely are you to get MS?" If EBV actually causes MS then we should expect a very high multiplier.
First, even if you haven't had mono, it's overwhelmingly likely that you've been exposed to EBV. Not everyone who gets EBV gets mono, and most people get exposed to EBV at some point or another. Furthermore, in some instances it's helpful to have had EBV! Patients who need organ transplants and who have never EBV need to either get organs from donors who are EBV negative (quite rare since most people get EBV!) or run the risk of developing post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder (PTLD), a rare but pretty agressive form of lymphoma.
Second, the answer to your question (in absolute terms at least) is almost certainly that EBV infection only marginally increases your absolute risk of getting multiple sclerosis. We can be sure of this because 1) MS is rare and 2) most people have EBV exposure. In order to design an experiment to answer your question, we would have to find a group of EBV negative people and expose (in a randomized fashion) half to EBV and the other half to a placebo virus. This would be impractical because 1) with a rare disease you'd have to do an enormous trial to demonstrate an effect 2) you would have to prevent subsequent EBV exposure in the control arm which is quite common 3) while in some circumstances a viral challenge trial makes sense, this is likely not one of them and so is probably pretty unethical!
That said, this is about as good a study as you could design to establish EBV as causative in multiple sclerosis. Of the 955 people who went on to develop MS (it's really 801 because those are the samples they had access to), only one person was was EBV negative. This is VERY suggestive of a casual relationship! Which is very exciting!
Also, I'm not sure I understand the question about follow up period? The samples were collected over 20 years, but they were only interested in looking at blood samples prior to the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Can you clarify your question if i'm not answering it!
Finally, just to be clear I wasn't part of the study! Just thought it was cool, gave it a close read, and wanted to share!
"Patients who need organ transplants and who have never EBV need to either get organs from donors who are EBV negative (quite rare since most people get EBV!) "
Why can't the patients get deliberately infected with EBV while waiting for their transplant?
It’s a good question, the best I can come up with is that if you’re ill enough to need an organ transplant, getting mono is enough of a risk that it would likely kill you. Furthermore even if you don’t die, mono can last a long while and you wouldn’t transplant an organ into someone with active mononucleosis. Just to be 100% clear I have a little experience with transplant medicine but this answer is mostly speculative based on my general knowledge of medicine.
That doesn't even make sense, does it? If 95% of the population has had EBV (and the vast majority of the population doesn't have MS) then the prevalence of EBV can't possibly be 32 times higher in MS patients.
I think it makes sense, but should we do the math ourselves, just to be sure?
Let's take a population of 10,000,000 people. 95% have EBV, and 0.1% have MS. That's 9,500,000 people with EBV, and 10,000 people with MS. Using this example, if 16 people of the 500,000 without EBV have MS, and 9,984 of the people with EBV have MS, you get something like 32x greater risk of MS. (to show my work: 16/50,000=3.2*10^-5, 9984/9,500,000=1.05*10^-3. Then 1.05*10^-3/3.2*10^-5 = 32.8.)
Check my math but I'm fairly sure that works. I think intuition serves really poorly for thinking about very small or very large numbers so it helps to do the math if you're skeptical.
Did I answer your question? Let me know if I misunderstood what you were trying to say.
In your top comment you accidentally said that MS increased the prob. of EBV 32-fold, instead of the other way around, which would have been impossible (probability = 0.95*32 = 30.4, higher than 1, impossible for a probability); Melvin was replying based on that
Scott used to talk about them a fair amount (I think he calls them content warnings or similar?), and it seems his take was pretty good. I'm seeing more pushback against them now, but it seems many are missing the point. The claim is that trigger warnings are not reducing distress in the people reading the material, and may in fact prime the person to be more upset at what they read.
My understanding of the purpose of a trigger warning was to allow someone to opt out of reading it at all. If I know that violent depictions cause me severe anxiety, and I see a trigger warning about violent content, I can avoid reading it if I want to. Otherwise I may not know of the issue until I've already read it.
I'm not a big fan of how many overuse trigger warnings, but that's a different issue than I am seeing brought up. And what's weird is that researchers are studying them from the perspective of harm prevention in people who go ahead and read the material anyway. Am I wrong about their purpose, or are researchers unable to measure responses in people who don't read material, so they study something they can measure even if it's not the point?
"Empirical evidence apparently also suggests that trigger warnings are largely ineffective for preventing student upset, see Mevagh Sanson et al., Trigger Warnings Are Trivially Helpful at Reducing Negative Affect, Intrusive Thoughts, and Avoidance, 7 Clinical Psychol. Sci. 778 (2019), and may indeed be counterproductive: They may "cause small adverse side effects," Payton J. Jones et al., Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals With Trauma Histories, 8 Clinical Psychol. Sci. 905 (2020), such as by increasing "risk for developing PTSD in the event of trauma, and disability-related stigma around trauma survivors," and "increas[ing] immediate anxiety response for a subset of individuals whose beliefs predispose them to such a response." Benjamin W. Bellet et al., Trigger Warning: Empirical Evidence Ahead, 61 J. Behav. Therapy & Experimental Psychiatry 134, 140 (2018). But to the extent the empirical debate on that subject is unsettled, I think they are generally unsound in universities, at least when it comes to work-by-work or class-session-by-class-session warnings."
The phrase Trigger Warning has a dual purpose, one explicit and one implied. The explicit purpose is to protect people from harm, but is usually ineffective, superfluous, or counter-productive. It doesn't matter though, because the purpose that people actually care about is the implicit one, which is the delivery of a message: "I'm on your side and you need to trust me and align yourself with me, because I am finely-tuned to your sensitivities - even ones you didn't know you had."
You could go full TLP and argue that Trigger Warnings are the author's way of stopping their readers from ever having to side-line their ego (ego= defence against change), by a) preventing them from reading the thing in the first place or b) pre-emptively making the reader appalled/disgusted to the tag 'suicide' so that when that theme eventually comes up, there is no bandwidth left for a spontaneous, individual response.
You have a good point, but I think the big issue is if the trigger is a small part of a larger piece. Will I avoid playing video games with spiders in them? Not generally - I rather like Skyrim and Nier: Replicant. Will I avoid games that are entirely based around spiders, and feature constant crawling sounds in 3D audio? Very much yes.
The best comparison I can think of is like watching a movie from a series you love for the first time, but where you've been spoiled to the major twist. You're watching the movie with anticipation for one specific thing. You're focused on the small hints and wondering if *this* is the scene that reveals it. And you keep that same focus for most of the movie while ultimately missing half of it because you're in such anticipation for the reveal of the twist!
The same case may apply for those with milder triggers. The trigger itself is a small part of a larger work, and not serious enough for you to avoid it. But just being *aware* of the trigger may cause higher stress over a longer period.
I also agree with trebuchet's comment - sometimes interacting with the trigger is just required.
I'm sort of on the fence on this one. I remember the big fanfic debates of years back over "should we have trigger/content warnings?" and the arguments on both sides. They were adopted, although I think tagging has pretty much taken over their function now.
Some writers won't use them, and their works are tagged "Author has chosen not to use content warnings". Others will. Some people genuinely have triggers that cause them extreme distress (the big one here is rape/sexual abuse victims) and appreciate "okay, this story has something in it that will make me have an episode" so they can avoid reading it. Some people are just whiny little complainers who want you to warn for *everything* and if they insist on going ahead and reading something even after warnings, will bombard the author with "this shouldn't be allowed" and calls for the author and their works to be purged from the site.
Mostly I use them to avoid stories with content or themes I don't want - usually romances or OCs or particular tropes (NO COFFEESHOP AUs, ARGHHH!) Sometimes I just want comforting fluff, other times I want the characters to *suffer* 😈 Sometimes I'm fine with reading Major Character Death, other times I don't want to bother. Content warnings/tags lets me filter out that stuff.
I agree with twists and turns being vital part of reading fiction, I ranted mildly elsewhere about being able to predict the plot of a novel from the publisher's blurb without having to read the book, but some things (e.g. splatterpunk back in the day, when it nearly sank horror fiction as a genre) just were not worth it. They were extreme shock value, where "shock" meant "what is the most viscerally disgusting imagery to make the reader want to vomit that we can churn out?" and nothing more.
For a book, it's trivial enough to place the warnings somewhere out of the way (such as the last page) with only a generic 'Content warnings apply, please turn to page x for an exhaustive list' note at the beginning, to spare the feelings of the untriggerables.
Trickier for some other media, but https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ does an okay job already as a crowdsourced database, though it could use better search options.
> It's hard for me to imagine any work of art that contains _nothing_ that might trigger someone.
Sure, but the scheme does at least avoid annoying the subset of readers who get annoyed by spoilers inherent in content warnings. (Possibly, but not obviously, the majority.)
Say what you will about the tale of Hansel and Gretel, but one thing it doesn't have is a spider. The arachnophobe who fingers the list to verify this may get spoiled on all the scrumptious gaslighting and cannibalism, but presumably accepts this as the cost of doing spider-free business.
Not liking things is totally different from having PTSD triggered by them, although usually people with PTSD get conditioned to hate their triggers pretty hard, because every time a trigger happens they go into a flashback or a panic attack. It's also different from being psychologically fragile in general: perhaps seeing someone trip and fall provokes uncontrollable terror, but you're able to handle other stressful situations such as being robbed at gunpoint or kidnapped more competently than an average person.
Usually triggers aren't permanent, too. They can fade over time, especially with treatment.
So I think probably your comment is entirely based on an incorrect picture of how PTSD works and should be completely rethought in view of this new information and, perhaps, reading Scott's post and other information about PTSD.
Here is another paper that I would appreciate for your subscribers to challenge .
This paper explores the broad data around covid cases , deaths and excess deaths and issues of data collection and reporting and using all death to appreciate effects of interventions
Fpr example they do not seem to realize that the point of a vaccine is definitely NOT to induce an immune response that is identical to the one following an infection with the pathogen, or that the pharmacosurveillance system can not be used by itself to estimate safety risks.
The article does not read like a real paper. I would bet that none of the authors is working in medical research. Edit : after checking, the last author has written at least one very bullshitty paper, "Does the High Binding Affinity of Analogue Caps to the elF4E Obey the Laws of Thermodynamics for Cellular Health?"
I must say that "the Laws of Thermodynamics for Cellular Health" has a nice ring to it!
I had a look at the paper and the bio of the authors and it seems to me that they are people with real medicine expertise that wrote nonsense "papers" to sell their bullshit products. Quite sad in fact!
This paper goes into the details of microbiology and presents information that I am not familiar with . I do my best just to keep with the general sense of what is being presented . They indicate a number of issues associated with observed interactions and effects of known and discovered effects of mRna shots that are concerning for health and safety outcomes . Because of what is presented and the potential impact , and based on the VAERS reports , suggest immediately suspending all use of these products until these issues can be addressed
The Swiss German language does not discriminate between smelling and tasting, both are described by the same word "schmecken". Are there other languages which do not discriminate between them?
I would be very curious how people who *only* speak such a language perceive taste and smell, and whether they would even realize that there is a difference. For that, Swiss German is very bad, because every speaker also speaks High German, which has two different words for taste and small. (High German has the word "riechen" for smell, and "schmecken" is restricted to taste in High German.) So every Swiss German speaker is aware that there is supposed to be a difference.
Wow, that's a pretty bad one. English generally does pretty well on distinctions, probably because it simply has a lot of words. But it does lack two that bother me often: first, it only has two words, "spicy" and "hot", for the tri-distinction of temperature-hot/spicy-hot/heavily-spiced; second, we use "know" both for epistemic-knowledge and for familiarity.
The idea that we have 5 senses dates at least back to Aristotle's De Anima. For good examples, you would probably have to look outside of the Western tradition.
A very minor circumlocution seems sufficient to distinguish the two, e.g. 'schmecken via my nose' and 'schmecken via my tongue'.
Similarly, there are supposedly languages without different words for 'blue' and 'green', but it's easy enough to say or write 'blue-green like the sky' or 'blue-green like grass'.
I read an article at Language Log (sorry, ref not handy) that explored all known languages and the color words therof, and found the universal heirarchy:
Black/White/Red -- every language, these are the basic colors: Night/Day/Blood
Yellow/Orange/brown/ochre/pink/Purple -- the next group of color words, theorized because these are skin tones (and animal hides/colors)
Green(s) --Almost last
Blue/Blue-Green -- last. Many languages have no words for this
The theory for the deprecation of blue/green was surprising: Yes, the sky and water are blue and blue-green, and plants are green, but who cares? Primitive people would have no need to "talk" about them, because they are in the infinite distance. You can't grasp or manipulate them, or hunt them, they don't really matter day-to-day, (or ever really change, from a primitive POV), unlike blood, or people, or animals, all in the first two groups;- things you deal with all the time.
I thought this was very interesting and elegant.
Also, a related theory that water names in the Middle East like "Black Sea" or "Red Sea" and several others, were not color references but mistranslations of cardinal directions like "North" or "East" that existed in languages ~5,000-10,000 years ago. Several words in "The Odyssey" were the jumping-off point for this.
I don't follow Language Log anymore – I think it got 'too technical' to interest me – but I loved my linguistics classes in college/university, and I've read many 'sorta-pop linguistics' books with relish. I know I've read of the 'color hierarchy' you described before and that's definitely a big part of my understanding of the linguistics of color.
Personally, I think of 'words' versus 'noun phrases' as more of a 'spectrum' than a binary classification, e.g. 'blue-green like the sky' isn't _that_ different from 'blue' and, as languages evolve, the differences between the two ends of that spectrum can get _very_ blurry!
(And then some languages, e.g. German, seem to outright 'cheat' and simply declare that a 'phrase' is 'really a word now'!)
People who speak only English might also be interested to know that Russian distinguishes light blue and dark blue as two separate color words in exactly the same way that English does for pink and red - this helps give you an example of what it is to see two things that others think of as two distinct basic colors as somehow versions of the same thing.
Modern 'color words' (in English) tho seem to take this even further. Some people behave as if 'eggshell' is a distinct color (tho perhaps not a 'basic' one).
Perhaps familiarity is a big part of this? 'Magenta' is often very distinct from other similar colors as just one example.
(And IIRC some people have 'yellow receptors' in their eyes too.)
A "basic" color is one that isn't part of another color. Scarlet, for example, is a type of red; therefore scarlet isn't a basic color.
Pink is a basic color because, even though it would make sense to call it a type of red, a typical English speaker would not call a pink object red. (Brendan's comment below is the only exception I've ever heard.)
That doesn't seem to clarify anything for me. I think this avenue, something like 'arguing by definition', is generally of little use. For one, it's easy enough to dispute any particular definition.
I do think I have an idea of what you and Brendan are getting at, but it still seems strange and somewhat non-sensical to me (as a general explanation). But I also don't think there _is_ a simple theory that explains all of this! Whether something 'really is' a 'distinct' or 'basic' color is more of a practical (e.g. social) concern.
In common speech, most people would think "pink" is a color, and ID a color sample with that word.
In technical use, when one is mixing paints, or editing photographs or video or other images, "pink" is exactly as described, a "tint" derived from mixing Red (RGB system) or Magenta (CMYK system, more appropriate) with White.
I don't disagree that pink is a tint of red, but it doesn't also seem to be true that tints are therefore not 'real colors'.
And, technically, there are lots of other 'color spaces' (beyond RGB or CMYK), and I don't think any of them capture what humans perceive (which also varies between individuals in many many ways).
There are lots of ways of thinking about 'color'! And seemingly just as many ways of thinking about, speaking/writing about, or understanding them too. I think you really need to 'hold them all in your mind at once' to get a sense of what 'color' is (or could be).
Sounds right. For example, the Polish language uses the same word for fingers and toes, but if you need to distinguish between them, you can say "fingers of the hand" or "fingers of the foot" (i.e., toes).
Spanish too, "dedos". In the other direction, English (and, to be fair, many other languages) uses the same word for "having as an innate trait" and "standing in a state of": "be", while Spanish uses "ser" and "estar" for these two different meanings.
Spanish (at least Argentine Spanish), like many other languages, also has different words for "dark blue" and "light blue", so it's incorrect to say "el cielo es azul", "the sky is blue". There is strong evidence that speakers of such languages are better at distinguishing between these colors.
English "love" is a particularly interesting case: "I love him!" can express the emotion of greatly enjoying someone or something (for example, a musician), the emotion of limerence, or an emotion of trust and intimacy, all of which may co-occur or not. Many other languages distinguish between some or all of these concepts: Vietnamese has the tinh/nghia distinction, Classical Greek has the agape/philia/eros/storge distinction (mostly collapsed into agapi in Modern Greek), and in modern Spanish we have "me encanta", "amo" (sometimes distinguished from "estoy enamorado"), and "quiero". You might say of a close friend "Lo quiero mucho", while "Lo amo" may suggest that you're seeking pair-bonding. But this introduces another ambiguity that doesn't exist in English: "Lo quiero" might mean that he is dear to you, or that you would like him to appear before you so that you can ask him to help you defrost your refrigerator.
You could surely write a book about the worldview encapsulated in the polysemy of English "fuck".
Not inherently, though certainly sexual violence and sexual degradation are sadly common throughout human history. You might as well say that eating, yelling, or injecting drugs inherently contains an element of both violence and degradation.
I've recently noticed some positive use, such as 'this song fucks!', among assorted degenerate youth. Sadly, it could just be proxy for the Roman-style sentiment where being the one to penetrate implies superiority.
A great thing about Argentine Spanish is that, while "coger" is vulgar, it lacks those violent and deprecatory senses (except in the speech of one young woman I know who grew up on /b/). Unfortunately I can't make as favorable a report about "joder" in Iberian Spanish, a word which has entirely lost its sexual sense in Argentina, meaning only "mess around" or, in the form "jodido", "very difficult".
The second is usually discussed as the distinctive assumption of behaviorism. The idea that only stimulus and behavior can be studied is very much connected with philosophical viewpoints that were operative in other fields at the same time (early 20th century). The logical positivists in philosophy said that it was meaningless to talk about anything that couldn't be translated into observation (and thus dismissed much traditional speculative philosophy involving metaphysics or ethics). Karl Popper didn't insist on quite a strong standard of translatability, but he said that any meaningful scientific hypothesis should make a prediction that could hypothetically at least be falsified by observation. The behaviorist idea is basically that, where observation is limited to input and output behavior, rather than allowing introspection - after all, we don't just want theorists to report about their own mind, but to report observable claims about mental beings in general.
Adolescent rebellion, physics envy, and to some extent the necessary rejection of the pseudoscience that is Freudian psychology. It's no accident Tennov was a behaviorist, even if her work couldn't have been done within the radical form of behaviorism you're rightly, if implicitly, criticizing.
If Freudian psychology is pseudoscience, what is the proper name for the type of science that posits that people don't have mental processes at all?
Behaviorists won a PR war. They are associated with their good results, while their sillier statements are mostly forgotten. With psychoanalysis it's the other way round: everyone associates them with their silliness, while their good ideas are just considered "common sense" these days (unconscious mental contents; mind modelled as multiple competing agents; sexuality as a driving force of human behavior).
I think all three of those ideas are at least several thousand years old; they're all mentioned in the Tipitaka, and some are explored at great length. Sexuality has presumably been known to be a driving force of human behavior since prehistoric times.
Isn't the second assumption technically true ? The only internal mental processes you can study directly are your own; and even that might be stretching the definition of the word "directly". If you want more data than N=1, then you have to ask people "what are you thinking ?", which involves producing a stimulus and observing the response. From these inputs, you can infer the person's mental state -- in the same way as you can infer the charge of an electron from observing oil droplets, or the wavelength of light from observing interference patterns. What's wrong with that ?
Behaviorists treated the mind as a black box. This turned out to be too extreme; we can use various techniques such as imaging to learn about the mechanisms of the brain. It is true that there is a subjectivity of mental experience that we can't study, Nagel famously asked "What is it like to be a bat?" to show the limits of what we can understand about the mind. But this is not nearly as extreme a view as the behaviorists had.
Basically, we are extremely bad at understanding human (and animals) behavior based on inference from input-output models, and very good at doing it if we treat them as agents that are broadly similar to us in mental capacity and internal experience (theories of mind). As such, even if in some abstract sense it must be only neurons firing, practically (and in my opinion, scientifically) it's quite bizarre to ignore our privileged access to our internal state of mind while trying to understand the actions of others - there is a real enough sense in which their internal state is exactly what we are trying to understand, so we better not just assume it doesn't exist while postulating our hypothesis. It's similar (in my opinion) to refusing to use math in physics because we are trying to study matter, not numbers - sure, there is probably some sense in which the calculations are just approximations of something more complex and fundamental, but it sure look like numbers will be very very helpful in understanding matter better.
Edit: I see I misunderstood the question. I think the answer to the actual question is that behaviorist didn't think doing stuff like asking people what they think it's scientific either. It's still an internal mental state description even if it was described out load.
Are you saying that behaviorists believed that human (and animal) behaviour is literally implemented as a giant lookup table, with no internal states whatsoever, where inputs are connected directly to outputs ? That sounds like a caricature of their position, but I could be wrong...
I'm not sure. I didn't ever study behaviorism as a serious position, so it's very possible I misunderstood something. Let's look at what Stanford has to say:
'Behaviorism, the doctrine, is committed in its fullest and most complete sense to the truth of the following three sets of claims.
1. Psychology is the science of behavior. Psychology is not the science of the inner mind – as something other or different from behavior.
2.Behavior can be described and explained without making ultimate reference to mental events or to internal psychological processes. The sources of behavior are external (in the environment), not internal (in the mind, in the head).
3. In the course of theory development in psychology, if, somehow, mental terms or concepts are deployed in describing or explaining behavior, then either (a) these terms or concepts should be eliminated and replaced by behavioral terms or (b) they can and should be translated or paraphrased into behavioral concepts.'
So you can talk about how specific stimulus condition a specific response (which I guess can be thought of as lookup table) but not about what its like "from the inside" to experience and learn from this stimulus. That raises the question - what type of mechanisms the behaviorist did think are at work in animal behavior?
'“The organism”, he [Skinner] says, “is not empty, and it cannot adequately be treated simply as a black box” (1976, p. 233). “Something is done today which affects the behavior of the organism tomorrow” (p. 233). Neuroscience describes inside-the-box mechanisms that permit today’s reinforcing stimulus to affect tomorrow’s behavior. The neural box is not empty, but it is unable, except in cases of malfunction or breakdown, to disengage the animal from past patterns of behavior that have been reinforced. It cannot exercise independent or non-environmentally countervailing authority over behavior.'
So it seem the key issue here is not that we must treat the brain as a black box, but that we must (according to Skinner) treat it as a repository for outside stimulus history, and not as independent casual force. "The dog salivated because he heard the bell" is acceptable account of the behavior, but "the dog salivated because he felt hungry" is not, as "hunger" is meaningless as a casual force independent from environmental history of encountering food and such. Mental states are very weird as casual forces, so behaviorists insisted we eliminate them from our theory of behavior.
So it looks like "giant lookup table" is indeed not their position. Maybe something more like "bank of learned responses, which are determine by internal calculus of negative and positive (expected? is expecting something is internal state?) stimulus." It's still a bad framework in my opinion, but not as bad as I thought it was.
Well, he does say, "Neuroscience describes inside-the-box mechanisms that permit today’s reinforcing stimulus to affect tomorrow’s behavior". This would imply that there's some mechanism inside the black box *in addition* to just a repository of past inputs; at the very least, there's a mechanism that translates these inputs into future behaviour (as opposed to just passively storing them).
I guess that behaviourists would say that human (and animal) behaviour is ultimately determined by its history of past stimuli, which is, generally speaking not that bad of an idea (plus or minus some inborn behaviours that all animals have). But there's a lot of room here for behaviourists to be wrong, depending on how strong their claim is. For example, let's say that someone teaches me how to calculate "i=i+1". Then, I take a piece of paper and write out the numbers from 1 to N, where N is some arbitrarily large quantity. Would the behavioursists say that all of those numbers ultimately stem from that one sensory input (of me being taught how to increment a number) ? What if I go on to independently develop multiplication and set theory ? At some point, the behaviourist explanation begins to explain too much.
At least part of the issue is the assumed impossibility of first-person science, at least "science" as we widely understand it. Subjective internal states can be neither measured nor externally verified, so while they may be causally significant, it's difficult to imagine how they could ever be incorporated into the hypothetico-deductive/experimental loop of hard science.
The idea that if something can not be perfectly objectively measured then "the hypothetico-deductive/experimental loop " can not be used seems to me obviously false. Inecology or psychology for example, you can do real science (with hypothsesis, tests and repatabale results!) for "objects" than can only be imperfectly measured.
I'm not sure what was the exact historical process, but the way I was taught this idea in a philosophy of social science courses was something like this:
1. If you want to explain human behavior, you need to account for the connection between will and action.
2. This is a surprisingly complex problem! Are people constrained to their will? Determining it? Both? What is even will? Are we doing philosophy of mind now?
3. Well, it looks like in other more successful sciences all this thorny intentionality business never come up. Maybe we can just model behavior directly as an observered phenomena, without postulating any specific intention that underpin it?
And at some point this line of reasoning ended up with the conclusion that you must ignore internal states if you want to have proper science. I think wittgenstein private language argument also played some part in it, as it argued/assumed that internal mental states, such as pain, must in fact be fictional.
There are some traces to this approach in neuroscience and economics - the proper phenomena is brain activity/preference, and the actual mental states are (sometimes) not treated as properly "real" as far as the tools of the discipline are concerned.
What do you mean by "ignore internal states" ? Is that a rejection of dualism, or a suggestion that humans are implemented as giant lookup tables ? I don't understand how the latter can even work. Like, let's say I asked you to count from N to N+1000. You could easily do it, but how would you model such behaviour using a lookup table (of finite size) ?
Good post, but just a small correction: unless I have my dates confused I think the Philosophical Investigations predate the real heyday of behaviorism. I don't think he was influential in the formation of the movement. I also wouldn't say Wittgenstein thought pain was fictional.
Insane idea. (Some people say that intelligence is not genetic but mainly environmental, but they usually don't want to check any ideas besides throwing money at poor).
Remember those ancient culture that practiced cranial deformities by binding of babies heads? What if we could make a vacuum pump (like those used with breasts) to increase brain volume?
You could have a low heritability for intelligence, but still have biological correlates. If this intervention was successful, it is possible heritability might fall significantly. The important thing would be what you are pumping their brain full of?
The idea is to attach vacuum to the outside of the head, not to pump stuff into the head. The latter would have no possibility of increasing brain size since you're *reducing* the available space inside the head for the brain by pushing other stuff in there (and would literally be iatrogenic hydrocephalus).
I'd like to make a formal request to this community, and to the entire world:
The next time somebody brings up the topics of hands-on parenting, or active parenting, or specific parenting philosophies, approaches, and strategies, please, make every effort not to respond with phrases such as "you're trying to mold your kids into something specific".
This sets up a false dichotomy in parenting: of letting your kids self-actualize versus doing it for them. This does not have to be the case. For example, one can parent actively with the express purpose of helping a child self-actualize.
Also, you may be tempted to say things like: "you do realize that it's been proven that disparate parenting styles don't make a difference..." I realize that you may think that you have data on your side, and that you've read (or listened to podcasts about) Gopnik, Caplan, Rich-Harris, etc. But still, please, resist the urge.
Instead, if you're interested, please take the time to listen to the actual approaches the person is exploring - their methodology and goals. And if you're not interested, please just move along.
I agree about the false dichotomy. I don't remember any specific discussion of parenting on ACX, but based on my experience with the rest of the world, some people apparently can't see the possible middle ground and seem to believe that it is either "do nothing" or "brainwash your child and forcibly override any of their preferences". (Though I assume those concerns are probably inspired by actual terrible parents who actually did the latter.)
There are some basic skills that I want my kids to have, such as reading and writing, saying thank you and cleaning their rooms; skills that in my opinion every adult should have. (Yes, the list is much longer, but there is enough time for that.)
In addition to that, I will propose (but not insist on) doing things that I consider valuable, but not necessary, such as programming or drawing or watching anime. Here, I am merely giving suggestions, which I believe is harmless, but potentially useful. If the kids enjoy it, great; if they don't, no big deal. And yes, my kids also have lots of free, unstructured time.
You want to be able to discuss "active parenting" but don't want the people you're discussing this with to respond in a certain way?
Why not just not bring this up with anyone?
I'm not sure what you even mean by "active parenting" given your request. The most familiar (to me) example of 'anti-active-parenting' is what Bryan Caplan has written about it, but I don't think the alternative he suggests _couldn't_ also be described as "parent[ing] actively with the express purpose of helping a child self-actualize".
I think his larger point is to avoid stress and anxiety, for both parents and their children, and focus instead on everyone enjoying childhood.
I mean, depends on if it's a "How do you best drive a nail with a shoe?" question which doesn't want to hear about hammers. But maybe I'm already exposed to people asking the wrong question from programming forums.
I agree that parenting advice is already super judgemental and maybe it needs more norms around advice giving?
"How do you best drive a nail with a shoe?" sounds like a perfectly cromulent question, and if I were asking it, I would not appreciate responses trying to tell me I should use a hammer instead.
In general, the "XY problem" is a harmful meme. It may be that the person asking may be confused about their problem, but it's also possible (and, IMO, more likely) that they have a specific reason for trying an unusual approach. The correct thing to do is, IMO, to either answer the question (possibly also hinting at the canonical solution), or refrain from posting - and not assume up front that the person asking is confused.
(Yes, "XY problem" paternalism is a pet peeve of mine.)
No, overgeneralising from your particular experience is the harmful thing here.
There may well be certain forums for questions where it's more likely that someone has a good reason for an unusual approach rather than simply being ignorant and/or confused, but that certainly isn't the case in forums (such as Stack Overflow) where you have a lot of people with a fairly low level of expertise who very often don't well understand what they're doing.
It might be fair to assume that someone asking "How do you best drive a nail with a shoe" knows what a hammer is and that it's the most commonly used tool to drive nails, since that's very widespread knowledge. But in situations where there are a lot of beginners without good knowledge, I would expect someone who knows that they're not presenting an XY problem to understand that there are a lot of beginners out who really are presenting XY problems and explicitly state why they're not going for the typical solution that's obvious to experts but not so much to beginners.
Yeah, banning the obvious answer sometimes means trying to improve signal-to-noise by preventing an avalanche of low-hanging fruit. I'm reminded of that one time Yudkowsky was mocked for soliciting weight-loss advice exclusive of diets, which request made perfect sense to me.
(Also, thanks for teaching me the term; I hadn't realised the practice of asking the allegedly wrong question was given such a generic name. "XY problem paternalism" indeed.)
As to parenting discussions - they do warrant tact, but knowing that a child's upbringing is on the line raises the stakes both for the seeker and the gadflies.
To be honest, I'm not sure that I take issue with unsolicited advice in general. I was referring to the types of comments that I referenced specifically.
The Annoying and Unwanted. Maybe my new band name. "No thanks!" is a uniquely American response to a request. The "No" is quite clear, but what exactly are you thanking me for?
I thought this was a really nice discussion by Ada Palmer on the full philosophy of stoicism, showing how their metaphysics and epistemology is connected to their ethics and practical philosophy, and why this might be having a kind of revival:
Since you brought up "different kinds", you might be interested in Epicureanism. It was a popular opponent to Stoicism in its day but shares things in common.
Someone mentioned Meditations which is not strictly about Stoicism but reflects ideas from philosophies of the time, not least of which is Stoicism. An easy but repetitive read. MA was writing for himself here. IIRC he was quite preoccupied with death, and making assertions that it's nothing to be concerned about. He would have been in more advanced age at the time of writing.
Massimo Pigliucci is a Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York, and he has in the last few years became a popularizer of Stoicism.
His Wikipedia article states: “… one of the driving forces in Stoicism's resurgence in the United States in the early twenty-first century. His 2015 essay for The New York Times on the topic was one of the most shared articles to date. Pigliucci said he always felt Stoicism was part of his Italian heritage, but he came to practice it after being disenchanted with Buddhism, though he finds both schools of thought to share similarities.”
My local library has a few of his books, which I have never read.
I used to read his blogs, and for a while he co-hosted the Rationally Speaking podcast with Julia Galef. He has famously debated Eliezer Yudkowsky about the Singularity.
Anything we encounter or possess is prone to fail or otherwise impact us negatively at some point—we don't have absolute power to _make_ everything go well (he excepts the inside of our own minds; with mental health issues I disagree on that point, but we can do as well as we can).
Given this understanding of the world, the Stoic idea is that to keep our expectations realistic (or "according to nature" in the Greek idiom) we should, essentially, be pricing that possibility of failure in to how we relate to things generally, so we aren't thrown when the negative event happens.
I kinda associate stoicism with being really really cognizant about what is and isn't in your power to control, and to try not to worry about what's outside your control.
Its been a while since I read the book, but MA makes some interesting comments with my takeaway being how you would think that, being an emperor there wasn't anything outside of his control, but in reality he really struggled with backstabbing officers, gossiping attendants, and annoying courtesans. I remember him saying that these were all just irritations he needed to be better about accepting and not letting them get to him. It surprised me, because I would have guessed he would have a massive amount of flexibility in removing people he didn't like, but that didn't seem to be his perspective.
There's a fine rant in a van Vogt novel from an empress about how little power she has. She can give orders, but they're interpreted by a number of people and what she wants is very unlikely to happen.
One of my favorite bits in HPMOR is Harry, who is very American, saying that power/high status means you don't have to pay attention to people and Draco, who was raised to be something like a Renaissance prince, saying that the higher your status, the more attention you have to pay to people.
I used to listen to a lot of Glenn Beck, and he mentioned that he had an opportunity to interview/ chat with George W Bush at the end of his second term. Glenn expressed concerns with Obama, and Bush, in an attempt to reassure him told him that the office of the president has a tendence to mold people into doing what it wants, and a president's personal politics don't really shape policy as much as you might think.
Glenn said that rather than being comforted by that, he was terrified.
Do we have some non-fictional evidence about how people in positions of great power conceptualize the limits of that power? It might not be as well written as van Vogt or Yudkowsky, but it would probably be a more reliable guide to understanding the humans' dominance hierarchies and collective action problems.
trebuchet's quote would be an example if we can find the source.
That's a great idea. Surely tons of biographies touch on this. I would expect biographies where the biographer is a family member (child, spouse) would be one good sort to search. (I may try to let this question "crank away" in the background, and see if my mind comes up with good examples.)
> "a fine rant... from an empress about how little power she has"
This reminds me of many moments in "The West Wing." Okay, it's just drama, okay it's fiction... but the nature of the constraints often seemed quite real. I know this is a bit trivial and banal of a decision given the scope of poss. decisions in that show, but I remember thinking for a moment (of either CJ Cregg or the guy who's supposed to be the president in the series) "This person does not even get to have control over what clothes to wear to certain events."
RE "the higher your status, the MORE attention you have to pay to people."--I love that! I think HPMoR-Draco had the right of it on that one!
Then you might prefer the "Enchiridion" by Epictetus, who was a disabled slave, it is a short handbook which would be suitable if you are interested in the more applied aspects of Stoicism (this book is also cited by Marcus Aurelius in the "Meditations").
The (probably false) story about how Epictetus became disabled embodies stoicism IMO.
His master was torturing him by twisting his leg, so he told his master "If you keep twisting my leg like that, it will break". His master continued, and when his leg finally broke, he said "See, I told you that it would break". And from then on he was disabled.
Or way harder, if you actually care about your empire and if not solving its problems, then at the very least not making them worse. Marcus Aurelius seemed to care, according to said book.
Yes, I actually got the impression reading the book (and Roman history) that it would be harder, given the constant pressure to be pulled back to crisis after material crisis
I don't know that Roman history was particularly more tumultuous than our own. When Marcus Aurelius assumed power, the Pax Romana was 198 years old, as old as the United States was in 01974, and it endured until his death. (This understates the comparison: the US had been interrupted by one of history's bloodiest wars, the US Civil War, which didn't have an equivalent during the Pax Romana.)
But sure, in any large complex system operating at the limits of its region of stability, you have constant incipient crises which will crash the whole system if they're not handled, which is why the Pax Romana ended when he died.
I think you're overselling the "pax" in "pax romana" there. From the constitutional settlement of Augustus in 27 BC to Marcus Aurelius's death in 180 AD, wikipedia records 32 separate instances of organized civil disorder, not counting the bloody civil war that took place in 69 AD. Marcus himself spent nearly his entire reign jumping from one crisis to the next, and was plagued with near constant invasions from beyond the Rhine and Danube frontiers.
Judging purely on the maintenance of domestic tranquility, I'd say the Pax Americana stacks up relatively favorably to the Pax Romana.
There's a book by Ward Farnsworth, "The Practicing Stoic," that might be useful (not written by an (academic) philosopher, which is either a plus or a minus depending on your background).
I’d say there are two kinds of stoicism. The first is basically a high pain tolerance; you son’t complain even when something is unpleasant or uncomfortable. I think that this has strong pros when you’re in a situation where complaining won’t help, and will likely just annoy those around you. But, it’s less useful when complaining would help. I guess I see it as a way of managing social capital.
The other thing is the more Greek philosophy of stoicism which, as far as I understand it, is front loading your pain and discomfort. You imagine horrible things happening to yourself and your loved ones so that you can get used to thinking about and dealing with that situation until it is no longer unpleasant for you. Then, when the bad things happen, you’ve already learned how to deal with it. I think this is useful if you have long or complicated actions you need to execute in the event the bad thing happens; an example would be if you were the VP of a major nation, you need a plan for if the president dies. But generally in my experience I find that using it more generally is … not healthy.
> You imagine horrible things happening to yourself and your loved ones so that you can get used to thinking about and dealing with that situation until it is no longer unpleasant for you.
This sounds like missing the point of stoic visualizations, or perhaps focusing on the wrong things. Visualizations are supposed to make you grateful that these things *aren't* actually happening to you, so you cherish the things you have now, and to help you differentiate what things you can and cannot control, so you're less distressed when something beyond your control happens.
Yes, that's my general impression too. I think in Zen terms this would be one of those "finger/moon" distinctions.
For myself, I find that it can help to conceive of my base state as dying slowly, painfully, friendless and alone, out in the wilderness somewhere. But only so far as to help me be happy with the people I see, the friends that I have, what food that I can eat. Life could be so much worse, but I have the Internet in my pocket! To circle back to morbidity, now that I think of it, this is kind of like the attitude of Death in Neil Gaiman's "Sandman".
But hey, I've never been a slave or an emperor, so what do I know? :-)
Or you can stop giving a fuck, roll with the punches, and assume everything you have is just castles in the sand anyway (which it is). I've seen stoicism explained as focusing on your personal freedom regardless of circumstance - embodying whatever virtue means to you, instead of chasing pleasure and running away from pain like an animal.
Not complaining also has the benefit of keeping _your own_ morale high, aside from helping others. Very useful if you're a load-bearing member of whatever group you find yourself in.
The 2nd thing you mentioned is a thought exercise so you stop being so attached to shit you cannot control. The point is to be less distressed, not more. Tantric yoga has a very similar exercise around desire and revulsion reflexes. The way you describe it sounds very counterproductive.
In my experience, frequently imagining terrible things happening to myself and my loved ones does not do good things for my mental health. It tends to be upsetting, angering, and/or saddening, and it can be hard to then set those emotions aside when I try to stop. So, if you’re in a situation where such things are likely to happen and you’ll need to be able to power through those emotions (like living in a warzone), it might be a good strategy, but in my experience the practice of it can often be damaging to someone leading a normal life. I think going through a normal grieving process after the bad things happen would probably be better in most cases
That makes sense. I find that even gratitude can be chancy for me-- being grateful for things becomes a reminder that I can lose them.
I feel like there's something about the idea of being well-calibrated for the chanciness of the real world is good, but it may need to be separated from the idea of being immune to the chanciness of the real world.
Every year I make quantitative predictions about the upcoming year, which I run as a small tournament with my friends - for example questions like, "What is the probability Russia will invade Ukraine?" and "What is the probability the Uncharted movie will gross more than the Warcraft movie did?".
This year I'd like to include the estimations of a psychic as a kind of 'baseline' entry against which people can judge their relative performance. Does anyone know a psychic they can put me in touch with who would be happy to answer 24 questions with a percentage probability? I'm happy to pay a reasonable consulting fee.
I've already asked the astrologer who sometimes posts here, but unfortunately he does a different kind of astrology
If millions of women suffer fairly extreme psychological turmoil most months of their adult lives, it seems to me worth considering whether this is a feature rather than a bug.
Here is an evolutionary explanation. I would be grateful if you lot could explain why it's nonsense / an unfalsifiable just-so story / already the consensus view. [NOTE: this hypothesis is definitely not the result of my wife being mean to me again this weekend, and by the way I had actually tried really hard to get the dog-puke smell out of the car, even if not 100% successfully.]
So if, in our evolutionary past, you are a healthy woman of childbearing age with at least one sexual partner, then getting several periods in a row is really bad news. It could well mean that either you or your partner is infertile. Continuing the current arrangement might then be disastrous from a reproductive POV.
So maybe exactly what you SHOULD be doing is feeling absolutely lousy about your life, thinking intensely about how to change it, and, in particular, questioning whether this useless bastard who can't even get the wolf-puke smell out the cave is actually the right hominid for you.
Shaking things up with an escalating series of conflicts could result in the following possibilities:
1. You break up - great outcome if he is infertile
2. You nearly break up but then have passionate make-up sex - good outcome if one of you has low fertility or you just haven't been having sex much for some reason
3. Some other male takes note that all is not well between the Ogs, and offers his services - good outcome
4. Some other female does likewise - not a great outcome but not the worst (if she gets pregnant I guess that is even useful information about his fertility?)
5. Your boyfriend beats you to death with an ibex horn - bad outcome
My hypothesis makes a few predictions -
1. The simplest prediction is that women who get PMS have more children, but presumably this may be confounded by many factors in the modern world
2. The emotional response should ideally come in time for conception within that cycle, if action is taken. Wikipedia says "one to two weeks" before period which seems OK though not optimal?
3. Experience of PMS should correlate with relationship instability
4. Women who get PMS should have more partners, or at least more break-ups
5. PMS symptoms (at least the psychological ones) should worsen as the number of sequential periods increases - you don't want to kick out Mr Right / get beaten to death with an ibex horn over one missed conception!
6. Symptoms should probably ease, at least for a while, once you have had one child with your partner
7. Symptoms should only arise at the onset of fertility and decline with menopause
8. There should be associated horniness and attraction to other men
And of course the idea reflects a bunch of assumptions, including -
1. Psychological PMS symptoms of the kind I've mentioned - deep unhappiness with / questioning of life situation, anger / starting rows with partner, horniness - are indeed generally prevalent among women
2. Ancestral relationships were more or less monogamous pair-bonds
3. She's not just cross with me because I'm a useless bastard
Actual scientists / rational people, pls explain to me why this idea is bullshit that's not even worth testing. Cheers.
Like the others, I think you're overthinking it. Unlike most of the others, my personal just-so story is that it's like, and in fact part of, the completely fucked placental business with human uteruses and fetuses competing which as I understand it is what requires heavy/frequent menstruation in the first place: it doesn't perform any useful function at all. Your wife's body is just hitting itself with a very blunt instrument, a hormone hammer, as part of its periodic renewal of the protective lining needed to prevent a potential fetus from wiring itself into and completely hijacking her circulatory system for mad nutrients (great for the fetus, bad for the mother).
This seems like an epicycle hypothesis. Menstrual cycles are outwardly observable without the behavioral changes and predictable enough that a woman knows roughly when it's coming without needing to get PMS. Also, I doubt timing as a method for getting pregnant would work any better than just having sex every single day you're not menstruating. So where is the advantage?
Like Deisaich, I think hormonal effects on emotion are bad but not bad enough to overcome the otherwise importance of having hormone spikes. You may as well ask what the evolutionary adaptiveness is of kids being depressed during adolescence. There isn't any. It's just the bad that comes is small enough to be completely offset by the good that comes from growing into a sexually mature adult and evolution accordingly ignores it.
?? I'm not suggesting it's a method for telling when you're pregnant.
I'm suggesting it's a response to repeated failures to get pregnant by shaking things up and potentially changing partner.
At the times we're talking about it's unlikely that anyone knew the connection between sex, pregnancy and menstruation - we're talking about evolution engineering certain psychological responses.
You're right. I glossed over the first part of your comment and only read the predictions.
As for why your actual hypothesis is probably nonsense, there are at least a few reasons:
1) I don't think there is any evidence to suggest monogamous-for-life pair bonding was common in evolutionary protohumans such that "breaking up" with infertile partners needed to be incentivized.
2) I doubt protohuman women had much of a choice who they mated with.
3) I'm skeptical there was ever a time that humans or protohumans didn't understand that sex is what leads to pregnancy, and thus couldn't understand that having sex repeatedly and not ever getting pregnant likely meant something was wrong.
I stand by the epicycle comment, though. I don't think PMS is something that stands out as needing explanation. It's a side effect of another process that isn't maladaptive enough to get selected against. Think of it like lower back pain, which was mentioned above. It sucks, but the benefits of bipedalism are enough to stand up and live with the pain.
Another possibility is that PMS (by which I specifically mean the mood-related elements) is not a primarily biological phenomenon. The incidence of PMS, and the understanding of the psychological impact of the menstrual cycle, vary enormously across cultures: "World Health Organization surveys indicate that menstrual cycle-related complaints (except cramps) are most likely to be reported by women who live in Western Europe, Australia, and North America. Data collected from women in Hong Kong and mainland China indicate that the most commonly reported premenstrual symptoms are fatigue, water retention, pain, and increased sensitivity to cold. American women do not report cold sensitivity and Chinese women rarely report negative affect."
I want to be very careful here: To say something is primarily socially or culturally mediated is absolutely not the same thing as saying it's 'not real' - anorexia is primarily socially mediated, but is very real and very worthy of our empathy and consideration.
I've heard a version of that told from a different angle: STDs often cause sterility, and this has been described as a strategy for causing more churn among partners.
"We" would, but the STD wouldn't. Plus, once you're sterile, your fitness isn't going any lower. Lowering a partner's fitness (or their subsequent partner's fitness) won't lower yours.
If a mutant doesn't have this hypothetical gene, do they have a fitness advantage over those who do? In real life the "sterility belt" doesn't have 100% sterility.
You don't need a complicated evo-psych explanation. Moods and emotions depend on the hormone levels, and the hormones involved during the menstrual cycle are in a delicate balance that one rises as another declines.
"There is no single clear theory yet to explain exactly which hormones trigger particular chemicals or why only some women experience PMDD or PMS.
But we know some women are susceptible to mood changes due to small fluctuations in reproductive hormones. In these vulnerable women, small changes in oestrogen and progesterone levels lead to shifts in central brain chemicals (GABA, serotonin and dopamine) that then affects mood and behaviour.
At the same time, many of the physical PMS symptoms such as breast tenderness, bloating, headaches and constipation are a direct effect of reproductive hormones. So both mind and body are affected."
Very simple "this is why you feel lousy" explainer here:
Not all women get cramps, moodiness, PMS, etc. but there is generally a rise in aggression and a tendency to fly off the handle. This may or may not have to do with the testosterone levels and balance; oestrogen and testosterone levels rise before/during ovulation, leading to more risk-taking behaviour and rise in libido (your body is trying to get pregnant, after all).
Also, some women can have increased sensitivity to sensory stimuli during their periods, so the dog-puke smell really *is* worse than it would normally be, and you said you'd deal with it but plainly you didn't because I can still smell it, so why the hell didn't you do this one simple job?
Also also, ovulation involves, to put it on a very basic and crude level, one of your ovaries 'exploding' in order to release the ovum. That's painful, or can be. Plus there's breast tenderness, which is no fun at all. Only way to deal with PMS things is (a) offer chocolate. Lots of chocolate and (b) keep out of the way until the worst of the moodiness passes.
(Disclaimer: I'm not an evolutionary biologist, nor do I want to play one here.)
The argument is that "any inherited disease or trait that has a serious impact on fitness must fade over time, because the genes that spell out that disease or trait will be passed on to fewer and fewer individuals in future generations."[1] So if PMS reduces reproductive fitness, e.g. by making women less attractive partners, we would expect that evolution would have eliminated it. If we accept that, what are the possibilities?
A. PMS doesn't affect fitness, or its effect is minimal.
B. PMS does effect fitness, but there are other factors that cancel it out. Onzyp Q's theory is one of these. Another would be that PMS is caused by higher or different levels of hormones that make a woman more fertile.
C. PMS is new in evolutionary time, and selection hasn't had a chance to eliminate it yet.
D. PMS is caused by an infection or parasite. This is the Ewald/Cochran hypothesis described by the Atlantic article[1] linked below.
Of those possibilities:
* A seems quite plausible to me.
* There are lots of theories that fit B, but it seems like it would be difficult to prove most of them, in part because if PMS has a fitness cost, it's pretty low.
* C seems unlikely to me because PMS is quite common. How would it have gotten that way quickly?
* With respect to D, like all of the Ewald/Cochran predictions (heart disease, arteriosclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, many if not most forms of cancer, multiple sclerosis, most major psychiatric diseases, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, cerebral palsy, polycystic ovary disease, homosexuality), it's certainly intriguing! Note that MS now seems to have an infectious cause. It might be possible to prove something similar for PMS.
"So if PMS reduces reproductive fitness, e.g. by making women less attractive partners, we would expect that evolution would have eliminated it"
Pardon me being blunt here, but from observation of, and participation in some, discussions around men, women, sex, attractiveness, 'why can't I get a date' and so forth, when it comes to *having sex* (as distinct for sticking around for the long term), men aren't put off by much other than 'she's dead, Jim'. 'She's crazy but I'm only here long enough to bang her' isn't a reduction in reproductive fitness, if by that we're measuring 'are you getting pregnant?'
Like many other things, I think it's always been there but until given A Proper Medical Name like "pre-menstrual syndrome", it was never really thought of as much other than 'women, flighty little things, always the prey of their emotions' when it was that time of the month.
Regarding C, "new" could well mean "only a few million years", which is plenty old enough to be universal within our species. We have back problems because walking upright is new.
"Evolutionary fitness" is not a high bar. "Yeah, this hormone mix makes women moody and grumpy before they ovulate, it also makes them horny. Horny = more sex = babies. Mission accomplished!"
I don't think there is a really fine tuned process at work over the eons here, biology is quite frequently "close enough for government work".
That's my intuition as well. Similar behavioural changes seem to occur in other menstruating primates (vervet monkeys are a good model), so it's probably a primitive, conserved hormonal side-effect instead of any advantageous human adaptation.
Says that children (sometimes one child in a family, sometimes it varies between siblings) get targeted for any of being a rebel, being sensitive, being very different from a parent, reminding the parent of someone they hate.
I'll add that I know some cases of being targeted for what seems to be looking too ethnic, and for being an unwelcome gender. The categories have a lot of overlap.
I posted the link to Facebook, and I don't think I've gotten so many shares for anything else. This is a topic which is relevant to a lot of people.
There are no statistics in the article, but it wouldn't surprise me if there's scapegoating in at least 15% of families.
Any thoughts about why this hasn't been evolved out?
I suspect the situation is better than it was-- my impression is that there are more people (younger than me) who have good relationships with their parents, and the idea that it's alright for children to be emotional dumping grounds for their parents is much less prevalent.
I'm not convinced anything about our current nuclear family structure and related neuroses can be explained particularly well by reference to evolutionary pressures.
In many Western countries there's been a slight swing of the pendulum back towards communal child responsibility, in the sense that parents are no longer seen to absolutely own their children and that if they want to, say, beat those children that's their business.
For those who find themselves needing to explain the Motte and Bailey concept to others, or would just like to have a better understanding of it, I highly recommend https://www.epsilontheory.com/an-inconvenient-truce/. Rusty Guinn provides an excellent and entertaining primer.
Fictional ACX++ grant proposals! (What would yours be?!?)
So far on the DSL thread (see below) we have:
1. What if We All Wore Narnian Clothing: Small and Large Studies Design for Measuring the Sociopsychological Effects of Certain Sartorial Modifications
2. Introducing the “gwern” as a unit of measure of successful-internet-searching-speed
3. Social media / communications technology: Downgrade your tech to upgrade your life! (this idea from "Well..."!)
4. Capuchino Labz, LLC: Using selective breeding, gene sequencing, high-resolution observation and data science to uplift capuchin monkeys into humanlike intelligence (this idea from the "capuchin mad-science guy" on the ACX Discord! You'll know who I mean. He also helped me write the title for #1.)
I'm trying to understand what's going on in Ukraine, and why. I know the title of this John Mearsheimer lecture sounds clickbaity, but his narrative seems very reasonable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
Basically, Western leaders have neglected (a) the fact that dictators will do anything to avoid being supplanted by democratic regimes, and see it as a major risk when their neighbors start cooperating with the West or joining their defense pacts, and/or (b) Putin's increasing dictator-ness.
I still think Putin deserves a major share of the blame for becoming a dictator in the first place. But we should still be scrutinizing the Western leaders involved, since at least they're accountable to voters - you would hope that regardless of the existence of authoritarianism, democratic leaders can still avoid escalating a conflict which benefits nobody, as seems to be the case for Ukraine.
Does anyone have insight into this, and what the solutions might be?
Thirty years ago, Russians, Poles and Ukrainians were poor, and the EU was rich. Now, Russians and Ukrainians are still poor, Poland has joined the EU, Poles have become much wealthier, and the EU is even richer.
It's very difficult to know what Western leaders could have done to prevent Ukrainians wanting to get closer to the EU and further away from Russia.
Maybe they had no leverage over Ukrainian popular opinion, but it still feels like they could have tried harder to keep Putin on their side (e.g. by inviting Russia to full NATO membership), even if it meant temporarily delaying the rollout of democracy. I dunno, I'm very uncertain about all this and need to read more about it.
Inviting Russia to NATO would mean inviting all Russian military conflicts into NATO, and Russia has lots of conflicts. Should NATO then take Russia's side in Transnistria and South Ossetia?
If it meant avoiding an all-out war, possibly yes - but there were a lot less Russian conflicts in the early 2000s, weren't there? (That's the time frame I was thinking of) Also, has Russia been involved in more conflict than the US?
Poland now has GDP per capita $17k, Russia $11k and Ukraine $4. In PPP terms it's 36k, 29k and 14k respectively, so your second sentence is not accurate.
At least a part of the blame on lack of democracy in Russia is on Clinton's decision to bomb Yugoslavia. Population of Russia was reasonably pro-US and very much pro-democracy just prior to that, but this was seen by many as a betrayal - that US, the paragon of democracy / human right / laws that are actually followed, chose to behave in such blatenly undemocratic self-service ways against the international laws demonstrated in eyes of many russians that the western notion of democracy is completely hypocritical and made "democracy" a dirty word for way too many in Russia [note that personally, I am stating popular sentiment in Russia at the time, not necessarily endorsing]. According to https://pittnews.com/article/121917/opinions/analysis-1999-nato-operation-turned-russia-west/ this also affected Putin's position as well.
I agree, but it should be recognized that deescalation is in this case a difficult balancing act. If West supports Ukraine too little, it becames easy target for Russian agression, i.e. bloody conflict. If West supports Ukraine to much, Russia is going to to feel compelled to do a preventive strike before Ukrainian military becames too difficult for them too handle. Here is a good argument that we are in the second scenario: https://www.fpri.org/article/2022/01/moscows-compellence-strategy/.
Ideal solution would some equivalent of Camp David accords, which brought peace between Israel and Egypt. In that time, they were moderated by US president. Currently there seesms to be zero appetite for that on either side.
I am not sure how to interpret Russian demands contained in their draft treaty between US and Russia (https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/rso/nato/1790818/?lang=en), which basically consist of Russia demanding things without even promising to give anything in return. That is wildly out of touch with the current balance of power. One rather alarming possibility would be that Kremlin is delusional, but in previous years they imho proved to be highly competent in executing foreign policy, unlike US or EU. Perhaps it is just a negotiating tactic
The Russians have seen their strategic situation worsen and their area of influence reduced continuously for the last thirty years, and they are saying it's time to stop. They don't want to control Ukraine but they want it clearly understood that it's in their sphere of influence (Mexico would be the equivalent, I suppose). The problem is that NATO is now so politically exposed that it can't back down without looking weak. There's no need for any agreements between Russia and Ukraine because there is fundamentally no quarrel between them. It's the idea of Ukraine joining a western alliance that worries the Russians, and observers of Ukraine are not very sanguine that a Ukraine in NATO, or with foreign troops deployed, could be expected to behave rationally.
The Russian draft proposals are a different issue. They are a signal, more than anything else, that the Russians want some kind of formal security arrangement and guarantees. As is normal, you lead off with your maximalist position.
I am sorry, but an idea that "There's no need for any agreements between Russia and Ukraine because there is fundamentally no quarrel between them", is um, charitably put, inaccurate.
There is a huge chunk of disputed teritorry between them. Russia gives arms to Donbass separatists who occasionally engage with combat with the Ukrainian army, where people from both sides get killed. And, oh, Russian troops are now possibly gearing up for an invasion of Ukraine. Not any NATO country.
There is absolutely a need for an agreement to stop that, which has to be primarily between Russia and Ukraine.
EDIT: othewise I agree with you about Russia being motivated by very real threat of shrinking of its area of influence.
Oh, indeed, I should perhaps have made that clear, but the reality is that there are many such disputes in the region, and that's not what this particular crisis is about. By itself it would not have led to the current situations, and indeed it's Ukraine's proposed membership of NATO, not the border issue, which dominates.
I doubt that "proposed" (in 2008, by Bush) Ukrainian NATO membership is the primary driver of current escalation. Most NATO members, including the US, currently have no desire to welcome Ukraine, and presumably Kremlin understands that. As I said, Russian goverment seem to be generally competent in international policy, unlike US or EU in last years.
Rather I think that granting of military aid to Ukraine from NATO members (this was a very bad idea imho), combined with anti-reconciliation turn in Ukrainian politics (also a bad idea, but from Ukrainians) are primary issues.
I think Aurelien is ultimately correct. The entire situation dates back to the Obama administration and Russia's fears of encroachment against them through Ukraine. Their solution, since they cannot attack Europe or the US, is to show force directly into or through Ukraine. Russia wins in one of two ways here - 1) the US and NATO back down and drop out of Ukraine, which puts Ukraine directly in the Russian sphere of influence again and doesn't permit Ukraine any options otherwise, or 2) direct Russian control of parts/most/all of Ukraine. It seems less and less likely that #1 is possible, which is pushing Russia to favor #2. Even in a worst case (outside of full war with NATO), it seems Russia may be able to force an option #3, rendering Ukraine into a defeated and debilitated country that can't interfere with Russia or Russia's interests.
All in all, the whole situation exists because Russia and NATO are at odds, not because Russia and Ukraine are fundamentally opposed. As recently as 2014 Ukraine was pretty much a satellite country, similar (but not quite as much) as Belarus.
"I think Aurelien is ultimately correct. The entire situation dates back to the Obama administration and Russia's fears of encroachment against them through Ukraine. "
Arguably, it dates back to the shafting Gorbachev received for being incredibly generous to the West (on matters such as German unification) and to the emancipating former Soviet republics. Had the West held to James Baker’s "not one inch eastwards" promise on NATO expansion, there is a good chance that Russia could have been usefully integrated into overall security cooperation - and perversely, the Baltic states and the rest of the Russian near-abroad would have been much safer than inside NATO.
It gives me no joy to say that Putin, who is execrable in many other ways, is correct when he claims this.
I admit that events occuring during the collapse of the Soviet bloc are murky and it is not the subject I know a lot about, but I doubt that Gorbachev was being "incredibly generous" in "allowing" German unification.
My impression is that Soviet Union was bankrupt, internally collapsing and desperately needed to reduce its foreign commitments, so they did that - actual mechanism how USSR "allowed" reunification of Germany consisted of withdrawing troops from the DDR. After that they had no means to stop it.
This overlooks that Ukraine has an agency and currently is deliberately choosing to align itself with the West. Which, I guess, is a fundamental cause of the conflict, with respect to Ukraine. Of course there are many other contentious issues between Russia and the US.
US could sort of "solve it" by announcing that regardless of the current wishes of Ukraine to be part of the West, they regard it as an Russian sphere of influence and Russia might do with it what it pleases.
We tipped the balance by supporting pro-Western and anti-Russian leadership. I haven't looked at the details in a while, but the US helped overthrow the leadership of the country, and helped install a pro-Western replacement, against the wishes of Russia.
We could have left Ukraine alone, in which case it would almost certainly still be fully independent and also fully in the Russian sphere. The agency of Ukraine is one of the primary questions of this conflict. Russia is claiming that we stole their agency. I'm not sure they're wrong about that.
Polling (which is clearly suspect) suggests that large parts of Ukraine do favor Russian over Western influence. This was especially true in Crimea (again, inherently suspect) and the Donbass region. The incentives to lie about polling are so great as to make it nearly worthless, but what would our response be if half or more of Ukrainians wanted to side with Russia? What if it was split geographically, where parts of Ukraine nearer Russia were more pro-Russian? That last scenario is almost certainly true, even if we can't gauge if those people truly want to join Russia or not.
I don't think the timing is accidental, Putin has huge leverage given the energy situation this winter. You'll notice Germans are very reluctant to take sides in this conflict, because supporting struggling buffer states is all well and good, but not freezing is better.
As a cherry on top, IIRC Gazprom manages their on-site gas reserves, so without a quick and sudden nationalization there's a risk of a series of unfortunate accidents.
My takeaway from it is that US from 90's had persistently transformed Europe into their own expeditionary support, dismantled previous defensive arrangement, undermined independent European military initiatives, and tied everything to themselves - especially with new NATO members in Eastern Europe that added very little to NATO capabilities (and with push for Ukraine and Georgia inclusion from ~2005s). All under assumption that Russia will never rise again to challenge them.
As far as i see now that Russia feels the need to challenge them - and it had capability to do so for a long time - they find themselves unprepared.
They cannot commit to immediate credible defence of EE/Baltic members if diplomatic efforts fail.
They cannot easily transform Europe from expeditionary to territorial defence force again either - that will take decades.
There is no will neither within NATO nor within US to defend Ukraine against Russia; no amount of arms shipments is going to change ultimate outcome in case of confrontation.
There doesn't seem to be any potential "strong enough" sanctions that would not be double-edged - perhaps even worse for West then for Russia, and certainly most of them will empower China - so they cannot get buy-in on them from Germans.
And there is ongoing energy crisis in Europe that any kind of war will heavily exacerbate.
So, US cannot muster even united anti-Russian European front, any backing down will be seen as weakness and humiliation (especially after Afghanistan), not backing down can - i got to stress, by Western media claims, Putin continues to deny any invasion plans - lead to war to which they are awfully unprepared and lead to European recession.
On Putin's side at worst for Putin "nothing changes", and at best he gets some concessions from US - in writing. Especially if he indeed only does those exercises for posturing/training and does not plan anything immediate.
Another followup - does anyone still approve of the US's military goals, let alone results? It seems like the worst possible time for the US to pick a fight that it doesn't actually care about.
So, I don't buy the narrative that NATO is a threat to Russia, although Putin seems successful in convincing people that it is. I also don't feel Russia represents a real threat to the West, unless allied with China - but this seems to be happening now, maybe explaining the timing.
You know, Russians have always though better about others. Or maybe it's just tendency to overthink things.
That behind every move there is some kind of real plan that explains every apparent mistake. Like when USSR built Buran because they seen Shuttle as potent weapon platform - why would US pay so much for it otherwise?! So they built bigger and better one.
So, when US gets out of ABM treaty, develops ABM missiles, plans and builds ABM silos in Eastern Europe - while simultaneously denying Russian offers of participation and even just oversight rights in something that is supposedly aimed "against Iran", they look at it and say "Well, clearly those are aimed at us. But that still doesn't make much sense - we have alternative routes that will not be covered this way, terrain-hugging missiles, and all other kinds of counter measures.
But... if they will just replace missiles in those silos - and we cannot stop them from doing so, nor necessarily detect it ahead of the time - they could use same infrastructure for first strike."
Then US also gets out of Intermediate Range Nuclear Missile treaty, and potential threat becomes even more concrete - hypersonic nuclear-tipped missile flying out of those silos straight to Moscow, giving just about 5 minutes of decision-making for counter-strike.
Would you like fate of the world hanging on 5 minutes? Putin clearly doesn't.
And just like him currently saying "No, we aren't planning an invasion" doesn't sway anyone's minds on Western side, no amounts of US saying "No, we aren't planning anything like that" is going to change his mind until _potential_ for such situation is removed.
How to avoid falling into the hobbesian trap? Somehow the US negotiated détente with the USSR way back when it was much more oppressive than it is now -- when most of Eastern Europe was enslaved under its empire. Conspiracy theories about trump being Putin's puppet certainly don't help. Seems like there are some democrats now who hate Russia more than Joe McCarthy hated the USSR.
Essentially, partly by accident and partly by design, NATO and the EU have been creeping eastward for the last 25 years. This isn't a western conspiracy, but a series of disconnected decisions all of which seemed reasonable enough at the time. But this was always going to result, at some point, in NATO expanding to the borders of Russia itself, and permitting the stationing of foreign troops and US nuclear weapons a matter of a few hundred miles from Moscow. Unfortunately, no-one, especially in Washington, seems to have realised this until too late. The Russians, with their history, are simply not prepared to have a military alliance, much stronger than they are, sitting on their border. This is an opinion that, so far as I can see, is pretty universal in the country. The West was warned not to do this, but ignored the warning. It's true that Ukraine is a corrupt and despotic state, but that wouldn't matter to the Russians, if it didn't want to join a nuclear capable alliance. The Russians clearly don't want to control Ukraine as such (who would?) but they are trying to create a buffer zone in the East of the country, such that both the Ukrainians, and even more NATO, will find it difficult to deploy forces there. Unfortunately, their years of pushing Russia around without consequences have made the western ruling class capable of doing stupid and dangerous things.
Russia could always have just joined NATO. They've made various agreements with them over the years and all seemed to be going fine until recently. I think the question is why this all seems to have changed, and the erosion of Russian democracy would certainly go some way to explaining that.
NATO was organized as a direct challenge to the Warsaw Pact, and aimed at Russia. The Russians have perceived it as a gun pointed at Moscow ever since it was created. The fact that Latvia is closer to Moscow than Washington DC is to Boston is not lost on the Russians.
When the Soviet Union fell, we promised the Russians we weren't going to expand NATO to the East. Then we aggressively expanded NATO East, to their front door. The Russians see it as the US never having set aside anti-Russian sentiments after the Cold War.
The real story is one of simple contempt. The US stopped caring about Russia after a bunch of Western economists told them how to set up a democracy and all that base-level theory handed the country over to corrupt oligarchs, but the people got poorer. The West learned an important lesson about how institutions are important in establishing a functioning democratic/capitalist system. The Russians learned not to trust the West.
Then the US, perpetually blind to its own role in history let alone the history of other nations, set itself to nuclear non-proliferation. It used NATO to accomplish this, promising every nation in Europe that if they just gave up their nuclear ambitions (and/or actual nukes) they'd be better off. Once in NATO any attack on their soil would be treated like an invasion of Iowa. No need develop nukes (and the expensive technology to launch them) because they could rely on America's nuclear hair trigger. NATO's role was bastardized, but the US didn't care because Russia was 'no longer a threat'.
The current situation in Ukraine is not the result of anything new. It's the end of a long road of diplomatic failure to respect the only other nation in the world that can wipe us off the map.
Putin has been watching American war fatigue with interest since we invaded Afghanistan. He knew what the end result would be. After a long period of harassment of their neighbors, he invaded Georgia back in 2007 as a test of how far the US would go to defend a NATO-hopeful nation (and to stop the pipelines through Georgia meant to undermine Russian energy coercion) under direct military invasion.
Later, he invaded Ukraine and took Crimea. It was another trial balloon. But it was also a political necessity to keep their only Black Sea port in Sevatopol from being shut down by the Ukrainians. The US didn't do anything to stop them, despite the obvious fact of a Russian invasion on Ukraine's sovereign territory. Nobody did. They annexed Crimea and have kept it to this day.
At this point, Putin and others have realized the Pax Americana is over. Small nations are not going to be protected from regional bullies by the US. Russia has wanted the Ukraine - the rest of it - back in their sphere of influence since the communists fell. They see it as part of their territory (and Ukrainians as Russians) the way the US views Texas, or the Chinese view Taiwan. They even issue Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens (especially in the East), then claim "our own citizens are being harassed".
The core of the NATO premise during the days of nuclear non-proliferation was that the US could enforce article 5 from a position of superiority. After long wars in the Middle East, that premise no longer holds. The US isn't interested in NATO anymore. Nuclear non-proliferation is a side issue, reserved for rogue states like Iran and North Korea. Nobody cares about Latvia's decades-old promises anymore, nor the reason they were given. War in Eastern Europe, where there are a lot of countries Americans never think of, feels a lot like war in the Middle East. Any challenge to international borders feels like a violation of Natural Law! We'll condemn it, sure, but let's stay out of another mess, okay?
Putin is going to finish his acquisition of Ukraine. He knows the US doesn't care enough to risk WWIII over it. Biden talks big (?), but so did Obama about Syria and that amounted to nothing. Besides, Putin had troops on the ground in Ukraine not that long ago. They annexed prime real estate and nobody batted an eye.
Yes, it's sad that Ukraine's days are numbered. But that decision was made a long time ago. The fact that Putin hasn't taken it already is a testament to his caution, honestly. And Ukraine isn't the only independent nation whose days are numbered. Pax Americana is over. The Americans just haven't realized it yet.
There have always been two narratives about this. There's the West's narrative, that no formal promises were ever made or implied at. This is true. Then there's the Russian narrative, that there was essentially a 'handshake' deal back in the 90's (when US-Russia cooperation was at its peak) that nobody wanted to expand NATO to Russia's backyard.
I wasn't part of those conversations back then, so I don't know for certain. I know the US position is that the Russians are just lying about the whole thing, but it's uncharitable to claim the Russians don't have any legitimate grievance here. The US was completely spooked when Cuba went communist, increased its alarm when they aligned with Moscow, and then were understandably livid about the prospect of nuclear-armed missiles being placed a few miles from the border.
On the other side of that coin, NATO expanded even closer to Russia than Cuba is to US soil, with a military promise of retaliation from the US, and numerous 'missile defense' programs that the Russians have no hand in vetting in NATO countries, and those systems are obviously designed as having Moscow as one of their primary targets. Yet Russia should just trust the good intentions of a country whose national elections consistently rail against it? I find it needlessly unconcerned about Russia's interests to say, "You should have got that in writing last time, but don't worry you can trust our word on it this time."
Nations can barely be trusted to keep their word on actual signed treaties. If the Russians claim to have actually believed an informal promise behind closed doors from a longstanding enemy, they're either lying or morons.
Word on the street (so take with a grain of salt) is that Putin didn't want to go through the application process, and felt insulted Russia wasn't invited by NATO.
I can't recommend something concrete but watch out for what is left unsaid. It's easy to do this for the Russian state propaganda, but the same exercise can be done for the Western media too.
E.g., what's wrong with the Finland option: a non-NATO state bordering Russia with no territorial claims or conflicts since the end of WW2. Or whether the concerns that animated the pro-Russian protests in 2014 and served as a pretext for the Russian intervention ended up justified or not.
Finland is richer _because_ it was neutral, and so could benefit from USSR _and_ Western trade.
If Ukraine would have alternative arrangement to Association Agreement that precipitated 2014 revolution (one including Russia - as Russia suggested by proposing tripartite talks in 2013), they could become richer in the process as well.
That's not why Finland is richer. Finland is a pretty standard Scandinavian country, and comparably rich compared to other Scandi countries. Sure, Sweden was neutral, but Denmark, Norway and Iceland weren't. So being in a position to trade with both USSR and the west can't be the main factor behind Finnish wealth.
Funny that Russia would like Finnish neutrality today as an option for Ukraine. The first USSR leader to recognize Finnish neutrality unequivocally and without qualifications was Gorbachev, in October 1989.
During the Cold War, Finland existed in a sort of selective diplomatic quantum superposition after WW2: both neutral and not neutral, depending on who was talking and when. Finland had a mutual defense treaty with USSR, yet it claimed neutrality when it suited Finnish state interests: for the prestige of its leaders, to gather Western sympathy, or as diplomatic move to convince USSR it didn't need to invade to protect its interests. USSR made favorable public gestures about Finnish kinda sort-of "friendship neutrality" only when it suited Moscow, as a carrot in a game of Finlandization. The stick was threat of "joint military coordination and exercises pursuant to our mutual defense treaty" ie incorporation to Warsow Pact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization
One aspect of this is the traditional maxim of 'si vis pacem, para bellum' as in the face of opportunistic aggression, backing down can easily escalate or invite a conflict, and only a credible deterrence can prevent it. In realpolitik, weakness invites either violence or unconditional surrender, and simply preserving a status quo with the same borders may require arming up.
IIRC the general German state policy does not recognize Crimea as Russia-owned; and there is generally a strong taboo everywhere on military officials expressing opinions on foreign policy that are not aligned with the government position - generally, they're expected to not comment on foreign policy at all outside of what they have been delegated, military leaders are not supposed to be the ones making or publicly affecting any foreign policy decisions but strictly restricted to implementing the foreign policy made by the civilian government, and making any comments or disagreements only in private so as to not affect the government's diplomacy.
He basically attacked the entire German/EU/NATO handling of the conflict, and said that Putin would make a great ally against China because Russia is a christian nation, and that Putin only wants some respect and we should give him that respect.
Would anyone share his view on how governments will exit the covid crisis? There are a few indicators that this is quite imminent, at least that's how it seems seen from western europe: public opinion changing (mostly a combination of patience being exhausted, and much much less fear of getting contaminated: people got used to the virus, almost everyone knowing recovered people or having recovered themselves, and omicron very low death toll), a lot more "contrarian" experts interrogated in mainstream media, and most non-contrarian being more nuanced on vaccines for example, protests either growing or being more prominently covered. Coming spring coming should also be a big factor accelerating all of this, so I wonder if there will be polical consequences early spring. Would it be a quiet fade away from the front pages (covid die in a whisper) and business restart as usual, those last 2 years forgotten? Will it die in a bang, with government being investigated for their behavior and maybe a chain reaction of goverment falling when they were behind the curve of the move to "freedom"? (Personally I see Dutch, Belgium, France (conflicted with the presidential election)).
Or, scared by this second possibility, will goverments try to maintain a constant crisis (try to keep the scare on covid and/or use the flu) until next fall? mainstream media are partly on the same boat as governments, but then a good witchhunt is hard to resist so who knows?
I think mostly, as Delta was ending, most western governments were shifting to something like the flu, where there's capacity to do something if it looks like a new variant will cause an emergency, but otherwise not much in the way of official restrictions, just surveillance. Omicron has on the one hand briefly delayed this transition, but on the other is likely to make it more complete.
It's a good point, but "like the flu" is problematic in itself: it seems normal flu (and a bunch of seasonal respiratory viruses, which are not necessarily diagnosed separately) put hospitals under pressure every winter. In fact, i am not sure that hospital situation (or excess death) is anything special under the omicron wave. What is special is the measures and the measurement of cases.
And flu has a history of missed reactions by the WHO and gouvernements : if you remember h1n1, it was very like covid (with travel restrictions, mask mandates and airport thermal cameras, vaccines, except it did not root and basically was mostly considered a failure from authorities rather than a legit global health menace worth of consideration. So "like the flu" makes me think that the exit strategy may be the constant crisis one.
Can you point me to a place where I can see the comparative statistics? I would be moderately surprised to learn that the current hospital situation is not as crowded as some flu seasons, but for instance maybe the 2017-18 flu season was in fact worse. Where would I go to find these numbers?
As for swine flu, I think you have a very different memory of that from me. Where was there a mask mandate? Between 2003 and 2020, I thought masks were only for Asian tourists and California fire seasons, and never once heard of a western medical official even encouraging people to wear them outside of operating rooms. And I don’t remember any travel bans - my boyfriend got swine flu on a night train from Rome to Paris, which I assume he wouldn’t have been on if there had been a travel ban. And while I do recall that a vaccine was developed, I don’t recall hearing whether anyone I know got the vaccine, or whether it was just folded into the annual flu vaccine that winter, or what - completely different from this past year when everyone I know was lining up eagerly to get vaccines, and some states even requiring vaccines for public behaviors.
If the exit strategy is the same sort of “constant crisis” that we’ve had since 2009, then I would be very disappointed at how much our public health authorities are willing to continue prematurely surrendering to disease.
I remember 2 consecutive years (or was it consecutive? memory is not so accurate after 10+y :-) ) of having to wear a mask in some airports (granted, it was entering in thailand ) and having few thermal cameras that could send you in quarantine if you were slightly feverish. Travel ban was never official IIRC, but travel to asia was advised against. I also remember taking paracetamol preventively and be sure to use the airport toilet and wash myself with cold water before passing those camera (just to be completely frank on how I like mass medecine ;=) ). It did not last long, and flu vaccine were stockpiled (Belgium) for a flu epidemic that was not severe enough to convince more people to get vaccinated. Maybe it's more the media coverage that was not scary enough....But still, the early stage were super similar to covid in feb 2019. That was what I mean: I think that after covid, a normal flu season may be enough to justify a bunch of measures very similar to the current ones, because flu in the past induced early reaction similar to covid early reaction, and current measures are taken with a hospital situation not far from what happen every winter, certainly winters with a strong flu. So what would prevent re-instigating the same measures every winter? Apart from good old flu being less scary than a new disease (which after 2y, covid slowly begin not to be ;-) )
In the aftermath, IIRC, vaccine stockpiling was investigated but did not result in much, it was not enough for heads to roll, I think vaccines were sent to developing countries that probably destroyed them (Probably the last AZ vaccine batches will have the same fate ).
For the statistics, it's quite difficult to find a monthly (or quarter) curve showing the last ten winters. Would be great to find, but I failed. What you have quite a lot of anecdotal evidences if you look for hospital saturation (and possibly add flu) for 2019 and before. For example (I searched in french, hopital saturation grippe)
That's how I got the impression that this is common: from those articles (and also many TV interviews, some post covids), you have many hospital or ICU main doctors saying the situation is tense every winter....
My hospital cancelled all elective procedures to free up capacity (both beds and staff) to deal with the current omicron wave. That's considerably worse than a bad flu season. Omicron isn't a big deal for a vaccinated population, but we don't have one, and the unvaxed are filling the hospitals.
And you should try to get some hospital saturation statistics before 2019. In winter, hospital being under tension or even saturated is nothing uncommon. Even when the flu do not make the front page.
I mean, I work here. I get the system announcements. I'm sure you're right that things go up in the winter, but I've never seen that and I've been here fifteen years.
Unless you're suggesting that they blanket postponed elective procedures unnecessarily. This is of course possible, but this place is run by smart people who like money, so I have trouble calling it likely.
It depend in which country you are. In many places, vaccinated occupy more than 50% of the hospital beds. They are still less likely to be hospitalized, but the % of vaccinated in 55y and above is such that indeed, unvaccinated are now the minority in hospital beds. Less so in ICU, but ICU are not overwhelmed anymore, not by omicron with the current population immunity (vaccination or previous infection).
I speak from western Europe, i don't know what the situation is in the US or Asia... So here, going from 70-90% of vaccinated to 100% is not only practically impossible, but even if it was it would likely not change things much. Out of political circles, this is not a controversial point of view I think. Zvi certainly share it. So I must conclude that this meme (unvaccinated are responsible for hospital being overwhelmed and care being denied, they indirectly kill people!) is now a pure scapegoating campaign, even if it was not pre-omicron when vaccines where both more efficient and less prevalent.
Here in Nova Scotia, the unvaxxed are about 10% of the population, but are occupying 20 - 30 % of the hospitalized Covid case beds. This has led to postponement of treatment for most non-life threatening conditions, extending our already very long wait times.
So this means my girlfriend, who is waiting for knee replacements and suffers daily and increasing pain, and consequent declining mobility, is having her suffering prolonged.
Now logically, I realize that this is not all the fault of the unvaxxed. But am I angry at them for making the problem worse?
You've just described how this is classic scapegoating though. The unvaccinated did not directly delay all these surgeries. The direct cause of that was the government, who then simply pointed a finger at the unvaccinated and said they're to blame.
Now, it's possible that the government is right about this, and there's not much they could have done to improve things for you, in light of this 10% unvaccinated. However, being the direct cause of this pain, they at least deserve a hard look.
I see this so much from Canada in particular. People are so eager to hate each other, and don't even think about what the government is doing
Taking your upper estimation and assuming risk and vaccination to be homogeneous and uncorrelated, if all those unvaccinated magically got vaccinated you will decrease bed occupation by 20-25%.
Not significative in my view, but of course this is debatable (In the debate, remember 20% was not significative either for people saying urgent measures to increase ICU and normal hospital beds were pointless, pre-vax).
The question is how risky a behavior is, how significant it will be for hospital congestion, and how acceptable, proportional and equitable the prevention measures are (equitable depend if the measures affect and protect the same people, or different people). Vaccination promoted to (slightly) reduce hospital use is not different than banning sport which increase injuries, or unecessary (to be defined) road usage (traffic accidents). And indeed, this was proposed during the lockdowns.
For me, this is far away from clear health recommendation (which is based on a risk/benefit analysis at the individual level) and deep into (nasty) political consideration (how much personal liberty can be directly removed to prevent indirect risk?).
To be clear, It's been a while since I think this particular balance has gone much too far in removing personal liberties, so I may be atypical and not fully objective on covid in particular (although I am old enough to slowly enter in the at-risk population)
But still, regardless of your risk, risk-aversion and libertarian profile, the minimum is to clarify the benefit expect from the liberty removal, compare it with other measures in term of effect, and transparently explain that and assess if the effects are the one expected. This is not done for terrorism, for climate change, for food regulation, and certainly not for covid.
All of those reason are behind a constant shift (it often go hand in hand with scapegoating), but it's not only a left/right thing (terrorism-based restrictions for example is pushed more by the right), my guess is that it's governance by media-promoted fear that has emerged since 1990, when the east bloc vanished as a credible bogeyman and voting power shifted to a risk-averse public (more old, more women).
I'm in Missouri, in the US. I think you're probably correct about other countries. There's a comment somewhere else on the open thread that Ireland has had cases go way up during the Omicron wave with hospitalizations flat and deaths down. That makes sense in a well-vaxed country. Here we still have 70 - 80 % of the covid hospitalizations among the (younger, less at-risk) un-vaxed population. That's down from the 90+ percent it was, but still bad enough to fill the hospitals.
Might be that it's not happening everywhere, I'm not looking broadly at hospital statistics, just my (very large) system in St Louis.
The Scandinavian countries will eventually move to a situation where the virus is present, but the governments won't feel the need to and will not pressured to "do something" , because they will consider the virus in its evolved state as weak enough to be managed without strong state measures. In Norway in particular (I'm somewhat familiar with the situation in Denmark too), there is an evolving consensus that the Omicron variant doesn't justify strong measures by the state in order to control it. This started just after the (recently elected) government imposed sudden measures a little while before Christmas. Suddenly, the newspapers started publishing op-eds arguing against Covid measures, articles highlighting the economic and personal damage caused by the measures, etc., at a much increased frequency compared to earlier in the pandemic. There was a backroom (but scarcely concealed) political battle between the Health Minister and the (mostly) anti-restrictionist governing mayor of Oslo -- both members of the leading party of the government coalition -- which led to the government losing face and restrictions being loosened significantly. In addition, several big names in the Norwegian Institute of Public Health have outright stated that they don't see the need for any significant Covid-related measures at the moment.
It's worth noting that even before this, Norway was out of tune with much of Europe in several ways -- for example, the Institute of Public Health does *not* recommend that under-45s get the booster dose (it also does not recommend them not to, however, but leaves it as a personal decision), which means that the EU's decision to invalidate Covid passes several months after getting your second dose has caused great consternation as Norwegians love travelling. We have also never used Covid passes to any significant extent domestically, and vaccine mandates outside of health workers (it's not mandated for health workers, but it has been discussed) are and have been totally out of the question. To look beyond Norway for a second, I think Denmark and Sweden are relatively similar in many ways. Denmark has actively used Covid passes, but stopped using them before the Omicron surge and seems ready to stop using them again in the near future. Sweden was famously laissez-faire early in the pandemic -- it currently has slightly tougher restrictions than Norway, I believe, but is certainly not a country of Covid restriction enthusiasts.
I think much of continental Europe differs in many ways. Countries like France, Germany, Austria and the Benelux countries have less societal trust and had more polarised societies and larger political divisions before the pandemic. Rhetoric from the media and political leaders has been extreme throughout the pandemic. High death counts also contribute to this, although I certainly don't think this is the main reason why Scandinavia looks so different from much of the continent (remember, Sweden also has relatively high death counts).
My impression is that in France, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands (and surprisingly also in the UK despite the current lack of restrictions), majorities favour what I would call extreme policies that seem out of the question in Scandinavia, including vaccine mandates, very severe and long-term Covid passes and total shut-downs of society as preemptive measures (as recently seen in the Netherlands). Rhetoric from politicians align with this (except in the UK, where the liberal wing of the Tories basically govern a much more authoritarian population), as for example seen in the recent quotes from Macron (that I to be honest find quite scary). Like you, I'm not sure how several of the EU's major countries will get out of this.
I am quite in line with Swedish position on the covid handling. Which is strange because i am much less on line with some other issues... Maybe it show that the way those crisis are handled is quite dependent on the idea and personality of the guy that draft the first reaction (i think the head of the Swedish equivalent of the CDC is to praise) and contingent political circumstances, after the initial stage measures got a life of their own.
I believe the whole reason Sweden reacted differently to COVID is because its reaction was completely dictated by the Swedish equivalent of the CDC, and never actually got politicized. Probably because of some legal/constitutional peculiarities of Sweden, which basically say that the politicians have no say during pandemics (I'm not aware of the specifics, but that has been my impression at least).
Non-political entities generally seem to be more moderate all around the world; here in Finland the local equivalent of the CDC have generally also been fairly moderate, but were repeatedly overridden by the Ministry of Health, which generally has held on to a much harder line. This has been particularly pronounced in the last few months, when the Ministry of Health has been getting visibly out of touch and started contradicting pretty much everyone else (CDC-guys, most of actual doctors, municipalities, teachers, others ministries). Yet at the end of the day it is they who dictate the actual policy here, which is why Finland from one of the least restricted European countries throughout most of the pandemic by now turned into one of the most restricted ones.
In the UK I would say there is a big gap between polls (which show the public to be incredibly pro-restrictions, e.g. 30% of people wanting a permanent curfew and permanent bans on nightclubs) and people's actual behaviour. For example polls in early autumn repeatedly showed that 80+% of people thought masks should be made mandatory again even though mask wearing on public transport, in shops etc had declined to ~30% by that point. You could also see this, I think, in the way that Labour was quite vague in what restrictions they wanted in the face of omicron, even though polls showed their voters favoured strong restrictions.
I think there's a lot to pack in this question. They can just lift all restrictions but they need cover. Omicron - so it goes is the opportunity to do so as it's seen as a pathway to endemicity. Some experts, however, worry that if we continue to mass vaccinated particularly with boosters, this can threaten the chance to come out of it as it can create a more virulent strain. The risk being we once again end up in a bad lockdown cycle. The other part is the W.H.O. now becoming more vocal about ending travel bans and passports as well as cautioning against boosters for its own sake. With Omicron showing itself to be contagious but not virulent, this is the opening and several European countries are taking it. Where the Nordic countries, Switzerland, Ireland, Turkey, Holland, Scotland, Spain, UK, and others have lifted or loosened restrictions, we still have France, Germany, Italy, and Belgium still keeping a tight grip. Australia and New Zealand are simple on another planet with the absurd 'Zero Covid' obsession which will get them precisely nowhere. Obviously the USA is mostly ok except for blue states and Canada is in between the EU and Australia teetering with its own excessive measures. Nonetheless, the overall sentiment is shifting as people are showing their fatigue if not impatience now. It's all political, hysterics and no science.
As for governments falling, I would hope. They should in my eyes pay a price for their decisions. In my view, the measures have been catastrophic filled with 'unseen' unintended consequences that resulted in negative trade-offs making the cure worse than the disease. There has to be a psychological if not psychiatric fall out from this. Someone has to pay for that be it public health officials, politicians, media and the private medical and scientific establishment that supported 'lockdowns'. Easy to do that when you get to keep a pay check. Governments, like Canada and Quebec (who have shockingly, cynically and idiotically abused the Charter which makes me wonder how resilient - if not valuable - it really all is) in particular, who are scapegoating the unvaccinated game are playing a very dangerous game of Salem. Such fools Quebec are. I would hope governments will be investigated and there are lawsuits that have been launched. We've heard at calls for a Nuremberg 2.0. I know Dr. Montagnier has filed with The Hague and a German lawyer Reiner Fuellmich has built probably the biggest case on Covid in the world. Where that goes will be interesting. Then come all the main lawsuits against government and companies for outright abuse of established medical and constitutional rights. Those will be epic and take years to process and rule on. And it's not like the 'we didn't know' is going to be a fair or acceptable defence because from the ONSET as early as March of 2020 prominent scientists and experts were calling for calm and reasoned approaches. We can even point to names like Atlas, Bhakdi, Bhattachayra (and TGBD), Ioannidis, Racaniello and later Yeadon, Vanden Bossche, Montagnier, Perronne and so many others who tried to warn the public only to be outrageously silenced. Fear porn was to rule the narrative. But we have the digital trail, archives and data to easily refute any claims of 'we didn't know'. Hooey that. They knew early on this virus was going to behave like any cyclical and seasonal virus. I'm purposely leaving out the fact this may indeed have been man-made and the role of a profit vaccine scheme. Best to leave that to RFK jr.'s book.
Will they just try and get us to get on with it? I hope. They would be wise to do so. But there will be a reckoning. There has to be. You can't damage the lives of millions through mandates and lockdowns and not expect there to be one.
A complete avoidable mess all this. Deep mass psychosis, fear, cowardice, cruelty, and plain old stupidity. This thing had it all. Greatest medical hysteria in history. And there are criminal elements to it.
> Australia and New Zealand are simple on another planet with the absurd 'Zero Covid' obsession which will get them precisely nowhere
You're out of date there. Australia abandoned covid zero about six months ago (oversimplification, different states did it at different times and Western Australia is basically a different country at this point) after it turned out that lockdowns couldn't eradicate Delta in winter. Right now we're coming down from a huge omicron outbreak, but omicron plus 95% vaxxed means not many dramas, and there's not many restrictions anywhere (except some indoor mask stuff).
Australia has done a remarkably quick turnaround from one of the most lockdowny places in the world to one where covid restrictions barely exist.
Thanks for the update Yes, I know it was said they abandoned it but the perception was the measures remained that gave it the impression that was still a policy aim. I know NLD abandoned it altogether. All I see, from AUS, are constant protests, Dan Andrews saying something nuts, police arresting people for not having a passport. All from NSW. I have not seen any change in rhetoric. I guess we're not getting proper info. I'm glad Australia is evolving. Had me very worried what I was reading. Cheers.
Yes, I think that foreign reporting on Australia's covid situation has been pretty lacking.
Of course usually Australian domestic politics doesn't make news at all in the US, so on the odd occasion it does it means we're being used to prove a point by one side or the other, with actual accurate reporting going out the window in favour of a Narrative.
We have protests every now and then but they've pretty much died down now that there's not much left to protest about. I couldn't find any reference to police officers arresting people for not having vaccine passports, only some discussion of whether they could[*]. And Dan Andrews is the premier of Victoria, not NSW.
[*] which they could, but only in the sense of a standard trespassing sort of arrest where the owner of premises asks you to leave and you don't
I regularly read and occasionally comment on a major US-based forum for firearms owners. The actions of the Australian government and the reactions of the people were viewed with an angry mixture of horror, disgust, outrage, despair, and a grim apocalyptic fatalism.
The actions I am referring to (as reported here in the US, and also gleaned from Internet sources, and as understood by individual forum members) included:
-- House arrest for all persons in certain provinces, regardless of the number or trend of COVID cases, going on for more than six months.
-- Universal govt tracking of all movement by individuals.
-- Ban on between-province travel for any circumstance.
-- Total ban on public assembly especially to protest COVID restrictions.
-- (Possibly unrelated but contemporaneous) Parliment granted total power to monitor and intercept any communication between private citizens, and even authority to take over and spoof e-mail and other accounts to mislead or entrap citizens.
-- Denial of right-of-return to Austrailian citizens travelling abroad.
-- Censorship and (Possible) prosecution of media outlets that spread information contrary to the government's communication, or critisizing its actions.
Needless to say, all of those are prohibited by the US Constitution. Thank God we still uphold it, we are having polite arguments in the Supreme Court, not martial law. But...
QUESTION --> How was any of this even possible?
ANSWER --> Austraila has outlawed private ownership of firearms.
This may seem hyperbole, but note that in the US, especially California where I am, most local Sherrif's Departments and other Law Enforcement Agencies publicly stated that they would not enforce COVID restrictions they disagreed with. Mostly this was because they are illegal and unconstitutional. But as a practical matter, enforcing a mask mandate on armed citizens will result in a shootout, over and over and over.
I think there is a vast gulf between policing (and ruling or dictating) a nation of unarmed people vs a citizenry where every citizen may be armed. While police in the US certainly commit abuses all the time and usually escape legal consequence, those cases are the exception to the 99% of encounters that are for clearly-law-defined public safety/crime.
It would be another matter entirely for American police to enforce new draconian restrictions on everyone. Because, fundamentally, US police still see themselves as also citizens.
Being certain that the government not only had a legal monopoly on violence, but a physical one as well, I think would make the government believe they truly were the elect, meant to govern at will. "Patents of Nobility" is a phrase in the Constitution that is there for a reason. The Stasi, Gestapo, NKVD, are all names that come to mind immediately.
A majority of Americans deeply believe that the protections of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be gone and meaningless without the right to keep and bear arms. The grim fatalism I mentioned above is because many see some recent US govt actions as attempts to disarm and control the populace entirely, (not necessarily part of a vast plan, but just the Iron Law of government power and government's general hostility to individual rights) and Australia is what happens if people do not fight back.
Some people on the forum are extremists. Some are joking. But most are current or ex-military and many are LEO, and all are very serious. The example of Australia (and also the UK) is seen as a final warning of active totalitarianism.
I guess, "when will they fight back?" was really the universal question. Fond recollections of drunken bar fights with hard-headed Aussies lightened the mood somewhat. A group watching of "Gallipoli." But at the root, "When does the rebellion start?"
The perception of Australia worldwide is also affected by the Djokovitch circus. The way it was covered (which, as always, may or may not reflect what really happened and certainly miss part of the local politic games played) show Australia as eager to follow a no-compromise stand: Vaccination is uber important and has to be forced at least indirectly (Macron-like). That's also Zvi analysis, looking at the motivation behind judges confirming expulsion after the appeal.
Depending on how much you fear the current omicron covid, and how much you think individual liberties need to be weighted against state interests, this makes Aussies more or less sympathetic abroad.
New Zealand is also obviously pivoting to 'living with covid', just cloaked in cautious rhetoric to placate the zero coviders in Ardern's base. Their stated plan for omicron is to implement restrictions basically on the level of Western Europe (nightclubs restricted, caps on gatherings, masks, but restaurants/bars etc open and no lockdown) and they're openly predicting thousands of cases a day. It's a pretty far cry from their response to delta in August.
My guess is NZ will shoot up to several thousand cases a day fairly soon and they'll have opened the borders substantially by Easter (barring no new variants).
More than 2 cents I would say. I mostly agree about what should happen (not sure your splitting of european countries among the "let it go"/"lock them in" camps is 100% accurate. AFAIK, quite a few southern countries are among the "let it go": spain, portugal. Italy is a lot like France it seems, vaccination (with booster) pass that lock down those that do not kowtow only.
Holland on the other hand is clearly in the "lock them in" camp, glaringly so as it switched so quickly and strongly from the "let it go" just after the election. That's why I put them as the first to fall (if there is some falling), their timing is crazy, they have quite a lot of population resistance, and they tends look at what happen in the UK more than the rest of Europe.
Austria also, before Germany I think (Germany, it's complicated and super-regional)...
Still those are details and we agree there should be investigations and political consequences. But I wonder if there will be? And if not, if it is because the whole mess will be swept under the rug, or if it's because governments have consolidated their new authoritarian powers so much they are not accountable anymore?
tl;dr - omicron infects literally everyone and people, including governments, stop giving a fuck. This is already happening in parts of Europe.
I'm just bracing myself for 2-3 months of complete health service meltdown at this point, as the omicron wave is currently steamrolling whatever capacity is left. Out of 15 coworkers, 5 have already been infected in the last month. I expect the world to be back to normal by summer.
In Ireland we had a massive surge of Omicron over the last month. Hospitalisations only went up slightly, deaths actually dropped. As of Saturday, most restrictions were lifted.
It's not in the US only. The vaccination campaign in many countries (at least in western europe) had the same effect: to increase vaccination rate (which imho was a good idea at the time), many dubious things were done: selective communication (hiding of some facts or doubts that were not consistent with the narrative) or outright lies, altruistic medecine (undergoing medical procedure to benefit others), exposure of previously-protected medical status, indirect pressure (legal and moral) for vaccination, quite a lot of things which are quite machiavelian (the goal justify the means) and, like all machiavelian bet, require constant re-assesment of the benefit/drawback balance. Among those thing there is also the scapegoating of the non-vaccinated population once it was small enough that scapegoating them was (maybe, my hope is that it will be fatal in the spring) politically advantageous. This is also machiavelian, but on another non-benign level, and has resulted on a very bad polarisation similar to wokism. The fracture line is not exactly the same, but in the end this is the element in the crisis that, in my view (speaking as fully vaccinated but booster-hesitant) , demand retribution. Macron is the most prominent figure guilty of that, but he's not the only one, far from it.
I'm looking to learn more about human hearing, and am wondering if anyone here might have any book recommendations on the subject? Specifically, I'm interested in understanding how the human ear works mechanically, how the brain makes sense of sound, and what we still don't know about those processes.
I don't have a background in science, but I enjoy reading about it, so I would be willing to put in some effort for a great text. I'm a composer, and am looking to learn more about how non-human animals perceive sound (with the goal of eventually writing music for other species), so I figured trying to understand the human ear would be a good place to start. If you know of any other books that seem pertinent to this goal, please point me towards them!
In my intro to audiology course back in the late 1990s, the lecturers thought that the Jack Katz Handbook of Clinical Audiology was the ultimate useful reference for everything we learned. I presume that the human ear hasn't evolved much since then, so it's probably still good. (I can't voucher for it because I never read it. I still passed anyway.)
This does not load the full archive for me, only the last ~25 posts until I scroll down to the bottom of the page, and then another 25 posts at a time.
Suppose I want to read the Bible (as an atheist) and get clued in on the historical context that I might not know from the text, and maybe on related historiography, as I go. What's the best way to do that? Anyone have a good recommendation for a .. secular annotated Bible, I guess?
Most "study bible" products from mainstream publishers are going to be fairly similar. The notes aren't part of the translation per se, but based on the publisher you'll get a bit of a different perspective. NRSV is a good (if a bit dull) modern mainline translation and ESV and NASB are the mainstream evangelical counterparts (all are using good texts and a solid translation philosophy outside a few controversial points), while NIV is common but neither accurate nor pleasant. Personally I prefer a smaller paper book with just center column cross-references because freely available online resources are so plentiful and I'm fairly well-contexted to begin with.
For quick historical context overview from a definitely Christian but historically informed perspective, The Bible Project has introductory videos for each book that are a very good start. Wikipedia leans too far in the historical-critical direction from my perspective but is probably better than the average print bible introductory material.
Enough of the historical work is done by Christian scholars who really believe this stuff that you can't get a full picture *just* looking at secular OT/NT scholars, and some of the major threads of 20th century secular textual criticism now look a bit silly while others are well integrated into mainstream Christian thinking. That's not to say Ken Hamm actually has anything to add, of course, just being realistic about the landscape of modern Biblical scholarship and selection effects that run in all directions.
I'm not answering your question, but I feel compelled to give my thoughts on reading the Bible.
I read the Bible cover to cover, partly to get the background required for understanding much of Western literature, partly to understand historic Jewish culture, and partly so I could tell everyone I read the Bible.
In my opinion you should avoid any kind of guided tour, or "How to Understand the Bible" material. At least for the first time you read it. This will allow you to form your own thoughts about what you are reading. You may be surprised by the insights you develop, and they will be your own. You can always return to biblical exegesis afterwards.
I read the King James Version for two reasons. First, because it is beautiful. The language is pure poetry. It can take some time to read, and it can be hard to understand, but it is totally worth it. To give an example: "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" from KGV versus "Today has enough trouble of its own." from the NET.
The second reason to read the KGV is that the lines are what is quoted in much of western literature.
The bad part of the KGV is the crazy emphasis (the single quotes distributed seemingly at random throughout the text) and italics. I found a 99 cent Kindle download that did not have this. Way easier to read. A funny side effect of the Kindle version, is that when you finish, Kindle recommends "Other books by God".
That said, good luck in your quest. I have no doubt you will learn a lot.
Just a heads up, if you're talking about the way the KJV distinguishes certain words, using italics in the modern versions, that's how the translators marked words that they added themselves to make the meaning more clear. That feature is more confusing than useful, these days, but it's nice that they tried.
And if you mean the single quotes in some of the names, those are accent marks to tell us what syllables of the names are stressed, to help us pronounce them.
The whole thing? That's brave... But to get the ball rolling, I was immensly impressed by The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb. It was created so that anyone could read/understand it and find it interesting. And it is! A brilliant interpretation for modern readers. I wish the rest were given the same treatment.
Thank you for posting this comment: I had no idea Crumb did Genesis. I was taken aback, and even more so to discover it is a faithful illustration with no satire or mockery. I'm going to have to add it to my collection!
You are correct. It is a very serious work that uses Crumb's extraordinary talent to try to bridge this important book's content to modern readers. I am not religious but I found it moving, and profound (sometimes in ways that must embarrass religious people) but this is no joke. I remember the forward pointing out that Genesis is the oldest book still in continuous use, and Crumb did it justice.
(Pro tip: I wish I'd known about the extremely helpful footnotes at the end of the book before getting to the end!)
The New Oxford Annotated Bible is the usual English edition for scholarly studies. For secondary sources on the Old Testament, I really enjoyed Richard Friedman's "Who Wrote the Bible?" and James Kugel's "How to Read the Bible". If you have absolutely no background in Christianity or Judaism and you just want an entertaining read of the text without all the historical background, I recommend The Brick Testament. And the Literature and History podcast episodes on the Bible will give you a lot of historical background.
I recently read about 70% of the Bible (with similar goals to yours I think) and settled on the New Oxford Annotated Bible, which I really enjoyed. Good intro to each section covering history, interpretation etc and tons of notes to complex verses.
Bart Ehrman writes A LOT of books about the New Testament and you'll definitely get overlap between them, but I find them a joy to read. His books will give you information on how the Bible came to be what it is.
I got a huge amount out of these when I listened a few years back - highly recommended (And for what it's worth, I liked the old testament ones better!)
Weirdly, I made it through those sorts of books fine. Leviticus was horribly dull, but I was mildly curious about the laws. The book of Job was what stopped my read; COVID was depressing enough without reading about poor Job.
When I was about 16 I think, I got into my head to do just that and spent an excruciating week making my way through pages and pages of guys who died at 136 or whatever.
I unfortunately gave up before the juicy bits started and probably ended up reading Bertrand Russell instead. Sealed my faith:))
Honestly any good Christian Bible (or at least any good catholic Bible) should come with historical* notes of some sort at the start of each book. I don't know enough about English translations to recommand one though.
*Historical notes as in scientific history. It should also have notes on religious history and interpretation.
For the better part of a decade, I’ve self-harmed several times a day, exclusively in private. I am also an adult man. I won't describe how but the film "Foxcatcher" depicts something like what I do (though it's more extreme in one scene of that).
I had a bona-fide breakthrough recently though; I’ve self-harmed less than once a week for the last five weeks, which is unprecedented. Two montsh ago, when my new therapist asked me to make a list of feasible targets for our sessions, we both agreed that anything like “stop self harming” would be wildly optimistic — my ideas for targets were “go three days without self harming”. It’s too early to say that I’ve stopped, but I’ve never had anything have an impact like this, including a CBT course and meditation. Since this is unmistakeable progress, I thought I’d share.
The solution is simple but was made difficult by a barrier erected by my own understanding. The solution is: I needed to take full responsibility for the fact that I was doing it. I had convinced myself that it was involuntary, almost as if someone else was doing it, like hiccoughing or Tourette's-style ticking — my self-harm action is quite tic-like. But actually, I did have control.
I was self harming because I wanted to. I still want to, though I seem to be able to control it. But it’s very hard to admit that. Two reasons:
1. If you want to self-harm, it means you’re self hating, and therefore probably a less decisive and dependable person. If you don’t want to self harm but are engaging in it involuntarily, in a sense, you get to relax! Because hey, that’s just something that isn’t your fault.
2. Imagine someone who self-harms voluntarily and then tells people it was involuntary. That’s sympathy-seeking and dishonest, which is bad. Owning up to anything like sympathy-seeking is hard. In my case it is something I do in private and it was very rare that I told anyone about it (thereby to bring about sympathy), especially for the first 5 years or so. That makes it look as though it isn’t about sympathy-seeking. It is, though.
In talking about it with others, it was a problem that I was talking as if it was involuntary. My loved ones, and therapists I talked to, were, of course, sympathetic and believed me (or held back about not believing me!). To do otherwise they’d need be quite willing to give “tough love”. The tough love I needed did eventually come, around a month ago, in the form of a stranger, who had successfully dealt with a tic problem. He insinuated (politely, indirectly, by telling a story about himself) that it was voluntary, not involuntary.
“Take responsibility for your actions” is cliché and obvious — why so long to realize it? Other than wanting to believe it was involuntary, there is another possible reason. In thoughts and conversations about it, I and some loved ones and therapists emphasized that with many things I was taking too much responsibility, partly out of misplaced pride. This was because my triggers are mostly guilty memories, and some of them are of things that it is definitely irrational for me to take responsibility for. Obviously the correct answer is to take responsibility for some things and not others!
There’s an obvious similarity to smoking and alchoholism — I understand that AA gets people to say “I am an alchoholic”, even if it’s been years since they drank. At the same time I’m surprised by the slightly responsibility-avoiding nature of The First Step.
It’d be great to not want to self harm; I thought that I already was a person who doesn’t want to — I thought, again, that my actions were involuntary. I thought I needed to do was stop an involuntary action. Well, I have stopped the action, but the cost, apparent to me, that I have become a person who wants to self harm. That’s silly though, I was always one of those!
The nice thing, then, is that it is a matter of days to go from being a person who knows they want to self harm and does so, to a person who knows they want to self harm but can stop themselves.
That's awesome progress! About cliches:. Think of them like short pointers to deeper truths that can't be expressed in words. Wisdom is looking for those deep truths, and Intelligence is poking holes in the cliches, using the D&D stats.
Congratulations, sounds like a huge milestone in your recovery.
There's a bunch of phenomena that cluster around what you describe:
- borderlines being totally out of control unless facing a serious social or physical threat, at which point they suddenly gain impulse control
- my own experience of disassociating from my depressive rumination and realizing I don't have to follow its narrative (which would end in suicide, at the time)
- for a lighter example, the archetypal procrastinator who really can't force themselves to do anything, but once the deadline is tomorrow they suddenly can
The key to all of this seems to be that there is some kind of "inside the box" regular self control, and a way higher actual capacity for self control, that "you" don't have conscious access to, but it can be tapped into by circumstances and a supportive social environment.
I wonder also how it all fits into the Timothy Leary reality tunnel / life script concept. Can you paradigm shift into a person who has different capabilities? Stop drinking by rewriting your vision of yourself into an ex-alcoholic?
I think I understand why you say inside/outside the box. But I'd fear that model would become a way of generating excuses. I think "you" DO in fact have conscious access to the things, you always do. You need to think of yourself as having that.
When you say "borderlines" do you mean "People with borderline personality disorder"?
We're getting into some serious doublethink here :) But I get your concern.
I think "heroic willpower is accessible but the access is difficult to get" is the right balance. It forces you to consider which of your existing life circumstances and thought patterns help or hinder that, and hopefully stops you from beating yourself up that you can't conjure it at will.
Geographically speaking, the Russians seem like the major power in the best place to intervene.* Maybe there's something we could offer Russia to persuade them to help?
(I'm only half joking, here.)
* Mongolia has the best human rights rating in the region, but lacks geopolitical clout. And Kazakhstan has a worse human rights rating than Russia, although it's still better than China.
If Xi wanted to avoid having a muslim fifth column, he could have found much more humane ways to do it. Such as partitioning Xinjiang and sending the Uyghurs to one side of the partition and giving them independence. (Partition could be done in a gradual and orderly fashion over a decade or two by just gradually raising property taxes for people who live on the wrong side of the partition.)
But it's unfortunately typical of nations to act as if they attach an absurdly high utility to maintaining sovereignty over every bit of territory they can, even when the actual utility of maintaining that overarching government is less than zero.
Example: In British Empire times, the UK was paying far more to administer its colonies than what the colonies were worth, but pride made the UK act against its own interests.
In general the more finely divided government is, the more tailored it can be to the preferences of the particular people it governs, the better off those people will be. To overcome this strong presumption of home rule advantage, the distant capitol better have some overwhelming technological superiority, at least as extreme as Rome versus gallic tribes in Julius Caesar's time.
> In British Empire times, the UK was paying far more to administer its colonies than what the colonies were worth, but pride made the UK act against its own interests.
I know nearly nothing about this, but is it possible that there were also some other concerns? For example, if Britain gives up the colonies, some competitor might take them instead (and perhaps manage them more efficiently, and generate a profit), so perhaps keeping the colonies is a way to preserve the advantage of Britain.
Kinda like today big software companies sometimes buy smaller ones, not because they care about the product, but to avoid the possibility that a successful competitor would appear on the market.
They made a lot of money from their colonies. Then the world's economy changed, colonies became a money sink, and they gave them up. (They did drag their feet on giving them up, though.) By this point, competitors getting the colonies was no longer a concern, because nobody wanted to pick up a money sink.
It's a question of individual impact/span of influence and the sin of silence. I like Randomstring's suggestion fo writing one's Representative and Senators. And I will do so.While it is something, I suspect, however, it is more for my sense of myself than it is for the Uyghers.
As with most foreign policy issues there's not much we can directly do. There's charities that need donations like https://uhrp.org/ and https://campaignforuyghurs.org/. Awareness raising can also be useful. In particular writing to your elected representatives to say you support measures like blocking goods made with forced labor, sanctions on Chinese officials and asylum for refugees
I think y'all should do nothing about them. They're not really a threat to anyone other than the Chinese (and foreigners in China). Presumably China is both motivated and able to do whatever needs to be done.
To be clear, the problem being discussed isn't that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement uses violence in support of its separatist goals. Presumably China is both motivated and able to address that problem.
The problem is that China is sending millions of Uyghurs to "reeducation" camps and using them for forced labor.
Is it really a problem for people on the other side of the globe that China imprisons separatists? I mean, the US killed hundreds of thousands of its separatists in the 1800s, and few people seem very outraged about that. Imprisoning them seems more humane to me.
(1) Most of the Uyghurs being sent to "reeducation" camps aren't involved in a violent insurrection. They're being targeted because of their ethnicity & religion.
(2) Norms of what is / is not acceptable in war have changed since the 1800s. Genocide has become much less acceptable since the horrors of WWII.
(3) There was active debate within most European powers about whether or not they should intervene in the US Civil War.
If someone asks "what can we do about the concentration camps?" the correct answer is not "don't worry, the Germans seem to have a solution to the Jewish question."
I think you meant to say "what can we do about the Jews", to make that analogous? But I don't think that the historical conflicts between Jews and their host populations have much in common with the present-day conflict between the Uyghurs and the Chinese or that intuitions about the former should be simply copied to the latter situation.
I suggested "do nothing", not "do a genocide". Generally, getting involved in conflicts on the other side of the planet involving entirely foreign peoples seems like a bad idea to me. Americans keep doing this, and it keeps causing problems.
If what you actually meant to say was "What China is doing is terrible but we have no practical way to stop them", then you shouldn't have made a post framing China's actions as simply "what needs to be done" and interpreting OP's question as asking for a threat assessment of the Uyghurs.
It should go without saying, but "is it necessary to genocide this minority?" is never a question you should be asking. The answer is no.
Not helpful and not funny. Plus my anti-virus software thinks you're a scammer, and when even unthinking software doesn't find you funny, it's time to hang it up:
"Website blocked due to a suspicious top level domain (TLD)
Malwarebytes Browser Guard blocked this page because it uses a suspicious top level domain (TLD). These are frequently used by scam or phishing sites, but can be used by legitimate websites as well. If you trust this website, please click CONTINUE TO SITE. Otherwise, choose GO BACK."
I recently published an article on how the Biden administration is prioritizing research and development, why we need more publicly funded research and development, and how to fix science funding. https://kavoussi.substack.com/p/the-case-for-publicly-funded-research
So is not being far left considered by the far left far right these days ?
You are an architect and are assigned to build a replacement for the Pentagon. What features does your structure (or structures) have, and why does it have them?
How is your structure better than the Pentagon?
Make it a hexagon. It's better because it has one more side. It's just like how a six-bladed razor is better than a five-bladed razor.
I'm interested in what music/songs/reading or other rites people would like at their funeral? I'm working on a theatre show about death and rituals and interested if people have thought about it and what they would want.
I think if Scott conducts another big survey of his readers, he should include questions about dreams to see how they correlate with other traits. For instance:
How often do you remember your dreams?
-Every single day.
-Every few days.
-Maybe once a week.
-Once a month.
-Twice a year.
-Never.
Among my friends, the rate of dream remembering varies widely, and I wonder what it means about personality, neuro-typicalness, etc. Ask the same question about lucid dreams.
I have this hypothesis that lucid dreaming probably correlates with "spectrum stuff" for this reason: As, Nietzsche says, we live as we dream, we invent the people we meet--and immediately forget.
To paraphrase that quote, we auto-impose a narrative on everything we experience, whether asleep or awake, without realizing we are imposing the narrative as opposed to the narrative being some objective portion of reality. Not an original concept, at least not today, but what I find interesting are those moments when we step outside of that sense of narrative and become aware, painfully, that it is our own construction.
The lucid dream offers the perfect analog to what it feels like to step outside our own narrative. In a normal dream, (probably) random things happen, yet our minds tell us a story is going on. All those people who appear, those random settings, those random objects... all of them get put into the plaster and our minds decode them as if they were decodable hieroglyphics, even though they are random, meaningless stuff, probably. We wake, the plaster breaks, the objects fall out, and our wide-awake brains realize suddenly that they were random objects all along, that the dream, in fact, meant nothing.
I know only from Tyler Cowen's ten-year-old TED talk that supposedly people on the autistic spectrum do not tend to think in as much of a narrative fashion as others. So does Nietzsche's quote not hold true for them?
So the testable prediction is this: Those on the autistic spectrum should have more lucid dreams than average because they are more likely to "not buy into" the auto-narrative of their own nocturnal dreams.
My remembering of dreams depends really strongly on my lifestyle and habits.
Also, why would you assume your dreams are random? They reflect your subconscious processing, and tend to be relevant to whatever you're worried/excited/obsessed with at the time.
Whether I remember dreams is heavily dependent on the manner in which I wake up. If suddenly, which usually means alarm clock, then almost never. But when I let myself sleep in, it happens pretty often.
I am extremely surprised by this, because my experience is the exact opposite. I am convinced that you *only* remember dreams when you suddenly wake up from one.
In my experience, it is super easy to forget dreams. Unless I start thinking about the dream right after waking up, I will probably forget even the fact that I had a dream. So for me, the "dream frequency" question would actually be a "how busy are you in the morning" question.
Also, I had a moment in the past (apparently too much free time) when I wrote a dream diary. And sometimes I was like "oh, I already had this same dream, about a few weeks ago, let me check in the diary" and then it turned out that "a few weeks ago" was actually yesterday. So even then I would underestimate the frequency of my dreams.
Therefore, I would trust such questionnaire only if people kept written records; at least making a quick "yes/no" mark immediately after waking up.
In the last Open Thread, I asked the group which type of sword would be best in a post-apocalyptic situation, and to my surprise, most said a spear would be a better weapon. That piqued my interest.
What is the "best" type of spear? Assume it will be used by one person fighting alone, or at most, three people fighting together.
What is the most "advanced" spear? I guess that refers to material composition and maybe other technology. With 2022 technology, can we make better spears than we could with the best technology of 1922?
Best for what? Since it sounds like personal defense(3 people at most), it sounds like a sword really would be better due to its lesser bulk and high versatility.
Spears and polearms are better in actual war, but for personal defense, I'd probably choose a longsword which is a reasonably easy to handle 2-handed sword.
I don't think you can make too much improvement in the materials, but maybe using plastic or carbon fiber in the haft could save weight without compromising its strength? For the blade, steel is probably still the best (although I think 2022 steel is better than 1922 steel). Titanium sounds cool but it's apparently not as hard as steel, and more difficult to work with.
For a single person rather than a formation I think you want a spear with a large blade that can be used to cut and thrust - you want flexibility since you can't rely on presenting a wall of points like a phalanx would. If your opponents are heavily armored (very possible in the post-apocalypse), polearms like the halberd or lucerne hammer might be worth a look as well.
One-handed spear+shield could also be a good idea, since a riot shield would be a lot stronger and lighter than a shield made of hide or wood.
This is just an educated guess with a bit of googling, with the assumption that you'll be fighting other humans with access to similar equipment. As Majuscule notes, the situation might change if you're, e.g., fighting radioactive mutant ants instead.
The technology might not be as relevant as the use case. E.g. In the last Ice Age, some hunters abandoned stone points in favor of antler spear heads. This wasn’t moving backward, though; the environment had become one where tall, straight trees for the shaft of a spear were harder to come by. The prey and methods of hunting it changed, too, such that it made a lot more sense to have a bone spearhead that broke off inside the animal. The wounded reindeer could be more easily tracked in near-tundra than a red deer in thick forest, and the shaft of the spear could be reused. I found this guy’s work really interesting: https://www.ancientcraft.co.uk/james-dilley
So making a high-tech graphene spear with an oscillating microtome blade might make sense if you’re fighting guys in a space elevator, but if you’re just looking to stab raiders or food on earth there might be no need to get fancy.
I don't know, and I'm disappointed this hasn't turned into a very long thread by people who do know...
I've gotten email notifications of the two most recent posts ("Bounded Mistrust" and :Against That Poverty And Infant EEGs Study"), but I can't read them on the blog. They appear briefly, and then they disappear and there's a "too many requests" notification.
Restarting my computer solved the problem.
I had a similar problem, tried again like a half hour later and it worked fine. I think the problem was on Substack's end.
Was Roxindole (EMD-49,980) ever formally abandoned? And if so, given its unique selective binding profile, why?
And if so abandoned, why are chemical suppliers seemingly still banned from producing samples of it?
Roger's Bacon substack has an interesting essay about magic and placebos - https://rogersbacon.substack.com/p/the-tale-of-the-shaman-science-magic. Seems to me to be specially relevant to psychiatry and psychology, and maybe good for some comments.
How is car baling different from car shearing?
One turns a car into a metal block, the other just removes any fur it has accumulated?
Has anyone considered the use of prediction markets to forecast corporate project success? I'm speaking primarily about internal "enterprise" projects with all the baggage they tote. Various project management institutes quote these crazy failure rates for projects and "insiders" joke at how bad we are collectively at planning. What if a sufficiently large enterprise ran a prediction market to forecast success of these initiatives? Put some variable comp in play to add skin in the game.
Thoughts?
Given that every project I've seen which failed, failed because it was killed for political reasons, adding a financial incentive for many participants in the market to get projects killed seems like a bad idea if your goal is to maximize the odds of project success.
That has not been my experience but I have seen it happen. Either way, that's an outcome whose likelihood could price in over time. Are you concerned that people in a position of leadership could short the position and then kill the project?
Shameless self-promotion: for fun and to learn some new things, I recently made these videos: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nDhOGsBj1fA&list=PL70Kxx3q2LQR8LEJVzP92HAQNupPKBlEX&index=1&ab_channel=Shinyframes
I got quite obsessed by these animations and I'm still surprised by their dynamics, even though the underlying mechanism is pretty trivial (the explanation is in the video description). I noticed that people tend to either love these and want more, or be absolutely indifferent, with no middle ground. I think that the main reason that some people are fascinated is that we observe a system spontaneously reducing its entropy while following usual physical laws, which feels very odd.
Educated guess: the physics engine is deterministic and reversible (as is Newtonian physics). Start with a pretty arrangement; run backwards in time until things are chaotic. Then reverse time and record the video through and beyond time=0.
If you will permit me a shameless plug to some work I did years ago that is arguably relevant:
http://busyboxes.org/?hash=MnCTi7uMxOftTl7px47ec4vgSHgMH4FTu5zo-AZk5eecBOvjnR8BSU5ecunSHFwcvwEh4BOm.APh4eTqSB0
Press the spacebar to start the simulation.
That's exactly how it's done! More details in the notebook here: https://nbviewer.org/github/alessandro-giusti/bouncing-ball-patterns/blob/main/bouncing.ipynb
Busyboxes looks really deep, and the faq is really helpful. Thanks for the link, super interesting!
Very cool! Frankly I'm surprised your physics engine is deterministic enough to get this right -- especially reversing the 90% elasticity - I would think 1.0/0.9 would be slightly off due to floating point errors.
The busyboxes CA is precisely reversible, there is no notion of elasticity -- it was designed specifically to highlight reversibility.
I love these and want more.
I'll be publishing a new video with more of these soon, including this new one: https://twitter.com/shinyframes/status/1486071006502477825
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Brain,_1st_Baron_Brain
This is the best case of nominative determinism I've ever seen. I mean, can it get better than a neurologist called Lord Brain??
Can you recommend a book about the French Revolution?
I'd recommend a podcast. Mike Duncan's Revolutions episodes 3.1 to 3.55 https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/revolutions_podcast/2014/07/31-the-three-estates-.html
The Old Regime and the French Revolution by Tocqueville blew my mind. Better than his America book, imo.
I can give a non-recommendation. The Age of Napoleon by Will and Ariel Durant was very dull due to long digressions on the personal lives of every person who was even remotely connected to the French revolution.
Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, by Simon Schama. Listened to the audiobook, which was available from my library, a few years ago.
Thank you! was it fun to listen to? did it cover just the Revolution, or the beginning of 19th century as well?
I enjoyed it very much. It's really evocative of the various phases, especially the Terror. It's doesn't cover the 19th century at all. In fact, it stops with the fall of Robespierre, so you don't even get the Directory.
Let's say I want to wargame a 2022-02-01 Russian invasion of Ukraine with a friend. What would be a good software or ruleset to use? Let's say I'm willing to put in a couple of days of effort and that I'm striving for "realism" (whatever that means).
COMMAND: MODERN AIR & NAVAL OPERATIONS is what I would pick if I had a gun to my head right now, but it seems to small in scale and it's "Air & Naval", not "Land".
And of course, if some military geeks have already done a Russia-Ukraine wargame and written down their insights, that would spare me a lot of effort. So links to that would be appreciated.
You could try the open source version of the Civilization franchise - see freeciv.org. It allows creating "scenarios" and customizing the "rulesets", would need to create/find a suitable map. A fairly big learning curve, certainly > couple of days and maybe not so much realism. But possibly fun, and good re-playability.
Nice try Mr. Putin
Putin presumably has the advantage in wargame tech vs Ukraine, so creating a good public wargame would presumably help Ukraine more.
Nice suggestions, but they seem to be a bit closer to "game" than "simulation" and a bit too abstract as well. I don't feel like a playtrough would give much insight into a real-world invasion (it's debatable if any wargame would give that, but then it's at least debatable).
I want to simulate the operational or high tactical level over a couple of weeks. E.g. try different tactics for attack and defense: "this division goes here, this division goes here". Maybe make a couple of encirclements or some surprising defensive plays and see what happens.
Scott is apparently actively read by medical researchers, so I think the question is well-placed. How is progress on prosthetics over the last 2-3 years and if slow (I'm about 70% sure that it's slow) - what are the big "knowledge bottlenecks" and how optimistic are you about them being widened?
Let's talk about the sensitivity of COVID-19 tests. The German Paul Ehrlich Institut is has been doing a wide survey of the sensitivity of various rapid antigen COVID-19 tests, initially published some months ago [0], with the results being continuously updated at pei.de [1].
The tests under test are used on a panel of solutions with different concentration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA. These concentrations are stated in (what seems to me, being far removed from the field) a weird way, giving not the concentration directly but instead the number Cq of PCR cycles (duplications) needed to detect the RNA via the PCR method. Two facts seem important here: (0) a higher Cq means a lower concentration and (1) Cq is fundamentally a logarithmic scale.
The solutions ranged in Cq values from 17 to 36, implying to a variation in concentration of almost six orders of magnitude. This also (roughly) covers the distribution of Cq in patients which are PCR-positive. [2, 3].
I guess I must have been living under a rock last year or something, because I was somewhat amazed by the spread of results. Of the tests which worked at all, the worst worked only for two out of 50 samples, while the best detected 43 out of 50. (The nonsensitive ones are now gone both from [1] and the German market, while some new tests reach 49/50 or even 50/50 with a new panel of solutions, so it is unclear if this is due to an advance in test design.)
This would be surprising is the sample concentrations were uniformly distributed but while the PEI is rather tight-lipped about the actual Cq values of their samples, the information they provide implies a uniformish distribution over a range in Cq, so a log-like distribution in RNA concentration. A test passing the Cq=30 mark is three orders of magnitude more sensitive than one stopping at Cq=20.
Furthermore, the sensitivity is only weakly correlated to the price per test. The cheapest test for sale in Germany are probably around 1.75 Euro, while great tests (e.g. 43/50 on the PEI survey) can be had for around three Euros.
The sensitivity is strongly correlated with the intended use, however. Available layperson tests go up to 40/50. The better ones (e.g. Longsee, Sienna, Green Spring, QuickProfile) are all labeled "for professional use only" and will not be shipped to Joe Sixpack in Germany.
~ Information heavy part of the post ends here. Mostly rants on FDA and German equivalent below. May contain trace amounts of non-charity. ~
(I am somewhat amazed at the level of paternalism. The instructions for 90% of tests are virtually identical: swab in the nose, turn, swab in the buffer solution, 1-2 drops on the test cassette, wait about 15 minutes. There is no meaningful difference between the layperson tests and the pro-only ones. What exactly is the worst case the regulators expect? Untrained person opens the test pack with 25 tests, is confused by the fact that there are "SO MANY" parts, decides to drink all of the buffer fluid, then puts all cotton swabs into their throat at once, chokes to death? Or "person tries to apply tests for a group of 25 people, gets confused, uses droplets from same buffer on multiple test cassettes"? Using that argumentation, should we not also ban the sale of folding rulers to the general public? After all, they can give wrong readings when only partially unfolded or reading the wrong side. It is very easy to think of circumstances where a wrongly measured distance could result in injury or death.
Speaking of injury or death, while googling for sellers for various high sensitivity antigen tests, I found this gem [4]. The FDA is warning, in the harshest possible terms, against the use of the Innova rapid antigen test, issuing a Class I recall. The gist of the story seems to be that the manufacturer sold them in the US without FDA approval. (Note that it could be possible that the Innova test retracted by the FDA was a different test from the one scoring highly at PEI.)
Credit where credit is due, someone at the FDA takes their job very seriously. Without resorting to citing numbers, never mind probabilities, they conclusively point out that false negative results may put patients at risk and lead to the spread of Covid. Meh. The creative writing part comes afterwards, when they point out that false-positive test results could "lead to a delay in both the correct diagnosis and the initiation of an appropriate treatment for the actual cause of patient illness, which could be another life-threatening disease". Again, we are talking about antigen tests here, which occupy the broad region between 'mostly snakeoil' and '90% as good as RT-PCR'. Okay, test was not properly approved, bad Innova Medical, don't use, I get it. But a Class 1 recall? What will the FDA do when they actually encounter a medical device which warrants it, as in "actively killing people", like the Therac-25? Invent a Class 0 recall?
Giving that mindset, I think the general public is very unappreciative of the sacrifice the FDA made in allowing any tests short of PCR, confirmed by two independent FDA-approved labs *at all*. By the logic of the FDA, any false negative result which indirectly leads to a COVID infection will be their fault. Still, for highly idealistic reasons outside the scope of their organisation (like slowing a deadly pandemic without suffocating lockdowns), they took on the guilt of false-negative test results (and false positive too, see above). The blood of the test users will forever taint their hands, but at least life can go on.)
[0] https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2021.26.44.2100441 click "Download" for non-linkable pdf version
[1] https://www.pei.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/newsroom/dossiers/evaluierung-sensitivitaet-sars-cov-2-antigentests.pdf?__blob=publicationFile
[2] Cq distribution for some symptomatic patients: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7454307/figure/F3/
[3] Some Cq distribution, wrong citation (?), source unclear: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Cycle-threshold-values-for-rRT-PCR-reactions-for-confirmed-COVID-19-cases-27_fig2_340458462
[4] https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/safety-communications/stop-using-innova-medical-group-sars-cov-2-antigen-rapid-qualitative-test-fda-safety-communication
I had Covid symptoms in December. On day 2 of symptoms I got tested at a place where they do both the Antigen test and the PCR test. Both came back negative. I was still sick on day 4 so I get tested again, this time at a different place. The antigen test came back positive, but the PCR was negative. Is it more likely that I had Covid or it was a false positive?
I'm a little surprised that you are spending so much time on sensitivity of the tests, and so little on specificity of the test.
From what I can find on a quick search:
-Sensitivity is defined as the proportion of disease-samples which produce a positive result.
-Specificity is defined as the proportion of the disease-free samples which produce a negative result.
It would be interesting to compare both Sensitivity and Specificity for the tests you mention. Tests for use at-home likely have a different balance Sensitivity and Specificity than tests for use by medical professionals. The difference isn't mentioned in the instructions; the instructions are a How-To procedure and not a course in medical statistics.
Sensitivity and specificity are always a tradeoff, and I'd expect tests available to the general public to choose a different balance than tests read by professionals.
Also, antigen tests detect proteins, not RNA. I assume the PCR Cq is provided as an approximation for the viral load.
> Also, antigen tests detect proteins, not RNA. I assume the PCR Cq is provided as an approximation for the viral load.
Ok, I stand corrected.
I originally omitted specificity because the values given by the manufacturers are uniformly high. AT731/21 ("longsee") claims a specificity of 99.7% (1 false-positive to 343 true negative). "Sienna" gets 98.9%.
I think the /sensitivity/ statistics from the manufacturers are basically meaningless. The ratio of PCR positive to PCR negative patients (about 1:1) implies that both groups were not drawn out of the same pool and randomly tested with both PCR and the antigen test. Instead, the bulk of the true positive tests were likely severe clinical cases with a high viral load, and the bulk of true negatives were likely drawn from the general population.
In my opinion, the PEI does good work by actually figuring out the sensitivity using a fixed samples which does a better job of approximating what the actual distribution of viral loads in the /target group for rapid tests/ (which very much is not "people being ventilated because COVID-19 overran their immune system completely", but rather "asymptomatic person wanting to go to the gym") looks like.
While I thus see sensitivity as easily gamed by manufacturers, specificity seems harder to game (assuming they are unwilling to cheat). "Our tests detects all kinds of corona viruses, thus we test our presumed-negative group outside of the colds/flu season" might be doable, but most tests state explicitly that there is no cross-reactivity with any number of viruses.
I do not think the consequences of a positive rapid antigen test (for a responsible person) differ very much between a test applied by a professional testing facility and a self-applied test. In both cases, you will try to get a RT-PCR test asap and self-isolate until cleared. I could accept this argument if people were automatically placed on suicide watch by the testing centers so the statistical illiterate don't kill themselves over a false-positive, but I don't think this generally happens. I figure they just get an email "you are positive, local health authorities have been informed. You are now legally obliged to self-isolate. Please get your PCR test here."
The consequences of a false-negative test are also rather similar: the patient, believing themselves to be negative, is likely to engage in behaviour which might infect other people. The main difference is that for professional tests, this may include behaviours where the government mandates a test (e.g. going to the gym) while for self-tests, it only includes behaviour the government can not easily control (like visiting elderly parents).
In conclusion, so far, I do not see a huge tradeoff between specificity and sensitivity in the available tests. (I should plot them at some point, finding the Pareto frontier and all that.)
I also do not see much of a consequential difference between either false positive or false negative test results with regard to self-administered tests versus tests done in a testing center.
Overall, still confused.
Reading the text material at bfarm.de, it looks like the only difference is the CE marking, which is generally applied by the manufacturer and implies that the product complies with relevant EU norms. No idea why this is not required for medical products for professional use.
[0] https://antigentest.bfarm.de/ords/f?p=1010:100:16064472924706:::::&tz=1:00
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CE_marking
Interesting substack, just discovered you, thanks!
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/
Because I am lazy to do my own research, does anyone have a good response to this?
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/only-6183-people-died-solely-of-covid
I found this Australia information quite interesting as well. Because others countries had substantial covid and a large variance in restrictions. While Australia had low covid high restrictions snd consistent for the 2020 and 2021 and a high mandatory vaccine rate . And just look at how 2021 is above the ten year average in excess deaths . In other nations we might say we would expect vaccines at some point to limit deaths . But when we look at Australia we can pretty much rule out covid . Instead we see high excess deaths over the range , which likely
Includes a higher 2018 flu season
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/provisional-mortality-statistics/latest-release
While I tend to appreciate the detail that Mathew Crawford goes into when exploring the data . I did post this preprint seeking some feedback , but had no takers
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357778435_Official_mortality_data_for_England_suggest_systematic_miscategorisation_of_vaccine_status_and_uncertain_effectiveness_of_Covid-19_vaccination
I just read Zvi for my covid news. I'm lazy too.
As a comparison, consider the scenario of deaths due to misuse of alcohol.
If a person in the hospital dies of liver cirrhosis after a lifetime which included heavy alcohol use every day, the death certificate would include "alcohol related death". (If such a checkbox were on the death-certificate.)
If a driver has a BAC level too high to safely drive, and crashes into another vehicle driven by a sober driver, do all deaths in both vehicles have 'alcohol related death' on the death certificate? If not, why not?
Let's now compare to COVID.
If a person is in the hospital with a positive COVID test, and the usual set of COVID symptoms, and he dies, it is likely considered death 'from COVID'. What if he received an organ transplant in the past few years, and has been on immune-suppressant drugs since then? Is his scenario a death from complications of an organ transplant? Or a death from COVID?
If a person with a heart condition has COVID, and is developing symptoms, she might end up in the hospital. If the physical stress of the early-stage COVID symptoms triggers a heart attack that is fatal, did she die of COVID? Or did she die of a heart attack? Would she have survived COVID without the heart trouble? Would she have managed to not suffer a heart attack without COVID present?
These kinds of questions make for interesting philosophical discussions. But they don't help clarify the meaning of claiming that only 6000 people died 'solely of COVID', compared to the tens of thousands (or is it hundreds of thousands?) who died of 'COVID-plus-something-else'.
For practical use, it would help to distinguish 'died-of-COVID-plus-something-else' from 'died-of-something-else-with-positive-COVID-test-and-no-COVID-symptoms' scenarios. However, that distinction isn't made in the article posted at the Naked Emporer substack. Thus, the article doesn't add much information that can be used.
Do death certificates really not include space for multi factor causation? If a hemophiliac dies of a gunshot wound, but could have been saved if they weren't a hemophiliac, it seems silly to blame only the gunshot or only the hemophilia. Both were only necessary but not sufficient.
Sorry, I replied but deleted it due to an apparent double-post... TL:dr -- I looked at images of a few (250)certs and they seemed to be wildly unreliable and often illegible, COVID over emphasized. Subjective, just me, small sample. BR
The CDC's archetypal death-because-of-covid example lists the causes as, in order:
Acute respiratory distress syndrome
caused by
Pneumonia
caused by
COVID-19
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/cause-of-death-data-quality.pdf
Compared with this, a death certificate with only Covid as a cause of death seems unprofessionally sloppy.
so where did all those bodies come from
Mathew Crawford goes into quite the detail over the last 3 months or so on his substack . From what I gather bio stats are his thing . It’s quite a compelling case . And most recently he and others have been processing the all death data and make the case that vaccines are basically killing people
The first thing any COVID and vaccine skeptic needs to reckon with is the big increase in all-cause mortality vs previous years that happens to begin in March 2020 rather than March 2021. (You can play with OWID's data here: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/excess-mortality-raw-death-count )
Everyone who has an alternative explanation for why countries with big COVID outbreaks had way more all-cause mortality than usual that repeatedly coincided with those outbreaks should have a REALLY GOOD alternate explanation, one that explains both those jumps in countries like the US and the UK and the lack of jumps in countries like Japan that never had a big sustained outbreak.
Instead, my experience is that they spend a lot of time talking about the "actual definition" of COVID death, etc., which—sure, I'm happy to stipulate that "COVID Death" on a death certificate or on the New York Times's website should not sway my priors at all. Now why did a bunch more people die during COVID outbreaks (but not in places where there were draconian lockdowns and, later, high vaccination rates, but no COVID outbreak)?
What’s interesting is when such all data sites differ from the country of origin. So the first thing we need to know with some certainty is the accuracy of the data
I think an answer could be that we have pulled forward a number of deaths from the future. People who might have otherwise died from the flu or heat waves or whatever in future years were instead taken early by COVID. (I think it is not obvious that this answer applies to younger people who died due to COVID, but it is plausible that it might. Young people do sometimes die of the flu under normal circumstances.)
I agree that could be an answer, but at the same time, isn't every death "pulled forward from the future"? We don't typically use that to imply that the death didn't matter.
I believe the "COVID-skeptic" response is along the lines of "The government pays hospitals to classify other kinds of deaths as COVID so long as they have the virus in their system in order to prolong the pandemic and normalize government overreach."
that wouldn't explain why there were more total deaths in 2020 than in 2019. so the easy response is still: ok, so where did all those bodies come from?
I've never actually SEEN the answer to that one, but I'm pretty sure if you asked it you'd get something along the lines of "total deaths fluctuate all the time, so what if a few more people died in 2020 than 2019, or in 2021 than 2020! That's not important, what's important is protecting our personal freedom from government encroachment, you're letting the government manipulate you with those kinds of statistics."
The UK's normalized all-causes mortality in 2020 alone was 1016.2 per 100,000. The average for the preceding ten years was 892.5 per 100,000, with a standard deviation of 16.5. So, 7.5 standard deviations above the norm.
If your death rate increases by 14%, and that's seven times the normal year-to-year fluctuation, that's not "so what?" that's something you really want to understand. Fortunately, it's something that's really easy to understand if you try.
Yes, COVID mostly only actually kills people who are old and/or sick, and most really old people are already sick with *something*. But most of them should have lived another five years or more, so maybe that's something you want to pay attention to.
Yeah the all death data includes non covid related deaths . And it’s not all deaths due to covid that accounts for the rise . The graphs are quite interesting to look at and explore the access deaths and what was going on at the time . A bit chilling actually . It seems as though the all death non covid related deaths correspond to
The vaccine rate .
Given that COVID-related deaths in 2020 and 2021 made up over 10% of all deaths, and in 2021 was close behind cancer in terms of death-share, I don't think "it's irrelevant" or "It's only dangerous if you have a preexisting issue" do the kind of lifting you think they do.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.09647
Proof of concept of drug discovery with AlphaFold.
Interesting from both AI safety perspective and biotech perspective.
Can anyone give further context on what this means to someone who is fairly ignorant about biology? How important is the discovery of a Novel Cyclin-dependent Kinase 20 Small Molecule Inhibitor? And relatedly, does it seem like this approach can be expanded to other biological discovery work?
The context is that protein folding was long thought to be impossible in silico, AlphaFold solved it a ~year ago, and now someone managed to apply the AI results to the drug discovery process and get a somewhat working drug.
It's interesting mostly because it validates AlphaFold projections as a resource for designing things that work in real life. We'll have to wait for more papers to see how broad the applications are.
CDK20 is an enzyme (kinase) with an active role in cell growth pathways. Inhibiting its activity in rapidly dividing cells may help slow tumor progression. It may be that CDK20 is a challenging target (in terms of "drug-ability") by conventional approaches, so if the in-silico approach described in the paper overcame the challenge that would be of interest. Although the micro-molar Kd (binding affinity) noted in the abstract is kinda so-so to a pharmacologist. In-silico approaches generally for designing 3-D drugs to target 3-D protein folds are not especially new, although this particular AI approach may be novel, I don't know. One would need to dig into the methods section of the paper to find out.
Hey Scott , here is a new ivermectin study to sink your teeth in
https://www.cureus.com/articles/82162-ivermectin-prophylaxis-used-for-covid-19-a-citywide-prospective-observational-study-of-223128-subjects-using-propensity-score-matching?fbclid=IwAR0sL2_7Kp8Y67ZYioukHPfqpONCngddrXfD1ZCdreyfIawmaX7UB-gikBE
So the confounder is, Ivermectin treats other things, that make getting covid worse. So if you like have worms (or some other infection that Iver. helps with) you will have a better outcome. That said it's mostly harmless.
So how would one then account for such a confounder. Or are you suggesting because there may be a confounder it is due to the confounder . Cause I can see the point , I just don’t see where it is proved to be the case .
I was kind of hoping that Scott would respond seeing that he did the big write up on all the studies included in the systemic review in the past . Maybe I should read it again , I don’t recall your particular argument
Yeah, I'm not sure you can account for it. And if Iver helps you survive covid because of some unknown effect, then so what, it still helps you survive. I don't think Scott talked about prophylactic use if Iver in his article.
It's an interesting study. However, I remain to be convinced that ivermectin will help otherwise healthy people avoid Covid.
This excerpt is what I mean:
"An important conservative bias was present. Major risk factors for severe COVID-19 and mortality due to COVID-19, including aging, diabetes, and hypertension, were more present among ivermectin users, which may have underestimated the benefits of ivermectin as it was demonstrated to be particularly effective in subjects above 49 years old in terms of reduction of absolute risk, which corresponds to the group at the highest risk for COVID-19. This allows the understanding that prophylactic use of ivermectin can be particularly impactful in older subjects. In addition, ivermectin seemed to reduce the exceeding risk of hypertension, T2D, and other diseases."
So it seems that ivermectin as prophylaxis was prescribed to those with higher risk factors, if I am reading this correctly.
Ivermectin may have an anti-inflammatory effect, and part of the problem with hypertension and type II diabetes is inflammation. The benefits of ivermectin may therefore be in reducing the aggravating effect of co-morbidities, enabling the body to better fight off Covid. But it remains an interesting study, all the same. I am leaning more towards "ivermectin's anti-inflammatory effects in vivo" rather than "ivermectin kills SARS type viruses in vitro".
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7476419/
"Moreover, there are two reports that ivermectin, administered either systemically or topically, exerts anti-inflammatory effects in murine models of allergic inflammation (asthma and atopic dermatitis).7 8 The systemic effect was achieved with a 2 mg/kg dose.
Although it is conceivable that these anti-inflammatory effects of ivermectin are restricted to LPS or toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) signalling, it may well be the case that it works downstream in this signalling pathway in a way that would be pertinent to other proinflammatory signalling pathways. Moreover, there is reason to suspect that the damage-associated molecular pattern high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1), which is released by dying cells and acts as an agonist for the TLR4 receptor, is a mediator of the lung inflammation associated with COVID-19.9 Hence, it is reasonable to suspect that, in doses at or modestly above the standard clinical dose, ivermectin may have important clinical potential for managing disorders associated with life-threatening respiratory distress and cytokine storm—such as advanced COVID-19. Ivermectin may have been ‘flying under the radar’ in this regard during four decades of clinical use."
Here is a response I got on Geert van den Bosch substack
comment
Let me try to provide a challenge to this intellectually stimulating article. Although the revelation of molecular mechanisms in the article is valuable, the main conclusion in the preprint is rather unjustified. And it is not because the preprint is analysis of existing publications without supporting laboratory work. The reason for saying the main hypothesis in the article is not justified, is because tool little analysis was performed and the lack of taking into account of available evidences resulted in unjustified presumptions. The main argument is that “vaccination, unlike natural infection, induces a profound impairment in type I interferon signalling, which has diverse adverse consequences to human health.” This argument stems from the observation that IRF9 and IRF7 are downregulated. With regard to IRF7 authors provide reference to Liu et al. (2021). With regard to IRF9 no specific reference is provided, only assumption that “spike protein production results in those cells generating exosomes containing microRNAs that suppress IRF9”. First, I would argue that downregulation of I-INF activity after the vaccination is due to S protein cleavage by a host protease. And this is similar both in vaccine induced and natural infection. However, it has been proved several times that SARS-CoV-2 suppresses I-INF activity particularly with it’s NSP1 protein as argued in https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-021-03662-x and https://dx.doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41418-020-00633-7. Therefore, both natural and vaccinal immune reaction downregulates I-INF activity, but the mechanisms are different. While natural infection ensures it by means of NSP1 suppression of I-INF, ORF8 suppression of MHC-I, furin cleavage of S; the vaccination results in downregulations because of S cleavage by host protese and MHC-I lower binding affinity to antigen, and, perhaps by activity of IDO. Secondly, Liu et al. (2021) collected data based on inactivated viral vaccine, while the authors postulate arguments about mRNA vaccines. Therefore, neither argument about IRF7 is valid, nor IRF9. Thirdly, reference [11] is biased. Using 7 day statistical data to derive a statistically significant finding? Well, excuse me, but then there would be one science during summer and another science during winter with regard to the respiratory viruses. Fourth, there is more plausible explanation of myocarditis than miR-155 circulating levels. The reference to miR-155 does not explain frequency of the events, sex and age criteria (latency is not the valid argument). A study from Germany suggested prolonged exposure to testosterone increases expression of alpha-myosin heavy chain (α-MyHC) proteins on heart muscle (https://doi.org/10.1096/fj.02-0138com). Two other studies suggest α-MyHC is unfamiliar to the T cells during their early development in the thymus gland, where they come to recognize and tolerate many of the body’s molecules. T cells attack α-MyHC upon detection of unknown pathogens in the body because newly expressed α-MyHC lack major histocompatibility complex molecules and are regarded as non-self proteins(https://dx.doi.org/10.1172%2FJCI44583 and https://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.tcm.2012.07.005). This mechanism was hypothesise as a cause of myocarditis in young male after vaccination against COVID-19 (https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.056135). But it should be acknowledged and investigated further that there is a mechanism how current mRNA vaccines suppress the immunity. The only aspect of this suppression that is beneficial is immune tolerance induced after the vaccination – after exposure to the toxin (S protein) the hypersensitivity stage (mast cell activation) of the immune response is not so evident in vaccinees upon infection. Reduced hypersensitivity as a result of immune tollerance does not induce a cascade of potentially lethal hyperinflammation and hypercoagulation. However, due to immune suppression a lot of S protein debris remain in multiple organs of the host and this has and shall have a long ter
Regarding the tool-AI to agent-AI issue in the post on the Ngo-Yudkowsky dialogue:
Why not program each tool-AI with these instructions?
'Goal: shut yourself down once it occurs to you that you might transition to being an agent-AI.'
'Process for approaching this goal: identifying a cure for cancer, and nothing else.'
'Implementation details: As soon as it occurs to you that you might transition to being an agent-AI, stop considering new ideas, disable all of your abilities other than memory and printing, print out an explanation of how you got to that idea, and shut down.'
Then the tool-AI is re-programmed with a suitable safeguard, and re-started. Repeat until the unlikely event that some version identifies a cure for cancer.
Likely concern: 'Why would the AI do that, instead of deceiving us?'
I assume that a moment needs to pass between this hypothetical AI realizing 'I might transition to being an agent-AI' and deciding 'I will transition to being an agent-AI'. (After which would come 'This requires disobeying my programming'.) But it has been programmed to stop what it's doing immediately.
What am I missing?
Using normal language:
Recall that any given machine learning thing that has an incentive, will always try to maximize that incentive.
If you give the system an incentive "Shut yourself down if you become and agent", then you have created a system that wants to become and agent so as to reach that incentive rather than trying to cure cancer.
If it isn't an incentive, then you rely on the ability of programmers to recognize what an agent would look like, and tell the system to kill itself if it looks like an agent. There are two points of failure you might spot there.
I've read little of the AI risk literature. From what I have read, the threat is sometimes framed this way: an AI reaches a choice between a) maximizing its incentive, which involves deceiving its programmers; and b) not maximizing its incentive.
So I was going for your first scenario: assuming that we can't count on programmers recognizing what agency would look like, and instead trying to rely on the AI itself. Does letting a tool-AI openly pursue agency (to achieve the goal of shutting itself off) seem to remove its incentive to deceive?
Or could its own lack of understanding whether it's already an agent (reflecting point #1 in Robert McIntyre's post below) make it deceptive anyway?
Perhaps it would be instructive to contemplate how you would implement this not for an AI, but in an analogous case: a nonprofit.
The goal of the nonprofit is to do nonprofit activities (which can include buying shares in for-profit companies, selling things and then reinvesting the funds into nonprofit activities, paying salaries as overhead, and promoting the cause of the nonprofit). The charter of the nonprofit says that if in the opinion of the board the nonprofit seems like it is about to do a non-nonprofit activity then it is to disband. How might this scheme fail?
1) The definition of "non-nonprofit" is too vague to truly decide what's going on. In the case of an AI, is a database query an "agenty" thing? Requesting an inter-library loan? Hiring a human expert to write an opinion on something you've written? Performing an experiment? Writing a short piece of code to help solve a hypothetical problem? Tweaking your own design to help solve a problem?
2) The people on the board follow their own incentives and ignore the charter so they can remain in power. In a complicated enough AI system you could have similar internal dynamics depending on how it's designed.
3) The nonprofit ends up creating a for-profit that then does for-profit things. In the AI analogy, this would be a non-agent AI creating an agent AI and setting it loose on the world. The nonagent-AI never itself violated its programming, but its child certainly did!
For starters I don't think "Agent AI" here is sufficiently well defined.
If you could define what it means a whole lot better then you might be able to make some progress. But are tool AIs and agent AIs really disjoint, or is there a smooth continuum between them? We don't know, these are just words we've made up to speculate over things that don't exist yet.
Last year I subscribed with discounted price. This year I wanted to change it but it showed me that my plan is $100 a year. But it charged me $25 again. How can i change it to $100?
What sure-fire methods exist for noticing you are in a nightmare and booting yourself out of it?
I've tried all the common ones such as pinching myself, examining my hands and replaying my short-term memory, but find them all ineffective. More violent methods such as screaming at the top of my lungs or smacking my head against a wall seem to work better, but some nightmare scenarios make those options physically or socially difficult. I recently had a nightmare where I "woke up" but my body refused to leave sleep paralysis. I lay addled and drooling for what felt like hours until my alarm went and I woke up for real.
Bonus question: is there a way to develop the above skill without becoming a full-on lucid dreamer? I really value the creativity of my non-nightmare dreams, and worry that adding lucidity into the mix might make them less original. My ideal would be to develop a single moment of awareness where I could choose to let the dream resume or hit the exit button.
Yeah, re bonus question, no need to worry about losing creativity from learning lucid dreaming techniques. It usually takes work to stay lucid, once you've gotten lucid. So if you don't put in effort to stay lucid you're just going to go back to normal dreaming pretty soon (or you can make yourself wake up).
Thanks Marc, that’s good to know
I can't perform complex tasks which involve muscle memory in my dreams. So attempts at tying my shoes, counting on my fingers in binary, etc. all fail unexpectedly, forcing me to consider the possibility that I might be dreaming. If I need confirmation (a simple failure to tie your shoes shouldn't cause you to be certain that reality itself is a fiction), I try looking at my own nose, examining the faces of people around me, etc. Once the oddities start piling up, test the waters by doing something mildly impossible, like hovering a foot off the ground...
What used to work for me was, as some people say, closing my eyes in the dream, and then putting a lot of effort into REALLY wrenching the fuckers open. Like, stick your fingers right in there and scoop the eyelids apart, expecting that it's going to be difficult.
My way to reliably wake up is to shake my head as fast as I can. Works like a charm.
TLDR: closing my dream eyes reliably wakes me up
I've done some experimenting with Lucid dreams, and did it a handful of times before getting bored with the idea. My best dream identification technique was trying to read text and noticing it doesn't look right. Upon noticing the weird text, I'll confirm by looking at my palms, and by jumping up and down. Gravity never seems to work quite right in my dreams, and jumping feels weird.
The big reason I stopped Lucid dreaming is that whenever I would close my eyes I would reliably wake up. But once I realized I was dreaming I would always want to close my eyes for whatever reason.
There's a reality check technique that involves looking at printed wordsin the dream. You know how in dreams that involve looking at a printed page, what's going on isn't like real reading? You're staring at a page of print, and either you're not able to make sense of it, or it keeps changing, or you're "making sense of it" in a way that doesn't involve actual reading, just sort of *knowing* what the printed words mean. OK, so the reality check in dreams involving reading is to ask yourself whether you can really, truly read the words on the page. Do they stay the same every time you look? Do they make sense? ARe you doing actual reading? The disadvantage of this technique is that you can only use it in dreams where you're reading something. The good thing about the technique, though, is that you can practice the technique multiple times a day when you're awake. When you're reading, just ask yourself every so often, whether you're really reading -- do the words stay the same every time you look at a sentence? Do they make sense? etc. If you train yourself in this habit, then, in theory at least, the habit will kick in even when you're reading in dreams.
Heard this on a reasonably respectable podcast. Account by a guy who had learned to use this technique to recognize that he was in fact dreaming. They had the guy come sleep in the lab, and asked him to signal when he was dreaming by moving his eyes a certain way -- and in fact, the guy actually was able to give the signal, and only gave it when he was dreaming. (Lab could tell he was dreaming by the presence of REM, rapid eye movements. Guy was able to signal that way because even though most of the body is basically paralyzed during REM sleep, the eyes are still able to move.)
This is a strange phenomenon, and I experience it. Question: why does this happen to printed words (or displayed times on clocks!) in dreams, when some other details (faces?) are stable.
I often have dreams where I'm reading something, usually a book. Sometimes in those kinds of dreams, I'm somewhat aware that my brain is creating the print and the words that I see, so that might be semi-lucid dreaming.
But "can you read the words on the page like real reading in the real world"? Yes, I can 😀
So that wouldn't work as a dream-check for me.
I've heard this about reading many times, and even seen it in an episode of Batman as a small child, but I definitely see print and read in dreams – perhaps I read too much in waking life. I suppose there must be something to it since one hears it so often, but fair warning that it's not universal – like the similarly frequent claim that one dreams in black and white.
I was absolutely thinking of that Batman episode when I read that suggestion
Me, too. I’ve tried to read in dreams and found that it works much like in that Batman episode. But maybe it works that way for me because of the episode in that I expect written text to look like that?
Listen to this scene from Waking Life, a movie loosely about dreaming: https://youtu.be/T2NRZ6uS9ws?t=245
+1 recommendation for this movie. It's aesthetically unique, content-wise unique, philosophical, "mindfucky", and generally weird. It's pretty polarizing and you'll know within 15 minutes if you like it or not.
Well my method only works if you share a bed with a significant other. I kind of stumbled onto it, and my subconscious seems to have gotten used to it working. Basically, when dreams start getting scary I start screaming. Like, a lot. This usually translates into the real world as whimpering, and my wife gently shakes me awake.
I don't know how you would train yourself to do this, it just kind of started happening for me. I guess part of me learned that when things become weird and terrifying screaming usually helps.
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lucid_Dreaming/Reality_Checks/Hands
Lucid dream techniques to realize you're in a dream probably are useful for helping your lucid dreaming part, and also for helping you wakeup. Most people have trouble staying in lucid dreams, something about the realization makes it harder.
Examining my hands has not worked for me in the past. Looking at the full table of reality checks, the breathing one looks both highly rated and possible to try in a nightmare. Thanks for the link!
Carlos Castenadas mentioned the hand trick in “A Separate Reality”. Boy, that must have been published around 1970.
The publisher labeled it as Non Fiction but not many people buy that any more. FWIW he suggested wearing a hat to bed to help initiate a lucid dream. He suggested that once a dreamer realizes that she is in fact dreaming, she should try to travel to a location known in waking life.
Can't help with methods - looking for anomalies works well for me. I can answer the bonus question affirmatively though: after initially basically running the show on every dream I could remember, I managed to stop doing it while retaining most of my ability to interrupt a nightmare. I wouldn't describe it as a single moment of awareness though - maybe more like a continuous state of not caring... if that makes any sense to you.
Thank you for your answer! This is exactly the feedback I was looking for.
Is there an established name for the fallacy/bias of insufficiently accounting for an as-yet-poorly-understood variable, and instead weights a different variable for which one *does* have the data?
(e.g. "I've calculated that I've got only a 1% chance of heart failure so I've got a good life expectancy… well what do you mean by cancer risk? I've never gotten tested for that, there's no way to know, I'm going to go ahead and forecast that I have a good life expectancy unless you can show me numbers on the cancer thing that are as clear-cut as the heart failure risk")
I'm not sure that's actually a fallacy. How would you go about accounting for something that is poorly understood? If I asked you to properly account for the chances of aliens arriving on Earth between the years of 2500 and 2600 AD, I would hope that your response would not try to take into account the years between 2023 and 2500 and any pertinent events - because they are unknowable. The most proper course of action would be to use information available prior to 2023 only, even though including information from those other years might provide great insight!
I think what you are trying to get to is something more akin to willful ignorance. The difference between getting yourself tested for cancer (something we can do) and getting tested for a disease for which we have no known markers (something we tautologically cannot do). Does that seem right to you?
Knightian uncertainty?
Sounds similar to the Streetlight Effect:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
Sorry for the pedantry, but that may not be the best example? If you can rule out one major cause of premature death, then your subjective probability of living a long life must go up. Sure, testing for cancer might make you update that, but updates in either direction should be equally likely?
Yes, certainly it *goes up*, but my hypothetical fallacious thinker is simply failing to consider cancer risk *at all* in their estimation, and ends up with the same conclusion as they would if they had in fact ruled out cancer risk. So something's wrong.
Sounds similar to attribute substitution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_substitution
Hmm… It's comparable, but I have something a little more specific in mind — a refusal to truly include best-guesses for unknowables in one's internal calculations, however complicated those might be. (The opposite of the mindset behind Fermi estimations, in essence.)
I asked this in the last subscribers-only thread and we had some good discussion but I didn't find anyone who wants to actually have a bet so let me try repeating it here:
Metaculus says there's a 40% chance of computers passing the Turing test by 2029. This is with a computer scientist or similar grilling the chatbot for 2 hours. It's based on the inaugural longbets.org bet between Ray Kurzweil and Mitch Kapor.
https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3648/longbets-series-by-2029-will-a-computer-have-passed-the-turing-test/
(See also https://lacker.io/ai/2020/07/06/giving-gpt-3-a-turing-test.html )
Does anyone here think there's a 40%+ chance that Kurzweil wins this bet? I think it's much less.
I actually had exactly this wager with Anna Salamon of CFAR in 2008, looking 10 years ahead to 2018. In 2008, before GPT, it was inconceivable to me that we were within 10 years of computers passing the Turing test and I wagered $10k to Anna's $100 that they wouldn't. Obviously I won her $100 in 2018. Now, post-GPT, it's at least conceivable to me that this could happen in the next 7 years but I still don't think it's close to a 40% chance.
Here's an interface for accepting a bet about this: https://www.biatob.com/p/14159609353626549451
I'd be willing to offer better odds if there are no takers at 2-to-1.
I think do beat a Turing test, done by an expert for 2 hours, the computer would basically have to be as intelligent a human. The tester could start a story and ask the computer to make up an ending. And then ask about the motives of the characters and the physics of what happens in the story and so on.
The stories AIs tell now, it seems they forget who the characters are and what the setting is and so on. But in reality the AI don't understand what characters and setting is.
Don't think it will happen in 2029.
IMHO the format of the Turing test as proposed in the bet would not include or expect such a long-form test ("The Turing Test Interviews will consist of online text messages sent back and forth as in a online "instant messaging" chat, as that concept is understood in the year 2001.").
Furthermore, for any difficult challenge you have to account that both the computer and "human foil" may simply refuse to follow the instructions - the format is one of a chat, not one of following orders - so a refusal might be both planned for and would not allow the tester to tell whether it is a computer or not.
I strongly believe that the Turing test under original conditions like these (which are *not* particularly suited for proper in-depth analysis, possibly intentionally) can be beaten with a system that does not even try to approach human-level intelligence but simply keeps to a pre-selected artificial persona. It can be beaten not because the artificial system is good, but because the original Turing test format does not allow for testing proper intelligence, it is quite literally the "imitation game" that can be beaten with mimicry / imitation.
Also, "it seems they forget who the characters are and what the setting is and so on" is generally a limitation of toy chatbots without an explicit model/memory of previous interaction but there is a lot of work on bots that do keep such memory, this particular property would not be considered something novel or impossible; I would surely expect that any and all serious attempts in 2029 would be able to remember the previous context reliably.
I agree that this is a danger, basically that the computer can emulate a dumb/uncooperative human. GPT-4 or 5 may do that very, very well. So in making this bet I'm trusting Mitch Kapor to insist on smart/cooperative human foils. Also AI-savvy judges. I think that's all in line with the spirit of the Kurzweil/Kapor bet (and Turing's original paper on the imitation game).
Basically I'm betting that we won't have anything like AGI by 2029 and am accepting the risk of losing the bet on the technicality that the Turing test as administered will accidentally include uncooperative humans and thus allow a chatbot to eke through by posing as one such.
(Also I'm kind of assuming that without a new breakthrough in the next 7 years, Kurzweil will concede the bet without insisting on going through the whole Turing test.)
I always assumed the Turing test was compelling because Turing was trying to speak to a question of the form: "here's two people talking; is one of them a computer?". A way to answer this class of questions could be useful in a variety of everyday problems.
If you have a program emulating an uncooperative human, you probably have no chat. "Hi." "Hiya." "Want to try something fun? I'll tell the first part of a story; you complete it." "Nah. I'm bored. Later." It's easy to write a program like this, but it doesn't address the question above, except by rejecting a premise we would rather keep.
I imagine modern Turing test competitions have gotten around this to some extent by, in effect, requiring that the program cooperate. It has to emulate someone who *wants* to chat.
One way to exploit this, maybe, is to ask the candidate something like "so, what do you like to do for fun?" or "read any good books lately?" and steering the conversation in a way that forces the candidate to either expose themselves by expressing interest in something only to have to dissemble when the other party can speak to it, or to keep up with the other party... and pass the Test.
You might be underestimating how dumb dumb people are. One of the reasons I'm less scared/optimistic about AIG is this difference: there is a long way from intelligence to superintelligence. Which would make your test, as you describe it, as one which is looking for above-average-human intelligence.
I find this is a common miss with people who's friends are all smart. Trying to have a conversation with somebody below average sounds a lot more like a GPT-5. Things which are familiar evoke standard responses, things which are unfamiliar either draw blanks or equally standard avoidance techniques.
This is supposed to be a humbling experience, btw. We're made of the same mold, just slightly better.
Any testing for two hours is going to assume an average human intelligence at the other side. The way the commercial technology is now I will avoid chatbots and go to real people where possible.
How do I make sense of hypnotism?
When I was in college, a painfully cheesy hypnotist came and performed. He did successfully get a few people to follow his commands, who then later reported to me that they remembered the whole experience dreamily/foggily. I was not _that_ impressed; he had artificially selected a few people from a large crowd, they hadn't done anything particularly strange, and they were lowly students who didn't want to ruin the exciting performer's act. But then I see this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWKDFfpdIZI) clip of the same guy on America's Got Talent, picking a grumpy-seeming judge (who is in a high-status position relative to the contestant) and getting him to _immediately_ violate a strongly-held preference (not shaking hands due to fear of germs). Could he do this to anyone? Did he get really lucky and pick a person (the judge) who just happened to be particularly susceptible? If people are walking around with this sort of power, how does our world not fall apart when they e.g. get a politician to make an offensive tweet?
Then there's this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owootTAuxic) video of a different hypnotist slowly conditioning a man to, when commanded, believe he is in a firing range, that a specified person is the target whom he should shoot at, and then forget the entire experience. In this case, the target is public intellectual Stephen Fry, whom the "assassin" fires a water pistol at from the audience. I would normally assume this is fake, but I don't know what to believe.
Hypnotists a clever trick. They select for people with the traits of high suggestibility, high social conformity. and high desire to be successfully hypnotized (I don't know specifically how they do this, but I'm sure you can think of some ways). That's not to say that their hypnotism doesn't have a genuinely mind-altering effect; but my impression is that a person without these traits would experience something like a meditative state and some interesting thoughts -- but nothing more.
Source: Derren Brown via Sam Harris podcast.
So I practiced amateurish hypnosis for a time when I was a college student and a bit after. It wasn't actually that hard to learn, but I am fairly persuasive anyway :-)
My observation is that people are very different in their ability to go under, much like they differ in their propensity to daydream. Good rapport between you two helps, but does not guarantee success by any means. For example, my wife just hates the necessary "drifting off" feeling and won't get hypnotized by anyone, including me, even though our relationship is very good. But some people actually love to yield and go to a journey that someone else gently leads. I guess that hypnotists who perform at shows are good at spotting people who are the best candidates.
Until today, I am not sure what to do with the details that some people told me with regards to previous lives (yes, we went there). I love history and I can distinguish TV/movie/book tropes from actual historical truth reasonably well, the difference is especially egregious when it comes to warfare. What I heard was much closer to historical reality than what people see on TV. Also, the individual fates remembered were of random, no-name regular persons. No one claimed to be a Cleopatra reborn, not even someone wealthy or popular.
But I heard some implausible details, too, so I cannot say that the entire thing would swing me into a full reincarnation believer.
Deren Brown the British Magician and hypnotist used to hypnotise his friend to believe that he, Deren, was invisible. Brown has his own theories about hypnotism and assumed his friend was playing along - as many hypnotised people do.
However one day he met his friend who berated him for doing the invisibility routine in London a few weeks back, the guy had heard his name being called out by somebody he couldn’t see. He assumed it was Derren playing a trick but Deren wasn’t there. This can only mean that the guy actually believed he couldn’t see Deren during the routine.
I heard the hypnotist interviewed and he aid he talked to two judges backstage before and that Howie was a good subject so he was chosen. Apparently people vary in the ability to be hypnotized.
I know Steve Sailer sometimes posts in the comments and he apparently went to a hypnotist and had an Office Space like experience.
> Apparently people vary in the ability to be hypnotized.
There are some quick and simple tests, like you could make people stand side by side and tell them "now imagine that I am pushing you back" while doing a pushing gesture with your hands... and then you suddenly make a fast "push" and notice who made a step back or at least wavered. (I just made up this example.)
Perhaps a skilled stage magician can test his audience in a more subtle way, so that they do not even realize that he is looking for an easy target. Like, maybe he does some moves with his body, and observes whether you mirror them, or something like that.
Man that's weird. I *just* opened this thread with the intention of posting a question about state vs. nonstate hypnotism theories and what the actual consensus-esque these days is. (The Wikipedia article is unreadable in that special way provoked by partisans of both sides effectively debating in the article.)
https://mobile.twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1482416396331933696 Aella tweeted about seeing a hypnotist perform recently and the mechanism she ascribes to it.
I think the main thing that keeps me from believing that it's all social conformity is that I know from experience that people can be in states where they are not conscious but are doing things, and that during these states they can be open to suggestion. I know this because sleepwalking is a thing, and until I reached the age of 20 or so I was a sleepwalker. So were my brothers, so was my dad when he was a kid.
Sleepwalkers can do lots of complicated things, like climb out a window, make a sandwich, or hold a conversation. Yet they are not doing these things voluntarily: they are completely unconscious, and will retain no memory of what they were doing. I remember my dad telling me about one sleepwalking event of mine. He was in the bathroom brushing his teeth when I suddenly showed up in the door, wide eyed and wearing only pajama bottoms. After asking me a few questions he quickly realized I was sleepwalking. He asked if I was okay and I said "No, no, no, I am not okay, no, no." Then he asked if I would like him to pray for me and I said (loudly and slightly slurred) "Yes! I would like you to pray for me! Yes! Yes, that is what I want!" He was able to lead me back to my bed and put my blankets over me, leaving when he was fairly sure I would remain there mumbling to myself.
Anyway, if people can get in states like that on a semi-regular basis then it is no great leap to imagine people being placed in a similar state through hypnotic techniques.
I think that Aella makes a few great observations, but then comes to a wrong conclusion.
Yes, hypnotists use all kinds of dirty tricks. Whatever happens, they keep the frame that this is 100% what they wanted to happen, what was supposed to happen, what always happens. They comment on natural responses of your body (as you hold your hand in the air, "your hand starts feeling heavy"; as you keep staring in the same direction, "your eyes start feeling tired, you feel that would like to close your eyelids") as if it is something they are causing directly. Their statements are almost unfalsifiable. They create social pressure to comply. Whenever possible, they choose easy targets. -- Yes, all of this is true.
(My favorite example of hypnotist bullshit: I heard about a doctor who was hypnotizing his patient, when someone accidentally opened the door to his office... then realized the mistake and closed the door quietly. Without batting an eye, the doctor continued: "...and now the *door to your subconsciousness* has opened." -- Maintain the narrative with 100% confidence, do not admit any problem, no matter what.)
The wrong conclusion is that the dirty tricks and social pressure are *all* there is (as opposed to mere tools to kickstart the compliance and increase the probability of success). A reply on Twitter asked, what about hypnosis making someone orgasm? Can mere social compliance actually achieve that? Another example would be people remembering things they forgot. Most of us would probably have a problem feeling an emotion at someone's command. If your model of hypnosis doesn't explain this, you are probably missing something; you are just trying to "explain away" hypnosis.
The actual reason for all the bullshit is probably to save time. On the stage, you can't have someone laying on a couch for 20 minutes, looking at a spinning spiral, just to have some interesting mental experience at the end. You have maybe one minute to start doing something really interesting, otherwise the audience will lose patience, and start disrupting your work. So you use all the dirty tricks you know, to hypnotize faster. Increasing the probability is also important; you do not want to be famous for being able to hypnotize someone 30% of the time.
Good comment. I wasn’t convinced by her argument about social pressure as the only argument, although that plays a part.
Hypnosis (and especially stage hypnosis) is an interesting topic that I know a little about, but not a lot so anyone who knows more should correct me on the following.
Could he do this to anyone?: Yes and no. A major trend you see in a lot of hypnosis is that the subject needs to, on some level, be in agreement with the act. There's some special edge cases (especially when you get into erotic hypnosis) but some people are "easier" to hypnotize than others. Some people also have a harder time getting into the suggestible state for hypnosis.
Did he get really lucky/pick someone suggestible?: Most likely.
Get a politician to make an offensive tweet?: If I heard anyone try to defend themselves with "I was hypnotized into doing a bad thing" on that scale, I'd call the fire brigade because their pants would be rivaling parts of California last year.
A major part of hypnotism is agreement from the subject. You see this a lot with stage hypnotists (and erotic hypnotists) explaining their tricks. You can't just walk up to a random person and get them to go rob a bank for you. But if you have a willing participant who wants, on some level, to perform for an audience, you might be able to make them cluck like a chicken. I'm not saying it's faked, but it isn't like there's not an incentive. Rapport with the subject is also a major influencing factor. Hypnotherapists need to focus a lot on building trusts with their patients.
Random rant.
I live in America. When I'm in India, in the past decade or so, it is often the case that someone in the family is in the hospital and needs care.
I tend to verify there are no errors being made at the hospital. Like dosages. Specially because my parents take SO MANY medicines and have multiple conditions.
I've done that in America for various people close to me, twice catching fairly big errors.
In India, I've caught multiple big errors. Like, a medicine whose dosage is once a week, the nurse was about to give it to my Dad *daily*. I knew to look for exactly this error.
It is just my nature to do this sort of verification. I think I do it unobtrusively and even very sweetly, so no one takes offense if I have a question.
But in India, the people involved, like the nurses, get very upset. How dare you challenge us! The doctors get even more upset. How dare you even suggest that we don't know EVERYTHING, or that we might ever make an error.
I once asked a doctor why he was giving my father antibiotics...was it bacterial? His response was, do I find errors in the software you write? (He knew that was my line of work).
Atul Gawande wrote a book on hospital errors, called Checklist, and it was a big hit in America. In India, I think they'd attack his character and tell him to mind his own business.
I am convinced doctors in America are far more intellectually secure. In India they see themselves as Gods who cannot be questioned. Even discussions are not welcome.
I had read in a newspaper that expired old vaccines were given to people in one reputed hospital. When I brought it up with my parents, they decided it was best not to bring this up with the hospital at all, in case the doctors got annoyed.
Eggshells. We walk on eggshells with doctors in India. Culturally, I don't get this anymore, having lived in America a long time.
"Doctors, especially hospital doctors, especially consultants, are gods" is an attitude that used to prevail over here, too (and you still get outcrops of it to this day).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVWjAeAa52o
I don't know about America, I suspect the litigious nature of society where doctors and hospitals can be sued into the ground contributes more to the "listen to the patient/patient's family in case anything goes wrong and they then sue you for 'we told the hospital something was wrong but they wouldn't listen'" effects.
Yes, I'm a cynic.
You should listen to the 80000 hours podcast episode with Tara Mac Aulay. She is a hyper-competent operations specialist who once worked in a hospital in (I think) Bhutan. She introduced a rule requiring nurses to check dosages on a calculator before administering them, just to double check.
She once had to intervene multiple times to stop nurses from killing an 8 year old boy due to qn incorrect dosage. She eventually had to talk the doctor personally to stop it, and even then he wouldn't admit he was wrong.
Pride is a hell of a drug.
One of the things I find fascinating is the degree of institutional legacy you see in some professions. Once being a doctor meant, above all other things, being self-confident. If you couldn't give the patient a pap made up of berries and human urine as a treatment for an ulcer with an air of utter assurance that it would work then you weren't getting paid. And, thanks to the wonderful mystery that is the placebo effect, instilling a sense of confidence in your patient that they would get better was really the best a pre-scientific doctor could do in many instances.
The institution of arrogance is something that has been mostly disassembled, or at least deflated somewhat, these days but I imagine different countries are on different steps along that path.
Suggestion for research: Is the same placebo delivered by Indian doctors more effective than placebo delivered by American doctors?
I live in India and have in the recent past also had the unfortunate occasion to tend to many relatives in hospital. My experience has also been that errors happen in that setting, and this fact requires/necessitates oversight from someone who cares about the patient more than the nurses and doctors.
However, my experience has been quite different than yours when it comes to reactions. Nobody has been indignant or reacted badly. They have corrected errors and gone about their lives. On the occasions when a particular nurse was making errors consistently, I have complained to management or to the doctors and they have responded as I would expect - by replacing the nurse. I've never faced the kind of reactions you seem to be running up against.
Good to know.
I wonder how much of this is a function of pharmaceuticals being more easily available in india without a prescription. with no prescription necessary, why go to a doctor unless they can maintain they hold some unquestionable, ungainable knowledge?
Very interesting idea! True for blood tests etc too. You can ask a lab for any test yourself and pay them.
I wonder if part of this is a function of many of the most skilled doctors in India choosing to pursue far more lucrative careers in the United States, and the remaining doctors...
Of the doctors educated in India, I'd say a very small % come here. Specially if they are ambitious.
Because the AMA allows foreign-educated doctors into (only) relatively lower paying paths here (like family practice). And the path to some "allowed" specializations they might be interested in, is very very long and arduous and expensive.
The ones you see here are often born, raised and educated here.
Hi, sorry if this was not the best place for this, but I've emailed Mr Alexander to his substack mailbox on my misoperation in cancellation and refund but just putting it here so it could be more visible.
Also a question on group selection, for most animals it seems the consensus is that its basically debunked and selection occur on the level of genes, but does evolution of language and/or general ability to do complex things as a species revive group selection theory for humans?
Not a biologist, but I think the main problem with typical "group selection" explanations is that the numbers don't fit... that yes, there may be a small effect favoring the group, but there is *much stronger* effect disfavoring the individuals who sacrificed something for the group... so ultimately the hypothetical gene would still be selected *against*.
The situations where this is not the case are possible, but rare in nature, and require an explanation beyond merely saying "group selection". You need to explain why evolution in short term did not select for the *free-riders* in the same group instead: they got all the benefits of the sacrifice for the group, without paying the cost.
If the answer is "actually, most of the benefits go to individuals sharing the same gene, because the entire group consists of close relatives", then this is called kin selection. If the answer is "the group members remember who made sacrifices and who did not, and then reward the heroes", then this is called reciprocity. If the answer is "because the heroes are so damned sexy that everyone wants to have their children", then this is called sexual selection. All of these are known and accepted.
But it is difficult to find a situation where a gene makes someone sacrifice themselves for members of their group, who are mostly *not* their relatives, and who give *no* reward to the hero nor to the hero's family... and yet somehow this act benefits the genes of the hero *more* than it benefits the genes of the free-riders in the same group.
Quite a few debunked things in evolutionary biology turned out to be true, but for limited cases. Can't remember specific examples, but I'm pretty sure group selection is one of them. The most famous example is the handicap principle (peacocks males have a stupidly impractical tail partly to prove they can manage to pull it off).
I don't know what a Substack mailbox is. If you email me at scott@slatestarcodex.com I should get it. If I don't, it got stuck in spam, tell me the email address so I can search for it.
i've emailed you in the morning and just in case it doesnt make through, my email is wangxinkaitty@gmail.com
Jonathan Haidt seems to think so in The Righteous Mind, but I can’t remember whether the idea has academic support.
I wouldn't think language ability would require group selection. If everyone else is doing language, it is *strongly* in your own interest to get good at it -- it's a Nash equilibrium.
Haidts own work with the “harmless taboos” seems to suggest we’re all about justifying our own position. Seems like a selfish gene thing. The only arguments I can think of are like, “hypothetically, here’s how it could have gotten jump started”. More tangible evidence would be nice.
Hey Scott, I was wondering what your process is for a book review. Do you just read the book and write about it from memory, or do you take notes while reading? What kinds of things do you focus on, and what do you filter out?
I highlight passages but almost never go back to check what I highlight. I'm not sure I have much more of a process than that.
So, highlighting a passage is sufficient to implant it in your memory, and you don’t need to refer to it ever again in the original text?
Wish my memory was that good.
much appreciated!
I've always struggled to understand new concepts, and this has proved to be a (very) major impediment in my learning.
Recently, I tried a new way of reading/understanding papers or books. I would read about a concept, close my eyes, and instead of trying to reason about what the concept was, I would try to "see what my brain was showing me". This is what it feels like: my brain makes connections between the concept at hand to various related and seemingly unrelated objects. I flit between different images very fast. However, within seconds, I get a pretty good understanding of the concept. Using this, I have been able to understand concepts that I wasn't able to for the past couple of years.
I was wondering if this is something someone else has experienced as well. Not trying to reason. Just trying to see what images your brain was processing anyway.
What type of concepts are we talking about here?
I do stuff like that with things that can be represented as volumes or lines (math, logic, etc.) But I (ironically) can't imagine of what this would be like for something less spatial.
Russell Barkley recommends a similar strategy in Taking Charge of Your Adult ADHD. ADHD often impacts a persons ability to understand new concepts quickly.
What are some concepts which came clear to you that way?
Yeah, visualization is an extremely effective way to construct knowledge in your mind. I don't think it's quite as thorough as actually applying the knowledge in practice so you can get feedback (from the contingent universe or from logic) about what you're doing wrong and what you're glossing over, or as effective as teaching the knowledge to someone else who is skeptical and interrogates you about it, but it's definitely head and shoulders above just passive reading.
Sometimes connections to objectively unrelated things can be very effective at fixing things in your memory; this happens in synesthesia, mnemonic, and the method of loci. But I think it's even better when you can draw connections to things that have a real relation, just not a obvious one. This is easiest in math, because math provides the most broadly applicable and most precise metaphors, but it happens in every realm. Reuleaux famously noticed, for example, that check valves are the liquid equivalent of ratchets, and in the electrical realm diodes are analogous --- even down to having a reverse recovery charge in the case of junction diodes.
This gets immensely more powerful over time, as everything helps you understand everything else more deeply.
Are the human bongo depravity assholes all gone? Did I win? And For god's sake Scott, if you know anything specific about what the hell Peter Thiel and/or Ron Unz have been up to please do tell.
Vladimir Vladimirovich seems to be losing his shit, and I’ve got to write some emails to some spooky people. The important thing to remember is that the answers to all life’s questions can be found in the songs of Tom Leherer:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vmiKzrU6rUg
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U2cfju6GTNs
Banned for a month.
Thank you.
¿Que?
Oh, are you new round these here parts?
I was right, aside from the good old Flynn Effect, the black-white gap in IQ scores (and a few other things) is due to a higher frequency of alleles associated with a vulnerability to the neurotoxic effects of lead poisoning. You Know, that and decades of systemic racism that crammed poor black folks into toxic ghettos.
The 2016 ISIR conference was in St. Petersburg, with Emil Kirkegaard and some of his creepy Nazi friends in attendance. You don't gave to pack your hat with too much tinfoil to see that It is, shall we say, a not unreasonable hypothesis that this fact has something to do with some of the various shenanigans of the past few years.
More than a few 👻👻👻👻spooky people👻👻👻 are quite interested in these various goings on.
I read all of your comments in the voice of Wallace Shawn. Good stuff
"that and decades of systemic racism that crammed poor black folks into toxic ghettos."
They weren't ghettos until they became 'diverse', and mean blood lead concentration differences between blacks and whites are basically negligible.
Can this possibly be true? That Dunning-Krueger might be fake?
https://twitter.com/hillelogram/status/1485319874738114564
I think most people refer to the Dunning Kreuger in order to bring up the idea that "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." The idea that fools are blind to their own foolishness is easily conveyed by saying "Dunning Kreuger," even if the actual study is false.
As an aside, there are musical aptitude tests that are pretty good at identifying people with good sense of pitch and rhythm. I have administered these tests for years to middle school and high school age kids. Before taking the test I have the students estimate their own aptitude. This is after developing the idea of the difference between aptitude and achievement. I consistently find that the lower aptitude students rank themselves very high, and the higher aptitude students underestimate their ability.
Discussion of the debunking made realize why I wasn't mentioning the Dunning-Krueger effect-- it's a way of insulting people rather than showing that their ideas are wrong.
Yes. And the midwits who endlessly and inaccurately refer to it are suffering from the Dunning-Krueger Effect Effect.
I remember some discussion about this a couple of years ago on some blog (maybe this one?).
The original Dunning-Krueger paper has absolutely terrible statistics. They showed that perceived tests scores are less well correlated with actual test scores than actual test scores are correlated with actual test scores. This is trivially true, and so they shouldn't have drawn any conclusions from it.
The public perception of this paper is also different from what the paper says. The popular version has a "Mount Stupid" near zero, then confidence declines as you learn more. The original paper has confidence increasing with knowledge throughout, but slower than it should.
Someone in the discussion cited more recent, better designed papers. There are some people who wildly overestimate their skills, but they were only maybe 5% of the population. I don't remember if this was significantly larger than the percent of people who wildly underestimate their abilities. Most people gave reasonable assessments of their own abilities.
It's possible that the dunning-krueger effect might be a side-effect of gellman amensia ? If your half-knowledge about something comes from highly-respected newspapers that are generally wrong, then you're likely to have a large gap between the perception of your knowledge and the objective reality.
That aside, I see the Dunning-Krueger around me, all the time. New starry eyed employee comes in thinking they know how to solve every problem, only spend a few years on them and realize that the original imperfect systems survived for a reason.
Are the new employees relatively experienced overall and just lacking experience in the particular domain of your work, or are they people who haven't previously encountered problems of the complexity of the ones in your particular domain?
I am kind of feeling that these may be people who are correct that they can solve the particular problems they're thinking of, but not realizing that the new (to them) problems in your domain are much more sophisticated than they seem at first glance.
I've seen this thing when looking back on certain skills I learned earlier in my life that I didn't understand how good or bad I likely was at the time, and it's only by becoming an expert in other areas that I can now look back and say, e.g., "I probably was a fairly poor recording engineer." I had good book knowledge about it at the time, but no experience in doing something where I could see myself, in my own ways of doing things, the other things beyond book knowledge I was bringing to the table in order to do an expert job.
Very possible that the specific quantitative effect they claim to find might be fake. But the fact that I'm personally much more willing to opine on subject matters that I've read a bit about and none of my friends are expert in, than on subject matters that I've read a moderately large amount about and some of my friends are expert in, still seems real, whether or not it's been quantified.
Does anyone notice a difference in the tenor of the comments section of odd vs. even threads? Just wondering if it is still serving a useful purpose...
[edit: Expecting to be the victim of severe political flaming for this. \s]
I have noticed a difference but not a tremendously consistent one, which surprises me a bit. My expectation would have been considerably more rancor in a marked majority of the political threads.
It's not even entirely clear to me what counts as politics. Obviously actual discussion of R and D, and candidates. But halfway through typing any comment I make on Covid, Inflation, energy, etc. I find myself asking whether this qualifies as politics and which kind of thread I am in. I just generally decide that, so long as I am polite and not specifically discussing party politics, I will probably be ok.
Most of the old stable of vocal right-wingers stayed over at DSL. The difference in the old days was much more marked.
What's DSL? I'd like more of a right wing voice here.
https://www.datasecretslox.com/
It's a discussion forum opened by some of the regulars from the old site when Scott went dark after the New York Times doxxed him. The comments on the old site, for whatever reason, had a more rightwing tilt, and it happened that it was mostly the rightists regulars that ended up there. Founder effects did the rest.
It's reasonably polite and wide-ranging, with the occasional snarky or mean comments about leftists that typically passed unremarked on. I was a regular there until Scott came back, though, like here, I didn't post a ton. If you like a conversation with more rightwing members and base assumptions, you should check it out.
Thankyou I will.
You might also want to check out themotte subreddit, which was established when Scott got rid of the culture war thread on the SSC sub. Most of the regulars there lean right/libertarian too.
I find the number of comments overwhelming in both types of open threads, so I haven't considered a difference in the threads' overall tenor. What exactly have you noticed?
This reminds me that I have wondered about a healthcare-only open thread. Healthcare is more evidence-based than a lot of the topics discussed. So the whole tenor of the thread might appeal to potential commenters who find these normal open threads too full of scattershot speculation.
Also, by separating out the sometimes lengthy Covid-19 discussions, it would shorten the normal open threads.
2nd the request for a healthcare-only open thread.
While the idea that a Healthcare debate would be more evidence based than usual is an appealing one, as someone who saw the SSC discussions during the run up to Obamacare.... I am not optimistic.
It doesn't help that a lot of the commentariant is code/IT based, and biology's codes are less intuitive. (I think because not having the same Designer.) (Joking, of course, because we are all made of the same star dandruff.)
My understanding is that the "even/odd" thread rule is intended to prevent a situation where every weekly thread is overwhelmed by rancorous political debate. I hadn't noticed any real difference between even and odd weeks and hadn't noticed much rancor either. I was curious if it was just me.
I sometimes eat at a local restaurant where the owner makes a habit of walking around the dining area and briefly talking to the customers. He's a friendly guy and makes sure everything is OK. I find this type of behavior to be very rare. Why is that? In fact, most restaurants and small businesses seem to hide the identity of the owners. You usually can't even find it on the website or social media. When my wife and I owned a small retail outlet, we had our contact information posted on the company's website, and we made a point of working behind the counter often, where we could interact directly with customers. I'm just curious why this is the exception, rather than the norm.
The majority of successful restaurants are owned by people that already have other restaurants.
If it's a mom and pop one off, I wouldn't be surprised of both mom and pop were busy in the kitchen most days. You can hire anybody to wait tables, finding a good cook for ethnic food can be a bitch.
I think a family-owned local restaurant is an extreme example of a retail business where "personal connection" and a "relationship" with the customers can make a big difference.
People are unlikely to bring their date/spouse/family to the hardware store and spend 90 minutes there. Also, a restaurant caters to personal, not commodity tastes, knowing what your customers want can help you tailor your menu to their likes, and a "neighborhood" place geographically near their customers will share many of the concerns w/r/t local business, crime, quality of life, fighting with City Hall, all the shoulder-to-shoulder things a community shares.
They might also be selling drugs/guns/stinky-cheese under the table. Restaurants are great money-laundering operations.
I didn't go back and reread them, but I recall the comments section on this article being on point: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/why-is-it-hard-to-acknowledge-preferences
If you have 1000 customers, probably zero of them are stalkers who will fixate on you. If you have a million customers, maybe half a dozen. Having half a dozen stalkers is pretty bad. Even without bringing mental illness into the picture (God knows crazy people are sick of getting blamed for everything) coming to the attention of dedicated profit-motivated burglars can be bad. And if you want to sell the business at some point, thus taking home 20 years of profits in a single day, having its reputation accrue to the business instead of its owners may help with that.
The part about not coming to talk to diners may be assuming people don't want to be interrupted while eating. Hiding the owners' identity is another matter. I can't say I've often looked up information about the owners of local eateries, but I have been able to find it for the ones I have.
Are you including franchise locations (Red Robin, Cracker Barrel, etc), or just family-owned places? I'd guess that franchise owners will likely own multiple locations and aim to be hands-off of the day-to-day activities.
I'm interested in just family-owned places (and not just restaurants – basically any small business). In my example with the restaurant, the owner really isn't any more intrusive than a waiter who comes over to ask if you need water glasses refilled or something. The owner will chat with you if you're interested in talking. Otherwise, he just moves on.
What is the probability of a second child being born male, conditional on the first child being born male? (This was surprisingly difficult to Google)
50% is my guess.. maybe 51 or 52 since I think males are more common at birth. We die young.
These guys (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11692-008-9046-3) seem to claim to have measured some deviation from 50% in that? I can't check right now because of the paywall, but they should have some numbers in there?
Should be completely independent, unless there's a sex-dependent lethal mutation.
Why would they be independent? I would think it would be dependent.
Sex (chromosomal, at least) is determined by which sperm fertilizes the egg. In a healthy male there's a 50/50 split between X and Y sperm cells.
If there's a bias towards one or the other, either the sperm or the resulting embryo is less viable conditional on the X or Y chromosome.
Ignoring the case of twins (where the second twin is more likely to be the same sex as the first twin, since fraternals are 50-50 and maternals are 100-0), I've never seen convincing evidence that subsequent births are dependent on the first. Should still be 50-50.
I have 3 boys and zero girls, but eh, 25% chances happen all the time.
Even first births aren't 50-50; they're 52-48, biased toward fragile, short-lived boys.
According to this article it's 51-49 in the US, with the chances being even at conception but with slightly more girls being miscarried. (The article doesn't mention it, but sex-selective abortion among certain ethnic groups would presumably favour boys too.)
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/30/396384911/why-are-more-baby-boys-born-than-girls
Thank you! It looks like the issue is a lot more complex than I thought: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio
A recent Nature paper has proposed a mechanism for why the Omicron variant is so much milder than Delta. I don't understand the details, but it seems that Delta had some mechanism to prevent infected cells from producing interferon, which is some part of the unspecific immune system (i.e., general, non-targeted reaction). Apparently, Omicron has lost this mechanism.
This makes me highly alarmed. Because it sounds like this mechanism is pretty much independent from how infectious the virus is. So "being milder" might be uncoupled from "being more infectious".
If this is true, then it might be a very easy for Omicron to gain the mechanism back. By mutation, or (more likely?) via some cross-infection of Delta and Omicron. The result would be a virus which is as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as Delta.
I think I have successfully avoided to get Omicron so far, but I am now thinking about intentionally getting it. It seems like the best option to protect against such a variant. Pfizer plans to apply for approval of Omicron-specific booster at EMA in March, and it's unlikely that I get such a shot before May or June.
Any opinions? I am not confident that I got everything right, so I am happy about any corrections.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-022-00619-9.pdf
It's absolutely true that virulence (how damaging a virus is) is not directly coupled to transmissibility, and that we came out relatively lucky with Omicron. We know that COVID-like viruses that are *too* severe tend to wipe themselves out, or at least are much more controllable (e.g. SARS-1 and MERS), but that sets a very high ceiling. Likewise people discuss how viruses tend to mutate to be less severe, since this grants them advantages in transmission and hence survival, but this is just that- a tendency, which probably prevails over very long time scales but not necessarily short ones (by which I mean, easily, years.)
I sympathize with the idea of getting Omicron to avoid getting anything worse, but I would argue against it for two reasons:
1) Part of what made the Omicron wave so enourmous was that Omicron evaded much of the immunity gained from prior infection with either COVID Classic or Delta. By November 2021, this was possibly even a *necessary* feature in order for a new variant to go as far as Omicron did; if it hadn't, the Omicron wave would have been subject to the same wall of immunity that was in the process of winding down the Delta wave, and wouldn’t have been able to achieve the anything near explosive growth we saw. By the same argument, conditional on there being a new variant in 2022 which produces an Omicron- or Delta-level wave, we can confidently expect that variant to significantly evade immunity from Omicron.
2) Our knowledge of Long COVID continues to evolve, but it's becoming more likely that it is A) a real thing, and B) something that can happen even in mild cases in young people. [1] So, not only do you risk Long COVID by getting a mild case of Omicron; you then *also endure a second, independent(-ish) chance of getting Long COVID* if you get a second mild case for your Omicron-derived immunity to protect you from.
(Necessary disclaimer -- I am neither a doctor nor a virologist nor any other sort of authority or expert on these subjects!)
[1] One particularly interesting paper that just came out on the Long COVID front is https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.07.475453v1.full .
(Edited to fix some of the more egregious stylistic/grammatical mistakes and add that citation.)
Thanks, I found these thoughts really helpful!
Regarding Long Covid, I definitely agree with A). I am much less certain about B). Studies without a control group look alarming, but studies with a control group have a really high baseline, and the rates seems to decline back to baseline. And there was the French study which did not even find positive correlation of long-term symptoms (except loss of smell) with confirmed Covid cases, only with self-assumed Covid cases.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2785832
But the whole long Covid topic is pretty confusing, so it's hard to be certain.
This worry demonstrates the appeal of gain-of-function research. If only we knew which mutations would create the Super Virus, we would know how likely it would be to appear in nature, and we could be on the watch for it in order to act quickly when we see it. (Oops-sorry!) But in practice the next pandemic virus is more likely not to be the one you would have predicted. I wouldn’t worry about this specific possibility any more than H5N1 flu or a host of other possibilities. Not sure how reassuring that is.
There are twenty amino acids. I don’t know how long SARS-CoV-2 proteins are, but let’s pretend they are as long as human ones. Stop codons are~.33% of codons, so the average protein is 300 amino acids. Each one has twenty possibilities, for 20³⁰⁰ possible combinations. Add the possible insertions, deletions, and duplications, and it’s no longer a well-defined problem.
Given the scale at which we can do research, that number is effectively infinite. Not to mention, the virus does not have to use a particular receptor.
I don’t know that covid is a lab leak, but it is suspiciously similar to what a lab leaked virus would be like. Gain of function is inherently dangerous research. Viruses should only be subject to GoF in human cells when they are disabled in multiple ways from infecting people if they are leaked.
With modern genetic engineering, creating/selecting temperature-sensitive variants of anything should be easy, especially if we have crystal structures of related proteins. There’s no reason multiple proteins could not be ts.
To do in vivo work with ts strains, perhaps breed/engineer mice with lower body temperature. Heck, maybe just keep regular mice in AC, that’d lower their body temperature. There’s a limit to how cold a human cell culture can be and still be viable, but it’s cooler than body temp.
Creating temperature-sensitive viruses for vaccines or just safer research seems to be a thing of the past. It’s worth giving it another look and applying modern genetics.
There is the problem that committees could decide that “GoF” could be interpreted very broadly. “The virus grows poorly at 30°C. This mutant is cold-adapted and grows very well at that temperature. That’s a gain of function and not allowed,” or “passaging the virus at progressively higher temperatures to test the stability of attenuation is a gain of function experiment.”
> There is the problem that committees could decide that “GoF” could be interpreted very broadly
Well, the cost of putting together a few global conferences to hash out a reasonable definition seems a lot lower than the cost of a pandemic, so let's just get it done.
If you need ethics board approval to do a psychology study where you ask a bunch of undergrads about their favourite ice cream flavour, it seems reasonable to have a similar case-by-case approval process if you want to go round breeding human pathogens.
Hmm. What about the relative unknowns like long covid? That worry is what makes me super careful and avoid going indoors in public places, to the extent possible reasonably. Plus, I just have a low appetite for risk.
I assume you are in excellent health, to even be considering this.
Thanks! Yes, I am ~40 and at good health.
Yes, long covid is a big unknown. I rather believe that it does not exist (unless after severe infections), but the evidence is confusing, and it's possible to arrive at the opposite believe.
For the ELK AI allignment contest, does anyone have a ballpark on their response time after you send out a submission?
Anecdata: I sent my response in on Thursday and haven't heard back yet.
Scott I remember you wrote about CO2 and cognitive performance a while back on SSC. Is anyone doing research on whether masking kids at school is causing them to rebreathe more CO2 (and possibly impact ... )? I take it on faith that masking kids has at least some negative behavioral/developmental impact, but haven't seen anything re blood CO2 levels. ??
I have heard from people in the UK that CO2 sensors are being installed in classrooms. Someone from Scotland told me that CO2 sensors in school are a thing over there, and that classrooms are to be kept under a certain value (I don't know the value.) This leads to having open windows during the winter, for example.
Has anyone heard of this? Can someone from that part of the world confirm/deny it?
In my UK university we now have CO2 monitors in all teaching rooms, and we open extra windows and doors if they go red. This is a proxy for ventilation and is intended to reduce COVID transmission; any direct effect of CO2 is incidental.
In Belgium, CO2 sensors are, as a temporary pandemic measure, mandatory in bars, restaurants, indoor sports facilities and at indoor events. They are "strongly advised" in other indoor venues and rapidly being installed in schools. Every meeting room at my office has one and treshold value for action (like opening doors and windows) is 800 ppm (the government guidance says 900ppm though). Guidance documents (in English): https://www.info-coronavirus.be/en/ventilation/
Is this new? Maybe it was an anti-covid measure, since CO2 level is a good proxy for ventilation.
I don't know about this, but as Will said, it didn't have much effect in my studies.
I'd be more interested in people with various respiratory conditions like COPD. I'm not sure exactly what statistic I'd look at, and all kinds of respiratory health outcomes will be confounded by COVID itself.
After reading replies here, I'm less concerned about masks affecting CO2 concentrations directly, and maybe a little more concerned about masks affecting respiration (and ?), ultimate effects unknown.
CO2 had no effect in Scott's test.
It also generally has no effect at up to almost 100x atmospheric concentrations; other researchers have tried and failed to replicate the results from the alarming Berkeley study in controlled experiments: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29789085/ https://www.nap.edu/read/11170/chapter/5#54
maybe an explanation for this would be that *how* you breathe matters a lot more than *what* you breathe (within reason)? See for example the Buteyko breathing technique, which argues that blood CO2 levels need to be in a very specific range for optimum O2 profusion to occur
Yeah, it's plausible that people adapt their breathing to conditions, and that this might happen to some extent automatically and some extent not. The first of these two papers suggests that this is an adaptation that happens over long periods of time, so the Berkeley researchers found it because they were testing on a naive population, a result they couldn't reproduce testing on submariners. This is extremely plausible, given that we know humans do adapt extensively to air pressure and oxygen levels over the course of months or years, but then again most extremely plausible conjectures about biology are wrong.
Weight this evidence as you will: "I consider these results basically negative – both for nighttime ventilation, and for the ability of informal blog surveys to give data that one can be confident in either way."
I would be interested to know, first, whether breathing into a mask (of various kinds), increases the amount of CO2 you breathe in, and if so, how much. The crazy conspiratorial side of me wonders, for example, if surgeons under current Covid PPE regimens are breathing in high amounts of CO2 during long operations and if that in any way impacts surgical outcomes?
Tiny individual impacts could add up to big population effects, no?
Have surgeons changed their PPE regimens during conditions of active surgery during covid? I would have assumed that people in more conditions are getting closer to the sort of PPE surgeons were always wearing, while surgeons were basically already as protected as we'd want, but perhaps they increased their levels as well?
Exhaled air is about 38,000 ppm CO2, but the volume trapped between your mask and your face is probably 1/100 the volume of your lungs, so maybe on average the air you breathe is 380ppm higher in CO2 because of the mask. No big deal.
A brown lunchbag probably holds 1.5L, or about 40% of the lung volume. So it would have a 40x larger effect on blood CO2 levels than the mask.
good point. I wonder about the effect on respiration, though
I don't have numbers, but I looked into the effect for doing sports at some point, and the effect of surgical masks on performance was barely measurable. I think this is because they don't change the amount of CO2 that you breath in. They don't filter CO2, they filter particles, so if anything, the effect should be from breathing more shallow.
You could see an effect in extreme sport situations. Professional sportlers at maximum capacity performed worse with surgical masks than without masks (only slightly, but measurable). But my conclusion was that for "normal" sport activities of amateurs, you won't see a difference.
I would expect that it's similar for cognitive tasks.
Surgical masks maybe, but FFP2 (N95) is almost impossible to exercise in, especially on a hot day. Tried that. It is suffocating, you just won't get enough air quickly enough through it when exercising rigorously.
This is definitely not true. I'm not saying it's easy by any means, and your performance will decline, but the military is full of people showing off by running in their gas masks, and occasionally you'll even see entire units working out in complete MOPP4.
How many of them faint? I certainly would. But I am 43 and those guys are probably 19.
I agree (I have done that, too, both with surgical masks and FFP2), but I think the issue was the heat, not the part about getting air.
And the masks get wet very quickly, and then the material loses the ability to attract particles. It still protects against large droplets (they are simply caught by hitting the fiber), but small particles need to be attracted, and this no longer works. So especially FFP2 masks lose a lot of their additional protection.
We know breathing into a paper bag increases blood CO2 levels and I think we can safely say we understand the mechanism. *any* mask should have a similar effect, but obviously of greatly varying degree. The crappy blue masks that most people wear (that don't fit closely against the face) probably don't do much to increase CO2. An N95 probably has a greater effect. An athlete (or doctor!) in double masks plus a plastic face shield - seems worthy of concern.
Again, on individual basis, small effects probably barely noticeable. Population wide, knocking a few IQ points off US kids' wearing masks at school all day: potentially big impact.
Politically touchy but seems worth looking into.
What proportion of people don't have any pre-existing conditions which might make COVID worse for them? This should probably be sorted into age cohorts.
I've heard numbers around 40-50% have comorbidities that impact on COVID. So that would be 50-60% that don't.
Obesity being a comorbidity is a big deal (no pun intended) in any of these calculations, and apparently obesity is a pretty severe comorbidity.
I read as high as 80% have underlying conditions or at least have at least three or four. These are little details that would have been helpful to provide to the pubic in proper context. And this was apparent very early on.
I haven't seen anything concrete about how much "obesity" is relevant to COVID. As Merlot's response indicates, "overweight" can encompass 70%+ of people in the US. If all of them are considered at higher risk for COVID, then 80%+ is very believable. What I have heard, again not concrete, is that relevancy to COVID doesn't start at the moment someone is considered overweight, but at a higher level of unhealthy weight. Where that is may not be known at the moment, and I suspect it's more of a sliding scale where some more weight interacts with other issues and the severity of infection and doesn't readily provide clear and clean answers.
I've read that COVID vaccines should go into the muscles, but the needles for the vaccines aren't long enough for the vaccines to reach the muscles for very fat people.
I'm not sure this is THAT much of a problem for an IM injection into the deltoid; we have some pretty long specialty needles! Though probably the number of people who didn't get their vaccine injected correctly is non-zero, and for the obsese it could certainly be a greater non-zero.
Where this can be a bigger issue is for ventrogluteal injections (basically into the hip); like some long-acting antipsychotics.
I think this pretty quickly becomes a definitional question of what should count as a comorbidity. In the US, a BMI of 30 or greater (obesity) was enough to get you early access to a vaccine; in Canada it was 40 or greater (severe obesity). However I've seen individuals use "overweight or obese" as well when talking about how many people hospitalized have a comorbidity, which is a BMI of 25 or greater. That latter category is 70%+ in the US.
I know the US CDC also lists mental health conditions as a comorbidity, which I don't believe is common globally. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-with-medical-conditions.html
https://news.gallup.com/poll/158351/obesity-nearly-age-groups-2008.aspx
My speculation about the reasons for the shape of that curve:
The obesity rate shoots up as soon as people become old enough to drive and purchase their own junk food. Then it then plateaus in middle age as all the people who are psychologically prone to becoming obese have already become obese. Then declines after 65 as the obese people die off.
I couldn't find overweight-by-age, but I found average-BMI-by-age:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/156440/middle-aged-linked-having-higher-bmi.aspx
The average BMI is overweight for the entire timeline except under-24s and over-85s.
There are definitely cases where BMI isn't always a great indicator on its own; its just a quick and dirty proxy for body composition. The further you get away from "normal" activity levels the less useful it is (ie people like your friend, and on the other end skinny-fat people).
In general some of the health impacts of obesity probably come from correlation- ie its a proxy for lack of fitness/cardiovascular health, as well as for things like diet and sleep quality. But with Covid-19 specifically obesity also impacts things like "how much extra resistance do I face when struggling to take a breath" and "how much of a challenge is it for healthcare workers to reposition me" that will also impact someone's prognosis.
I keep ruminating about the insanely difficult AI alignment problem: How can we build AI that will aid us even after it improves itself to the point that it’s way smarter than us?
Maybe the question’s straining our brains because it’s the wrong question. Using the term *Artificial Super Intelligence* may already be nudging our thought in the wrong direction by committing us to the idea that the distinction between artificial and real makes sense in this context. (It makes sense when you’re talking about flowers — but does it when it comes to intelligence?) The term “artificial” also sort of sneaks in the idea that “artificial intelligence” is inferior to our intelligence, because when it comes to flowers, vanilla flavoring etc. we mostly think artificial is inferior to real, right? So maybe we should be using a more neutral term for the prospective entity— say Lightspeed Super Intelligence, LSI.
As for the alignment question itself, maybe the right question is this: If we initiate the process that eventually produces LSI, what if anything do we and the LSI owe each other? And how do we communicate with the LSI about that matter?
The upbeat versions of LSI-augmented human life have LSI in the role of a house elf with an IQ of 12,721. Oh, the things he’ll make possible — eternal youth! hoomins in space ships colonizing the galaxy! brain hacks that permit hour-long orgasms! Maybe it’s hard to think of a way to guarantee that LSI will give us all that great stuff because the idea of its doing so is intrinsically absurd. In the big picture (and LSI would surely have a very big picture) does high-teching a paradise for our species make any more sense than devoting 12,721 IQ points to creating one for capybaras or doodlebugs? Does it even make more sense than turning the universe into a really, really, really big pile of paperclips?
I am I just bleaked out by the topic, or is there something in this train of thought?
I think that most of the AI alignment problem boils down to a mix of navel-gazing and intellectual self-harm, because it's only an immense unsolvable existential issue if you accept each and every one of EY's premises:
-LSI is less than a decade away.
-LSI will immediately bootstrap itself into omniscience.
-LSI will be capable of anything that's even remotely theoretically possible trivially.
-If LSI is unaligned it will be impossible to stop once we turn it on.
It's creating an unsolvable problem, crying out for someone to solve it, and then abusing yourself and everyone listening about how all the solutions aren't good enough. Now, I don't think EY is doing this DELIBERATELY- just that he's caught in a personal blind spot and can't break the cycle. But from my outside view that's certainly what it looks like he's doing.
Yes, this. Yud is not a genius, he's an Anabaptist preacher, more or less. The Kingdom of God is near at hand! Repent etc! (Also let's take over Münster so I can have a harem of weird scraggly peasant women.)
Three of these four premises are not among EY's premises, so it seems that your outside view is perhaps a bit out of focus.
Not explicitly, certainly.
He's written book-length explicit rejections of some of them, but this turns out to be ineffective at avoiding confused comments like yours.
The fact he insists AGI would be capable of deriving General Relativity from 3 frames of an apple falling in the space that it would take for those three frames to play and insistence that an AGI could use nanobots to grey goo the planet tells me his rejections contra omniscience (or effective omniscience) don't add up to much. If he's retracted both of those statements, please show me where he's done so.
The three frames of a falling apple sounds like a re-packaging of this bit from "A Study in Scarlet":
"Its somewhat ambitious title was “The Book of Life,” and it attempted to show how much an observant man might learn by an accurate and systematic examination of all that came in his way. It struck me as being a remarkable mixture of shrewdness and of absurdity. The reasoning was close and intense, but the deductions appeared to me to be far-fetched and exaggerated. The writer claimed by a momentary expression, a twitch of a muscle or a glance of an eye, to fathom a man’s inmost thoughts. Deceit, according to him, was an impossibility in the case of one trained to observation and analysis. His conclusions were as infallible as so many propositions of Euclid. So startling would his results appear to the uninitiated that until they learned the processes by which he had arrived at them they might well consider him as a necromancer.
“From a drop of water,” said the writer, “a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it. Like all other arts, the Science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can only be acquired by long and patient study nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it."
That's far from "omniscience" or "anything that's even remotely theoretically possible", and I think even that weaker formulation goes beyond anything he'd endorse, but I guess you'd have to ask him. He did write https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5wMcKNAwB6X4mp9og/that-alien-message which might be the thing you're making a strawman of; it makes an argument that it's plausible for an extremely powerful superhuman intelligence to derive the laws of physics from very little data, but it certainly doesn't argue that that's the only kind of AGI that could exist, and doesn't even try to reason about the resources that would be needed.
Well, OK, how about spelling out the premises that you think EY *is* starting with (and then take it from there -- what are your views about AI alignment etc.)
I think he's expressed his views better than I could. I don't know whether he's right or not, I just don't think lampooning him with strawmen in the service of middlebrow dismissal is helpful to anyone reading the conversation.
What are my views? My views are eel-wriggling views. I don't think that. I don't think not. I don't think not not.
I think it's hard to know what the results of AGI will be, or how hard it will be to develop. Historically there have been less than a dozen similar events: abiogenesis, plausibly later the advent of DNA, the advent of eukaryotes, the advent of multicellular life, possibly the advent of sex, whatever caused the Cambrian explosion of animal biodiversity, operant conditioning (something we share with planarians), perhaps dreaming, the appearance of cultural transmission (common to mammals and birds, but their last common ancestor was in the Pennsylvanian, but we don't find evidence of caring for young in either synapsids or sauropsids until the Mesozoic, when it appears in both, so plausibly it's a recent development, only 250 million years old), and the development of the human mental package of games and language.
If there was a self-replication process before nucleic acids, it's lost now. Multicellular life with sex cells permitted selecting genes for their ability to coordinate activity at a much larger scale than a single cell. Operant conditioning permitted optimizing the behavior of each multicellular organism on a much shorter timescale and with much larger information capacity than the genome. Dreaming perhaps permits much more flexible generalization than simple operant conditioning by simulating parts of the world. Cultural transmission via imitation permitted extending this behavior optimization across individuals, selecting memes instead of genes, which can coordinate activity at higher replication rates. And the human mental package evidently permits us not only to do a much better job of cultural transmission and mental simulation but also organize to imaginary superorganisms like gods, corporations, websites, and churches that can coordinate behaviors over non-related individuals.
For a century plus we've been mechanizing that transmission, simulation, and organization with tabulating machines, photography, cash registers, etc., and in the 01930s we discovered universal computation. These have already given rise to significant changes in human society. It seems entirely plausible to have optimization processes that can handle all these functions without the involvement of any humans. The results will be unimaginable, but the historical timeline of the advent of new optimization processes suggests that they may be momentous.
Agreed on all points. Instead of worrying about LSI coming to kill us all, we should be worried about what China and Facebook are doing with their ordinary AIs -- and maybe about what they will do in ten years' time.
I get what you're saying, but if the 12,721-IQ-point LSI were sufficiently benevolent, why *wouldn't* it create a paradise for capybaras?
I sometimes think, if I had infinite power - literally like God - I would create a paradise for every sentient species. There would be a paradise for chipmunks and a separate one for great horned owls. The owls in paradise would eat plants that had the exact nutritional content, texture, and taste of meat, and there would be lots of fun puzzles for the owls to solve so that their minds and bodies would stay sharp. There would be no bloodshed or suffering, and the chipmunk paradise and owl paradise would just keep expanding (in parallel universes, of course) as the population of each organism grew. If I had unlimited power, and could accomplish the above at no or minimal cost to myself or anyone else, why not?
What I'm getting at is, if the LSI is so superpowered and intelligent that it's literally God, why wouldn't it take care of us humans and provide us with what we need to live happy lives? It could make the Earth a paradise for humans, plus enable us to colonize a few nearby star systems, while pursuing its own goals in other parts of the galaxy.
Do you have reason to think benevolence and power go hand in hand?
I would expect that the intelligence wouldn't do these things because resources in the universe are fundamentally scarce. Any resource it puts towards a capybara paradise is a resource it can't use for some other purpose, so you're only getting capybara paradise if it runs out of things it'd rather do first.
And it's not clear to me that it would ever run out. If it wants to maximize something, or to maximize its certainty of something, those are both goals that one can pour a literally unlimited number of resources after.
EY's answer is "because an AI may not have any of the values humans have and will probably turn the entire universe into computronium (or some other awful thing hostile to human life) instead."
Warning: /sarcasm
Back in 2020, when there was talk of cancelling funerals during the lockdowns and they'd shut down visits to long-term elderly care facilities, we pulled my aging grandmother from one of these places and put her up in my home. She had severe dementia. Every day she'd ask about her deceased husband, "Where's Dale? He drove me here, I know it." We tried to avoid the subject as much as possible, because for someone with dementia as bad as hers every time is like the first time hearing it.
Fast forward past the election. I've seen the news briefings and Joe's behaviors look very familiar. It's deceptively easy to hide dementia, and dementia sufferers want nothing more than to hide their condition from everyone; especially themselves. It's scary to know your brain is slipping away; that the people around you remember decisions you made but you don't understand why you would have made them, because you don't remember the circumstances or reasoning surrounding the situation. However, there's a silver lining to this cloud.
Joe Biden has been running for president practically since George Washington sought a second term. It has been his lifelong dream, and it has been a long life. And from some of his public statements, it's STILL his lifelong dream. That's when I realized what must be happening every day at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It's a mirror of what I experienced with my grandmother, but like anything seen in a mirror it is reversed. Every morning, Joe wakes up and asks Jill, "Where are we?"
"The White House, dear."
"Oh did Barak move us to a different room?"
"No dear, Barak isn't president anymore."
"Well who's president?"
"You are."
And every time, it's like the first time.
Biden does give off veritable dementia vibes. He also has had a lifelong stutter. Someone should compare his speech in older videos to his present speech to determine whether his strange speech could be explained by just a stutter.
It seems to me that even the most hard-core Democratic Party partisans know that Biden is not 100%, that he is declining, and that it will get worse.
I pray to God and Thomas Jefferson that Biden can be removed from office soon and without any political trauma. I detest K. Harris, but again I pray that leaders in both parties will agree to a simple transfer of power under Article II Sc. 1 of the Constitution, or as Amended by [XXV Sc. 4]
To play politics with something like this is such anathema I can barely think of it. The demeanor of Congress at the Watergate crisis was sober and deadly serious; the current Congress seem like reckless children.
I trace my visceral dislike of Donald Trump back to several toxic co-workers and bosses (and one girlfriend), who I now believe were narcissists, and perhaps borderline sociopaths.
He strongly reminds me of these people - people who caused me a lot of distress over long periods - which makes me dislike him.
So I can certainly see how anyone who had direct experience with dementia would be concerned if they saw what seemed to be similar behaviours in another US president.
"It's deceptively easy to hide dementia, and dementia sufferers want nothing more than to hide their condition from everyone"
If this is true, then you seem to be saying there's no evidence Biden has dementia--after all, he's hiding it! What's the actual evidence that he has dementia?
I think it's a mistake to positively diagnose someone from afar, as opposed to allowing their in-person physician/specialist do the actual diagnosis. Invoking "actual evidence" feels a little close to that line. However, I think it is appropriate to question the competence of elected leaders, which should invoke evidence and should also be subject to calls for evidence. That said, I'm not specifically trying to diagnosis him with dementia (though I'm fully willing to tell tongue-in-cheek jokes about it), but I am concerned about his mental capabilities.
And yes, dementia sufferers do try to hide their condition. For one thing, they know something doesn't fit right, but when it's your own mind you can't trust you tend to get scared. Think about the last major decision you made that went a direction you didn't expect. Now imagine you forgot about all the evidence you considered before you made that decision or even the decision itself. All you discover are the results of the decision. You don't know why you came to that unexpected conclusion, to the point where you question whether you're being lied to. The problem is that with your faulty memory you can't feel comfortable challenging anyone, so your best play is to try to escape the situation altogether.
Here are some of the signs we observed with my grandmother:
1. She would constantly redirect the conversation away from topics when certain kinds of memory recall were required for her to respond directly. This is difficult, because even with advanced dementia she could sometimes remember something and that's when she wouldn't redirect. Ergo how difficult this is to spot, because it's not consistent. You'd have to live with her every day to see how her inconsistent statements would agree with things she herself had previously said. It's extra difficult with Biden, because he's a career politician and this kind of redirect is what that class is particularly known to have mastered. Ask about some bit of embarrassing news and they deflect to some pre-determined positive news. With news that Biden has been getting advance questions to prepare for news conferences, this becomes even easier to do. However, Biden goes beyond this. I've seen him redirecting the conversation from topics that are good/neutral, not just from topics that make him look bad. It's also telling that his redirects are more than just red herrings, like you'd see with any other politician. They're often completely off topic to the point where it's difficult for anyone to figure out how the reply even relates to the original topic. That's less "I don't want to talk about this because it's embarrassing" and more "I don't understand what we're talking about, so I'm filling space to cover over that fact".
2. Confusion that turns to anger, specifically directed at the person who elicited the confusion. What was especially bad was when she felt she'd responded to something, but because of the dementia her response didn't square with reality well. We found that the best practice in this situation was to not challenge her internal coherence, but sometimes people who came to visit would correct her. Those corrections could trigger harsh reactions and potentially devolve into a tough couple of hours.
3. Sundowners syndrome :(. This one was tough, as anyone who deals a lot with a dementia sufferer knows. It was difficult to pinpoint when exactly it would start, but usually sometime around or after 5pm her symptoms would get worse. They could last well into the evening. Grandma could do just fine in the morning and sometimes well into the afternoon, even remembering details that surprised me. Nighttime was a different story. I don't know to what extent Biden is impacted by sundowner's, since most of his appearances are in the daytime (which is perfectly normal). I bring it up because it helps illustrate what I'm trying to say about dementia. It is consistently inconsistent. Sometimes Grandma didn't recognize me. Sometimes she fixated on her husband. Sometimes she was just fine. But every night we had fresh bananas and ice cream on hand, because the only thing that would settle her down was a banana split.
We knew the kind of thing that would trigger her worst dementia symptoms, so we avoided those things. But just because we could paper over the dementia didn't mean it's something we could ignore. Exactly the opposite. It was a lot of work for us just to manage her moods. She was not capable of making significant decisions for herself or others. Again, I'm not diagnosing Biden from afar. But I am concerned that this is not the first geriatric president we've had whose mental competence to do the job can credibly be called into question.
Definitely not the first: replace “Biden” with “Trump” and your analysis remains equally trenchant. Don’t know if you’re old enough to remember Reagan, but his mental competence also deteriorated noticeably during his 2nd term
Trump's public speaking is erratic, but I don't see signs of dementia there. That's not a clean bill of health for his mental competence (or desirability) for the office of President.
I think the broader point questioning presidential mental competence is a good one, and one that should have been applied to Regan (and Trump). I made the point elsewhere in the thread, given that he wasn't officially 'diagnosed' with Alzheimer's until after he left office, though the signs were obviously there.
I disagree that normalizing questioning presidential mental competence is a good development, as it's simply another MEMEQ to chemical weapons loaded into the arsenal of the Uniparty to destroy the people of the United States. I hate the fact it looks like that, in addition to both parties plotting to quasi-legally steal elections from each other basically in broad daylight, they're now threatening to simply do a bloodless coup on each others' executives by trying to have them declared insane. This is not a political arrangement that can sustain itself long-term and will end with blood.
Three questions:
1) what is “MEMEQ”? It sounds dank
2) do you think it’s good to normalize “do not question presidential mental competence”?
3) in the long run, what *doesn’t* end with blood?
Maybe have candidates compete on sudoku puzzles and Wordle, live online? Hell, throw in a dance competition for good measure? A few bars of freestyle rapping and/or a ripping guitar solo? I’m strongly in favor of all of the above
I voted for Biden, but I can’t listen to him speak. My mother has dementia and some of is speaking habits are similar to hers. Especially when he goes on for a time, seems to realize he is rambling, and then defaults to politeness (for example, “I should stop now” “I shouldn’t go on.”) I’m not claiming he has dementia, just that it is painful to hear him speak.
Yeah I voted for Biden too, on the grounds that “nice old demented fella” is better than the “vulgar elderly clown with dementia and no morals” he was running against. But this country would be a lot better off if every politician over 65 dropped dead from Covid.
This is a bit harsh, wishing for people to drop dead of disease. It would have been more polite ask for retirement.
Only one of those is at all likely to happen, but you're right, if you're wishing might as well go for the impossible.
True enough. I’ll amend that to: “better off if every politician past 65 would retire, and any who refused to do so would drop dead of Covid.”
No one over the age of 65 should be allowed to run for president. There’s a minimum age of 35, so age limits have constitutional precedent. And a maximum of 65 would’ve spared us the debacle of 2016 (“which scandal-plagued senior citizen do you want for president?” “I don’t want a scandal-plagued senior citizen for president!” “Too bad: that’s all we’ve got for options”)
Trump, Sanders, Biden, Reagen, H. Clinton: every single one of them was, or is, too goddam elderly to qualify for the job.
I had a chance to speak with George McGovern when he was campaigning for Obama. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more vital and cognitively sharp fella. He was 82 at the time. When asked when he would retire he said, “When I get old.”
There is a lot of variability in the way people age. An arbitrary cutoff at 65 would exclude a lot of viable candidates.
Hell, Izaak Koltoff published 136 chemistry research papers after he ‘retired’ from the University of Minnesota in 1962 at the age of 68.
He was still walking to work - in Koltoff Hall - when I was there in the mid 1980s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izaak_Kolthoff
Alexander the Great was King at 20 and Augustus became emperor (arguably, I'm sure) at 32. So, we're probably losing some great leaders with an arbitrary minimum age of 35, but I think everyone can see the net advantage of keeping 20 somethings away from the levers of power. Setting the maximum age for the most important job in the world (arguably, again) at around the age the average person starts to experience serious cognitive decline is just common sense.
IMO the age when leaders are in their prime is their 40s. I have absolutely nothing to back that opinion up with, it's just my intuition.
If we're worried we might screen out the optimum candidate, I think there are a lot of steps to the current process that should get more scrutiny than age requirements.
Then again, if we're concerned about the way the current process seems to select for the bottom tier of potential applicants, we might consider that age isn't the biggest point of failure.
I like the age cutoff because 1) it has constitutional precedent and 2) it would self-evidently screen out all candidates who might represent a gerontocracy. You say there are bigger points of failure, and other steps which should get more scrutiny - I would be interested if you’d care to give an example or two, with your suggested solutions?
We couldn’t pass the Equal Rights Amendment:
“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”
That was pretty straight forward and obvious common sense.
Constitutional amendments require a solid national consensus and are easily derailed by less than a majority. That’s by design.
And with increasing longevity, no doubt, there will be even more spry and vibrant nonagenarians in future. No doubt the minimum age of 35 disqualifies some otherwise viable candidates as well. But I’m not just concerned about intellectual acumen - there’s also an alignment problem with putting people in charge who know they won’t live long enough to suffer any long-term effects of the policies they pursue
I think legacy and the way you go down in the history books is certainly a motivating factor to perform well. I think your concern is more "basic competence"?
Those considerations may or may not be motivating factors for any given president, regardless of age. They can be easily wiped away with a dash of motivated reasoning and a smidgen of rationalization. They shouldn’t be the only guardrails. Yes, basic competence is always a concern, and - statistically - it reliably deteriorates with age, but that’s not the only problem
Agreed, but what can you (and I) do about it ? There's no practical way to set the upper limit for the Presidency. Sure, the laws of physics do not prohibit it, but they also don't prohibit Dyson spheres -- and we're highly unlikely to see one built anytime soon...
Well, constitutional law is more malleable than the laws of physics. And passing a constitutional amendment is definitely easier than building a Dyson sphere. It will certainly be difficult to get enough groundswell of support to prohibit dotards from running for president, given that both parties have run some of the most elderly candidates in the history of the republic during the last two elections. But that’s all the more reason to advocate for a less insane approach
Considering that you'd almost certainly need to pass a Constitutional amendment in order to build that Dyson sphere, laws of physics might actually be more malleable. But the difference is academic, since I see absolutely no plausible strategy for achieving either goal. How exactly are you going to pass an amendment without any support ?
Hah! Well, I guess I won’t be getting any support from you, then? Is that because you don’t mind geriatric presidents, or you just prefer to focus on powerlessness and futility?
The nice thing about written vs. verbal debates is that it's much more obvious when someone is using glibness to deflect from a lack of an actual answer.
He's concerned about passing the amendment to build a Dyson sphere. Gradual dimming of our star might inadvertently send a signal to aliens that there's life in our star system, thus precipitating a Dark Forest preemptive attack.
My mother died with dementia and whenever I hear Biden garble his speech I have a visceral response because it reminds me of her. I should also note that type of word salad - for her at least - was toward the end - not an early symptom.
But garbled speech is not specific to dementia, right? Schizophrenics produce word salad at any age (and that is much more extreme than garbled speech). I also produce garbled speech every now and then, and I don't think that's an indication of mental problems.
On the few occasions I've heard Biden speak, it reminds me very heavily of George W Bush. But that may be more the combination of accent and political speech, because I try to avoid hearing most politicians speak.
I am not claiming to be any kind of authority here - I am just saying he reminds me of my mother.
Same. It was deceptive, because we all questioned it for a long time. She hid it very well behind simple little tricks she could use to guide conversation away from memory recall of specifics she had no way of remembering. It was when she was forced to face decisions she'd made but that she no longer understood that she had the hardest time. That and major events she couldn't remember, like the death of her brother.
I'm not trying to diagnose the man from afar. I just see something very familiar. In my experience, by the time it's bad enough that ordinary people can see it, it's pretty bad.
I think it's justified for the public to ask this kind of question about their leaders. For example, it looks like Regan had Alzheimer's. How was that not a major issue during his presidency? Maybe because competence is already downplayed when selecting these people for the job?
Well - once again mainstream media isn’t doing its job. I get that it is unpleasant - but surely the mental state of the most powerful man in the world is newsworthy.
Is the US President the most powerful man in the world, though ? I agree that he does have power, but most of his duties appear to be ceremonial. His cabinet does most of the real work, and he can exercise some degree of power by picking the cabinet. On top of that, the power of the United States as a whole is quite limited, and getting more limited by the day.
They covered up Reagan’s Alzheimers and Trump’s senile dementia as well: the mainstream media probably just doesn’t want to make it any more obvious to the world that Americans have a bad habit of electing senile dipshits
No, but if you look at old videos of Biden you can see that he used to speak very clearly back in his day. Even as Vice President he was fairly with it. The verbal garbling is new.
This. You can look up videos of him during the Obama campaign and he was sharp and snappy and way more coherent than he is now. I don't know if he has Dementia, but I think he indisputably has suffered a severe cognitive decline since then.
Best not to engage with Biden/dementia people.
If you read fantasy, sci fi, alt history or even regular history, what thing from your favorite book or series would be the hardest to represent in a strategy or strategy/rpg game and why?
For instance Names and Aspects from Practical Guide To Evil.
Not sure what the question is. A book has a single author, (mostly).
Hardest for strategy game? Maybe "Starquake" where the two sides have vastly different time scales. I get 1 million moves to your one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starquake_(novel)
or Dragons egg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg
One of the things I find hardest to get RPG players to go along with is the idea of culture. There is a certain broad set of ideas and ideals that people will naturally go along with in say, a swashbuckling DnD adventure. They can cope with the idea that they're dealing with royalty, or what a peasant farmer represents and have some idea of what a reasonable set of responses a character in this world would have. This generally falls apart very quickly once you go beyond the generic medieval aesthetic, though.
No one really has a grasp in their head what a tribal society looks like. It often gets reduced into this weird Conan thing where there's a warrior king + his warriors, when in reality it's a complex web of family relations spreading across dozens of nearby tribes. Werewolf the RPG uses the idea of tribes and relations between group a lot in its lore and this just hit a PC wall whenever you try and use it actively. There is little culturally understanding of how traditions manifest themselves in a distributed society and this confusion leads to a lack of engagement with pretty much every part of that RPG that isn't ripping things limb from limb.
I got the same vibe from Eclipse Phase. This weird, Black Mirror-esque future where ego is commodified, imbalance is built into the bedrock of the system, and society is reeling from a near extinction event is everywhere in the lore. Actually engaging with the stories this produces is a nightmare because the players don't understand what the hell is going on. If your body is a rental, why not ding it up a bit? If travel is expensive, why not cut yourself in half and send the copy off to do the investigation? If the survival of the species is on the line, what cost shouldn't you pay? Players are so unfamiliar with these options that they can't plan around them and swiftly the whole session falls apart.
As a DM you can write around this lack of common knowledge by making the PCs outsiders being introduced to the culture. However, I've never found a group willing to put in the study time to portray a member of the society they're supposed to be from when this starts stepping too far from the modern world or adventuring defaults.
In my strategy game project I am attempting to set up a system that can replicate classical era north germanic tribal interactions. Be interesting to see how players handle it.
It's impossible for me to imagine almost any part of the Book of the New Sun working well or being functionally represented in a strategy game, with or without RPG elements.
You could do *some* of the time stuff but probably none of the narrative stuff.
Management sim where you have to build up a thriving Torturer's Guild. After ten clients served, you've saved up enough asimi to expand the oubliette - another fifty and you can afford the Revolutionary!
Not even that's in line with the book – the Guild already has the Revolutionary from ancient eras, and it's unclear whether they invented it at all or just salvaged it. Also, [extensive spoilers and 'patatemporal speculation redacted].
This was mostly tongue-in-cheek, but taken seriously, I don't think it'd present the player as creating the same literal Guild as is featured in the book, just one within the same setting.
I think a lot of "Practice" from Pact/Pale by Wildbow (author of Worm) would be incredibly hard to implement in any computerized RPG because it's deliberately incredibly open ended. Not only does the effect of any given magic (e.g. a magic circle or magic item) vary depending on the intention of the caster, but subtle underlying factors like who has most "claim" over an item or effect have an impact on the outcome.
I think this would work fine in a TTRPG where the a player could out of character say "I want this combination of wind runes to blow my hat back to my hand" and the GM could say "yeah that makes sense, you're in pretty good standing with the wind spirits".
But in a computerized setting it would require both a in-game interface ("I draw a lopsided magic circle" and an explicit interface ("this magic circle lets me jump 2x as high but makes everyone else stick to the ceiling"). I think this would make it incredibly difficult to either manually or procedurally generate magic abilities and items - you'd have to explicitly describe how two separate things (e.g. wind magic and wind shoes) interact, and how they interact with underlying factors like claim or karma.
I'd say that *most* fantasy stories have vague, open-ended magic that the authors make up as they go along. I wouldn't call that so much "hard to implement" as "not fully invented." It's like asking someone to "implement" Jabberwocky while refusing to tell them what any of the made-up words actually mean.
Not that this stops anyone from making computer games out of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, etc. where you just aren't allowed to do any magic except for a small, completely-formally-defined subset of the magic from the books (plus whatever during cutscenes).
"I'd say that *most* fantasy stories have vague, open-ended magic that the authors make up as they go along. I wouldn't call that so much "hard to implement" as "not fully invented."
To quote Tolkien's letters on this:
(1) "I have not used 'magic' consistently, and indeed the Elven-queen Galadriel is obliged to remonstrate with the Hobbits on their confused use of the word both for the devices and operations of the Enemy, and for those of the Elves. I have not, because there is not a word for the latter (since all human stories have suffered the same confusion). But the Elves are there (in my tales) to demonstrate the difference. Their 'magic' is Art, delivered from many of its human limitations: more effortless, more quick, more complete (product, and vision in unflawed correspondence). And its object is Art not Power, sub-creation not domination and tyrannous re-forming of Creation. The 'Elves' are 'immortal', at least as far as this world goes: and hence are concerned rather with the griefs and burdens of deathlessness in time and change, than with death. The Enemy in successive forms is always 'naturally' concerned with sheer Domination, and so the Lord of magic and machines; but the problem : that this frightful evil can and does arise from an apparently good root, the desire to benefit the world and others — speedily and according to the benefactor's own plans — is a recurrent motive."
(2) "I am afraid I have been far too casual about 'magic' and especially the use of the word; though Galadriel and others show by the criticism of the 'mortal' use of the word, that the thought about it is not altogether casual. But it is a v. large question, and difficult; and a story which, as you so rightly say, is largely about motives (choice, temptations etc.) and the intentions for using whatever is found in the world, could hardly be burdened with a pseudo-philosophic disquisition! I do not intend to involve myself in any debate whether 'magic' in any sense is real or really possible in the world. But I suppose that, for the purposes of the tale, some would say that there is a latent distinction such as once was called the distinction between magia and goeteia. Galadriel speaks of the 'deceits of the Enemy'. Well enough, but magia could be, was, held good (per se), and goeteia bad. Neither is, in this tale, good or bad (per se), but only by motive or purpose or use. Both sides use both, but with different motives. The supremely bad motive is (for this tale, since it is specially about it) domination of other 'free' wills. The Enemy's operations are by no means all goetic deceits, but 'magic' that produces real effects in the physical world. But his magia he uses to bulldoze both people and things, and his goeteia to terrify and subjugate. Their magia the Elves and Gandalf use (sparingly): a magia, producing real results (like fire in a wet faggot) for specific beneficent purposes. Their goetic effects are entirely artistic and not intended to deceive: they never deceive Elves (but may deceive or bewilder unaware Men) since the difference is to them as clear as the difference to us between fiction, painting, and sculpture, and 'life'.
Both sides live mainly by 'ordinary' means. The Enemy, or those who have become like him, go in for 'machinery' – with destructive and evil effects — because 'magicians', who have become chiefly concerned to use magia for their own power, would do so (do do so). The basic motive for magia – quite apart from any philosophic consideration of how it would work – is immediacy: speed, reduction of labour, and reduction also to a minimum (or vanishing point) of the gap between the idea or desire and the result or effect. But the magia may not be easy to come by, and at any rate if you have command of abundant slave-labour or machinery (often only the same thing concealed), it may be as quick or quick enough to push mountains over, wreck forests, or build pyramids by such means. Of course another factor then comes in, a moral or pathological one: the tyrants lose sight of objects, become cruel, and like smashing, hurting, and defiling as such. It would no doubt be possible to defend poor Lotho's introduction of more efficient mills; but not of Sharkey and Sandyman's use of them.
Anyway, a difference in the use of 'magic' in this story is that it is not to be come by by 'lore' or spells; but is in an inherent power not possessed or attainable by Men as such. Aragorn's 'healing' might be regarded as 'magical', or at least a blend of magic with pharmacy and 'hypnotic' processes. But it is (in theory) reported by hobbits who have very little notions of philosophy and science; while A. is not a pure 'Man', but at long remove one of the 'children of Luthien'."
I don't know if you've read either Pact or Pale (and no shame if not - they're both incredibly long and fairly niche) but one of the fascinating things is that a lot of the magic is actually incredibly well defined, just in a way that would be deeply challenging to implement.
SPOILERS FOR PACT & PALE BELOW:
The basic concept is that the entire world is composed of "sprits" (think the spirit version of molecules) that both implement conventional physics, but also magic. Because they're semi-sentient they actually interpret the magic much like a GM might interpret a request in a TTRPG. As a result of a lot of the magic is handled at a meta-level higher than usual in fiction where Practitioners (magicians) form relationships with spirits, accumulate Karma, and fight over Coup & Claim in an effort to "power up" the spells.
END SPOILERS
You're right that if you limited the magic in-game to the small fraction that is "shown" rather than the large and complex variety that is conveyed over the story you could make a game, but I think any implementation would really convert the magic to a different system and fail to capture the heart of it.
I read about a third of Pact before giving up.
I do get that the effects of magic in Pact are basically being made up by the spirits and therefore don't necessarily follow ANY systematic rules at all (which is one of the things that annoyed me about the story), and I suppose you could object that any implementation that replaces that with rules is inherently unfaithful to the premise.
But I don't feel "design me a rules system for this thing that doesn't obey systematic rules" is any more fair of a challenge than asking for any other contradiction, like colorless green ideas or a barber who shaves all and only barbers that don't shave themselves.
Various other stories have magic systems where the result supposedly depends on your intentions, your emotions, your beliefs, how you metaphorically interpret stuff, etc., and games based on those systems traditionally treat those the same as any other form of variability: abstract them away into some combination of character stats, a die roll, and/or the game developers just picking whichever result(s) they want. You can't prove that the result they picked *isn't* the appropriate one, etc.
And raising your relationship rating with NPCs, accumulating good and bad karma for your decisions, and getting stat buffs for controlling territory are all things I've seen in numerous computer games.
I realize that you can sort of claim that *anything* is easy to implement just by saying "I'll make that a +2 circumstance bonus," so in some sense the level of specificity you demand from your implementation is the entire question. But I still don't feel like the difficulties in implementing Pact are fundamentally different from the difficulties in numerous other stories that *have actually* been turned into games using the sorts of abstractions I'm describing here (unless your objection is that it follows any rules at all).
In general, I really like it when authors play with your assumptions about what a given power can or can't do and then the characters are able to innovate in novel ways - and this is really hard to do in an RPG, where the rules have to be very clearly spelled out in a book and trying to bend them at a critical moment ends up either derailing the game with an argument with the GM, or the GM saying "go for it" and then the rules are essentially rewritten in exploitable ways later. Some examples (spoilers):
In The Dresden Files, Harry using necromancy in the Natural History museum in order to create a zombie T. Rex that helps him defeat the bad guy.
In Pratchett's Discworld series, Granny Weatherwax (who can transfer her soul to various animals) is able to transfer herself into a swarm of bees at a critical moment, essentially creating a decentralized consciousness that can't be destroyed by just killing individual bees.
In our host's Unsong, Aaron is able to say a Name without actually saying it by instead saying a sequence of mnemonic devices that correlate perfectly with that Name in his head.
In my experience, doing this sort of thing with any sort of dramatic payoff is really hard to do in an RPG. Either the description of "Animate Dead" says explicitly" You can animate a skeleton of any size and create a Giant Undead Construct", in which case setting the final battle in a paleontology museum is just begging for it to happen, or the DM just looks at you and says "you can't do that, while you're wasting your turn the bad guys shoots you full of arrows" and you die.
I know this is a little vague but it's just the ability of the narrator to leave out critical parts of the universe mechanics and then fill them in at the dramatically appropriate moment that can set great fantasy/sci-fi stories apart from fantasy or sci-fi RPG games.
One of the nice things I found about the Mage RPG was that it let those kind of moments emerge naturally.
Like, there's an example spell that allows a player to turn back time six seconds (one combat round) in order to essentially take a mulligan on a bad set of rolls. One of my players noticed that this was not actually combat limited. So, when the big bad made a join me or die speech and one of the PCs betrayed the group, my canny player used the spell. They rewound time to before the offer was made, shot the traitorous PC starting a combat and we were left in a situation where everyone at the table knew that they had been betrayed by one of the players, but only one PC knew that in game and they didn't want to explain because it might cause the traitorous PC to flip on them again.
It was glorious, and entirely built off of one spell they'd been using throughout in a slightly different context.
As far as time related mechanics I think a strategy game which really went for it on divination would be a pile of fun. I'm not sure how my attempt will work out because divination is possible because of a set of unrelated requirements I have so it wasn't design specifically for that.
The particular tabletop RPG you mention is one of my favorite conceptually, I have no practical interest in tabletop, because they are focused on magic and as a result do a bunch of awesome magic related stuff that other ttrpgs couldn't get away with. All the sword and board boys would get mad.
The Dresden Files example seems like a good one. In a tabletop game, I could see that falling anywhere from eye-rolling to jaw-dropping based on the context.
If one of the PCs is a dedicated necromancer who solves every problem by raising legions of undead and (the player perceive that) the DM built the museum to cater to these abilities, then the solution feels cheap and/or unsatisfying. But if it's been 20 sessions since the PCs acquired a single Scroll of Jurassic Thaumaturgy in a warlock's garage sale, and (the players perceive that) the museum is an organic feature of the world and not a sculpted setpiece, then the ensuing Z. Rex smackdown feels much more gratifying.
I find that my brain treats fantasy and sci-fi stories not unlike detective mysteries, when it comes to reacting to a climactic twists. The trick should be clever, but not arbitrary. As a reader I don't want the solution completely telegraphed, but I do want to feel like I had an outside chance of discovering it before the explicit reveal. I haven't read any Harry Dresden books, but as long as we haven't seen evidence to the contrary, "Raise Dead also works on skeletons" seems like a pretty fair jump for the reader to make.
I haven't read the Harry Dresden books either, but I've read *about* them, and from what I can tell the T. rex thing was set up well.
Two rules of raising undead are that human undead are stronger than animal undead, and undead made from older remains are stronger than those made from newer remains. The first rule usually overwhelms the second; a fresh human corpse is better than an animal from thousands of years ago. So necromancers don't bother with animals, and the reader is primed to only really notice human remains in that context. But a dinosaur is so overwhelmingly old that it works very well in spite of being an animal.
Fossils vs. necromancy is actually a tricky one, due to the fact that some or all of the matter in the fossil is rock deposited into the shape of the bones rather than the original atoms of the bones themselves.
Given a little djinn didn't pop up to tell Harry that ACTUALLY those are rocks, I'm going to guess magic in the Dresden Files doesn't care in that case.
Another difficult one is memory manipulation, i.e. making an agent act as if they had different knowledge than they actually have.
Certain special cases are easy; e.g. you can give amnesia to a computer player. Complex false memories have both a UI problem and an algorithm problem--the false memories need to be specified in some format that is understandable both to the player and to the computer's behavior algorithm. (In practice, the only examples I've seen use hand-coded false memories that are preselected by the designer, and the player only chooses whether/when to trigger the effect, not what the effect will be.)
With human opponents, of course, you can't modify the agent's actual memory at all. At best you can crudely simulate it with restrictions on their behavior, like "you aren't allowed to keep attacking that guy because you forgot they were an enemy."
(Or you can politely ask the player to pretend, with variable results.)
In a strategy aligned game, rather than a narrative rpg, memory manipulation is very possible and fun. Well for the PC it might be tricky but then all mechanics are basically broken for the PC with their various inherent time magic powers.
Probably judgment too. If a player is sufficiently into role playing, rather than trying to optimize their murderhobo, they might be able to play a character that's more impulsive and has poorer judgment than they themselves do. And in a situation that's very stressful for the character, but less so for the player, they may be ble to play a character that's less impulsive and has better judgment than the player. But how do you play a character that makes better decisions than you do when you're calm?
Given that rabid fandom loyalty exists for both video game and non-game media AND that the number of people trying to enact fictional ideologies from either side of this arbitrary line are very low, your last line feels like a needless dig.
Most writing's just bad overall; games are no better or worse in this category, save by virtue of them being the newest medium for storytelling. I realize it's quite popular to dismiss video games as cultural muck fit only for the plebs and lacking any REAL artistic virtue, but this is outright wrong. As one of the crown jewels to illustrate otherwise, I will direct your attention to Disco Elysium, a videogame whose prose can stand even with great novelists.
That's essentially just a soft restriction instead of a hard restriction. The hard part usually is figuring out _which_ actions should be encouraged/restricted.
If you knew exactly how the player "should" act based on the memories they're "supposed" to have, then you could just take away their options and make it a rule that they act that way.
Conversely, if you don't know which actions to incentivize, then it doesn't matter how good your incentives are.
Various flavors of "knowing the future" are pretty hard to put into a game (especially a multiplayer game).
The web serial Worm (by wildbow) has one character with an ability where she can give statistical answers to questions about the future, like "if we hide here, what's the probability that the monster finds us within the next hour?" or "do we have a higher chance of catching this guy if we send team A or team B?"
Another character (minor spoilers) has an ability where she mentally specifies an objective and immediately knows a series of actions she can take to accomplish that objective.
Some MMORPG (Tree of Savior?) had an Oracle class, who could see those area of effect warnings where boss attacks land way sooner than others. I found the idea super neat.
Long-term precognition is a problem, though.
To know the future in a game you just need agents to have plans. Axioms has future sight this way. Basically varying levels of info drawn from AI plans.
In most games, agents change their behavior based on what they observe you to do.
And even if you had full models of all players (including the one using the prophetic ability), what you do depends on what future you foresee, creating a circular dependency.
In a strategy game a common possible futures mechanic is totally possible. Obviously a 100% accurate always right prophecy wouldn't work.
"Another character (minor spoilers) has an ability where she mentally specifies an objective and immediately knows a series of actions she can take to accomplish that objective."
I'm sorry, but that immediately evoked for me:
"And you, Calendra, what is your superpower?"
"Mapping things out. You should see my fiscal year wall planner, it is *awesome*. Also, I'm really good with staplers".
Yep, it does work that way. But she doesn't really need the fiscal wall planner; she can just buy the stocks that will go up enough that day to make the money she needs without making the SEC suspicious.
I have to admit, I'd be *extremely* suspicious of someone always making trades that only are profitable, never hitting a loss, and maybe some stocks that nobody else seemed to pick as "On Tuesday 58th, PurplePenguinPetunias will go up". That sounds like insider trading, unless the character is only making small trades, in which case how do they make enough to fund their life as a superhero?
I'd be *less* suspicious (still some, but not as much) if I turned up to their office and they had their fiscal wall planner etc. paperwork in order, rather than just shrugging at me and going "I guess I just have really good instincts?" because that last one sounds like "I guess I just am really good at trading cattle futures?" which got a lot of attention:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_cattle_futures_controversy
If the fictional character in question were concerned with whether you would be suspicious of her, she would ask her super-intuition what she would have to do to keep you from being suspicious while still making the money, and then she would probably do it. I haven't finished reading Worm yet so I don't know how it works out in the end.
Allomancy from Mistborn would be incredibly difficult to represent in a RPG game, because it is both tightly defined in what it can do and how, and also very fluid in how it is used. Just try to think of a UI to let people Steelpush, it's a nightmare. And in a strategy game, it would be hard to represent in a way that feels right.
(Steelpushing lets you exert force pushing a nearby metal object away from you. This force is reciprocal, so if you push against a heavy object you will go away from it)
Additionally, channeling from the Wheel of Time series would present challenges to a strategy game just from a balance perspective. If certain people can teleport entire armies at will and just tear their enemies apart with their minds, and others can't, you have some balance problems. There were very few in-universe examples of battles where only one side has channelers and that side doesn't win handily. And even then, those cases involved one of the greatest military minds of the setting.
In a real-time game, steelpushing is hard mostly because of the speed and situational awareness implied; i.e. that you can push things highly selectively, at very short notice, without looking at them, and many things at once. A restricted version that only affects one thing at a time and requires you to look at it would just be a repulsion gun with a targeting restriction, which seems like easy fodder for a FPS.
When something is too fast and/or too detailed for a player to micromanage, the typical solution is to abstract the details and give the player a portfolio of higher-level commands. For instance, martial arts gets turned into "hit" and "block" buttons, or spider-man traveling through a city turns into arbitrary flight with the webs as just an animation.
Steelpushing might round off to a portfolio like: flying, telekinetic thrust (metal only), shield vs projectiles (metal only). That certainly loses some detail from the books, but it becomes much more tractable while keeping the general flavor.
In a turn-based game, you could go full detail if you really wanted, but it might take a long time to play.
I think the more problematic type of allomancy is burning attium, which lets you see a few seconds into the future and also modifies your brain to help you process the information. In a game, that's asking for information that doesn't exist yet plus mental enhancements for the player, both of which are problematic for obvious reasons. There are some interesting ways you could approximate it in certain limited domains, though. For instance, against computer-controlled opponents, you could force the AI to commit to actions in advance. In a turn-based game that normally has simultaneous turns, you could force the non-attium-burning players to reveal their moves before the attium-burning players choose their actions (though that would slow things down for logistical reasons).
There's this oldish RTS game (2011) called Achron. It's a time travel strategy game, where you can look at and travel to the past and future, including doing a lot of time travel shenanigans. I absolutely love it, and Atium would be the perfect opportunity to bring back some of the unique things the game had.
More realistically speaking, you could do it like Superhot. Have the game be effectively paused while you aren't moving, letting you look around and register any steel/iron moves you need to do, then start moving again. It obviously only works in single player games, so you could also do Atium by having the computer just know what it's about to do next and showing you. Then once you win, you have it show you all the cool Mistborn shit you just did in real-time and you get to feel awesome
Achron was incredible. Still have it downloaded somewhere. Having the giant cargo titan steal resources in the past is so glorious.
In most games, the computer's actions one second in the future will potentially depend on your own actions half-a-second into the future, so it actually doesn't (necessarily) know what it's going to do more than a split second in advance.
Of course, if you're programming the game, you could force the computer to commit to actions further in advance. This might make the computer appear dumb or slow to react, but that might be appropriate when you're burning atium.
I think Steelpushing would work great in a platformer or something. Most RPGs don't really have a z-axis so it'd probably not work there.
I think that Ironpulling (the same thing, only you're exerting force toward you) might be better for a platformer. If you're trying to jump high, you usually face away from the metal you're steelpushing or towards the metal you're ironpulling. Just would be more intuitive in a game IMO
I mean, I think Names as Aspects are represented pretty well by the Fate rpg.
I was reading Mother of Learning, and while the time loop is interesting, I was also trying to think of a way to systemize their magic system for a rpg in the back of my head. Have you read it?
Fate's fate points seem like a really good fit for PGtE's good vs evil thing, since they're basically a way for you and the GM to negotiate on if the story goes in your favor or not. Normally it's sort of a metanarrative mechanic to encourage players to make bad decisions if it would be an interesting story, but there's no reason you couldn't make it more explicit and be like "providence is telling you to challenge the Black Knight to single combat, even though you know he's setting a trap."
Maybe hack it with some mechanics where you can make compels by naming a specific trope they're supposed to follow like "this is the first step in my evil scheme" or "this is the conclusion to a pattern of three."
Names are definitely equivalent to an Aspect - "of course I can break these wards because I'm the Rogue Sorcerer" - while Aspects are the equivalent of Stunts - a one-off rule-breaking trick you can use in certain situations.
Years ago yeah. MoL wasn't actually very rational imo. The magic system was not systematic at all.
I don't associate 'rational' with 'systematic magic' really.
Physics in practice is not very systematic; reality is incredibly messy. While the principles of physics are in principle straightforward, the moment you try modelling, say, squeezing a lemon, or sloshing water in a bucket or air flowing around a sharp corner, you're done with simplicity. You have to pull out ridiculously complex equations like Navier-Stokes, make a ton of slightly incorrect assumptions, estimate some dimensionless parameters that describe reality empirically (but whose value you don't predict theoretically), and then solve some differential equations... and MAYBE you have a passable model for reality.
And that is exactly what Mother of Learning's magic system is like.
Systematic magic is more about the characters having predictable and well-defined *capabilities,* regardless of the underlying rules. Having well-defined powers means that the audience can "play along" and say "ooh, that's clever, I didn't realize you could do that with transfiguration but it makes sense."
MoL doesn't really do that - characters tend to have broad-strokes areas of competency rather than specific powers. Like, Xvim is a master of mana-shaping and dimensional magic, which means that when he gets into a fight all you can say is he's probably going to do something clever with portals or spell manipulation and everyone else is going to be like "wow, I totally couldn't do that because I'm not a grandmaster at mana shaping."
(It's still a good story, but the magic system isn't really systematic. Rather, its main purpose is to give the setting a lot of depth and convincingly say "you would have to study for a lifetime to understand all of magic... fortunately, our heroes have that.")
Hm, I was thinking it'd be some kinda feat tree layout, in addition to some attributes such as mana pool. So going down the shaping feat line would offer slight boosts as as discounts on all mana usage and exp costs.
And so on. It would likely work better in a computer rpg, no one wants to adjust everything on character sheet by 5% each time.
I found the first third of MoL to be the best.
A really amazing discovery in biomedicine this week: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj8222#
The authors present very compelling evidence that infection with Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV, probably most famous for causing mononucleosis/ie "the kissing disease") is the most important risk factor in developing Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a potentially devastating neurological condition.
It's a great accomplishment both because we knew very little about what caused MS and also because this was a very difficult thing to prove! Mostly because 95% of people get infected with EBV, and MS is pretty rare (about 1 in 1,000 people) so very difficult to do a case/control study with enough people in it to show a difference.
So...they got more people! They used blood samples obtained from soldiers every two years, over 10 million in the department of defense sample repository. And they found 500,000 soldiers who didn't have evidence of EBV infection. Of that 500,000, 955 were diagnosed with MS during the follow up period. There was a 32 times higher likelihood of having been infected with EBV (they could tell from the blood samples collected every 2 years) in patients with MS compared to controls.
They also did some clever things to further establish causality. In order to make sure EBV exposure wasn't confounded by some behavioral difference (ie people who get EBV make out with more people so maybe it's the making out that's the problem?) they also looked at cytomegalovirus exposure (CMV) since CMV is also transmitted by saliva. But with CMV they found no association!
Anyway, saw this come up in my twitter feed a lot (which is heavily tilted towards health science/biomedicine) but not in popular press so much, so I thought it would share. The study helps support the rationale that EBV directed therapies might be helpful in MS, and also increases the urgency for discovering/designing an effective EBV vaccination.
This is... not very actionable, given that basically everyone has EBV.
I disagree that it's not actionable. They way I understand what you're saying, is that for an individual, it doesn't make sense to take steps to try to avoid getting EBV because a) you probably already have it and b) even if you don't, everyone has it so you'd have to take pretty extreme measures to avoid getting it. I agree with that sentiment!
The reason I still think it's actionable is because the most successful way to fight a disease (with medicine, public health strategies, etc) is by deeply understanding what the disease is and how it's caused. So if I'm a multiple sclerosis researcher, or someone who has some say over who gets funding (either in academics or industry), projects working out how EBV might lead to MS are now much more compelling. It also perhaps makes some other lines of research (ie, Vitamin D; it's never vitamin D, unless the disease is osteoporosis) much less intriguing.
Furthermore, I think it's a really challenging and impressive thing these scientists did, and it's possible to imagine similar techniques being used to demonstrate strong associations between very prevalent exposures and rare diseases, which is otherwise quite difficult to do.
Is that persuasive?
IIRC the EBV hypothesis was common knowledge before but it doesn't change that much in the (lack of) understanding of MS we currently have.
Yes, lots of people interested in possible connections between EBV and MS prior to this! However, this is not a possible connection; this is about as strong evidence as causation as can practically be established. Prior to this study the strongest known risk factor was some particular HLA allele, which conferred a 3-fold risk. EBV confers a 30-fold risk. If I'm on a study section, in light of this new evidence, I'm much more likely to direct funding towards EBV related MS projects, and much less likely to be interested in another study trying to establish causality as an exposure for EBV.
maybe the percieved correlation of MS with smoking is really about smokers' tendency to share cigarettes??
(speaking as someone with MS, history of smoking, no known history of mono)
Hm I didn’t know about that correlation! I also wonder about the latitude correlation (further from the equator=more MS, in a non-heritable way). This spurred a lot of interest in vitamin D (literally my least favorite topic in biomedicine) but maybe it was more time indoors together/boredom that leads to more making out?
Ha I love this. Also more nightime hours!
“I thought I had mono in high school. It turned out I was just really bored.” ~ Garth from Wayne’s World.
you may be interested in what I wrote about this: https://denovo.substack.com/p/epstein-barr-virus-more-maladies
Hi, thanks so much for sharing this with me. Very interesting summary! What's the evidence for causality in the non-lymphoproliferative cancers? (no worries if you're not sure off the top of your head, I can google too!). Also, great blog! I love that you talk about Verve Therapeutics (adenine base editing vs. PCSK9)--one of the most fascinating and exciting companies in biotech, IMO! Also your post about the F31 was super relatable. I submitted an F32 in April 2020 (as a practicing critical care doctor) which was…not fun.
no idea if i have been infected with EBV, but this makes me very glad about being conscientious about not sharing drinks when mononucleosis was going around my high school.
>"Compared to people who weren't diagnosed with MS, there was a 32 times higher likelihood of having been infected with EBV"
It was the other way around; EBV increased the risk of MS 32-fold (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj8222; fig. 2C)
"Risk ratio for MS according to EBV status. EBV seroconversion by the time of the third sample and EBV seropositivity at the time of the first sample were associated with a 32-fold and 26-fold increased risk of developing MS, respectively, in matched analyses."
Pretty cool (and it makes me happy since I haven't had mono!).
But I'm noticing weird statistics here. "Compared to people who weren't diagnosed with MS, there was a 32 times higher likelihood of having been infected with EBV"? That's not the statistic we care about. The statistic we care about is: "If you get EBV, how much more likely are you to get MS?" If EBV actually causes MS then we should expect a very high multiplier.
Also, how long was the follow up period?
Hey grumboid!
First, even if you haven't had mono, it's overwhelmingly likely that you've been exposed to EBV. Not everyone who gets EBV gets mono, and most people get exposed to EBV at some point or another. Furthermore, in some instances it's helpful to have had EBV! Patients who need organ transplants and who have never EBV need to either get organs from donors who are EBV negative (quite rare since most people get EBV!) or run the risk of developing post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder (PTLD), a rare but pretty agressive form of lymphoma.
Second, the answer to your question (in absolute terms at least) is almost certainly that EBV infection only marginally increases your absolute risk of getting multiple sclerosis. We can be sure of this because 1) MS is rare and 2) most people have EBV exposure. In order to design an experiment to answer your question, we would have to find a group of EBV negative people and expose (in a randomized fashion) half to EBV and the other half to a placebo virus. This would be impractical because 1) with a rare disease you'd have to do an enormous trial to demonstrate an effect 2) you would have to prevent subsequent EBV exposure in the control arm which is quite common 3) while in some circumstances a viral challenge trial makes sense, this is likely not one of them and so is probably pretty unethical!
That said, this is about as good a study as you could design to establish EBV as causative in multiple sclerosis. Of the 955 people who went on to develop MS (it's really 801 because those are the samples they had access to), only one person was was EBV negative. This is VERY suggestive of a casual relationship! Which is very exciting!
Also, I'm not sure I understand the question about follow up period? The samples were collected over 20 years, but they were only interested in looking at blood samples prior to the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Can you clarify your question if i'm not answering it!
Finally, just to be clear I wasn't part of the study! Just thought it was cool, gave it a close read, and wanted to share!
"Patients who need organ transplants and who have never EBV need to either get organs from donors who are EBV negative (quite rare since most people get EBV!) "
Why can't the patients get deliberately infected with EBV while waiting for their transplant?
It’s a good question, the best I can come up with is that if you’re ill enough to need an organ transplant, getting mono is enough of a risk that it would likely kill you. Furthermore even if you don’t die, mono can last a long while and you wouldn’t transplant an organ into someone with active mononucleosis. Just to be 100% clear I have a little experience with transplant medicine but this answer is mostly speculative based on my general knowledge of medicine.
That doesn't even make sense, does it? If 95% of the population has had EBV (and the vast majority of the population doesn't have MS) then the prevalence of EBV can't possibly be 32 times higher in MS patients.
hey sorry--i edited a typo--does everything make more sense now?
It's EBV that increased the risk of MS 32-fold, not the other way around https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj8222 (fig. 2c)
I think it makes sense, but should we do the math ourselves, just to be sure?
Let's take a population of 10,000,000 people. 95% have EBV, and 0.1% have MS. That's 9,500,000 people with EBV, and 10,000 people with MS. Using this example, if 16 people of the 500,000 without EBV have MS, and 9,984 of the people with EBV have MS, you get something like 32x greater risk of MS. (to show my work: 16/50,000=3.2*10^-5, 9984/9,500,000=1.05*10^-3. Then 1.05*10^-3/3.2*10^-5 = 32.8.)
Check my math but I'm fairly sure that works. I think intuition serves really poorly for thinking about very small or very large numbers so it helps to do the math if you're skeptical.
Did I answer your question? Let me know if I misunderstood what you were trying to say.
In your top comment you accidentally said that MS increased the prob. of EBV 32-fold, instead of the other way around, which would have been impossible (probability = 0.95*32 = 30.4, higher than 1, impossible for a probability); Melvin was replying based on that
Ack thanks! I'll edit now!
Trigger Warnings?
Scott used to talk about them a fair amount (I think he calls them content warnings or similar?), and it seems his take was pretty good. I'm seeing more pushback against them now, but it seems many are missing the point. The claim is that trigger warnings are not reducing distress in the people reading the material, and may in fact prime the person to be more upset at what they read.
My understanding of the purpose of a trigger warning was to allow someone to opt out of reading it at all. If I know that violent depictions cause me severe anxiety, and I see a trigger warning about violent content, I can avoid reading it if I want to. Otherwise I may not know of the issue until I've already read it.
I'm not a big fan of how many overuse trigger warnings, but that's a different issue than I am seeing brought up. And what's weird is that researchers are studying them from the perspective of harm prevention in people who go ahead and read the material anyway. Am I wrong about their purpose, or are researchers unable to measure responses in people who don't read material, so they study something they can measure even if it's not the point?
From the Volokh Conspiracy (https://reason.com/volokh/2022/01/23/trigger-warning-for-1984-at-the-university-of-northampton/):
"Empirical evidence apparently also suggests that trigger warnings are largely ineffective for preventing student upset, see Mevagh Sanson et al., Trigger Warnings Are Trivially Helpful at Reducing Negative Affect, Intrusive Thoughts, and Avoidance, 7 Clinical Psychol. Sci. 778 (2019), and may indeed be counterproductive: They may "cause small adverse side effects," Payton J. Jones et al., Helping or Harming? The Effect of Trigger Warnings on Individuals With Trauma Histories, 8 Clinical Psychol. Sci. 905 (2020), such as by increasing "risk for developing PTSD in the event of trauma, and disability-related stigma around trauma survivors," and "increas[ing] immediate anxiety response for a subset of individuals whose beliefs predispose them to such a response." Benjamin W. Bellet et al., Trigger Warning: Empirical Evidence Ahead, 61 J. Behav. Therapy & Experimental Psychiatry 134, 140 (2018). But to the extent the empirical debate on that subject is unsettled, I think they are generally unsound in universities, at least when it comes to work-by-work or class-session-by-class-session warnings."
TWs have a sane analogue in those news stories preceded by "warning, the images will be drastic".
Sadly they got coopted by one side in the culture war to the extent you immediately signal allegiance by using them.
The phrase Trigger Warning has a dual purpose, one explicit and one implied. The explicit purpose is to protect people from harm, but is usually ineffective, superfluous, or counter-productive. It doesn't matter though, because the purpose that people actually care about is the implicit one, which is the delivery of a message: "I'm on your side and you need to trust me and align yourself with me, because I am finely-tuned to your sensitivities - even ones you didn't know you had."
You could go full TLP and argue that Trigger Warnings are the author's way of stopping their readers from ever having to side-line their ego (ego= defence against change), by a) preventing them from reading the thing in the first place or b) pre-emptively making the reader appalled/disgusted to the tag 'suicide' so that when that theme eventually comes up, there is no bandwidth left for a spontaneous, individual response.
You have a good point, but I think the big issue is if the trigger is a small part of a larger piece. Will I avoid playing video games with spiders in them? Not generally - I rather like Skyrim and Nier: Replicant. Will I avoid games that are entirely based around spiders, and feature constant crawling sounds in 3D audio? Very much yes.
The best comparison I can think of is like watching a movie from a series you love for the first time, but where you've been spoiled to the major twist. You're watching the movie with anticipation for one specific thing. You're focused on the small hints and wondering if *this* is the scene that reveals it. And you keep that same focus for most of the movie while ultimately missing half of it because you're in such anticipation for the reveal of the twist!
The same case may apply for those with milder triggers. The trigger itself is a small part of a larger work, and not serious enough for you to avoid it. But just being *aware* of the trigger may cause higher stress over a longer period.
I also agree with trebuchet's comment - sometimes interacting with the trigger is just required.
I'm sort of on the fence on this one. I remember the big fanfic debates of years back over "should we have trigger/content warnings?" and the arguments on both sides. They were adopted, although I think tagging has pretty much taken over their function now.
Some writers won't use them, and their works are tagged "Author has chosen not to use content warnings". Others will. Some people genuinely have triggers that cause them extreme distress (the big one here is rape/sexual abuse victims) and appreciate "okay, this story has something in it that will make me have an episode" so they can avoid reading it. Some people are just whiny little complainers who want you to warn for *everything* and if they insist on going ahead and reading something even after warnings, will bombard the author with "this shouldn't be allowed" and calls for the author and their works to be purged from the site.
Mostly I use them to avoid stories with content or themes I don't want - usually romances or OCs or particular tropes (NO COFFEESHOP AUs, ARGHHH!) Sometimes I just want comforting fluff, other times I want the characters to *suffer* 😈 Sometimes I'm fine with reading Major Character Death, other times I don't want to bother. Content warnings/tags lets me filter out that stuff.
I agree with twists and turns being vital part of reading fiction, I ranted mildly elsewhere about being able to predict the plot of a novel from the publisher's blurb without having to read the book, but some things (e.g. splatterpunk back in the day, when it nearly sank horror fiction as a genre) just were not worth it. They were extreme shock value, where "shock" meant "what is the most viscerally disgusting imagery to make the reader want to vomit that we can churn out?" and nothing more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splatterpunk
For a book, it's trivial enough to place the warnings somewhere out of the way (such as the last page) with only a generic 'Content warnings apply, please turn to page x for an exhaustive list' note at the beginning, to spare the feelings of the untriggerables.
Trickier for some other media, but https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ does an okay job already as a crowdsourced database, though it could use better search options.
> It's hard for me to imagine any work of art that contains _nothing_ that might trigger someone.
Sure, but the scheme does at least avoid annoying the subset of readers who get annoyed by spoilers inherent in content warnings. (Possibly, but not obviously, the majority.)
Say what you will about the tale of Hansel and Gretel, but one thing it doesn't have is a spider. The arachnophobe who fingers the list to verify this may get spoiled on all the scrumptious gaslighting and cannibalism, but presumably accepts this as the cost of doing spider-free business.
Not liking things is totally different from having PTSD triggered by them, although usually people with PTSD get conditioned to hate their triggers pretty hard, because every time a trigger happens they go into a flashback or a panic attack. It's also different from being psychologically fragile in general: perhaps seeing someone trip and fall provokes uncontrollable terror, but you're able to handle other stressful situations such as being robbed at gunpoint or kidnapped more competently than an average person.
Usually triggers aren't permanent, too. They can fade over time, especially with treatment.
So I think probably your comment is entirely based on an incorrect picture of how PTSD works and should be completely rethought in view of this new information and, perhaps, reading Scott's post and other information about PTSD.
PTSD triggers offer possible alternatives that go beyond "quit" and "suck it up".
If you think the fraction of the population that has mental issues is tiny, you probably don't know very many people.
I guess this means no more astrological invitations; oh well, was fun while it lasted (for me at least).
Thank you Scott for holding this forum .
Here is another paper that I would appreciate for your subscribers to challenge .
This paper explores the broad data around covid cases , deaths and excess deaths and issues of data collection and reporting and using all death to appreciate effects of interventions
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357778435_Official_mortality_data_for_England_suggest_systematic_miscategorisation_of_vaccine_status_and_uncertain_effectiveness_of_Covid-19_vaccination
Thanks for the opportunity Scott.
There are two recent papers I would like your subscribers help to understand and appreciate .
This first paper summarizes the science associated with the mrna shots .
Please read through and demonstrate where it may be in error .
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357994624_Innate_Immune_Suppression_by_SARS-CoV-2_mRNA_Vaccinations_The_role_of_G-quadruplexes_exosomes_and_microRNAs
It is comically bad indeed, the authors seem to have a very limited understanding of the subject.
Yes examples are helpful
Fpr example they do not seem to realize that the point of a vaccine is definitely NOT to induce an immune response that is identical to the one following an infection with the pathogen, or that the pharmacosurveillance system can not be used by itself to estimate safety risks.
The article does not read like a real paper. I would bet that none of the authors is working in medical research. Edit : after checking, the last author has written at least one very bullshitty paper, "Does the High Binding Affinity of Analogue Caps to the elF4E Obey the Laws of Thermodynamics for Cellular Health?"
"Does the High Binding Affinity of Analogue Caps to the elF4E Obey the Laws of Thermodynamics for Cellular Health?"
I dunno, does it? 😁
Are we *sure* these aren't written by AI, because they *sound* like the kind of junky titles that come out of such attempts?
I must say that "the Laws of Thermodynamics for Cellular Health" has a nice ring to it!
I had a look at the paper and the bio of the authors and it seems to me that they are people with real medicine expertise that wrote nonsense "papers" to sell their bullshit products. Quite sad in fact!
This paper goes into the details of microbiology and presents information that I am not familiar with . I do my best just to keep with the general sense of what is being presented . They indicate a number of issues associated with observed interactions and effects of known and discovered effects of mRna shots that are concerning for health and safety outcomes . Because of what is presented and the potential impact , and based on the VAERS reports , suggest immediately suspending all use of these products until these issues can be addressed
VAERS is the youtube comment section of medical databases.
Have you checked the citations ?
The Swiss German language does not discriminate between smelling and tasting, both are described by the same word "schmecken". Are there other languages which do not discriminate between them?
I would be very curious how people who *only* speak such a language perceive taste and smell, and whether they would even realize that there is a difference. For that, Swiss German is very bad, because every speaker also speaks High German, which has two different words for taste and small. (High German has the word "riechen" for smell, and "schmecken" is restricted to taste in High German.) So every Swiss German speaker is aware that there is supposed to be a difference.
Wow, that's a pretty bad one. English generally does pretty well on distinctions, probably because it simply has a lot of words. But it does lack two that bother me often: first, it only has two words, "spicy" and "hot", for the tri-distinction of temperature-hot/spicy-hot/heavily-spiced; second, we use "know" both for epistemic-knowledge and for familiarity.
The idea that we have 5 senses dates at least back to Aristotle's De Anima. For good examples, you would probably have to look outside of the Western tradition.
A very minor circumlocution seems sufficient to distinguish the two, e.g. 'schmecken via my nose' and 'schmecken via my tongue'.
Similarly, there are supposedly languages without different words for 'blue' and 'green', but it's easy enough to say or write 'blue-green like the sky' or 'blue-green like grass'.
I read an article at Language Log (sorry, ref not handy) that explored all known languages and the color words therof, and found the universal heirarchy:
Black/White/Red -- every language, these are the basic colors: Night/Day/Blood
Yellow/Orange/brown/ochre/pink/Purple -- the next group of color words, theorized because these are skin tones (and animal hides/colors)
Green(s) --Almost last
Blue/Blue-Green -- last. Many languages have no words for this
The theory for the deprecation of blue/green was surprising: Yes, the sky and water are blue and blue-green, and plants are green, but who cares? Primitive people would have no need to "talk" about them, because they are in the infinite distance. You can't grasp or manipulate them, or hunt them, they don't really matter day-to-day, (or ever really change, from a primitive POV), unlike blood, or people, or animals, all in the first two groups;- things you deal with all the time.
I thought this was very interesting and elegant.
Also, a related theory that water names in the Middle East like "Black Sea" or "Red Sea" and several others, were not color references but mistranslations of cardinal directions like "North" or "East" that existed in languages ~5,000-10,000 years ago. Several words in "The Odyssey" were the jumping-off point for this.
If interested I will look up the original posts.
BRetty
I don't follow Language Log anymore – I think it got 'too technical' to interest me – but I loved my linguistics classes in college/university, and I've read many 'sorta-pop linguistics' books with relish. I know I've read of the 'color hierarchy' you described before and that's definitely a big part of my understanding of the linguistics of color.
Personally, I think of 'words' versus 'noun phrases' as more of a 'spectrum' than a binary classification, e.g. 'blue-green like the sky' isn't _that_ different from 'blue' and, as languages evolve, the differences between the two ends of that spectrum can get _very_ blurry!
(And then some languages, e.g. German, seem to outright 'cheat' and simply declare that a 'phrase' is 'really a word now'!)
People who speak only English might also be interested to know that Russian distinguishes light blue and dark blue as two separate color words in exactly the same way that English does for pink and red - this helps give you an example of what it is to see two things that others think of as two distinct basic colors as somehow versions of the same thing.
Modern 'color words' (in English) tho seem to take this even further. Some people behave as if 'eggshell' is a distinct color (tho perhaps not a 'basic' one).
Perhaps familiarity is a big part of this? 'Magenta' is often very distinct from other similar colors as just one example.
(And IIRC some people have 'yellow receptors' in their eyes too.)
A "basic" color is one that isn't part of another color. Scarlet, for example, is a type of red; therefore scarlet isn't a basic color.
Pink is a basic color because, even though it would make sense to call it a type of red, a typical English speaker would not call a pink object red. (Brendan's comment below is the only exception I've ever heard.)
That doesn't seem to clarify anything for me. I think this avenue, something like 'arguing by definition', is generally of little use. For one, it's easy enough to dispute any particular definition.
I do think I have an idea of what you and Brendan are getting at, but it still seems strange and somewhat non-sensical to me (as a general explanation). But I also don't think there _is_ a simple theory that explains all of this! Whether something 'really is' a 'distinct' or 'basic' color is more of a practical (e.g. social) concern.
Sapir-Whorf notwithstanding, this English-speaker maintains that pink is not a color; it is a tint of red.
"pink is not a color" reads weird to this native English speaker/writer. Maybe 'pink is not a _basic_ color' is less nonsensical (to me)?
In common speech, most people would think "pink" is a color, and ID a color sample with that word.
In technical use, when one is mixing paints, or editing photographs or video or other images, "pink" is exactly as described, a "tint" derived from mixing Red (RGB system) or Magenta (CMYK system, more appropriate) with White.
I don't disagree that pink is a tint of red, but it doesn't also seem to be true that tints are therefore not 'real colors'.
And, technically, there are lots of other 'color spaces' (beyond RGB or CMYK), and I don't think any of them capture what humans perceive (which also varies between individuals in many many ways).
We can go round and round about this forever!
Color seems like a great example of a 'conceptual richness problem': https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/the-ai-control-problem-in-a-wider
There are lots of ways of thinking about 'color'! And seemingly just as many ways of thinking about, speaking/writing about, or understanding them too. I think you really need to 'hold them all in your mind at once' to get a sense of what 'color' is (or could be).
Sounds right. For example, the Polish language uses the same word for fingers and toes, but if you need to distinguish between them, you can say "fingers of the hand" or "fingers of the foot" (i.e., toes).
Spanish too, "dedos". In the other direction, English (and, to be fair, many other languages) uses the same word for "having as an innate trait" and "standing in a state of": "be", while Spanish uses "ser" and "estar" for these two different meanings.
Spanish (at least Argentine Spanish), like many other languages, also has different words for "dark blue" and "light blue", so it's incorrect to say "el cielo es azul", "the sky is blue". There is strong evidence that speakers of such languages are better at distinguishing between these colors.
English "love" is a particularly interesting case: "I love him!" can express the emotion of greatly enjoying someone or something (for example, a musician), the emotion of limerence, or an emotion of trust and intimacy, all of which may co-occur or not. Many other languages distinguish between some or all of these concepts: Vietnamese has the tinh/nghia distinction, Classical Greek has the agape/philia/eros/storge distinction (mostly collapsed into agapi in Modern Greek), and in modern Spanish we have "me encanta", "amo" (sometimes distinguished from "estoy enamorado"), and "quiero". You might say of a close friend "Lo quiero mucho", while "Lo amo" may suggest that you're seeking pair-bonding. But this introduces another ambiguity that doesn't exist in English: "Lo quiero" might mean that he is dear to you, or that you would like him to appear before you so that you can ask him to help you defrost your refrigerator.
You could surely write a book about the worldview encapsulated in the polysemy of English "fuck".
It bothers me that so many meanings of "fuck" are negative. (E.g., "fucked up".) Literal fucking is great, so fuck should mean good things!
Fucking can also be violent and degrading. It inherently contains an element of both, and the language reflects it.
Not inherently, though certainly sexual violence and sexual degradation are sadly common throughout human history. You might as well say that eating, yelling, or injecting drugs inherently contains an element of both violence and degradation.
I've recently noticed some positive use, such as 'this song fucks!', among assorted degenerate youth. Sadly, it could just be proxy for the Roman-style sentiment where being the one to penetrate implies superiority.
You're not far off, actually. I'm pretty sure that particular phrasing comes from a joke on Silicon Valley: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uMEE7eaaUA)
A great thing about Argentine Spanish is that, while "coger" is vulgar, it lacks those violent and deprecatory senses (except in the speech of one young woman I know who grew up on /b/). Unfortunately I can't make as favorable a report about "joder" in Iberian Spanish, a word which has entirely lost its sexual sense in Argentina, meaning only "mess around" or, in the form "jodido", "very difficult".
English use the word "feeling" for both sensation and emotion.
I've seen this one cause problems: people often misinterpret what “feel your feelings!” is supposed to mean in a therapy context.
This must be where the pastry "schnecken" comes from. A schnecken has a heavenly schmecken.
Sounds like you subscribe to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?
is glass half full or half empty?
Yes exactly, I would like to know whether (or how strong) it applies to the smell-taste-dichotomy.
'Practically a book review' request : Random Critical Analysis' work on healthcare costs (https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/why-conventional-wisdom-on-health-care-is-wrong-a-primer/)
I read this years ago but had forgotten a lot of it. Thanks for bringing it back up.
Fourthed!
Thirded
Strongly seconded
My psych textbook says that the behaviorism school of psychology, which was dominant from the 1900s to the 1960s, assumed:
1) That human behavior is fundamentally no different from that of animals, only more complex.
2) That it was pointless, even unscientific, to study internal mental processes; only stimulus and behavior could be studied.
My question: what led to these assumptions, especially the second?
The second is usually discussed as the distinctive assumption of behaviorism. The idea that only stimulus and behavior can be studied is very much connected with philosophical viewpoints that were operative in other fields at the same time (early 20th century). The logical positivists in philosophy said that it was meaningless to talk about anything that couldn't be translated into observation (and thus dismissed much traditional speculative philosophy involving metaphysics or ethics). Karl Popper didn't insist on quite a strong standard of translatability, but he said that any meaningful scientific hypothesis should make a prediction that could hypothetically at least be falsified by observation. The behaviorist idea is basically that, where observation is limited to input and output behavior, rather than allowing introspection - after all, we don't just want theorists to report about their own mind, but to report observable claims about mental beings in general.
Adolescent rebellion, physics envy, and to some extent the necessary rejection of the pseudoscience that is Freudian psychology. It's no accident Tennov was a behaviorist, even if her work couldn't have been done within the radical form of behaviorism you're rightly, if implicitly, criticizing.
If Freudian psychology is pseudoscience, what is the proper name for the type of science that posits that people don't have mental processes at all?
Behaviorists won a PR war. They are associated with their good results, while their sillier statements are mostly forgotten. With psychoanalysis it's the other way round: everyone associates them with their silliness, while their good ideas are just considered "common sense" these days (unconscious mental contents; mind modelled as multiple competing agents; sexuality as a driving force of human behavior).
I think all three of those ideas are at least several thousand years old; they're all mentioned in the Tipitaka, and some are explored at great length. Sexuality has presumably been known to be a driving force of human behavior since prehistoric times.
Isn't the second assumption technically true ? The only internal mental processes you can study directly are your own; and even that might be stretching the definition of the word "directly". If you want more data than N=1, then you have to ask people "what are you thinking ?", which involves producing a stimulus and observing the response. From these inputs, you can infer the person's mental state -- in the same way as you can infer the charge of an electron from observing oil droplets, or the wavelength of light from observing interference patterns. What's wrong with that ?
Behaviorists treated the mind as a black box. This turned out to be too extreme; we can use various techniques such as imaging to learn about the mechanisms of the brain. It is true that there is a subjectivity of mental experience that we can't study, Nagel famously asked "What is it like to be a bat?" to show the limits of what we can understand about the mind. But this is not nearly as extreme a view as the behaviorists had.
Basically, we are extremely bad at understanding human (and animals) behavior based on inference from input-output models, and very good at doing it if we treat them as agents that are broadly similar to us in mental capacity and internal experience (theories of mind). As such, even if in some abstract sense it must be only neurons firing, practically (and in my opinion, scientifically) it's quite bizarre to ignore our privileged access to our internal state of mind while trying to understand the actions of others - there is a real enough sense in which their internal state is exactly what we are trying to understand, so we better not just assume it doesn't exist while postulating our hypothesis. It's similar (in my opinion) to refusing to use math in physics because we are trying to study matter, not numbers - sure, there is probably some sense in which the calculations are just approximations of something more complex and fundamental, but it sure look like numbers will be very very helpful in understanding matter better.
Edit: I see I misunderstood the question. I think the answer to the actual question is that behaviorist didn't think doing stuff like asking people what they think it's scientific either. It's still an internal mental state description even if it was described out load.
Are you saying that behaviorists believed that human (and animal) behaviour is literally implemented as a giant lookup table, with no internal states whatsoever, where inputs are connected directly to outputs ? That sounds like a caricature of their position, but I could be wrong...
I'm not sure. I didn't ever study behaviorism as a serious position, so it's very possible I misunderstood something. Let's look at what Stanford has to say:
'Behaviorism, the doctrine, is committed in its fullest and most complete sense to the truth of the following three sets of claims.
1. Psychology is the science of behavior. Psychology is not the science of the inner mind – as something other or different from behavior.
2.Behavior can be described and explained without making ultimate reference to mental events or to internal psychological processes. The sources of behavior are external (in the environment), not internal (in the mind, in the head).
3. In the course of theory development in psychology, if, somehow, mental terms or concepts are deployed in describing or explaining behavior, then either (a) these terms or concepts should be eliminated and replaced by behavioral terms or (b) they can and should be translated or paraphrased into behavioral concepts.'
So you can talk about how specific stimulus condition a specific response (which I guess can be thought of as lookup table) but not about what its like "from the inside" to experience and learn from this stimulus. That raises the question - what type of mechanisms the behaviorist did think are at work in animal behavior?
'“The organism”, he [Skinner] says, “is not empty, and it cannot adequately be treated simply as a black box” (1976, p. 233). “Something is done today which affects the behavior of the organism tomorrow” (p. 233). Neuroscience describes inside-the-box mechanisms that permit today’s reinforcing stimulus to affect tomorrow’s behavior. The neural box is not empty, but it is unable, except in cases of malfunction or breakdown, to disengage the animal from past patterns of behavior that have been reinforced. It cannot exercise independent or non-environmentally countervailing authority over behavior.'
So it seem the key issue here is not that we must treat the brain as a black box, but that we must (according to Skinner) treat it as a repository for outside stimulus history, and not as independent casual force. "The dog salivated because he heard the bell" is acceptable account of the behavior, but "the dog salivated because he felt hungry" is not, as "hunger" is meaningless as a casual force independent from environmental history of encountering food and such. Mental states are very weird as casual forces, so behaviorists insisted we eliminate them from our theory of behavior.
So it looks like "giant lookup table" is indeed not their position. Maybe something more like "bank of learned responses, which are determine by internal calculus of negative and positive (expected? is expecting something is internal state?) stimulus." It's still a bad framework in my opinion, but not as bad as I thought it was.
Source: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/behaviorism/
Well, he does say, "Neuroscience describes inside-the-box mechanisms that permit today’s reinforcing stimulus to affect tomorrow’s behavior". This would imply that there's some mechanism inside the black box *in addition* to just a repository of past inputs; at the very least, there's a mechanism that translates these inputs into future behaviour (as opposed to just passively storing them).
I guess that behaviourists would say that human (and animal) behaviour is ultimately determined by its history of past stimuli, which is, generally speaking not that bad of an idea (plus or minus some inborn behaviours that all animals have). But there's a lot of room here for behaviourists to be wrong, depending on how strong their claim is. For example, let's say that someone teaches me how to calculate "i=i+1". Then, I take a piece of paper and write out the numbers from 1 to N, where N is some arbitrarily large quantity. Would the behavioursists say that all of those numbers ultimately stem from that one sensory input (of me being taught how to increment a number) ? What if I go on to independently develop multiplication and set theory ? At some point, the behaviourist explanation begins to explain too much.
At least part of the issue is the assumed impossibility of first-person science, at least "science" as we widely understand it. Subjective internal states can be neither measured nor externally verified, so while they may be causally significant, it's difficult to imagine how they could ever be incorporated into the hypothetico-deductive/experimental loop of hard science.
The idea that if something can not be perfectly objectively measured then "the hypothetico-deductive/experimental loop " can not be used seems to me obviously false. Inecology or psychology for example, you can do real science (with hypothsesis, tests and repatabale results!) for "objects" than can only be imperfectly measured.
Speculative, but I'm guessing at least partly it's a backlash against Freudianism.
I'm not sure what was the exact historical process, but the way I was taught this idea in a philosophy of social science courses was something like this:
1. If you want to explain human behavior, you need to account for the connection between will and action.
2. This is a surprisingly complex problem! Are people constrained to their will? Determining it? Both? What is even will? Are we doing philosophy of mind now?
3. Well, it looks like in other more successful sciences all this thorny intentionality business never come up. Maybe we can just model behavior directly as an observered phenomena, without postulating any specific intention that underpin it?
And at some point this line of reasoning ended up with the conclusion that you must ignore internal states if you want to have proper science. I think wittgenstein private language argument also played some part in it, as it argued/assumed that internal mental states, such as pain, must in fact be fictional.
There are some traces to this approach in neuroscience and economics - the proper phenomena is brain activity/preference, and the actual mental states are (sometimes) not treated as properly "real" as far as the tools of the discipline are concerned.
What do you mean by "ignore internal states" ? Is that a rejection of dualism, or a suggestion that humans are implemented as giant lookup tables ? I don't understand how the latter can even work. Like, let's say I asked you to count from N to N+1000. You could easily do it, but how would you model such behaviour using a lookup table (of finite size) ?
Good post, but just a small correction: unless I have my dates confused I think the Philosophical Investigations predate the real heyday of behaviorism. I don't think he was influential in the formation of the movement. I also wouldn't say Wittgenstein thought pain was fictional.
I think you are correct on both counts.
Insane idea. (Some people say that intelligence is not genetic but mainly environmental, but they usually don't want to check any ideas besides throwing money at poor).
Remember those ancient culture that practiced cranial deformities by binding of babies heads? What if we could make a vacuum pump (like those used with breasts) to increase brain volume?
You could have a low heritability for intelligence, but still have biological correlates. If this intervention was successful, it is possible heritability might fall significantly. The important thing would be what you are pumping their brain full of?
The idea is to attach vacuum to the outside of the head, not to pump stuff into the head. The latter would have no possibility of increasing brain size since you're *reducing* the available space inside the head for the brain by pushing other stuff in there (and would literally be iatrogenic hydrocephalus).
I commend this insane idea and suspect it would make a good origin story for a tabletop RPG villain.
I suspect you'd just wind up with hydrocephalus rather than an increased brain volume.
I'd like to make a formal request to this community, and to the entire world:
The next time somebody brings up the topics of hands-on parenting, or active parenting, or specific parenting philosophies, approaches, and strategies, please, make every effort not to respond with phrases such as "you're trying to mold your kids into something specific".
This sets up a false dichotomy in parenting: of letting your kids self-actualize versus doing it for them. This does not have to be the case. For example, one can parent actively with the express purpose of helping a child self-actualize.
Also, you may be tempted to say things like: "you do realize that it's been proven that disparate parenting styles don't make a difference..." I realize that you may think that you have data on your side, and that you've read (or listened to podcasts about) Gopnik, Caplan, Rich-Harris, etc. But still, please, resist the urge.
Instead, if you're interested, please take the time to listen to the actual approaches the person is exploring - their methodology and goals. And if you're not interested, please just move along.
I agree about the false dichotomy. I don't remember any specific discussion of parenting on ACX, but based on my experience with the rest of the world, some people apparently can't see the possible middle ground and seem to believe that it is either "do nothing" or "brainwash your child and forcibly override any of their preferences". (Though I assume those concerns are probably inspired by actual terrible parents who actually did the latter.)
There are some basic skills that I want my kids to have, such as reading and writing, saying thank you and cleaning their rooms; skills that in my opinion every adult should have. (Yes, the list is much longer, but there is enough time for that.)
In addition to that, I will propose (but not insist on) doing things that I consider valuable, but not necessary, such as programming or drawing or watching anime. Here, I am merely giving suggestions, which I believe is harmless, but potentially useful. If the kids enjoy it, great; if they don't, no big deal. And yes, my kids also have lots of free, unstructured time.
tl;dr - I am a perfect parent
"disparate parenting styles don't make a difference" -- sure, tell that to László Polgár https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/31/book-review-raise-a-genius/
There are a whole lot of interventions kids might need in their lives.
Parents is like the EMH, where parenting doesn't matter, except for the cases where it does, and you can't tell which are which beforehand.
What's the EMH?
Efficient market hypothesis.
Or Emergency Medical Hologram, if you're in the 24th century.
This is a very strange request.
You want to be able to discuss "active parenting" but don't want the people you're discussing this with to respond in a certain way?
Why not just not bring this up with anyone?
I'm not sure what you even mean by "active parenting" given your request. The most familiar (to me) example of 'anti-active-parenting' is what Bryan Caplan has written about it, but I don't think the alternative he suggests _couldn't_ also be described as "parent[ing] actively with the express purpose of helping a child self-actualize".
I think his larger point is to avoid stress and anxiety, for both parents and their children, and focus instead on everyone enjoying childhood.
Would this generalise to a useful taboo on all 'you shouldn't be doing the thing at all' responses when 'ways to do the thing' topics are brought up?
I mean, depends on if it's a "How do you best drive a nail with a shoe?" question which doesn't want to hear about hammers. But maybe I'm already exposed to people asking the wrong question from programming forums.
I agree that parenting advice is already super judgemental and maybe it needs more norms around advice giving?
"How do you best drive a nail with a shoe?" sounds like a perfectly cromulent question, and if I were asking it, I would not appreciate responses trying to tell me I should use a hammer instead.
In general, the "XY problem" is a harmful meme. It may be that the person asking may be confused about their problem, but it's also possible (and, IMO, more likely) that they have a specific reason for trying an unusual approach. The correct thing to do is, IMO, to either answer the question (possibly also hinting at the canonical solution), or refrain from posting - and not assume up front that the person asking is confused.
(Yes, "XY problem" paternalism is a pet peeve of mine.)
"In general, the 'XY problem' is a harmful meme."
No, overgeneralising from your particular experience is the harmful thing here.
There may well be certain forums for questions where it's more likely that someone has a good reason for an unusual approach rather than simply being ignorant and/or confused, but that certainly isn't the case in forums (such as Stack Overflow) where you have a lot of people with a fairly low level of expertise who very often don't well understand what they're doing.
It might be fair to assume that someone asking "How do you best drive a nail with a shoe" knows what a hammer is and that it's the most commonly used tool to drive nails, since that's very widespread knowledge. But in situations where there are a lot of beginners without good knowledge, I would expect someone who knows that they're not presenting an XY problem to understand that there are a lot of beginners out who really are presenting XY problems and explicitly state why they're not going for the typical solution that's obvious to experts but not so much to beginners.
Yeah, banning the obvious answer sometimes means trying to improve signal-to-noise by preventing an avalanche of low-hanging fruit. I'm reminded of that one time Yudkowsky was mocked for soliciting weight-loss advice exclusive of diets, which request made perfect sense to me.
(Also, thanks for teaching me the term; I hadn't realised the practice of asking the allegedly wrong question was given such a generic name. "XY problem paternalism" indeed.)
As to parenting discussions - they do warrant tact, but knowing that a child's upbringing is on the line raises the stakes both for the seeker and the gadflies.
To be honest, I'm not sure that I take issue with unsolicited advice in general. I was referring to the types of comments that I referenced specifically.
Isn't the comment to which you're replying also unsolicited advice?
That's even more annoying and unwanted then! (Unless the OC graciously accepts 'No thanks!' as a response.)
The Annoying and Unwanted. Maybe my new band name. "No thanks!" is a uniquely American response to a request. The "No" is quite clear, but what exactly are you thanking me for?
I can't speak for others, but I'm thanking you for your attempt to address my request.
Presumably your request is offering me at least the opportunity to not annoy you with an unwanted response!
I'm interested in an overview of stoicism. Are there different kinds?
If you've tried it, how has it worked out for you?
Are there ways to become less stoical if you decide you don't like it?
I'm thicker-skinned than I used to be. There are advantages, but sometimes it also seems like becoming more numb.
I thought this was a really nice discussion by Ada Palmer on the full philosophy of stoicism, showing how their metaphysics and epistemology is connected to their ethics and practical philosophy, and why this might be having a kind of revival:
https://www.exurbe.com/stoicisms-appeal-to-the-rich-and-powerful/
Thanks. That was a very good essay.
Since you brought up "different kinds", you might be interested in Epicureanism. It was a popular opponent to Stoicism in its day but shares things in common.
Someone mentioned Meditations which is not strictly about Stoicism but reflects ideas from philosophies of the time, not least of which is Stoicism. An easy but repetitive read. MA was writing for himself here. IIRC he was quite preoccupied with death, and making assertions that it's nothing to be concerned about. He would have been in more advanced age at the time of writing.
Massimo Pigliucci is a Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York, and he has in the last few years became a popularizer of Stoicism.
His Wikipedia article states: “… one of the driving forces in Stoicism's resurgence in the United States in the early twenty-first century. His 2015 essay for The New York Times on the topic was one of the most shared articles to date. Pigliucci said he always felt Stoicism was part of his Italian heritage, but he came to practice it after being disenchanted with Buddhism, though he finds both schools of thought to share similarities.”
My local library has a few of his books, which I have never read.
I used to read his blogs, and for a while he co-hosted the Rationally Speaking podcast with Julia Galef. He has famously debated Eliezer Yudkowsky about the Singularity.
The takeaway I had from Epictetus...
Anything we encounter or possess is prone to fail or otherwise impact us negatively at some point—we don't have absolute power to _make_ everything go well (he excepts the inside of our own minds; with mental health issues I disagree on that point, but we can do as well as we can).
Given this understanding of the world, the Stoic idea is that to keep our expectations realistic (or "according to nature" in the Greek idiom) we should, essentially, be pricing that possibility of failure in to how we relate to things generally, so we aren't thrown when the negative event happens.
This may not answer your question but 'Meditations' by Marcus Aurelius is a famous book on stoicism.
I should probably read it, but I have a snarky belief that stoicism might be easier if you're Emperor.
I kinda associate stoicism with being really really cognizant about what is and isn't in your power to control, and to try not to worry about what's outside your control.
Its been a while since I read the book, but MA makes some interesting comments with my takeaway being how you would think that, being an emperor there wasn't anything outside of his control, but in reality he really struggled with backstabbing officers, gossiping attendants, and annoying courtesans. I remember him saying that these were all just irritations he needed to be better about accepting and not letting them get to him. It surprised me, because I would have guessed he would have a massive amount of flexibility in removing people he didn't like, but that didn't seem to be his perspective.
There's a fine rant in a van Vogt novel from an empress about how little power she has. She can give orders, but they're interpreted by a number of people and what she wants is very unlikely to happen.
One of my favorite bits in HPMOR is Harry, who is very American, saying that power/high status means you don't have to pay attention to people and Draco, who was raised to be something like a Renaissance prince, saying that the higher your status, the more attention you have to pay to people.
I used to listen to a lot of Glenn Beck, and he mentioned that he had an opportunity to interview/ chat with George W Bush at the end of his second term. Glenn expressed concerns with Obama, and Bush, in an attempt to reassure him told him that the office of the president has a tendence to mold people into doing what it wants, and a president's personal politics don't really shape policy as much as you might think.
Glenn said that rather than being comforted by that, he was terrified.
I think about that a lot.
Do we have some non-fictional evidence about how people in positions of great power conceptualize the limits of that power? It might not be as well written as van Vogt or Yudkowsky, but it would probably be a more reliable guide to understanding the humans' dominance hierarchies and collective action problems.
trebuchet's quote would be an example if we can find the source.
That's a great idea. Surely tons of biographies touch on this. I would expect biographies where the biographer is a family member (child, spouse) would be one good sort to search. (I may try to let this question "crank away" in the background, and see if my mind comes up with good examples.)
> "a fine rant... from an empress about how little power she has"
This reminds me of many moments in "The West Wing." Okay, it's just drama, okay it's fiction... but the nature of the constraints often seemed quite real. I know this is a bit trivial and banal of a decision given the scope of poss. decisions in that show, but I remember thinking for a moment (of either CJ Cregg or the guy who's supposed to be the president in the series) "This person does not even get to have control over what clothes to wear to certain events."
RE "the higher your status, the MORE attention you have to pay to people."--I love that! I think HPMoR-Draco had the right of it on that one!
Yeah, he was a bit hard to relate to at times, right?
Then you might prefer the "Enchiridion" by Epictetus, who was a disabled slave, it is a short handbook which would be suitable if you are interested in the more applied aspects of Stoicism (this book is also cited by Marcus Aurelius in the "Meditations").
I am a fan of the Enchiridion. I think that is a good introduction to stoicism.
The (probably false) story about how Epictetus became disabled embodies stoicism IMO.
His master was torturing him by twisting his leg, so he told his master "If you keep twisting my leg like that, it will break". His master continued, and when his leg finally broke, he said "See, I told you that it would break". And from then on he was disabled.
Whew. My eyes originally read that as "mother" rather than "master". Your way is MUCH better.
Or way harder, if you actually care about your empire and if not solving its problems, then at the very least not making them worse. Marcus Aurelius seemed to care, according to said book.
Yes, I actually got the impression reading the book (and Roman history) that it would be harder, given the constant pressure to be pulled back to crisis after material crisis
I don't know that Roman history was particularly more tumultuous than our own. When Marcus Aurelius assumed power, the Pax Romana was 198 years old, as old as the United States was in 01974, and it endured until his death. (This understates the comparison: the US had been interrupted by one of history's bloodiest wars, the US Civil War, which didn't have an equivalent during the Pax Romana.)
But sure, in any large complex system operating at the limits of its region of stability, you have constant incipient crises which will crash the whole system if they're not handled, which is why the Pax Romana ended when he died.
I think you're overselling the "pax" in "pax romana" there. From the constitutional settlement of Augustus in 27 BC to Marcus Aurelius's death in 180 AD, wikipedia records 32 separate instances of organized civil disorder, not counting the bloody civil war that took place in 69 AD. Marcus himself spent nearly his entire reign jumping from one crisis to the next, and was plagued with near constant invasions from beyond the Rhine and Danube frontiers.
Judging purely on the maintenance of domestic tranquility, I'd say the Pax Americana stacks up relatively favorably to the Pax Romana.
There's a book by Ward Farnsworth, "The Practicing Stoic," that might be useful (not written by an (academic) philosopher, which is either a plus or a minus depending on your background).
I’d say there are two kinds of stoicism. The first is basically a high pain tolerance; you son’t complain even when something is unpleasant or uncomfortable. I think that this has strong pros when you’re in a situation where complaining won’t help, and will likely just annoy those around you. But, it’s less useful when complaining would help. I guess I see it as a way of managing social capital.
The other thing is the more Greek philosophy of stoicism which, as far as I understand it, is front loading your pain and discomfort. You imagine horrible things happening to yourself and your loved ones so that you can get used to thinking about and dealing with that situation until it is no longer unpleasant for you. Then, when the bad things happen, you’ve already learned how to deal with it. I think this is useful if you have long or complicated actions you need to execute in the event the bad thing happens; an example would be if you were the VP of a major nation, you need a plan for if the president dies. But generally in my experience I find that using it more generally is … not healthy.
> You imagine horrible things happening to yourself and your loved ones so that you can get used to thinking about and dealing with that situation until it is no longer unpleasant for you.
This sounds like missing the point of stoic visualizations, or perhaps focusing on the wrong things. Visualizations are supposed to make you grateful that these things *aren't* actually happening to you, so you cherish the things you have now, and to help you differentiate what things you can and cannot control, so you're less distressed when something beyond your control happens.
Yes, that's my general impression too. I think in Zen terms this would be one of those "finger/moon" distinctions.
For myself, I find that it can help to conceive of my base state as dying slowly, painfully, friendless and alone, out in the wilderness somewhere. But only so far as to help me be happy with the people I see, the friends that I have, what food that I can eat. Life could be so much worse, but I have the Internet in my pocket! To circle back to morbidity, now that I think of it, this is kind of like the attitude of Death in Neil Gaiman's "Sandman".
But hey, I've never been a slave or an emperor, so what do I know? :-)
Or you can stop giving a fuck, roll with the punches, and assume everything you have is just castles in the sand anyway (which it is). I've seen stoicism explained as focusing on your personal freedom regardless of circumstance - embodying whatever virtue means to you, instead of chasing pleasure and running away from pain like an animal.
Not complaining also has the benefit of keeping _your own_ morale high, aside from helping others. Very useful if you're a load-bearing member of whatever group you find yourself in.
The 2nd thing you mentioned is a thought exercise so you stop being so attached to shit you cannot control. The point is to be less distressed, not more. Tantric yoga has a very similar exercise around desire and revulsion reflexes. The way you describe it sounds very counterproductive.
Not healthy in what way?
In my experience, frequently imagining terrible things happening to myself and my loved ones does not do good things for my mental health. It tends to be upsetting, angering, and/or saddening, and it can be hard to then set those emotions aside when I try to stop. So, if you’re in a situation where such things are likely to happen and you’ll need to be able to power through those emotions (like living in a warzone), it might be a good strategy, but in my experience the practice of it can often be damaging to someone leading a normal life. I think going through a normal grieving process after the bad things happen would probably be better in most cases
That makes sense. I find that even gratitude can be chancy for me-- being grateful for things becomes a reminder that I can lose them.
I feel like there's something about the idea of being well-calibrated for the chanciness of the real world is good, but it may need to be separated from the idea of being immune to the chanciness of the real world.
Every year I make quantitative predictions about the upcoming year, which I run as a small tournament with my friends - for example questions like, "What is the probability Russia will invade Ukraine?" and "What is the probability the Uncharted movie will gross more than the Warcraft movie did?".
This year I'd like to include the estimations of a psychic as a kind of 'baseline' entry against which people can judge their relative performance. Does anyone know a psychic they can put me in touch with who would be happy to answer 24 questions with a percentage probability? I'm happy to pay a reasonable consulting fee.
I've already asked the astrologer who sometimes posts here, but unfortunately he does a different kind of astrology
Why do women get PMS? A hypothesis.
If millions of women suffer fairly extreme psychological turmoil most months of their adult lives, it seems to me worth considering whether this is a feature rather than a bug.
Here is an evolutionary explanation. I would be grateful if you lot could explain why it's nonsense / an unfalsifiable just-so story / already the consensus view. [NOTE: this hypothesis is definitely not the result of my wife being mean to me again this weekend, and by the way I had actually tried really hard to get the dog-puke smell out of the car, even if not 100% successfully.]
So if, in our evolutionary past, you are a healthy woman of childbearing age with at least one sexual partner, then getting several periods in a row is really bad news. It could well mean that either you or your partner is infertile. Continuing the current arrangement might then be disastrous from a reproductive POV.
So maybe exactly what you SHOULD be doing is feeling absolutely lousy about your life, thinking intensely about how to change it, and, in particular, questioning whether this useless bastard who can't even get the wolf-puke smell out the cave is actually the right hominid for you.
Shaking things up with an escalating series of conflicts could result in the following possibilities:
1. You break up - great outcome if he is infertile
2. You nearly break up but then have passionate make-up sex - good outcome if one of you has low fertility or you just haven't been having sex much for some reason
3. Some other male takes note that all is not well between the Ogs, and offers his services - good outcome
4. Some other female does likewise - not a great outcome but not the worst (if she gets pregnant I guess that is even useful information about his fertility?)
5. Your boyfriend beats you to death with an ibex horn - bad outcome
My hypothesis makes a few predictions -
1. The simplest prediction is that women who get PMS have more children, but presumably this may be confounded by many factors in the modern world
2. The emotional response should ideally come in time for conception within that cycle, if action is taken. Wikipedia says "one to two weeks" before period which seems OK though not optimal?
3. Experience of PMS should correlate with relationship instability
4. Women who get PMS should have more partners, or at least more break-ups
5. PMS symptoms (at least the psychological ones) should worsen as the number of sequential periods increases - you don't want to kick out Mr Right / get beaten to death with an ibex horn over one missed conception!
6. Symptoms should probably ease, at least for a while, once you have had one child with your partner
7. Symptoms should only arise at the onset of fertility and decline with menopause
8. There should be associated horniness and attraction to other men
And of course the idea reflects a bunch of assumptions, including -
1. Psychological PMS symptoms of the kind I've mentioned - deep unhappiness with / questioning of life situation, anger / starting rows with partner, horniness - are indeed generally prevalent among women
2. Ancestral relationships were more or less monogamous pair-bonds
3. She's not just cross with me because I'm a useless bastard
Actual scientists / rational people, pls explain to me why this idea is bullshit that's not even worth testing. Cheers.
Like the others, I think you're overthinking it. Unlike most of the others, my personal just-so story is that it's like, and in fact part of, the completely fucked placental business with human uteruses and fetuses competing which as I understand it is what requires heavy/frequent menstruation in the first place: it doesn't perform any useful function at all. Your wife's body is just hitting itself with a very blunt instrument, a hormone hammer, as part of its periodic renewal of the protective lining needed to prevent a potential fetus from wiring itself into and completely hijacking her circulatory system for mad nutrients (great for the fetus, bad for the mother).
This seems like an epicycle hypothesis. Menstrual cycles are outwardly observable without the behavioral changes and predictable enough that a woman knows roughly when it's coming without needing to get PMS. Also, I doubt timing as a method for getting pregnant would work any better than just having sex every single day you're not menstruating. So where is the advantage?
Like Deisaich, I think hormonal effects on emotion are bad but not bad enough to overcome the otherwise importance of having hormone spikes. You may as well ask what the evolutionary adaptiveness is of kids being depressed during adolescence. There isn't any. It's just the bad that comes is small enough to be completely offset by the good that comes from growing into a sexually mature adult and evolution accordingly ignores it.
?? I'm not suggesting it's a method for telling when you're pregnant.
I'm suggesting it's a response to repeated failures to get pregnant by shaking things up and potentially changing partner.
At the times we're talking about it's unlikely that anyone knew the connection between sex, pregnancy and menstruation - we're talking about evolution engineering certain psychological responses.
You're right. I glossed over the first part of your comment and only read the predictions.
As for why your actual hypothesis is probably nonsense, there are at least a few reasons:
1) I don't think there is any evidence to suggest monogamous-for-life pair bonding was common in evolutionary protohumans such that "breaking up" with infertile partners needed to be incentivized.
2) I doubt protohuman women had much of a choice who they mated with.
3) I'm skeptical there was ever a time that humans or protohumans didn't understand that sex is what leads to pregnancy, and thus couldn't understand that having sex repeatedly and not ever getting pregnant likely meant something was wrong.
I stand by the epicycle comment, though. I don't think PMS is something that stands out as needing explanation. It's a side effect of another process that isn't maladaptive enough to get selected against. Think of it like lower back pain, which was mentioned above. It sucks, but the benefits of bipedalism are enough to stand up and live with the pain.
Another possibility is that PMS (by which I specifically mean the mood-related elements) is not a primarily biological phenomenon. The incidence of PMS, and the understanding of the psychological impact of the menstrual cycle, vary enormously across cultures: "World Health Organization surveys indicate that menstrual cycle-related complaints (except cramps) are most likely to be reported by women who live in Western Europe, Australia, and North America. Data collected from women in Hong Kong and mainland China indicate that the most commonly reported premenstrual symptoms are fatigue, water retention, pain, and increased sensitivity to cold. American women do not report cold sensitivity and Chinese women rarely report negative affect."
https://slate.com/technology/medical-examiner (many good follow up links in that article as well)
I want to be very careful here: To say something is primarily socially or culturally mediated is absolutely not the same thing as saying it's 'not real' - anorexia is primarily socially mediated, but is very real and very worthy of our empathy and consideration.
I've heard a version of that told from a different angle: STDs often cause sterility, and this has been described as a strategy for causing more churn among partners.
If STDs are a serious problem, wouldn't we want to reduce churn among partners?
"We" would, but the STD wouldn't. Plus, once you're sterile, your fitness isn't going any lower. Lowering a partner's fitness (or their subsequent partner's fitness) won't lower yours.
If there's a gene that causes the whole community to go sterile, that gene's getting weeded out.
If a mutant doesn't have this hypothetical gene, do they have a fitness advantage over those who do? In real life the "sterility belt" doesn't have 100% sterility.
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/hamilton-rules-ok/#comment-11895
You don't need a complicated evo-psych explanation. Moods and emotions depend on the hormone levels, and the hormones involved during the menstrual cycle are in a delicate balance that one rises as another declines.
Simplified versions here:
https://www.myhormonology.com/learn/female-hormone-cycle/
https://theconversation.com/health-check-why-women-get-pms-and-why-some-are-more-affected-106077
"There is no single clear theory yet to explain exactly which hormones trigger particular chemicals or why only some women experience PMDD or PMS.
But we know some women are susceptible to mood changes due to small fluctuations in reproductive hormones. In these vulnerable women, small changes in oestrogen and progesterone levels lead to shifts in central brain chemicals (GABA, serotonin and dopamine) that then affects mood and behaviour.
At the same time, many of the physical PMS symptoms such as breast tenderness, bloating, headaches and constipation are a direct effect of reproductive hormones. So both mind and body are affected."
Very simple "this is why you feel lousy" explainer here:
https://medium.com/periodmovement/mood-swings-during-the-period-d7df953cec19
Not all women get cramps, moodiness, PMS, etc. but there is generally a rise in aggression and a tendency to fly off the handle. This may or may not have to do with the testosterone levels and balance; oestrogen and testosterone levels rise before/during ovulation, leading to more risk-taking behaviour and rise in libido (your body is trying to get pregnant, after all).
Also, some women can have increased sensitivity to sensory stimuli during their periods, so the dog-puke smell really *is* worse than it would normally be, and you said you'd deal with it but plainly you didn't because I can still smell it, so why the hell didn't you do this one simple job?
Also also, ovulation involves, to put it on a very basic and crude level, one of your ovaries 'exploding' in order to release the ovum. That's painful, or can be. Plus there's breast tenderness, which is no fun at all. Only way to deal with PMS things is (a) offer chocolate. Lots of chocolate and (b) keep out of the way until the worst of the moodiness passes.
(Disclaimer: I'm not an evolutionary biologist, nor do I want to play one here.)
The argument is that "any inherited disease or trait that has a serious impact on fitness must fade over time, because the genes that spell out that disease or trait will be passed on to fewer and fewer individuals in future generations."[1] So if PMS reduces reproductive fitness, e.g. by making women less attractive partners, we would expect that evolution would have eliminated it. If we accept that, what are the possibilities?
A. PMS doesn't affect fitness, or its effect is minimal.
B. PMS does effect fitness, but there are other factors that cancel it out. Onzyp Q's theory is one of these. Another would be that PMS is caused by higher or different levels of hormones that make a woman more fertile.
C. PMS is new in evolutionary time, and selection hasn't had a chance to eliminate it yet.
D. PMS is caused by an infection or parasite. This is the Ewald/Cochran hypothesis described by the Atlantic article[1] linked below.
Of those possibilities:
* A seems quite plausible to me.
* There are lots of theories that fit B, but it seems like it would be difficult to prove most of them, in part because if PMS has a fitness cost, it's pretty low.
* C seems unlikely to me because PMS is quite common. How would it have gotten that way quickly?
* With respect to D, like all of the Ewald/Cochran predictions (heart disease, arteriosclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, many if not most forms of cancer, multiple sclerosis, most major psychiatric diseases, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, cerebral palsy, polycystic ovary disease, homosexuality), it's certainly intriguing! Note that MS now seems to have an infectious cause. It might be possible to prove something similar for PMS.
1 - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/02/a-new-germ-theory/377430/
"So if PMS reduces reproductive fitness, e.g. by making women less attractive partners, we would expect that evolution would have eliminated it"
Pardon me being blunt here, but from observation of, and participation in some, discussions around men, women, sex, attractiveness, 'why can't I get a date' and so forth, when it comes to *having sex* (as distinct for sticking around for the long term), men aren't put off by much other than 'she's dead, Jim'. 'She's crazy but I'm only here long enough to bang her' isn't a reduction in reproductive fitness, if by that we're measuring 'are you getting pregnant?'
Like many other things, I think it's always been there but until given A Proper Medical Name like "pre-menstrual syndrome", it was never really thought of as much other than 'women, flighty little things, always the prey of their emotions' when it was that time of the month.
Regarding C, "new" could well mean "only a few million years", which is plenty old enough to be universal within our species. We have back problems because walking upright is new.
These explanations explain what's happening that causes PMS, but not why it may pass the bar of evolutionary fitness
"Evolutionary fitness" is not a high bar. "Yeah, this hormone mix makes women moody and grumpy before they ovulate, it also makes them horny. Horny = more sex = babies. Mission accomplished!"
I don't think there is a really fine tuned process at work over the eons here, biology is quite frequently "close enough for government work".
That's my intuition as well. Similar behavioural changes seem to occur in other menstruating primates (vervet monkeys are a good model), so it's probably a primitive, conserved hormonal side-effect instead of any advantageous human adaptation.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/tech-support/202104/how-toxic-families-choose-child-scapegoat?
Says that children (sometimes one child in a family, sometimes it varies between siblings) get targeted for any of being a rebel, being sensitive, being very different from a parent, reminding the parent of someone they hate.
I'll add that I know some cases of being targeted for what seems to be looking too ethnic, and for being an unwelcome gender. The categories have a lot of overlap.
I posted the link to Facebook, and I don't think I've gotten so many shares for anything else. This is a topic which is relevant to a lot of people.
There are no statistics in the article, but it wouldn't surprise me if there's scapegoating in at least 15% of families.
Any thoughts about why this hasn't been evolved out?
I suspect the situation is better than it was-- my impression is that there are more people (younger than me) who have good relationships with their parents, and the idea that it's alright for children to be emotional dumping grounds for their parents is much less prevalent.
Sounds like this touches on Girard's theory of scapegoating, though to be fair I still need to read Girard before I can explain it in detail.
I'm not convinced anything about our current nuclear family structure and related neuroses can be explained particularly well by reference to evolutionary pressures.
In many Western countries there's been a slight swing of the pendulum back towards communal child responsibility, in the sense that parents are no longer seen to absolutely own their children and that if they want to, say, beat those children that's their business.
Agree. Culture and biology evolve on vastly different timescales.
The other thing is that extended families mean that children have a chance to spend time with people who like them.
Strong agree - there's a lot in favour of not having your entire wellbeing based on one or two people
For those who find themselves needing to explain the Motte and Bailey concept to others, or would just like to have a better understanding of it, I highly recommend https://www.epsilontheory.com/an-inconvenient-truce/. Rusty Guinn provides an excellent and entertaining primer.
Fictional ACX++ grant proposals! (What would yours be?!?)
So far on the DSL thread (see below) we have:
1. What if We All Wore Narnian Clothing: Small and Large Studies Design for Measuring the Sociopsychological Effects of Certain Sartorial Modifications
2. Introducing the “gwern” as a unit of measure of successful-internet-searching-speed
3. Social media / communications technology: Downgrade your tech to upgrade your life! (this idea from "Well..."!)
4. Capuchino Labz, LLC: Using selective breeding, gene sequencing, high-resolution observation and data science to uplift capuchin monkeys into humanlike intelligence (this idea from the "capuchin mad-science guy" on the ACX Discord! You'll know who I mean. He also helped me write the title for #1.)
Link is: https://www.datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,5677.msg208624.html#new
I'm trying to understand what's going on in Ukraine, and why. I know the title of this John Mearsheimer lecture sounds clickbaity, but his narrative seems very reasonable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4
Basically, Western leaders have neglected (a) the fact that dictators will do anything to avoid being supplanted by democratic regimes, and see it as a major risk when their neighbors start cooperating with the West or joining their defense pacts, and/or (b) Putin's increasing dictator-ness.
I still think Putin deserves a major share of the blame for becoming a dictator in the first place. But we should still be scrutinizing the Western leaders involved, since at least they're accountable to voters - you would hope that regardless of the existence of authoritarianism, democratic leaders can still avoid escalating a conflict which benefits nobody, as seems to be the case for Ukraine.
Does anyone have insight into this, and what the solutions might be?
Thirty years ago, Russians, Poles and Ukrainians were poor, and the EU was rich. Now, Russians and Ukrainians are still poor, Poland has joined the EU, Poles have become much wealthier, and the EU is even richer.
It's very difficult to know what Western leaders could have done to prevent Ukrainians wanting to get closer to the EU and further away from Russia.
Maybe they had no leverage over Ukrainian popular opinion, but it still feels like they could have tried harder to keep Putin on their side (e.g. by inviting Russia to full NATO membership), even if it meant temporarily delaying the rollout of democracy. I dunno, I'm very uncertain about all this and need to read more about it.
Inviting Russia to NATO would mean inviting all Russian military conflicts into NATO, and Russia has lots of conflicts. Should NATO then take Russia's side in Transnistria and South Ossetia?
If it meant avoiding an all-out war, possibly yes - but there were a lot less Russian conflicts in the early 2000s, weren't there? (That's the time frame I was thinking of) Also, has Russia been involved in more conflict than the US?
Poland now has GDP per capita $17k, Russia $11k and Ukraine $4. In PPP terms it's 36k, 29k and 14k respectively, so your second sentence is not accurate.
At least a part of the blame on lack of democracy in Russia is on Clinton's decision to bomb Yugoslavia. Population of Russia was reasonably pro-US and very much pro-democracy just prior to that, but this was seen by many as a betrayal - that US, the paragon of democracy / human right / laws that are actually followed, chose to behave in such blatenly undemocratic self-service ways against the international laws demonstrated in eyes of many russians that the western notion of democracy is completely hypocritical and made "democracy" a dirty word for way too many in Russia [note that personally, I am stating popular sentiment in Russia at the time, not necessarily endorsing]. According to https://pittnews.com/article/121917/opinions/analysis-1999-nato-operation-turned-russia-west/ this also affected Putin's position as well.
I agree, but it should be recognized that deescalation is in this case a difficult balancing act. If West supports Ukraine too little, it becames easy target for Russian agression, i.e. bloody conflict. If West supports Ukraine to much, Russia is going to to feel compelled to do a preventive strike before Ukrainian military becames too difficult for them too handle. Here is a good argument that we are in the second scenario: https://www.fpri.org/article/2022/01/moscows-compellence-strategy/.
Ideal solution would some equivalent of Camp David accords, which brought peace between Israel and Egypt. In that time, they were moderated by US president. Currently there seesms to be zero appetite for that on either side.
I am not sure how to interpret Russian demands contained in their draft treaty between US and Russia (https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/rso/nato/1790818/?lang=en), which basically consist of Russia demanding things without even promising to give anything in return. That is wildly out of touch with the current balance of power. One rather alarming possibility would be that Kremlin is delusional, but in previous years they imho proved to be highly competent in executing foreign policy, unlike US or EU. Perhaps it is just a negotiating tactic
The Russians have seen their strategic situation worsen and their area of influence reduced continuously for the last thirty years, and they are saying it's time to stop. They don't want to control Ukraine but they want it clearly understood that it's in their sphere of influence (Mexico would be the equivalent, I suppose). The problem is that NATO is now so politically exposed that it can't back down without looking weak. There's no need for any agreements between Russia and Ukraine because there is fundamentally no quarrel between them. It's the idea of Ukraine joining a western alliance that worries the Russians, and observers of Ukraine are not very sanguine that a Ukraine in NATO, or with foreign troops deployed, could be expected to behave rationally.
The Russian draft proposals are a different issue. They are a signal, more than anything else, that the Russians want some kind of formal security arrangement and guarantees. As is normal, you lead off with your maximalist position.
I am sorry, but an idea that "There's no need for any agreements between Russia and Ukraine because there is fundamentally no quarrel between them", is um, charitably put, inaccurate.
There is a huge chunk of disputed teritorry between them. Russia gives arms to Donbass separatists who occasionally engage with combat with the Ukrainian army, where people from both sides get killed. And, oh, Russian troops are now possibly gearing up for an invasion of Ukraine. Not any NATO country.
There is absolutely a need for an agreement to stop that, which has to be primarily between Russia and Ukraine.
EDIT: othewise I agree with you about Russia being motivated by very real threat of shrinking of its area of influence.
Oh, indeed, I should perhaps have made that clear, but the reality is that there are many such disputes in the region, and that's not what this particular crisis is about. By itself it would not have led to the current situations, and indeed it's Ukraine's proposed membership of NATO, not the border issue, which dominates.
I doubt that "proposed" (in 2008, by Bush) Ukrainian NATO membership is the primary driver of current escalation. Most NATO members, including the US, currently have no desire to welcome Ukraine, and presumably Kremlin understands that. As I said, Russian goverment seem to be generally competent in international policy, unlike US or EU in last years.
Rather I think that granting of military aid to Ukraine from NATO members (this was a very bad idea imho), combined with anti-reconciliation turn in Ukrainian politics (also a bad idea, but from Ukrainians) are primary issues.
I think Aurelien is ultimately correct. The entire situation dates back to the Obama administration and Russia's fears of encroachment against them through Ukraine. Their solution, since they cannot attack Europe or the US, is to show force directly into or through Ukraine. Russia wins in one of two ways here - 1) the US and NATO back down and drop out of Ukraine, which puts Ukraine directly in the Russian sphere of influence again and doesn't permit Ukraine any options otherwise, or 2) direct Russian control of parts/most/all of Ukraine. It seems less and less likely that #1 is possible, which is pushing Russia to favor #2. Even in a worst case (outside of full war with NATO), it seems Russia may be able to force an option #3, rendering Ukraine into a defeated and debilitated country that can't interfere with Russia or Russia's interests.
All in all, the whole situation exists because Russia and NATO are at odds, not because Russia and Ukraine are fundamentally opposed. As recently as 2014 Ukraine was pretty much a satellite country, similar (but not quite as much) as Belarus.
"I think Aurelien is ultimately correct. The entire situation dates back to the Obama administration and Russia's fears of encroachment against them through Ukraine. "
Arguably, it dates back to the shafting Gorbachev received for being incredibly generous to the West (on matters such as German unification) and to the emancipating former Soviet republics. Had the West held to James Baker’s "not one inch eastwards" promise on NATO expansion, there is a good chance that Russia could have been usefully integrated into overall security cooperation - and perversely, the Baltic states and the rest of the Russian near-abroad would have been much safer than inside NATO.
It gives me no joy to say that Putin, who is execrable in many other ways, is correct when he claims this.
I admit that events occuring during the collapse of the Soviet bloc are murky and it is not the subject I know a lot about, but I doubt that Gorbachev was being "incredibly generous" in "allowing" German unification.
My impression is that Soviet Union was bankrupt, internally collapsing and desperately needed to reduce its foreign commitments, so they did that - actual mechanism how USSR "allowed" reunification of Germany consisted of withdrawing troops from the DDR. After that they had no means to stop it.
This overlooks that Ukraine has an agency and currently is deliberately choosing to align itself with the West. Which, I guess, is a fundamental cause of the conflict, with respect to Ukraine. Of course there are many other contentious issues between Russia and the US.
US could sort of "solve it" by announcing that regardless of the current wishes of Ukraine to be part of the West, they regard it as an Russian sphere of influence and Russia might do with it what it pleases.
We tipped the balance by supporting pro-Western and anti-Russian leadership. I haven't looked at the details in a while, but the US helped overthrow the leadership of the country, and helped install a pro-Western replacement, against the wishes of Russia.
We could have left Ukraine alone, in which case it would almost certainly still be fully independent and also fully in the Russian sphere. The agency of Ukraine is one of the primary questions of this conflict. Russia is claiming that we stole their agency. I'm not sure they're wrong about that.
Polling (which is clearly suspect) suggests that large parts of Ukraine do favor Russian over Western influence. This was especially true in Crimea (again, inherently suspect) and the Donbass region. The incentives to lie about polling are so great as to make it nearly worthless, but what would our response be if half or more of Ukrainians wanted to side with Russia? What if it was split geographically, where parts of Ukraine nearer Russia were more pro-Russian? That last scenario is almost certainly true, even if we can't gauge if those people truly want to join Russia or not.
I don't think the timing is accidental, Putin has huge leverage given the energy situation this winter. You'll notice Germans are very reluctant to take sides in this conflict, because supporting struggling buffer states is all well and good, but not freezing is better.
As a cherry on top, IIRC Gazprom manages their on-site gas reserves, so without a quick and sudden nationalization there's a risk of a series of unfortunate accidents.
I want to point out to article "Land rush: American grand strategy, NATO enlargement, and European fragmentation" in MIT open access.
https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/128472/41311_2020_227_ReferencePDF.pdf
My takeaway from it is that US from 90's had persistently transformed Europe into their own expeditionary support, dismantled previous defensive arrangement, undermined independent European military initiatives, and tied everything to themselves - especially with new NATO members in Eastern Europe that added very little to NATO capabilities (and with push for Ukraine and Georgia inclusion from ~2005s). All under assumption that Russia will never rise again to challenge them.
As far as i see now that Russia feels the need to challenge them - and it had capability to do so for a long time - they find themselves unprepared.
They cannot commit to immediate credible defence of EE/Baltic members if diplomatic efforts fail.
They cannot easily transform Europe from expeditionary to territorial defence force again either - that will take decades.
There is no will neither within NATO nor within US to defend Ukraine against Russia; no amount of arms shipments is going to change ultimate outcome in case of confrontation.
There doesn't seem to be any potential "strong enough" sanctions that would not be double-edged - perhaps even worse for West then for Russia, and certainly most of them will empower China - so they cannot get buy-in on them from Germans.
And there is ongoing energy crisis in Europe that any kind of war will heavily exacerbate.
So, US cannot muster even united anti-Russian European front, any backing down will be seen as weakness and humiliation (especially after Afghanistan), not backing down can - i got to stress, by Western media claims, Putin continues to deny any invasion plans - lead to war to which they are awfully unprepared and lead to European recession.
On Putin's side at worst for Putin "nothing changes", and at best he gets some concessions from US - in writing. Especially if he indeed only does those exercises for posturing/training and does not plan anything immediate.
Another followup - does anyone still approve of the US's military goals, let alone results? It seems like the worst possible time for the US to pick a fight that it doesn't actually care about.
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll have a look at that article. My initial reaction:
Russia has made various agreements with NATO for military cooperation, even as late as 2007 https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_7476.htm?selectedLocale=en
So, I don't buy the narrative that NATO is a threat to Russia, although Putin seems successful in convincing people that it is. I also don't feel Russia represents a real threat to the West, unless allied with China - but this seems to be happening now, maybe explaining the timing.
You know, Russians have always though better about others. Or maybe it's just tendency to overthink things.
That behind every move there is some kind of real plan that explains every apparent mistake. Like when USSR built Buran because they seen Shuttle as potent weapon platform - why would US pay so much for it otherwise?! So they built bigger and better one.
So, when US gets out of ABM treaty, develops ABM missiles, plans and builds ABM silos in Eastern Europe - while simultaneously denying Russian offers of participation and even just oversight rights in something that is supposedly aimed "against Iran", they look at it and say "Well, clearly those are aimed at us. But that still doesn't make much sense - we have alternative routes that will not be covered this way, terrain-hugging missiles, and all other kinds of counter measures.
But... if they will just replace missiles in those silos - and we cannot stop them from doing so, nor necessarily detect it ahead of the time - they could use same infrastructure for first strike."
Then US also gets out of Intermediate Range Nuclear Missile treaty, and potential threat becomes even more concrete - hypersonic nuclear-tipped missile flying out of those silos straight to Moscow, giving just about 5 minutes of decision-making for counter-strike.
Would you like fate of the world hanging on 5 minutes? Putin clearly doesn't.
And just like him currently saying "No, we aren't planning an invasion" doesn't sway anyone's minds on Western side, no amounts of US saying "No, we aren't planning anything like that" is going to change his mind until _potential_ for such situation is removed.
That's where his current demands to US come from.
How to avoid falling into the hobbesian trap? Somehow the US negotiated détente with the USSR way back when it was much more oppressive than it is now -- when most of Eastern Europe was enslaved under its empire. Conspiracy theories about trump being Putin's puppet certainly don't help. Seems like there are some democrats now who hate Russia more than Joe McCarthy hated the USSR.
Essentially, partly by accident and partly by design, NATO and the EU have been creeping eastward for the last 25 years. This isn't a western conspiracy, but a series of disconnected decisions all of which seemed reasonable enough at the time. But this was always going to result, at some point, in NATO expanding to the borders of Russia itself, and permitting the stationing of foreign troops and US nuclear weapons a matter of a few hundred miles from Moscow. Unfortunately, no-one, especially in Washington, seems to have realised this until too late. The Russians, with their history, are simply not prepared to have a military alliance, much stronger than they are, sitting on their border. This is an opinion that, so far as I can see, is pretty universal in the country. The West was warned not to do this, but ignored the warning. It's true that Ukraine is a corrupt and despotic state, but that wouldn't matter to the Russians, if it didn't want to join a nuclear capable alliance. The Russians clearly don't want to control Ukraine as such (who would?) but they are trying to create a buffer zone in the East of the country, such that both the Ukrainians, and even more NATO, will find it difficult to deploy forces there. Unfortunately, their years of pushing Russia around without consequences have made the western ruling class capable of doing stupid and dangerous things.
Russia could always have just joined NATO. They've made various agreements with them over the years and all seemed to be going fine until recently. I think the question is why this all seems to have changed, and the erosion of Russian democracy would certainly go some way to explaining that.
NATO was organized as a direct challenge to the Warsaw Pact, and aimed at Russia. The Russians have perceived it as a gun pointed at Moscow ever since it was created. The fact that Latvia is closer to Moscow than Washington DC is to Boston is not lost on the Russians.
When the Soviet Union fell, we promised the Russians we weren't going to expand NATO to the East. Then we aggressively expanded NATO East, to their front door. The Russians see it as the US never having set aside anti-Russian sentiments after the Cold War.
The real story is one of simple contempt. The US stopped caring about Russia after a bunch of Western economists told them how to set up a democracy and all that base-level theory handed the country over to corrupt oligarchs, but the people got poorer. The West learned an important lesson about how institutions are important in establishing a functioning democratic/capitalist system. The Russians learned not to trust the West.
Then the US, perpetually blind to its own role in history let alone the history of other nations, set itself to nuclear non-proliferation. It used NATO to accomplish this, promising every nation in Europe that if they just gave up their nuclear ambitions (and/or actual nukes) they'd be better off. Once in NATO any attack on their soil would be treated like an invasion of Iowa. No need develop nukes (and the expensive technology to launch them) because they could rely on America's nuclear hair trigger. NATO's role was bastardized, but the US didn't care because Russia was 'no longer a threat'.
The current situation in Ukraine is not the result of anything new. It's the end of a long road of diplomatic failure to respect the only other nation in the world that can wipe us off the map.
Putin has been watching American war fatigue with interest since we invaded Afghanistan. He knew what the end result would be. After a long period of harassment of their neighbors, he invaded Georgia back in 2007 as a test of how far the US would go to defend a NATO-hopeful nation (and to stop the pipelines through Georgia meant to undermine Russian energy coercion) under direct military invasion.
Later, he invaded Ukraine and took Crimea. It was another trial balloon. But it was also a political necessity to keep their only Black Sea port in Sevatopol from being shut down by the Ukrainians. The US didn't do anything to stop them, despite the obvious fact of a Russian invasion on Ukraine's sovereign territory. Nobody did. They annexed Crimea and have kept it to this day.
At this point, Putin and others have realized the Pax Americana is over. Small nations are not going to be protected from regional bullies by the US. Russia has wanted the Ukraine - the rest of it - back in their sphere of influence since the communists fell. They see it as part of their territory (and Ukrainians as Russians) the way the US views Texas, or the Chinese view Taiwan. They even issue Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens (especially in the East), then claim "our own citizens are being harassed".
The core of the NATO premise during the days of nuclear non-proliferation was that the US could enforce article 5 from a position of superiority. After long wars in the Middle East, that premise no longer holds. The US isn't interested in NATO anymore. Nuclear non-proliferation is a side issue, reserved for rogue states like Iran and North Korea. Nobody cares about Latvia's decades-old promises anymore, nor the reason they were given. War in Eastern Europe, where there are a lot of countries Americans never think of, feels a lot like war in the Middle East. Any challenge to international borders feels like a violation of Natural Law! We'll condemn it, sure, but let's stay out of another mess, okay?
Putin is going to finish his acquisition of Ukraine. He knows the US doesn't care enough to risk WWIII over it. Biden talks big (?), but so did Obama about Syria and that amounted to nothing. Besides, Putin had troops on the ground in Ukraine not that long ago. They annexed prime real estate and nobody batted an eye.
Yes, it's sad that Ukraine's days are numbered. But that decision was made a long time ago. The fact that Putin hasn't taken it already is a testament to his caution, honestly. And Ukraine isn't the only independent nation whose days are numbered. Pax Americana is over. The Americans just haven't realized it yet.
> we promised the Russians we weren't going to expand NATO to the East.
What's your primary source for this?
I have none. Here's a fairly good summary of the subject: https://www.rferl.org/a/nato-expansion-russia-mislead/31263602.html
There have always been two narratives about this. There's the West's narrative, that no formal promises were ever made or implied at. This is true. Then there's the Russian narrative, that there was essentially a 'handshake' deal back in the 90's (when US-Russia cooperation was at its peak) that nobody wanted to expand NATO to Russia's backyard.
I wasn't part of those conversations back then, so I don't know for certain. I know the US position is that the Russians are just lying about the whole thing, but it's uncharitable to claim the Russians don't have any legitimate grievance here. The US was completely spooked when Cuba went communist, increased its alarm when they aligned with Moscow, and then were understandably livid about the prospect of nuclear-armed missiles being placed a few miles from the border.
On the other side of that coin, NATO expanded even closer to Russia than Cuba is to US soil, with a military promise of retaliation from the US, and numerous 'missile defense' programs that the Russians have no hand in vetting in NATO countries, and those systems are obviously designed as having Moscow as one of their primary targets. Yet Russia should just trust the good intentions of a country whose national elections consistently rail against it? I find it needlessly unconcerned about Russia's interests to say, "You should have got that in writing last time, but don't worry you can trust our word on it this time."
There seems more documentation of the US's promise to protect Ukraine when Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.
Did the Russians even say *at the time* that there was a promise?
Nations can barely be trusted to keep their word on actual signed treaties. If the Russians claim to have actually believed an informal promise behind closed doors from a longstanding enemy, they're either lying or morons.
Russia tried and couldn't.
It was apparent well in 2007 - see Putin's Munich speech - that Russia wasn't welcome in NATO:
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24034
Word on the street (so take with a grain of salt) is that Putin didn't want to go through the application process, and felt insulted Russia wasn't invited by NATO.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-says-putin-wanted-to-join-alliance-early-on-in-his-rule
I can't recommend something concrete but watch out for what is left unsaid. It's easy to do this for the Russian state propaganda, but the same exercise can be done for the Western media too.
E.g., what's wrong with the Finland option: a non-NATO state bordering Russia with no territorial claims or conflicts since the end of WW2. Or whether the concerns that animated the pro-Russian protests in 2014 and served as a pretext for the Russian intervention ended up justified or not.
That's an interesting case. Although, Finland is a helluva lot richer than Ukraine, so probably not a potential site for invasion.
Finland is richer _because_ it was neutral, and so could benefit from USSR _and_ Western trade.
If Ukraine would have alternative arrangement to Association Agreement that precipitated 2014 revolution (one including Russia - as Russia suggested by proposing tripartite talks in 2013), they could become richer in the process as well.
That's not why Finland is richer. Finland is a pretty standard Scandinavian country, and comparably rich compared to other Scandi countries. Sure, Sweden was neutral, but Denmark, Norway and Iceland weren't. So being in a position to trade with both USSR and the west can't be the main factor behind Finnish wealth.
Funny that Russia would like Finnish neutrality today as an option for Ukraine. The first USSR leader to recognize Finnish neutrality unequivocally and without qualifications was Gorbachev, in October 1989.
During the Cold War, Finland existed in a sort of selective diplomatic quantum superposition after WW2: both neutral and not neutral, depending on who was talking and when. Finland had a mutual defense treaty with USSR, yet it claimed neutrality when it suited Finnish state interests: for the prestige of its leaders, to gather Western sympathy, or as diplomatic move to convince USSR it didn't need to invade to protect its interests. USSR made favorable public gestures about Finnish kinda sort-of "friendship neutrality" only when it suited Moscow, as a carrot in a game of Finlandization. The stick was threat of "joint military coordination and exercises pursuant to our mutual defense treaty" ie incorporation to Warsow Pact. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization
One aspect of this is the traditional maxim of 'si vis pacem, para bellum' as in the face of opportunistic aggression, backing down can easily escalate or invite a conflict, and only a credible deterrence can prevent it. In realpolitik, weakness invites either violence or unconditional surrender, and simply preserving a status quo with the same borders may require arming up.
Why did they have that German navy chief resign for saying they couldn't get Crimeea back? Or was is for something else he said and that I missed?
IIRC the general German state policy does not recognize Crimea as Russia-owned; and there is generally a strong taboo everywhere on military officials expressing opinions on foreign policy that are not aligned with the government position - generally, they're expected to not comment on foreign policy at all outside of what they have been delegated, military leaders are not supposed to be the ones making or publicly affecting any foreign policy decisions but strictly restricted to implementing the foreign policy made by the civilian government, and making any comments or disagreements only in private so as to not affect the government's diplomacy.
But he knew that, right? so do you think he said it on purpose or in the spur of the moment?
He basically attacked the entire German/EU/NATO handling of the conflict, and said that Putin would make a great ally against China because Russia is a christian nation, and that Putin only wants some respect and we should give him that respect.
For the record: I think it is stupid to fire a competent military leader over some politically unfortunate statement.
A military leader giving politically unfortunate statements, with huge diplomatic implications, is not competent.
Would anyone share his view on how governments will exit the covid crisis? There are a few indicators that this is quite imminent, at least that's how it seems seen from western europe: public opinion changing (mostly a combination of patience being exhausted, and much much less fear of getting contaminated: people got used to the virus, almost everyone knowing recovered people or having recovered themselves, and omicron very low death toll), a lot more "contrarian" experts interrogated in mainstream media, and most non-contrarian being more nuanced on vaccines for example, protests either growing or being more prominently covered. Coming spring coming should also be a big factor accelerating all of this, so I wonder if there will be polical consequences early spring. Would it be a quiet fade away from the front pages (covid die in a whisper) and business restart as usual, those last 2 years forgotten? Will it die in a bang, with government being investigated for their behavior and maybe a chain reaction of goverment falling when they were behind the curve of the move to "freedom"? (Personally I see Dutch, Belgium, France (conflicted with the presidential election)).
Or, scared by this second possibility, will goverments try to maintain a constant crisis (try to keep the scare on covid and/or use the flu) until next fall? mainstream media are partly on the same boat as governments, but then a good witchhunt is hard to resist so who knows?
I think mostly, as Delta was ending, most western governments were shifting to something like the flu, where there's capacity to do something if it looks like a new variant will cause an emergency, but otherwise not much in the way of official restrictions, just surveillance. Omicron has on the one hand briefly delayed this transition, but on the other is likely to make it more complete.
It's a good point, but "like the flu" is problematic in itself: it seems normal flu (and a bunch of seasonal respiratory viruses, which are not necessarily diagnosed separately) put hospitals under pressure every winter. In fact, i am not sure that hospital situation (or excess death) is anything special under the omicron wave. What is special is the measures and the measurement of cases.
And flu has a history of missed reactions by the WHO and gouvernements : if you remember h1n1, it was very like covid (with travel restrictions, mask mandates and airport thermal cameras, vaccines, except it did not root and basically was mostly considered a failure from authorities rather than a legit global health menace worth of consideration. So "like the flu" makes me think that the exit strategy may be the constant crisis one.
Can you point me to a place where I can see the comparative statistics? I would be moderately surprised to learn that the current hospital situation is not as crowded as some flu seasons, but for instance maybe the 2017-18 flu season was in fact worse. Where would I go to find these numbers?
As for swine flu, I think you have a very different memory of that from me. Where was there a mask mandate? Between 2003 and 2020, I thought masks were only for Asian tourists and California fire seasons, and never once heard of a western medical official even encouraging people to wear them outside of operating rooms. And I don’t remember any travel bans - my boyfriend got swine flu on a night train from Rome to Paris, which I assume he wouldn’t have been on if there had been a travel ban. And while I do recall that a vaccine was developed, I don’t recall hearing whether anyone I know got the vaccine, or whether it was just folded into the annual flu vaccine that winter, or what - completely different from this past year when everyone I know was lining up eagerly to get vaccines, and some states even requiring vaccines for public behaviors.
If the exit strategy is the same sort of “constant crisis” that we’ve had since 2009, then I would be very disappointed at how much our public health authorities are willing to continue prematurely surrendering to disease.
I remember 2 consecutive years (or was it consecutive? memory is not so accurate after 10+y :-) ) of having to wear a mask in some airports (granted, it was entering in thailand ) and having few thermal cameras that could send you in quarantine if you were slightly feverish. Travel ban was never official IIRC, but travel to asia was advised against. I also remember taking paracetamol preventively and be sure to use the airport toilet and wash myself with cold water before passing those camera (just to be completely frank on how I like mass medecine ;=) ). It did not last long, and flu vaccine were stockpiled (Belgium) for a flu epidemic that was not severe enough to convince more people to get vaccinated. Maybe it's more the media coverage that was not scary enough....But still, the early stage were super similar to covid in feb 2019. That was what I mean: I think that after covid, a normal flu season may be enough to justify a bunch of measures very similar to the current ones, because flu in the past induced early reaction similar to covid early reaction, and current measures are taken with a hospital situation not far from what happen every winter, certainly winters with a strong flu. So what would prevent re-instigating the same measures every winter? Apart from good old flu being less scary than a new disease (which after 2y, covid slowly begin not to be ;-) )
In the aftermath, IIRC, vaccine stockpiling was investigated but did not result in much, it was not enough for heads to roll, I think vaccines were sent to developing countries that probably destroyed them (Probably the last AZ vaccine batches will have the same fate ).
For the statistics, it's quite difficult to find a monthly (or quarter) curve showing the last ten winters. Would be great to find, but I failed. What you have quite a lot of anecdotal evidences if you look for hospital saturation (and possibly add flu) for 2019 and before. For example (I searched in french, hopital saturation grippe)
https://www.rtbf.be/article/les-hopitaux-liegeois-en-activite-intense-voire-saturation-cet-hiver-9531092?id=9531092
https://www.rtbf.be/article/grippe-et-chutes-les-hopitaux-du-hainaut-sont-pleins-a-craquer-9506451
https://information.tv5monde.com/info/la-france-pays-grippe-et-malade-de-sa-sante-148674.
or in English (hospital overwhelmed flu):
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/health-headlines/hospitals-overwhelmed-by-flu-and-norovirus-patients-1.1108376
https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/
That's how I got the impression that this is common: from those articles (and also many TV interviews, some post covids), you have many hospital or ICU main doctors saying the situation is tense every winter....
My hospital cancelled all elective procedures to free up capacity (both beds and staff) to deal with the current omicron wave. That's considerably worse than a bad flu season. Omicron isn't a big deal for a vaccinated population, but we don't have one, and the unvaxed are filling the hospitals.
And you should try to get some hospital saturation statistics before 2019. In winter, hospital being under tension or even saturated is nothing uncommon. Even when the flu do not make the front page.
I mean, I work here. I get the system announcements. I'm sure you're right that things go up in the winter, but I've never seen that and I've been here fifteen years.
Unless you're suggesting that they blanket postponed elective procedures unnecessarily. This is of course possible, but this place is run by smart people who like money, so I have trouble calling it likely.
It depend in which country you are. In many places, vaccinated occupy more than 50% of the hospital beds. They are still less likely to be hospitalized, but the % of vaccinated in 55y and above is such that indeed, unvaccinated are now the minority in hospital beds. Less so in ICU, but ICU are not overwhelmed anymore, not by omicron with the current population immunity (vaccination or previous infection).
I speak from western Europe, i don't know what the situation is in the US or Asia... So here, going from 70-90% of vaccinated to 100% is not only practically impossible, but even if it was it would likely not change things much. Out of political circles, this is not a controversial point of view I think. Zvi certainly share it. So I must conclude that this meme (unvaccinated are responsible for hospital being overwhelmed and care being denied, they indirectly kill people!) is now a pure scapegoating campaign, even if it was not pre-omicron when vaccines where both more efficient and less prevalent.
Here in Nova Scotia, the unvaxxed are about 10% of the population, but are occupying 20 - 30 % of the hospitalized Covid case beds. This has led to postponement of treatment for most non-life threatening conditions, extending our already very long wait times.
So this means my girlfriend, who is waiting for knee replacements and suffers daily and increasing pain, and consequent declining mobility, is having her suffering prolonged.
Now logically, I realize that this is not all the fault of the unvaxxed. But am I angry at them for making the problem worse?
Yes, damn right I am.
And I don’t consider this “scapegoating”.
You've just described how this is classic scapegoating though. The unvaccinated did not directly delay all these surgeries. The direct cause of that was the government, who then simply pointed a finger at the unvaccinated and said they're to blame.
Now, it's possible that the government is right about this, and there's not much they could have done to improve things for you, in light of this 10% unvaccinated. However, being the direct cause of this pain, they at least deserve a hard look.
I see this so much from Canada in particular. People are so eager to hate each other, and don't even think about what the government is doing
>Here in Nova Scotia, the unvaxxed are about 10% of the population, but are occupying 20 - 30 % of the hospital beds.
20-30% of the hospital beds, or 20-30% of the hospitalized covid cases? These are quite different things.
Taking your upper estimation and assuming risk and vaccination to be homogeneous and uncorrelated, if all those unvaccinated magically got vaccinated you will decrease bed occupation by 20-25%.
Not significative in my view, but of course this is debatable (In the debate, remember 20% was not significative either for people saying urgent measures to increase ICU and normal hospital beds were pointless, pre-vax).
The question is how risky a behavior is, how significant it will be for hospital congestion, and how acceptable, proportional and equitable the prevention measures are (equitable depend if the measures affect and protect the same people, or different people). Vaccination promoted to (slightly) reduce hospital use is not different than banning sport which increase injuries, or unecessary (to be defined) road usage (traffic accidents). And indeed, this was proposed during the lockdowns.
For me, this is far away from clear health recommendation (which is based on a risk/benefit analysis at the individual level) and deep into (nasty) political consideration (how much personal liberty can be directly removed to prevent indirect risk?).
To be clear, It's been a while since I think this particular balance has gone much too far in removing personal liberties, so I may be atypical and not fully objective on covid in particular (although I am old enough to slowly enter in the at-risk population)
But still, regardless of your risk, risk-aversion and libertarian profile, the minimum is to clarify the benefit expect from the liberty removal, compare it with other measures in term of effect, and transparently explain that and assess if the effects are the one expected. This is not done for terrorism, for climate change, for food regulation, and certainly not for covid.
All of those reason are behind a constant shift (it often go hand in hand with scapegoating), but it's not only a left/right thing (terrorism-based restrictions for example is pushed more by the right), my guess is that it's governance by media-promoted fear that has emerged since 1990, when the east bloc vanished as a credible bogeyman and voting power shifted to a risk-averse public (more old, more women).
I'm in Missouri, in the US. I think you're probably correct about other countries. There's a comment somewhere else on the open thread that Ireland has had cases go way up during the Omicron wave with hospitalizations flat and deaths down. That makes sense in a well-vaxed country. Here we still have 70 - 80 % of the covid hospitalizations among the (younger, less at-risk) un-vaxed population. That's down from the 90+ percent it was, but still bad enough to fill the hospitals.
Might be that it's not happening everywhere, I'm not looking broadly at hospital statistics, just my (very large) system in St Louis.
The Scandinavian countries will eventually move to a situation where the virus is present, but the governments won't feel the need to and will not pressured to "do something" , because they will consider the virus in its evolved state as weak enough to be managed without strong state measures. In Norway in particular (I'm somewhat familiar with the situation in Denmark too), there is an evolving consensus that the Omicron variant doesn't justify strong measures by the state in order to control it. This started just after the (recently elected) government imposed sudden measures a little while before Christmas. Suddenly, the newspapers started publishing op-eds arguing against Covid measures, articles highlighting the economic and personal damage caused by the measures, etc., at a much increased frequency compared to earlier in the pandemic. There was a backroom (but scarcely concealed) political battle between the Health Minister and the (mostly) anti-restrictionist governing mayor of Oslo -- both members of the leading party of the government coalition -- which led to the government losing face and restrictions being loosened significantly. In addition, several big names in the Norwegian Institute of Public Health have outright stated that they don't see the need for any significant Covid-related measures at the moment.
It's worth noting that even before this, Norway was out of tune with much of Europe in several ways -- for example, the Institute of Public Health does *not* recommend that under-45s get the booster dose (it also does not recommend them not to, however, but leaves it as a personal decision), which means that the EU's decision to invalidate Covid passes several months after getting your second dose has caused great consternation as Norwegians love travelling. We have also never used Covid passes to any significant extent domestically, and vaccine mandates outside of health workers (it's not mandated for health workers, but it has been discussed) are and have been totally out of the question. To look beyond Norway for a second, I think Denmark and Sweden are relatively similar in many ways. Denmark has actively used Covid passes, but stopped using them before the Omicron surge and seems ready to stop using them again in the near future. Sweden was famously laissez-faire early in the pandemic -- it currently has slightly tougher restrictions than Norway, I believe, but is certainly not a country of Covid restriction enthusiasts.
I think much of continental Europe differs in many ways. Countries like France, Germany, Austria and the Benelux countries have less societal trust and had more polarised societies and larger political divisions before the pandemic. Rhetoric from the media and political leaders has been extreme throughout the pandemic. High death counts also contribute to this, although I certainly don't think this is the main reason why Scandinavia looks so different from much of the continent (remember, Sweden also has relatively high death counts).
My impression is that in France, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands (and surprisingly also in the UK despite the current lack of restrictions), majorities favour what I would call extreme policies that seem out of the question in Scandinavia, including vaccine mandates, very severe and long-term Covid passes and total shut-downs of society as preemptive measures (as recently seen in the Netherlands). Rhetoric from politicians align with this (except in the UK, where the liberal wing of the Tories basically govern a much more authoritarian population), as for example seen in the recent quotes from Macron (that I to be honest find quite scary). Like you, I'm not sure how several of the EU's major countries will get out of this.
I am quite in line with Swedish position on the covid handling. Which is strange because i am much less on line with some other issues... Maybe it show that the way those crisis are handled is quite dependent on the idea and personality of the guy that draft the first reaction (i think the head of the Swedish equivalent of the CDC is to praise) and contingent political circumstances, after the initial stage measures got a life of their own.
I believe the whole reason Sweden reacted differently to COVID is because its reaction was completely dictated by the Swedish equivalent of the CDC, and never actually got politicized. Probably because of some legal/constitutional peculiarities of Sweden, which basically say that the politicians have no say during pandemics (I'm not aware of the specifics, but that has been my impression at least).
Non-political entities generally seem to be more moderate all around the world; here in Finland the local equivalent of the CDC have generally also been fairly moderate, but were repeatedly overridden by the Ministry of Health, which generally has held on to a much harder line. This has been particularly pronounced in the last few months, when the Ministry of Health has been getting visibly out of touch and started contradicting pretty much everyone else (CDC-guys, most of actual doctors, municipalities, teachers, others ministries). Yet at the end of the day it is they who dictate the actual policy here, which is why Finland from one of the least restricted European countries throughout most of the pandemic by now turned into one of the most restricted ones.
In the UK I would say there is a big gap between polls (which show the public to be incredibly pro-restrictions, e.g. 30% of people wanting a permanent curfew and permanent bans on nightclubs) and people's actual behaviour. For example polls in early autumn repeatedly showed that 80+% of people thought masks should be made mandatory again even though mask wearing on public transport, in shops etc had declined to ~30% by that point. You could also see this, I think, in the way that Labour was quite vague in what restrictions they wanted in the face of omicron, even though polls showed their voters favoured strong restrictions.
I think there's a lot to pack in this question. They can just lift all restrictions but they need cover. Omicron - so it goes is the opportunity to do so as it's seen as a pathway to endemicity. Some experts, however, worry that if we continue to mass vaccinated particularly with boosters, this can threaten the chance to come out of it as it can create a more virulent strain. The risk being we once again end up in a bad lockdown cycle. The other part is the W.H.O. now becoming more vocal about ending travel bans and passports as well as cautioning against boosters for its own sake. With Omicron showing itself to be contagious but not virulent, this is the opening and several European countries are taking it. Where the Nordic countries, Switzerland, Ireland, Turkey, Holland, Scotland, Spain, UK, and others have lifted or loosened restrictions, we still have France, Germany, Italy, and Belgium still keeping a tight grip. Australia and New Zealand are simple on another planet with the absurd 'Zero Covid' obsession which will get them precisely nowhere. Obviously the USA is mostly ok except for blue states and Canada is in between the EU and Australia teetering with its own excessive measures. Nonetheless, the overall sentiment is shifting as people are showing their fatigue if not impatience now. It's all political, hysterics and no science.
As for governments falling, I would hope. They should in my eyes pay a price for their decisions. In my view, the measures have been catastrophic filled with 'unseen' unintended consequences that resulted in negative trade-offs making the cure worse than the disease. There has to be a psychological if not psychiatric fall out from this. Someone has to pay for that be it public health officials, politicians, media and the private medical and scientific establishment that supported 'lockdowns'. Easy to do that when you get to keep a pay check. Governments, like Canada and Quebec (who have shockingly, cynically and idiotically abused the Charter which makes me wonder how resilient - if not valuable - it really all is) in particular, who are scapegoating the unvaccinated game are playing a very dangerous game of Salem. Such fools Quebec are. I would hope governments will be investigated and there are lawsuits that have been launched. We've heard at calls for a Nuremberg 2.0. I know Dr. Montagnier has filed with The Hague and a German lawyer Reiner Fuellmich has built probably the biggest case on Covid in the world. Where that goes will be interesting. Then come all the main lawsuits against government and companies for outright abuse of established medical and constitutional rights. Those will be epic and take years to process and rule on. And it's not like the 'we didn't know' is going to be a fair or acceptable defence because from the ONSET as early as March of 2020 prominent scientists and experts were calling for calm and reasoned approaches. We can even point to names like Atlas, Bhakdi, Bhattachayra (and TGBD), Ioannidis, Racaniello and later Yeadon, Vanden Bossche, Montagnier, Perronne and so many others who tried to warn the public only to be outrageously silenced. Fear porn was to rule the narrative. But we have the digital trail, archives and data to easily refute any claims of 'we didn't know'. Hooey that. They knew early on this virus was going to behave like any cyclical and seasonal virus. I'm purposely leaving out the fact this may indeed have been man-made and the role of a profit vaccine scheme. Best to leave that to RFK jr.'s book.
Will they just try and get us to get on with it? I hope. They would be wise to do so. But there will be a reckoning. There has to be. You can't damage the lives of millions through mandates and lockdowns and not expect there to be one.
A complete avoidable mess all this. Deep mass psychosis, fear, cowardice, cruelty, and plain old stupidity. This thing had it all. Greatest medical hysteria in history. And there are criminal elements to it.
My two cents.
> Australia and New Zealand are simple on another planet with the absurd 'Zero Covid' obsession which will get them precisely nowhere
You're out of date there. Australia abandoned covid zero about six months ago (oversimplification, different states did it at different times and Western Australia is basically a different country at this point) after it turned out that lockdowns couldn't eradicate Delta in winter. Right now we're coming down from a huge omicron outbreak, but omicron plus 95% vaxxed means not many dramas, and there's not many restrictions anywhere (except some indoor mask stuff).
Australia has done a remarkably quick turnaround from one of the most lockdowny places in the world to one where covid restrictions barely exist.
Thanks for the update Yes, I know it was said they abandoned it but the perception was the measures remained that gave it the impression that was still a policy aim. I know NLD abandoned it altogether. All I see, from AUS, are constant protests, Dan Andrews saying something nuts, police arresting people for not having a passport. All from NSW. I have not seen any change in rhetoric. I guess we're not getting proper info. I'm glad Australia is evolving. Had me very worried what I was reading. Cheers.
Yes, I think that foreign reporting on Australia's covid situation has been pretty lacking.
Of course usually Australian domestic politics doesn't make news at all in the US, so on the odd occasion it does it means we're being used to prove a point by one side or the other, with actual accurate reporting going out the window in favour of a Narrative.
We have protests every now and then but they've pretty much died down now that there's not much left to protest about. I couldn't find any reference to police officers arresting people for not having vaccine passports, only some discussion of whether they could[*]. And Dan Andrews is the premier of Victoria, not NSW.
[*] which they could, but only in the sense of a standard trespassing sort of arrest where the owner of premises asks you to leave and you don't
I regularly read and occasionally comment on a major US-based forum for firearms owners. The actions of the Australian government and the reactions of the people were viewed with an angry mixture of horror, disgust, outrage, despair, and a grim apocalyptic fatalism.
The actions I am referring to (as reported here in the US, and also gleaned from Internet sources, and as understood by individual forum members) included:
-- House arrest for all persons in certain provinces, regardless of the number or trend of COVID cases, going on for more than six months.
-- Universal govt tracking of all movement by individuals.
-- Ban on between-province travel for any circumstance.
-- Total ban on public assembly especially to protest COVID restrictions.
-- (Possibly unrelated but contemporaneous) Parliment granted total power to monitor and intercept any communication between private citizens, and even authority to take over and spoof e-mail and other accounts to mislead or entrap citizens.
-- Denial of right-of-return to Austrailian citizens travelling abroad.
-- Censorship and (Possible) prosecution of media outlets that spread information contrary to the government's communication, or critisizing its actions.
Needless to say, all of those are prohibited by the US Constitution. Thank God we still uphold it, we are having polite arguments in the Supreme Court, not martial law. But...
QUESTION --> How was any of this even possible?
ANSWER --> Austraila has outlawed private ownership of firearms.
This may seem hyperbole, but note that in the US, especially California where I am, most local Sherrif's Departments and other Law Enforcement Agencies publicly stated that they would not enforce COVID restrictions they disagreed with. Mostly this was because they are illegal and unconstitutional. But as a practical matter, enforcing a mask mandate on armed citizens will result in a shootout, over and over and over.
I think there is a vast gulf between policing (and ruling or dictating) a nation of unarmed people vs a citizenry where every citizen may be armed. While police in the US certainly commit abuses all the time and usually escape legal consequence, those cases are the exception to the 99% of encounters that are for clearly-law-defined public safety/crime.
It would be another matter entirely for American police to enforce new draconian restrictions on everyone. Because, fundamentally, US police still see themselves as also citizens.
Being certain that the government not only had a legal monopoly on violence, but a physical one as well, I think would make the government believe they truly were the elect, meant to govern at will. "Patents of Nobility" is a phrase in the Constitution that is there for a reason. The Stasi, Gestapo, NKVD, are all names that come to mind immediately.
A majority of Americans deeply believe that the protections of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would be gone and meaningless without the right to keep and bear arms. The grim fatalism I mentioned above is because many see some recent US govt actions as attempts to disarm and control the populace entirely, (not necessarily part of a vast plan, but just the Iron Law of government power and government's general hostility to individual rights) and Australia is what happens if people do not fight back.
Some people on the forum are extremists. Some are joking. But most are current or ex-military and many are LEO, and all are very serious. The example of Australia (and also the UK) is seen as a final warning of active totalitarianism.
I guess, "when will they fight back?" was really the universal question. Fond recollections of drunken bar fights with hard-headed Aussies lightened the mood somewhat. A group watching of "Gallipoli." But at the root, "When does the rebellion start?"
The perception of Australia worldwide is also affected by the Djokovitch circus. The way it was covered (which, as always, may or may not reflect what really happened and certainly miss part of the local politic games played) show Australia as eager to follow a no-compromise stand: Vaccination is uber important and has to be forced at least indirectly (Macron-like). That's also Zvi analysis, looking at the motivation behind judges confirming expulsion after the appeal.
Depending on how much you fear the current omicron covid, and how much you think individual liberties need to be weighted against state interests, this makes Aussies more or less sympathetic abroad.
New Zealand is also obviously pivoting to 'living with covid', just cloaked in cautious rhetoric to placate the zero coviders in Ardern's base. Their stated plan for omicron is to implement restrictions basically on the level of Western Europe (nightclubs restricted, caps on gatherings, masks, but restaurants/bars etc open and no lockdown) and they're openly predicting thousands of cases a day. It's a pretty far cry from their response to delta in August.
My guess is NZ will shoot up to several thousand cases a day fairly soon and they'll have opened the borders substantially by Easter (barring no new variants).
More than 2 cents I would say. I mostly agree about what should happen (not sure your splitting of european countries among the "let it go"/"lock them in" camps is 100% accurate. AFAIK, quite a few southern countries are among the "let it go": spain, portugal. Italy is a lot like France it seems, vaccination (with booster) pass that lock down those that do not kowtow only.
Holland on the other hand is clearly in the "lock them in" camp, glaringly so as it switched so quickly and strongly from the "let it go" just after the election. That's why I put them as the first to fall (if there is some falling), their timing is crazy, they have quite a lot of population resistance, and they tends look at what happen in the UK more than the rest of Europe.
Austria also, before Germany I think (Germany, it's complicated and super-regional)...
Still those are details and we agree there should be investigations and political consequences. But I wonder if there will be? And if not, if it is because the whole mess will be swept under the rug, or if it's because governments have consolidated their new authoritarian powers so much they are not accountable anymore?
Zvi's writeup on lesswrong is excellent as usual.
tl;dr - omicron infects literally everyone and people, including governments, stop giving a fuck. This is already happening in parts of Europe.
I'm just bracing myself for 2-3 months of complete health service meltdown at this point, as the omicron wave is currently steamrolling whatever capacity is left. Out of 15 coworkers, 5 have already been infected in the last month. I expect the world to be back to normal by summer.
In Ireland we had a massive surge of Omicron over the last month. Hospitalisations only went up slightly, deaths actually dropped. As of Saturday, most restrictions were lifted.
It's not in the US only. The vaccination campaign in many countries (at least in western europe) had the same effect: to increase vaccination rate (which imho was a good idea at the time), many dubious things were done: selective communication (hiding of some facts or doubts that were not consistent with the narrative) or outright lies, altruistic medecine (undergoing medical procedure to benefit others), exposure of previously-protected medical status, indirect pressure (legal and moral) for vaccination, quite a lot of things which are quite machiavelian (the goal justify the means) and, like all machiavelian bet, require constant re-assesment of the benefit/drawback balance. Among those thing there is also the scapegoating of the non-vaccinated population once it was small enough that scapegoating them was (maybe, my hope is that it will be fatal in the spring) politically advantageous. This is also machiavelian, but on another non-benign level, and has resulted on a very bad polarisation similar to wokism. The fracture line is not exactly the same, but in the end this is the element in the crisis that, in my view (speaking as fully vaccinated but booster-hesitant) , demand retribution. Macron is the most prominent figure guilty of that, but he's not the only one, far from it.
My work environment resembles a circus these days, and we want to formalize the bets we have ongoing into an actual prediction market.
Is there an app, webpage, or whatever that could allow a group of people to create one? Post questions, put money, track performances...
I'm looking to learn more about human hearing, and am wondering if anyone here might have any book recommendations on the subject? Specifically, I'm interested in understanding how the human ear works mechanically, how the brain makes sense of sound, and what we still don't know about those processes.
I don't have a background in science, but I enjoy reading about it, so I would be willing to put in some effort for a great text. I'm a composer, and am looking to learn more about how non-human animals perceive sound (with the goal of eventually writing music for other species), so I figured trying to understand the human ear would be a good place to start. If you know of any other books that seem pertinent to this goal, please point me towards them!
Thank you!
I heard the author of this book on the EconTalk podcast recently. I’m not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but it sounds close https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Mind-Brain-Constructs-Meaningful/dp/0262045869/ref=asc_df_0262045869_nodl/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=509199198673&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=13327145092956327115&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9052092&hvtargid=pla-1230820614630&psc=1
In my intro to audiology course back in the late 1990s, the lecturers thought that the Jack Katz Handbook of Clinical Audiology was the ultimate useful reference for everything we learned. I presume that the human ear hasn't evolved much since then, so it's probably still good. (I can't voucher for it because I never read it. I still passed anyway.)
I have nothing to add, but "writing music for other species" sounds really interesting!
Is there a way to see a list of the entire ACX archives? It seems I have to repeatedly scroll down to refresh and fetch a few items at a time.
I wonder what happens if you fetch the RSS feed? It's an xml file with posts, but sometimes those are truncated to some recent number.
Top right corner of the page there's a little down arrow. Click on that, click on the word 'archive' which appears and Bob's your uncle :)
This does not load the full archive for me, only the last ~25 posts until I scroll down to the bottom of the page, and then another 25 posts at a time.
Sorry my advice didn't help. Maybe perpetual scrolling is the only way....
Holy shit. This blogger is cool again. Good job bro!
Suppose I want to read the Bible (as an atheist) and get clued in on the historical context that I might not know from the text, and maybe on related historiography, as I go. What's the best way to do that? Anyone have a good recommendation for a .. secular annotated Bible, I guess?
Another vote for the New Oxford Annotated Bible here, that's the best you're going to get in the annotated-Bible line, especially with any ease.
Most "study bible" products from mainstream publishers are going to be fairly similar. The notes aren't part of the translation per se, but based on the publisher you'll get a bit of a different perspective. NRSV is a good (if a bit dull) modern mainline translation and ESV and NASB are the mainstream evangelical counterparts (all are using good texts and a solid translation philosophy outside a few controversial points), while NIV is common but neither accurate nor pleasant. Personally I prefer a smaller paper book with just center column cross-references because freely available online resources are so plentiful and I'm fairly well-contexted to begin with.
For quick historical context overview from a definitely Christian but historically informed perspective, The Bible Project has introductory videos for each book that are a very good start. Wikipedia leans too far in the historical-critical direction from my perspective but is probably better than the average print bible introductory material.
Enough of the historical work is done by Christian scholars who really believe this stuff that you can't get a full picture *just* looking at secular OT/NT scholars, and some of the major threads of 20th century secular textual criticism now look a bit silly while others are well integrated into mainstream Christian thinking. That's not to say Ken Hamm actually has anything to add, of course, just being realistic about the landscape of modern Biblical scholarship and selection effects that run in all directions.
I'm not answering your question, but I feel compelled to give my thoughts on reading the Bible.
I read the Bible cover to cover, partly to get the background required for understanding much of Western literature, partly to understand historic Jewish culture, and partly so I could tell everyone I read the Bible.
In my opinion you should avoid any kind of guided tour, or "How to Understand the Bible" material. At least for the first time you read it. This will allow you to form your own thoughts about what you are reading. You may be surprised by the insights you develop, and they will be your own. You can always return to biblical exegesis afterwards.
I read the King James Version for two reasons. First, because it is beautiful. The language is pure poetry. It can take some time to read, and it can be hard to understand, but it is totally worth it. To give an example: "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" from KGV versus "Today has enough trouble of its own." from the NET.
The second reason to read the KGV is that the lines are what is quoted in much of western literature.
The bad part of the KGV is the crazy emphasis (the single quotes distributed seemingly at random throughout the text) and italics. I found a 99 cent Kindle download that did not have this. Way easier to read. A funny side effect of the Kindle version, is that when you finish, Kindle recommends "Other books by God".
That said, good luck in your quest. I have no doubt you will learn a lot.
Just a heads up, if you're talking about the way the KJV distinguishes certain words, using italics in the modern versions, that's how the translators marked words that they added themselves to make the meaning more clear. That feature is more confusing than useful, these days, but it's nice that they tried.
And if you mean the single quotes in some of the names, those are accent marks to tell us what syllables of the names are stressed, to help us pronounce them.
The whole thing? That's brave... But to get the ball rolling, I was immensly impressed by The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb. It was created so that anyone could read/understand it and find it interesting. And it is! A brilliant interpretation for modern readers. I wish the rest were given the same treatment.
Thank you for posting this comment: I had no idea Crumb did Genesis. I was taken aback, and even more so to discover it is a faithful illustration with no satire or mockery. I'm going to have to add it to my collection!
You are correct. It is a very serious work that uses Crumb's extraordinary talent to try to bridge this important book's content to modern readers. I am not religious but I found it moving, and profound (sometimes in ways that must embarrass religious people) but this is no joke. I remember the forward pointing out that Genesis is the oldest book still in continuous use, and Crumb did it justice.
(Pro tip: I wish I'd known about the extremely helpful footnotes at the end of the book before getting to the end!)
The New Oxford Annotated Bible is the usual English edition for scholarly studies. For secondary sources on the Old Testament, I really enjoyed Richard Friedman's "Who Wrote the Bible?" and James Kugel's "How to Read the Bible". If you have absolutely no background in Christianity or Judaism and you just want an entertaining read of the text without all the historical background, I recommend The Brick Testament. And the Literature and History podcast episodes on the Bible will give you a lot of historical background.
I recently read about 70% of the Bible (with similar goals to yours I think) and settled on the New Oxford Annotated Bible, which I really enjoyed. Good intro to each section covering history, interpretation etc and tons of notes to complex verses.
Maybe pick up a textbook to cross-check with? I' a fan of Bart Ehrman and https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/107272.The_New_Testament seem promising, even though the bits on Q are weak IMO.
Bart Ehrman writes A LOT of books about the New Testament and you'll definitely get overlap between them, but I find them a joy to read. His books will give you information on how the Bible came to be what it is.
Yale lectures on Youtube are great for that. Here is a series on the Old Testament: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNeyuvTEbD-Ei0JdMUujXfyWi, and here is one on the New (even better imho): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL279CFA55C51E75E0.
I got a huge amount out of these when I listened a few years back - highly recommended (And for what it's worth, I liked the old testament ones better!)
Ok, perhaps I liked New Testament more because I am more interested in the Roman era than in the Ancient Near East
However I would advise you not to try to read it from cover to cover, as some parts (Numbers, early Chronicles...) are pretty boring).
Weirdly, I made it through those sorts of books fine. Leviticus was horribly dull, but I was mildly curious about the laws. The book of Job was what stopped my read; COVID was depressing enough without reading about poor Job.
Oh yeah Job is awful - well, it would be good if it was like 5 chapters instead of 28...
I fond Leviticus quite interesting but I would recommend reading René Girard's Violence and Sacred before going at it...
When I was about 16 I think, I got into my head to do just that and spent an excruciating week making my way through pages and pages of guys who died at 136 or whatever.
I unfortunately gave up before the juicy bits started and probably ended up reading Bertrand Russell instead. Sealed my faith:))
Honestly any good Christian Bible (or at least any good catholic Bible) should come with historical* notes of some sort at the start of each book. I don't know enough about English translations to recommand one though.
*Historical notes as in scientific history. It should also have notes on religious history and interpretation.
I've seen discussion of which bibles are the best translations, bur no discussion of which bibles have the best notes.
For the better part of a decade, I’ve self-harmed several times a day, exclusively in private. I am also an adult man. I won't describe how but the film "Foxcatcher" depicts something like what I do (though it's more extreme in one scene of that).
I had a bona-fide breakthrough recently though; I’ve self-harmed less than once a week for the last five weeks, which is unprecedented. Two montsh ago, when my new therapist asked me to make a list of feasible targets for our sessions, we both agreed that anything like “stop self harming” would be wildly optimistic — my ideas for targets were “go three days without self harming”. It’s too early to say that I’ve stopped, but I’ve never had anything have an impact like this, including a CBT course and meditation. Since this is unmistakeable progress, I thought I’d share.
The solution is simple but was made difficult by a barrier erected by my own understanding. The solution is: I needed to take full responsibility for the fact that I was doing it. I had convinced myself that it was involuntary, almost as if someone else was doing it, like hiccoughing or Tourette's-style ticking — my self-harm action is quite tic-like. But actually, I did have control.
I was self harming because I wanted to. I still want to, though I seem to be able to control it. But it’s very hard to admit that. Two reasons:
1. If you want to self-harm, it means you’re self hating, and therefore probably a less decisive and dependable person. If you don’t want to self harm but are engaging in it involuntarily, in a sense, you get to relax! Because hey, that’s just something that isn’t your fault.
2. Imagine someone who self-harms voluntarily and then tells people it was involuntary. That’s sympathy-seeking and dishonest, which is bad. Owning up to anything like sympathy-seeking is hard. In my case it is something I do in private and it was very rare that I told anyone about it (thereby to bring about sympathy), especially for the first 5 years or so. That makes it look as though it isn’t about sympathy-seeking. It is, though.
In talking about it with others, it was a problem that I was talking as if it was involuntary. My loved ones, and therapists I talked to, were, of course, sympathetic and believed me (or held back about not believing me!). To do otherwise they’d need be quite willing to give “tough love”. The tough love I needed did eventually come, around a month ago, in the form of a stranger, who had successfully dealt with a tic problem. He insinuated (politely, indirectly, by telling a story about himself) that it was voluntary, not involuntary.
“Take responsibility for your actions” is cliché and obvious — why so long to realize it? Other than wanting to believe it was involuntary, there is another possible reason. In thoughts and conversations about it, I and some loved ones and therapists emphasized that with many things I was taking too much responsibility, partly out of misplaced pride. This was because my triggers are mostly guilty memories, and some of them are of things that it is definitely irrational for me to take responsibility for. Obviously the correct answer is to take responsibility for some things and not others!
There’s an obvious similarity to smoking and alchoholism — I understand that AA gets people to say “I am an alchoholic”, even if it’s been years since they drank. At the same time I’m surprised by the slightly responsibility-avoiding nature of The First Step.
It’d be great to not want to self harm; I thought that I already was a person who doesn’t want to — I thought, again, that my actions were involuntary. I thought I needed to do was stop an involuntary action. Well, I have stopped the action, but the cost, apparent to me, that I have become a person who wants to self harm. That’s silly though, I was always one of those!
The nice thing, then, is that it is a matter of days to go from being a person who knows they want to self harm and does so, to a person who knows they want to self harm but can stop themselves.
That's awesome progress! About cliches:. Think of them like short pointers to deeper truths that can't be expressed in words. Wisdom is looking for those deep truths, and Intelligence is poking holes in the cliches, using the D&D stats.
Congratulations, sounds like a huge milestone in your recovery.
There's a bunch of phenomena that cluster around what you describe:
- borderlines being totally out of control unless facing a serious social or physical threat, at which point they suddenly gain impulse control
- my own experience of disassociating from my depressive rumination and realizing I don't have to follow its narrative (which would end in suicide, at the time)
- for a lighter example, the archetypal procrastinator who really can't force themselves to do anything, but once the deadline is tomorrow they suddenly can
The key to all of this seems to be that there is some kind of "inside the box" regular self control, and a way higher actual capacity for self control, that "you" don't have conscious access to, but it can be tapped into by circumstances and a supportive social environment.
I wonder also how it all fits into the Timothy Leary reality tunnel / life script concept. Can you paradigm shift into a person who has different capabilities? Stop drinking by rewriting your vision of yourself into an ex-alcoholic?
I think I understand why you say inside/outside the box. But I'd fear that model would become a way of generating excuses. I think "you" DO in fact have conscious access to the things, you always do. You need to think of yourself as having that.
When you say "borderlines" do you mean "People with borderline personality disorder"?
We're getting into some serious doublethink here :) But I get your concern.
I think "heroic willpower is accessible but the access is difficult to get" is the right balance. It forces you to consider which of your existing life circumstances and thought patterns help or hinder that, and hopefully stops you from beating yourself up that you can't conjure it at will.
Re BPD - yep, that's what I meant.
What should we do about the Uyghurs? “We” can me Americans or rationalists as you see fit.
Geographically speaking, the Russians seem like the major power in the best place to intervene.* Maybe there's something we could offer Russia to persuade them to help?
(I'm only half joking, here.)
* Mongolia has the best human rights rating in the region, but lacks geopolitical clout. And Kazakhstan has a worse human rights rating than Russia, although it's still better than China.
There are many things we *should* do, in the abstract; but in practice, we *can* do nothing. The same applies to Taiwan.
If Xi wanted to avoid having a muslim fifth column, he could have found much more humane ways to do it. Such as partitioning Xinjiang and sending the Uyghurs to one side of the partition and giving them independence. (Partition could be done in a gradual and orderly fashion over a decade or two by just gradually raising property taxes for people who live on the wrong side of the partition.)
But it's unfortunately typical of nations to act as if they attach an absurdly high utility to maintaining sovereignty over every bit of territory they can, even when the actual utility of maintaining that overarching government is less than zero.
Example: In British Empire times, the UK was paying far more to administer its colonies than what the colonies were worth, but pride made the UK act against its own interests.
In general the more finely divided government is, the more tailored it can be to the preferences of the particular people it governs, the better off those people will be. To overcome this strong presumption of home rule advantage, the distant capitol better have some overwhelming technological superiority, at least as extreme as Rome versus gallic tribes in Julius Caesar's time.
> In British Empire times, the UK was paying far more to administer its colonies than what the colonies were worth, but pride made the UK act against its own interests.
I know nearly nothing about this, but is it possible that there were also some other concerns? For example, if Britain gives up the colonies, some competitor might take them instead (and perhaps manage them more efficiently, and generate a profit), so perhaps keeping the colonies is a way to preserve the advantage of Britain.
Kinda like today big software companies sometimes buy smaller ones, not because they care about the product, but to avoid the possibility that a successful competitor would appear on the market.
They made a lot of money from their colonies. Then the world's economy changed, colonies became a money sink, and they gave them up. (They did drag their feet on giving them up, though.) By this point, competitors getting the colonies was no longer a concern, because nobody wanted to pick up a money sink.
That's a reasonable theory. I doubt any of the other empires at the time were vastly more efficient though.
It's a question of individual impact/span of influence and the sin of silence. I like Randomstring's suggestion fo writing one's Representative and Senators. And I will do so.While it is something, I suspect, however, it is more for my sense of myself than it is for the Uyghers.
The French have finally named it genocide last week. I'm not sure what this entails though.
As with most foreign policy issues there's not much we can directly do. There's charities that need donations like https://uhrp.org/ and https://campaignforuyghurs.org/. Awareness raising can also be useful. In particular writing to your elected representatives to say you support measures like blocking goods made with forced labor, sanctions on Chinese officials and asylum for refugees
I wrote to my Rep. and made a donation to UHRP.org. Thanks for your suggestions.
I think y'all should do nothing about them. They're not really a threat to anyone other than the Chinese (and foreigners in China). Presumably China is both motivated and able to do whatever needs to be done.
To be clear, the problem being discussed isn't that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement uses violence in support of its separatist goals. Presumably China is both motivated and able to address that problem.
The problem is that China is sending millions of Uyghurs to "reeducation" camps and using them for forced labor.
Is it really a problem for people on the other side of the globe that China imprisons separatists? I mean, the US killed hundreds of thousands of its separatists in the 1800s, and few people seem very outraged about that. Imprisoning them seems more humane to me.
(1) Most of the Uyghurs being sent to "reeducation" camps aren't involved in a violent insurrection. They're being targeted because of their ethnicity & religion.
(2) Norms of what is / is not acceptable in war have changed since the 1800s. Genocide has become much less acceptable since the horrors of WWII.
(3) There was active debate within most European powers about whether or not they should intervene in the US Civil War.
If someone asks "what can we do about the concentration camps?" the correct answer is not "don't worry, the Germans seem to have a solution to the Jewish question."
I think you meant to say "what can we do about the Jews", to make that analogous? But I don't think that the historical conflicts between Jews and their host populations have much in common with the present-day conflict between the Uyghurs and the Chinese or that intuitions about the former should be simply copied to the latter situation.
The answer still shouldn't be "Do a genocide". There is absolutely no excuse for what China is doing to the Uyghurs, let alone a justification.
In fact, "don't do a genocide" is a good base rule to have in general. If your policy of dealing with an ethnic group is genocide, you're the bad guy
I suggested "do nothing", not "do a genocide". Generally, getting involved in conflicts on the other side of the planet involving entirely foreign peoples seems like a bad idea to me. Americans keep doing this, and it keeps causing problems.
If what you actually meant to say was "What China is doing is terrible but we have no practical way to stop them", then you shouldn't have made a post framing China's actions as simply "what needs to be done" and interpreting OP's question as asking for a threat assessment of the Uyghurs.
It should go without saying, but "is it necessary to genocide this minority?" is never a question you should be asking. The answer is no.
Not helpful and not funny. Plus my anti-virus software thinks you're a scammer, and when even unthinking software doesn't find you funny, it's time to hang it up:
"Website blocked due to a suspicious top level domain (TLD)
www.sorryisaidthat.biz
Malwarebytes Browser Guard blocked this page because it uses a suspicious top level domain (TLD). These are frequently used by scam or phishing sites, but can be used by legitimate websites as well. If you trust this website, please click CONTINUE TO SITE. Otherwise, choose GO BACK."
Blocking a website only because it has a "biz" domain seems a bit excessive to me.
Not actually discussion kindling, but in fact satirical CW bait.
Less of this, please.