HN user
Cutting edge ->
Matthew Johnson: Psychedelics | Lex Fridman Podcast #145
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICj8p5jPd3Y
Matthew W. Johnson is a professor and psychedelics researcher at Johns Hopkins.
Once someone has formed an identity around some core assumptions of the world, anything that challenges it will be seen as an attack on one’s ego.
That's hard to escape, and it might well be a quite useful mechanism in many cases, but multiply that by filter bubbles and echo chambers, and it can become difficult for otherwise reasonable people to have conversations about many topics. It happens here too but I would say less than in other parts of the worlds. Here = HN. Worlds = Parallel realities that get created that way ^
Related ;
Beware online "filter bubbles" ( 2011 )
https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_b...
I would argue some media outlets are more reliable than others, as can be established for oneself by looking at their track records and following the money. I think this ^ applies as is to mainstream media in general, pick your flavour, but some organisations are trying to do journalism right. You ought to be careful before defaulting to not believing anything you read. I think using your discretion in selecting trusted sources goes a long way in ensuring some level of information integrity. Add to that a layer of fact-checking resources, using your common sense and trying to read between the lines, and you might end up with a coherent world view that you can use to interface with other people. Getting your propaganda from multiple sides can also add scope to your experience of the world from what other people write about it. That being said, I reckon it's a complex mess ... my $0,02.
You must be aware of this but here's who I consider ( to my knowledge ) to be at the forefront of those questions and the best documented / systematic and comprehensive resource ;
https://nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html
As a side note, and from someone with negative karma, you may wish to peruse my recent comments about Covid, some seem to think they are unthinkable ideas while I persist in saying they are worth considering, although it is about an ongoing black swan and therefore probably not within the scope of your survey, they fit your description in that way.
Textbook example ^ and right on the money, I think. You barely even have to send anyone " over there " just take what they produce and roll with that. Free goodies. Of course if you have a few idle provocateurs, it's probably a good return on investment.
Honest question ; why is this thread [flagged] ? I get the answer might be obvious and disappointing, but surely the thread is not being cancelled right ?
Not at all. I wasn't arguing against the vaccines but against blanket lockdowns ( EDIT : I guess that was really not clear, since I was initially arguing about that, my bad ). I have reservations about the vaccines, but on a voluntary basis, it seems to make a lot of sense that the people in the at-risk demographics and those in daily direct contact with them should get it. The damage from the lockdowns however could be equal to or worse than the damage they seek to prevent. This damage not being limited solely to loss of life but also including that. This is not even a marginal opinion, as per my previous comments, it is backed by many scientists and the WHO itself.
Feel free to swarm the karma out of me for clarifying that ( not necessarily directed to parent comment ).
I am not disputing that part of the equation.
If you care for your own health but not for the health of the people in the community you live in, then this makes perfect sense.
It's not that I don't care for the health of others, it's that I care more about the health of 98% of the population ( including mine and that of people I know ) that are more or less invulnerable to the virus than about the health of people that would die ( for the most part ) within the next few years from just about any cause, and that are not currently enjoying any quality of life nor contributing to society. It's a matter of proportionate and rational response. See Focused Protection.
I am for throwing everything we got for minimizing those deaths, up to a certain point and within what is reasonable.
this entire account consists of argument about Covid
More like 11 / 21 total threads I commented in.
Given this is a pretty hot and important topic, and that the flow of information about it is restricted ( censored ) through various mechanisms, especially the stance I have on it, which is best resumed by the Great Barrington Declaration ( signed by 13,000 + medical and public health scientists that I keep linking to ) I believe this is not an unreasonable ratio. In any event, your claim is false. If you check some of the stuff I've linked to, you may find I have some objectively valid points.
Meanwhile, multiple sources suggest that they are vastly inflated ;
" ... That, of course, can mean anything from having had a recent positive COVID-19 test (which may or may not have been accurate) to having tested positive months earlier to simply having been declared positive based on symptoms (with hospitals facing strong financial incentives to claim COVID-19 deaths).
For the sake of argument, however, let us assume that the CDC’s numbers are valid. Out of those 164,280 deaths, the CDC calculates that just six percent of them, or 9,857, were caused solely by COVID-19. “For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death,” the agency says. In other words, 94 percent of those who died with COVID-19 already had two or more other serious health issues such as hypertension or diabetes." [0]
[0] ; https://thenewamerican.com/cdc-fewer-than-10-000-americans-h...
How many of these people would have died in the next year without the intervention of Covid ? The general idea is that lockdowns are doing way more harm than they prevent. As acknowledged by the WHO and many others ;
" “We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Dr. David Nabarro said to The Spectator’s Andrew Neil. “The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.” " [0].
" ... thousands of medical health experts signed their names to a petition calling for the end of coronavirus lockdowns, citing the “irreparable damage” they’ve caused.
"As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists, we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection,” read the petition, known as the Great Barrington Declaration. "Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health." " [1]
[0] ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=915&v=x8oH7cBxgwE&feature=yo...
[1] ; https://gbdeclaration.org/
See also ;
Years of potential life lost
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_potential_life_lost
COVID-19, unemployment, and suicide
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
American people are crying out for help and dying − not from a virus with an “infection fatality rate” of 0.15-0.2% across all age groups, and 0.03 to 0.04% in those under 70 years old. (This means, 99.96% of nearly everyone who gets the virus lives.) No, the desperation and distress are in response to the government’s unprecedented mandates and lockdowns.
Yup, as common sense dictates and as highlighted in the Great Barrington Declaration ;
Azat is a dedicated mathematician who published two mathematical papers while being in the detention center. Statements in support of Azat were released by the Société Mathématique de France and by the American Mathematical Society in which mathematicians demanded a fair and transparent trial for Azat.
It's practically impossible to shield the vulnerable population from a highly contagious disease that is rampant in the non-vulnerable population - someone after all needs to tend for the vulnerable.
Case in point for Focused Protection [0]
[0] ; https://gbdeclaration.org/
"By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized."
Essentially anything that deviates from WHO guidelines, that is to say conventional wisdom and orthodoxy...
This.
Based on an Aug 11, 2016 comment of yours, maybe you would like to start with The Captain and the Enemy, which also happens to be where I started. After that I started reading everything GG although I'm not quite done. I currently have The Ministry of Fear waiting to be loved. Myself I love the Penguin editions, perfect format and the smell ... the ones from the 70's I mean.
I am a big fan of GG but some of his books I find just too dry, almost literally in some senses, where the arid African climate seems to just pour out of the pages onto you, and also permeates the contents ; The Heart of the Matter, A Burnt-Out Case, are examples that come to mind. Don't let your first impressions turn you off from this genius. Some of his other books are quite different. Had I started with one of these ^ I might not be able to recommend those ->
I have loved ; The Human Factor, The Captain and the Enemy, The Honorary Consul, Our man in Havana, The Tenth Man ...
Terry A. Davis (1969–2018) began experiencing regular manic episodes in 1996, leading him to numerous stays at mental hospitals. Initially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he was later declared schizophrenic and remained unemployed for the rest of his life. He suffered from delusions of space aliens and government agents that left him briefly hospitalized for his mental health issues. After experiencing a self-described "revelation", he proclaimed that he was in direct communication with God, and that God told him the operating system was for God's third temple.
Now that's a founder's story.
Ultraviolet radiation is a common method of killing bacteria and viruses. Now, researchers from Tel Aviv University have proven that the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, can be killed efficiently, quickly and cheaply using ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (UV-LEDs) at specific frequencies.
“We discovered that it is quite simple to kill the coronavirus using LED bulbs that radiate ultraviolet light,” said Prof. Hadas Mamane, head of the Environmental Engineering Program at Tel Aviv University's School of Mechanical Engineering, who led the study with Prof. Yoram Gerchman and Dr. Michal Mandelboim.
She said that the UV-LED bulbs require less than half a minute to destroy more than 99.9% of the coronaviruses. The study is the first of its kind in the world. An article about it was published earlier this month in the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology.[0]
~[0] ; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S101113442...
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. - Chinese Proverb
Excellent break down of the concept by Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto ( 9:18 );
Jordan Peterson Pick Your Sacrifice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5--W9mhC4zA
" [...] an approach we call Focused Protection [...]
As immunity builds in the population, the risk of infection to all – including the vulnerable – falls. We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity – i.e. the point at which the rate of new infections is stable – and that this can be assisted by (but is not dependent upon) a vaccine. Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity.
The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.
Adopting measures to protect the vulnerable should be the central aim of public health responses to COVID-19. By way of example, nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity and perform frequent testing of other staff and all visitors. Staff rotation should be minimized. Retired people living at home should have groceries and other essentials delivered to their home. When possible, they should meet family members outside rather than inside. A comprehensive and detailed list of measures, including approaches to multi-generational households, can be implemented, and is well within the scope and capability of public health professionals.
Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home. Restaurants and other businesses should open. Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume. People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity." [0]
How about you use Firefox with Multi-Account Containers [0].
Firefox can take multiple thousand open tabs ( up to 2500 for sure ) without crashing. Your local files can most likely all be opened in the browser give or take a few tweaks. Multi-Account Container is good for organizing that and has a bunch of other very interesting applications.
You can also use a Firefox Account to sync all that stuff you'll never read ;p across multiple devices.
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
a closed latte shop is not a good reason for depression.
I agree but that's not what I was referring to ->
Maybe we will have to come to accept that a ( big ) bunch of very old people will die a few years earlier than expected so that the rest of us can avoid a greater depression ?
That being said, once we refrain from locking down everything and everyone, we can start expending all of our resources to minimizing the deaths in the at risk groups.
In the end, I believe this approach can result in less deaths than trying to impose ' sanitary measures ' that most people disregard at least to some extent because they make little sense and are downright immoral.
I get from the article that this strain might be more infectious and herd immunity might not be as efficient as it would have been previously, but _all things considered_, it would still be our best option in the scenario where an efficient vaccine is not readily available for that strain / variant.
The deaths due _directly_ to the virus are by no means the only parameter we should pay attention to.
See ;
Great Barrington Declaration ( signed by 12,943 medical and public health scientists )
Years of potential life lost
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_potential_life_lost
COVID-19, unemployment, and suicide
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
My understanding is that the parent comment isn't trying to pose as a 'news article' and therefore is not implicitly accepting to adhere to vanishing standards of integrity and delivery of the information.
A HN user / comment can be as biased and editorialized as they like, the same shouldn't be true for ' traditional media outlets ' whatever that means.
As far as I'm concerned, it is objectively true that this is a minor, politically motivated detail although it is still relevant information. They could have mentioned that somewhere in the article without appending it as a prefix / title to his name. That's rather disingenuous. It's not his main defining characteristic.
That being said, I believe one should not necessarily turn away from what they perceive to be propaganda of one kind or another, but rather view it as such and analyse it, although this can be irritating at times.
FWIW, Thiel has also backed 48+ other political candidates over the years, maybe we should add all of that to his name ? ;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel#Support_for_politi...
By this, I knew that the WELL had a new resident and that his corporeal analog was supposedly called Acid Phreak. Typing !finger optik yielded results of similar insufficiency, including the claim that someone, somewhere in the real world, was walking around calling himself Phiber Optik.
Persistent offending occurs in the context of the desire for fast money (p. 179), alienation (p. 182), rejection and defiance of authority (p. 183), and the view of the criminal justice system (p. 184) and society/the world more generally as unfair or corrupt (p.186).
Who would have thought ?
For further insights ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupac_Shakur#Discography
The Safe-Inet service was shut down and its infrastructure seized in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France and the United States. The servers were taken down, and a splash page prepared by Europol was put up online after the domain seizures. This coordinated takedown was carried out in the framework of the European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats (EMPACT).
I like how they specify ; "Since September 21 2020" in the takedown notice to stir up some paranoia for the lulz.