donovanian

Knowing what little about humanity I do, what would be the end-game of covering up "aliens".

I think it's possible the government practically can't reveal information about extraterrestrials, supernatural phenomenon, or really anything that's within the realm of incredible.

The reason being - there will be a potentially large amount of people that will not believe what the government reveals or that they're being honest about their revelations.

You only have to see something like QAnon or the Russiagate stuff to see that a large segment of people across the political spectrum creates vast narratives founded in distrust of whatever is relatively credible and apparent.

So if the government were to say "we're aware of phenomenon that we cannot explain and it seems to be characteristic of some form of intelligence," you'd have many who would start arguing that the government is colluding with aliens or something. It could be destabilizing to society.

Don't people have the right to be informed?

Fauci has been leading with every indication he's willing to speak lies if it makes people fall in line with his policy objectives.

those who could help the most

Wouldn't complete confiscation of the wealth of billionaires finance something like Medicare for All for around 3 years?

I don't think people understand how utopian and ultimately ill-conceived their plans are.

Maybe one-size-fits-all "guidance" is net harmful, and local knowledge and individual risk evaluation has outperformed the supposed advice, efforts and mandates of so-called experts.

You’re totally right. It’s strange to see random self-righteous, presumably highly-educated, safety-minded people suggest that the US should just be New Zealand. There’s been some really wildly unworkable things offered as though it’s just obviously correct.

The only failure we have to grapple with are all the people who demand any action in an emergency.

The most damaging force in a chaotic situation like a terrorist attack, financial crisis or natural disaster are those who scream "you must act now, do anything!"

Look at the demand for ventilators - it's likely that the people demanding them cost people their lives.

It's often that governments will act in ways that are much worse than had nothing been done at all, and at least in the context of something as complex and varied as a pandemic - local knowledge generally has vastly outperformed the one-size-fits-all mandates from the federal government.

Fauci is a mess honestly. He's been all over the map and revealed he's in the business of noble lies in the interest of policy objectives - which only backfires and erodes public trust.

Were the establishment smart, they'd have no problem with vaccination hesitancy by saying that after vaccination you can resume normal life and ditch the masks. Instead it's been the outrageous message of "nothing will change."

You only have to see how the establishment has handled the obesity epidemic in the US to see whether any of their supposed intelligence and expertise accomplishes anything.

you should think of it as getting a flu but ten times worse that also gives you a permanent heart condition

Perhaps we should think of it as getting SARS-Cov-2 and as much as 1/3 of people don't even know they're infected.

Unhealthy people are often really hit hard, the most vulnerable have a substantial risk of death.

But an overwhelming number of healthy people are fine, and given the prolonged disruption of normal life, those people suffer vast consequences from interventions that outweigh catching the virus.

Children especially are being sacrificed for the elderly and chronically ill.

It was (and remains to be, for many of the OGs) about making a space for peaceful people which was outside of the manipulation of large institutions, both corporate and governmental.

I agree with this explanation, and would add that I think the simple point is that people should be able to save their hard-earned money and accumulate value in a way that's divorced from technocrats manipulating the economy.

Precious metals have served this purpose for a while, but obviously a virtual system dispenses with the huge inconveniences of storing heavy physical objects. You've got gold that can be transported at the speed of information.

The institutional system we have now has essentially decided that saving money is wrong, that deferring consumption is pernicious.

Of course, this is a boon for "consumer capitalism", which last I checked is reviled.

Compared to the risk of going unvaccinated, it's an obvious choice.

I think the insidious and repugnant effect of this line of thinking is that it subverts the body autonomy and free will that every human being should enjoy.

The issue isn’t only risk, rather it’s individuals deciding based on their own judgement, which may involve their own evaluation (informed or not) of risk.

The public health establishment is set on presenting the illusion that people have absolutely no choice but to take a vaccine that was rapidly developed using novel technology.

In my opinion, this is unethical. No human being should be coerced or propagandized into taking drugs or medicine of any type.

The only responsibility of government should be presenting boring information about the vaccine to be used by people to decide what they’d like to do. But it’s very clear that society at large is set on propaganda and conformity in the pursuit of technocratic policy goals.

It’s precisely this well-intentioned pursuit of end goals augmented by the certainty of science that allowed the eugenics of the 1920s. And it seems like a century later we think we’re immune to that pernicious illusion afforded by science.

As someone in my late twenties who started a little later than the people who went through CS in college w/ internships, etc., you can do it!

It takes a bunch of persistence - just keep chugging at applications and learning.

If you don't jibe well with the leetcode interviews (I certainly don't, I just don't do well and I think it has to do with my anxiety), aim for smaller companies or really just any that ends up having a laxer interview process. They do exist though!

I'm convinced the leetcode stuff selects for something largely orthogonal to ability. My major was practically the same as CS, if not harder in many ways (EE) - I can understand any of the concepts in their full math and theory, etc., I generally just don't have them at at my fingertips to perform on demand, aside from basics. This stuff belongs in books to be referenced as needed.

Twenty percent of previously healthy 18-to-34-year-olds had ongoing symptoms. Overall, research shows as many as one-third of individuals who had COVID-19 and weren’t hospitalized will still be experiencing symptoms up to three months later."

There's a million variables at play here, is it a random twenty percent? My guess would be that at least in the US 20~40% all age groups are seriously unhealthy to begin with.

for far less money - what's not to like?

no free lunches, my friend

So it stands to reason that if the vaccine were effective, after the vaccine blitzkrieg that's going on now, the vulnerable should be ok.

I'm in the same boat, I'm not against vaccination either. I've taken every vaccine offered, I get the yearly flu vaccine and even went out of my way for the HPV vaccine.

I’ll never say this to family who are hesitant to even take the vaccine in the first place

This is precisely the attitude that justifies their suspicion and opposition. It's a form of weird narcissistic paternalism.

If they ever caught wind of you saying this, they'd never trust you again.

And this is how the public health establishment has botched their trust with the public: noble lies, very contorted language and arbitrary advisories instead of "idk", etc.

Don't treat them like intelligent and equal human beings. Treat them like impressionable rubes that are below you. /s

The bills passed claim they're for "relief", but if you examine the contents much of the spending doesn't even occur this year.

Only about 5 percent of that total is funding public health efforts related to the pandemic, according to the nonpartisan number crunchers at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).

and it resulted in some, but not very much, artwork in the grand scheme of things

I'm not sure I follow, my understanding is that patronage, say from the Medici family, led to a proliferation of art.

You're being pretty generous, and I think it sounds reasonable but placed within the broader picture (and given how liberals generally consider profit-driven healthcare systems and industry in other circumstances...) it seems like people are looking to paper over some dastardly stuff and dismiss legitimate concerns so as to not "rock the boat."

For instance:

Officials from Argentina and the other Latin American country, which cannot be named as it has signed a confidentiality agreement with Pfizer, said the company’s negotiators demanded more than the usual indemnity against civil claims filed by citizens who suffer serious adverse events after being inoculated. They said Pfizer also insisted the governments cover the potential costs of civil cases brought as a result of Pfizer’s own acts of negligence, fraud, or malice. In Argentina and Brazil, Pfizer asked for sovereign assets to be put up as collateral for any future legal costs.

https://www.statnews.com/2021/02/23/pfizer-plays-hardball-in...

It'd be one thing if they were looking to defend against unforeseen damages. But this looks like they're trying to evade liability for crimes.

It would mean to ignore the weakest in society (maybe lay them off?) for the benefit of a few at the top.

As though almost all the unprecedented levels of pandemic relief in the US haven’t gone to anything but people that need relief.

Also, even if we disregard the expedited process, the release (the rate of production and administering it) is faster than you'd expect normally, which in itself imposes a greater financial/business risk by exposing more people quicker to the same amount of risk.

All this seems to dance around the fact that it's the first vaccine of its kind. It induces side effects that are not normal. And the process has been greatly expedited far beyond the usual liberal sentiment that the FDA is indispensable and we should be taking extraordinary amounts of time to approve medicines, etc.

Perhaps there is an asymmetric aggregated risk "exposure" for pharmaceuticals. But I still don't see a huge upside to someone like me who's relatively young, fit and who's had tons of relatives, friends, etc. who've gotten the virus and not only survived but really didn't notice any lasting effects.

You should trust the system and the process.

If I'm supposed to be ok with small risks, why aren't any of the pharmaceuticals ok with the small risk that they've made a mistake and should be held liable?

Why did they seek indemnity if there's no chance the vaccine could risk my health?

I don't oppose the vaccine but this has never sat right with me.

as is usually seen with other vaccines

Is this really true? I can't recall having any vaccine in my life that's ever knocked me out like I often hear reported for the sars-cov-2 vaccine.

Agreed!

It's no way to live drilling dumb little puzzles; there's this prevailing attitude that we should be grateful or it's not a big deal. But for me, it's been nothing be joyless, and I've found a lot of satisfaction working at companies that don't require these charades.

The PR damage happens when authorities engage in noble lying and all of this weird non-transparent messaging.

Public health really hasn't been upfront with a lot, and their back and forth on a number of issues, while maintaining this air of authority is ultimately counter-productive to building trust.

What are you basing your claim about lockdown causing death on?

It's pretty obvious there's a profound psychological, developmental (children), and economic toll of lockdowns.

For anyone that's below 60 or so, it's very clear they've got net negative effects on their life from draconian across the board measures that go on this long.

edit: wow immediately flagged? Is it verboten to mention the simple fact of economic trade-offs in any decision we make?

I'm not even saying that lockdowns are bad, I'm saying that they have profound consequences that can't be brushed away or ignored.

The fact that so many are reticent to even admit that is why I think it's so important to mention it.

There's a lot of "quality of life" there

I guess you'd have to ignore what Deidre McCloskey describes as the Great Enrichment of liberal democracies:

"[...] a rise in real wages 1800 to the present by a factor of 10 or 30 or (allowing for improved quality of goods) 100, which is to say 900 or 2,900 or 9,900 percent" [1]

Meanwhile there's a certain propensity for incredible inhumanity, eugenics (in the case of the 1920s Progressive movement) and the outright abuse and "reeducation" of minority races in China.

[1] http://www.deirdremccloskey.org/docs/pdf/IndiaPaperMcCloskey...

Equality means things are measurably the same.

No I think you're loading the meaning of equal. No one would say "you and I are equal" and expect that we're clones.

That’s why you’ll often see folks talk about “equality of opportunity.” Not equality in general; equality as an input.

People talk about equality of opportunity because that's the circumstances that people concluded recognize human dignity and autonomy.

As soon as you begin the path of equal outcomes, you're talking an expansive micro-managing state optimizing for variables they scarcely understand.

And fundamentally there's a lack of faith in people as capable human beings that can manage the affairs of their own life and work to lead the life they want by their own endeavor. It's paternalism.

The New Deal political coalition

I have a hard time seeing the discontinuity between the New Deal people you're referencing and the 1960s Great Society ones that pretty much iterated on the same themes of the scientific management of society through monolithic institutions with expansive powers.

It's pretty much relentless hubris with little to show and much to answer for.

The world is not as toxic when profit isn't involved.

Got it - this evinces a certain idealism that ignores some pretty glaring stuff that defined the Soviet Union, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. All the places that either outright outlawed profit, or otherwise viewed it as evil.

Also regarding your list - what a weird view - that there's angelic spheres where we somehow transcend human behavior.

You only have to look at the scandals of the knitting community to see that no one is immune to toxicity.