When governments spend more than they collect in taxes, they do something that everyone refers to as "borrowing", which increases the "debt". But during the Covid pandemic, pretty much every country was "borrowing". But if everyone is borrowing, who is the lender? It seems to me now that those words do not have their ordinary meaning. "Borrowing" turns out to be code for "printing money", and "debt" is "the amount of money we've printed".
Well, not quite. I have the impression that governments nominally "borrow" from private corporations and individuals, but of course the way they "pay back" this money - with interest - is not by intermittently switching between budget deficit and budget surplus. Rather, they simply "borrow" more even money and use the new money to pay off the old debts. Which makes no sense to me: wouldn't it be better to print money to avoid paying interest? (and to avoid the risk of hyperinflation, have some sort of limit on the money-printing?)
I wonder if the whole system is set up in some modestly idiotic way - inefficient and difficult to understand, but not bad enough that the government is forced to change it. I also wonder if all the governments of the world use basically the same system, which would be a surprising "coincidence".
In any case, I've never seen a explanation that I could entirely follow. Aside from things like "fractional reserve" being hard to wrap one's head around, I find that virtually everyone who tries to explain macroeconomics takes for granted that their audience understands concepts like "buying debt" and the distinction between "fiscal", "monetary" and "financial". Does anyone explain this stuff like I'm 5?
Still, I would like to share a flash of insight I've had recently about macroeconomics that no one has ever even attempted to explain to me. It's about the value of money.
I assert that the value of money is (approximately) the total amount of production divided by the total amount of spending. "Amount of production" is real-world goods and services, so it has no particular unit of measurement. "Amount of spending" is the amount of money that changes hands, and it could be measured in dollars.
A key point here is that money which doesn't change hands doesn't enter into the equation. Nor does the world population. Hypothetically, then, suppose Jeff Bezos finds a way to gobble up most of the world's wealth and he becomes a 50-trillionaire. If production stays the same during this time (I guess it's more likely to increase, but let's pretend) and he spends almost none of this money, the effect of this wealth accumulation should be deflationary: the denominator (spending) decreases because Bezos is not spending his earnings (while production is flat or increasing), so the value of money increases. Everyone's money is worth more! Yay! However, those who are in debt effectively find themselves with bigger debts. Wages fall in response to the constricted money supply, so indebted people will have trouble paying off their debts. (I heard somewhere that this was a major problem during the Great Depression.)
But now, suppose that suddenly Bezos decides to spend 6 trillion dollars for a vacation on the moon three years from now, and suppose world production responds mainly by *moving* resources to the moon mission (due to structural limitations that prevent total production from increasing very much). Thanks to the increasing denominator, the effect will be sudden inflation (especially in moon-mission-related industries, i.e. this is where price increases are likely to be concentrated, though there will be inflation everywhere due to the loss of production in other sectors, and also whole supply chains relevant to the moon mission will be impacted, which can also cause price increases to bleed into other areas of the economy).
Getting back to the debt issue, while nominally the U.S. and many other countries have huge public debts and also huge private debts, none of this matters in practice, *as long as it doesn't affect production or spending significantly*. Indeed, perhaps big debts can be good by stimulating production, though I wonder if it can lead to instability (and if so, why).
Also, anyone want to predict the overall stock market trend over the next few years? I am not aware of any mechanism by which a major crash should occur, so I tentatively expect a minor crash at worst. However, US stocks are probably overpriced, so I expect that price increases will level off pretty soon and investor returns will be relatively poor over the next few years. Of course, though, I'm no expert and I don't really understand why the stock market rose so much in the first place. Did a lot of those stimulus dollars somehow get dumped straight into markets? Or was it caused more by regulators using their poorly-explained mechanisms to increase the money supply in a way that increased average stock prices?
I have schizoaffective, minimal negative symptoms (zero to my awareness), above-average IQ + some problems in attention in processing speed, but I'm scared of cognitive decline.
Many cross-sectional studies show that cognition is not declined in schizophrenia at age 18-65. But two recent longitudinal studies (Zanelli, Kotov) do show cognitive decline
after 10 and 20 years respectively.
So what should I do? I do not smoke, I'm managing my weight, I'm controlling my blood pressure, I do go on walks. Is this enough? Is this the best that I can do?
I'm aware that there are no drugs or supplements for cognition in schizophrenia (something does exist in the pipeline, but who knows about that).
There is some data on "cognitive training" but Cohen d = 0.4 for this, and some folks do have cognition which is 2SD below normal. Sounds like a joke. Seriously?
Also one of the promising agents in the pipeline " BI 425809" has an effects size of around d = 0.45. Is this even distantly possible to have something with 1 SD effect on cognition?
Right now I'm extremely butthurt that psychiatry for 100 years ignored the obvious symptom of schizophrenia, hinted even by Kraepelin.
Another interesting statistic is that ("Three cognitive trajectories", "Tale of three trajectories") you can find that schizophrenia does not universally
affect cognition. There are probably 3 cognitive trajectories with approximately 30% of people with intact cognitive function. So they should work!
There should be 30% of schizophrenics in the workforce. But the real number for 1st world is 10-15%. So what's up with them? Too lazy? Underdrugged? Overdrugged?
The obvious consequence of this is "no schizophrenics in the workforce" => "no exposure for society" => "weird ideas about schizophrenia" =>
I've read somewhere ( I think it was old SlateStarCodex ) that fracking is now cleaner than most other energy sources. This doesn't align with conventional wisdom. It also doesn't align super well with Wikipedia's introduction, which I would summarize as something like 'greenhouse effect similar to coal, other effects worse'.
Has Scott ever written about this? If not, any other rationalist-adjacent people? If not that, either, but if you have strong opinions on this (in either direction), where is the best evidence?
Initially, when I found out a friend of mine hadn’t been vaccinated (male, ~22 years old), I was worried that:
a) he was prolonging the pandemic
b) his behavior, at scale, is producing variants that could be avoided
c) he risks dying if he gets it
Now, I’m not so sure. From an article I read recently, the widespread nature of Covid seems inevitable. Variants seem to be here to stay. At endemicity, these variants seem rather insignificant. Covid is forecasted to become a permanent, cyclical virus that infects the population in waves for all of future time. (If this is news to you, please consider reading this article before responding: “Why Covid is Here to Stay and Why You Shouldn’t Worry About It” https://cspicenter.org/blog/waronscience/why-covid-19-is-here-to-stay-and-why-you-shouldnt-worry-about-it/)
Further, my friend is unlikely to get it now that a significant percentage of people are vaccinated. His risk of transmitting it to anyone vaccinated, assuming he gets it, is low. And even if he does transmit it, they’re extremely unlikely to have any serious complications. Finally, if he gets it, hospitalization is unlikely. Most probably, at worst he’ll be extremely sick for two weeks, so I can’t even rationally use his own self-preservation as a very compelling argument.
Also, everyone is pointing out that “98% of covid hospitalizations are in unvaccinated people,” but nobody talks much about the base rate of hospitalization being low (around 1-4%, from what I’ve found, sometimes less, at ~500 per 100k cases).
It’s hard for me to build a compelling case for a young person (eg. < 30 years old) to get vaccinated now. I’m pretty sure it’s a smart thing to do, but I can’t confidently say it’s wrong not to.
I'm a long time lurker (since 2014 or so) and many years ago used to post on the subreddit. I am thinking of blogging on substack. I've set up a "dummy" page already under this name. If I were to blog I would mostly discuss politics, current events, some pop culture, maybe some religion. I'm not interested in earning money, just want the intellectual stimulation. I have never blogged before, but I've been lurking and posting anonymously on message boards, others' blogs, etc since the late 1990s.
This is the most intelligent and kind community I've encountered in nearly 25 years online. I value all your feedback tremendously and it will have a decisive role in any decision I make about blogging here on Substack. Here are some questions I have that I would greatly appreciate the community's feedback on
1. How likely am I to be doxxed? I am terrified, to put it mildly, of being doxxed. I am especially concerned about the consequences it would have on my employment and on my family (including minor children). FWIW I have no plans to discuss things and people from my day-to-day life on my blog - it just doesn't overlap in many interesting ways with what I'd want to discuss online
2. Would the content of my blog create issues (esp relating to doxxing)? I mostly want to discuss politics. To give you an idea of where I'm at politically, I was the only 14 year old girl in the country who wanted to talk about how awesome Newt Gingrich was, but when I see things like Jack Dorsey's congressional testimony or corporate logos all over BLM stuff, I find myself muttering "workers of the world unite you have nothing left to lose but your chains......." You met me at a very strange time in my life :) I am still working a lot of things out and I have a feeling I'm not the only conservative who's doing the same. I'd like to have a blog spot where that kind of conversation can happen. I'm debating whether to get involved in local GOP politics and thought maybe a blog could overlap/springboard to that. But I don't want to bother if Substack is not the right environment, if it will get banned due to content, or will cause more trouble than it's worth (see 1).
3. While I've been lurking/commenting on blogs for ages I've never blogged before myself. Would it be advisable to start by commenting on other substack blogs for awhile and then starting my own?
Well I've rambled along enough.....many thanks for your feedback!
I was going to make a snarky remark about not sending a libertarian to do a statist's job, but a more accurate or insightful assessment would be something to the effect that the seasteaders in the article were trying to do something that the existing and mature system doesn't really accommodate for.
It would be like if someone were to introduce a Tesla forty years ago, but without any of the infrastructure in place that is needed to operate a Tesla. There's no stations so an owner can charge it away from home, nobody knows how to fix it, the DOT isn't sure how to crash test a vehicle with none of the internal combustion stuff, the environmental testing people can't test tailpipe emissions on a vehicle with no tailpipe, etc..
Does anyone here have advice for RSI? I recently bought a brand new laptop, and it's really nice with the exception that my hands begin to hurt after using it for more than a few hours. For whatever reason it's only on this new laptop, my old laptop does not have this problem. Obviously it would be super lame to have to just use the old laptop or return the new laptop, so I am wondering if you guys know what could be causing this or how to fix it.
For context, the new new laptop is a Zephyrus g14, and the old laptop is a 13 inch macbook from 2017.
Are there any migraine sufferers here who have tried microdosing psilocybin, or any other tryptamines? Did they have any effect on the frequency of your migraines? Have you ever tried to dose as you feel a migraine coming on, and did it have any effect on your symptoms?
"This fall, Princeton University Press will publish Harden’s book, “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality,” which attempts to reconcile the findings of her field with her commitments to social justice. As she writes, “Yes, the genetic differences between any two people are tiny when compared to the long stretches of DNA coiled in every human cell. But these differences loom large when trying to understand why, for example, one child has autism and another doesn’t; why one is deaf and another hearing; and—as I will describe in this book—why one child will struggle with school and another will not. Genetic differences between us matter for our lives. They cause differences in things we care about. Building a commitment to egalitarianism on our genetic uniformity is building a house on sand.”
Harden understands herself to be waging a two-front campaign. On her left are those inclined to insist that genes don’t really matter; on her right are those who suspect that genes are, in fact, the only things that matter. The history of behavior genetics is the story of each generation’s attempt to chart a middle course. When the discipline first began to coalesce, in the early nineteen-sixties, the memory of Nazi atrocities rendered the eugenics threat distinctly untheoretical. The reigning model of human development, which seemed to accord with postwar liberal principles, was behaviorism, with its hope that environmental manipulation could produce any desired outcome. It did not take much, however, to notice that there is considerable variance in the distribution of human abilities. The early behavior geneticists started with the premise that our nature is neither perfectly fixed nor perfectly plastic, and that this was a good thing. They conscripted as their intellectual patriarch the Russian émigré Theodosius Dobzhansky, an evolutionary biologist who was committed to anti-racism and to the conviction that “genetic diversity is mankind’s most precious resource, not a regrettable deviation from an ideal state of monotonous sameness.”"
What's the technical difficulty level of something like this:
I have a strong preference on keeping moving, but I want to get the bus ultimately, but because I don't want to wait for the bus, I want to keep moving until the bus catches up with me.
A plug-in/adaptation for Google Maps/similar that says "Walk this way, walk until this point, and the bus should be there (small amount of time) after you get to that stop".
You should write about the effectiveness of condoms against STDs. I haven't found any detailed, condensed articles about whether or not to wear a condom.
This has a great parallel to wearing masks. It would be interesting what contradictions exist between people with different tolerances in either category. The demographics would be interesting to compare.
Could you please write about the booster? Clarifying the science and how to think about it? If it has been 6 months since dose 2, what's the MEDICAL advice for various people, in different circumstances (immunocompromised, NOT immunocompromised but high risk of serious problems with covid, healthy low risk people, etc)? Same mRNA you got before, be it Moderna or Pfizer, again? Is Moderna not approved for this yet?
What is the etiquette regarding when to reply to a Tweet? Is there any etiquette (other than "don't reply to people who block you" and similar software limitations)?
So what's, like, the verdict on Iraq after the Iraq War and the surge and then Islamic State and the next surge etc. etc. etc. What kind of shape did Iraq end up in, as a country? I don't think I'll ever stop being fascinated by how short the American attention span is, and even in the middle of The World Discussing Afghanistan To Death- has anyone even mentioned Iraq?
My vague impression is that they're a quasi-functional democracy, and basically about as competent and with as much state capacity as they did during the Saddam era/pre-Iraq war. Does that sound correct? Like, they're roughly at the same level as other 2nd world countries in the Middle East and North Africa, but now they have elections that are at least kind of legitimate. Did they successfully drive Islamic State out? The American media I guess decided to stop covering that particular issue at some point. They're still in an awkward federalist structure with the Kurds?
I guess my point is that, even with wall-to-wall wailing about how we 'lost' in Afghanistan, I just haven't heard any summaries or lessons learned from Iraq. Aside from the WMD issue, I suppose we could say the left was wrong in that democracy apparently *can* be forcibly imported to a developing Muslim country, but also that the left was right in that it probably wasn't worth the cost (a couple trillion $)- yes? I mean Iraq is not even a particularly important or strategic ally to the US in the Middle East, if I'm not mistaken.
Does inspire some reflection that we were able to make Germany & Japan stable democracies, it sort of worked in Iraq, and yet the Arab Spring seems to have done absolutely nothing in the end. State capacity something something, culture & institutions something something
I don't know if I exactly have any formed thoughts around this, but I've been sort of thinking about soft power, especially in its cultural manifestation, and how this ties in with debates over "Is the West/America a declining force? Is China going to be the new global superpower?"
Now, this is usually in terms of economic and military power, but the interesting thing is the huge, huge, huge influence American culture has had. People talk about Coca-colonisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocacolonization but I don't know if the knowledge of the appeal of American culture is really recognised.
And of course, what leads on from that is when there is an attempt to co-opt this and replace it with your own cultural influence. Again, China is the one here; the Belt and Road Initiative and the influence within African nations are often discussed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative
But what about the influence of American culture on the youth of China? I think the CCP is becoming somewhat concerned about this, or at least trying to co-opt it as a propaganda opportunity. I started thinking about this due to two things:
(1) The really horribly translated potential crackdown on "sissy pants males" - that is to say, what would probably be called "metrosexual" here, at least when that was the fashion a while back. Young, attractive, well-groomed men who are actors and models and pop idols and have a huge fan base following (mostly if not solely women). It sounds vaguely silly to Western ears, but there's something more at the base of it than "we don't want our young men to be nancy boys!" It's precisely because of the huge fanbase, and the economic importance (these idols have all kinds of endorsements from a range of Chinese and Western companies selling everything from makeup to instant ready meals to watches and fashions) and more concerning to the CCP, influence on how the fans think of them - there's a minor scandal over one actor whose career has been pretty much totalled by the government, it kicked off because of jealousy of one set of fans who set out to cancel him by digging up "oh shit" moments from his social media history, and because a set of his fans defended him, this was seen as Bad Influence: instead of falling into line with the CCP judgement, they were holding out. This is not the job of media celebrities as the CCP views it; they are supposed to be Positive Role Models for the Youth, which includes being (at least publicly, whatever the views in private) 100% in line with the government and leading their fans the same way.
(2) I am currently watching online something called "Street Dance of China". It's the fourth season of a dance competition. This year they have international dancers as well as Chinese dancers. The theme is "the battle for peace and love".
Now, I never imagined I'd end up watching hip-hop etc. dance (it's a long story) but I am, and I'm enjoying it. However it is (a) an example of how hugely influential American culture, from rap and hip-hop, are globally and (b) there's a subtle but definite angle about showcasing Chinese culture, how Chinese dancers are interpreting these styles of dance, and showing how China is catching up with and indeed surpassing international stars.
It's attracted an international audience as well, building on from success of last season, such that the TV channel is providing a range of subtitles:
"The first drafts of & English & Vietnamese & Thai & Spanish & Arabic & Indonesian & Japanese & Korean captions are up."
So, yeah. Huge and unknown(?) influence of American popular culture on modern Chinese youth, and possibly an attempt by China to leverage that popularity into cultural influence within its own geographic sphere - Chinese hip-hop dancers instead of American ones as the role models for Asian youth?
(Or I could be talking out of my hat. The dancing is great entertainment, though).
(I WANT AN EDIT BUTTON SO BADLY GAAHHHH) For the median citizen of these places, do you think quality of life will become better or worse by 2040, as compared to 2021? How confident are you of these beliefs? Places: Your country, USA, China, France, currently developed world as a whole, currently developing world as a whole.
"Quality of life" is of course subjective, so use whatever metrics seem reasonable, but lean toward measurable ones like life expectancy, median income vs. affordability of basic goods and services, homicide rates, suicide rates, etc.
Do you guys know what were the fastest declining major languages of the 20th century? I can think of Yiddish, Occitan, and Plattdeutsch, but I wonder what you guys can come up with.
Here’s a fun thought experiment - if you distributed buttons to every human, which when pressed, deposited $1,000,000 into their bank account at the cost of randomly killing a person in the world, how many people would die?
What would the death counts look like with 100k, 10k and 1k?
My 68 year old cousin died of COVID last week, a week after her roommate died of COVID. They both were apparently fully vaccinated. They both recently went back to their lives; going to the gym, work and family gatherings. They both had pretty major health issues before all this. Her roommate had COPD and was undergoing long term antiretroviral treatment and she was undergoing immunotherapy for Hep C. We think. It’s kinda fuzzy the details, lots of unnecessary secret-keeping (the 28 first cousins on that side of my family were pretty close growing up) and we’re all more or less much feared-based neurotics : )
Here are some recent testable prediction numbers:
1. Did they get one shot - failed to get the second shot - got COVID and died from complications because they were immunocompromised?
the family myth creators: 8% me: 1%
2. Were they both vaccinated and got COVID and died from complications because they were immunocompromised - a failure of an unnecessary unknown and un reliable vaccine?
family myth creators: 94% me: 1%
3. Were they afraid of the vaccine (due to their various health concerns) and lied about getting vaccinated.
the family: 6% me: 98%
I am not making light of their deaths, my cousin was one of the cooler cousins and I certainly share mental health issues with her. And am therefore highly empathetic.
If you believe that they were both fully vaccinated, I’m sincerely curious if there could be another explanation?
I really think that there's something to the cliché idea of there being a decline of the intellectuality culture and arts (weighted by popularity) in the past century or so. That is, it seems to me our culture and art is less and less produced and defined by intellectuals and mirrored in their (our) aesthetics, at least if you appropriately weight each cultural and artistic production by its impact and popularity.
My guess is that in the past the intellectual elite had much stronger ties to the social and economic elite (and these really are very distinct elites!), perhaps because those latter elites used the intellectual aesthetics as a way to distance themselves from the common lowly people. With the rise of the bourgeoisie and the optimization of capitalism, it was realized this was a nonsensical move -- you can sell a lot more culture and arts if you dumb it down. Slowly but surely the intellectual aesthetic was torn down in favor of a 'democratized' common man's aesthetic, which is obviously less intellectual given that most people are not intellectuals.
I don't want to get into the value judgement of whether this is a good or bad thing, but I'd like to hear whether people agree this decline of intellectuality took place and whether what I've written is a plausible mechanism.
Does anyone here listen to the Huberman Lab podcast (Stanford professor providing detailed discussion of neuroscience, health, and similar topics). I've been really enjoying it, but got very concerned with accuracy after listening to episode 19.
In episode 19, Huberman describes a study where cooling your palms in-between sets radically increased the number of reps a person can do (300% for dips!). The idea is that hyperthermia limits performance and cooling through the extremities prevents that.
Huberman claims that this methodology is being used by lots of sports teams and that they've been getting great results.
Frankly, this sounds way too good to be true.
There are a number of peer reviewed papers demonstrating the effect, however:
- They're from the original authors, who started a company to commercialize the technology
- The company was founded in 2000 and don't appear to have been able to bring anything to market in the last 20 years.
- I found a couple examples of replications that don't show anything like the effect size the original authors see, plus the results don't show a proper dose/response.
I'm tempted to try this myself to see if there's any validity to the claims (easy enough experiment and claimed gains are enormous).
1) Has anyone tried palm or extremity cooling themselves or know of any independent publications that either prove or debunk it?
2) Has anyone run across any other claims of concern from Huberman? Trying to decide how much I should update on my assessment of his credibility.
I'd like to be able to take notes while taking walks.
A few years ago, I very briefly tried note-taking via smartphone voice recognition (IIRC Google Assistant and various third-party apps that seemed to use the same underlying API), but found it unimpressive. In particular, these features did poorly when I wanted to flexibly switch between speaking in English and in German.
Nowadays, is there any solution for taking audio notes that's genuinely impressive? I'm not so much asking for service recommendations, but rather for glowing endorsements, i.e.: "I've been using <fantastic solution> for <at least a month> to take notes. It parses my speech correctly with no noticeable delay and with hardly any errors, and it's significantly faster than typing on the smartphone while walking."
How does a prior get trapped and what can be done about the problem? I don't want to have to deal with people insisting that "the other side is up to no good" every damn time something happens.
I'm not sure how to approach the question but intuitively it must have something to do with social dynamics. People organize into groups and communities with shared interests and share information among themselves. One of the particular phenomena that would actually impact people's beliefs, is that some of the most popular information tends to get repeated very often in such groups, especially when social media functions such as "Like" buttons etc exist. In particular information of the form "A member of Group A did Bad Thing X to one of us/an innocent victim" has high memetic potential. The mechanism is: coincidental spaced repetition (to memorize many such instances) + the availability heuristic (to overestimate the frequency of Group A doing Bad Thing X based on how easy it is to remember such events).
I don't know exactly what to do about this but I recommend staying away from highly partisan online spaces. The difference between how fast information spreads now vs. 25 years ago is so large, that we may have found some kind of phase transition where a rapidly increasing number of people hold these incredibly cynical worldviews, at least implicitly.
Does anyone know if the polsci literature on extremism suggests anything about these kinds of things? I would like to know more about these kinds of things, in particular how one might mentally guard oneself from the kind of mechanism I explained above. I'm worried that just observing some of these communities would expose a person to risk of implicitly adopting such beliefs.
a) "thinking", defined properly, means the act of resolving cognitive dissonance.
b) most people aren't thinking, and don't realize this. They might be 'feeling' or 'subvocalizing', but these aren't really thinking, any more than reading a book is thinking.
In more detail, 'thinking' requires a thinker to be holding two different ideas in mind, "feeling" that they are both correct, "feeling" that there is come contradiction between them, "feeling" that this contradiction is not real, but a result of the thinker's ignorance, and then searching for a resolution - that is, some new piece of information, a new belief, or story, which resolves the apparent contradiction. "Thinking" necessitates at least trying to reduce informational uncertainty - that is, thinking means producing new beliefs (or at least, attempting to) which lower the net total dissonance between a person's existing beliefs.
I'm putting the word "feeling" in quotes in the second paragraph to say that this probably isn't' the right word here, either. It's just the best one i can summon at the moment.
Basically, i get the impression that most cognitive processes are only vaguely lit up in most people's heads, and that most adults do a bunch of feeling, and expression of these feelings, and then they tell themselves "this is thinking", maybe because words are involved. There's a fundamental difference between attempting to resolve conflict between two things you already belief, and just feeling something and putting that feeling into words. I think the later is almost always productive activity, whereas the former is just another form of angry (or happy, or confused) shouting. It might be a form of _communication_ - but the key thing is that no new beliefs are actually being formed. I get the impression that most of the subvocalizations that occur consist of other people's words, being repeated in their minds when corresponding emotions are triggered by external stimuli.
Is there something written about this idea? I know Eliezer seems to have brought this up somewhere, when he noted that most of the words people exchange aren't really about beliefs (in the anticipation-constraining sense), but are much more like flags being waved.
Considering the statistical minutia often discussed here it is indeed amusing to see some good old anecdotal evidence and meaningless interpretation:
" (MicroCovid says that vaccinated people who attend an outdoor meetup with a known case have a 2% chance of getting sick, but since several people are reporting symptoms maybe it’s higher than that)."
Where online do you go if you have a question on an arbitrary topic and want high-quality answers? Nowadays search engines have gotten so bad that I can't find any but the blandest results for any questions of interest; and while there are e.g. subreddits on arbitrary niches, your questions often get buried without any answers.
I'm particularly interested in getting high-quality answers to questions of health & illness, and would be willing to pay e.g. bounties.
Does anyone here have tips on such bounty services, or on other ways to ask questions on arbitrary topics and have a decent chance of getting high-quality answers?
Delta is a beast gang. It has ripped through Louisiana, including waylaying a lot of vaccinated people and killing elderly ones. Get jabbed and stay safe out there..
This is probably the worst human herpesvirus, not because mono is particularly bad, but because it gives people cancer. It can also rarely cause long-term fatigue, which is interesting in context of other viral fatigue syndromes such as long COVID.
I have a question regarding the Corona Pandemic and its recent wave. Perhaps someone can shed some light on things I have wondered about.
Multiple western countries are entering the forth wave, with the Delta variant increasing incidences despite 50%+ of the people being fully vaccinated.
Now, the clinical tests say that being vaccinated does not fully prevent the possibility of a covid-19 infection, but it does significantly reduce the number of dangerous infections and infections that lead to hospitalisations and death.
What surprised me: Why do we see this in most western countries, but not the US?
Details: According to https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases, we have an incidence of 511 in the UK now, the peak of the last wave was at 877, so we have about 58% of the cases of the worst peak of the last wave.
Hospitalisations are on a time delay, but the recent wave started in June and was actually higher than now on July in the UK, so that should not be the reason. The widespread vaccinations probably reduce the severity in the UK, as expected.
France? Incidence 205, down from 376 a few weeks ago, worst of the last wave 675, so this wave reached 55% of the last regarding incidences. Hospitalisations 11k now, 31k at the last wave's peak, or 35%. Significantly lower.
Israel? Israel reached a new maximum with an incidence of 1.143 these days, their worst at the last peak was 981, so they are at 116% right now. Hospitalisations reached 1.400 a few days ago, the worst of the last wave was 2.387, so its 58%. Same picture: Hospitalisations do not keep up.
Same in Italy, which peaked its recent wave at 108, down from 384 in the last, or 28% of incidences. Hospitalisations are 4.600 now compared to 32.900 last wave, or 14%. Same in Germany or Spain.
But then I look at the US. The US right now has an incidence of 491, the peak of the last wave was 748, so it reached 65% of its last peak. Hospitalisations are 97k, the last peak was 133k, or 72%.
Why is the US the one western country where hospitalisations rise faster than instances? It's like in the US, vaccinations made corona worse!
(And when we look at deaths, the picture is almost similar: According to https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths, the UK is at 1,65 deaths per million people, their previous peak was 18.2, so they just have 9% of their last peak, although their incidences are at 58%. France has 1,96 of 9,2, or 21%, while their incidences are at 55%. Germany 0,37 compared to 10,6, so just 3 % of the last big wave of deaths, but its incidences are at 138 compared to 257, or 53%. Israel has a new maximum of incidences, but its deaths are at 2,96 and were at 7,3, so just 54% of their last peak. But the US has 4,66, the last peak was 10,27, so 45%, compared to 65% of incidences. That is way worse than the european countries I compared or Israel. But when we look at hospitalisations, the difference is more extreme.)
I thought of a couple of explanations, but none explain it to me. Without socialized healthcare in the US like there is in Europe, it is unlikely that the people in the US are just more likely to go to the hospital when they feel a bit ill. I would expect the opposite.
The numbers of fully vaccinated people are lower in the US than in western Europe (US 52%, UK 63%, France 60%, Germany 61%, Italy 61%), but while I would understand that to affect the R0 value and that the speed with which a wave grows, I would not expect it to so completely chance the hospitalisations picture.
It's also not that the numbers in Europe grew so fast that the hospitalisations aren't keeping up, most of the countries mentioned have waves cresting already, unlike the US.
It's not the vaccine either, while that could explain if the UK behaved differently, using mainly AstralZeneca, the US uses Biontec/Pfizer and Moderna, just like France, Italy and Germany.
Hi Scott, I'm a long time lurker and first time poster. Now that I have a stable income I would like to subscribe, but I see that the only payment option is CC, which I don't have. Is there any way to subscribe via Paypal, iDeal, or something similar? Or plans to add them in the future? Thanks!
Can you use probabilistic reasoning and Nick Bostrom's observation selection theory (https://www.anthropic-principle.com/q=book/chapter_10/) to argue against supernatural Hells and Heavens? If all people really went to eternal or extremely long-lasting Hells or Heavens after death, then almost all conscious experiences would be had in those hellish or heavenly states of mind. Yet, what we observe are regular lives on Earth, so it's much more likely that the reference class from which our observations are taken contains mostly regular lives on Earth.
To put it more clearly, let's assume there's a bag full of 1,000,000 balls, and you don't know how many of the balls are red and how many are blue. You pick one ball at random, and it's blue. What is more likely: the bag contains mostly blue balls or the bag contains one blue ball and 999,999 red balls and you happened to pick the only blue ball? Because the latter is equivalent to us picking the rare regular Earth life observation from all observations that include eternal lives in Heaven and Hell. So eternal Hell and Heaven almost certainly aren't real.
I think if they'd mandated that everyone get vaccinated for Covid right at the beginning (circa January/February 2021), then we'd probably have a much higher vaccination rate for it than we do now. Some folks would obviously resist it, but I think most people's reaction would be "Oh, the government is requiring me to get the vaccine, it must be really important" and get it. Same reason people follow all kinds of public orders and such even if the actual enforcement side of that is pretty limited.
But saying, "We recommend you get the vaccine, but aren't requiring it" kind of sends the message that it's a personal choice above all, rather than a public health issue in the same way that kids have to get vaccinated before attending school.
On a lighter note, I saw the "Shang Chi" movie in theaters today. It amuses me to think of all the Ancient Secret Organizations in the MCU as being like that Simpsons joke about Mr Burns having every disease known to man, but they're all stuffed together and none of them can really get a foothold on him. In any case, fun movie, and it actually handles the Third Act stuff pretty good (not always a given with MCU movies).
So here's a weird thought. Do you think at some point, podcast advertisements will be able to take samples of your voice recorded when you use the voice assistant built in, and then emulate your own voice reading them to you? Or would that be too weird, or a violation of your IP rights?
I have been wondering how much impact general fear of the sort "dawn of nation/civilization" have on interest rates.
If I assume that in the next 50 years, in my country there will be a terrible war, some hyperinflation, some X-risk event, or something else that basically makes my possessions void, then this should set a lower limit on the interest rates that I am a willing to accept for a loan. For 50 years, I should never accept interest rates below 1.4%. For 20 years, I should never accept less than 3.5%.
Does this have an effect, or is it beyond the time horizon of people? If interest rates are close to zero, then implicitly people assume that their bonds will still have value in 50-100 years. This may have been unreasonable in the 60s and 70s, with two world wars just a few decades ago, and a cold war looming. But it may be more in line with people's believe nowadays, reasonable or not. But I have never heard this argument come up in any discussion of why interest rates are low. Any opinions?
It seems like in some cases, it's obviously correct to reason using the anthropic principle, and other times it's way too powerful an argument and seems equivalent to throwing up your hands and saying "Because God willed it".
For example why are we on earth and not space? Space isn't conducive to life evolving. That seems like straightforward uncontroversial anthropic reasoning.
Which events in evolutionary history are fantastically unlikely and critical to intelligent life? All of them. Every step in our evolution is very unlikely and we are in a universe / Everett branch where we win the lottery billions of times in a row. This seems way too powerful of an explanation and leaves basically no reason to look for a general mechanism like natural selection.
Can anyone point me to some good discussion / literature about how to think about under what conditions it's best to use anthropic reasoning? I've seen Nick Bostrom's book online but... it's really large and intimidating and I would be curious to know if it deals with this kind of question.
A contact hygiene failure could explain a cluster of cases at an outdoor meetup, and I just feel like handwashing and hand sanitizer aren't getting as much attention as they deserve. So PSA that your hands need to be clean before you handle food or touch your face, and a precautionary rule of thumb is to act as if they become unclean whenever they touch anything that isn't certainly clean. I've been adhering to this rather strictly since I was little.
Since this is "politics allowed" I'll admit I'm quite sad by how from a political perspective covid panned out. The two sides started as:
- covid-denial (against quarantine measures and border closure) vs underpowered covid carefulness (maybe we should close borders with China, 3 months after covid was raging in China)
- then they promptly switched to the more stable configuration of covid-alarmism and covid-denialism
My hope was that, once vaccines arrive, this will provide an "out" for both sides to reach a more moderate ground.
One side could "<mumble-mumble vaccine is so safe that even the close-to-nonexistent risk of covid isn't worth it>"
The other side could "<mumble-mumble yes the numbers look the same but mortality is down, and it's basically confounded with background mortality... and maybe it was before but not quite look there's a few pct point diff>"
And things would go to normal.
As it stands the two sides seem to be polarizing more and more instead. With the covid alarmists now claiming the vaccine doesn't work, and that new variants are worst, and that long covid will destroy the world.
The covid denialists picked this fucking hill to die upon in terms of 2x placebo-level adverse effects being grounds for not getting a vaccine, and refuse to wear masks even when it's sensible, and refuse to close down even the dumbest kind of gatherings (e.g. concerts, sport matches)
My one hope right now is that the "get the vaccine, wear a mask in stores, go about your own business as usual" is becoming more common but just doesn't get promoted as a view, since it's no polarizing and rather boring. It seems to be the case given that I see less people wearing masks outdoors in most places I go and more people are getting vaccinated in spite of increasing fear-mongering.
Michael Huemer is a philosopher at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He recently published an interesting article entitled "Existence is Evidence of Immortality" in which he makes the case that persons are repeatable. [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/nous.12295] In other words, it is an argument for reincarnation. The TLDR is available on this blog post [https://fakenous.net/?p=128]:
Tl;dr:
1. Premise: There is a nonzero initial probability that persons are repeatable (can have multiple lives).
2. Also, the probability that you would be alive now given that persons are repeatable is nonzero.
3. Evidence: You are alive now.
4. Claim: The probability that you would be alive now, given that persons are unrepeatable, and that there is an infinite past, is zero. Rough explanation: there were infinite opportunities for you to exist in earlier centuries, which, if persons are unrepeatable, would have prevented you from existing now.
But you do exist now, so either the past is finite, or persons are repeatable. Bayesian calculation: Let H=[persons are repeatable], E=[You exist now]:
If persons are repeatable, then they will repeat, given sufficient time. Conclusion: if the past is infinite, then persons are reincarnated infinitely many times.
Not sure where I got this link from - might have even been one of the previous open threads. Anyhow, I was curious what anyone who has tried to learn Mandarin (or any other of the Sinitic languages) thinks of this article: http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
Thank you Scott for announcing the infections without calling for other meetups to be cancelled or for them to be held with mandatory masking. We really do need this kind of sensibility these days.
When governments spend more than they collect in taxes, they do something that everyone refers to as "borrowing", which increases the "debt". But during the Covid pandemic, pretty much every country was "borrowing". But if everyone is borrowing, who is the lender? It seems to me now that those words do not have their ordinary meaning. "Borrowing" turns out to be code for "printing money", and "debt" is "the amount of money we've printed".
Well, not quite. I have the impression that governments nominally "borrow" from private corporations and individuals, but of course the way they "pay back" this money - with interest - is not by intermittently switching between budget deficit and budget surplus. Rather, they simply "borrow" more even money and use the new money to pay off the old debts. Which makes no sense to me: wouldn't it be better to print money to avoid paying interest? (and to avoid the risk of hyperinflation, have some sort of limit on the money-printing?)
I wonder if the whole system is set up in some modestly idiotic way - inefficient and difficult to understand, but not bad enough that the government is forced to change it. I also wonder if all the governments of the world use basically the same system, which would be a surprising "coincidence".
In any case, I've never seen a explanation that I could entirely follow. Aside from things like "fractional reserve" being hard to wrap one's head around, I find that virtually everyone who tries to explain macroeconomics takes for granted that their audience understands concepts like "buying debt" and the distinction between "fiscal", "monetary" and "financial". Does anyone explain this stuff like I'm 5?
Still, I would like to share a flash of insight I've had recently about macroeconomics that no one has ever even attempted to explain to me. It's about the value of money.
I assert that the value of money is (approximately) the total amount of production divided by the total amount of spending. "Amount of production" is real-world goods and services, so it has no particular unit of measurement. "Amount of spending" is the amount of money that changes hands, and it could be measured in dollars.
A key point here is that money which doesn't change hands doesn't enter into the equation. Nor does the world population. Hypothetically, then, suppose Jeff Bezos finds a way to gobble up most of the world's wealth and he becomes a 50-trillionaire. If production stays the same during this time (I guess it's more likely to increase, but let's pretend) and he spends almost none of this money, the effect of this wealth accumulation should be deflationary: the denominator (spending) decreases because Bezos is not spending his earnings (while production is flat or increasing), so the value of money increases. Everyone's money is worth more! Yay! However, those who are in debt effectively find themselves with bigger debts. Wages fall in response to the constricted money supply, so indebted people will have trouble paying off their debts. (I heard somewhere that this was a major problem during the Great Depression.)
But now, suppose that suddenly Bezos decides to spend 6 trillion dollars for a vacation on the moon three years from now, and suppose world production responds mainly by *moving* resources to the moon mission (due to structural limitations that prevent total production from increasing very much). Thanks to the increasing denominator, the effect will be sudden inflation (especially in moon-mission-related industries, i.e. this is where price increases are likely to be concentrated, though there will be inflation everywhere due to the loss of production in other sectors, and also whole supply chains relevant to the moon mission will be impacted, which can also cause price increases to bleed into other areas of the economy).
Getting back to the debt issue, while nominally the U.S. and many other countries have huge public debts and also huge private debts, none of this matters in practice, *as long as it doesn't affect production or spending significantly*. Indeed, perhaps big debts can be good by stimulating production, though I wonder if it can lead to instability (and if so, why).
Also, anyone want to predict the overall stock market trend over the next few years? I am not aware of any mechanism by which a major crash should occur, so I tentatively expect a minor crash at worst. However, US stocks are probably overpriced, so I expect that price increases will level off pretty soon and investor returns will be relatively poor over the next few years. Of course, though, I'm no expert and I don't really understand why the stock market rose so much in the first place. Did a lot of those stimulus dollars somehow get dumped straight into markets? Or was it caused more by regulators using their poorly-explained mechanisms to increase the money supply in a way that increased average stock prices?
So what's up with cognition in schizophrenia?
I have schizoaffective, minimal negative symptoms (zero to my awareness), above-average IQ + some problems in attention in processing speed, but I'm scared of cognitive decline.
Many cross-sectional studies show that cognition is not declined in schizophrenia at age 18-65. But two recent longitudinal studies (Zanelli, Kotov) do show cognitive decline
after 10 and 20 years respectively.
So what should I do? I do not smoke, I'm managing my weight, I'm controlling my blood pressure, I do go on walks. Is this enough? Is this the best that I can do?
I'm aware that there are no drugs or supplements for cognition in schizophrenia (something does exist in the pipeline, but who knows about that).
There is some data on "cognitive training" but Cohen d = 0.4 for this, and some folks do have cognition which is 2SD below normal. Sounds like a joke. Seriously?
Also one of the promising agents in the pipeline " BI 425809" has an effects size of around d = 0.45. Is this even distantly possible to have something with 1 SD effect on cognition?
Right now I'm extremely butthurt that psychiatry for 100 years ignored the obvious symptom of schizophrenia, hinted even by Kraepelin.
Another interesting statistic is that ("Three cognitive trajectories", "Tale of three trajectories") you can find that schizophrenia does not universally
affect cognition. There are probably 3 cognitive trajectories with approximately 30% of people with intact cognitive function. So they should work!
There should be 30% of schizophrenics in the workforce. But the real number for 1st world is 10-15%. So what's up with them? Too lazy? Underdrugged? Overdrugged?
The obvious consequence of this is "no schizophrenics in the workforce" => "no exposure for society" => "weird ideas about schizophrenia" =>
"stigma".
We all know that [Steven Pinker](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/gp8wv8/goddamn_it_pinker/) is [directly responsible](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/6ggwap/steven_pinker_jinxes_the_world/) for all the world's problems over the last decade or so. But the man simply cannot be stopped:
[**Steven Pinker Thinks Your Sense of Imminent Doom Is Wrong**: *“It is irrational to interpret a number of crises occurring at the same time as signs that we're doomed.*](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/06/magazine/steven-pinker-interview.html)
I've read somewhere ( I think it was old SlateStarCodex ) that fracking is now cleaner than most other energy sources. This doesn't align with conventional wisdom. It also doesn't align super well with Wikipedia's introduction, which I would summarize as something like 'greenhouse effect similar to coal, other effects worse'.
Has Scott ever written about this? If not, any other rationalist-adjacent people? If not that, either, but if you have strong opinions on this (in either direction), where is the best evidence?
Initially, when I found out a friend of mine hadn’t been vaccinated (male, ~22 years old), I was worried that:
a) he was prolonging the pandemic
b) his behavior, at scale, is producing variants that could be avoided
c) he risks dying if he gets it
Now, I’m not so sure. From an article I read recently, the widespread nature of Covid seems inevitable. Variants seem to be here to stay. At endemicity, these variants seem rather insignificant. Covid is forecasted to become a permanent, cyclical virus that infects the population in waves for all of future time. (If this is news to you, please consider reading this article before responding: “Why Covid is Here to Stay and Why You Shouldn’t Worry About It” https://cspicenter.org/blog/waronscience/why-covid-19-is-here-to-stay-and-why-you-shouldnt-worry-about-it/)
Further, my friend is unlikely to get it now that a significant percentage of people are vaccinated. His risk of transmitting it to anyone vaccinated, assuming he gets it, is low. And even if he does transmit it, they’re extremely unlikely to have any serious complications. Finally, if he gets it, hospitalization is unlikely. Most probably, at worst he’ll be extremely sick for two weeks, so I can’t even rationally use his own self-preservation as a very compelling argument.
Also, everyone is pointing out that “98% of covid hospitalizations are in unvaccinated people,” but nobody talks much about the base rate of hospitalization being low (around 1-4%, from what I’ve found, sometimes less, at ~500 per 100k cases).
It’s hard for me to build a compelling case for a young person (eg. < 30 years old) to get vaccinated now. I’m pretty sure it’s a smart thing to do, but I can’t confidently say it’s wrong not to.
I'm a long time lurker (since 2014 or so) and many years ago used to post on the subreddit. I am thinking of blogging on substack. I've set up a "dummy" page already under this name. If I were to blog I would mostly discuss politics, current events, some pop culture, maybe some religion. I'm not interested in earning money, just want the intellectual stimulation. I have never blogged before, but I've been lurking and posting anonymously on message boards, others' blogs, etc since the late 1990s.
This is the most intelligent and kind community I've encountered in nearly 25 years online. I value all your feedback tremendously and it will have a decisive role in any decision I make about blogging here on Substack. Here are some questions I have that I would greatly appreciate the community's feedback on
1. How likely am I to be doxxed? I am terrified, to put it mildly, of being doxxed. I am especially concerned about the consequences it would have on my employment and on my family (including minor children). FWIW I have no plans to discuss things and people from my day-to-day life on my blog - it just doesn't overlap in many interesting ways with what I'd want to discuss online
2. Would the content of my blog create issues (esp relating to doxxing)? I mostly want to discuss politics. To give you an idea of where I'm at politically, I was the only 14 year old girl in the country who wanted to talk about how awesome Newt Gingrich was, but when I see things like Jack Dorsey's congressional testimony or corporate logos all over BLM stuff, I find myself muttering "workers of the world unite you have nothing left to lose but your chains......." You met me at a very strange time in my life :) I am still working a lot of things out and I have a feeling I'm not the only conservative who's doing the same. I'd like to have a blog spot where that kind of conversation can happen. I'm debating whether to get involved in local GOP politics and thought maybe a blog could overlap/springboard to that. But I don't want to bother if Substack is not the right environment, if it will get banned due to content, or will cause more trouble than it's worth (see 1).
3. While I've been lurking/commenting on blogs for ages I've never blogged before myself. Would it be advisable to start by commenting on other substack blogs for awhile and then starting my own?
Well I've rambled along enough.....many thanks for your feedback!
- Cloud Possum
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/24/seasteading-a-vanity-project-for-the-rich-or-the-future-of-humanity
I was going to make a snarky remark about not sending a libertarian to do a statist's job, but a more accurate or insightful assessment would be something to the effect that the seasteaders in the article were trying to do something that the existing and mature system doesn't really accommodate for.
It would be like if someone were to introduce a Tesla forty years ago, but without any of the infrastructure in place that is needed to operate a Tesla. There's no stations so an owner can charge it away from home, nobody knows how to fix it, the DOT isn't sure how to crash test a vehicle with none of the internal combustion stuff, the environmental testing people can't test tailpipe emissions on a vehicle with no tailpipe, etc..
Does anyone here have advice for RSI? I recently bought a brand new laptop, and it's really nice with the exception that my hands begin to hurt after using it for more than a few hours. For whatever reason it's only on this new laptop, my old laptop does not have this problem. Obviously it would be super lame to have to just use the old laptop or return the new laptop, so I am wondering if you guys know what could be causing this or how to fix it.
For context, the new new laptop is a Zephyrus g14, and the old laptop is a 13 inch macbook from 2017.
What if the Egyptian Pharaohs had devoted less effort into building the Pyramids and more into building canals to bypass all the Nile cataracts?
Are there any migraine sufferers here who have tried microdosing psilocybin, or any other tryptamines? Did they have any effect on the frequency of your migraines? Have you ever tried to dose as you feel a migraine coming on, and did it have any effect on your symptoms?
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/09/13/can-progressives-be-convinced-that-genetics-matters
"This fall, Princeton University Press will publish Harden’s book, “The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality,” which attempts to reconcile the findings of her field with her commitments to social justice. As she writes, “Yes, the genetic differences between any two people are tiny when compared to the long stretches of DNA coiled in every human cell. But these differences loom large when trying to understand why, for example, one child has autism and another doesn’t; why one is deaf and another hearing; and—as I will describe in this book—why one child will struggle with school and another will not. Genetic differences between us matter for our lives. They cause differences in things we care about. Building a commitment to egalitarianism on our genetic uniformity is building a house on sand.”
Harden understands herself to be waging a two-front campaign. On her left are those inclined to insist that genes don’t really matter; on her right are those who suspect that genes are, in fact, the only things that matter. The history of behavior genetics is the story of each generation’s attempt to chart a middle course. When the discipline first began to coalesce, in the early nineteen-sixties, the memory of Nazi atrocities rendered the eugenics threat distinctly untheoretical. The reigning model of human development, which seemed to accord with postwar liberal principles, was behaviorism, with its hope that environmental manipulation could produce any desired outcome. It did not take much, however, to notice that there is considerable variance in the distribution of human abilities. The early behavior geneticists started with the premise that our nature is neither perfectly fixed nor perfectly plastic, and that this was a good thing. They conscripted as their intellectual patriarch the Russian émigré Theodosius Dobzhansky, an evolutionary biologist who was committed to anti-racism and to the conviction that “genetic diversity is mankind’s most precious resource, not a regrettable deviation from an ideal state of monotonous sameness.”"
What's the technical difficulty level of something like this:
I have a strong preference on keeping moving, but I want to get the bus ultimately, but because I don't want to wait for the bus, I want to keep moving until the bus catches up with me.
A plug-in/adaptation for Google Maps/similar that says "Walk this way, walk until this point, and the bus should be there (small amount of time) after you get to that stop".
Can anyone recommend a good intro book to Bayesianism?
Hey Scott,
You should write about the effectiveness of condoms against STDs. I haven't found any detailed, condensed articles about whether or not to wear a condom.
This has a great parallel to wearing masks. It would be interesting what contradictions exist between people with different tolerances in either category. The demographics would be interesting to compare.
Dr. Scott Alexander,
Could you please write about the booster? Clarifying the science and how to think about it? If it has been 6 months since dose 2, what's the MEDICAL advice for various people, in different circumstances (immunocompromised, NOT immunocompromised but high risk of serious problems with covid, healthy low risk people, etc)? Same mRNA you got before, be it Moderna or Pfizer, again? Is Moderna not approved for this yet?
What is the etiquette regarding when to reply to a Tweet? Is there any etiquette (other than "don't reply to people who block you" and similar software limitations)?
So what's, like, the verdict on Iraq after the Iraq War and the surge and then Islamic State and the next surge etc. etc. etc. What kind of shape did Iraq end up in, as a country? I don't think I'll ever stop being fascinated by how short the American attention span is, and even in the middle of The World Discussing Afghanistan To Death- has anyone even mentioned Iraq?
My vague impression is that they're a quasi-functional democracy, and basically about as competent and with as much state capacity as they did during the Saddam era/pre-Iraq war. Does that sound correct? Like, they're roughly at the same level as other 2nd world countries in the Middle East and North Africa, but now they have elections that are at least kind of legitimate. Did they successfully drive Islamic State out? The American media I guess decided to stop covering that particular issue at some point. They're still in an awkward federalist structure with the Kurds?
I guess my point is that, even with wall-to-wall wailing about how we 'lost' in Afghanistan, I just haven't heard any summaries or lessons learned from Iraq. Aside from the WMD issue, I suppose we could say the left was wrong in that democracy apparently *can* be forcibly imported to a developing Muslim country, but also that the left was right in that it probably wasn't worth the cost (a couple trillion $)- yes? I mean Iraq is not even a particularly important or strategic ally to the US in the Middle East, if I'm not mistaken.
Does inspire some reflection that we were able to make Germany & Japan stable democracies, it sort of worked in Iraq, and yet the Arab Spring seems to have done absolutely nothing in the end. State capacity something something, culture & institutions something something
I don't know if I exactly have any formed thoughts around this, but I've been sort of thinking about soft power, especially in its cultural manifestation, and how this ties in with debates over "Is the West/America a declining force? Is China going to be the new global superpower?"
Now, this is usually in terms of economic and military power, but the interesting thing is the huge, huge, huge influence American culture has had. People talk about Coca-colonisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocacolonization but I don't know if the knowledge of the appeal of American culture is really recognised.
And of course, what leads on from that is when there is an attempt to co-opt this and replace it with your own cultural influence. Again, China is the one here; the Belt and Road Initiative and the influence within African nations are often discussed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative
But what about the influence of American culture on the youth of China? I think the CCP is becoming somewhat concerned about this, or at least trying to co-opt it as a propaganda opportunity. I started thinking about this due to two things:
(1) The really horribly translated potential crackdown on "sissy pants males" - that is to say, what would probably be called "metrosexual" here, at least when that was the fashion a while back. Young, attractive, well-groomed men who are actors and models and pop idols and have a huge fan base following (mostly if not solely women). It sounds vaguely silly to Western ears, but there's something more at the base of it than "we don't want our young men to be nancy boys!" It's precisely because of the huge fanbase, and the economic importance (these idols have all kinds of endorsements from a range of Chinese and Western companies selling everything from makeup to instant ready meals to watches and fashions) and more concerning to the CCP, influence on how the fans think of them - there's a minor scandal over one actor whose career has been pretty much totalled by the government, it kicked off because of jealousy of one set of fans who set out to cancel him by digging up "oh shit" moments from his social media history, and because a set of his fans defended him, this was seen as Bad Influence: instead of falling into line with the CCP judgement, they were holding out. This is not the job of media celebrities as the CCP views it; they are supposed to be Positive Role Models for the Youth, which includes being (at least publicly, whatever the views in private) 100% in line with the government and leading their fans the same way.
https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1002883/xinhua-mocks-sissy-pants-male-idols
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Zhehan#Controversy
(2) I am currently watching online something called "Street Dance of China". It's the fourth season of a dance competition. This year they have international dancers as well as Chinese dancers. The theme is "the battle for peace and love".
Now, I never imagined I'd end up watching hip-hop etc. dance (it's a long story) but I am, and I'm enjoying it. However it is (a) an example of how hugely influential American culture, from rap and hip-hop, are globally and (b) there's a subtle but definite angle about showcasing Chinese culture, how Chinese dancers are interpreting these styles of dance, and showing how China is catching up with and indeed surpassing international stars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3wcZkmbB1w
It's attracted an international audience as well, building on from success of last season, such that the TV channel is providing a range of subtitles:
"The first drafts of & English & Vietnamese & Thai & Spanish & Arabic & Indonesian & Japanese & Korean captions are up."
So, yeah. Huge and unknown(?) influence of American popular culture on modern Chinese youth, and possibly an attempt by China to leverage that popularity into cultural influence within its own geographic sphere - Chinese hip-hop dancers instead of American ones as the role models for Asian youth?
(Or I could be talking out of my hat. The dancing is great entertainment, though).
(I WANT AN EDIT BUTTON SO BADLY GAAHHHH) For the median citizen of these places, do you think quality of life will become better or worse by 2040, as compared to 2021? How confident are you of these beliefs? Places: Your country, USA, China, France, currently developed world as a whole, currently developing world as a whole.
"Quality of life" is of course subjective, so use whatever metrics seem reasonable, but lean toward measurable ones like life expectancy, median income vs. affordability of basic goods and services, homicide rates, suicide rates, etc.
Do you guys know what were the fastest declining major languages of the 20th century? I can think of Yiddish, Occitan, and Plattdeutsch, but I wonder what you guys can come up with.
Old music, digitized records collections at archive.org - https://archive.org/details/georgeblood
My fav: https://archive.org/details/78_rio-grande_leonard-warren-tom-scott-morris-levine_gbia0036362/07+-+The+Drunken+Sailor+-+Leonard+Warren+-+Tom+Scott.flac
I mostly like the shanties and folk stuff
Could people fill me in on Sinovac? I gather it's not a very good vaccine, but better than nothing.
Any thoughts about why China bet on an inferior vaccine? Bad luck? Cheaper to develop and make?
Does China seem to be getting some good out of it in terms of foreign relations?
Is it possible to take pictures of outside while keeping camera sensors inside a Faraday cage?
Tough math problem: http://www.acritch.com/media/math/Self-assigned_student_numbers.pdf
Here’s a fun thought experiment - if you distributed buttons to every human, which when pressed, deposited $1,000,000 into their bank account at the cost of randomly killing a person in the world, how many people would die?
What would the death counts look like with 100k, 10k and 1k?
What is the rationalist take on the Hegelian argument that the human condition is constituted by a struggle for recognition?
My 68 year old cousin died of COVID last week, a week after her roommate died of COVID. They both were apparently fully vaccinated. They both recently went back to their lives; going to the gym, work and family gatherings. They both had pretty major health issues before all this. Her roommate had COPD and was undergoing long term antiretroviral treatment and she was undergoing immunotherapy for Hep C. We think. It’s kinda fuzzy the details, lots of unnecessary secret-keeping (the 28 first cousins on that side of my family were pretty close growing up) and we’re all more or less much feared-based neurotics : )
Here are some recent testable prediction numbers:
1. Did they get one shot - failed to get the second shot - got COVID and died from complications because they were immunocompromised?
the family myth creators: 8% me: 1%
2. Were they both vaccinated and got COVID and died from complications because they were immunocompromised - a failure of an unnecessary unknown and un reliable vaccine?
family myth creators: 94% me: 1%
3. Were they afraid of the vaccine (due to their various health concerns) and lied about getting vaccinated.
the family: 6% me: 98%
I am not making light of their deaths, my cousin was one of the cooler cousins and I certainly share mental health issues with her. And am therefore highly empathetic.
If you believe that they were both fully vaccinated, I’m sincerely curious if there could be another explanation?
I really think that there's something to the cliché idea of there being a decline of the intellectuality culture and arts (weighted by popularity) in the past century or so. That is, it seems to me our culture and art is less and less produced and defined by intellectuals and mirrored in their (our) aesthetics, at least if you appropriately weight each cultural and artistic production by its impact and popularity.
My guess is that in the past the intellectual elite had much stronger ties to the social and economic elite (and these really are very distinct elites!), perhaps because those latter elites used the intellectual aesthetics as a way to distance themselves from the common lowly people. With the rise of the bourgeoisie and the optimization of capitalism, it was realized this was a nonsensical move -- you can sell a lot more culture and arts if you dumb it down. Slowly but surely the intellectual aesthetic was torn down in favor of a 'democratized' common man's aesthetic, which is obviously less intellectual given that most people are not intellectuals.
I don't want to get into the value judgement of whether this is a good or bad thing, but I'd like to hear whether people agree this decline of intellectuality took place and whether what I've written is a plausible mechanism.
Does anyone here listen to the Huberman Lab podcast (Stanford professor providing detailed discussion of neuroscience, health, and similar topics). I've been really enjoying it, but got very concerned with accuracy after listening to episode 19.
In episode 19, Huberman describes a study where cooling your palms in-between sets radically increased the number of reps a person can do (300% for dips!). The idea is that hyperthermia limits performance and cooling through the extremities prevents that.
Huberman claims that this methodology is being used by lots of sports teams and that they've been getting great results.
Frankly, this sounds way too good to be true.
There are a number of peer reviewed papers demonstrating the effect, however:
- They're from the original authors, who started a company to commercialize the technology
- The company was founded in 2000 and don't appear to have been able to bring anything to market in the last 20 years.
- I found a couple examples of replications that don't show anything like the effect size the original authors see, plus the results don't show a proper dose/response.
I'm tempted to try this myself to see if there's any validity to the claims (easy enough experiment and claimed gains are enormous).
1) Has anyone tried palm or extremity cooling themselves or know of any independent publications that either prove or debunk it?
2) Has anyone run across any other claims of concern from Huberman? Trying to decide how much I should update on my assessment of his credibility.
I'd like to be able to take notes while taking walks.
A few years ago, I very briefly tried note-taking via smartphone voice recognition (IIRC Google Assistant and various third-party apps that seemed to use the same underlying API), but found it unimpressive. In particular, these features did poorly when I wanted to flexibly switch between speaking in English and in German.
Nowadays, is there any solution for taking audio notes that's genuinely impressive? I'm not so much asking for service recommendations, but rather for glowing endorsements, i.e.: "I've been using <fantastic solution> for <at least a month> to take notes. It parses my speech correctly with no noticeable delay and with hardly any errors, and it's significantly faster than typing on the smartphone while walking."
How does a prior get trapped and what can be done about the problem? I don't want to have to deal with people insisting that "the other side is up to no good" every damn time something happens.
I'm not sure how to approach the question but intuitively it must have something to do with social dynamics. People organize into groups and communities with shared interests and share information among themselves. One of the particular phenomena that would actually impact people's beliefs, is that some of the most popular information tends to get repeated very often in such groups, especially when social media functions such as "Like" buttons etc exist. In particular information of the form "A member of Group A did Bad Thing X to one of us/an innocent victim" has high memetic potential. The mechanism is: coincidental spaced repetition (to memorize many such instances) + the availability heuristic (to overestimate the frequency of Group A doing Bad Thing X based on how easy it is to remember such events).
I don't know exactly what to do about this but I recommend staying away from highly partisan online spaces. The difference between how fast information spreads now vs. 25 years ago is so large, that we may have found some kind of phase transition where a rapidly increasing number of people hold these incredibly cynical worldviews, at least implicitly.
Does anyone know if the polsci literature on extremism suggests anything about these kinds of things? I would like to know more about these kinds of things, in particular how one might mentally guard oneself from the kind of mechanism I explained above. I'm worried that just observing some of these communities would expose a person to risk of implicitly adopting such beliefs.
What do you think of the following claim:
a) "thinking", defined properly, means the act of resolving cognitive dissonance.
b) most people aren't thinking, and don't realize this. They might be 'feeling' or 'subvocalizing', but these aren't really thinking, any more than reading a book is thinking.
In more detail, 'thinking' requires a thinker to be holding two different ideas in mind, "feeling" that they are both correct, "feeling" that there is come contradiction between them, "feeling" that this contradiction is not real, but a result of the thinker's ignorance, and then searching for a resolution - that is, some new piece of information, a new belief, or story, which resolves the apparent contradiction. "Thinking" necessitates at least trying to reduce informational uncertainty - that is, thinking means producing new beliefs (or at least, attempting to) which lower the net total dissonance between a person's existing beliefs.
I'm putting the word "feeling" in quotes in the second paragraph to say that this probably isn't' the right word here, either. It's just the best one i can summon at the moment.
Basically, i get the impression that most cognitive processes are only vaguely lit up in most people's heads, and that most adults do a bunch of feeling, and expression of these feelings, and then they tell themselves "this is thinking", maybe because words are involved. There's a fundamental difference between attempting to resolve conflict between two things you already belief, and just feeling something and putting that feeling into words. I think the later is almost always productive activity, whereas the former is just another form of angry (or happy, or confused) shouting. It might be a form of _communication_ - but the key thing is that no new beliefs are actually being formed. I get the impression that most of the subvocalizations that occur consist of other people's words, being repeated in their minds when corresponding emotions are triggered by external stimuli.
Is there something written about this idea? I know Eliezer seems to have brought this up somewhere, when he noted that most of the words people exchange aren't really about beliefs (in the anticipation-constraining sense), but are much more like flags being waved.
Considering the statistical minutia often discussed here it is indeed amusing to see some good old anecdotal evidence and meaningless interpretation:
" (MicroCovid says that vaccinated people who attend an outdoor meetup with a known case have a 2% chance of getting sick, but since several people are reporting symptoms maybe it’s higher than that)."
Where online do you go if you have a question on an arbitrary topic and want high-quality answers? Nowadays search engines have gotten so bad that I can't find any but the blandest results for any questions of interest; and while there are e.g. subreddits on arbitrary niches, your questions often get buried without any answers.
I'm particularly interested in getting high-quality answers to questions of health & illness, and would be willing to pay e.g. bounties.
Does anyone here have tips on such bounty services, or on other ways to ask questions on arbitrary topics and have a decent chance of getting high-quality answers?
Delta is a beast gang. It has ripped through Louisiana, including waylaying a lot of vaccinated people and killing elderly ones. Get jabbed and stay safe out there..
My latest post in my series about human herpesviruses covers the Epstein-Barr virus: https://denovo.substack.com/p/epstein-barr-virus-more-maladies
This is probably the worst human herpesvirus, not because mono is particularly bad, but because it gives people cancer. It can also rarely cause long-term fatigue, which is interesting in context of other viral fatigue syndromes such as long COVID.
I have a question regarding the Corona Pandemic and its recent wave. Perhaps someone can shed some light on things I have wondered about.
Multiple western countries are entering the forth wave, with the Delta variant increasing incidences despite 50%+ of the people being fully vaccinated.
Now, the clinical tests say that being vaccinated does not fully prevent the possibility of a covid-19 infection, but it does significantly reduce the number of dangerous infections and infections that lead to hospitalisations and death.
What surprised me: Why do we see this in most western countries, but not the US?
Details: According to https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases, we have an incidence of 511 in the UK now, the peak of the last wave was at 877, so we have about 58% of the cases of the worst peak of the last wave.
And according to https://ourworldindata.org/covid-hospitalizations#how-many-people-are-in-hospital-due-to-covid-19-at-a-given-time, we have 7.600 hospitalisations in the Uk, down from 39k at the peak of the last wave, or 19% of the last peak. The hospitalisations do not keep up with the incidences.
Hospitalisations are on a time delay, but the recent wave started in June and was actually higher than now on July in the UK, so that should not be the reason. The widespread vaccinations probably reduce the severity in the UK, as expected.
France? Incidence 205, down from 376 a few weeks ago, worst of the last wave 675, so this wave reached 55% of the last regarding incidences. Hospitalisations 11k now, 31k at the last wave's peak, or 35%. Significantly lower.
Israel? Israel reached a new maximum with an incidence of 1.143 these days, their worst at the last peak was 981, so they are at 116% right now. Hospitalisations reached 1.400 a few days ago, the worst of the last wave was 2.387, so its 58%. Same picture: Hospitalisations do not keep up.
Same in Italy, which peaked its recent wave at 108, down from 384 in the last, or 28% of incidences. Hospitalisations are 4.600 now compared to 32.900 last wave, or 14%. Same in Germany or Spain.
But then I look at the US. The US right now has an incidence of 491, the peak of the last wave was 748, so it reached 65% of its last peak. Hospitalisations are 97k, the last peak was 133k, or 72%.
Why is the US the one western country where hospitalisations rise faster than instances? It's like in the US, vaccinations made corona worse!
(And when we look at deaths, the picture is almost similar: According to https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths, the UK is at 1,65 deaths per million people, their previous peak was 18.2, so they just have 9% of their last peak, although their incidences are at 58%. France has 1,96 of 9,2, or 21%, while their incidences are at 55%. Germany 0,37 compared to 10,6, so just 3 % of the last big wave of deaths, but its incidences are at 138 compared to 257, or 53%. Israel has a new maximum of incidences, but its deaths are at 2,96 and were at 7,3, so just 54% of their last peak. But the US has 4,66, the last peak was 10,27, so 45%, compared to 65% of incidences. That is way worse than the european countries I compared or Israel. But when we look at hospitalisations, the difference is more extreme.)
I thought of a couple of explanations, but none explain it to me. Without socialized healthcare in the US like there is in Europe, it is unlikely that the people in the US are just more likely to go to the hospital when they feel a bit ill. I would expect the opposite.
The numbers of fully vaccinated people are lower in the US than in western Europe (US 52%, UK 63%, France 60%, Germany 61%, Italy 61%), but while I would understand that to affect the R0 value and that the speed with which a wave grows, I would not expect it to so completely chance the hospitalisations picture.
It's also not that the numbers in Europe grew so fast that the hospitalisations aren't keeping up, most of the countries mentioned have waves cresting already, unlike the US.
It's not the vaccine either, while that could explain if the UK behaved differently, using mainly AstralZeneca, the US uses Biontec/Pfizer and Moderna, just like France, Italy and Germany.
So, what's up with that?
Hi Scott, I'm a long time lurker and first time poster. Now that I have a stable income I would like to subscribe, but I see that the only payment option is CC, which I don't have. Is there any way to subscribe via Paypal, iDeal, or something similar? Or plans to add them in the future? Thanks!
Can you use probabilistic reasoning and Nick Bostrom's observation selection theory (https://www.anthropic-principle.com/q=book/chapter_10/) to argue against supernatural Hells and Heavens? If all people really went to eternal or extremely long-lasting Hells or Heavens after death, then almost all conscious experiences would be had in those hellish or heavenly states of mind. Yet, what we observe are regular lives on Earth, so it's much more likely that the reference class from which our observations are taken contains mostly regular lives on Earth.
To put it more clearly, let's assume there's a bag full of 1,000,000 balls, and you don't know how many of the balls are red and how many are blue. You pick one ball at random, and it's blue. What is more likely: the bag contains mostly blue balls or the bag contains one blue ball and 999,999 red balls and you happened to pick the only blue ball? Because the latter is equivalent to us picking the rare regular Earth life observation from all observations that include eternal lives in Heaven and Hell. So eternal Hell and Heaven almost certainly aren't real.
I think if they'd mandated that everyone get vaccinated for Covid right at the beginning (circa January/February 2021), then we'd probably have a much higher vaccination rate for it than we do now. Some folks would obviously resist it, but I think most people's reaction would be "Oh, the government is requiring me to get the vaccine, it must be really important" and get it. Same reason people follow all kinds of public orders and such even if the actual enforcement side of that is pretty limited.
But saying, "We recommend you get the vaccine, but aren't requiring it" kind of sends the message that it's a personal choice above all, rather than a public health issue in the same way that kids have to get vaccinated before attending school.
On a lighter note, I saw the "Shang Chi" movie in theaters today. It amuses me to think of all the Ancient Secret Organizations in the MCU as being like that Simpsons joke about Mr Burns having every disease known to man, but they're all stuffed together and none of them can really get a foothold on him. In any case, fun movie, and it actually handles the Third Act stuff pretty good (not always a given with MCU movies).
So here's a weird thought. Do you think at some point, podcast advertisements will be able to take samples of your voice recorded when you use the voice assistant built in, and then emulate your own voice reading them to you? Or would that be too weird, or a violation of your IP rights?
Is e-ink screen or paper better for eyes than LCD screen?
Asking, as I have some premature eye problems due to eye strain caused by heavy computer use.
And I am a programmer so I cannot just stop using it.
I am considering switching to paper or e-ink partially, as part of a solution. But I have no idea is it likely that it will help.
Are we back to "Chronological" for open threads, or did Scott forget to set it to "New First" for the past two?
I have been wondering how much impact general fear of the sort "dawn of nation/civilization" have on interest rates.
If I assume that in the next 50 years, in my country there will be a terrible war, some hyperinflation, some X-risk event, or something else that basically makes my possessions void, then this should set a lower limit on the interest rates that I am a willing to accept for a loan. For 50 years, I should never accept interest rates below 1.4%. For 20 years, I should never accept less than 3.5%.
Does this have an effect, or is it beyond the time horizon of people? If interest rates are close to zero, then implicitly people assume that their bonds will still have value in 50-100 years. This may have been unreasonable in the 60s and 70s, with two world wars just a few decades ago, and a cold war looming. But it may be more in line with people's believe nowadays, reasonable or not. But I have never heard this argument come up in any discussion of why interest rates are low. Any opinions?
It seems like in some cases, it's obviously correct to reason using the anthropic principle, and other times it's way too powerful an argument and seems equivalent to throwing up your hands and saying "Because God willed it".
For example why are we on earth and not space? Space isn't conducive to life evolving. That seems like straightforward uncontroversial anthropic reasoning.
Which events in evolutionary history are fantastically unlikely and critical to intelligent life? All of them. Every step in our evolution is very unlikely and we are in a universe / Everett branch where we win the lottery billions of times in a row. This seems way too powerful of an explanation and leaves basically no reason to look for a general mechanism like natural selection.
Can anyone point me to some good discussion / literature about how to think about under what conditions it's best to use anthropic reasoning? I've seen Nick Bostrom's book online but... it's really large and intimidating and I would be curious to know if it deals with this kind of question.
A contact hygiene failure could explain a cluster of cases at an outdoor meetup, and I just feel like handwashing and hand sanitizer aren't getting as much attention as they deserve. So PSA that your hands need to be clean before you handle food or touch your face, and a precautionary rule of thumb is to act as if they become unclean whenever they touch anything that isn't certainly clean. I've been adhering to this rather strictly since I was little.
Since this is "politics allowed" I'll admit I'm quite sad by how from a political perspective covid panned out. The two sides started as:
- covid-denial (against quarantine measures and border closure) vs underpowered covid carefulness (maybe we should close borders with China, 3 months after covid was raging in China)
- then they promptly switched to the more stable configuration of covid-alarmism and covid-denialism
My hope was that, once vaccines arrive, this will provide an "out" for both sides to reach a more moderate ground.
One side could "<mumble-mumble vaccine is so safe that even the close-to-nonexistent risk of covid isn't worth it>"
The other side could "<mumble-mumble yes the numbers look the same but mortality is down, and it's basically confounded with background mortality... and maybe it was before but not quite look there's a few pct point diff>"
And things would go to normal.
As it stands the two sides seem to be polarizing more and more instead. With the covid alarmists now claiming the vaccine doesn't work, and that new variants are worst, and that long covid will destroy the world.
The covid denialists picked this fucking hill to die upon in terms of 2x placebo-level adverse effects being grounds for not getting a vaccine, and refuse to wear masks even when it's sensible, and refuse to close down even the dumbest kind of gatherings (e.g. concerts, sport matches)
My one hope right now is that the "get the vaccine, wear a mask in stores, go about your own business as usual" is becoming more common but just doesn't get promoted as a view, since it's no polarizing and rather boring. It seems to be the case given that I see less people wearing masks outdoors in most places I go and more people are getting vaccinated in spite of increasing fear-mongering.
Michael Huemer is a philosopher at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He recently published an interesting article entitled "Existence is Evidence of Immortality" in which he makes the case that persons are repeatable. [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/nous.12295] In other words, it is an argument for reincarnation. The TLDR is available on this blog post [https://fakenous.net/?p=128]:
Tl;dr:
1. Premise: There is a nonzero initial probability that persons are repeatable (can have multiple lives).
2. Also, the probability that you would be alive now given that persons are repeatable is nonzero.
3. Evidence: You are alive now.
4. Claim: The probability that you would be alive now, given that persons are unrepeatable, and that there is an infinite past, is zero. Rough explanation: there were infinite opportunities for you to exist in earlier centuries, which, if persons are unrepeatable, would have prevented you from existing now.
But you do exist now, so either the past is finite, or persons are repeatable. Bayesian calculation: Let H=[persons are repeatable], E=[You exist now]:
P(H|E) = P(H)*P(E|H) / [P(H)*P(E|H) + P(~H)*P(E|~H)]
= P(H)*P(E|H) / [P(H)*P(E|H) + P(~H)*0]
= P(H)*P(E|H) / P(H)*P(E|H)
= 1 (provided P(H), P(E|H) are nonzero)
If persons are repeatable, then they will repeat, given sufficient time. Conclusion: if the past is infinite, then persons are reincarnated infinitely many times.
Not sure where I got this link from - might have even been one of the previous open threads. Anyhow, I was curious what anyone who has tried to learn Mandarin (or any other of the Sinitic languages) thinks of this article: http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
Thank you Scott for announcing the infections without calling for other meetups to be cancelled or for them to be held with mandatory masking. We really do need this kind of sensibility these days.