nopie
10mo ago
Yes, Putin is a liar, an imperialist and a murdering conqueror. People have characterized him fairly.
Putin is a war criminal.
nopie
1yr ago
Maybe masks filter things efficiently (just for the sake of argument) but it doesn't matter in practice because people cannot wear them 24 hours without stop and will get exposed to unfiltered air at some time. If the end result is that mask wearers get respiratory infections at almost the same rate as the rest, what is the point?
Also we are supposed to see the big picture, not just some technical point. Mask mandates would be wrong even if they were effective.
nopie
1yr ago
No, I need something to trust before I make a voluntary decision.
I mean, I can be forced to make a decision. If someone threatens me, I would comply. But to make a decision, for example, get a covid booster or not, is based on my understanding and trust in the benefit or absence of any benefit.
nopie
1yr ago
My contra-argument to this would be that more strength has no value in the modern society. You need some strength to do most activities but as we have different power-tools, average worker is as much productive as the Olympic level athlete. And even if it would matter, the strongest man is only marginally better than an average male (in good physical health and training status). The group work is more important than individual strength since immemorial times. Even in stone age hunting mammoths required teamwork more than brute force.
Intelligence however is very different from physical strength. Maybe it has more value in the modern society. Again, some geniuses may make important discoveries that can benefit us all. But that may be very unpredictable and hard to measure anyway.
Taleb doesn't say that IQ doesn't matter at all. Definitely some people are smarter and therefore more successful. But the correlation of IQ with success probably maxes at certain limit.
nopie
1yr ago
Even more weird reasoning coming. The second paragraph is a clear contradiction of the first. Hitler hadn't attacked the USSR in 1940. He had a non-aggression pact. Clearly, it must be prima facie evidence that he lacks the motive to attack the USSR. Except that he did just a few months later. What changed? Probably nothing, he was only busy with other things or waiting for more opportune moment.
I cannot imagine how crypto could work without exchanges.
Once I wanted to install bitcoin wallet just for interest. At that time the wallet file size was 2 terabytes large. I decided not to waste my resources on this. The same is probably true for most people with the exception of a small number of motivated people.
Without exchanges bitcoin would never get to the usage levels it has now. If you want to buy drugs with bitcoin, the seller needs to be able to use those bitcoins to buy something else. Even today there is not much use for them and most likely one needs to use exchange to get another currency that one can use to buy legal things.
I understand the original idea was that everyone mines bitcoins with their own hardware and then engages in commerce with other people. In reality as soon as exchange was started, professional miners started earning real (fiat) money.
But even if bitcoin community had managed to ban exchanges (not really sure how) and had captured sufficiently large economy to be self-sufficient (I sell pizza for bitcoins that I use to buy drugs or whatever), the government would have controlled it, to collect taxes if not for other reasons. Did you know that you have to pay tax even for barter transactions?
There is nothing special about bitcoin as originally intended. It is nothing more than digital cash. That is not sufficient to avoid government control because the government controls physical things. Not fully, not entirely but sufficiently to make it hard enough to discourage the majority.
nopie
10mo ago
The wall street does not rule the world or countries. They certainly do lobbying but it is not a dictatorship and many smart people constantly suggest ways how to improve the global financial system.
Noah Smith have made very good comparisons about the economy of the post-soviet countries – the countries which have joined the EU have developed faster than those which didn't. If you look from the point of view of freedoms, you will see the same results.
Ukraine has lost a lot of potential by failing to join the EU sooner. Better late than never.
nopie
1yr ago
This data does not show this. Even if the expenditure increased but it could be the case that it went to wrong sectors of the economy.
nopie
1yr ago
The point here is that when someone has psoriasis why does he need to get the approved medicine if Ngoko bean bean extract could be used instead without prescription? The reality is that we don't know if Ngoko bean extract (and thousands of other remedies offered by snake oil peddlers) works for psoriasis. Obtaining this information can be costly and I can see why no one wants to study Ngoko beans if they cannot be patented.
However, psoriasis is mostly auto-immune disease and if topical treatments do not work, specific monoclonal antibodies can be tried. They are not cheap but that's because the technology to make them is quite complicated.
You cannot separate “telling people to wear masks work” from “wearing masks work” in the intervention. It is the real life we are talking about.
The argument that maybe the results would be better if we apply efforts to improve the compliance is a real one and was raised by the Cochrane group reviewers. Their answer was that no one has studied it, so we don't know and cannot claim that it would have helped.
I was just learning about different contraceptive methods. Their reported results of effectiveness are not some best case values but real life results from studies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Index Even that is being criticised that in studies people get better counselling and training and may not represent the real life values. I find interesting that fertility rhythm method has very high theoretical effectiveness (slightly worse than condoms – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_birth_control_methods) and yet it is heavily criticized by all experts in the field. It is always more easier to take a pill than measure temperature daily plus all other behavioural aspects.
Some argue that it still makes sense for their elderly relative to wear mask to protect themselves. Maybe, but I don't know your elderly relative. The statistical chances are that they are as much non-compliant as any other member of the population. Telling all hundred or thousand of them (how many readers do we have?) to wear a mask will statistically yield the same result as in those studies.
nopie
1yr ago
I don't think that psychology is efficient at all. Most of it is not helping at all and a small part of it has moderate efficacy. That small part might even be a common sense methods. Like in medicine it would be a common sense to put a clean dressing on injury to prevent a person bleeding to death and possibly cleaning the wound first with something to minimise risk of infection.
nopie
10mo ago
I didn't understand your comparisons either. So, I just emphasized the basic truth.
nopie
1yr ago
No, my medical decisions are not like asking a woman out.
Of course, you can make them like rolling a dice but that's not the best way. The whole medical history has led us to this point that we don't.
nopie
1yr ago
I trusted that rationalist community will be better than general public with regards to understanding medical evidence. I no longer have these illusions. One example was that we don't really have much evidence about Paxlovid use in vaccinated. For this reason the UK do not recommend it for healthy, vaccinated people with low risk. The same applies to Tamiflu. Even if they were beneficial to some degree, they are not cost effective. And yet rationalists on these forums often claim the opposite, with general statements that the scientific recommendations are due to incompetence.
People often make the case that if we can shorten the cold period of feeling terrible even a couple of days it is worth it. It may be but somehow I think people underestimate the impact of mental health. People in depression don't feel terrible for couple of days, they feel terrible for months, even years. It was the issue why I objected to lockdowns because the harm from covid for young people was low and in most cases it was just feeling terrible for a few days. While getting into financial difficulties, social problems, depression, drug and alcohol use can have much longer lasting periods of feeling terrible and also long lasting negative effects. And for many children losing schooling can have life-time consequences.
nopie
1yr ago
The chances of Germany attacking the USSR prior to 1941 was very high. The evidence was that Germans thought of themselves as higher race and it was only a question of time when they would attack all other countries, including the USSR.
The strength of the evidence can vary – from very weak to very strong. I wouldn't be able to predict anything without strong evidence. You try to confuse absence of evidence with evidence of absence.
My Bayesian sense says that you are a Russian troll.
The following evidence is present:
-
new account, not much engagement
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you write very confusing things, do not stay on topic and then demand (yes, you demand) – “please explain this or that”.
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you support extreme point of view
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your answers are being regularly downvoted
Any evidence against?
I don't believe that the use of nuclear arms means the world is over. It can cause a lot of damage but the impact on it is overestimated. Even if one believes argameddon, we don't really know what increases the risk. People are just unnecessary panicking. We just witnessed the same happened with covid pandemic. It just led to a lot of unnecessary lockdowns, travel restrictions, useless but dehumanising vaccine mandates etc.
That said, I totally understand Elon Musk's arguments. His first poll was unreasonable because it included the condition of Ukraine remaining neutral naively believing that it was a real reason why Russia attacked. The second poll is more reasonable. Despite all the blood and everything ultimately if most people in those areas prefer to stay with Russia, then it is wrong to force them eternally. The question is only how this transition should happen? I cannot imagine that the referendum during the war is appropriate. But if given a reasonable time, like in five years when the cities are rebuilt and the scars of war are more or less healed, then people can make a choice. The poll doesn't say anything about these conditions but many people are reading it in the context of the first poll and in the context of current politics instead taking it at the face value.
nopie
10mo ago
That's not really true. At some point Russia's GDP was even higher than Latvia's. Belarus is also relatively stable and more prosperous than Ukraine.
The EU membership boosted the growth of their members quite considerably.
Of course, you could say that readiness to join the EU was also a big impetus for necessary reforms. Turkey was going that way too. But since they clearly decided not to join the EU, their growth stalled.
nopie
1yr ago
I was in Spain and it definitely hadn't recovered in 2021. The amount of people on streets were visually lower.
Healthcare utilization in the UK during covid was 80% of normal. That is one of the most contra-intuitive things because most people believe that healthcare was totally overwhelmed during pandemic. Well, some places were but in general the income of healthcare workers took a hit.
However, the amount of money we spent on vaccines that later were thrown out were unusually high. That means that other needs did not get financed sufficiently. The distortions are quite clear and apparent in every sector where I look.
nopie
1yr ago
That is actually very common. Most people who want to discredit conspiracy theorists actually know very little about the subject and the conspiracy theorist actually knows a great deal more (albeit often with his own bias that misleads him). When starting dialog, the discreditors are quickly faced with a failure which they don't want to accept and simply start mocking the opponent.
I already said in another place that I totally support Scott on his stance to write a long and detailed rebuttal. Maybe his choice about ivermectin wasn't the most interesting to majority but people write detailed PhD theses about more boring subjects and learn a great deal about many things. Who am I to say which subjects one should engage to and which are not allowed?
nopie
1yr ago
No, we don't know if ngoko bean extract don't cause harm. They could easily make psoriasis actually worse.
It is unbelievable today but merely 50 years ago cigarettes were recommended for treating asthma and were sold by pharmacists. Today we know that cigarette smoke actually harm airways and make asthma attacks worse.
nopie
1yr ago
The standard definition of success for a company is how much money it makes (profit) and not how many people it employs. Although I can imagine that from the government point of view the number of employed people is also important. But the number of people working for Twitter was probably insignificant even for the US. I don't see any huge implications in this case.
Currently for Ukraine Putin's aggression in Ukraine is existential danger.
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