nopie
1yr ago
I am not sure what do you mean by this. Why would I even want to run some code on a supercomputer?
nopie
11mo ago
That still is not utilization. My sources are the BMJ. I am too lazy now to search for the article I had read before but the quick search sent me an article that it had decreased by a third, so I am not sure which data is more trustable.
The rebounding after 1-2 months of depression is simply not believable. We had unexplained excess mortality of 10-15% in December 2022 which was neither due to vaccines, nor covid (despite panicking voices on both sides). In medicine we don't just look at test results to make diagnosis. We have to corelate to what we observe in patient, all manifestations and functions. And we have to admit what we don't know.
It may be fully possible that the measures introduced to limit covid exposure increased actual spending while utilization remained below the normal.
I can now better understand why 2008 crisis caught so many unprepared. That was the belief in reported numbers that everything is fine. It took a doctor to actually look behind those numbers and see what is going on in the field.
nopie
11mo 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
11mo 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
11mo ago
You are missing the main reason why the stimulus was too much this time. It was simply because the government acted in contradictory ways and prevented people spending money. The fact that different restrictions continued after most elderly had received vaccine was the biggest unforced error.
nopie
1yr ago
Well, I had read Krugman's “End This Depression Now” explaining why stimulus in certain conditions is needed. I read the book because I was going through personally depressive period in my life but the book had some insights anyway. Krugman was proven right with sufficient evidence that I was surprised that so many experts still disagreed with him and demanded austerity policies instead. Nevertheless, even the staunchest critics have to admit that stimulus worked better during economic contraction, so it was no-brainer that the governments faced with economic contraction during covid pandemic would try to use stimulus too. I didn't believe that it will be very effective because unlike normal conditions people were prevented from spending money. The government had little choice though because they had to make sure that people who were forced out of work by their policies can still pay rent, buy food etc.
Incidentally, the lack of spending opportunities also gave me chance to invest some money. I expected that other people would do the same and it seems that eventually they did. But when I saw stock market taking a dive, it made no sense. I didn't expect to make a quick profit, I thought that recovery would take longer time. I believed that eventually everybody would get covid and then all the restrictions will be shown useless. Even the most totalitarian governments would have to admit that their policies are futile. Once restrictions are gone, people would quickly restart economic activities and stock market would rise.
Scott wrote that the stock market dive actually happened due to automatic selling. Many funds set automatic scripts to sell when the price reaches certain low threshold to prevent from further losses. Selling moved the price even lower with more and more funds initiating automatic selling.
nopie
1yr ago
When I learned that US embassy workers were having unexplained brain damage, many people ascribed that to “sonic weapons” from unknown attackers. The most likely explanation however was that it is probably coincidence and more likely it was mass psychogenic illness. This Havana syndrome is still unresolved but if there was a way to bet on this, the correct way would be to bet against sonic weapons.
Now, if the governments in many countries would wrongly become convinced that it was sonic weapon, it would seem that you lose the bet. But eventually the truth comes out and the bet against sonic weapons has much higher chance to be right.
Covid was something similar to this. When due to human nature collectively we have markets going into wrong direction, you may or may not be able to profit from it but in any case you need to take stance and try to correct the delusion that is harming all of us. If you can it directly by placing winning bets, that's preferrable because it might help other people to realize sooner that their thinking is faulty. Granted such cases are rare, or non-existent for most people.
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.
nopie
1yr ago
In medicines all such good reasons should be verified, with RCTs if possible. So many things that “just makes sense” were proven wrong.
As for spitting, it is how people have interacted with each other for thousands of years and it never bothered anyone except in some gross cases. To become concerned about it now would indicate that the person has too much anxiety.
Just for a note, I never masked as a pharmacist, except when administering vaccines. For vaccines it is a protocol that we have to strictly observe but for other interactions it is optional. I also noticed that in other countries covid vaccines are administered differently. For example, we do not clean the skin with alcohol wipe (unless visibly dirty) because the studies showed that it makes no difference.
nopie
1yr ago
I don't think vitamin D production differences are significant in the modern world with all year round availability of vitamin D containing foods plus most foods already come fortified with vitamin and supplements are cheap.
Significant differences would be in the different tolerance of environment, psychological aspects to thrive in society or make career and succeed. Maybe there are some differences in these things too but I don't think they are significant either because currently most social differences can be explained by culture and traditions rather than race or ethnicity.
High level court officials were giving completely misleading data about how many kids have been hospitalized due to covid and how many of them died from covid. I cannot simply trust any officially published data now. I will need several confirmatory sources with good methodology and tested by rigorous review process.
I work at the pharmacy. Some children we dispense medicines to are wheelchair bound. In fact, they have severe disabilities, including mental disabilities. In vulgar language such a child is sometimes called “a vegetable”. People talk like that although I am conscious that some people will consider that it is very disrespectful to use such a word. In any case, one of them died from covid. It is sad but I am sure the parents saw his death from covid as mercy. He had no chance of fulfilling life and was only suffering every hour of his existence.
Elon Musk refused to reinstate Alex Jones on twitter because he was using child tragedies for personal gain. I agree with this decision. But I think that many people were using those rare child deaths from covid to spread fear and push their narratives. Their actions are abominable similar to Alex Jones'.
nopie
1yr ago
I agree that protests sometimes have very little success or no success at all in near term. However, with time they can change collective minds more effectively than armed resistance. After the WWII many Latvians took the arms and waged guerrilla war against Soviet occupation (fondly remembered as Forest Brothers). They failed and had no impact at all. What changed everything was Gorbachev's glastnost (openness) policy, people were allowed to talk freely and they decided that they don't like the Soviet system anymore. Despite what you read in history books, that was the main reason why the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Today I learned from my aging mother that during WWII as a small child she was a refugee in camps in Germany. She might remember some details wrong but when the war ended they were let out and they had to decide: stay in Germany or go back to Latvia. She said that they had no information, no understanding about global things and they were afraid to stay in Germany (after all, Germany had started the war), so they decided to return to Latvia. Today it sounds like a monumental mistake considering that Latvia remained occupied by the Soviet Union and how different the post-war development turned to be. This just illustrates that sometimes people make bad choices because genuinely they don't know better.
Ukraine is again a good example of that as well. Areas with greater Russian loyalties are much easier to conquer by Russia. Ukraine is in a bad shape but encroaching totalitarianism is much worse with potentially poor future outcomes. Beliefs that people have in Russia about the west are main reason why this war is happening at all. Protests can nudge people to change their minds better than weapons.
Of course, we should do GoF research very carefully and with proper safeguards. But saying that it should be banned completely is a different kind of proposal. I have no idea how valuable is GoF research as these things are very complicated but it is not always easy to predict future benefits.
I am less concerned about some occasional leaks. Covid might have leaked from the lab (with or without GoF research) but what I understand, potentially it could have arisen naturally too. Every walking immunosuppressed individual (e.g., HIV patient with poor adherence to medication or organ transplant recipient) is a breeding place of new viral mutations. In the past such people didn't live long. Today due to improved medical care their numbers are increasing significantly. I wouldn't suggest that we should stop providing medical care to such people and let them die as soon as possible out of fear that they could leak some kind of mutated supervirus.
nopie
1yr ago
They could do all these things. My impression is that most Latvians just have an instinctive reaction – Russians bad therefore we shouldn't let them in even if they are avoiding being sent to Ukraine to kill more Ukrainians. No one really wants to think deeper because that would require one to compare which is the lesser risk – allowing more Russians into the country or risking them to be sent to Ukraine. Covid experience have taught us that such nuanced thinking is too complicated for policy makers. They operate more on the level of Idiocracy – covid bad, make lockdowns (electrolytes good, give plants electrolytes).
Thanks for the explanation.
I don't think it is Joe Biden though. My priors are that sons don't really want to be controlled by their fathers. But in case he had such a relationship with his father, he would had called him less formally, like “Dad” or similar.
Ray Epps is more interesting. I think the worry about January 6 being a potential coup is overblown. Recently Germany had arrested a bunch of people for plotting a coup and restoring monarchy. The media described them as a group of senile men who had got hold of weapons, i.e., nothing serious and all immediately forgot about it. The same is probably true about January 6 except they were not seniors but younger fantasists and some of them had guns (but everybody has a gun in the US). It should not be paid such an attention. Sadly some people died in the crowds but fatal traffic accidents also happen and it is time to forget about this.
The only difference I can see is that Trump was tweeting something and the irrational hate of Trump has been a feature of the US politics. I am not saying that Trump is a good man but he certainly is not guilty of all the outrageous things he is accused of. Whatever Ray Epps' role was, it doesn't change the fact that it was just a spontaneous crowd gathered in naive beliefs, probably instigated by social media viral messaging.
nopie
26d ago
It is hard to believe that US intelligence is becoming worse. The recent events (Ruso-Ukrainian war, Crocus City Hall shooting) show that is has become better.
It appears that CIA has wide access to online communication worldwide and combined with modern AI technologies that allows to sieve vast amounts of information and find a needle in the haystack. A translator I had known got hired by a US agency couple of years ago. She has never spoken what she does but I suspect that she works on automated translation models for US intelligence. Currently we should assume that communication in any language is equally monitored and analysed.
Also, it hard to believe that if Russians really possessed such technology that many describe as improbable it wouldn't have leaked by now. Even best agents eventually make mistakes.
Russians have been involved in assassination in other countries, like in the UK. But we know that because eventually we found some evidence. It is likely that it could have happened in this case too, especially after repeated attacks in several countries. Unless, of course, CIA knows more about these cases but keep silent.
And third, why would Russians use this technology against targets of low importance instead of someone who really matters?
nopie
1yr ago
The fact that he is a media person disqualifies him already.
He talked rubbish about war in Ukraine. He is not interested in finding truth, just make controversial statements to increase his audience (and income).
nopie
1yr ago
Wrong? No, it was that you are likely a troll. That's the downvoting is for, it's intended purpose to show which comments are worse than others.
nopie
1yr ago
Exactly.
Why should I even care about this issue? I was just trying to convey how much would I trust this information based on my priors. I don't think I am biased exactly because I don't care about it. However, this is more interesting that Tucker doesn't move my priors.
If I read something on wikipedia that would move my priors.
I mean, this is going into circles. Your write something very unclear based on some references or comparisons that I am not familiar with, I don't understand them. You then say – what comparisons?
Maybe you should reflect on what DuplexFields wrote and try to rewrite it so that it makes sense. I cannot provide reasonings of things that I cannot understand.
nopie
10mo ago
There was not much of a pie to divide at the start. All countries started being very poor but some countries received new investments and others not.
Specifically in Ukraine oligarhs resisted establishing links with the EU exactly because they feared that new investments will make their wealth to become proportionally much smaller (hence, losing power). If Ukraine had joined the EU despite inefficient privatization, it would have been much more developed today.
On the other hand, the countries that remained economically related to Russia, the risk of western investments was too high and they remained poor.
The usual – that Russian invasion is the US fault for not promising to not expand NATO, that Ukraine is losing the war (it is a stalemate on the front but Ukraine is retaining statehood and even becoming closer to and more integrated with the EU which could be kind of victory).
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