787 karma · joined October 28, 2018
1. They lied about masks, first it was irrelevant whether you wore one or not, then they changed their mind and suddenly masks were super important and you just have to wear one or else. The truth is that it probably helps a little because duh, you have some cloth in front of your breathing, it probably catches some particles but definitely not all all the time. Saying that scientific truth evolved is utter nonsense, experts definitely always knew particle size and mask efficiency. They just didn't care and didn't do their job figuring it out and telling people the real efficiency.
2. They lied constantly that vaccines are super safe and super effective, outright attempting to gaslight you that "nobody" dies to vaccines. Which is just a flat out lie. People absolutely died from vaccines and always have. Just stop lying about it.
3. The U.S president himself lied that you will not spread it anymore if you get vaccinated. All lies. And it was definitely already known at the time he said this, frankly it's common sense.
3. They lied about herd immunity which is basically impossible to achieve.
4. Deals with vaccine companies were kept secret, that doesn't exactly inspire much confidence to follow guidances when everyone knows how much money can corrupt.
5. They mounted a massive coercion campaign and constantly shamed everyone in the most pathetic ways possible with patronizing TV coverage. Colbert's little vaccine dance is historic at this point.
6. They strongly suppressed alternative points of view from other scientists and doctors. These were not flatearther tier people, they made good points and many were and are well respected people. And yet they were suppressed anyway.
And after all this you come here with a very generic comment about how disappointed you are that people didn't come together on a base truth. I'm disappointed that you seem to have no complaints and offer such a generic, apologist view of the past.
Just because you can hire a 68 year old to do content moderation or be an assistant teacher... does not mean that anybody actually wants him around at that age and that he will be a net gain to the environment. His speed and ability at work is inherently going to limit other people's speed in some way or form,not even just that. Even his vibe, his impact on the team. These things are all things that people consider during hiring. It's the concept of "the chain is only as strong as its weakest link" I suppose.
I also think that once robots are around it will be yet another huge multiplier but this time in the real world. Sure the robot won't be as perfect as the human initially but so what. You can utilize it to do so much more. Maybe I'll bother actually buying a rundown house and renovating myself. If I know that I can just tell the robot to paint all the walls and possibly even do it 3 times with different paint then I feel far more confident that it won't be an untenable risk and bother.
I understand that argument I've never seen it spelled out by anyone other than me. I only brought it up as a last effort to explain the possible thinking behind these actions. It still won't make sense because even if you believe that you are the top dog and you can effortlessly bully others then you'd have to realize that you won't be the top dog in every situation all the time everywhere at the same time. There will be many instances where others who previously leaned your way for free will now look to get paid for leaning your way.
I think there is a difference here for the future of humanity that has never happened before in our tool making history.
*while everybody made sure that they would band together to punish such behavior as the even bigger and stronger combined force
I noticed the same thing that the article writer noticed: You can point out obvious problems to the exact person responsible for them and they will agree with you and later they still don't fix it. They just don't care, it's like you mentioned some geographical fact about a town in South Africa to them. A normal person would call this psychopathic behavior but now it's the human norm. I decided to cut people out of my life that don't care [about anything except themselves] because obviously there is just no point in interacting with them. To be honest, that's almost everyone in society. They are self benefit machines, hyper optimized for their own wellbeing. Fine, be a machine then but don't be surprised when I recognize you for what you are and I don't start playing tetris where the only outcome is benefit for you.
It's also sad how even in this thread on hackernews almost everyone disagrees with the author and they keep claiming that people do care about some stuff and it's okay and we are all human after all and so on. I want to emphasize: You aren't supposed to have to care about everything. But some people do in fact have jobs and specific duties and they are paid to care about them and still don't do it.
He did say: Filtering based on the owner's identity is bad. He did not say: Filtering based on the owner's identity is bad while that identity matches a person of color