chronofar

You say you're not justifying tailgating, but it sounds like your prescription for rush hour is exactly that.

I suppose there are different characteristics in different types of congestion. Stop and go congestion is usually caused by disruptions to the flow of traffic, while slower than usual congestion is indeed caused by over-capacity as you indicate. Just moving slower would be all such times would experience if not for people tailing and cutting others off, leading to the stopping part.

I think that's an extremely suspect hypothesis. Most congestion is caused by:

- Construction

- Accidents

- Directly counter to your point: people driving like assholes and cutting others off or forcing others to take abrupt maneuvers that then cascade through the tightly packed traffic

Slow speeds and ample space do not cause congestion, changes in the flow of traffic do, and usually those are caused by people following too close and making sudden maneuvers. If enough space is given and the flow of traffic is not disrupted you could go as fast as you want with as many cars as you want and not experience congestion.

It's the mentality you're espousing here that I find so fascinating about road travel. There appears to be such dissonance that one will justify speeding or tailing or road rage in all kinds of ways.

Until you realize being cut off doesn’t actually impact you much so you play a much safer game of giving everyone a wide enough berth to act like an idiot and not ruin your day. Driving habits are extremely psychologically interesting, from road rage at a stranger who did something you didn’t like to people feeling compelled, and indeed proud, of unsafe driving habits that put multiple lives at risk to save a couple minutes on a trip. An argument could be made that curing these tendencies would stand to save more lives then almost any other mass behavioral correction (saving maybe dietary choices).

> If there had been some sort of response the Russians would have backed off.

Are you sure about that? Are you really willing to risk your chips betting on a retreat? This sort of geopolitical chicken would be incredibly dangerous.

Yes physical is one of the things I glossed over and generalized, and of course there is real physical decline that is inevitable. However most people are not genetically destined to be saddled w/ medical bills immediately following their peak, and with basic self-care can maintain general freedom to adapt and move about several decades beyond yours (seems about 60s or so is where you'll likely experience issues of some sort even if you're in exceptional health).

Of course again the trend is that many people don't exert said self-care and fall subject to ailments much earlier (or just have bad luck w/ a host of varying types of environmental/genetic circumstances), and just generally use getting older as an excuse to withhold themselves from a great many things. This again is not destiny, merely a trendline that can be changed.

I don't think this is a necessity but rather a trend bourn of hardening rituals and habits. When you're young flexibility is built in, you are moving quickly between milestones and change is part of the program, thus your adaptability is high which provides softer cushions and greater perceived rewards for change and growth. But as people begin to settle on a solid self-identity, holding fast to the place in the world they think they've carved out, this adaptability wanes and change starts to become more disruptive.

But of course this need not be the case. At 30 you have even more life direction choices available to you than when you were 18, indeed given this forum it's difficult to even fathom how many there truly are, though I'd wager you felt like the future was a lot more open when you were 18. But that's just inertia you're feeling, not destiny, and it can be changed at your whim.

Of course the WEIRD caveats apply here, as well as a host of other generalizations and psychological needs I'm glossing over. Nonetheless hopefully the shape of the point I'm trying to make finds some purchase.

Not every, or even most, individuals no, I would hope not. But every for-profit company surely does. No matter whatever bullshit mission they may plaster on their walls, the moniker "for-profit" tells you what the goal is plain and simple, and any high minded ideals will ultimately become subservient to that.

I don’t think there’s nearly as much daylight between these as you’re suggesting. Just look at how current beliefs in COVID or climate science fall along political preference lines. Scientific literacy is absolutely important to express coherent preferences on how policy should address these matters.

> When I worked in DoD intel in the past, I had to travel to multiple nations with extremely high rates of dangerous tropical disease. I took multiple vaccines for this purpose. At no point do I ever recall worrying about whether the local populations I was dealing with were vaccinated at all.

Yeah the tropical diseases are an interesting parallel for me too. In a place where malaria or dengue are prevalent I don’t blame others for being vectors of the disease, I assess my own risk and behave accordingly. And the mere fact that they’re spread via mosquitoes instead of air/surfaces doesn’t change the necessity of congregating people to spread. But these diseases are not universally dangerous, so people should not be universally pressured to take any measure to avoid them.

I’m not sure I fully agree with the tyrannical impulse premise, but I’d subscribe more readily to a tribal “badge of honor” premise, which in this (and indeed most cases) happens to be tyrannical. I think generally the masses don’t intend tyranny, rather they virtue signal to coerce and thus become tyrannical as a result.

Does it really? Across age demographics and other risk factors when compared with those with 2 shots (who from data I’ve seen aren’t getting severe disease because of the protection from the vaccination)? That would surprise me and isn’t what I’ve seen. Would love to see what you’re referring to.

> Marginal reduction in transmission can mean the difference in ending a pandemic or dragging it out for another year or two.

Sure, it’s great that we have the vaccines to do so. We should be focusing on making them available to everyone on earth rather than forcing them down the throats of those who don’t want them to get to the fastest “end.”

> And you probably don't remember ever being required to show vaccination status to get into a stadium or restaurant in your lifetime because you hadn't previously lived through a pandemic.

Fair enough. My reply was in response to a status quo argument, but indeed this pandemic hasn’t been just that. In which case I think you have to assess the dangers to those who have been vaccinated, which is not much. Indeed with omicron the risk isn’t very high for a large portion of the population vaccinated or not. And the vaccines are available to anyone who wants to reduce their risk, thus the mandates make little sense.

> College kids were already required to get multiple vaccines to attend and I remember being lined up to take the swine flu nasal spray with no say in the matter if I was going to continue education.

Saying it's happened in the past isn't an argument that it should continue in the future. I doubt your swine flu nasal spray had as intense of negative side effects as the COVID second shot and booster tend to in the young and healthy. Now that we're in booster territory and Delta is being phased out the shots are almost certainly more painful than the disease for some portion of the population.

> How is this worse than all the other health based coercion we’ve had?

I can't recall any other health based requirement for attending an event or restaurant. I also don't understand why people continue to harp on how a personal COVID vaccination decision "affects society and others" at this point. The vaccine only marginally prevents infection at this stage, and the primary benefit of reduced severity should stop everyone who's vaccinated from worrying about what others around them may be doing. I get the flu shot so I don't get the flu, and I'm not sitting around telling others who haven't that they're putting me in danger.

I don’t think you need to lack empathy or patience to desire a return to normalcy with an understanding that if someone decides not to protect themselves they may experience negative consequences.

We all have our choices and risk tolerances, people can make their decision and move on with their lives. I don’t stay off roads just because some people might not be wearing seatbelts.

My second shot made me feel more ill than I have any other time in the last half decade or so aside from a bout with dengue. It’s likely I’ve also had COVID within that stretch and it barely registered (had a slightly sore throat for a few days after confirmed exposure).

I’ve also had the flu shot most every year, even though I really have never been seriously ill from the flu, because it’s an easy preventative measure without side effects. If the booster for COVID regularly makes me more sick than the disease it protects against that’s definitely a burden, a rather large one. Just because it’s killed vulnerable people doesn’t mean the calculus for me or others with strong immune systems is the same.

The main motivator for doing so would be to sell it more cheaply to those who can’t afford the cocaine sold elsewhere as crack requires lower dosages for effect. You’ll find this in patterns of cocaine use already, the affluent use cocaine and the impoverished are more likely to use crack. I don’t think anything changes on that front with legalization except you trade arrests for outreach. I don’t see why we should expect demand for crack would suddenly grow and become more rampant with legalization, I’d expect the opposite, but in either case the solution is outreach not prohibition.

Proper legalization and regulation would mean it wouldn’t be sold as crack and wouldn’t have the potential to contain fentanyl, eliminating much of the physiological risk. Proper drug legalization would also divert funds currently used for drug enforcement (swat teams, dea, private prisons, etc) to drug treatment facilities accessible to those who need it.

In general the negative effects of most any drug are best fought with education, regulation, and treatment, not prohibition. Cocaine and crack were illegal in the 80s and 90s when the crack epidemic raged, so obviously legal status was not preventing such crises in the first place. The important factors there were more around support of impoverished communities than tepid laws that serve only to further the cycle of social disruption caused by petty arrests and adversarial tension between police and downtrodden communities and the empowerment of gangs by creating a thriving black market.

The struggles we’re having related to crack or other drugs are related to a great many things aside from the drug itself, prohibition itself causing some of the largest problems on a global scale. What if Mexico could have cocaine as a legitimate export? Would we have violent cartels or legitimate businesses that improve the community (though surely they’d also leach as businesses are wont to do, but surely less violently than illegal organizations)? I’d posit the latter, though the transition from one to the other won’t be smooth.

> experts on Twitter seem very very worried and I’m more inclined to go with them (and the exponential function) than with my antivaxxer friend’s posts on Facebook.

I wouldn’t give a lot of heed to either of those groups, they’re both avenues where nuance is discarded in favor of fervor for the sake of memes. You’ve chosen panic, as I suspect your party of choice has, as your fervor of choice, but that doesn’t mean everyone sees the same fire you do requiring the largest of firehoses whose dousing will cause all sorts of collateral damage.

There is more at play than pure epidemiology, though that is for sure a factor for consideration.

Right, the thing is before you have children you can weigh the costs/rewards dispassionately, but after you have a child the calculus changes because now this person exists who is now the most important thing in the world to you. As soon as that person exists your life is no longer yours, it is in service of that child (assuming everything goes according to plan, of course it doesn't always work out that way), so of course rationalizing any cost at that point is just part of the deal.

I want my life to be my own, thus the costs are not worth it to me. If I had a kid tomorrow of course that equation would change and it would be in my best interest to rationalize all costs in service of the child, and surely I would and suddenly they would be "worth it." I do not view this as an argument in favor of having children, rather I view it as a a specific detail of the biological programming working its magic.

I'm not a never-kid person either. I am open to the idea that one day I may decide the costs are indeed worth it and seek to have children. I think that seems unlikely, but part of the freedom of designing my own life is having the space for my preferences to change, and I could envision a world in which I would be happy as a parent. It would not be in a nuclear family as is common in the west, but that is perhaps for another discussion.

This appears a strange mindset. You see the issue, you see solutions to the issue, but you imagine these solutions are too difficult? Are they more difficult than the mental health and happiness struggles you've been having?

I certainly get anxiety especially when unpracticed in the subtleties of forming meaningful connections, so I understand what's likely holding you back. But I think it's likely important to realize your rationalization here doesn't make a lot of sense.

Because the evolutionarily programmed rewards from parenting will typically outweigh the rewards from general altruism. Your child becomes the most important thing in the world by default, which can flip all sorts of joy and fulfillment triggers in your brain that are difficult to flip in that way via other means. Having children is your genetic purpose, so much of our biology is driven to that end, thus it would figure to provide uniquely strong rewards.

I say this as someone who does not have kids and has no plan to have kids as I don't care to pay the immense costs required, so maybe I shouldn't even be replying to this, but I tend to see the same sorts of replies to these sorts of questions which I think put a bit of extra gloss that obfuscates the true motivators a bit.

And this is irrational on a country wide scale, though understandable at the beginning. We should, I would think, be much better at modeling by this point factoring in vaccinations and recovery immunity to make predictions about specific municipal healthcare risks and move resources to meet them accordingly. Knee-jerk national restrictions based on accelerating cases seems foolish at this point without stringent data models that predict unacceptable levels of healthcare strain. Maybe such models are put forward in some places, but I haven’t seen it.

"Lie" is the wrong term. "Mislead" or "misrepresent" would be the more appropriate way to phrase it. On a topic as politicized as this with as little scientific literacy as the general public has you don't think they'd have anything to gain by fudging things a bit in their favor (ignoring a confounding variable here, drawing a misleading conclusion there) to distribute more shots? And you think it would just be clear cut that the general public would be able to discern such mistakes over the long term and hold them accountable? And you don't think companies often take measures just to boost their short term earnings/stock price even if it has obvious long-term deleterious effects? I'd say these viewpoints would be naive in the extreme.

Not to say they did commit any such errors here. Perhaps all such studies conducted by Pfizer are truly earnest and valid/replicable, I certainly hope they are. But it's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of an organization publishing new science when that organization stands to profit greatly from the results. You may call that libertarian (though I'm frankly not sure how), I'd call it just due diligence.

And it’s a common refrain of “follow the science” dogmatists to attempt to paint things as “objective facts” in a decidedly unscientific way. Just what “measurable numbers” are you referring to and what “objective facts” do you think they reveal?

You would be very hard pressed to find a self respecting scientist who calls any of their work “objective fact.” There are several ways to display views that are “anti-basic science,” and you are displaying one of them.

But to try and wrangle your question into what I think it was intending (though severely misled such that I needed the above preamble): Do I believe established high probability scientific consensus and recommendations can be discarded or disagreed with as mere opinion? Absolutely not. I am not at all “anti-basic science” in the way that you think I am. I think it’s quite possible to accept the scientific consensus on COVID as it exists so far and still argue currently against mandatory vaccinations in different settings.

> There is plenty of room for dissent, but it stops being “dissent” when it is simply denying reality.

Ah yes of course, when the common view gets the label of “reality” dissent is no longer “dissent.” /s

If only everyone could see the line in the same place, but well if that were the case I don’t suppose there’d be any dissent at all.

I agree that certain forums require perhaps different compulsory actions, and for healthcare certainly the case for more stringent requirements can be made. Nonetheless my previous reply remains accurate, it is quite possible to coherently argue against them in this context, at minimum by way of their political mechanism of enforcement, while also accepting the consensus scientific views.

Convince or compel? Do you expect all healthcare workers to receive any widely prescribed treatment? Is there no room for dissent in your mind?

Rejecting a compulsory measure not “anti-science,” and using that term in that manner displays a dogmatism that is decidedly unscientific. It is quite coherent to accept the consensus epidemiological realities of COVID, the efficacy and safety of the vaccines, and simultaneously disagree with compulsory measures to enforce treatment.

> You can use a PC in the same way. If you position it well, you can even have a dual purpose work/entertainment PC.

Not without significantly more work. A console you just plugin to your TV and you're good to go, with a PC you want to use for both work and entertainment you'll need to finagle all sorts of things. One major hurdle I've yet to overcome seamlessly is playing on my TV/Home Theater from a computer in my office. When I game I prefer to get full immersion, but there really aren't any great, easy to use solutions that allow such a setup. I could get a separate computer for the Home Theater purpose, but now again it's easier/cheaper to just get a console.

> I am not aware of instances (at any scale, I'm certain examples exist but exceptions don't disprove the rule) where people are aware that Facebook usage is ruining their lives but are incapable of discontinuing their use.

"Ruining their lives" is likely a bit too strong of language, but the potential negative influence of Facebook and complete lack of privacy is certainly becoming something of common knowledge, and yet people continue to use it. As a society you can make a pretty strong argument that it's been a net negative, and yet we're apparently unable to do anything about it. The whole enterprise of maximizing engagement positions some of the smartest minds in tech to maximize qualities of addiction.

In other words, there seem legitimate parallels to draw.

> But if we are going to be honest about why Facebook is becoming the public whipping boy, it's because Boomers who voted for Donald Trump used Facebook to talk loudly about why they like Donald Trump.

This seems a dishonest oversimplification. You can point to the 2016 election as a tipping point perhaps in how we view Facebook, but it was not because boomers were talking about why they liked Trump, it was because we began to realize at scale just how powerful manipulation (by state actors) on these platforms can be.

Most people mostly care about his/her own opinions, and others opinions only insofar as they reflect on himself/herself (even though of course the others are also thinking about themselves mostly), we're hopelessly self-involved creatures like that. Nonetheless there is inertia and subtle shifts that can come from sharing them, and though it may often feel like coming up against a brick wall if you look in the right way you'll see the bricks may be aligned a bit differently, and you can trace some of those differences to opinions you may have expressed.

As always the wise approach is probably somewhere in the middle, in this case choosing your battles. You don't have to voice every opinion, but you shouldn't be silent if you have a strong and well-formed opinion about something important.