chronofar

I don't know I think it depends on the particulars of the area. Things didn't shut down everywhere, and having a car wasn't so necessary when everyone was working from home. In addition being in a high density area preserved some camaraderie and togetherness in a period of universal isolation, and being able to get out and walk around in the immediate area was a great way to fight cabin fever.

In other words, by my estimation the urban ideal continued to be advantageous for different reasons during the pandemic, though I can certainly picture other urban centers that would have been a much worse experience, in particular those with stricter mandates and poor weather (which is a truly isolating scenario).

Sure on a 6-12 month timescale. Beyond that it seems much easier. This is true of any infrastructure decision, they generally require work in the short term but are taken on to relieve pain and facilitate the ongoing future.

Keeping employees out of a country due to hostile government behavior is actually the simpler world.

In both cities you will find new developments in the city that are imminently walkable and highly desirable (more expensive than other parts). I think these cities are actually great examples of the shifting preferences indicated here. They were built to sprawl, but are finding large success when they improve pedestrian infrastructure.

The problem with taxis has nothing to do with their prices. Look through this thread at various folks mentioning problems with the old systems and see how often price is among them. I’ll happily pay more, and various studies in the past have shown that ridesharing services charge much less than they could (in the name of growth and stamping out competition powered by venture money).

How many Uber/Lyft drivers were taxi drivers before you think? I’d say not a hugely large percentage. In other words, the “exploited” here are also apparently compelled to flock to such a job in previously untold numbers. This in turn drives down prices, and the reverse trend since the pandemic is the reason they’re back on the rise. The convenience provided here is not just for riders but for drivers.

All this to say your perspective reeks of political oversimplification that forces you to ignore various factors at play, many of them good, to churn out rhetoric. This ironically prevents seeing actual solutions to the problem you claim to care about.

So the quality of service of a product is secondary to the wage dynamics of those who provide it? The point of the person you responded to is that for the consumer this was an unambiguous win, the industry is better for riders in nearly every way. Marginally does not even begin to approach it, it is a giant leap forward in quality of service that further extends to many things (reducing drinking and driving for instance).

I’d say the real problem with the outcomes here may be venture capital. That is what made the rich richer and allowed them to explode on a model that didn’t require them to be profitable. It’s possible this business model can’t succeed without that support, it’s also possible it could with higher prices, better wages and more time.

How about from a different angle, without this law if someone wants to keep me alive at all costs against my will and force me to live in agony they an "apply all sorts of trickeries" to do so. For me, extreme prolonged agony is a fate worse than death. Death does not scare me, profound suffering does.

Again, the law you're after here is preventing elder abuse. This is indeed something we should pay great attention to and try as best we can to carry out the wishes of the elderly. This abuse is no uncommon, even if it's comparatively benign by changing estate inheritance at the end of life for instance.

It really has nothing to do with assisted suicide.

It’s exactly the same situation by the criteria you just gave. Intoxicated driving is illegal because it puts the lives of others at risk.

If you don’t find that particular analogy salient surely you can think of others. How about just driving itself in cars that can go faster than the speed limit? The point is there are a multitude of things that provide benefit and also the opportunity for abuse, but rarely, virtually never, does this justify forgoing the benefit.

Rather I think the point is we’re gravitating towards the idea that not all life is worth living, and the consciousness that must (alone) experience a given life should have primacy on decision rights of its continuation.

To relinquish some of the sacredness of life endowed by evolution is not to commit wholeheartedly to nihilism.

This is the same fallacious reasoning people use to advocate many laws, drug prohibition a popular one. For instance people will say if drugs are legal then it opens the door to people being intoxicated while driving or harming someone else in x other way. But of course these are already illegal in of their own.

What you’re looking for here is protections of the elderly against abuse via coercion to act counter to their best wishes. This is a separate concern that needs to have laws and parameters around it.

Virtually anything can be “an opportunity for abuse.” Look at the internet. That’s not a good reason at all to prevent it, it’s a reason to outlaw and protect against the abuse.

We don’t understand the effects because of the stigma around their illegality. Only recently has progress been made there, and further understanding from legality could only be a good thing. Use is already happening and will continue to happen. Increasing our understanding of the effects and regulating production and distribution accordingly are the path to safety.

Grade A fear mongering, go for the kids. High schools are full of all kinds of illicit drugs. Regulating them and creating outreach would actually get a better handle of that. The additive argument is utterly absurd. Again legalization means regulation, which would prevent such a thing.

Drugs are not “functionally legal” in the area you’ve pointed out, and the issue you point to is economic in origin not drug related. This is not a coherent argument.

Now the argument you’re getting to is somewhat coherent, which is it could be dangerous to let advertisers loose with severely dangerous and addictive drugs like heroine. But the answer to this is rather easy, you don’t. The same way tobacco advertising is regulated, you regulate drug advertising and provide outreach for those who are addicted.

That seems incredibly unlikely. If anything such a thing was far more likely in their time than the present.

In any case though, if this hypothetical is not hyperbole (and I still suspect it is), it would seem prudent to remedy ASAP.

I guess a can’t refute your hypothetical here, but the process it describes is ridiculously brittle. It seems utterly unbelievable to think all it takes to overthrow the US government is disrupting a single ceremonious formality. That surely cannot be expected to withstand the test of time on merely goodwill and tradition.

> Being barraged with uncertainty, the obvious answer then becomes that there is really no truth

This is an extreme and absolutist conclusion. Feynman once said something to the tune of (paraphrasing): I have degrees of certainty about different things and there’s many things I don’t know anything about. This is not “no truth,” this is “no truth I should be 100% confident in.”

> Surely there must be good and evil in the world

I could not disagree more strongly. There are incentives, both genetic and societal. This does not mean we are resigned to relativism or an absence of truth, it means we are more enlightened about the factors that impose into our interaction than being subject to fanciful innate accusations.

I don’t understand this. So you’re thinking if they hold or execute members of Congress that’s all it takes to overthrow the government? This seems ludicrous and yet I’ve seen multiple people espouse such a thing, so I’m wondering if I’m not understanding some kind of checkmate that comes with such a move.

I'm not sure I understand the question. Partisan is not a verb.

Like I said, you're either not understanding the position I've given or are deliberately being dishonest in your representation of it. Maybe it's my fault for communicating it poorly, though that seems unlikely. Rather it seems more likely you're intent on misrepresenting it as a matter of partisan rhetoric. I do doubt you're completely aware of your partisan slant here, after all your just on the righteous side of saving lives. But your talking points and misunderstanding and characterization of mine are all too predictable along those fault lines.

Well, we've managed to go several replies deep here and not get through at all to one another as far as I can tell. I see your position and think it's delusional and partisan. You either can't see mine or are being intentionally dishonest (I suspect a bit of both).

As I mentioned before, I'm not sure exactly what the right answer is here. I'm just sure it's more complicated than your pulpit would suggest.

> It is simple, and many countries have done it. I currently live in one that is doing precisely this - closing businesses and compensating them.

It's not simple. Even in your country, or any other country that has done this effectively, I promise you it is not simple. There are sacrifices being made, whether you can see them now or not. And just because it has been executed well in one country and economy does not mean it can just be universally applied without issue.

In any case, I'm absolutely all for such compensation, I'm just not under the delusion that it's easy to achieve.

> There's nothing inherently authoritarian about it.

You've apparently just conjured up your own notion of what authoritarian means to select cases. I'm not going to argue semantics. Suffice to say, this is more governmental control than many people are willing to relinquish.

> Australia and New Zealand are extremely diverse immigrant nations. They're very similar to the US in that regard.

Neither are anywhere remotely close to the diversity of the US. The major cities are to be sure cosmopolitan as they are around the world, the general populous is not.

> There's nothing inherently authoritarian about it.

You've conjured your own meaning of authoritarian here to apparently require specific political opposition oppression. This is not correct, but I'm also not interested in arguing semantics. Suffice to say many view lockdown as more interventionist than ideal in their government.

> First off, lockdowns are effective

I will refer you back to my original post and the very first sentence I responded to you with, as well as the parenthetical you replied to here. They are effective in reducing cases. This is not the only factor at play.

> And in fact, this spring, an overwhelming majority of Americans did favor lockdown measures (around 80%).

Indeed, when the world as a whole locked down together. Since that time is has become partisan as you said, and also highly questioned whether the costs were worth it.

> Should the US lock down and save hundreds of thousands of lives, or would you rather keep restaurants open?

How about restaurants stay open and there is little to no additional loss of life?

> It's easy to muse about hypothetical questions about how many people should die before the government should act

This isn't hypothetical. We're seeing it play out and the difficulty you're having is that people disagree with you about that number and you appear to be unable to understand why.

> Restaurants can be compensated.

Oh geez why didn't I or LA or the US think of that? Alright then, pack it in problem solved, let's just make sure everyone's compensated.

Of course were it that simple few would have a problem with the sacrifice, and a much more convincing argument could be made that it would be better for society as a whole to lock down.

> There's nothing authoritarian about it.

Nothing? There's nothing authoritarian about the government imposing a lockdown? Are you somehow of the notion that "democratically elected" governments cannot be authoritarian in any way? I'm struggling to understand your perspective here.

> It's just as "authoritarian" as mandating seatbelts or childhood vaccinations.

Absolutely (well, for the sake of argument, I wouldn't argue mandating seatbelts is on the same level as shutting down restaurants but for our purposes here let's say we're on the same page). We always make tradeoffs of this kind all the time to be sure. Few want anarchy (the opposite of authoritarianism). It's again why the "hypothetical" question is important to understanding why people disagree with you. Where do we draw the line?

> And that goes for authoritarian New Zealand and Australia too, I suppose?

Moreso than the US? Most definitely. Less than China? Of course. Australia and NZ benefit from largely homogenous cultures and low population density that allow them to better handle such things. Singapore would likely have been a better counter-example.

> Populations in highly democratic countries will actually support strong lockdown measures if they believe they will be effective and if the government compensates people financially.

Sure, except none of your conditionals there actually get bourn out. Many people question the effectiveness (again not just of reducing cases, but on providing a net positive impact to society) and in the US stimulus measures haven't been nearly precise enough to find themselves to the right hands.

> But if it truly is impossible to gain public support for lockdowns in the US, then something is deeply wrong with American society

Rephrased: "If American society cannot widely support the action I think is correct, there is something deeply wrong with American society." There is something deeply wrong with American society, but it is thinking like that.

> This isn't some minor inconvenience.

Neither is shutting down economic activity for a significant period of time.

> people would rather see hundreds of thousands of their fellow citizens die than close down restaurants for a month

What a ridiculously dishonest way to frame it. This is just political punditry at work. Restaurants closing for a month also has real people attached to it. People who lose their livelihood and don't have an ample safety net to keep them afloat. And of course it's not just restaurants, shutdowns impact many businesses in many ways, and those impact people in many other ways. And, as pointed out in the article here, it's highly questionable whether an action like this would save significant life.

> Your elected government telling you that you can't go to a restaurant during a pandemic isn't "turn-key totalitarianism."

But it is. I certainly agree it's not full-scale totalitarianism, but it is an authoritarian action in the face of a threat (which like I said reminds me of the kind of turn-key totalitarianism Bostrom mentions in the vulnerable world hypothesis). China was as successful as it was in such measures because it is inherently authoritarian, the US has been less successful because it isn't, and has deep-rooted propaganda against it. Should we wish the US was more ready to allow the government to take authoritarian action? What if the virus was 20x more deadly? What if it was 0.5x as deadly? Where do we say it's ok for the government to exert control? This is of course not a new, nor a readily decided or agreed upon, question.

Look, all told I'm not really sure what the right answer is here. Maybe we actually should be less hostile toward authoritarian actions in general for the good of society as a whole. Maybe China is actually closer to the optimal model, I don't know, I could make some compelling points (to those open to hear them) in either direction.

My main point here is just that the calculus shouldn't just be which actions reduce new cases and deaths the most, and indeed that isn't the calculus for many people, hence the resistance and difficulty in implementation. In reality the equation is and should be very complicated and nuanced, taking actions and reactions of various actors into account.

You seem to have missed the point entirely and opted to just regurgitate numbers to plug into the guiding function I explicitly questioned.

What is the number of deaths it takes for you to think the government should take whatever action necessary to prevent it? Is it 1? 100? 1000? When does reduction in deaths become more important than other considerations?

> Governments can drastically reduce contacts between people, and doing so reverses the growth of the epidemic.

But doing so has costs and epidemiology is not, nor should it be, the only consideration. The US could enforce speed limits of 25 mph everywhere and effectively eradicate motor vehicle deaths. Could enforce limits on sugar intake and reduce heart disease deaths. But of course these seem fairly absurd propositions. The fervor of COVID reporting makes such measures seem reasonable.

It reminds me a bit of Bostrom’s vulnerable world hypothesis, in which he imagines scenarios could arise (in that case due to technological progress) where the only way to prevent a rogue bad actor from accomplishing mass destruction is “turn-key totalitarianism” where freedoms are subsumed to allow the government to address the threat. And there are situations where this seems the only pragmatic response, for instance if technology was discovered that allowed an individual to easily and cheaply produce an explosion akin to a nuclear weapon.

But COVID does not seem such a scenario to many. And yet what many others are asking for here is turn-key totalitarianism. Is that really favorable here to more vulnerable populations being at higher risk? Do we really want to just maximize age expectancy and reduce deaths as a guiding function of society? I don’t think so, but that is the implicit claim within, and it's why it's hard to enact in practice.

Which just goes to show you can't tax your way out of inequality. You need better incentive structures.

I'm with you. I'm a big fan of Google Photos, in fact I'd go so far as to say I'd take very few pictures if not for it. Not because of the storage, but because of the ease with which it allows me to reminisce and organize my photos. I'd happily pay the couple bucks a month for it if it's what keeps it viable, I'd much rather that than the kill the service.

And they're giving 8 months notice and everything up to that point will continue to be supported for free. It's kind of crazy to me that people have a problem with it.

Yes, let's cherry pick this one example to invalidate all ML strides in image recognition under the guise of racism, surely that seems reasonable.

This seems specious. Others absolutely have competing options, Apple's photos the most notable (since it's by the other Phone OS maker). None as good as Google photos imo (at least not that I've tried), but on release there was nothing as good as Google Photos either.

And now that they are charging, presumably there's space for competition to arise again no? Just as if they started charging at the outset?

The storage is a small piece of the Google Photos offering. Good luck searching for a persons name or "sunsets", getting time hops, stylized suggestions and collages, or easy group sharing on a trip in solutions like DropBox or S3, especially for the average user.

That's the weirdest thing to me about this conversation. People act like storage is the main thing Google Photos does, but that's not by a long shot the most compelling piece of the offering.