357 karma · joined December 2, 2016
1) it doesn't exist, but our brains are thinking and talking about it
2) it exists, but it's overdetermined: it just so happens that your brain starts thinking and talking about it while it also exists
3) it exists as a phenomenon in the physical world, able to affect other physical things
Obviously. But they weren't, and given precedent, probably never would have been. That's why this is happening.
Its introduction into our population was an event that we observed more or less directly. We can learn from that, and (motivated by that event's total cost) we can try to do better next time (and something similar will almost certainly happen again). Can't quite say the same about death itself.
You're comparing (cost of measures) to (cost of disease after taking those measures), which is a nonsensical comparison. It's like saying "parachutes are too expensive; almost no one dies from skydiving!"
How many people would die from skydiving if skydivers stopped using parachutes but continued to skydive? Am I a charlatan if I give a rough number?
Surely there is a continuum of uncertainty between the skydivers and "it's impossible to know." Surely diseases can be modeled, and those models used to predict outcomes with various degrees of uncertainty. Surely those predictions have meaning.
Surely the number of lives saved is the correct thing to measure against the economic cost. It's hard to compare against a counterfactual, of course -- but look at NYC, look at Italy, look at France.
Depending on what we mean by "back to life", a trick is in fact much more likely than something thought to be biologically impossible.
If we eliminated the possibility of a trick -- that is, proved beyond a doubt that 11 people were dead, and then alive -- I would absolutely not be ready to attribute it to some new treatment. Natural law is being violated here! I would instead start checking for other possibilities, like:
- Are other people spontaneously reanimating around the world, or just in this study?
- Did these 11 people have anything else in common? Extraterrestrial origin, perhaps? Unusual religious beliefs?
- Hang on, let's double (triple, quadruple, etc.) check that they were really dead. And then go back and check again.
- And by all means, start a proper clinical trial of the new treatment while we're trying to understand how resurrection is even possible.
I don't think the article is trying to say "18% of workers have basically lost their jobs!!!", but rather to give a sense of how many people's incomes are impacted.
1) Our brains are bad at acting on information that contradicts our gut feelings, which are usually based on things we perceive directly. If we don't see direct evidence of a threat, we might take some minimal steps to avoid it, but it's hard to fully commit for intellectual reasons alone.
2) We've adapted to a low signal/noise ratio. Everything is always a near-cataclysmic threat: tech companies, Trump, the Clintons, Sanders, immigrants, global warming, vaccines, carbs, terrorists, and so on. They're all going to kill us or ruin our lives! We could probably mobilize and act on one or two of them, if we could all agree, but all of them? Some of them contradictory? We just pick a handful that resonate, and ignore the rest. And that mostly works, because the threats have few visible short-term effects.
A pandemic is just another one of these filtered threats, right up until the exponential growth shoves it in our faces -- at which point it's too late.
It sounds a bit like saying "you're only human" -- which is of course unlikely to convey any new information, but could still be useful for its emotional result.
From your analysis, it almost sounds like HN is more social than the behavior-hacking money machines. The big companies might own the most commonly used social media, but that hardly means their model is the only one.
...beyond the similarities themselves, that is.
> It's the differences that count to distinguish things
By definition. But then again, if I'm comparing the impact of two dictators, it's probably not helpful to point out that they had different hair colors.
I think what you're really saying is that in a particular context, some properties are relevant, and others aren't. There's no point in pointing out that irrelevant properties are shared, but equally there's no point in pointing out irrelevant properties that are different.
In other words, people just have to be clear about what they're talking about.
Also, people usually talk/write in their own dialect. "Bathroom" is how you say it in American English. If the article were about Victorian French bathrooms, would you find it weird if it didn't use "salle de bains" ("room of baths")?
If the hypothetical anti-vaxxer didn't already know that life-threatening diseases exist and can be prevented with vaccines, that's probably where you should have started your argument.
Reading this immediately makes me read the rest of your comment as much more negative and critical than I would otherwise. That's not necessary. If you want to ask a question about stop signs in the U.S., just ask it. (On the other hand, this is something you could google in about 5 seconds, so maybe your point really is just to criticize? Again, your opening line has thrown me off.)