The problem is the assumption of linearity. Things are good now but it seems to me things are getting better at a decelerating rate, and some trends have even started to reverse in the most westernized countries. Most of what’s getting better in the world is in places like Africa or Brazil, emerging economies. Things aren’t getting better for a lot of people in a lot of cities in America. People are fleeing la, sf, etc... Empires rise and fall, predictably.
I have a similar reaction to a lot of YouTube psychology. So much confirmation bias and other nonsense passing for facts. It takes a lot of caution and care to discuss behavior without inadvertently misinforming people. Pinker is really excellent in this regard. Scott Alexander would be another person who is able to reason about behavior without misinforming. I think both should be more active in advocating for criminal justice reform, knowing what they know. Forensic psychology has a lot of skeletons in its closet.
The soft bigotry of different standards is talked about but rarely is the premise carefully examined. Can there be a single standard? Maybe the problem is expecting a good essay, composed in earnest, by a kid that can “barely string a sentence together.” We ought not be surprised when humans act human.
Maybe we should redefine public education to be a bit more exclusive, and not shame those that aren’t on a college track into pursuing mentally challenging work for which we are unfit. Give kids the money that would be spent on their education (loosely defined) and let them invest it, or spend on vocational training or seed money to start their own small business. Too much focus on producing som eidetic notion of the educated individual. People don’t wind up homeless because they weren’t exposed to Shakespeare. Some people will be lucky to attain enough basic skill to stay afloat. If such a person is able to fool plagiarism software, maybe that’s something to celebrate.
Security is impossible. As long as there are incentives, nothing will be secure. It’s just a matter of incentive/difficulty. With enough incentive stuxnet or solar winds or omb are possible. Bitcoin values are causing this equilibrium to be disrupted, making this appear as though it were a new problem.
It’s odd to hear so much focus on America and American politics. We have more liberal drug laws than other non-western countries but the discussion always has a lot of American exceptionalism in reverse.
Indeed. It is a scale problem. We have too many producers of research, too few destroyers of research, like Gelman. Show me the incentive and I can tell you the outcome. Encourage the whole world to become “experts” and then be amazed as the reverence and trust in expertise is devalued. That’s us.
I thought I had covid before news of covid even came out. Was googling “novel pneumonia type illnesses” and reading about sequelae. I had had close contact with wuhan travelers in late dec. 2020. Mostly fatigue and headache for a week, then the lung issues started and lasted a month or more. A few weeks later the first couple of California cases from China presented at a local er. Few cared at that point as the politics were inverted early on due to the travel ban, and also the super bowl and impeachment vying for the public’s attention.
Because we think we’re better. Thinking to oneself, “I don’t believe in any conspiracy theories, but those other people sure do!” is to be unaware of the human condition. Ideology exists and it’s good to get frequent reminders about that, lest we judge.
How could one listen to enough Alex Jones to know this? I like the idea of Alex Jones, paranoid style American politics is a tradition and has its uses, but it’s to me a bit like pro wrestling. It’s not content that’s pitched toward the upper 2/3rds of the bell curve. He is a canary.
“Is this work so valuable for public health that it outshines the risk to public health in doing it?”
The people doing this know nothing about security and that’s the real problem. They can’t hope to assess risks they do not understand, questions about security, not science. Moreover, most of the science experts have conflicted interests that will cause them to downplay valid security concerns.
All it takes is one disgruntled employee with the right access ...
This differs by gender. A married woman taking time off for domestic/child rearing/continuing education is very common. An adult male, it’s very uncommon unless you’re rich, which most posters here obviously are.
This is the direct result of giving out too many phds. There’s no signal, only noise. Trust in our academics, rightfully, in rapid decline. Habermas come to pass.
I think this is wrong. It’s Bitcoin alone that is the problem. Ransom demands will exist as long as it’s viable money making enterprise. Asking humans to not to be human isn’t usually an effective strategy for anything. The only solution to remove the incentive, the value of crypto. Bonus for the planet since crypto also incentivizes coal burning and other pollution.
Indeed they change more than their zealous detractors, whose rigid mindsets cannot update priors despite abundant evidence contradicting their sacred beliefs, namely that the pious and meek are to be looked down upon, either pitied or scorned.
Rich parents are very different. Imagine sending your children off to boarding school! But that’s seen as perfectly normal in rich people culture, and has been for centuries.
Targeted ads are unethical and should be eliminated, the abuses are too obvious to enumerate. Prostitution and drugs have also enabled the existence of many small companies.
It’s a small fraction but Amazon creates content too, maybe even more now with mgm, and content creation looks less like displacement, though there’s some of that too (not enough IMO)
I’ve come to the conclusion that suicide is the only solution for some, perhaps many of us. There should be better medical procedures for that, for those who want to end their suffering. Untreatable chronic insomnia is a terrible way to live, indeed not really life at all.
Some is the opposite: people know they are safe with or without it, and because there an infinitesimally small risk and very little direct personal benefit for young healthy people and then make the “rational” but myopic choice to not get vaccinated. The benefits are mostly to communities and older people, healthcare and other essential workers. A less myopic self interested rationalist might decide that despite it having a slight risk and negligible direct personal benefit for young healthy people, for the community it’s much better if everyone gets vaccinated, even young low risk people.
He doesn’t need to because as he notes, the virus is waning because better people are getting the mRNA version, not just full blown covid which the non-vaccinated will be getting on random occasions many months or even years from now.