My question is: does the triangle I mentioned cover 100% of the possibilities or will the biological and technological evolution bring you to something totally new in terms of coexistence? If we could observe a civilization 1 million years more advanced, could we find striking resemblances to what we have had so far in history? — Eugen

What you stated are the theoretical extremes, which basically cannot happen.

Furthermore, when asking about the civilization in 1 million years, do notice that human beings haven't been around for 1 million years, let alone "civilization". 100 000 years ago Homo Sapiens was migrating from Africa to other continents. So take some zeroes off, better scope would be 10 000 years. Lucky if we get anything right (which we naturally won't know) about 1 000 years. With 100 years we can say a lot and the World is quite the same as with 10 years from now not much has changed.

In a World where there are flat-Earthers and all kind of truthers around, this surely will continue. Trump needs his hardcore followers and this is the time when he is still in the White House to get the cult going.

Isn't the formal process coming also to an end as the electoral college is meeting on Monday?

Surely fitting that the cases have been solved.

Ah yes, I cited that most famous of conspiracy theory publishers, the British Medical Journal. Not to mention that hotbed of zealotry that is The Lancet. — Isaac

And what you are talking about, just like above "But fuck, I don't think Pfizer have quite enough money yet. Perhaps we could shut a few more clinics and rustle up a couple of million more for them." and earlier has absolutely nothing to do with any article in the Lancet or the British Medical Journal.

Oh yes. That's the real issue here as you said.

The recent SpaceX landing is similar to the Texas lawsuit challenging election results? — praxis

That SpaceX first flight actually went awesome.

Yeah, in the end one of the Raptor engines didn't work. Still...way to go!!! :up:

A nice debrief of what actually happened! :razz:

You'd both have some evidence to back up these claims I presume? — Isaac

Why don't you listen to Faucci?

Or you assume he is a corporate hack? Wearing your tinfoil hat are you, Isaac?



Oh but they didn't have pregnant mothers in the group and children! Do you know just who basically are killed by Covid-19? I think the worst group being killed by Covid-19 aren't actually children and pregnant women. I think that the way the US, the UK, the EU or heck, even Russia are handling this issue with starting the vaccinations is correct. Yes, get those vaccinations out there: you have a system of approving vaccinations so follow it... as has been done.

Sorry, but I'll leave now my tinfoil hat in the cupboard this time. Call me a sheeple or something if you want.

How does the number of Covid deaths impact on the likely efficacy of the vaccine as a means of reducing them (together with collateral deaths from pandemic-related impacts)? Is there some threshold of deaths at which a previously inefficient approach to reducing them suddenly becomes efficient?

It seems to me the number of deaths only serves to make it all the more urgent that we work out some effective course of action. So an argument about the negative effects of any strategy is not to be 'weighed against' the death rates, it's fully about the death rate. — Isaac

First of all, Isaac.

Where the corners have been cut in the "race to a vaccine" is that before the approval was gotten, the large scale production of the vaccine was started. This is the multi-million dollar risk here, what was deemed OK. And I guess big Pharma was given a assurances that they wouldn't have to cover the risk all by themselves if the vaccine is a bummer. That's were the millions poured into this come out. In any other situation only now would large scale production of the vaccine would have started, not that the vaccine would be ready for shipping. Hence part reason was what said earlier.

Seriously. Would we trust a massive multinational business to act in the interests of the wider community under any other circumstances? Do we need to go through the track record of giant multinationals with social welfare? — Isaac

This is YOUR punchline. Multinationational corporations are evil.

Your point has been heard.

Dogs bark and the caravan goes on...

The entire argument I've been presenting is about the negative effects it will have, for goodness' sake. — Isaac

Well, good to weigh those negative effects. Yet do weigh then them on the fact that now the US has lost daily the equivalent of those lost in 9/11 to Covid-19 and the pandemic has killed more than heart disease kills annually. So what does 9 months compare to two years?

At what point did I say that the level of investment would not produce a vaccine more quickly? — Isaac

At least you said so:

You think those billions now poured into various vaccine programs by major countries won't have an effect? — ssu

Yes, absolutely I think that — Isaac

That's the spirit! :up:

Oooh, frank, that's too positive. Especially being positive about technological innovation and that it will improve things in the future.

People don't like that. Far more trendy and smart looking to be doom and gloom. We're on the Titanic and people are just rearranging the deck chairs. That stuff.

First ask yourselves, how much investment and focus is put into vaccine research generally? Compare that with what is now happening with Covid-19. You think those billions now poured into various vaccine programs by major countries won't have an effect? — ssu

Yes, absolutely I think that (or at least not the scale of effect relied on). Developing a vaccine involves a very great number of resources and those resources are spread sufficiently thinly such that it takes a considerable amount of time to complete all the stages. Not all of those resources can simply be bought by throwing money at them. How is money going to increase the number of trained staff? How is money going to increase the supply of minority condition groups to test against? How is money going to speed up the long-term monitoring period?

It's lunacy to invest this amount of money in a medicine which might not even work when there's absolutely proven interventions which we know will save tens of thousands of lives not only now but in the next one, and the next one... — Isaac

Well, coming back to the discussion above with Isaac just two months ago: I think we can say that indeed yes, when there is an urge to do something, a concentrated effort to do it and far more resources are put on something than normally, it does have an effect on the timetable:

The vaccine development took nine months, not two to five years. Something worth noting.

The initial wave culled the most vulnerable portion of the population both from the point of view of first quickly finding those who were open to getting infected and those with the highest mortality rate by age and sex. The nursing home patients. — magritte

So you assume it went through all the nursing homes? It's not like the pandemic has gone through the population, which is obvious when you look at the debate around herd immunity and the Swedish-model (or the first adopted UK-policy).

Is the government going to ship Viagra to us now?

I think the whole discussion of anti-natalism is a symptom of a larger problem.

Jack Cummins makes an important point about anti-natalism:

It tends to make sweeping emotional appeals about suffering, leading to the belief that it would be better to not having been born at all, with an overriding conclusion that it is wrong morally to bring children into the world. — Jack Cummins

I see that here lies the motive for all the anti-natalist nonsense as it's a way to give for some a moral reasoning for not having offspring and to get a chance to have a whack at those institutions promoting natalism, starting from ones like the Catholic church. Perhaps it's like a response of a perceived hostility of the traditional society which universally and even quite logically values children, does see in positive light that people have children, especially at an age when birthrates are universally going down. For those who cannot or do not want children, other's emphasis on children and stories just how wonderful and important they are seems in our highly sensitive age as a veiled hostility against those without children, especially if they could have them.

I haven't followed the topic, but I guess there might be a proponent or two of anti-natalism, but likely it's debated just as an interesting philosophical argument.

Of course, one reason might be is just to annoy conservatives and those holding traditional views. At least looking at the length of the discussion of this bizarre concept, they have succeeded in their trolling.

You cannot proceed logically from the premise of a lack of information, to your conclusion of a similar or larger amount of infections. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yet you say...

What's different in the April-June time frame is a higher proportion of deaths per infections. That's probably due to a combination of the reasons you stated (insufficient testing), and the reasons I stated (rapid infection in the most vulnerable population). — Metaphysician Undercover

Which I agree.

And we can still assume that there are many infected today who do not test. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yet highly less than earlier.

Are you serious? What do you base that on, the death rate? The first wave swept through the most vulnerable, and exposed, the nursing homes, where the numbers of vulnerable are concentrated and the virus spread easily. — Metaphysician Undercover

Based on what it says there on the chart: "Limited testing meant that most infections were not confirmed during this wave". I get your point, that partly might be an issue to be noted, but notice that the statistical difference is huge: from April to June there is hardly any correlation, while starting from July the correlation between deaths and infections is obvious.

Then there is the way how pandemics spread: it doesn't come as a rain and influence all parts of the country in a similar way from the start. It might be the deaths in nursing homes in Washington state that are here apart from let's say the nursing homes in South Dakota: the pandemic spread to Washington first when there was non-existent measures taken in nursing homes.

How it looked at the start:

The third biggest porblem of science is philosophy forums on the Internet. — god must be atheist

How important we must be!

What is interesting and I think is an explanation just why the US appears different from other countries is because of the utter lack of testing at start compared how huge the outbreak was. The infections were far higher than stated, hence when the infection cases went down in the summer, but the testing ramped up, it biased the statistics of new infections. Likely now we see the actual correlation:



We can assume that there has to be at least similar if not larger amount of infections at the spring as now.

In Nordic countries, Sweden hit a new high since last time and Iceland is up also. Only in Norway the number of new infections is decreasing:

Before Trump came on the scene the gutter press could end a political campaign if the candidate happened to scream awkwardly. They had no power here, and overestimated their king-making status. They failed and lashed out because of it. — NOS4A2

This is directly from the populist playbook, actually. The populist has to give the image of being somebody else, being not part of the elite. Best way to use rhetoric that "ordinary" politicians don't use. A lot of it is simply talk. Never mind if the actual policies are similar or simply fail.

Trump in happier times with friends:

You don’t mention that Trump acted the same with pretty much every other leader he met—only Putin. — NOS4A2

Lol! That is an absolutely hilarious statement from you. He definately has not acted the same with every other leader he has met. He has complained, bickered, all in the way to create the "acting tough" image. Yet when it comes to Putin, he hasn't dealt similarly with him.

That's again a fact. Just watch yourself the press conferences, his statements. The actual remarks. Without no journalist on telling his or her view.

But I guess reality doesn't mean much for Trump supporters.

what he probably needed was some sort of carrot and stick for the enlisted men and a reform strategy that would get me back in the organization. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, some times you need a carrot and stick approach to handle potential insurgents. Or to get an insurgent force back to normal life. And it's a difficult balancing act that such inept people like Brennan simply could not fathom (when you hear him talk about it, you can see that he doesn't get it).

Besides, that "carrot-and-stick" approach was finally done by the US military with it's Sunni Awakening in Anbar province and elsewhere, which actually broke the back of the Al Qaeda in Iraq. Then military middle leadership was left to decide which Sunni insurgents weren't so bad after all. And with the Surge it worked... only to be later broken apart by the Shiite leadership after the US withdrew and Al Qaeda came back as ISIS.

The problem is that soldiers went home and didn't want to come back out when it was unclear how things would progress vis-a-vis ethnic divisions of power. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That ethnic strife was something that was quite apparent for the Saudis and others, that pleaded for Bush the older not to continue to Baghdad during the Gulf War. But afterwards, it didn't matter anymore.

Several things have made corporate culture so bad, even if there always have been bad apples.

First, now days the CEO doesn't have strong ties to the company, seldom has he (or she) made his career only in the company. For instance Dave Calhoun, the now stepped down CEO of Boeing hadn't worked at all in Boeing before coming to lead the corporation. An he wasn't an engineer, but gotten his education in accounting. Seldom is the CEO as "self made man" that has started up from scratch the company. Seldom does a large company be owned by a single family with family members being active in company. With family companies it's quite rare that the leadership opts for the strategy "trash the company for bigger profits now".

These all factors make create the bad corporate environment that Boeing has fallen into. Let's just think about William E. Boeing himself, who got interested in flying and took flight lessons in Glenn L. Martin's flight school in the early 1910's, who himself was the founder of Lockheed-Martin (and now Lockheed). Hence that time it was aviation industries as the tech industry of Bill Gates & Steve Jobs where in the 1970's. So that time has passed long ago.

The Boeing company a hundred years ago:


Then these huge corporations have seen a lot of mergers (and Boeing is like 10% DJIA), so you don't have the earlier culture anymore. The Boeing 737 Max is one case, but then the way how the F-35 was built tells a story where it's not the company that takes the risks anymore (as the company is paid even with an unfinished aircraft).

What is left?

It's the idea taken as a religious decree that the work "is done for the shareholder". And this is taken as the disguise for profiteering, as the only issue is that the share price has to go up next quarter, and naturally the income of the successful CEO can draw huge incomes as, well, because he can.

Trump has had most of the corporate global media, Hollywood, the intelligence community, and Big Tech against him. The most lucrative, influential and comprehensive machinery of propaganda in human history delivered an undoubtedly anti-Trump message, fitting the propaganda model to a T. — NOS4A2

And this is what fanatic Trump supporters cherish the most. Forget what he actually says, the main fact is that he has gotten these people angry.

The canard of a Kremlin-linked president still rattles in the heads of true believers while they remain mostly ignorant that the Chinese politburo had already reached the highest echelons of the opposing party. — NOS4A2

No. The simple reason is that I have to watch the whole press conference in Helsinki of the US president alongside the Russia president and NOT to refer to journalists (who indeed basically are biased against all Republican presidents), but use my OWN THINKING to see that it wasn't normal. Trump's behaviour isn't at all normal with Putin. No president of any country would take the view of a rival and be against his own team. Trump's behavior simply wasn't normal.

But you don't notice this. You think that you are just surrounded with zombies who don't think with their own heads. So there's this left-wing bias in mainstream media. So? You have a right-wing bias in Fox. Easy to notice what is propaganda and what isn't.

What are the problems of modern science? — Thinking

The basic problem is that people are putting far too much things in what they regard as "science" and "scientific view". It's either used a sledgehammer or portrayed something with hidden evil intensions. Science is apolitical.

It's just a method.

I am sorry but I do believe determining creation stories are not factually true is as simple as that. — Athena

I agree. My point is that having those creation stories or other myths doesn't make religion totally false as it gives us moral rules how to behave. What I think that religion still has it's positive aspects too, that's all.

I don't think religion is a root of evil and war. You could say the similar thing about all successful political ideologies, that they have gotten us war and misery. Yet ideologies have given us also good.

Another viewpoint in the picking of general Austin is that Biden continues with the similar line with Trump of appointing a former general to lead the department of defense. This has been quite rare.

Sure, might be no problem, and someone like Mattis did understand that his role was different as being a secretary as before in the military. The problem is that if this becomes a habit, perhaps unintentionally, it weakens the civilian control of the military. Already with the huge military-industrial complex behind it, a secretary of defense systemically being a retired career military doesn't make it better.

(Russia for example has a tradition of the Defense Minister being an active general, something inherited from the Soviet Union. In the west military officers being defense ministers has been rare.)

So, I am asking about the whole question of truth arising from the clash between religion and science and divergent systems of thinking. Is there one which is the ultimate in terms of establishing truth? — Jack Cummins

I'd refer to that quote by Felipe Fernandex-Arnesto: science and religion aren't enemies. One doesn't refute the other, even if some atheist would disagree with my view.

You can think of it from a logical viewpoint. Science tries to be objective whereas religion is inherently subjective. They easily overlap, but are about different things. The insistence of just thinking about the creation stories in religion and them being false to our scientific views doesn't refute in my opinion religions. It isn't as simple as that. We need morals and we cannot deduce those morals from just scientific inquiry.

Truths are truths and are part of a logical system, so I'm a bit confused just what do you mean with a mythic truth. Are you thinking of axioms or postulates?

Yes, he's referring to mass mobilizations. It doesn't necessarily have to be a war on a country's own land. WWII greatly reduced inequality and allowed workers to gain concessions in the US. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If you have fought a long war where a large part if not all of the males of the younger generations have learned only warfighting and not have been sitting at school or learning their professions, it is simply a political suicide to forget these people afterward. Things like the G.I. Bill are an obvious policy, if you have the resources to do it. The dumb mistake of leaving a huge number of soldiers just to their own was last done by the American occupiers in Iraq. The inept American leadership just left the defeated Iraqi army alone to disband chaotically without any program for the now unemployed officers and soldiers. And what do you know, in an instant you had a Sunni insurgency in the country.

Wars also force elites to accept a more centralized states. This is pretty obvious in the massive growth of the US security apparatus after WWII. Theoriticians like Fukayama and historians like William Durrant both tie the growth of competent states to the need to field larger and more complex armies. This is a trend that starts with the European Wars of Religion and then truly gets under way with the Napoleonic era and the levee en mass. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Do notice the obvious changes in warfare that have taken place: the Napoleonic or World Wars types of mass armies have gone. A conventional infantry battalion is quite vulnerable today, hence manpower isn't so important.

The oddity might be my country and the Swiss, which have an exotic strategy in their defence and deterrence yet aren't thinking of using that outside their borders, actually. And then there's Israel, which also has lowered it's wartime strength. Also the Finnish wartime Army is down to 300 000 from 700 000 and the Swiss Army would field perhaps half a million, if it needed.

(Switzerland actually called roughly 4 000 of it's wartime medical staff to "arms" to fight COVID-19)


If we take out Israel from this as the country is basically at war with it's neighbors all the time, at least in an low intensity conflict, then this thinking is basically logical for the 20th Century Cold War era, but not for this Century anymore. The only occasion is if a poor country fights another poor country, like in Africa. Or if you are planning to fight a civil war. Hence I think a new approach ought to be looked on the issue.

(Levée en masse. In one of the poorest countries in the world it works still.)

Thomas Piketty demonstrates how war, and the need to mobilize the populace, had also acted powerfully to redistribute wealth and political power. Absent war, the returns on capital slowly allow a small elite to pull away and dominate the economy and politics. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I assume this is a reference to an all out war, where basically the country itself is the battlefield. In the case of the US kept secure by those two mighty oceans and an own continent without any rivals, this seems a bit odd. As it is now those "colonial wars" fought by the professional army (still made of US citizens though) are a splendid way to cash in for the elites.

This debate around Covid-19 would be even more vitriolic in the US if the country would have successfully handled the pandemic. Now as finally the corona pandemic has killed more than heart disease does, the rhetoric of it being a "just another cold" isn't so popular anymore.

Let's say the US would be where Canada is now and wouldn't have the 871 deaths/million, but would have only 334 deaths/million (of Canada), which would mean that there would be only 110 000 deaths until now. That one hundred thousand death mark was reached now in May, by the way. If the US would be in a similar state as my country, it would have only 10% of the total deaths: only roughly 28 000 now. Of course this simply isn't realistic as the US is the third most traveled to country in the World, which is absolutely crucial to why the country could not have realistically kept the virus spreading before the alarm bells went off. Closing the borders well before the WHO considered this a pandemic isn't realistic.

If success would be that the US would have now half or one tenth of the body count, would the discourse be different? I find it very unlikely that Americans would be pleased with a far lower body count, as in any case a "lock down" of some sort would have been implemented.

Prior to the pandemic many studies put the US with it's large resources as the best prepared country to face a pandemic. Now it's obvious that reality is nothing like it. It's not only the structure of the US being literally United States where the States decide what to do themselves, it is also the individualist liberalism at the core of the ideology of the country. Simply Americans abhor "big government" and won't fall into line and follow orders given by "the rulers" as many other countries do. Nope, every man pursues his happiness, or his health in this occasion, by himself. Collectivism is something sinister and this pandemic is just a trick to snatch away those freedoms that Americans enjoy.

Apparently there are genderless languages, Finnish, for example. I do not know Finnish, so I wouldn't know how that works (I think there are Finnish speakers here, ssu?). But I well imagine that the discernment of such matters not made with pronouns is the more rigorously made elsewhere in their usages. — tim wood

Naturally for us it works well, as there actually aren't so many occasions when the "hän", referring to both he or she, would lead to problems or misunderstandings. And it works easier than saying "he or she". Yet before nobody cared much about the issue and only now the sjw types are enthusiastic how "progressive" the language is.

He’ll save the worst till last. God knows what’s going to happen in January. — Wayfarer

Oh I know!!!

Trump will go around preparing for a "The Real Inauguration", the inauguration of the real President, but in the end nothing will come out of it and it will turn out to be a scam to get people to give money to fund his oncoming legal battles.

Something like that! :grin:

When people talk about the 1% in the US, one has to remember that you are talking about 3,3 million people.

So you have people like physicians:

According to the New York Times, among all groups of physicians – academic, private practice, and hospital or clinic-based – roughly 200,000 doctors, or about 20% of the profession, belong to the 1%.

A great site where you see who actually are the 1% top income by profession can be seen here.

So it goes like managers, physicians, chief executives and public administrators, lawyers, teachers...

Yes, teachers like professors in universities etc. Who people refer to with the 1% is usually more of the 0,01% or smaller...

And doesn't a negation of H leave it quite open?

Like I cannot give the correct answer, yet here's my answer A and it's not it so there you go.

Many times people get sidetracked by noticing that there is a correct answer.

I think the former CIA directors outcoming says it all. If it was an Israeli/US/joint venture, that isn't certain. But that it had the US approval is obvious to anybody (except for those living in La-la-Trumpland).

Whoever carried out the hit, it is all but certain that Trump gave it the nod. Once again, he is trying to put a stamp on the Middle East that Biden will find difficult to scrub out. His actions would hardly be without precedent; Obama, Clinton and Reagan all made last-gasp moves in the region to shape it in their image.

(see here)

And of course as the Trump administration inherently leaks, this was for everyone to notice:

See:

Trump asked advisors for options to attack Iran's main nuclear site just days after sacking his Defense Secretary

Trump asked for options for attacking Iran last week, but held off

The assassination of Mohsen Fakrizadeh seems to be the final Trump era action on Iran before the Biden administration takes over. Seems that Trump and/or the Israelis pushed for a strike at Iran, but some sources say that MBS of Saudi-Arabia got cold feet. Hence the assassination was the next "best" option.

What was interesting was the response from former CIA director John Brennan about it. And as with the previous assassination then openly done by the Trump team (at the Iranian general, which got Iran to fire missiles into US bases), this seems to be the choice of Trump how to do things.



The perils of being in the Iranian nuclear programme:

Just interesting. But note that people take these things seriously.

Let's not forget what happened to all those poor Danish minks, all 17 million of them, now found in mass graves. Well, of course, at least the Danish government isn't going after the wild ones in the Danish fauna.

But since we have this specialization and division of labor, philosophers should be using scientific results and ideas where it is appropriate — SophistiCat

When it is appropriate. That's all I want to say.

Did you know the CDC restricts the use of masks on newborn babies? They don't seem to be doing too bad, eh? — Merkwurdichliebe

Newborn babies rarely get the cold. And if your baby would die of COVID, I guess that would get news coverage. But I guess the probability is similar for you to get shot by the police on the way from the maternity ward.

And what about cats and dogs? It's reported that they can get Covid-19 too. And the CDC doesn't want the animals to use masks either. Or not that I've heard.



Yet that isn't at all a reason why not to wear a mask.