What kind of a choice is that? — tim wood

It's a choice over who to trust. Something people seem to find impossible to grasp is that the question is not about actual consequences either way, it's about potential consequences because the question of trust is measured by the risk, not the actual outcome.

I would trust my fellow publicans to look after my pint whilst I pop out, I wouldn't trust them to look after my baby. Why? Has their trustworthiness changed between the two examples? No. Has the actual consequence changed (in terms of their intent to harm either my pint or my baby)? No. What's changed is the risk each instance of trust entailed.

What matters here is that injecting a newly developed medically active chemical into someone's body has high potential consequences, so we need a higher degree of trust in the person doing that than we do putting a seatbelt on, or not driving over the speed limit. Reassurances of safety and efficacy are irrelevant here because until we've resolved to trust those institutions their reassurances are moot. The decision to trust them has to precede the use of their data, it's simply a-synchronous to use an entity's own data in an argument that we ought to trust their data.

All these questions are perspectival, because we're talking about trust, not facts. So people are asking "what's the worst that could happen?" Note this is not a question about actualities, it's about parameters, and their answer will determine the threshold of trustworthiness they require before accepting any further information on trust - including information about safety and efficacy.

It strikes me, in anticipating the justification that will follow, that this whole issue is about academia.

I don't think a single person involved in this thread would, under normal circumstances, assume corporations act for the public good. Also, none would hesitate to believe governments to be entirely betrothed to corporate interests. In fact, our most vocal pro-vaccers are elsewhere arguing exactly that case.

So why, when an industry produces a solution to a problem (a problem that industry may well have caused in the first place), do these same people believe this time their solution is in the public interest, believe that this time their complicity in the problem is unlikely...?

...The prevailing view of the academic establishment. That's it. The sole reason why the corporate line is not being treated with the same suspicion-bordering-on-contempt that it usually receives (and deserves), is because the academic establishment are also broadly in favour of it.

So the relevant discussion, it seems, is over the justification for thinking that the academic establishment is beyond being tempted, bribed, coerced, threatened and subject to popularism, just like any other establishment. I wonder if that's why that infamous survey threw up so many vaccine hesitant PhDs, we know better than to see academia as anything other than just another capitalist industry.

1. Beliefs are not individuated, they're built from structural components. My belief that this desk will hold the weight of my teacup is built from a general belief about my desk's solidity, which is built from a general belief about objects...etc. So engaging with an idea which challenges some belief may cause a weakening of confidence in any number of other beliefs depending on how well connected it is. We need confidence in our belief structures (at least nearer the core) because uncertainty costs energy.

2. Certain beliefs (or the behavioural indicators of them) act as tokens of membership for one's social group. People often rely on their social group for support so adopting (and maintaining) the right tokens of membership is very important.

3. A combination of 1 and 2 mean that often beliefs which are not tokens of group membership, but which are deeply connected to such tokens get protected to the same extent as the token beliefs.

I find it ironic that this is the hill mostly conservative people want to die on when it comes to corporate power. — Xtrix

Likewise I find it disturbing that at the first whiff of danger to their own health most of those on the left will just obediently lie down let the corporations walk all over them on the strength of nothing more than a few in-house tests, the usual lobbying of government departments and a tight funding leash over academic institutions.

Although actually doing their corporate public image work for them is new low - "these companies actually exercise their power for legitimate, medically and scientifically sound reasons" - are you really that naive? These companies have done fuck all about the thousands dying under their charge from environmental pollution, poor working conditions, poverty... and you think they're imposing these restrictions on medical grounds? Just coincidence that one of their own stands to make billions from the exact course of action they're mandating?

...provided the employees pay for it themselves. — Xtrix

..straight out of the fucking Thatcherite playbook. You don't have to accept the private corporation's solutions...so long as you pay for the alternatives yourself.

Either way, a test would resolve the issue and as the vaccine isn’t infallible why not just test everyone every day if the concern is so great. — I like sushi

Tests would lead to workers having to go home too frequently and so production would drop, mandatory vaccination means productivity remains high and their hedge funds get kicked up a few points in the process. Neither, of course, have the slightest thing to do with public health.

Aug 23 (Reuters) - U.S. energy companies are moving to require that employees receive COVID-19 vaccinations as infection rates rise across the United States and health surveys show that energy workers remain among those most reluctant to get inoculations.

Calls to require vaccinations for employees working at close quarters in oilfield and refinery operations came as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration fully approved the Pfizer-BioNTech shot. — Reuters

...but virtually zero action on worker safety in the last twenty years...https://apps.publicintegrity.org/blowout/us-oil-worker-safety/... now they're suddenly wracked with concern for their beloved workers?

It's got nothing to do with public health, it's to do with getting workers back to their job (being exploited for profit) as quickly as possible. Typical corporate whitewashing, but I suppose the taboo on criticising corporations now extends to the oil industry because...covid.

What the ..., ↪Isaac
? — jorndoe

Have I become a new expletive?

We were just chatting about regular fellows becoming infected with virulent pseudo-information, and sure enough, a bunch of influential creeps are doing just that: polluting "the airways". (Did you check yet?) — jorndoe

Indeed, I don't even feel the need to check it sounds perfectly plausible.

Keep exposing creeps. Not a "psychological game", "hand-waiving", ... It's part of the pandemic story. — jorndoe

It is. So's disposing of used swabs but no one posts about it. I wasn't questioning the truth of what you're highlighting, I was questioning your reason for highlighting it. What point does it make here? That there are wackos on Facebook who have a huge following? I don't think anyone was in any doubt about that. At issue (at least as far as I see it), is which is the tail and which the dog. Do people believe internet nutjobs because they've lost faith in mainstream media, or have people lost faith in mainstream media because of internet nutjobs?

You're free to comment on how to improve the situation. Or, is that impossible? — jorndoe

Ban Facebook, ban Twitter, ban Instagram. That'd be a start. The damage they've done is beyond reckoning.

So how many folks are we talking about? — Olivier5

We're not talking about folks, we're talking about corporations. Legal entities capable of criminal activities.

Read the article and quote the part where they say that "we're all going to get immune from covid eventually." — Olivier5

I already did.

The immune systems of more than 95% of people who recovered from COVID-19 had durable memories of the virus up to eight months after infection. — literally the first sentence in the actual fucking article

You then claimed that it doesn't mean the same and I asked you to support that claim. Are we just going to do the whole thing again?

The article describes a physiological state, that most people will enter into on contact with COVID, the other articles I've cited describe this state as 'becoming immune'. Therefore it's correct to say that most people will become immune.

The details on the exact nature and duration of that state are irrelevant because I've made no claim about that.

It's fine to quote articles but to call untold numbers of semi-mysterious people criminals is not. — Olivier5

I've literally just named and enumerated them.

I've already explained it — Olivier5

No you asserted it. What is it with you people and your egos? You're not my teacher, you've made no claim of expert knowledge. You just saying something you 'reckon' is not an explanation, it's a repeat of the matter at issue.

Besides which, none of what you've said addresses the appropriate term to use, which us the only thing you're questioning. I used the term 'become immune' you pointing out issues with immunity doesn't negate the use of the term.

Notwithstanding all that, you've not addressed the actual argument, within which the term in question was almost completely irrelevant.

such talk is unhealthy and irresponsible during a pandemic. — Olivier5

And yet...

There's no taboo that i know of on criticizing big pharma. — Olivier5

...except the one you keep repeating.

What else could you possibly do to verify the claim? Ask me to write more and more stuff that you will quietly dismiss until i'm blue in the face? — Olivier5

No. Just a citation from the medical literature. It shouldn't be that hard, here...

https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/immunity

Immunity to a disease is achieved through the presence of antibodies to that disease in a person’s system.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/immunity-types.htm

Here's an article using the exact term 'become immune'. https://patient.info/news-and-features/coronavirus-how-do-we-become-immune-to-diseases-like-covid-19

I just want you to do the same for your claim that memory in the immune system is not 'becoming immune'. If that's too much to ask you're on the wrong site, this isn't Twitter.

Better still...

Sanofi - charged with manslaughter https://www.business-humanrights.org/it/ultime-notizie/france-sanofi-charged-with-manslaughter-in-criminal-case-over-birth-defects-linked-to-epilepsy-medication/

Pfizer - fined for illegal marketing https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/stories/2009/september/pfizer_settlement_090209

Merck - fraudulent price reporting and kickbacks https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2008/February/08_civ_094.html.

Johnson & Johnson - Off-label Marketing and Kickbacks https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/johnson-johnson-pay-more-22-billion-resolve-criminal-and-civil-investigations

AstraZeneca - Illegal marketing https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/pharmaceutical-giant-astrazeneca-pay-520-million-label-drug-marketing

GlaxoSmithKline - Fraud https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/glaxosmithkline-plead-guilty-and-pay-3-billion-resolve-fraud-allegations-and-failure-report

Bristol-Myers Squibb - illegal marketing https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2007/September/07_civ_782.html

7

There. Named and enumerated, no longer mysterious and untold of number. So could we discuss the actual argument now?

The argument is that you are borderline paranoid when you speak of untold numbers of semi-mysterious criminals like that — Olivier5

Quote me saying 'untold numbers' or 'semi-mysterious'. I won't defend your fantasy version of what I'm saying.

Ask any qualified medical doctor if your article claims that we will all become immune to covid eventually. I am confident they will agree with me that it makes a much weaker claim. — Olivier5

I'm perfectly happy with the meaning and my understanding of the articles. It's your claim that they're substantially dissimilar, why would I go and ask someone to verify a claim you made?

You're dodging again. If we're not to use the expression 'becoming immune' to cover the action of either vaccination or naturally acquired 'immunity' then what term should we be using? Simply replace that corrected term in my statement and then explain how it alters the argument in any way whatsoever (wherein the expression 'while we all become naturally immune' plays a completely irrelevant role).

Still unanswered is the original claim, which you keep dodging. I've argued that the pharmaceutical companies have behaved reprehensibly and so solutions developed by them should be used sparingly and begrudgingly, not freely and with fanfare. You claimed this was "directly from Trump". I've asked three times for your supporting evidence for this claim and each time you've sidetracked into some unrelated triviality.

It has to do with my dislike of sweeping criminal accusations addressed at untold number of semi-mysterious folks. — Olivier5

I asked you what it had to do with the argument. You can chat about your personal likes and dislikes with someone who gives a shit.

your article makes a much weaker claim. — Olivier5

How so? The articles I cited both refer to 'lasting immunity' arising from naturally acquired infection. If you think that's inappropriate then it's on you to provide some citation to that effect. I'm not going to just take your word for it.

In many ways, one of which is the constant emergence of new variants, another the finding is limited to period of 8 months after infection. Yet another the difficulty to extrapolate from in vitro findings to in vivo response. — Olivier5

And from the medical literature...? We're looking for the term 'becoming immune' being restricted to uses where immunity has been proven ex vitro to last beyond 8 months without chance of variants.

So the vaccines don't provide immunity either. They suffer from precisely the same issues "the constant emergence of new variants, ... the finding ... limited to period of 8 months after infection. ...the difficulty to extrapolate from in vitro findings to in vivo response." What name should we give to that which they provide?

So how many people are we talking about? — Olivier5

Corporations are legal entities. Individuals are rarely prosecuted, although I did provide an example where one was. What has the number of people got to do with the argument?

"Durable memories up to 8 month" <> everybody becoming immune. — Olivier5

In what way does a durable memory in the immune system not mean 'becoming immune'. What would 'becoming immune' mean if not a durable memory in the immune system and can you provide an example of it being used that way in the medical literature? That way we're discussing actual facts, not your imagination, yes?

Who is 'they' in that sentence? — Olivier5

The pharmaceutical corporations in question.

The way I read it, you painted a whole lot of people as criminals. — Olivier5

They are criminals, they've been convicted of criminal offences, it's literally the definition of a criminal. Regardless, you're changing the subject. The accusation was that this position came "directly from Trump". Where's the Trump quote to that effect?

Nothing in this article says anything about "all of us becoming immune naturally", — Olivier5

The immune systems of more than 95% of people who recovered from COVID-19 had durable memories of the virus up to eight months after infection. — literally the first sentence in the actual fucking article

this is the kind of heavily paranoid stuff I am talking about: — Olivier5

So that's saying that the pharmaceutical companies have behaved reprehensibly and so solutions developed by them should be used sparingly and begrudgingly, not freely and with fanfare.

Now find me the quote from Trump saying the same thing with which you support your claim that my statements come "directly from Trump" and we can discuss any overlap.

where does this reference to natural immunity supposed to ultimately grace us all come from? — Olivier5

Here

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting-immunity-found-after-recovery-covid-19

Or here

https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101

Or is having the NIH and BMJ in my 'feed' too much right wing brainwashing for you?

You have in my view spread wholesale condamnations of governments, the medical establishment, the media and the likes — Olivier5

Quote me doing so then. That way we can discuss actual comments rather than your strawman version of them - "wholesale condemnations" is the claim here, so I expect quotes to that effect.

...that were totally unfounded. These doubts of yours in your own doctors, ministers and journalists are coming from somewhere alright, but this 'somewhere' is not reality — Olivier5

So you think the stuff I posted about GlaxoSmithKline is not real? Are the reports of contamination, false representation, hiding safety data and bribery all lies? Again, if you want to argue with some made-up version of what I'm saying do so in private, otherwise quote the claim of mine you think is unfounded and we can discuss it.

Sorry if I appear to trust doctors and my government(s) more than I trust you. — Olivier5

Where has there been a conflict between what your doctor says and what I've said? Once more, the quote function is your friend here. Quote the claim I've made which your doctor disputes and we can discuss it, otherwise please leave me out of this fantasy discussion you're having.

I have what I believe are good reasons to trust doctors. — Olivier5

Good. Do you trust them to fix your car? No. So when we're discussing issues of risk, trust, and corporate influence, what has the opinion of your doctor got to do with it?

I have no reason whatsoever to trust you. — Olivier5

We're having an internet discussion, I'm not doing brain surgery on you. Normal charitable conversation requires that you have a reason not to trust me, rather than that you don't trust me unless given some reason to. You must live a pretty impoverished life if your default position is not to trust anyone who isn't related to you or hasn't saved your life at least twice.

Some of the things you write seem to come directly from Trump — Olivier5

Quote them then.

It's only snide when others do it to you, right? — Olivier5

No. It's snide when you impute my position to right-wing tabloid sources despite clearly being able to see that I've cited no such source but have almost exclusively referred to medical journals, technical papers and reputable news sources. It's snide when you refuse to actually quote anything but rather respond to some fabricated grotesquery of what you'd like me to have said because it makes your counter argument easier. Constant deflection into impugning false assumptions and unrelated truisms is snide, calling them out is not.

The argument here (at this point). Is that the pharmaceutical industry has behaved reprehensibly and that this gives good cause to not trust them. If you have any counter argument to that, I'll hear it. Otherwise maybe you could keep your little role-playing session private and reserve this space for discussing the things that real interlocutors have actually said.

not all "mainstream media" reports are bullshit and pseudo-information.
Inflated or blanket distrust can be wacky just the same. Perhaps even paranoid? — jorndoe

Well yes, but demonstrating the existence of a scale doesn't act as evidence of the position on it of any given piece. Just because not all mainstream media reports are bullshit, doesn't mean you should expect people to simply believe the ones you pick are examples of such 'non-bullshit' reports, does it?

So...unless your post was a throwaway piece of virtuous flag-waiving, let's assume it had a point. That point was presumably that misinformation is being spread by a few key players. OK. Where does that take the discussion? Have the BMJ been duped by these key players? Has Reuters? Has the medRxiv? Because at the moment I'm the only voice opposing the unwavering march of total vaccination here and those are my sources.

So explain, so as we can follow the line of argument, how the mainstream media's view of a few Facebook whackos has anything at all to do with what we're discussing here. Because without explanation it sounds a lot like you're just trying to besmirch any opposition by pointing to some looneys and with some copious hand-waiving hoping that a "they're all like that" taint will stick. As opposed to, you know, actually mounting a serious counter-argument using your own words.

In what way is that exchange interpretable as my condoning the spread of unfounded doubt?

Just explain the thinking. I'm suggesting that the pro-vaccine arguments have been that we should not criticise the pharmaceutical industry, I cited your claim that I should not be "spreading artificial doubt and confusion in the midst of a crisis."...where next? How exactly do you get from that point in the discussion to a claim that I support the spread of unfounded doubt?

Are you now saying that spreading unfounded doubts is problematic? — Olivier5

'Now saying'? Either quote me ever saying that spreading unfounded doubts was not problematic, or argue like a grown up. If you can't support your arguments without slandering your opponents then you should seriously question the quality of your argument.

Have you now stopped beating your wife?

You do realise you just followed a post about the questionable trustworthiness of mass media by citing six articles from mass media outlets as evidence of some relevant phenomena? Are you playing some complex psychological game?

Okay so it's fine to doubt big pharma and the government but not you, some reason. — Olivier5

Yes, that's right. The clue being...

for some reason. — Olivier5

The more of them the better, giving more weight, and history, context, ability to spot apparent anomalies/outliers, overview — jorndoe

Well, yes. We've been through this before, so I'll just refer you to my previous argument. Once you stratify a population by some variable (expertise here) that variable ceases to exert the same influence within that cohort. So yes to context, and overview, no to spotting anomalies/outliers that status is largely irrelevant.

I just don't think everyone has time (or knowledge/skills/inclination) to do that, not if we're talking technical papers anyway (many wouldn't know where to look). — jorndoe

Yeah, that's true, but then one can always withhold judgement when one is without good sources. It's not necessary to have a violently strong opinion on everything. I think most medical journals are making their covid coverage available for free online (much to my wife's annoyance who pays for the subscriptions!)

Reuters and Associated Press, for example, seem good. Or just good enough perhaps? — jorndoe

I think they work differently to actual newspapers don't they? Such that they're systematically less likely to exhibit bias. Good sources, I certainly trust Reuters more than other news sources, whether that's justified or not, I'm not sure.

the guy I mentioned may have lost loved ones to covid, but he didn't see them die. — frank

Unlikely. The death rate is about one in one thousand of the population. Most people's social groups are a little under 100 people, so 90% of the population will likely not know anyone who's died from it. If a person's social group is mainly young and healthy, or if they live rurally, the chances of them knowing anyone who died from it are potentially orders of magnitude smaller. Even if the bodies were on the street I doubt I'd have seen one where I live.

When the newspapers report people dying from malaria do people in the West doubt it's true because they don't see it? No. The doubt has nothing to do with a lack of visual confirmation, it's a lack of trust in media, government and academic institutions whose appalling behaviour unfortunately utterly deserves such rejection.

What's regular (perhaps unsuspecting) fella' to do? — jorndoe

Stick to reading reputable journals and expert opinion. What's so difficult about that?

Newspapers are meant to be biased, it's their modus operandi, why anyone would expect unbiased opinion from them is beyond me.

Artificial doubt, manufactured doubt, is a problem. Well grounded doubt is not. — Olivier5

Right. So when you said...

I can agree with that. Capitalism mechanically leads to an unhealthy concentration of power. — Olivier5

...you meant "everything is fine and any doubt about that is artificial and manufactured"? Or you were perhaps referring only to the whole capitalist enterprise apart from the bit that made the COVID vaccine because that's perfectly flawless for some reason you've yet to divulge?

you think the stuff you get in your feed and you spread here comes from nowhere? You think nobody profit from it? Think again. — Olivier5

This kind of smearing of your interlocutors is beneath contempt. What part of my posting history, fully sourced from reputable medical journals and peer reviewed papers gives you the slightest justification for the suggestion that I get my information from some 'feed'.

Honestly if you can't even bring yourself to treat the people you speak to with the bare minimum of respect you can fuck off.

There's no taboo that i know of on criticizing big pharma. — Olivier5

The whole body of pro-vaccine responses on this thread (and the other) has been predicated entirely on that premise. You've said almost exactly that yourself only a few posts ago, about...

not spreading artificial doubt and confusion in the midst of a crisis. — Olivier5

Or did you think the COVID vaccines have been developed and tested by some system other than the one there's apparently no taboo against criticising?

I still welcome the attention paid at long last to malaria. — Olivier5

The point is that 'attention' paid to it by a bunch of criminal profiteers is not really 'welcome' so much as begrudgingly accepted as the least worst option currently available. Without a shadow of a doubt it will have ruled out any less profitable option, regardless of the benefit to the population concerned. With research funding streams as they currently are we'll likely never know what we need to know about this horrific disease because the options explored for it's eradication and management are pre-filtered to only those which can turn a profit. Even if this were the best option, supply will be restricted and potentially contaminated/altered because of the choice of supplier.

All of which will never change so long as people continue to support the blackmail of "don't criticise the pharmaceuticals, people might stop taking medicines!".

They've cheated once therefore they can't produce a useful vaccine. Understood. — Olivier5

Did I say the vaccine wouldn't be useful? That we're relying on a criminal profiteer for the health of a continent's children is not 'Great News' it's a fucking lamentable tragedy.

Great news! — Olivier5

Yes,

in November GlaxoSmithKline pled guilty to knowingly distributing adulterated medication after a whistleblower, Cheryl Eckard, a company insider, tipped off federal investigators.

The extent of GlaxoSmithKline’s bad medicine is astonishing: after Eckard became the lead of a quality assurance team she made some horrific discoveries at a Puerto Rico plant manufacturing drugs for the U.S. For example, all the systems were broken, the equipment was broken, and the manufacturing processes were broken in the Cidra, Puerto Rico plant. Specifically, water tainted with bacteria was used to make tablets, failures on production lines made some drugs too strong and others not strong enough, and employees were contaminating the product by sticking their arms inside of tanks containing Bactroban, an anti-bacterial ointment. But the worst discovery was that employees were packaging the wrong drugs inside of the wrong bottles, and even mixing various drugs together in the same packages.

Federal investigators say that between 2001 and 2007, GlaxoSmithKline failed to disclose safety data from certain studies of Avandia to the Food and Drug Administration. This is, ethically, perhaps the most serious of the charges. Glaxo's handling of the Avandia matter was fraught with bad disclosure bordering on deceit. During that time period, Avandia became the best-selling diabetes drug in the world. Now it not only bears warnings that it might cause heart attacks, its use has been so restricted that the drug has nearly vanished off Glaxo's ledgers. To the extent that Glaxo kept Avandia's heart risk from being recognized, that means that patients were exposed to added risks.

Glaxo is ... pleading to misdemeanor criminal charges that it sold two antidepressants for purposes for which they were not approved. This includes selling Paxil, once of of Glaxo's top-selling drugs and a member of the same class of medicines as Prozac and Zoloft, to children and adolescents, a group that the drug was never approved to treat. Since 2004, all of these antidepressants have carried a warning that they can increase the risk of suicide in adolescents.

A Chinese court ordered GlaxoSmithKline to pay $492 million in 2014. The fine resolved charges of bribing doctors in China to use GSK products. It was the biggest penalty ever imposed by a Chinese court.

The court sentenced Briton Mark Reilly to four years in prison. He was the company’s British executive for China.

But this is probably a different GlaxoSmithKline so great news!

In other news Lockheed Martin have come up with a brilliant strategy for dealing with some of the world's most troubled war zones, and McDonalds have been consulted about a promising line of products to alleviate famine, so finger's crossed on those too!

I've honestly never come across someone so completely self-assured as you. It's been an eye-opener reading your responses, but I think when we reach "I'm right", "I'm right", "I'm right", "I'm right", "I'm right", I've definitely milked that particular cow dry.

I'd say thanks, but I'm actually left feeling quite disturbed in the end and find myself in no mood for good terms. I wanted to get some first hand experience of how social media affected people's belief resilience, but it turns out I don't have the stomach for it.

Notice the last line. Also recall my repeating the 150/10,000,000 as a measure of risk. This is saying exactly the same thing. — Xtrix

No, you've not given the incidence rate there.

Winning the NBA Championship is an event. Lebron James' odds of doing so are much greater than mine, alas. Same event, different odds. — Xtrix

No. Someone winning the NBA and Lebron James winning the NBA are two different events, statistically.

it's important to note that your odds of contracting ovarian cancer are zero if you're male. — Xtrix

Only important to note? So I should still take a few precautions against ovarian cancer because the overall prevalence is still relevant? Just a mere 'note' that my odds are actually zero because of a known variable?

The data is there -- look it up yourself. — Xtrix

You're claiming that there are "hundreds of millions" of known variables affecting stroke risk and you think it doesn't even need justification. Still, if you insist...

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=odds+ratio+factors+stroke+risk&btnG=

I count five on the first two pages, the rest seem to repeat that broad set. There's only a few thousand results in total, maybe less than fifty key papers, when do they start getting into the first million known variables?

What is the ultimate thesis here? That you cannot measure the risk of COVID? That looking at the "prevalence" of a disease is unrelated to risk? I have no real idea — Xtrix

Indeed. And yet vociferous disagreement nonetheless, against a position for which you have no idea what the argument is.


Anyway, the more interesting matter. Thanks for answering. One last question, how have you arrived at your beliefs on the matter? Let's just take the statistical disagreement about what constitutes risk. You're very sure of your position, you don't cite any external sources so where does your knowledge on the matter come from?

Scrap my last response, I'm not interested. I've got a question I'm far more interested in, if you'll indulge me - What do you think is happening here? This conversation we're having. What do you imagine our roles are, what story have you put together that explains my posts in this educator/student story on statistical modelling? You've made clear what you imagine my politics and motives to be, but you've left out my education level, profession, age... I'm just intrigued as to how you're putting this all together.

Normally, I'd infer all this from your responses, but with you I'm absolutely stuck on how you're putting all this together into a coherent narrative. I thought I'd try just asking for a change.

Also, whilst I'm just asking, what's your role in this storyline? How do you see this ending, for example, what's the coup de grâce with which the hero slays the dragon here?

it’s an excellent primer indeed, and saying exactly what I’ve been saying the entire time — Xtrix

Where does it say that the prevalence and the risk are the same? Provide the quote that you think supports your view.

There’s an infinite number of KNOWN variables as well —or at the very least in the hundreds of millions of combinations for an individual. — Xtrix

OK, so for a stroke, say, give me the first twenty or so, a list with the ORs for each.

X and y are both odds of dying of a heart attack. — Xtrix

You can't have two different odds of the same event.

If that’s what’s are restricting “risk analysis” to, then it doesn’t exist. What you’re talking about in that case is certainly. — Xtrix

Where do I say the knowing all the variables is what we're restricting risk analysis to. Read more carefully.

They’re both odds. — Xtrix

No. Here's a primer on the differences. https://www.cdc.gov/csels/dsepd/ss1978/lesson3/section2.html

No. You cannot include all variables because, as I mentioned before, there is a nearly infinite range of variables we can control for. — Xtrix

So? How does that affect the maths I provided? Each one of the infinite range of variables which we don't know about has an equal chance of increasing the risk as it does of decreasing the risk, so including them is a matter of multiplying each probability by the uncertainty (0.5*p + 0.5*p). I did write all this out in my reply, if you're not going to bother even reading it, there's no point in replying. We are including all the unknown variables in our measure of uncertainty (risk). What matters here is deliberately not including a known variable.

You know, the guy named Bob who’s got red hair and saw Star Wars in the theaters— all known variables. What about him? What’s HIS specific odds? — Xtrix

I went through this in my last response. His specific odds can be calculated by multiplying the ORs for any known variables by the unadjusted OR for the control. All the unknown variables are taken account of because being unknown they are just as likely to increase his risk as they are to decrease it and so they make no difference. The known variables are not just as likely to increase his risk as decrease it (that's what being known means, we know the effect they have), so ignoring them effects the risk. Ignoring the unknown variables doesn't affect the risk because, being unknown, their effect is p(0.5) one way and p(0.5) the other, the inclusion of which leaves the original OR the same. To use your example of {red hair} the OR for having red hair is unknown so it's a Gaussian distribution around a mean OR of 1, the sum of all the possible ORs is 1, we include the variable because we multiply the unadjusted control OR by the OR for the variable (it just happens to be 1 so it makes no difference). If we exclude it instead, it makes no difference to the risk. If, however, we exclude a known variable (say BMI) we will affect the risk because the OR is not 1.

If all you're going to do is bleat on about "we can't know all the variables" again, then don't bother replying, I've addressed that issue three times now and you've ignored it each time.

Yeah, your guess is right. I don't think the fact that we can theorise a scale of increasing external causes and concomitant decreasing internal assumptions means that we necessarily judge beliefs by their position on that scale, though it may well be a factor. The problem is, all we have with which to judge a belief's position on that scale is verification, and peer agreement. If I believe the pub is at the end of the road, that may well be partly made up of external causes (pub>perception>memory>belief) and partly of internal assumptions (pubs are usually at the ends of roads>belief). When I get to the end of the road, I'll find the pub there, but all I've really got is one more belief about the pub being at the end of the road, I haven't somehow gathered something of a different kind to my untested belief, just more perception/expectation combinations.

So yes, we might want to judge our beliefs by such a position on the scale, but we can no more access that data directly than we can the original data that informed the belief in the first place. I don't know if you recall a conversation we had with phforrest a while back covering the same ground. He was sure there was some solid ground he could reach about theories being less 'clashy' than others and I was arguing that the extent to which a belief clashes with other beliefs is itself a belief, we don't get out of the rabbit hole that way.

We can, however, develop habits of thinking which tend to give less surprising results when followed as means of building and sorting beliefs. We can theorise that this might be because they are further toward the end of the scale with a higher proportion of external causes, but we can't test them by that measure - it's a post hoc theory as to why they yield less surprising results, not a means by which we find them in the first place.

But we need to take care when applying the principle of surprise, it's only (in this case) a measure of the match between our priors and the incoming data. It's not to be confused with a sort of correspondence theory, surprise is not generated by a lack of correspondence between belief and external word, it's caused by a mismatch between priors and input data - that input data might well be a perceptive feature which itself is the output from some other model whose degree of external causality is completely unknown to us. It links up to the external causes only on the assumption that the chain of models is more influenced by forward acting updates (of priors) than backward acting suppression of surprising data. Clearly with our interaction with the physical world, this is going to be the case, but the more complex the beliefs get, the less we can be sure of such a favourable balance, until, with our most conceptualised beliefs, the backward acting suppression of surprising data might rule the roost and surprise reduction is going to make matters worse, not better (if correspondence with some external reality is our goal).

I think this is where my kind of Ramsey-Quine-Friston monstrosity gets us. Our beliefs are models which produce tendencies to act, but those actions might be to update priors to better match the data, or to suppress the data to better match the priors, or to reach out to the external causes to make them yield less surprise-inducing data in the first place, and by and large, the choice of tactic in each individual case is a largely a psychological habit resulting from embedded narratives.