The basic idea of democracy is that the people rule. We have guardrails on that, like the Constitution, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. If a decision makes its way through that obstacle course, then we say we've done the best we can. — frank

If that were the case, why would people be as unhappy with their representatives as they are? Making it through is merely the lowest rung on the ladder.

What do you want me to do about that? — frank

What makes you think this is about what I want, or what I want you to do? I am just confused about the way you make your decisions.

I can vote for Biden to give a faint voice to my attitude about the legality of abortion, but if large numbers of women don't want it, I can't say they're being victimized. — frank

Err, ok. So, just how many women have to not want it for women in general to no longer be victimised?

If they aren't being victimized, then on what basis do I say they should put up with what they consider to be murder? — frank

Why should you, or anyone, care what some random group of people "considers" murder? You either conclude it is morally wrong or it isn't. If you conclude it isn't morally wrong, these people are simply wrong. You can consider their viewpoint and their fears as a matter of empathy, but basing policy decisions on that is just irrational.

I'm sorry, but that's democracy. — frank

What's democracy? People getting what they want, whatever it is? Is Roe v Wade anti-democratic? Is brown v board?

Again, my attitude about this is related to the voting record of women — frank

I doubt very much that you have looked at the voting record of women in detail.

If there's a predominantly black community somewhere that wants to segregate schools, then how would that be in defiance of the 14th Amendment (the basis of Brown v Board)? — frank

The decision in brown v board was based on the equal protection clause, which would apply regardless of who was at the receiving end of discrimination.

Again, you're right. If large numbers of women in South Carolina don't want abortions going on in their communities, then I believe they shouldn't have to endure it. I'm in favor of the freedom to choose. — frank

So you're pro choice then? :wink:

But seriously, if you are going to adopt some meta-political stance based on allowing as much electoral choice as possible, you'd have to consult a detailed survey on just who would vote for what. And does it follow you'd want all supreme court decisions restricting legislation be overturned, including brown v board?

You're right. Voting for Biden to get RBG's seat would be standing for a principle in the face of defeat. I don't see why I should do that if large numbers of women participated in that defeat. See what I mean? — frank

Why do you base what you want on what other people do or do not do? That's genuinely confusing to me. I get voting tactically to get what you want, or closer to it, anyways. What you seem to be doing is actively refusing to make your own decision.

I think that decision was already made. The country elected Trump at a time when a justice seat was vacant. Voting for Biden now just to get RBG's seat for a democrat would be a gesture. Prolife advocates are already spoiling for a SCOTUS trial. They aren't waiting for RBG's seat.

States that are strongly democratic won't illegalize abortion. States like South Carolina will. — frank

That just sounds like you're avoiding the question. If it truly didn't matter, why did you bring it up earlier?

If you truly believe that South Carolina will be doing grievous wrong by this (in the league with allowing rape), then what will you do about it? — frank

I suppose I'll complain about it on the internet somewhere. There is probably something more effective I could do, like donate to some organisation. But to be honest I probably won't.

If the country as a whole decides that it doesn't want women to have that right, then on what basis would I insist otherwise? — frank

Well if the whole country decides they'd want rape within a marriage to be legal, would that be cause to just accept it. I think it's obvious that while some questions are left to public consensus, others are not. Of course, you can argue that abortion is of the former type.

But, looking at this from the perspective of a voter, your question seems entirely beside the point. It's during the process of voting that the country decides what "it" wants. Basing your vote on the predicted outcome of that choice is circular. You vote according to your conscience.

So the only question that should matter here is whether you think abortion, with whatever strings attached, should be legal and available.

My understanding is that the loophole Trump used to undermine it was a result of aggressive way it was passed. — frank

Yes. But even at that point the proposals had already been watered down significantly, in a vain attempt to get bipartisan support. At least that is how I remember it. I may have to look that up again, so take this with a grain of salt.

This might explain why some countries have much higher mortality rates. A greater proportion of those who are infected are older. — Michael

That, or testing is more limited, only discovering the more severe cases, which are usually older patients.

We won't really know until the data has been thoroughly analyzed in a few years.

Coronavirus mortality raise has risen since I last checked. 4.5%. — Michael

Probably because Italy has about a third of all deaths with a CFR of over 10%, followed by Spain, where it is about 9%

This goes right back to the moral hypotheticals I’ve asked before. The issue is do you think it worthy saving one person today causing one million to die tomorrow, or saving one million today so that only one dies tomorrow.

Of course reality is FAR more complicated and unpredictable than that. Morally it is my position not to shirk away from uncomfortable questions and resolve problems based on one particular universal rule.

Where is the line between willful negligence and ‘crossing that bridge when we come to it’? I don’t know. I think it’s worth asking that question for obvious reasons though. — I like sushi

I made a thread about the moral standing of future people a while ago, but unfortunately (for me) it didn't get any traction. I think that, as our capabilities and the complexity of our societies increase, we need to increasingly think about how the moral value of a person, or possible person, changes the farther away in time from us they are.

Maybe a mere a 3-4 million will die this year of the virus due to extreme measures taken. Then ... the economic down turn causes massive worldwide poverty which essentially kills hundreds of millions over the following year. That simply doesn’t seem like either a morally or logically robust stance to take. — I like sushi

Not sure how one or the other is more logical. As to the moral question: how certain so the negative consequences in the future have to be to justify having more people die right now? Wouldn't the moral choice be to save as many as you can now and then also save as many as you can later?

So you concede the point. While the Dems were impeaching him and calling him a racist, he was seeing ahead of the "experts." — fishfry

Uh, impeachment was already finished by that point? And who care about what anyone calls Trump? He certainly doesn't care about what he calls others.

And why are the experts in scare quotes?

You could save over 400,000 Americans every year if you banned booze and cigarettes. So "how much are you willing to do to save lives?" Maybe you should give that question some thought yourself. — fishfry

We should totally do that, IMHO. Alkoholism is really bad.

Anyways you make a good point. The core reason that this is taken as seriously as it is is that no-one wants to be the one responsible for wrecking the healthcare system. You don't want to be responsible for doctors to working themselves nearly to death while having to decide who lives and who dies.

It's a good enough reason as far as I am concerned.

But his instincts have been prescient. Now the rest of the world is starting to catch up.

You could see it that way, if you chose to. — fishfry

Yeah, but why choose to do that? It seems much more reasonable to assume that "presidential instincts" have fuck all to do with success or failure.

So where are my priorities? The main concern I see with RBG's spot is that it becomes more likely that Roe v Wade will be overturned. It probably should be. Trump was elected in part because he garnered more votes from white women than Clinton did. If it was important to those women to have the right to an abortion, they would have voted for Clinton. — frank

What about all the other women? They don't feature in your calculations?

Obamacare turned out to be legally wonky. That's why it was so easy to screw it up. If we can't manage to do it right so it will last, then again, that signifies that the people are mostly against it. — frank

That doesn't follow. You realise the initial plans for "Obamacare" looked different, but there was too much political resistance? There is no reason to assume people being for or against it had anything to do with the quality of the implementation.

Political hyperbole is not "lying". By that standard, all politicians lie, any time, all the time. So again, is that the greatest "lie" you can think of? — Nobeernolife

Why is it not lying? Is it ok for politicians to lie, some of the time or all the time? Do some politicians lie more than others?

the claim that only CNN is allowed to read Wikileaks — Nobeernolife

Where and when did CNN use those exact words?

staged muslim peace demonstrations — Nobeernolife

That just seems like political hyperbole, if it happened, which I doubt.

"good people" Charleston lie — Nobeernolife

Trump's words are a matter of public record. Not a lie.

"fish tank cleaner as miracle cure" lie? — Nobeernolife

The thing they reported on happened, so based on your standard, not a lie.

There is no compelling medical case for taking extraordinary public measures. — Galuchat

I know you're probably just a crazy person, but, a 10% fatality rate in Italy isn't a compelling medical reason?

At the extremes - which are useful to consider - letting the virus run rampant is estimated to cause 100 million deaths in the year (with a large margin of error). That would create herd immunity and things would stabilize at that terrible cost. The other extreme is almost continual lockdowns for 12-18 months to develop a vaccine and stave off the worst effects, which may cause so much damage to developing countries that the death toll may surpass 100 million in the long term. — I like sushi

What compounds the issue is that the social consequences are difficult to predict absent lockdown measures. Will people panic and self-quarantine? How many of the working population will fall significantly ill? How will your medical system and the people working in it react to constant overload?

Numbers from Europe indicate that Germany, France and Italy are now out of the exponential growth phase. So the lockdowns appear to have the desired effect. Spain on the other hand still has rising per day infections.

So the world is going to stand around and let this happen to Italy?

Wow. — frank

Well they have been for the last two weeks. Or rather most of the world. China did send equipment and advisors.

Spain is now in pretty much the same situation. And one shudders to think what will happen in Greece's overcrowded refugee camps, where most of the personnel has already left for fear of what is to come.

Holy shit, that's horrendous. I assume they're just stacking them up in tents. Could NATO help? — frank

Not unless NATO has a bunch of respirators lying around somewhere. The issue is specialised equipment and medical personnel. And what makes it worse is that the neighboring countries cannot afford to help (some token gestures have been made) since they need to husband their resources to avoid the same fate.

It seems to me that it's only what's called "the known universe" that is "established by scientific method". — Cabbage Farmer

The known and the empirically knowable, yes. But beyond that, the meaning of "the universe" gets rather vague and nebulous.

But there's an important conceptual difference between the world as it is, and the world as it is known by us.

I see no reason to suppose that our knowledge of the world at any given time in history would give us complete knowledge of the whole world.

Is there some reason to suppose that what we know about the universe at any given time, in keeping with scientific method, is all that we will ever come to know? — Cabbage Farmer

This topic tends to run into language limitations. So, I get what you're saying, but the problem is that concepts like "knowledge" break down when we go beyond whatever we can somehow experience. Everything we'd "know" about the "world as it is" can only be based on deductions from first principles, something entirely different in nature from knowledge about the physical world.

Based on that, we cannot ever "come to know" anything about the "world as it is". If that information is available to us, we already have it, we merely need to make the correct deductions.

Is there some reason to suppose that the sum of everything we could ever possibly know about the universe, in keeping with scientific method, would provide a complete account of everything that is in fact the case, across all time and all space, or across whatever "dimensions" we should name alongside or instead of time and space, and across whatever universes and multiverses and iterations of generation and decay of universes or multiverses there may be....? — Cabbage Farmer

Well, yes, because by definition "what is in fact the case" is established by the scientific method. You probably mean that there might be large parts of reality forever hidden from any human mind. And that could be the case. Or it could not. But for practical purposes, it seems irrelevant.

Yeah, yeah. I am sure whoever you're working for already has a whole narrative lined up for you to peddle.

It got me thinking - and made explict an intuition I had - that the trolly problem, far from being a general model of ethics, is precisely a paradigm of ethics adopted in liminal situations, states of emergency and exception in which normal society has ceased to function. It's somewhat of a intellectual and philosophical travesty that it is taken for a litmus test of ethics in general. — StreetlightX

I am of the opinion that the "trolley problem" is entirely based on an unjustified distinction between action and inaction.

But in the case of doctors deciding who gets access to medical equipment, a "trolley problem" only comes up when the same equipment could either treat one very sick person or several slightly less sick persons.

In other cases, it's an issue of conflict of duties. I think most moral philosophies agree that in case of conflict between equal duties, a personal decision is permitted. As far as moral questions go, the "general economic consequences" Vs "individual lifes" conflict is a lot more interesting, I think.

Have you picked up what people have said about the strategy of how to prevent pandemics? — ssu

He's just preparing the next pro Trump spin. Bad consequences from the lockdown? Experts gave Trump wrong advice. No strict measures enforced? Trump was emulating South Korea, but impotence down the line stymied him.

Note this last bit in the post:

It is too late for that in the US. The CDC and FDA have royalty screwed our chances at early testing. — NOS4A2

Already showing the seeds for the next blame game.

The predicted spike in London is showing now with a rapid increase in confirmed cases and hospital admissions. And yet, the underground (metro) had packed commuter trains this morning. Packed with key workers and critical healthcare workers, presumably spreading it amongst themselves. The hospitals will be overwhelmed within a week. — Punshhh

Based on the numbers, the UK is about one week behind Germany and France. They seem to be taking the same measures those countries took a week ago.

Italy, France and Germany are seeing a flattening of the curve of new infections, but the total number of patients will still rise for a significant time. So the question is how much capacity the UK has left.

How do you know this? What is the basis for this claim in your argument? — Cabbage Farmer

Depends on what you mean by "the universe". If the nature of the universe is established via the scientific method, whatever is the result must be finite.

I'm all for global cooperation. And borders. Good neighbors make good fences, that's one way to look at it. — fishfry

But why do good neighbors need a fence in the first place? The whole notion seems contradictory to me. The fundamental principle of nationalism is "the nation first". That implies you'd only cooperate with other nations where it benefits you. On the other hand, if your guiding principle is global cooperation, you have to accept compromises that'll make the nation worse off.

In other news, barring significant changes during the last couple hours of the day, it looks like the measures taken in Italy are starting to have an effect. Numbers from France and Germany also seem to show a reduction of the exponential factor.

Whether I'm hypocrite or snowflake notwithstanding, the point is that there is a consistent disdain for Trump that goes beyond rationality, even to the point of hoping for his failure despite who may suffer in his path. — Hanover

Sure. But that's just politics. It's not exactly conductive of rationality. People are emotional. People want their political enemies to fail, sometimes people want them to fail so badly they'll accept hurting their own interests. None of this is either new or surprising. Trump certainly elicits particularly strong feelings. He's good at making people angry. And rather proud of it, too.

The truth is that the US has controlled the virus as well as any other nation so far and hasn't shown any greater ineptitude than the others. — Hanover

I'd call that more of a guess than "the truth". But you have a point in that there really isn't any indication, as per the numbers, that the US is doing especially badly.

What was the question again? Truth? Who said anything about being able to "describe the exact physical characteristics" of the cat or the mat?

Are we talking about how to communicate conveniently, or are we discussing what truth consists of? I thought it was the latter. — Daz

And my point was that the conventions in place to allow convenient communication don't change what the truth is. If you refer to one thing as a "mat", and I to another, the problem isn't to find truth, but to fix the misunderstanding.

If we don't know exactly when the mat-in-process-of-being-manufactured is in fact a mat, then we don't *really* know what the mat is. (Same thing with a cat as it's being biologically conceived and developing in the womb, or as it is dying, let's hope at a ripe old age.) Or the mat when it is falling apart eventually.

Cats and mats have not only spatial but also temporal extents ... but we don't know what those extents are. (Or as the cat is digesting and assimilating its food, when exactly does the food become the cat?)

The fact that these questions have no clear answers means that the truth (or not) of a simple statement like "The cat is on the mat" is much less clear than it may first appear. — Daz

I think you're unnecessarily imbuing the terms "mat" and "cat" with some sort of essential "mat-ness" and "cat-ness". The problem you're describing disappears when we simply accept the terms "mat" and "cat" as fuzzy categories meant to simplify communication. As long as we can describe the exact physical characteristics of whatever we are talking about, the name we give it is irrelevant.

My friend tested me on that a couple of weeks ago:

Out of 20,338 people tested in Britain for covid-19 164 people have the disease. The test itself is 97% accurate. You take the test and it comes back positive. What's the chance you actually have it based on this single test?

Apparently the answer is something like 21%? — Michael

Assuming you got the prevalence of the disease right, which is the difficult part of the calculation.

If we assume the base chance to have the virus is 0.8 percent, as per your numbers, then out of a thousand people 8 will have the virus. These 8 will test positive (rounded up). But from the remaining 992 another 30 will test positive (3%, rounded up). So if you test positive, your chance of having the virus are 8/38, which is 21%.

Conclusion: for rare diseases, you need very accurate tests.

So I think you're right. This pandemic has made apparent our reliance on Chinese manufacturing, even for the most basic of products, and hopefully altering the supply-chain to a better deal will begin shortly after. — NOS4A2

Do you think people will accept reducing their standard of living in order to achieve this "deglobalisation"?

One event that struck me was how fast the Schengen agreement was effectively abandoned in Europe. — fishfry

The Schengen agreement has specific clauses for this type of event. It wasn't abandoned. It's also weird that you think it happened "quickly". The opposite is true. The European states waited until it was abundantly clear that further waiting was impossible to justify.

People will come to respect the importance of cooperation among sovereign nations. Global cooperation, not globalism. This could become a movement. — fishfry

A movement for global cooperation you say? Like the UN? Or the Paris accord? Or the ICC?

Mass-energy equivalence? — TheMadFool

Yes.

What do you mean? Take this universe (matter, energy in space-time) and begin with your idea of "relative" absence and suppose you have an anti-matter gun that annihilates matter. You shoot objects into oblivion one by one i.e. you cause relative absence of things. Ultimately, you would've destroyed everything after shooting yourself and programming the gun to take itself out. That which is left, after the gun self-destructs, is absolute nothing. — TheMadFool

You'd be left with a lot of energy, which isn't nothing.

But you can just change the wording to ask, "Why does anything exist"? Which doesn't need to reference some ontological nothing. — Marchesk

True. But then we'd at least be able to evolve that question into a number of questions about specific things (since "anything" is again merely a category for "all individual things). We could ask of any one thing why it is, and why it is that specific way. And that kinda describes metaphysics in general.

So I guess if you leave the "nothingness" out of it, instead of a fundamental question, you have a fundamental descriptionn of metaphysics.

Consider the idea of nothing which for this discussion, and hopefully staying true to the meaning as intended in the question, "why is there something rather than nothing?", will simply mean the state of nonexistence. — TheMadFool

I think this statement already highlights the problem with the notion of "nothing" as an ontological category. You can only meaningfully talk about the nonexistence of something. Nothing is always a relative term, denoting the relative absence of something, whose attributes we know.

It seems to me the entire question of "why is there something rather than nothing" is just a result of a mistake in our reasoning. We tend to subconsciously reify categories and relational terms into ontological "things". In this case, we turned relative absence into it's own absolute thing "nothingness".

How do you know that? Right now, it seems to be toilet paper. — Nobeernolife

Yeah, fuck the free market.

Well, if it flows back to China for more cheap plastic crap, what the difference? — Nobeernolife

In real terms, it's China that's loosing value (production capacity and resources) and is only getting money in return.

You seem to be mixing two different ideas here. One is (high-bandwith) brain-machine interfaces, the other is some kind of "normalisation" of brain function. Could you explain why you think one is connected, or might lead to, the other?

The first thing to point out when talking about brain-machine interfaces is that we're already using them. Just with our bodies as an additional interface. Some of these interfaces (smartphones) have already had significant effects on our behaviour and psyche.

France and Germany are both approaching about the same number of cases per capita as Italy had when their health system started to break down. Both countries seem to be better prepared and holding up well so far. But the measures only slowly take effect, and even if they are fully effective, it'll probably take two weeks to reach the peak.

I have heard unconfirmed reports that despite the situation in Italy, Quarantine still isn't strictly observed there by everyone. People are still meeting in Cafes and the like. Boggles the mind.

It might be politically risky, but the drug is fairly safe. — Hanover

I have no idea how safe it is, or what the opportunity costs of attempting this treatment might be. And of course if subsequent information makes this seem like a well informed bold decision, instead of a gamble, it'll be perceived differently and convince more people.

But just success will not be enough to convince a lot of "naysayers".

Suppose it works? Will he not be a great savior? Will all the Trump naysayers do an about face? — Hanover

Is that a sociological question? If so, I'd say no. Rejection of Trump isn't based primarily on single decisions. As you have already analysed, it's easy to see this as a risky gamble that, given your scenario, just happened to work.

Might easily be enough to win the election though.

Well, technically they do (as that's how there is a currency at all). — Michael

It'd perhaps be more accurate to say that the a society could, if necessary, suspend the use of markets and money to direct economic output and instead pour all output directly into a problem.

Markets are useful because they are low-maintenance cybernetic systems that allow a relatively high amount of individual freedom. Money is useful because it makes markets even better at what they do. But we don't need to rely on either to solve a problem.

So the question is, is instant pleasure and this increasing amount of stimulation leading to what could only be concerned as devolution? — dylanthevillain

There is no such thing as devolution in the sense that you're using it here (as an opposite of evolution). There is just change.

And is this all because of misinformation and commercial propaganda? Or do I just need to stop gaming so much? I dunno, but these dark circles i've got sure as hell are showing me something is up with how we're living these days. — dylanthevillain

Who is to tell you how to use your time? Do you want to stop gaming, use that time for something else?

What is certain is that our bodies aren't made to sit mostly motionless in front of a screen. Unfortunately, what effects any individual experiences is mostly down to luck. You can try to live healthy and avoid risk factors. It doesn't guarantee you will live longer.

You can quarantine yourself if you want. Just like you can stay off the road to protect yourself from a car accident, you can stay in home to protect yourself from coronavirus. — Hanover

Sure. But my employer would hardly let me, would they? If some children go to school, and others do not, how would classes be handled?

Whether we admit it or not, we permit a certain number of deaths in order to maintain a certain why of life, which includes allowing our economy to operate the way it does. The worst case scenarios in the US if we were to allow the virus free reign would be between 200,000 and 1.7 million deaths. The estimate should make clear they simply don't know, since there's such a large range. But, let us assume we should expect 1,000,000 deaths, then that would put us at 250,000 less deaths than than the 1.25 million annual car accident deaths we deal with annually. We really have to keep these things in perspective here before we allow the entire world's economy to collapse. — Hanover

It's not just a numbers game though. Our societies operate on certain principles. We accept the deaths caused by car incidents not just because the benefits of allowing personal car use outweigh the deaths in general, but also because driving despite the risk is an individual decision and accidents can often be blamed on individual failures.

The virus is different. There is far less individual control over exposure, especially in the absence of central rules and guidelines. There is also no way to assign individual blame. What we're left with is a situation where government officials are forced to assume responsibility for the life and death of citizens.

It is simple, Wars are good for the economy of the victorious. However, the overall industry of the world suffers. A net loss, that is what wars bring. Good for one, bad for the other. — Zehir

It's not even necessarily good for the victors. France and Britain won both world wars, but their economies (especially that of France and especially in WW1) suffered dearly.

Wars usually stimulate the growth of industrial capacity. That is good if that capacity remains intact and you can use it afterwards. The problem is that much the actual industrial production goes up in flames, and that work could have been put to use improving lives instead of taking them.

The most oblitered industries were in Germany, which (the Western sector) experienced one of the most amazing economic booms of all times.
Ditto for Japan, by the way.

Again, I am only pointing out that reality is not that simple. — Nobeernolife

A boom is a relative. It took Germany about 15 and Japan about 20 years to reach the pre-war GDP per capita outputs.

In both countries, the destruction of the old, restrictive regimes was highly beneficial. Presumably, had that been achieved without a war, things would have been even better.