you are asking for the impossible. — Olivier5

When people speak of risk-based decision making, they are not talking of perfect estimates of risks across the whole demographic. They are speaking of basing their decisions on the best estimate of risks one can get at any given time.

One last try. If I say "if you don't shoot me, then I'll live to see another day" am I asking you to shoot me? — Isaac

So your question was rhetorical. Drumroll.

It still manifests bad faith. Because you are a scientist, you must know that no measurement can be perfectly precise; there's always a margin of error. And you must know that the risks taken by one particular individual are impossible to measure. Therefore you should know that you are asking for the impossible. Twice. That's a bit much, even rhetorically.

People marking where they stand, for others to know. I don't see a problem.

You don't even understand what you are saying, and you don't understand what I am saying either.

if you can't produce figures for my risk then my decision is not risk based is it?
— Isaac

Do you understand the point of this sentence at all? — Isaac

I do. You are asking others to do your homework for you. But nobody cares about you enough to give you these numbers...

I find the whole notion of agreeing and disagreeing in a medium like this completely baffling — Isaac

Why? Don't you disagree all the time with me here? Ask yourself where does this compulsion to disagree come from.

you can't get a truly individualised risk so don't even bother starting"? — Isaac

I trust nobody is stoping you from trying to calculate your individual risk. Don't ask others to calculate it for you though. We don't give a rat's ass.

People here don't want to agree, in principle. Even when they agree with you, they will find something to disagree with. It's the opposite of your usual anglosaxon meeting in the flesh, where everybody always tries to agree with one another by default. Here they try to disagree with you.

As I said, I'm a "gentleman of fortune" (i.e. a pirate). We go by different rules.

Consensus was not the claim. Certainty was. — Isaac

A bit of unrealistic goal. I think Sartre said somewhere that the human condition involves making decisions based on insufficient information.

Minor means child in this context: a person less than 18 years old.

One my choose to hold that a proposition does not exist until it is has been expressed. But even if we restrict to the set of propositions that have been expressed, we have not vitiated Fitch's argument.

It is not the case that for all propositions p that have been expressed we have p -> Kp. Therefore, as Fitch shows in the proof, it is not the case that for all propositions p that have been expressed we have p -> LKp. — TonesInDeepFreeze

That is indeed correct and I understand it is at least one of the 'traditional' readings. Not all propositions are necessarily decidable and we have good reason to think some are indeed not decidable.

In short: we have more questions than answers.

My beef was more with the other idea. The illogical one, which treats knowledge as a commodity.

the intended interpretation of the 'K' operator is that of knowing the existence of a propostion or sentence, but rather it is that the proposition or sentence is known to be true. Ignoring that point leads to incoherence. — TonesInDeepFreeze

That's probably a fair point. The SEP is not very clear on this but I trust you.

Let me start by noting a residual ambiguity here. I can see two very different ideas of an "unknown truth":

1. An hypothesis or proposition that has been actually proposed as true by someone, which is in fact true but unbeknown of most, and on which truth value there is no consensus whatsoever yet. For instance: the CIA killed the Kenedy's (if it's in fact true).

2. An hypothesis or proposition that has not yet been proposed by anyone, that is in fact true. For instance: Charlie Chaplin killed the Kenedy's (if it were in fact true that he did but my money is on #1, and if I had not just now proposed it of course...).

While the first meaning is not problematic, I have explained at length why #2 is for me a logical impossibility. Sentences not yet said are not yet said. They don't sit out there in Plato's realm or some similar otherwordly place, waiting for us to say them.

The physician, as agent for the state acting in the interests of persons refusing care, the state will provide the care — tim wood

Only in the case of children. And note also the the whole para starts with a mention of the kid's own consent, given legal status here right off the bat ("in case he or she can consent). The article is not meant to force rationally mature kids to take a medication they clearly reject by themselves. It is meant to protect unwitting kids from wako parents.

Human - The Pretenders

I play a good game
But not as good as you
I can be a little cold but you can be so cruel

I'm not made of brick
I'm not made of stone
But I had you fooled enough to take me on

If love was a war
It's you who has won
While I was confessing it, you held your tongue

Now the damage is done

Well there's blood in these veins
And I cry when in pain
I'm only human on the inside

And if looks could deceive
Make it hard to believe
I'm only human on the inside

I thought you'd come through
I thought you'd come clean
You were the best thing I should never have seen

But you go to extremes
You push me too far
Then you keep going till you break my heart

Yeah, you break my heart

See, I bleed and I bruise
Oh, but what's it to you?
I'm only human on the inside

And if looks could deceive
Make it hard to believe
I'm only human on the inside

And I crash and I burn
Maybe some day you'll learn
I'm only human on the inside

I stumble and fall
Baby, under it all
I'm only human on the inside

But there are people out there pushing the odds against you and yours for no decent, good, or reasonable reason. I'm not at all sure anger should be the animating spirit of response, though it be often a clue, but perhaps a more reasoned attention that at some point, as required, directs and insists and imposes. — tim wood

Why yes, a more reasoned attention is precisely what I am trying to provide here, and in other discussions I may have in society. I often fail at it but I'm only human.

An imposition of a Covid vaccine, shown to save lives and reduce both incidence and severity of an otherwise incurable and contagious sickness seems reasonable. — tim wood

I'm not even sure that would be constitutional in France.

I didn't quote the whole article. It's rather long and detailed. The section on minors says the following:

The consent of the minor or adult under guardianship must be systematically sought if he or she is capable of expressing his or her wishes and participating in the decision. In case the refusal of treatment by the person with parental authority or by the guardian could have serious consequences for the health of the minor or the adult under guardianship, the physician will provide the necessary care.

In short: the parents give consent for their kids, in consultation with the kids, but the doctor must overide the parents if they refuse a treatment that would in the doctor's judgment be life-saving.

I don't know what the situation is in Italy.

Not all sentences have a clear meaning, not all sentences are about some state of affairs, and not all sentences are proposed as true. So the Fitch is about propositions, not sentences.

The invitation here is to think reasonably and realistically. Try it. — tim wood

Reasonably and realistically, I will probably get COVID at some point, and I hope that being vaccinated will reduce the impact. And I'm not going to get all angry because somebody didn't get vaccinated. But that's just me. You do your thing.

Their parents can consent.

The topic is about propositions, but more formally about sentences. — TonesInDeepFreeze

It's about propositions. Let's not change the goal post.

I can materially stop anyone from entering my home. Unless the guy comes with loads of guns, he is not crashing my barbeque.

what makes you think your body cannot be altered against your will? — tim wood

Article L. 1111-4 of the French Public Health Code, which stipulates: “that no medical act and no treatment can be practiced without the free and informed consent of the person and this consent may be withdrawn at any moment.” And I trust a similar article must exist in Italian law because they always ask me to sign all sorts of consent forms.

I'm just not going to invite him at the barbecue, as simple as that. That is something I can control, but I cannot control my neighbors' medical treatments. I have to share society with people who disagree with me on many things.

I understand it as a law principle that says that your body is yours to decide about. I cannot decide to alter your body in any way, because it's yours not mine.

And given the realities of Covid, your "don't care" means you're good with your friends, family, even yourself getting possibly very sick, even dying - because some other people are stupid. — tim wood

Yes but you cannot control everything, and it's not all about me and my dear ones. People need to make a living, kids need to mingle, and people are allowed to be stupid... My family and friends are vaccinated. I trust that we all wash hands and wear masks as need be... To the degree that we might still catch the virus and get sick, it will be chalked up to shit that happens.

On the basis of what (sound) argument? In the US children have to go to school and to go to school they have to have been vaccinated. — tim wood

That is true, in France and Italy as well, and COVID may be put on the list. And children do stay out of school if their parents don't want to vaccinate them for, say, measles. This said, the habeas corpus principle implies that you cannot force an adult to take a medical treatment that he doesn't want to take.

a technocracy. — Yohan

Thanks for the clue. Yes, the fear of being dependent on labs and lab technicians for regular shots, that may protect you but also may affect you. Artificialization of life on a massive scale, moving to scary transhumanism. We're getting close to the core of the neurosis, I think.

They've made their decisions. If the catch it and die, or spread it to their own loved ones who die, well then... (gigantic shrug) — Michael Zwingli

I agree with that. Vaccination must remains a choice and cannot be made mandatory for the general public. They can antivaccinate all they like, for what I care. Medical professionals are another matter.

is it not the case that the madness is controlled before treatment commences? — tim wood

My thinking is, you cannot treat the madness if you don't know the cause of the madness.

So what's the big scandal with COVID? Any idea? I note that AIDS had its fair share of dissenters too, so there could have been perhaps a similar "scandal" with AIDS, and I remember that it included the crazy idea that the HIV virus was fabricated (by the CIA, of course). So maybe the idea that new virulent diseases can appear or evolve naturally, as predicted by Darwinism, is the big "scandal" here? The idea that nature can change radically, evolve, and treat us as mere food. I don't know.

Worth asking just what, exactly, they care about. — tim wood

And why. Like, why do some people spend such a large part of their life arguing that Pi is a rational number, or that perpetual movement ought to be possible, or that there's no such thing as climate change? What's the motivation? In my experience, and I have a lot of experience with dissenters, there is always at the start of it some sense of scandal, as perceived by them. What's the big scandal for CC? Maybe this idea that Western science and technology (a good thing, right?) are killing the world. What's the big scandal with the Holocaust? Maybe the very idea that them gooooood white folks, who invented civilization as we know it, could do such an awful thing, and that them baaaaaad Jews be presented as victims.

So what's the big scandal in COVID, as seen by dissenters? That ought to be the question.

I have. You folks have a huge entitlement problem. You want every data to be handed to you free of cost, and all the analysis done, and with convincing data please... But nobody is going to do your homework for you. So put the bare minimum effort into making your own data analysis.

give me the numbers. If this fact is relevant to my decision then the numbers have to be relevant to me. — Isaac

It is your responsibility to assess the risks you are taking with your and other people's lives, not @Xtrix's responsibility. If the numbers must be relevant to you, then I suggest you collect them yourself.

in order to be propositions.

I think there is something like hazing going on with anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers and such. They paid a very heavy price by disagreeing with the obvious and looking stupid to the majority. So now they can't go back and admit they were wrong. Or all that suffering and humiliation would be for nothing. — khaled

You can play nice with anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers and the likes -- it's doable as long as you don't give a shit -- but they won't play nice with you, because they care. One cannot be rabidly anti-consensus without a little grievance. They don't just calmly review the consensus opinion to conclude "Hmm not sure I can agree with that". No, they have chosen their camp in what they see as one of the most important battle of mankind, and they attack the other camp aggressively, and anyone defending it. Because they care.

Let me proselytize a little more.

To think of knowledge as a commodity, like salt or copper, a thing that can exist irrespective of whether human beings pay attention to it or not, is the wrong way to think about it. Knowledge is not a commodity, it is an activity.

As a consequence, the unknown is NOT a commodity either. And it does not come already prepackaged in neat little English sentences called 'propositions'.

Bis repetitas placent. And I cannot let it be said that it is antirealist to point out that propositions have to be proposed...

In any case, it is NOT a realist point of view IMNSHO to imagine that ideas can exist independently of actual people having them, in some platonic realm.

What does "p is known" mean? — TheMadFool

As explained: some people know about the existence of proposition p.

?