Trust of family presumes love.
Trust of friends presumes loyalty.
Trust of acquaintances presumes integrity.
Trust of workmates presumes competence.
Trust of companies presumes production of value.
Trust of the media presumes accuracy.
Trust of the justice system presumes impartiality.
Trust of the military presumes strength.
Trust of a political system presumes equality of opportunity.
Trust of the physical world presumes a fixed nature. — Baden

You use "trust" here to mean you accept its veracity, except with your last example where you use it to mean you expect certain results. You have therefore equivocated.

To say "I trust the physical world to offer me stabilty" is different from saying "I trust my friend." The former usage allows for such comments as "I trust China will lie, that Ted Bundy will slaughter, and that covid will hospitalize." The latter is a generalized statement of veracity, where "I trust China" would be a questionable statement, but "I trust China to lie" would be accurate.

Nitpicked your examples maybe, but I do think the distiction is one to point out because there is a pragmatic argument that could be made that distrust of a person's veracity is not a bad thing as long as that dishonesty is predictable enough to allow others to successfully navigate it. That is, as long as I know there's dogshit on the sidewalk, I can avoid stepping in it.

I have written a couple of published op ed pieces that advocate for requiring each state here in the US to send one male senator and one female. — Frank Apisa

I think we should have a biological male, biological female, trans male, trans female, asexual, fluid sexual, homosexual man, heterosexual female, homosexual trans female... from each state. We'll need a lot more chairs. We might need one person of each race, sex, gender, nationality, and region too. Gonna need a lot of chairs.

Anyway, big thumbs up for the idea!

Nobody wants a live chicken. Sad. — frank

They taste better un-lived.

For the record, my family has been consuming a record number of eggs during this pandemic. I think eggs are something everyone knows how to cook. As long as the egg makes it into the pan, you end up with something edible. Well, not the egg shell, but the inside of the egg. The shell should end up in the garbage so that the dog can knock over the garbage and get the eggshell and also happen upon the old yogurt containers so that he can drag them over the rug.

I don't quite understand why they have to kill the chickens. — frank

I don't think they could adopt them out quickly enough.

I agree our leaders have always been big fat liars, but I disagree we are more leery. Au contraire, we are much less leery; our leaders can now tell blatant lies that everyone can see are blatant lies, then contradict themselves, and then accuse their critics of being liars. In the good old days, they didn't usually get caught out, but if they did they were booted out. Well perhaps that was never the universal tradition, I'm not sure. — unenlightened

When were these good old days? The days of the monarch or the dictator, or does that go back too far? At least now our leaders feel like they have to lie. Back then they could just tell you all the terrible things they had planned and there was no other recourse.

So there has to be more trust than distrust in the world or society would collapse. I think society is close to collapse right now. So I am telling you, and anyone who is prepared to listen, that we all need to trust, and need the truth to be told, and need to cooperate, or we will not survive. Like the boy who cried 'Wolf' we will be eaten by wolves if we do not cooperate and tell the truth, because wolves do cooperate and tell the truth, and that makes them stronger than they are as individuals. — unenlightened

This assumes that karma controls the world. I'd love to think that North Korea will fall due to the falsehoods and propaganda it imposes on its citizens. Sort through history and consider every time and every leader, and do we see that their demise is owed to the collapse of truth and honesty within the society? Do we really see that time and time again the innocent and pure rise and take power because there is no more assured way to success than by embracing righteousness? I really don't think so.

This isn't to say that a society built upon the foundation of dishonesty is one anyone would like to live in, but I think it's wishful thinking to suggest that there is this karmic system of self-correction that results in the collapse of those societies that fail to seek honesty.

At any rate, I have the exact reaction to the loss of trust, kindness, and compassion that you do, but mine is due to the inherent sacredness of such things, as opposed to whatever pragmatic pain I may suffer from their loss. I have full trust in the ingenuity of humankind to create a fully functioning, sustainable, and workable system that is propped up by nothing but bullshit. Such systems don't crumble under their own weight, but they are typically destroyed by the intentional acts of the heroic. We give them such names as "revolutionaries" and "founding fathers." Mothers too, of course.

Then I can only conclude you must suffer from early onset dementia. You used to be an intelligent poster. That reply wasn't it. — Benkei

You're a grouch. Go back to sleep.

I stand by my post as fully responsive. Maybe re-read it.

You go from raising taxes on the wealthy and corporation to class warfare without any intermediate steps. Let's assume it's true. What do you think about Warren Buffet when he said this:

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”? — Benkei

I didn't suggest we needed to increase tax revenues, so I've not advocated for any increases, either on the rich or the middle class. Biden wanting to increase taxes on the wealthy (especially if he is alignment with what you are saying) would be to redistribute the wealth, which is what I was objecting to.

How do you relate that to the declining labour share of GDP development and income inequality?Or the fact CEO pay has risen by 940% since 1978 but worker pay only by 12%? This while GDP grew with nearly 90% since then? — Benkei

What do you think about the increase in salaries of Premier League soccer players over the years compared to whatever the lower level players are now making?

Why should having more money effectively give you a bigger voice and more influence? Shouldn't it just be one man, one vote? Or you don't think there's any tit-for-tat involved with campaign donations? Or do you think because it's legal, it's not corruption? — Benkei

Every person does have one vote. I don't follow your equation of speech to voting.

How much should you be allowed to speak before the government arrests you for speaking too much?

Anyway, money gives you all sorts of things, like better clothes, better food, better schooling, and even a bigger megaphone to scream and yell from. I'm just wondering what it is that you wish to say that isn't being heard. The ability of the average guy to be heard is much higher today than it was when there were just newspapers and a few major television stations. The only way to be heard back then was to write a letter to the editor that might or might not be published. Now, all I have to do is write whatever bullshit I want and some guy in the Netherlands starts offering me his perspective (which I do appreciate). My point is that there isn't this massive group of silenced people who just can't afford a place at the podium to be heard. Your biggest beef, I'd suspect, is the disproportionate power the US has and that it's controlled currently by the conservative micro-majority, thus subjecting the planet to what amounts to be an overall minority opinion. I can only imagine what it feels like to be in your shoes with Trump steering this great big ship we call the world and all you can do is look on in shock and dismay. You call it a tragedy. Me, a comedy.

I boycott all North Korean goods. Sure, it's difficult around Christmas when looking for that perfect gift, but it's the least I can do to de-fund their nuclear program.

I live in the European Union and can buy land anywhere. — Benkei

I didn't realize that. What's the EU equivalent of Alabama?

Nothing. I'll have gotten it all in place already. — Benkei

I know very little of your swampy little outpost, but am I correct in stating that property in the Netherlands is fairly expensive and the only crop you can grow is tulips?

The thing is, I could buy acres and acres of land in rural Alabama for next to nothing and I could probably raise pigs and chickens and grow corn pretty easily and could avoid the Armageddon better than you and your shoeless, shirtless kids could under their windmill in their tulip field.

I'm not suggesting you move to Alabama, as you lack the requisite sophistication, but I'm just questioning whether your plan is fully realizable where you are.

"Absolutist on free speech" is the reason to be against finance reform for campaigns?

At least I know now to ignore everything you say. — Xtrix

The regulation of financing regulates the speech.

Excellent. This is where I want to start, with our inescapable mutual dependence. I switch the light on trusting that it has been wired up so it doesn't give me a shock or set fire to the house. We need to trust. therefore we need to be honest. We need to communicate, therefore we need to be honest.

All this mistrust is macho posing, and chronic anxiety. But at the same time it is being normalised by the media and by politics - and alas, by philosophy. — unenlightened

Yes, but the purpose of your OP couldn't have been to convince us of the virtue of honesty because I would think that's largely uncontested. We all understand that thou shalt not lie.

The OP seemed to suggest a lament, that we've degenerated from a point of trust to our current dismal state of affairs where we look for angles and ulterior motives in everyone's acts and speech. For example, is Trump a great big fat liar of grander proportions than we've ever known such that we need to rethink where we are and thereby return to our purer state? Or, have our leaders always been big fat liars, but we're just now more leery? I think it's the latter really, as I think about leaders the world over and throughout history.

Since this is really a prayer of sorts, I'd more fundamentally pray for kindness and understanding and I'd expect the honesty you pray for to flow from that. After all, I just want to be treated as I'd like to be treated myself. The rest, as they say, is commentary upon that.

I've already started looking for a plot of land with enough arable land, a self-sufficient modular home and I'll be advising my kids to study agriculture. — Benkei

Tell me all the things your kids are going to need to sustain themselves so that I can teach my kids to sell it to them. I'm just trying to identify emerging markets.

What do you object to the most? — frank

I actually went to the Biden site where he lists out his positions. If I had to pick what I didn't particularly like, it would relate to raising taxes specifically on the wealthy and corporations, because I'm tired of the class warfare, which is how this usually plays out. He wants to study the idea of reparations, which I find horribly polarizing and unjust. That alone will cost him my vote. He had an entirely hands off stance with China, and I do see them as a threat and concern. I'm not in principle opposed to tariffs as he is. I didn't like his idea of raising teacher's salaries, as I don't follow how the federal government should have a hand in that very (very very) local issue. He's in favor of 2 years of free college education, which in principle sounds good, but that sounds again like a state issue, considering different state institutions charge differently and private colleges are much more expensive. I'm also opposed to campaign finance reform because I'm close to an absolutist on free speech. His objections to drilling for oil I largely disagree with.

Your mistake is mixing the two above strategies up completely and using that confusion to leverage some absurd objections to what's being done. Stop doing that, please. — Baden

I read the article you sent, and it does clearly delineate three strategies to the coronavirus, which really can be described as varying levels of quarantining and social distancing. The more, the less spread, the less, the more spread. It does respond to an earlier question I had, which is how much the total infection rate will fall under each plan versus just how long we will need to prolong the infections in order adequately respond to the more serious cases. From the graph I posted, and from what I had read elsewhere, the primary focus of the social distancing was not to reduce total infection, but to decrease the rate of infection to a level where healthcare could address the problem.

I'll concede from the data you've provided that if we do nothing to reduce the spread, we will substantially increase the total number of cases with or without healthcare available. But even within the data posted, they continue to speak of the collapse of the healthcare system if we do nothing to address the issue, which is suggestive of the good the healthcare industry is doing to increase survival rates. I'm still not sure they really are, and that is not a conspiracy theory or anti-science mentality.

No complicated math here, but with 24 votes so far, with 4% voting for Trump, that means only one Trump voter. :chin:

Biden has been credibly accused of sexual assault. No progressive who cares about women's rights should vote for him until a proper investigation is carried out. Period. And any who do are massive hypocrites. — Baden

My issue with the Baden accusation, I mean Biden, is that only FoxNews seems to have heard the charges and everyone else is ignoring it. It is worthy of investigation and supposedly neutral news' outlets should investigate every allegation equally regardless of the political affiliation of the accused.

In terms of whether I would not vote for Biden based upon the charges, I would vote for him if I agreed with his politics, but I don't. That said, an accusation is not proof. This whole thing of guilty until proven innocent is a disgusting recent turn of events and something we will one day hopefully look back upon with regret. The concept of determining guilt only after all the facts are revealed has served us well in matters far worse than sexual harassment or even rape, including such things as murder, mayhem, and terrorism. My presumption at this point is that Biden is not guilty of anything.

We need to take seriously that calling someone a rapist who is not is a vile act in itself.

See: https://www.businessinsider.com/covid19-model-predicts-40-million-people-could-die-without-interventions-2020-3

"Their model puts hard numbers to the phrase "flatten the curve," which public health officials have been using when encouraging people to stay at home and keep their social distance. The goal is to keep healthcare systems from becoming overwhelmed with too many critical cases at one time."

From that article, check the graph below (I couldn't seem to get it to embed). I know it's roughly done, but it presents as showing the same number of cases under the curve in either scenario.

When will we see these kinds of crowds? In a few years perhaps, likely not this year and the next... — ssu

Next Trump rally maybe.

Because "we don't know" seems like a perfectly good reason to err on the side of caution when what "we don't know" is how many thousands of "extra" deaths we will have. — Echarmion

Sure, so let's feed popcorn to every infected person because we don't know what it'll do, and we might as well err on the side of caution. Best case, fewer deaths. Worst case, belly full of popcorn.

is what I object to. And you know it because it keeps being pointed out to you. The primary reason we shut down the economy was to suppress the spread of the disease and lower fatalities. — Baden

No it's not. The primary reason we shut down the economy was to slow the spread of the disease so that our healthcare system wouldn't be overwhelmed because it was assumed the healthcare system would reduce fatalities if it were available. We're not reasonably going to be able to hide away from this virus until a vaccine is found, meaning leveling the curve only drags out the total number of infected over a longer period of time. If that were not the case, we shouldn't be talking about opening the economy for many more months. It's still very much around and is going to spread some more..

Load of bum. Google "coronavirus models". That's how many people would have died and that's why things needed to be shut down. All this blathering about whether ventilators are 50 or 80% effective is not going to change that. — Baden

Let's say 1m will have severe cases (however we define that) on Date X if we don't quarantine at all. Let's then say we have 500k hospital beds. Assuming no better way to triage, 500k of the last ones to show up looking for a bed will be sent home. The question then is how many of the 500k will now die who wouldn't have died had there been 1m beds.

The answer, despite every model out there, is "beats me." For some reason, that's not important. You even say

All this blathering about whether ventilators are 50 or 80% effective is not going to change that. — Baden

It would seem that if ventilators were 100% effective, 500k more will die under my example. Why do you say my question about the effectiveness of treatment is irrelevant then?

I don't know who you think has found truth and lost trust, or how or when this happened. I ask you the same question - do you walk down the street and buy stuff in the shops, travel on public transport, fire bullets made in a factory, let the dentist near your face with his needles and drills? Then you haven't lost trust. — unenlightened

Well, sure, total trust has not been lost. But do I trust the dentists like I once did, and do I just take my medicine as prescribed? I probably do a whole lot more research now than before, as I'd suspect we all do. And all this happened once that information became accessible to me, which is very much a Google thing.

There were a couple of days when you were being reasonable on this whole thing and now it's a big attack on everything scientific and almost conspiracy-theory like stuff on the economy being shut down. — Baden

Oh, please, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. You're just a de-legitimizer of all who don't speak the gospel (backatcha).

I've simply questioned the extent to which our healthcare system is doing anything meaningful to increase the lifespans of those afflicted with the coronavirus. Neither of us know what that is, and so it isn't entirely reasonable to go to such lengths to make sure there is a hospital bed for each person afflicted if that bed is no better than the one at home for you.

We've premised the closing of the entire world's economy on the principle that we needed to be sure there was sufficient healthcare for the infected, and no one can tell us what the treatment is doing for folks. And since I've always said that it is in fact a matter of how many we're saving, you need to identify how many of the now living would have died but for the healthcare they've received. I'll accept some have been saved by the healthcare, but what percentage? 1%, 25%, 80%? No one knows, and so here we are preaching for more hospital space because we're just so sure the sick belong in the hospital because that's just always where we put them.

And I'm right here. And that sucks for you. If I don't take it as a given that our healthcare system provides care for one's health, we have a quandary, and in this great big instance, we have no data to show our good doctors (and they are) are doing a whole lot of good here.

Anyway, I don't attack science. I've just asked for the scientific basis for the current treatment protocol, and I've been told that it is just whatever it is.

When trust is lost, there are laws and punishments and hierarchies of watchdogs watching each other. But trust is not restored, except by honesty. — unenlightened

There's honesty and then there's truth. We only know if someone is honest if we are able to otherwise find the truth. And if we can find the truth ourselves, we don't need to appeal to any authority. We just go take a look for ourselves.

So, to restore honesty would make things more expedient because we wouldn't have to spend the time checking up on people, but it would also make us more subject to being conned by those who remain dishonest. Could all this really mean that we're just seeing the consequences of the information age come to fruition? We no longer need to trust Walter Cronkite. We can look for ourselves. And what we've learned when we looked for ourselves is that those we had trusted may have just been selling a point a view.

Maybe we've lost trust, but we've found truth. Is that so bad an exchange? Maybe the truth is that there never really was all this honesty.

A couple of thoughts:

First, the distrust of government is obviously not new. The question for liberal democracies (of which I include the US) is how to deal with that. In the US system (ideally), the President cannot act without the approval of the Senate, without the approval of the House, without the approval of the Court, and they are all ultimately checked by the people, and the people are even checked by the rights set forth in the Constitution. These checks and balances were forged as the result of distrust of the government.

Second, I agree that distrust is the result of prior dishonesty, but it's often far less sinister than that. The first question the judge will ask prospective jurors when they walk in the courtroom is whether they are related by blood or marriage to the litigants, whether they have a financial interest in the outcome of the case, or whether they have formed any opinions prior to hearing any evidence. The purpose for these questions is to exclude on the basis of bias. I cannot hear a case involving my mother not because I am a scoundrel or liar when it comes to my mother, but it's because I am hopelessly biased as to all things that might relate to her. By the same token, if I will be called upon to pay the verdict in a civil case, I cannot sit as a juror. In a criminal case, I cannot sit if I was a prior victim of the accused, and I suppose we could imagine a number of other such cases. None these exclusions are based upon my propensity to lie or be dishonest. In fact, a judge is required to recuse herself if there's even the appearance of impropriety, despite the fact she may possess the wisdom of Solomon and the trust of all the community.

When one looks to the various news outlets, we see distrust from one side or the other. The left watches CNN and the right FoxNews. The complaint du jour by the right is that CNN is not covering the allegations of Biden's prior sexual misconduct. The argument isn't that CNN is filled with liars and cheaters, but that it's biased. It's that it does not stand as a neutral, but as an advocate. It's that everything is spun and then advocated or condemned. The general complaint of our time is that of polarization, where everyone is now an advocate and everyone is selling a point of view.

Thirty years ago, we trusted our news outlets not to be biased, but today, not so much. I'd submit that we haven't degenerated from a trusting bunch to a skeptical bunch, but that we've simply shaken away some amount of naivete and that we're now more sophisticated. Your question about whether we should trust Google is a good one because it recognizes that Google has in fact become the current check and balance for our news, where we can determine for ourselves if we've got our facts straight. And maybe it is time to become skeptical of it, not because we're further degenerating, but because we're becoming even more sophisticated. But the answer is that I do expect (and there likely already is one) a new search engine that will emerge that the right will say is less biased or one the left will say is less biased. Regardless, that's a good thing, as I see no reason to trust the folks at Google not to also be selling something or some point of view.

The only way you can sense you're being watched is thorough your senses, of which there are 5. So, I feel I'm being watched when I see someone watching me.

I don't know man... Like, over 90% of people who receive brain surgery for gunshot wounds to the head die, or are at least never the same afterward.

We should probably stop doing brain surgery on these poor souls. They've already suffered enough dammit! — VagabondSpectre

You've not read the articles indicating a real question about the safety of ventilators on covid patients.

Did I mention:Stop conflating the need for the general suppression of the virus to the availability of ventilators. The former needs to be done regardless. — Baden

The suppression of the virus drags out the infection over time. What evidence do you have that fewer are going to get it overall given enough time?

Consider what options are being weighed; someone's lungs are not working, they would choke to death with a good chance without the ventilator. The alternative; do not use ventilators on people choking to death due to inconclusive evidence, with no proposed mechanism, which is being given undue weight because people are misinterpreting statistics. — fdrake

If someone is knocking on death's door, I think you should throw everything in the hospital closet at the patient and you should wave all sorts of branches over the guy's head while dancing on one foot. I'm all for the Hail Mary pass. That being said, I don't know how much I'd be willing to invest financially in all those ideas if I didn't have a good idea they'd work. My point is simply that if we've decided to go to great lengths to provide certain resources to patients at a great expense to the world, we should be assured those resources do something meaningful.

If keeping the curve low was our objective, and we're now learning it saved considerably less lives than we thought, we should have known that before we decided to do what we did.

People on ventilators tend to die. Having a high death rate due to respiratory failures while on ventilators is not so surprising. This is fully consistent with them helping people survive; if someone who needs a ventilator to breath did not have a ventilator, they would die. — fdrake

Yeah, and you don't know why they're dying. You're just hypothesizing one way (it's because they were really sick and about to die anyway), and I'm hypothesizing the other way (it's because the ventilator is killing them). Let's figure this puzzle out before we make sure every man, woman, and child suffering from covid has a ventilator near by, especially if it means every Tom, Dick, and Harry is going to have to stay out of work for two months or more to assure those ventilators are at the ready.

People with more severe reactions are more likely to receive a ventilator, and they're also more likely to die as a result of the virus. — VagabondSpectre

We know people are dying on ventilators at alarming rates. You can say it's because they were really sick and going to die anyway, or you can say the ventilator killed them. Eenee meenee minie moe. Is that how we form public policy and is that how we decide to shut down the world?

President Hanover issues a decree where patients currently on ventilators stop using them due to inconclusive evidence that they do not help. — fdrake

President Fdrake issues a decree that we quarantine the world so that the spread of covid will not exceed the number of ventilators based upon no evidence that ventilators increase the survival of covid patients.

Huh?

Would we stop using defibrillators if we found out they only worked 20% of the time? — Baden

If they killed people, we'd stop using them.

You're making the Trump argument by the way. Let's try this medication, it seems like it works from what folks have told me, it's been around a long time, and why not, it's safe for most people.

The reason this matters is because we've shut down the world's economies to be sure we had plenty of beds and ventilators and it might be all those beds and ventilators aren't really making a difference.

So, to the extent we say "why not give them a try?" the "why not" is because there is a massive price to pay if we're wrong. And maybe we were.

What's the alternative? — frank

Not relying upon them.

A world where there are ventilators has a lot less deaths due to respiratory failure than one which has no ventilators. It's not like ventilators are a covid specific thing, they're for respiratory failure. — fdrake

Well of course. Use respirators where they ought be used, but maybe not for covid. If they don't work for those patients and they possibly hasten their death, then let's not get in such a frenzy to make sure they are plentiful enough for covid patients.

Medicine isn't research based for the most part. — frank

If you're going to concede the point that medicine isn't scientifically based, but that it's just based upon anecdotal cases and general feel, then we should all step back from accepting these medical opinions as any sort of gospel and perhaps reconsider our reliance upon them when forming public policy.

This is based on existing protocol which is science based. Try again. — Benkei

Really? Because it's the existing protocol, it must be based upon good science? It's just a tautology? Maybe show me the study you're referencing instead of just repeating that's what everyone happens to be doing.

Are you seriously suggesting that there's no evidence that a machine which demonstrably keeps failing lungs working facilitates recovery of people with respiratory failure? — fdrake

That's what the evidence is in fact showing. Google this "do ventilators help covid patients"