Or did the populists sort of randomly win? — frank

The Cummings video I posted above is quite informative on how they got people to engage with the Brexit is good narrative, they cite a few catastrophes in framing public opinion; what happened to Greece during its economic crisis (which was partly forced on them by EU banking interest) and the Syria/refugee crisis, the 2008 recession and a resulting resentment towards a class of "political elites" that they capitalised on majorly (they got to frame it like the EU is full of political elites, and weaponise class identity in their favour, which is a strong force in the UK).

They happened upon a narrative which spans liberal left and liberal right reactions to the crisis, blamed the EU for the disintegration of faith in politics (and Brexit will RESTORE it apparently!), but also resonates with the far left's class thinking on the matter and the far right's "national sovereignty with less immigrants" narrative. They politicised a common kernel of truth (people being sold out and fucked by their governments since 2008) and spinned it in their favour.

It's interesting to pay attention to exactly what he doesn't say, because it reflects badly on him.

"We used Facebook's terrible user privacy standards to get people to fill out questionnaires that allow us access to their and all their friends' feeds and data, then we stored all that, used a bunch of machine learning algorithms to learn about them, we tested survey parameters to see if they were reposted (and other engagement metrics), then we maximised those for each demographic we could.

BTW, we leveraged all this research in the week before the vote to tailor personalised ads to prime voting our way"

Interestingly in 2015 very few people in the UK were critical of the EU, had even thought of leaving, or thought it was a sensible thing to do. What changed during the following year? A populist campaign employing lies, political manipulation, xenophobia and fear of Turkey joining (our streets would be flooded with Turks). Pushed every day by the right wing rags and populists like Farage. And hey presto, all those people who weren't concerned about the EU, suddenly hated it and wanted to leave whatever the cost. — Punshhh

:up:

How does what I wrote in the OP correlate to what you wrote in your last post? — Chester

You are talking about how the left are worse than you. Because they, allegedly, don't care in the right way about Chinese workers. And apparently you are not virtue signalling.

The left, who you are complaining about for not caring in the right way about Chinese workers. And they are virtue signalling.

Stahp means stahp. You've been warned. Don't refuse moderation.

(Also, an answer to the eternal question, the moderators moderate the moderators)

By the way, I'm not racist, I still enjoy a good Chinese take-away... — Chester

I've heard that a lot growing up. Usually just after my friends were innocently calling the staff "chinkies".

1) Freedom of movement involves the weakening of national borders (obviously), that is a direct "attack" on national independence so damn free movement. I don't mind a few checks next time I travel to Europe. — Chester

Are you imagining that people can come to the country and stay indefinitely without work in the current situation? If someone stays, they have a job or get deported (or other much more circumstantial stuff). If someone stays and works illegally; do you think that's the fault of the person coming to the country for a better life and being exploited by a business to undercut wages and worker's contract induced "monetary risks"? Or is it the fault of opportunistic businesses undercutting the fair price of labour? I'm gonna go with the latter. If businesses didn't stand to gain by illegal contractless hiring, they're not going to bloody do it are they.

Even within Schengen, if you lose your job and can't find another within a year (or other much more circumstantial stuff), countries will deport you. You will have a residence permit revoked.

Are you imagining that a defaulting to international laws on immigration and migrant work would curtail the amount of illegal immigration and illegal contractless jobs? All this would do is act as a disincentive for citizens of EU member states to come to Britan. It does absolutely nothing for the majority of the right's bugbear immigrant nations. Don't you dare tell me when you talk about cutting immigration you're imagining less Swedish people coming in...

We lead Europe on human rights — Chester

Evidence please.

We have mandatory unpaid labour under the name of "workfare" (if you've ever been in that position, it's quite possible to be perpetually working for free and then fired when the workfare period ends for that job). We have zero hours contracts.

The Paris agreement is a complete joke, none of its target will get reached...because China and India will carry on polluting. — Chester

You can add the US to that list, it shows no signs of stopping and resists any measures that would slow their emissions growth.

But, it's actually the majority of Paris agreement signatories that are failing to meet emission reduction targets, which they lowball compared to what is necessary anyway.

It's a largely symbolic gesture, insofar as there are not punitive measures on countries that fail to meet them. If you want to reduce global carbon emissions, it takes a sustained organised effort over the entire world, and everyone needs to do their share. The Paris agreement is a first step, though taken very late, in that direction. It requires much more global cooperation and the mandatory imposition of climate taxes over the majority of the world's major polluters (or something similar) to do the full job. That requires an even larger legislative body than the EU to generate such a binding agreement, and it would continue to be resisted by any and all corporations that benefit from unsustainable emissions growth.

We've had paid holidays in the UK for decades...nothing to do with EU membership. — Chester

Wrong. Making it a legal right to have at least 11 hours between shift end and shift start (with exceptions based on job nature), having a maximum working week of 48 hours (with exceptions based on job nature), and a minimum of 20 days paid annual leave per year were not enforceable claims in Britain before the EU working time directive in 2003. There's an opt out if you don't want it, those considerate commisars and their respect for individual autonomy!

There are no plans or promises to keep this. Even as it gets circumvented by endless zero hours contracts and revolving door temporary ones. I wonder what will happen?

Why should the working week be capped at 48 hours? That's only two days out of seven. — Chester

As said, you can (could) opt out if you like, or if your job nature requires it. It isn't so much that it's capped, it's that you're legally entitled not to work more than that if the job's very nature doesn't require it. Putting these things in the law, in an ideal world anyway, allows workers to use them.

Stahp.

I'm quite convinced that the timing is not a coincidence. I wonder what populist right driven campaign was backed by those same populist right rags and donors at the time that would allow the UK to stop implementing the agreement. :chin:

I don't think the EU has achieved anything of real value for the people of Europe. — Chester

(1) It facilitated freedom of movement agreements. You didn't need a Visa to go on holiday to France or visit relatives in Germany. You should probably like this if you like free trade, rather than borders. If you dislike what's going on at the Irish border and its impact on businesses due to major efficiency losses, you like free travel.

(2) EU convention on human rights (our government want to weaken this sneakily and has tried).

(3) Paris agreement on climate change. Better air quality, less pollution, some amount of work to mitigate the chances of the collapse of human civilsation itself.

(4) Mandatory paid holidays for workers (UK government resisted this)

(5) Capping the working week at 48 hours (UK government resisted this).

(6) Legislation to stop massive tax avoidance (UK government resisted this).

There are six things for you. Our government doesn't like the EU convention on human rights, it doesn't want tax transparency legislation, it didn't like mandatory paid holidays at the time, it didn't like limiting the amount of hours people are required to work.

These are tangible things the EU has done, much to the chagrin of the British government. You're imagining how much better things would be without it. We can imagine differently; no paid holidays, no Paris agreement, no capped work hour requirements, less tax transparency and less effective enforcement of it .

I'll take tangible results most people find favourable over your baseless speculations any time.

Such trust seems to me to be a default state. We always end up trusting something since doubt is always practiced on some ground, held up by trust in it. A state where such trust does not happen is one of utter paralysis; not even the world itself could reassure us of its continued function by continuing to function as it does. People play at that on the forum a lot, practicing Cartesian doubt while typing on a keyboard which allegedly is not reassuring enough to exist.

We're all skeptical of things that do not conform to our expectations, we can make a game of this and reassure ourselves by defeating all "enemy ideas", leaving the unarticulated position we inhabit the only thing that feels left standing.

If the ability to share the same sources of trust, those grounds that doubt leaves standing, is diminished, so is the social fabric those grounds together constitute.

But in such a state of alienation, things will still be trusted in this sense by necessity, people do stuff upon a background their expectations hold fixed.

People on the right don't generally go on marches — Chester

:groan:

I just talk to people , I'd say I'm fairly persuasive ...but it's up to them — Chester

You're doing exactly the same shit you were criticising in the original post.

I don't think your theory makes much sense, it doesn't respect thresh-holds. Say the limit is 10 politicians, and that can be a just arrangement, suddenly 1 more gets employed and they're necessarily corrupt.

But you probably don't mean it like that, you're looking at them and saying "look at all that bureaucracy, it's so inefficient!". But inefficient compared to what? I mean, do you believe that the UK will somehow magically become more efficiently run by defaulting to international law arrangements on trade, despite all the border problems that will kill businesses

The EU is a perfect example where commissars get to decide on what politicians can vote on. That's why the EU is generally at odds with the majority of EU citizens. — Chester

What specifically do you think the EU has influence over in a member state that violates the interests of its members?

.

People aren't as stupid as those on the liberal left think, just because most Brexiteers haven't been to Uni and learned the art of talking absolute bollox (I'm an exception lol:)) people like you shouldn't underestimate the will of most people to leave an organisation that is clearly utterly corrupt. — Chester

And you shouldn't underestimate the effects of a gigantic, personalised-ad style propaganda campaign and a political class that lied, over and over again, about the effects the EU are having on the UK on public opinion on the matter. It's not that people are stupid, it's that if you saturate discourse with lies and misinformation, people will believe lies and misinformation. If everyone ends up believing that everyone else is informed by lies and misinformation, so much the better for promoting a state of numb apathetic helplessness. Like rats in a cage who get shocked randomly.

Besides vague sentiments about sovereignty and small government being better, what do you actually think will be better off after Brexit? What are your predicted improvements?

We're going to have the same loopy political class that's intent on turning Britain into rich man's playground, only now it won't have to try and keep to EU human rights legislation (not that Britain has a great record on that on all fronts), and it won't benefit from EU trading rules regarding medicine.

I mean, these people blamed all of Britain's ills on the EU despite being exactly those who made policy that promoted the shambles Britain is turning into. We had enough autonomy to make stupid fucking decisions

I've already said the government should put taxes on Chinese goods. — Chester

Stop virtue signalling.

A lot of people in the UK are very angry at what the Chinese have done and a boycott movement could come into being. — Chester

Are you working towards a boycott movement? What're you doing that makes it more likely for other people to stop buying Chinese goods?

As some commentators have predicted, China’s rise to power will heavily alter the political and cultural landscape of the future. China’s entrance into the world market has made them a big player. Now western companies and bureaucracies have to kowtow to Chinese influence, for fear of loosing that market. Unfortunately China’s rise hasn’t made them more like us; it has made us more like them. — NOS4A2

It's not like companies had conniptions about outsourcing manufacturing labour to other countries that brutally discipline their labour forces. Turning a blind eye to human rights violations isn't a specifically Chinese thing, it's a political and corporate job requirement.

I don't know what the last examples have to do with. Put "difference" and "will" at the center of what? Phusis? — Xtrix

As a, or the, central explanatory category for the unfolding of nature considered as its own thing.

Regardless, I wasn't advocating putting phusis as the "central place in science," I'm saying it is a basis for science if and only if it bears some connection to the current ontology of science (which I contend is a naturalism or physicalism). Just the uncontroversial etymology of the words "nature" and "physics" will immediately show you there is. — Xtrix

So the connection goes: phusis -> naturalism, naturalism -> scientific practice? In what regard is phusis a basis for scientific practice if it bears some connection to the current ontology of science?

Being a "basis" is quite a lot different from "bearing some connection", right? So I interpreted that you were doing the Heideggerian move of putting "phusis" as the general concept that "allows nature to reveal itself to scientists in the way they reveal it", despite being "more primordial" than that style of disclosure.

Scientists rarely engage with nature as its own concept, right? You don't need to think of nature as its own thing to have a predictive theory. Maybe if the scientist sought to explain why the theory is predictive, they would have recourse to nature as a concept.

It seems to me that scientific practice rarely requires meditation upon the fundamental nature of nature; it's contextualised and regionalised. So in that regard, any conception of nature as its own thing (in toto or in itself) does not seem to be a requirement of doing science.

I guess that leaves questions of transcendental priority; can someone conceive of any particular predictive understanding of nature without using something like phusis? If it's a ground for science, it's not going to be a ground of scientific practice, it'll be a ground in terms of conceptual/logical priority.

I would also guess that it's commonplace to treat metaphysics regarding nature as descriptive rather than explanatory; given (bunch of science stuff), how should we think about it? EG: what constitutes a function of a component of an organism?

So it seems to me if the analysis of phusis takes a central place in science, it only does so as a transcendental ground, and needs only behave that way given the stipulations of interpreting it that way. Maybe Deleuzians would put difference at the center, maybe Schopenhaurians would put will there.

our argument seems to imply that poor(er) people are unable to choose better options with regard to what they purchase...they will always buy the cheapest goods, — Chester

Nah. My argument is that there are major incentives to buy them, not that everyone buys them. It's financially responsible (something I assume you like) to buy cheaply when in a position that surprise expenses are troubling or catastrophic, and if you don't have enough for savings etc etc. Buying cheaply usually means going to either a charity shop or supporting human rights violations through your purchases, buying cheaply means you have more left over for savings. Being financially responsible is more likely to make you violate human rights when you're poorer; and I guess, not being a member of the "spoiled middle classes" yourself, this applies to you equally..

It is not the liberal left's fault that companies use Chinese labour, it is Chinese politics' fault, and our government's fault for allowing it in our country. If you're in government, and you, your friends and donors need these human rights violations to continue for their profits (which applies to Labour and the Tories), they're gonna continue. It won't be put to a vote. You won't get to "have your say". So people, rightfully frustrated by all this, are going to do whatever they can that makes them feel like they have a voice. "Share this on Twitter, solidarity with Chinese workers!", they're people finding their voices in the death rattle of a form of democratic politics which no longer has any relevance or import; a public forum. The same can be said of us talking shit like this on a forum, how wretched we are.

It benefits our corporate crony government for this to be framed as a matter of individual consumer choice (which you're falling for hook line and sinker), because that means they don't have any responsibility for curtailing or sanctioning Chinese imports. Vote with your money! (Our investors have the most money btw). You're thinking in terms of boycotts, which promote individual actions without giving any means of organising them. If it takes an organised effort to make a dent, why not intervene in government for that?

But of course, we can't intervene in government, we never get the choice of whether our establishment will support human rights violations abroad. So, presumably, all we have left are little crumbs of action like consumer choices. And really, as disgusting as it is to wash one's hands of systemic problems like this by buying "ethical products", or sharing a Tweet, it's far, far more disgusting to keep it swept under the rug because it benefits the corporate interest saturated nightmare we call a state. It's not you that's doing this, it's not you that is keeping the inhumane production chains in a state of brutal discipline, so why in the hell are you directing all that hate towards people in much the same position of powerlessness as you? Why are you better than them?

the point is that we can be wrong about our emotions not just in the sense that they're not suited to our modern world (that idea has been around for years) but that they're not 'suited' to any world, they don't come pre-packaged and suited to some set of circumstances predicted by evolution — Isaac

Isaac DESTROYS evolutionary psychology. (Maybe).

How I'm thinking about emotions in the natural kind flavour are that they are attractors in the dynamical system of active inference given the statistical regularities of our current lifestyles. So, a dynamical system is a pair of collections, a collection of parameters; called states, like the state of a neuron; and a collection of update rules that maps states to other states; an application of an update rule moves a state "forward in time".

Like if you had the parameter x, and the update rule f(x)=x^2, if the initial value of x is 2, then the updates are f(2)=2^2=4, f(4)=4^2=16, f(16)=16^2=196 and so on. The "time" there is how many times the update rule f is applied.

An attractor in a dynamical system is a collection of states that map into themselves under the update rule. You can't escape it, like a ball rolling to the bottom of a hill. For the above map f(x)=x^2, 1 would be an attractor, as would 0, since f(1)=1^2=1 and f(0)=0^2=0.

A more complicated attractor might be whether an asteroid would enter into orbit around Earth. It'll come from some angle, and when it non-negligibly gets pulled by Earth's gravity, it might start to rotate around Earth. The attractor there would be the collection of all orbits around Earth that the asteroids take.

The collection of states in the active inference model is the collection of states it references, the update rules are the state transitions (what we predict them to be and what our interventions reveal about them intermingling into learning). I'm unclear whether "state" refers to something like the state of a neuron, or whether it refers to something like the state of an environmental parameter, or whether at one stage in the process it refers to an environmental parameter (well, in its encoded form) and at others it refers to neuron states. The active inference system's dynamics also don't seem to have exact state access, like the above square map "knows" that 1 comes in as input, what goes into the update rule in the active inference system looks to be an uncertain summary of each state (from a previous prediction). Anyway.

The system described regarding habit formation in the Friston paper you linked doesn't have this "gets stuck there forever" property regarding habits though, a prior becomes change resistant by having its updates diminished by previous success using the policies (actions/worldly interventions, in the paper foraging strategies in a maze) it proposes. So thinking of emotions (not core affect alone) as learned, they would need to be change resistant habits that activate based upon context similarity to the predictions (bodily-environmental model) their representations/encoded patterns generate. When evidence accumulates that the activating context for the habit is no longer present, the agent switches to an exploratory mode that yields the formation of new habits.

If we take that idea that new context recognition is impeded by having a strong prior for what context we're in and what to do in it, it seems to me to fit quite neatly with Barrett's "language-as-a-context" view (from here, the language paper you linked).

In addition, emotion words cause a perceptual shift in the way that faces are seen. Morphed faces depicting an equal blend of happiness and anger are encoded as angrier when those faces are paired with the word ‘angry’, and they are encoded as even angrier when participants are asked to explain why those faces are angry [19].

Language seems to have the ability to prime which habits are simulated and enacted; and language as a cultural artifact/shared repository of symbols and meanings changes much more slowly than the fleeting associations that shape our emerging experience of emotions. It's a relatively time stable network of associations we partake in by analogous simulations. Moreover, language plays a mediating role in valuation of core affect. So: it changes slowly, it primes for which habits to activate by being a context, it mediates valuation in accordance with its own system of associations. It also seems to amplify predictions/interventions that are more typical of it when it's used as a prime (people primed with angry words report faces as more angry).

That seems to give language the power to canalise the developmental landscape of our emotions. It pulls core affect, through valuation, towards that which it typifies. That makes emotions like "anger", "sadness", despite having variable content, look a lot like attractors to me.

It's the opposite of a political power grab...it clearly involves less politicians that will become more accountable to their electorate. — Chester

... Are you serious about the idea that less politicians means more accountability? Where did you get it?

My point is that it is not the political rights that constantly bleats about workers rights . It is the liberal left that pretends to care. — Chester

What would "not pretending to care" look like? I can think of a few scenarios for it:

(1) Yeah I don't actually care about workers in China, we need them to be a hair's breadth from slave labour for various reasons.

That's not pretending to care by simply not caring. That's clearly not acceptable, right?

(2) I care about worker's rights in China, but I have little to no influence over working conditions in China. I'll try to buy things that are ethically sourced, and that eventually will help workers in China.

That seems well intentioned but ultimately more of a salve to someone's sense of propriety than anything effective for workers in China; if you buy from a "more ethical" company, you're usually still giving money in support to human rights violators, companies are legally mandated to favour the bottom line over human rights; so long as the human rights violations are legal somewhere, your race to the bottom will end up there.

(3) I care about worker's rights in China, but I believe that my individual consumer choices don't matter much for their livelihood.

Seems defensible to me. How can I be expected to change the world when it's not a political option for me, but it is a political option for a government? I have no place in the closed rooms where decisions are made; and those decisions force me, and you, to live in hypocrisy every day. Maybe you buy from Asda but don't buy their clothes, grats, they're still going to use those profits to support importing from China.

(4) I care about worker's rights in China, my consumer choices matter, but I can't afford to buy more ethically sourced goods.

Say you're over 25 and living in London, working a full time job for minimum wage. You make £18137.60 per year, working 52 times 40 hour weeks in a year. After tax and personal allowance, that would be £17010.08. If you use median yearly rent for London, you end up at about £5000 yearly income after tax and rent. I'm sure you know how much skimping you have to do on that, that $5000 has to cover every expense besides rent. For a year. In the most expensive area in Britain, in one of the most expensive areas in the world.

If you worked it out per month, that gives you £344 for the month using the same median rent (before tax). You do not have enough to cover surprise expenses. You have to make choices between normal social opportunities like going out with your friends or going to the gym. The situation only gets more bleak if they have dependents.

And someone in this position, you'd call them a hypocrite if they cared about human rights violations in China and made well meaning Tweets about it while being just as powerless as you. You reserve the right to say "I'm so virtuous I'll call out all the people who care despite living in the same inescapable hypocrisy as me", as if it makes you better, as if you're doing anything but shitting downwind and pretending it doesn't smell.

It's not even your poop man! It's Chinese manufacturing's and international state-corporate collusion's poop!

China's a state capitalist country. You can tell because they have workers who are payed to do jobs. One reason why we keep importing from there is that there is a major incentive in production to produce as much as cheaply as possible. UK companies who use human rights violating companies across the world get to feel like the blood isn't on their hands because it is shed elsewhere.

It is also true that it is difficult for some in the UK to afford new clothes, electronics and so on. People live paycheck to paycheck for their entire lives, so it makes sense for them to minimise their costs and buy cheaply, supporting practices of production that violate human rights.

So, a political discourse, media and politics that tries to hold the awful collusion between these parties accountable would be much better, and make it more likely to lead to the amelioration of UK companies supporting human rights violations abroad to maximise their profits, wouldn't you agree?

Surely this is better than throwing "China, CCP, communism" at an imagined enemy of "left liberals", presumably living a similar life to you in the UK, and accusing them of hypocrisy, when it should be directed at the UK government's hypocritical collusion with known human rights violators while claiming to be champions of worker's rights.

Brexit was power consolidation of the political class you're railing against. The same people that want the UK out of EU trading and tax transparency standards have bought a government that wants the UK to default to international law on the matter.

https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75

here's a study that's actually quantifying how much life has been lost and adjusting for comorbidities and demographics.

Can see it now.

"EU refuses to negotiate with Britain on fair terms, leading to no deal arrangement"
"If only the EU were willing to negotiate with us fairly, openly, honestly, we could have had a fair deal on the table. No deal is better than a bad deal."

Our lords and masters get to look like heroes reluctantly doing what they must, when it was really what they intended all along, while vilifying the EU even more.

This makes sense. I couldn't find much on Google scholar, the things I've found stress the necessity of ventilators, rather than looking at of those who died whether their deaths can, to a large part, be attributed to ventilator use. Partially on that basis, I'm guessing that overall using ventilators is beneficial when there's no indicator not to, and the statistics people are using to support "Ventilators are killing people!" look to require their misinterpretation to support the idea, and more generally that there are other variables (allocation of resources based on case severity) that better explain inflated mortality given being confirmed to have covid.

Have you seen any papers that are looking at weather ventilators are bad for people with covid, to the extent where it's better if they are not used?

I don't doubt it!

My parents, girlfriend, and the government all tell me I don’t have to be looking for work right now. Strangers on the internet mostly say otherwise. I think I’ll follow the former rather than the latter. — Pfhorrest

My friend in the UK tried looking for work, he's a chemical engineer that can do data analysis. He's had over 80 applications, no responses except for one; which gave him an offer, then rescinded it after delaying for months. It's unlikely to be a fun time for a while, like it was in 2008, only more.

Edit: everyone's getting fired now, getting a job now will thus be hard.

I don't think these are good evidence that using a ventilator increases risk (of death, or that it worsens outcomes). It would be extremely surprising if stopping people choking to death, for any reason and by any means, increased risk of death or if it worsened health outcomes. In that regard, from the article:

However, they have yielded secondary advantages, including removing patients sooner from ventilators, thus freeing them up for other patients, and reducing the use of paralytic agents, which are in low supply. He also points out that more than 20 academic medical centers across the country have reached out to learn how to perform the new procedure at their hospitals.

In this context, I think they're attempts to address a problem which may arise with ventilators. Ventilators are not killing extra people, they are saving lives. Just like the tracheotomy procedure.

Well I'm glad the surgery worked. Though in that scenario, notice that the only reason the tracheotomy was necessary was because the ventilator ceased to function as normal, and that providing air to the person's lungs saved their life.

Out of the three possible speculative conclusions we could draw, why leap to pointing the gun at ventilators? Is there not ample evidence that there is a shortage of ventilators and that Corona is decidedly a deadlier virus than the common cold? — VagabondSpectre

We're leaping to point the gun at ventilators because it's convenient for the emerging excess healthcare expenditure narrative, and articulate people like @Hanover, irrelevant of the sincerity of his beliefs, enjoy polishing turds.

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. — Hanover

...

Until you're dead, never go to the doctor's again. But don't go after, you were going to die anyway after all.

On what basis are you assuming ventilators kill people who would choke to death without them?

The treatment protocol is fluid at best but there is emeging correlation between when a COVID 19 patient is vented and the survival rate. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

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.

If there are indicators that certain COVID patients would be at a higher risk of death from being ventilated, in the case of respiratory failure, that would be a good incentive not to ventilate them.

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.

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. — Hanover

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

Almost everyone currently on a ventilator dies.

Huh.

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

Ok.

The question: "Do people who are put on ventilators tend to die?" is not...
the question "Do ventilators preserve the life of those patients and aid recovery?" is not...
the question: "Did putting someone on a ventilator kill 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.

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?

Good luck to both of you!

Can I imply something with a question?

You are right of course. It is my partisanship, my ideological blinkers, and my thorough lack of critical thinking skills that lead me to believe Trump implied injecting bleach into your veins has a hope of curing coronavirus, in public, just for a PR move.