Then what are we arguing about? — Garth

Ummm dunno. Looks like whether or not facts should impact our beliefs, post-truth versus empiricism.

I don't understand why nobody in this thread can accept that this forum doesn't fall on the exact midpoint between Brett's political views and whatever liberal views he had in mind when he made this thread. It should be obvious. — Garth

Pfhorrest did a poll. The forum leans toward the left, unsurprisingly.

So, how can molecules correctly work out each complex step without some crude form of awareness? — Gary Enfield

Evolution.

A great many biomolecules that do a great many whizzy things have been computationally modelled for predictive purposes. Do you know what the modellers don't need to add to the models to make them work? Self-awareness.

There's actually several whizzy molecules involved in homologous recombination, not just one. That it can physically occur (which it can according to the models) is the necessary condition to allow nature to explore that as a pathway. No awareness required, just a survival advantage. Since this occurs in microbes and plants, a pretty fundamental one at that.

Sorry - but chemistry says that DNA is no more than a template to produce components. — Gary Enfield

Components with function, which is what you're describing.

It has no logical capacity/capability. — Gary Enfield

That's s circular argument. You can't presume the molecule to be aware when answering the question "How can it do what it does without awareness?"

Blatent Last Jedi apologism. She's Palpatine's granddaughter and that's that! ;)

It's an interesting point, not one I've thought a lot about, although it's parallel to the outdatedness of 'if King, tragedy; if commoner, comedy' too.

I suppose if your culture perpetuates secret King narratives, that's what you'll find more compelling. I wonder what this has to do with the usual placement of believers on the right. Feels like a lot.

Well, there's that, but it's still been a hugely successful campaign. Both my Christmas and New Years' plans were torpedoed by the December outbreak in my vicinity, but the response was universal commitment to wearing masks, being tested, and registering every place you visit with a government app. And, it worked. It's the opposite of what happened in a lot of places. (That said, the Australian Open Tennis is going ahead, which a lot of people are questioning, we're terrified of the UK Variant escaping the bottle.) — Wayfarer

Of course. You guys tend to do things right. We don't, which is why there's something called "the UK Variant" :cry:

Here in Australia, the stats are Cases 28,708, Recovered 25,913, Deaths 909. Obviously Australia has a small population compared to the USA but were deaths here proportional, we would have expected about 4,000 deaths. — Wayfarer

Tbf you effectively live on a donut, that's got to help. :P

Chain well and truly yanked, accusations of pathos retracted.

No, it's not the same deal. You're telling some stranger than he can't pass on the virus after he's vaccinated when health officials presently eagerly want to know if that's true or not. — frank

No, I did not say that. I said you have to think about others. You can conscientiously take the vaccine to lower the risk to others without a guarantee that it will do so, just in the same way you can bet heads without the guarantee it will come up heads. Don't rewrite my conversations for me, that's pathetic.

Since I don't hold any position of power, it's irrelevant what biases I may hold in regard to others, as long as those biases aren't to my disadvantage. — baker

Everyone's in a position of power all the time. In the aforementioned context of right wing extremists peddling their uninvestigated biases, those biases have the power to compel others toward biased, hateful beliefs. How do we know? Because said peddlers themselves acquired those beliefs through exposure to others.

Likewise, we can help people we love better if we are unbiased against the particular challenges they face.

I remember my (now ex-) girlfriend telling me about guys beeping her, yelling at her, slowing their cars down, winding down their windows, laughing, when she was out jogging. I found that difficult to process. It suggested that, when I wasn't looking, the world operated in a starkly different way.

I might have told this story before on here, apologies if so. A friend of mine was in a guided hiking group through the rainforest in Australia. The guide said that if they looked carefully, they'd see these giant spiders. My friend spent the whole time looking, never saw one, until near the end when he overheard the guide telling someone that you have to adjust your focus to see them because they hang between the trees and our brains have difficulty focusing on the spaces between things.

So he really focused and eventually he saw a giant arachnid dangling between the two trees in front of him. Then he turned around. They were fucking EVERYWHERE! He'd been surrounded by them the whole time, he just didn't know how to see them.

The girlfriend after the girlfriend after that told me a similar thing about guys intimidating her by yelling, slowing down etc. but also about how it didn't happen if she was with a man. Once, she and this guy had had to walk single file down a narrow path. Another man coming the other way saw her but not him, verbally abused her, then saw her friend and apologised... TO HIM!

After that I started seeing it everywhere. It's not that it hadn't been happening around me, it's just that I never tuned in. I'm in no particular position of power either, but at least I have the power to tell creeps to go fuck themselves when they start harassing lone women in the street. All because one friend who went to Australia and another who once had to walk single file taught me not to trust my biases over their experience.

But it hasn't been established that the vaccine keeps you from being a carrier. Don't blow smoke up the poor guy's butt. — frank

There's no data on it because there's no long-term vaccinated population to study. However there's every reason to expect a reduction in transmission rate, not least the reduction of the lifespan of the virus in the vaccinated individual. You can't transmit a virus you no longer have. Also, logically, the possibilities are it does or it doesn't.

If someone said, "I'll toss this dollar coin. If it's heads, you can have it; if it's tails, I keep it," would you refuse because of lack of evidence it would be heads? Same deal.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Back to the OP, not much more to go on. Apparent evidence of Russian disinformation on social media, no surprise there:

https://gh.bmj.com/content/5/10/e004206

Someone more on the ground claiming that ethnic minorities are being particularly targeted, which is slightly more trustworthy, but still no hard evidence:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-55630726
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-55332321

That was my argument to the taxi driver: even if you're fit, you have to think about everyone you meet, everyone who touches something you touch, your own family. He seemed to agree at first, but it didn't stick.

You're right, I don't worry for myself at all, not much for my household either as we're all healthy. It's more people that use the same shops as me, taxis as me, etc. Although I sanitise like a motherfucker. I'm actually drunk most of the time now just from Lady Macbething my way through half the world's supply of alcoholic hand gel :rofl:

A president, given his high position, should live up to high standards, and he should be judged by those high standards. — baker

Yes, I agree, and were Congress a noble place Trump would have been convicted of things he definitely did that were criminal and against the interests and constitution of his country.

We can definitely say that Trump's campaign to overturn the election were low for the office he holds and criminal in some cases. But the impeachment article describes a specific crime: not spreading distrust and contempt for democracy but inciting a specific event. That needs specific evidence.

But yeah I agree... the leader of any democratic country should always be held the most firmly to it's laws. Weird how that never seems to be the case, eh? :vomit:

Why? What good would that do me? — baker

Good does not always mean good for me. We're a social species whose instinctive ideas of what is good are honed on the basis that what's good for me and what's good for others all comes out in the wash. They're good instincts to trust (good for you). :)

And how is that compatible with him being the president?? — baker

I don't understand the question.

Murder is wrong. Show me a murder and I'll tell you — counterpunch

that it's not a murder if the victim is a black man in handcuffs. We've danced that jig already.

Straight white males are singled out by political correctness for a lack of representation. — counterpunch

I.e. they have to share their rights with women, ethnic minorities, and gay and trans people. Ain't that a blow.

Answer the question, or don't respond. The latter is my preference - if that helps! — counterpunch

The question was based on a false premise as explained. Do better thinking, ask better questions, get better answers. Simple!

so basically we're fucked with covid, no way around it

fucked if we do restrictions (all the collateral damage)
fucked if we don't (covid will kill and injure many people)

so which is the lesser evil? — dazed

There's no upside to a deadly pandemic, for sure. I think my government ought to have shut down unnecessary national and international travel, locked down until the transmission rate was small, and continued to block travel or quarantine travellers to and from countries that were not tackling the pandemic.

The argument against these was capitalism. Shutting down travel would have shut down some airlines. Some airlines folded anyway because of how protracted the pandemic response was. High street stores and hospitality businesses would have folded because people wouldn't be shopping and socialising. They folded anyway because of how protracted the pandemic response was. Not everyone would have been able to run their businesses because schools -- read: state babysitters -- were closed. Now almost a year later people are still unable to run their businesses because their businesses folded. Children won't have gotten an education for six months. Children will have had no education to speak of for 18, whereas keeping the schools closed would have given them the opportunity to adapt to purely online methods instead of being in a constant state of emergency and uncertainty.

The Covid response has been the apotheosis of capitalism in its starkest inappropriateness: short-term answers to long-term problems; the primacy of the business over the citizen; the disregard for anyone, child or care home resident, who isn't spending.

There's no good pandemic outcome, but there are some truly awful ones and we've ticked all those boxes.

But when such a case involves high politicians and other VIP's, this makes it a special case. Noblesse oblige. — baker

I think that is the emotive aspect: Trump is a special case, so deserves special measures. But that's not the way law works. If you set a precedent for blaming agitators with unforeseen violence, it will not help to say that was just a "special case" when Republican lawmakers go after protestors. They can simply reply, "So is this."

Another example, if a high-ranking military officer were to do something similar, he could be courtmartialed and charged with conduct unbecoming an officer. — baker

That's true, but the military has extremely strict rules. The President has more leeway than anyone in the country, which is how he gets away with e.g. threatening state officials if they don't manufacturer votes or pressuring his VP to overturn an election.

Why should a president not be assessed by such principles, and instead treated like an ordinary plebeian who just so, totally incidentally, happens to be president? — baker

It's precisely that he be treated as anyone else, including a BLM protest organiser, that I would argue for.

And I have zero expectation that you would ever back democracy against fraud, or law and order against a black criminal. — counterpunch

The fact that your brain takes "Murdering black people is wrong" and gets to "Would defend a black criminal against prosecution" is a testament to precisely how racist you are. They are not comparable. Wanting law and order is not a carte blanche to murder criminals in your protection.

You lump people into groups based on their arbitrary characteristics. — counterpunch

No, *you* do. Equal to that's in your eyes is a failure to represent "straight white males".

Many gay people are quite well off. — counterpunch

That is not a rational measure of the D advantages they may have had specifically because of their sexuality.

Not all white people are privileged. — counterpunch

All white people are advantaged insofar as they are white, which hugely lowers their probability of being attacked because of the colour of their skin by your lot.

I would argue that people should be treated fairly, as individuals, regardless of what arbitrary group categories they happen to belong to - because those coincidences of identity say next to nothing about who an individual is, or where they stand in society. Particularly as equality legislation on race, gender, sexuality - was passed into law years ago. — counterpunch

Yes, much of it by the party you disparage for not focussing on "straight white males" and for giving a shit about "Muslims, gays and trannies". You don't get to both object to it and claim credit for it.

What you seem to be arguing for is not an equality of rights, but equality of outcome - with the most privileged, regardless of individual merit, for everyone but poor whites, about whom you couldn't care less. — counterpunch

This is incoherent. I can't simultaneously aim for equality of outcome and a privileging of everyone except poor whites. That makes no sense.

I do argue for timeboxed approaches to gaining equity though, you're right there. In my capacity as an academic, I was involved in getting more female undergraduates in the physics department, and have always supported any effort to overcome the identification of "physicist" with "man". I support Labour's all-female shortlists for safe seats, and equal opportunities measures to ensure that women and ethnic minorities aren't disadvantaged by potential employers who share your views. If and when equity is obtained, I would object to such measures for the same reason.

Did you mean that as an accusation? :rofl:

Yes, but you probably wouldn't die of Covid. Most of the vaccines that are out are based on new technology. Didn't that give you pause? — frank

Speaking for myself, I don't want to get Covid and I don't want to pass it on to others. I imagine that's normal. — Kenosha Kid

I'm due to get the vaccine in September. That's as long again as the pandemic has been in the UK so far.

So ... I'm confused. — baker

There seems to be two schools of thought here. One is that if you're an agitator and your cult followers start an insurrection, you are culpable even if you had no plans for an insurrection. The other, mine, is that you're not.

Actually, there's a third. If you're NOS, you're morally culpable if your plan was to protest against lethal racist police brutality but you're not if your plan was to overturn an election.

My point of view is based on the larger picture: if we say that the inspiration behind an insurrection is morally culpable for it, we're implying that any agitator is responsible for unforeseen violence in its name, so a BLM protest organiser or rousing speaker becomes culpable for any riots that break out, for instance.

This leaves the above route wherein we have to rely on evidence that Trump actually did intend an insurrection or, in the absence of that evidence, pretend that there's sufficient evidence. Which is also bad, not now, but for future Presidents.

I just want to say that I feel stupefied, flabbergasted, stumped by Trump and his supporters.
I just don't get it.
I don't understand how someone can really mean those things he says, and yet get so far in life and politics. I keep thinking that what he does is all a carefully thought out strategy.
It's all just beyond, way beyond my scope. — baker

His supporters, before they were his supporters, liked what they saw, which was a vicious, racist, misogynistic, nationalistic, ablist, xenophobic, illiterate hatemonger or, as they'd previously referred to that figure in their life, "Dad".

Blacks are more likely to look for ulterior motives everywhere they go (not that they're all the same). — frank

Is this based on something? I understand why black Americans don't trust the American police, but not what they have against institutions generally.

Maybe the question is more: why do white, educated, liberal minded people feel so comfortable taking it? — frank

Speaking for myself, I don't want to get Covid and I don't want to pass it on to others. I imagine that's normal.

No you're not. — counterpunch

Oh no, I really am. I have zero expectation that you would ever acquire sufficient humanity to give you pause before cheering on a murderous mob if that mob's interests happen to coincide with your own, or to pause before suggesting that unarmed, already-restrained black men have it coming when they're murdered by cops. I also have zero expectation -- and the OP bears this out -- that you would ever think you have to learn about a subject before declaring your beliefs about it beyond criticism.

I really was joking about that.

The problem is you think deferring to others on the basis of their arbitrary characteristics is the definition of decency and humanity — counterpunch

The beauty of not being a piece of shit is that I don't have to base my attitudes on secondary characteristics. Wanting, say, gay people to have the same quality of life as me, the same opportunities and advantages, follows naturally from an egalitarian position. Your view is that extending these opportunities and advantages to people with different characteristics to yourself is bad because it doesn't help straight white males, i.e. people with your characteristics whom are already amply advantaged compared to others.

I don't need to be asked to stand up for equality. When you're not a piece of shit, that happens naturally.

It's here too. — frank

Remind me where here is... US?

My impression is that it's part of a broader lack of trust — frank

I wonder what the direct causes of that distrust are. Even in the context of economic inequality and racism, it doesn't seem obvious that so many would not trust doctors.

Recently, I showed that the subjectivist, post modernist, anti-truth position of the left is false, with numerous examples, in an argument peppered with literary and philosophical references, and ran into an ideologically indoctrinated brick wall of direct contradiction. — counterpunch

If you've already decided that everything you believe is necessarily true and any contradiction must therefore be ideologically motivated irrespective of its content and justification, you're still, in philosophical terms, a bug under a rock. All you're doing here is proving what everyone already knows: you are incapable of rational discussion. You get the reaction you deserve.

It also doesn't help that these beliefs you hold to be beyond contradiction lean heavily toward the racist, homophobic, transphobic, fascistic and, in the case of your ideas for environmental science, utterly batshit insane. Maybe acquiring some decency and humanity will make people want to engage with you, and maybe some light reading on the subjects you wish to proclaim on will give them something to work with if and when they do.

I'm joking, of course.

Whatever kind of administration America ends up with, I think it's fine to enjoy the great unTrumping while it lasts.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/17/joe-biden-executive-orders-trump-climate-iran-covid

I do however think we should use social media to arrange as many indoor anti-masker rallies as possible. Big ones. With lots of booze and a charity kissathon.

yes I can see that there will likely be more cases in densely populated areas but this does not mean that our hospitals would in fact become over-run. — dazed

The UK has a much higher population density than Sweden and its hospitals are already at critical stage despite the tier system.

In fact, the British Prime Minister also argued for a herd immunity approach in the UK at first and the inevitable hospital crisis is the principle reason he U-turned. He also condemned 20,000 vulnerable people in care homes to death, just so you know he meant it when he said it.

I think the consensus is he's a psychopath who just lost himself the next election.

The other problem is that people who have contracted one Covid strain and recovered have gone on to contract another, some have even died from the second strain. Herd immunity is not a given when people travel all over the world.

I'm actually with you on the broader issue of the cult of everlasting life. I would prefer to live in a culture with more dignity and a lower life expectancy, to the extent that I like to think that I won't be one of those who fall into the great void with broken fingernails. But I'm also a person who historically has kept their pets alive beyond their own comfort because I can't bring myself to give the go ahead to vets to put them to sleep. I think family members are probably the biggest problem here. We could fix this with a shift in authority from the family to the doctors as to whether extending the life of an individual has more of a basis than their family being in that cult.

That said, given the strangely high occurrence of mass murderers in the British health service... maybe not here :rofl:

I don't think it is predictable, given what happened in Sweden and other areas with little to no restrictions, where they were also providing care to the over 80's — dazed

The probability of contracting Covid is proportional to the number of people you directly or indirectly interact with, e.g. the number you speak to, the number who touch the same door handle as you, the number who use the same ATM, etc. Sweden has a population density of 25 people per square kilometre. New York has a population density of 40,000 people per square kilometre. Can you see how that will effect the spread of the virus and the measures necessary to contain it?

poisoning the water supply of a city — god must be atheist

Now you're really trying to annoy the right. :P I mean, take their liberties, their guns and their platforms, but don't tell them that companies can't kill hundreds of thousands of people through wilful poisoning of their water supply. Du Pont are heroes to these people.

I am saying restrictions and lockdowns should only occur if we get to such a state... — dazed

Which is what you described as the "worst case scenario", so yes you are advocating for it.

Why on Earth would anyone choose such catastrophic brinkmanship when the worst outcome is so predictable. Your entire argument is based on the behaviour of the pandemic with those restrictions in place. Without them, very different numbers.

the hospitilization RATE does not alter with the amount of infection — dazed

Yes it does. Once the hospitals are maxed out, or as in your schema simply not employed for Covid, the rate plummets because there's no room for more patients. It becomes a one-in one-out deal.

worst case we let it spread and in fact it wreaks havoc among those under 80 such that our hospitals can't cope then we respond with restrictions — dazed

I agree that is the worst case. Kind of weird that you're advocating for it.

the same extremely rare complications you refer to above? — dazed

The obvious and quite huge flaw in this logic is that the limited fatality rate in healthy young people suggests that we need not handle the spread of the pandemic.

But the current character of the pandemic is with people mask-wearing, social distancing, self-isolating and quarantining. You can't use the same number for the spread without these things, because the probability of contraction increases with the number of disease-carriers.

Furthermore there's a phase transition when those with Covid cannot get medical care. We haven't reached such a catastrophic point yet, but that would be essentially ground zero in your approach.

The "post modernists" aren't against truth. Indeed, the favourite targets of the right are all about the truth: the various objective states the world and society takes. They just recognise the objective states are a contingent formation: a truth put there by moment of existence, rather than something put there by a transcendent force or derived from a concept or principle. — TheWillowOfDarkness

:up:

Post-truth is incompatible with post-modernism. It's sort of to deconstruction what intelligent design is to evolution.

Sometimes it's the lack of lacking something. — god must be atheist

I miss the lack of lacking something :(

Sounds like an application of the representativeness heuristic. — Echarmion

That's the one! Thanks!

Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it — NOS4A2

That particular defendent has had that accusation struck. That does not make the video evidence of the crowd a mass hallucination.

Well there is a long tradition of thought in philosophy that holds, essentially, that "evil is reducible to ignorance", i.e. nobody knowingly does bad things, everyone does what they think is the right thing to do, and is only incorrect about what the right thing to do actually is. — Pfhorrest

I often think something similar but different... I do things that I know are wrong, but they're little things, such speed a little to make a long journey less arduous. I'm not ignorant of the law or the good reasons for it, rather I'm cogniscent of what I can get away with and that the benefit to self appears to me to outweigh the risk to society.

There's an interesting quirk of human psychology that makes us think that if we did it before we'll do it again. If, say, there was a 1 in 10 chance of being caught speeding on a particular road, that might for some time put me off speeding, but should I get away with it once, I'll be more likely to think I'll get away with it again, even though patently the more I do it, the larger my overall probability of being caught.

This is a treatment that a professional psychologist devised — baker

... for someone wanting to be more rational. Do you think, say, the NRA want to be more rational, the KKK, the Proud Boys? (Give up? Answer is: No, they don't.)

I want to figure out how to best guard against them when they are used against me. — baker

Even better, you could figure out how best to recognise them when you use them against others. Maybe using that professional psychologist's treatment, or by thinking really hard.

I think most biases are revealed to us by trusting others' contrary experience. It's difficult to do this when your schema for handling the testimony of others is to separate it into that which supports your position and that which is part of a conspiracy involving the Clintons, the Jews, Hunter Biden and the reanimated corpses of South American de facto dictators.

Submission guidelines for all three of the journals mentioned can be viewed online, they first request a blind copy of a manuscript (i.e. from which author ID is removed), which is assessed by two or three referees prior to acceptance. But I imagine it's a pretty tough row to hoe! — Wayfarer

Oh, that's good. Physics journals take the full pre-print. I have often wondered how important the final author's name has been to my publication success record ;) A blind pre-print is an excellent idea.