@Marko I'm always... Amused... At the way that the left appears to think that everybody who supports Donald Trump has the exact same viewpoints in the exact same thoughts.
Guys, we're not the cultists. You are.
Millions of people having different opinions on the same topic? That's normal. Tolerating people with other viewpoints? That's the way it's supposed to be. Finding anybody with the slightest deviation from orthodoxy and punishing them? That's Trump's opponents and their evil authoritarian "consequence culture".
I've seen two or three of these posts that are like "ha I'm going to pwn the trumpists by pointing out that they have different opinions than Trump!" -- that's not a pwn, except maybe for yourself thinking that it's normal to march in lockstep with whatever your leader tells you to think this week!
It really doesn't matter who the politician is, think for yourself! Your favorite politician is probably lying to you about their actual positions anyway, so if you shut down your brain and let them tell you what to think, they'll make you look stupid when they act differently than they speak.
Guys, we're not the cultists. You are.
Millions of people having different opinions on the same topic? That's normal. Tolerating people with other viewpoints? That's the way it's supposed to be. Finding anybody with the slightest deviation from orthodoxy and punishing them? That's Trump's opponents and their evil authoritarian "consequence culture".
I've seen two or three of these posts that are like "ha I'm going to pwn the trumpists by pointing out that they have different opinions than Trump!" -- that's not a pwn, except maybe for yourself thinking that it's normal to march in lockstep with whatever your leader tells you to think this week!
It really doesn't matter who the politician is, think for yourself! Your favorite politician is probably lying to you about their actual positions anyway, so if you shut down your brain and let them tell you what to think, they'll make you look stupid when they act differently than they speak.
@metokurist Oddly enough, I went on a big music buying spree recently because of my split with big tech. I'm running a subsonic server so I can stream to my own phone or computer from my own file server. Having my own stuff I don't need to ask permission for is the way forward.
@foofighter8291 At the outset the different vaccines don't have a 100% success rate. I think I was looking at the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that has a 60% reduction in the likelihood that you'll get COVID, and an 85% reduction in the likelihood that you'll be hospitalized if you do. That still means there's a 40% chance of getting it and a 15% chance of being hospitalized.
The key here is the number of people infected by an infected person. In terms of the disease modelling, they look at the number of people who will be infected by an infected person. If the number is above a certain point, then the disease will spread out of control if it isn't managed. If the number is below a certain point, then the virus will eventually go extinct because it can't infect enough people relative to the number of people who recover or die.
It's similar to the offspring of humans. Let's say you have a group of 50 males and 50 females, and they group together into couples and have one kid. The next generation will be 50 people, and if they're separated roughly equally then you'll have 25 males and 25 females. If the couples had two kids, then the next generation would be 100 people, 50 males and 50 females. If the couples had three kids, then the next generation would be 150 people, 75 males and 75 females.
If you can reduce the population's chance of getting the disease by 60%, then you can easily take a number that was above the threshold of spreading out of control and bring it below that point, so the virus will eventually burn itself out. It isn't necessarily as much about protecting individuals as it is about protecting the population.
The vaccine doesn't need to be 100% effective to completely wipe out the virus. The polio vaccine was found in the lab to be about 65%-80% effective, and today polio cases worldwide have dropped 99% and it's been effectively wiped out in the developed world.
The key here is the number of people infected by an infected person. In terms of the disease modelling, they look at the number of people who will be infected by an infected person. If the number is above a certain point, then the disease will spread out of control if it isn't managed. If the number is below a certain point, then the virus will eventually go extinct because it can't infect enough people relative to the number of people who recover or die.
It's similar to the offspring of humans. Let's say you have a group of 50 males and 50 females, and they group together into couples and have one kid. The next generation will be 50 people, and if they're separated roughly equally then you'll have 25 males and 25 females. If the couples had two kids, then the next generation would be 100 people, 50 males and 50 females. If the couples had three kids, then the next generation would be 150 people, 75 males and 75 females.
If you can reduce the population's chance of getting the disease by 60%, then you can easily take a number that was above the threshold of spreading out of control and bring it below that point, so the virus will eventually burn itself out. It isn't necessarily as much about protecting individuals as it is about protecting the population.
The vaccine doesn't need to be 100% effective to completely wipe out the virus. The polio vaccine was found in the lab to be about 65%-80% effective, and today polio cases worldwide have dropped 99% and it's been effectively wiped out in the developed world.
This is a message for the upcoming generation.
A long time ago, I had a major existential crisis. It was after I'd spent a long time studying physics. Physics is a really beautiful thing. The world is like clockwork, so you can start with a bunch of knowns and predict how the world will work objectively. The reason we can use mathematics in physics isn't because mathematics are a magic spell that twists the world, it's because the world is so dependable that you can use something imaginary and perfect like mathematics to describe it. Because you can use this imaginary thing to describe it, you can use the imaginary ways of twisting those numbers to determine things you couldn't otherwise. Using this ability to predict the universe, you can engineer outcomes, and that's how technology is born.
After this, I started getting into the softer parts of my education, ethics and philosophy, and I figured that if you read enough you'd find the equations that govern living, that you could find an objective way to live, some mathematical equation that gives you the outcome of living a good life.
I went through millennia of philosophers, from the Greeks to modern-day, and every time I had the same problem: At the first principles stage, philosophers would just make up whatever they wanted, then they'd use the tools of logic to build from there. Even philosophers such as the skeptics ended up eventually just ignoring the problem and making up their set of first principles from whole cloth. I imagined a hypothetical alien species that was completely unlike humans. An alien species that used photosynthesis instead of eating, that reproduced asexually, that was not a social animal, that was biologically immortal, and that hypothetical alien could not share values with us humans. Things we value deeply would be completely worthless to them, it would look absurd.
I was really depressed for a long time over this, I was searching for that objective truth, and I couldn't find it anywhere. At that time I was working in a big city and after a 12 or 16 hour shift on the weekend (I worked every Saturday and Sunday) in between my full time school during the week, I'd ride my bike back to my apartment and I'd pass by the area of town where the prostitutes hung out, and I'd pass by the big bars with giant lines waiting to get in. I wanted to feel like I was somehow superior for choosing my studies and discipline instead of these other life paths, but I knew that was illogical. They were doing what they were doing and I was doing what I was doing and there was objectively no reason to consider one path more righteous than another. That alien would find no difference between me and anyone else. It seemed like my toiling was meaningless.
What was further terrifying is the idea that our little ball of dust would some day be swallowed up when our yellow dwarf becomes a red giant. Everything the human race ever created will be bathed in atomic fire for trillions of years. The reality of it just made me feel small and meaningless.
What broke me out of the depression was sitting in class one day, listening to my old teacher talking about hiking in Kenya. He was this nerdy scrawny guy, and hearing that I was very impressed with his story, and I thought it was amazing that this scrawny guy teaching a course had done something incredible like that. That was when I realized something: I didn't need some objective equation to know I was amazed. There is no objective value that exists outside of being a human being, there are only the values we hold as individual human beings. That doesn't make our values any less real or meaningful to us. From there I did what all those other philosophers had done, and I started to take stock of fundamentally what I valued.
One of the things I found I value is making real, tangible things that last and bring something valuable to the world. Having the skills to turn something useless into something meaningful is thus a virtuous thing, and we're living in an age where more than ever before, you can learn about skills basically for free, and materials you would struggle to find before the internet are a click away. Even if they aren't core survival skills or anything, there's value in knowing how to do things. It's part of going out and doing amazing things, the skill to do mundane things is the first step.
As you grow up, you'll be exposed to many ideas, you should strive to see as many of those ideas as you can, both ideas you agree with and ideas you disagree with, to get a broad base. The more you can see of humanity's best ideas, the more of them you can accept or reject. Understand that your opinions are not set in stone, and things you believe are very important can change in a heartbeat because circumstances change or your viewpoint on them changes. Having a broad base, being well read, being a resident in the world and seeing what the world has to show you will help you with the next step. Without context, your viewpoint will always be narrow. If you only accept one person or group's viewpoint uncritically, then you'll just be controlled and you won't be able to be in control of your life.
There are a lot of forces that want you to be casting your eyes outward, so they can choose for you what’s of value and what isn’t. This can be valuable at some points because you can see different perspectives and you can decide whether to integrate those perspectives into your own, but finding your own first principle values is an introspective, meditative, contemplative journey. The world and everything you see leaves its mark on you as you pass through it, and that's where it gets a chance to affect you. For this exercise, you're trying to shut out the outside world and look into yourself alone.
You have to try to push others opinions out, because this is a personal journey. Think about a lot of things. What fundamentally impresses you? what fundamentally disgusts you? What fundamentally makes you deeply happy? What fundamentally makes you deeply upset? Thinking about these things that get reactions out of you, try to think about the themes these different things have, the reasons why they make you feel the way they do. Eventually you will make it to a basic idea, a word that describes the thing you deeply cherish or reject about these situations. It's going to be different for everyone because everyone's life is different.
Once you know what it is you value fundamentally, then it’s time to apply the practice of philosophy as a fundamentally structured method of thinking to your fundamental values, and that’s where you end up with your own personal value system that has been vetted and is internally consistent. You go through and try to find logical fallacies or inconsistencies and figure out ways to work through those inconsistencies. You'll likely take things you've already derived and apply logic to come up with totally different things further down the line. Make sure you give everything the gut check. Just because it's logical doesn't mean it's correct! You can use pure logic from first principles to lead to places you don't agree with.
Then comes the hardest part. You know what you value, and you have built a vetted and internally consistent value system, then you have to go out and live it.
The amazing thing about this is that if you succeed, then you can always wake up and look at yourself in the mirror and be proud of yourself. Every person has faults and flaws and nobody can be everything (and anyone who tries to say differently is selling something), but if you live your core values, then you can accept those faults and flaws because you know you’re proud of yourself.
We have limited resources in our life. We can't do everything or even most of the things we want to do. If we just act without thinking though, we might grow old and find we're disappointed in ourselves for not living up to our standards, that we've pursued things we don't really care about or things that weren't actually something *we* care about and it's actually someone else's ideals, that we spent a lot of time and effort on things we only did because we were going with the flow. By figuring out what matters to you, and by living according to your own compass, you are much less likely to have to go through what I did, and you can always look in the mirror and be proud of yourself even when things get hard and you might not otherwise know what makes it meaningful.
A long time ago, I had a major existential crisis. It was after I'd spent a long time studying physics. Physics is a really beautiful thing. The world is like clockwork, so you can start with a bunch of knowns and predict how the world will work objectively. The reason we can use mathematics in physics isn't because mathematics are a magic spell that twists the world, it's because the world is so dependable that you can use something imaginary and perfect like mathematics to describe it. Because you can use this imaginary thing to describe it, you can use the imaginary ways of twisting those numbers to determine things you couldn't otherwise. Using this ability to predict the universe, you can engineer outcomes, and that's how technology is born.
After this, I started getting into the softer parts of my education, ethics and philosophy, and I figured that if you read enough you'd find the equations that govern living, that you could find an objective way to live, some mathematical equation that gives you the outcome of living a good life.
I went through millennia of philosophers, from the Greeks to modern-day, and every time I had the same problem: At the first principles stage, philosophers would just make up whatever they wanted, then they'd use the tools of logic to build from there. Even philosophers such as the skeptics ended up eventually just ignoring the problem and making up their set of first principles from whole cloth. I imagined a hypothetical alien species that was completely unlike humans. An alien species that used photosynthesis instead of eating, that reproduced asexually, that was not a social animal, that was biologically immortal, and that hypothetical alien could not share values with us humans. Things we value deeply would be completely worthless to them, it would look absurd.
I was really depressed for a long time over this, I was searching for that objective truth, and I couldn't find it anywhere. At that time I was working in a big city and after a 12 or 16 hour shift on the weekend (I worked every Saturday and Sunday) in between my full time school during the week, I'd ride my bike back to my apartment and I'd pass by the area of town where the prostitutes hung out, and I'd pass by the big bars with giant lines waiting to get in. I wanted to feel like I was somehow superior for choosing my studies and discipline instead of these other life paths, but I knew that was illogical. They were doing what they were doing and I was doing what I was doing and there was objectively no reason to consider one path more righteous than another. That alien would find no difference between me and anyone else. It seemed like my toiling was meaningless.
What was further terrifying is the idea that our little ball of dust would some day be swallowed up when our yellow dwarf becomes a red giant. Everything the human race ever created will be bathed in atomic fire for trillions of years. The reality of it just made me feel small and meaningless.
What broke me out of the depression was sitting in class one day, listening to my old teacher talking about hiking in Kenya. He was this nerdy scrawny guy, and hearing that I was very impressed with his story, and I thought it was amazing that this scrawny guy teaching a course had done something incredible like that. That was when I realized something: I didn't need some objective equation to know I was amazed. There is no objective value that exists outside of being a human being, there are only the values we hold as individual human beings. That doesn't make our values any less real or meaningful to us. From there I did what all those other philosophers had done, and I started to take stock of fundamentally what I valued.
One of the things I found I value is making real, tangible things that last and bring something valuable to the world. Having the skills to turn something useless into something meaningful is thus a virtuous thing, and we're living in an age where more than ever before, you can learn about skills basically for free, and materials you would struggle to find before the internet are a click away. Even if they aren't core survival skills or anything, there's value in knowing how to do things. It's part of going out and doing amazing things, the skill to do mundane things is the first step.
As you grow up, you'll be exposed to many ideas, you should strive to see as many of those ideas as you can, both ideas you agree with and ideas you disagree with, to get a broad base. The more you can see of humanity's best ideas, the more of them you can accept or reject. Understand that your opinions are not set in stone, and things you believe are very important can change in a heartbeat because circumstances change or your viewpoint on them changes. Having a broad base, being well read, being a resident in the world and seeing what the world has to show you will help you with the next step. Without context, your viewpoint will always be narrow. If you only accept one person or group's viewpoint uncritically, then you'll just be controlled and you won't be able to be in control of your life.
There are a lot of forces that want you to be casting your eyes outward, so they can choose for you what’s of value and what isn’t. This can be valuable at some points because you can see different perspectives and you can decide whether to integrate those perspectives into your own, but finding your own first principle values is an introspective, meditative, contemplative journey. The world and everything you see leaves its mark on you as you pass through it, and that's where it gets a chance to affect you. For this exercise, you're trying to shut out the outside world and look into yourself alone.
You have to try to push others opinions out, because this is a personal journey. Think about a lot of things. What fundamentally impresses you? what fundamentally disgusts you? What fundamentally makes you deeply happy? What fundamentally makes you deeply upset? Thinking about these things that get reactions out of you, try to think about the themes these different things have, the reasons why they make you feel the way they do. Eventually you will make it to a basic idea, a word that describes the thing you deeply cherish or reject about these situations. It's going to be different for everyone because everyone's life is different.
Once you know what it is you value fundamentally, then it’s time to apply the practice of philosophy as a fundamentally structured method of thinking to your fundamental values, and that’s where you end up with your own personal value system that has been vetted and is internally consistent. You go through and try to find logical fallacies or inconsistencies and figure out ways to work through those inconsistencies. You'll likely take things you've already derived and apply logic to come up with totally different things further down the line. Make sure you give everything the gut check. Just because it's logical doesn't mean it's correct! You can use pure logic from first principles to lead to places you don't agree with.
Then comes the hardest part. You know what you value, and you have built a vetted and internally consistent value system, then you have to go out and live it.
The amazing thing about this is that if you succeed, then you can always wake up and look at yourself in the mirror and be proud of yourself. Every person has faults and flaws and nobody can be everything (and anyone who tries to say differently is selling something), but if you live your core values, then you can accept those faults and flaws because you know you’re proud of yourself.
We have limited resources in our life. We can't do everything or even most of the things we want to do. If we just act without thinking though, we might grow old and find we're disappointed in ourselves for not living up to our standards, that we've pursued things we don't really care about or things that weren't actually something *we* care about and it's actually someone else's ideals, that we spent a lot of time and effort on things we only did because we were going with the flow. By figuring out what matters to you, and by living according to your own compass, you are much less likely to have to go through what I did, and you can always look in the mirror and be proud of yourself even when things get hard and you might not otherwise know what makes it meaningful.
@xenmen I think that some of the later things on his list of skills are a bit questionable (the consciousness age stuff -- I look at some of them and go "That might not be physically possible..."), but fundamentally I like it a lot! I think the fundamental idea is sound, that we can't rest on our laurels like those who control us would like us to, that we can become the industrialist, the artist, the author, the innovator.
One thing I think needs to be part of a well-rounded education and we don't really get a lot of good education on when we're young is economics and trade. Eventually when you're doing these fundamental things you start to realize that one person cannot do everything, because even if you have the knowledge and the skills, you need other people to do other parts of the process. One example being clear glass. A simple method is to heat up silica and add some borax. Well, where do you get silica? There are regions where it's plentiful but many places where it isn't available in a form you can turn into glass. Where do you get borax? There's like two places on earth where you can get a lot of borax. As you grow your skills you begin to realize the value of division of labor, and from there you have a body of knowledge that helps you understand that things have value and how to determine that value.
I think there's an inherent value in the ability to do things, to make things, even before you do that thing or make anything. Then once you have accumulated enough skills you create a thing that never existed before out of materials that were basically worthless before, and that's pretty amazing when you think about it. It gives you an appreciation of what goes into the world, and eventually it means you have opportunities. Opportunity is the father of invention!
One thing I think needs to be part of a well-rounded education and we don't really get a lot of good education on when we're young is economics and trade. Eventually when you're doing these fundamental things you start to realize that one person cannot do everything, because even if you have the knowledge and the skills, you need other people to do other parts of the process. One example being clear glass. A simple method is to heat up silica and add some borax. Well, where do you get silica? There are regions where it's plentiful but many places where it isn't available in a form you can turn into glass. Where do you get borax? There's like two places on earth where you can get a lot of borax. As you grow your skills you begin to realize the value of division of labor, and from there you have a body of knowledge that helps you understand that things have value and how to determine that value.
I think there's an inherent value in the ability to do things, to make things, even before you do that thing or make anything. Then once you have accumulated enough skills you create a thing that never existed before out of materials that were basically worthless before, and that's pretty amazing when you think about it. It gives you an appreciation of what goes into the world, and eventually it means you have opportunities. Opportunity is the father of invention!
@pluralistic Unions? Good luck having any jobs at all in the stagflationary environment we've engineered ahead.
You'll remember these as the good times.
You'll remember these as the good times.
@DK_Dharmaraj The upcoming stagflationary recession should help.
Nothing helps people stop trying to mess with others quite like being too focused on where your next shelter or meal is coming from.
Nothing helps people stop trying to mess with others quite like being too focused on where your next shelter or meal is coming from.
Bank of Canada says QE can widen wealth inequality, is probing its effects | Financial Post
@TheIronHeart You'd need to stop karening and trying to be all things to all people to have taxes that low and to have those benefits.
Sorry, you have to pay tax when you have 4 kids, because we need to fund gender studies programs in pakistan.
Sorry, you have to pay tax when you have 4 kids, because we need to fund gender studies programs in pakistan.
@graf @AnimeTradCath @Revelations Terry died in 2018, I think that glowies were already in everyone's minds back then.
RIP Terry
RIP Terry
@krabappel When Biden said "The Bush Administration supports me!" I was like "And you're bragging about this?"
Hey! Justin Trudeau! You want to turn my website into state-run media?
Come and take it, you Nazi Gestapo! My grandfather fought Nazis like you and I'll fight you too!
Go on, make the Liberal Party unelectable for 1000 year even through all your lying, cheating, and stealing. Everyone thinks they're indestructible. Ask Kathleen Wynne how well that worked out! Your time is coming, and you're taking your whole Nazi party with you, and your commie friend Jagmeet too!
Come and take it, you Nazi Gestapo! My grandfather fought Nazis like you and I'll fight you too!
Go on, make the Liberal Party unelectable for 1000 year even through all your lying, cheating, and stealing. Everyone thinks they're indestructible. Ask Kathleen Wynne how well that worked out! Your time is coming, and you're taking your whole Nazi party with you, and your commie friend Jagmeet too!
I think at this point we should just call everyone in the media Baghdad Bob until they prove otherwise.
@Shadowman311 The Iraqi information minister told us earlier this week that there are no fuel shortages. Never!