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Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

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Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#151

Post by XorNot »

Kaiyou wrote: post #144
smolder wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sorts of incentives for organized conspiracy would naturally be bigger than the incentives for competence in executing ordinary matters of government. However the rareness of uncovering organized conspiracies suggests they are rarely attempted more than it suggests some hypercompetent class of conspirators.

Define "rare". Based on the ones I know were admitted alone, I'd think they are rather common.

Its because they're not what people want to imagine (hypercompetent ubermenchen who they're outsmarting) but just covering up "mundane" though still devestating crimes.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#152

Post by david_w »

TechBro8615 wrote: post #30
djaychela wrote: post #5

From what I'm reading, I think there are still a significant minority of people who think this isn't an issue. I've had to learn to just walk away from comments on a variety of media where comments such as 'psychosomatic', 'less dangerous than the flu that kills 50,000 each year', 'patented by the illuminati', 'caused by 5G masts', and so on. I ended up deleting my twitter account as I dared try to engage with one UK…

What's amusing to be is how anyone can look at the incompetence of governments across the world, and conclude they'd be capable of any kind of organized conspiracy against the general population.

"What's amusing to be is how anyone can look at the incompetence of governments across the world, and conclude they'd be capable of any kind of organized conspiracy against the general population."

Tell that to the Jews in Deutchland circa 1931...

Tell that to the Kulaks in the Ukraine in 1930 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor,

Tell that to the educated classes in China under Mao;https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/china/mao-murd...

You see conspiratorial thinking as some kind of bug in the thinking of insuffciently skeptical and analytical minds; a branch of stupidity. But it's not. It's a self-defense mechanism which, like other things considered antiquated and ineffcient like borders and control over immigration saves people from mass death.

These things don't exist because people are stupid and can't reason. They exist because people aren't stupid and do reason and then believe in their own mind's creations.

No matter how smart or sophisticated or computer-aided your reasoning is, no matter how big your data set becomes, you will only match and elucidate upon, but not beat, instincts which evolved under real Darwinian pressures which make you aware and wary of things which kill en masse.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#153

Post by amenod »

diryawish wrote: post #117
nullc wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument no longer works when we're seeing highly infected regions with significant increases in their _all cause_ mortality rate, e.g. https://reason.com/2020/03/17/italian-daily-death-rate-up-20... https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2020/04/01/virus-deaths-...

Italy’s death rates are up 20% when comparing this year’s average to a typical year’s whole average. This way of comparing averages may skew the information. In America, we have more average daily deaths in the beginning of the year than in the middle and end until December. The average of January through March will always be higher than the yearly average.

This!

This is the latest data published by the Italian Ministry of Health. Looking at the chart on the second page, try to ignore the lines (we all know there is an infinite amount of ways one can approximate a curve to the dots) and just observe the dots. Does this seem like a bad year to you? Compared to winter 2016/17?

http://www.salute.gov.it/portale/caldo/SISMG_sintesi_ULTIMO....

Also note that all the charts are misleading since they don't start with 0 (the effect is exaggerated).

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#154

Post by zzzcpan »

david_w wrote: post #152
TechBro8615 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's amusing to be is how anyone can look at the incompetence of governments across the world, and conclude they'd be capable of any kind of organized conspiracy against the general population.

"What's amusing to be is how anyone can look at the incompetence of governments across the world, and conclude they'd be capable of any kind of organized conspiracy against the general population." Tell that to the Jews in Deutchland circa 1931... Tell that to the Kulaks in the Ukraine in 1930 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor , Tell that to the educated classes in China under Mao; https://www.globalsecurity.or…

Technically the government itself is a form of conspiracy against the general population. But people don't know that, even educated people, because political science isn't mandatory in higher education. But labeling something as conspiracy theory is a useful tool to silence discussions about all the evil governments and large organizations do.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#155

Post by notahacker »

smolder wrote: post #138
notahacker wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Actual conspiracies are comparatively banal, and often more to do with covering up incompetence than establishing new world orders with incredible technological advances. To bring up famous examples from the not too distant past, the same administration supposedly capable of secretly planting demolition charges in busy NYC offices without anyone noticing apparently saw it as too risky to secretly plant chemical…

Not in order to give credibility to the idea, but I do think it would be easier for a group of conspirators based in the US to pull off secret demolition charges than for them to plant weapons in a foreign country unnoticed.

One theoretical conspiracy involves personnel carrying around large explosive charges and drilling holes in strategically placed beams on every floor of a permanently occupied and secure office building unnoticed by any one of thousands of surviving workers. The other involves a truck in an area the US is known to be conducting military operations unloading stuff at an abandoned remote facility and then calling in non-conspirators to validate their 'find', and accusing any Iraqi who argues the facility had other purposes of lying. Not saying there aren't reasons the second wouldn't go wrong - from getting ambushed or inspected en route to UN weapons inspectors concluding the material is unlikely to be of Iraqi origin - but it's not more difficult to plant stuff in a remote location than secretly prepare for a controlled demolition of a heavily occupied skyscraper.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#156

Post by lazyjones »

Lewton wrote: post #136
lazyjones wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be a bit early to say. Social distancing delays the infections. It's possible that it kills the virus, but unlikely, so people will be infected and possibly die later if they aren't immune already. Sweden is not able to stop infections at all, their health system is guaranteed to be overwhelmed, but survivors will most likely be immune and it will be over quickly, one way or another, when everyone has been exp…

Do you think they’ll have the stomach to continue with the plan once their hospitals are overwhelmed? I’m extremely skeptical they won’t eventually have to lock down harder than Denmark

I am not sure - there's still a chance that we won't reach the claimed 50-70% infections for some unknown reason, like the weather or some people being more resistant. Our (Austrian) chancellor said recently (~2 weeks ago) that he expects all health systems in the EU to become overwhelmed, though currently the outlook seems much better (even Italy has been sounding more optimistic lately). I don't know what to conclude from this other than that the worst possible outcome might not be as dramatic as previously thought, so Sweden might just pull through with it.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#157

Post by [deleted] »

dillonmckay wrote: post #91
INGELRII wrote: post #82

> They didn't realize there was any danger in making false predictions. Is there any danger for them? PG seems to have very idealistic view of politics. As far as I know, any amount of fact checking in politics don't change political views. Will Fox News lose any viewers over this? Politicians may lose jobs because bad economy, but will they lose votes because they were wrong and ignorant? H. L. Mencken wrote: > No o…

Votes will be lost, because people are unnecessarily putting themselves and others at risk, and some will die.

[deleted]

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#158

Post by atomashpolskiy »

nullc wrote: post #147
atomashpolskiy wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was saying that this is yet another virus strain that causes flu-like illness, i.e. cold with fever, etc. Leave your pedantry for someone else.

I tend to reserve it for people who use "x is literally y" as the totality of their argument. :P

You see, only a few months ago for the majority of people the word "flu" was a perferctly fine umbrella term for all of these viruses, including multiple coronaviruses. Now everyone is an expert virusologist with rigorous fervor for miniscule details. This is silly and drives us into the wrong direction, because the actual illness is not very different (it's a fact), but the amount of attention payed to it leads to huge overreaction. Oh, it's a relative of SARS, god forbid, oh my god, we're all going to die! Bullshit.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#159

Post by atomashpolskiy »

paulgb wrote: post #146
atomashpolskiy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in the position to make such statements, but there is quite a number of medical professionals, who say exactly this: massive lockdowns of general population aren't necessary. As for me, I personally believe that the medicine is worse than the disease in this case. We can be quite certain at this point that there will be lots of casualties from the economical disruption, and whether the unconstrained virus cou…

> but there is quite a number of medical professionals, who say exactly this: massive lockdowns of general population aren't necessary Who?

Consider this your homework. Google hasn't shutdown yet.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#160

Post by Lewton »

BaronSamedi wrote: post #148
Lewton wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But both sides are irrationally being confident. Being "doomsdayer" does not necessarily mean confidence in the situation. It's more about accepting that overreacting is much more desirable than underreacting when facing something exponential where you're constantly 2 weeks behind knowing what the reality is

> accepting that overreacting is much more desirable I wish that were true but it is not. It is entirely possible to take actions that make a bad situation worse. The consequences of an economic shutdown, for example, are unknown. The worst case of global depression and supply chain disruption is just as bad as the virus itself, if not more so. I do not know how one makes good decisions in a situation of highly uncer…

When you're in a situation where the severity of the outcome doubles every 4 days and you do not have clear information about where the curve will break, underreacting will result in extremely bad outcomes much much much more often than overreacting

For a simplified example just compare the cost of taking actions that make you break the curve 4 days too early with the situation where you break the curve 4 days too late

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