Avoiding news [1] and people who don't bet on their prediction [2] go a long way.
[1] https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf
[2] https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/01/i_changed_my_mi.htm...
Coronavirus and Credibility
351–360 of 968 posts
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#352Pg should write about what seems to be the real epidemic in america: politics. When people politicize a chemical compound , you know things are dangerously wrong
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. Unfortunately now it's more like picking a sport team ("Team CNN" or "Team Fox"), or Apple vs/ Google vs/ Microsoft than actually finding, or learning about, facts. Tribalism at it's finest. The only alternative I've found (I'm open to helpful suggestions) is to ignore that noise and read actual briefings and original sources. But, that defeats the point of news being an honest and straight forward source of…
I've found a well-curated Twitter feed of smart sources from various ideological and media camps helps to find interesting and informative info which would otherwise take a great deal of time to find. You do get misinfo and bad takes sometimes, but if you set it up right it's no worse than mainstream sources. Lists are useful as well to avoid Twitter's feed curation algos. Just specifically for COVID-19, this led me…
Agreed. I’d also add selling stocks when they were hitting highs.
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#354Liberalism and conservatism are essentially religions—there are core fundamental beliefs to them and a community surrounding it. Rejecting the political party is not just rejecting beliefs but also rejecting family, friends, and social structure. The battle has become so much more about red vs blue, left vs right, that principles and facts are no longer relevant. The vitriol and lack civility in the current political…
> Liberalism and conservatism are essentially religions
I somewhat agree but I would argue that it's the Democratic and Republican parties that are religions, not the philosophies themselves. They both are fine on their own just like religious philosophies.
It's the people who basically form a cult, give it a name, and interpret the philosophies that are the problem. It becomes all about growing your cult to be bigger than the other cults so you have more power. To get people interested you attack the other side instead of having intelligent debates. They operate within there own echo chambers.
Most media companies pick a side and then attack the other side. People like watching other people get very emotional so that leads to more viewers. It's why there are so many "reality" shows.
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#355What a ridiculous zeal. Hardly anyone at this point is arguing that there actually is an issue. After all, flu is still a dangerous illness, esp. for certain groups of people, so even plainly calling this COVID thing "just a flu" is not equivalent to saying that it's not an issue. It's your framing of the phrase "just a flu", that makes it look like some kind of heresy or insult. And, most importantly, why do you cal…
As this comment seems to be controversial, and I'm getting many downvotes, I'd like to provide a couple of links for anyone interested in the topic.
John Ioannidis MD of Stanford University:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6MZy-2fcBw
Knut Wittkowski, for twenty years head of The Rockefeller University's Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGC5sGdz4kg
A collection of fact-checked links to public statements and critical research about COVID-19, updated DAILY (scroll to bottom for the most recent additions):
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#356At the time, if you believed Chinese data, and the WHO, then you should have concluded this was no worse than the flu.
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#357Does pg never watch the news? Or did he just forget that "no worse than the flu" was the general tone until late February in pretty much all 'western' media and even MDs? E.g. https://www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronav... https://www.mdmag.com/medical-news/the-fear-of-the-corona-vi... (kudos for correcting/updating later...) Seems a bit one-sided to get so excited about wrong predictions by the Fox/…
There were sober voices on twitter, no neef to follow the mainstream. Thanks to @balajis, some of us were well prepared
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see one prediction from an actual modern climate scientist. It reads: "So the climate will continue to change, even if we make maximum effort to slow the growth of carbon dioxide. Arctic sea ice will melt away in the summer season within the next few decades. Mountain glaciers, providing fresh water for rivers that supply hundreds of millions of people, will disappear - practically all of the glaciers could be gone…
> I see one prediction from an actual modern climate scientist. That's a nice "No True Scotsman" right there. Unless, of course, you can give me a non-arbitrary reason why Dr. David Barber of the University of Manitoba speaking in 2008 is a "pre-modern" climate scientist, whereas Dr. James Hansen of NASA writing in 2009 is a "modern" climate scientist.
The quote's from a newspaper. However, I did your job (again) digging into that man's actual predictions, and he was wrong not once.
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#359In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life and has the exact same dynamic with the exact same players . There is also zero introspection - the people who were wrong about covid-19 are simply denying they said what they said. The truly scary part is they are getting away with it in real time, and changing a large populations' memory of contemporary events. I realize it's hard to remember f…
And they both use the same scare statistics. (covid) 2 million Americans will die. (global warming) If we don't stop emitting CO2 the world will collapse by 2030.
Re: Coronavirus and Credibility
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ar…
"What the official figures don’t say. They don’t say that in March 2020 more than 5.400 people have died in Bergamo province, 4.500 of which due to coronavirus. Six times more than the previous year."
https://www.ecodibergamo.it/stories/bergamo-citta/coronaviru...
Doesn't that seem like a bad year to you?