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Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

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Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#431

Post by lliamander »

admax88q wrote: post #364
lliamander wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very nearly 100% of experts in this field agree it's happening, have agreed for quite a while, and think the impact will be dire and potentially irreversible in the timeframe of human lifetimes. The consensus regarding climate change (and human's role in it) has been exagerated[0] [0] https://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-climate-falseh...

Your source is a random blogspot.com who claims that there's ambiguity because they consider the term "caused by" to be ambiguous. I stopped reading there.

David Friedman is an economist at Santa Clara University.

The argument relates not to climate science itself, but to the methodology on study measuring the consensus of climate scientists. It's pretty easy to follow.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#432

Post by sorisos »

nullc wrote: post #129
redis_mlc wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people will continue to ignore an exponential trend Every cold and flu grow exponentially. Not sure what the fixation of HN readers is on the work exponential. Although true, using it doesn't add anything to analysis of corona virus specifically. I'd rather talk about the false hope in ventilators, and the futility and destruction to our economy by lockdown.

Like soylent green the economy is made of people. If people are doing well, the economy will likely catch up-- weak businesses will fail, new ones will be created. It may hurt, may hurt for a while-- but from a purely economic perspective this might turn out to be a useful reboot. There are going to be a lot of phenomenal opportunities in the coming year. But the economy cannot do well if the people are not. For a th…

I wish and hope just pausing the economy is as easy as you say. I'm worried though, as the last decades the Economy appears to be this unpredictable daemon that affects everything and everyone but no one knows how to please it.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#433

Post by formalsystem »

Taleb elaborates on this idea quite a bit. Opinions are irrelevant, what matters is your position. Opinions are useless without a downside.

For example, don't tell me that you think Microsoft is a good or bad company. Tell me how many shares of Microsoft you own or how you're shorting Microsoft.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#434

Post by theschwa »

jerkstate wrote: post #411

I think that the video linked is unnecessarily partisan. Lots of politicians and media of all mainstream ideologies got this wrong. At the same time, plenty of woke progressives were telling us that the US/China travel ban was racist and unnecessary on Jan 31, and are now saying that it wasnt done soon enough. Plenty of conservative-leaning news outlets and politicians were sounding the alarm bells since January as w…

This is likely the case, but can you site some sources?

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#435

Post by dekhn »

daveguy wrote: post #429
dekhn wrote: post #400

I'm a biologist and I have no trouble saying with a straight face that, as of yet, COVID-19's true health impact has been lower than that of a bad year of flu. I don't care about TV commenters- by the metric of # of deaths (not potential number of deaths, or total cost to the medical system, or impact on economy), COVID-19 has been less than a bad year of flu. This isn't to say COVID-19 isn't bad, or doesn't have the…

You may be a biologist, but you are definitely not an epidemiologist. It is at least 10x more lethal and much more contagious. We will bear the brunt of it in the US because we didn't take it seriously for so long. The only reason we aren't at 2,000+ deaths per day in the US is because now we are taking it seriously. That death rate sustained for a typical flu season (4 months) would be 240,000 deaths. This is seriou…

My training was in a hospital medical center and I'm familiar with epidemiology. I think most claims about total deaths due to covid are uninformed speculation based on incomplete data.

You are making predictions that we have absolutely no confidence about. That's not helpful. I'm saying we don't have the data to claim what you're claiming.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#436

Post by xkapastel »

endorphone wrote: post #210
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…

"Is there any danger for them?" Fox news dumped Laura Ingraham and Trish Regan. Both were at the forefront of claiming it was all a hoax. Dr. Drew has gone on a reputation rehabilitation tour apologizing for his prior claims. But those dismissals are a canary in a coal mine. They demonstrate that even Fox News has limits. It is outrageous that anyone -- outside of scam prosperity preachers -- advertise on Fox News.

Did Fox News actually dump Laura Ingraham? I've never heard about this. She still seems to be on TV.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#437

Post by cortesoft »

runeks wrote: post #402
throwaway5752 wrote: post #208

In 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…

> In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life and has the exact same dynamic with the exact same players. No, global warming has a very different dynamic. With a virus, if you do the right thing and protect yourself, you’re more likely to survive. With global warming, if you get a lot of people to emit less CO2, you might just end up making CO2 emissions cheaper for everyone else.

So what should we do?

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#438

Post by 9HZZRfNlpR »

mapgrep wrote: post #341
9HZZRfNlpR wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an American and far from Trumps target audience but the CNN is bad as Fox. I have them both on TV. It truly is a kettle and pot situation, I believe so many Americans have grown so deeply into either culture that unfortunately you can't comprehend it anymore.

Every single journalist in the video Paul Graham linked was on Fox News/Fox Business.

Right, but I expressed my opinion on your political divide and newspapers, not PG's links.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#439

Post by mindslight »

jpxw wrote: post #25
martinko wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the conspiracy theories out there, the 'caused by 5G masts' is the one that confuses me the most. I get the possible aversion to 5G, but how does one make the leap from that to it causing COVID?

I’ve tried to understand them, their rationale appears include: - 5G occurred at the same time as corona - This is therefore “too much of a coincidence” - 5G kills off things that naturally kill coronavirus - 5G makes our immune systems weaker All of which are unfounded of course. But it’s important not to just reject people’s ideas out-of-hand, or to suppress them.

My aunt sent me a video asking my opinion (yay?), and I've been hearing ominous FUD about "5G" long enough that I wanted to see where it was actually coming from. So I watched it.

The bit I gleaned was the claim that since 60GHz is absorbed by oxygen (haven't checked this, but I'd assume similar to 2.4GHz being absorbed by water), it therefore interferes with your lungs' ability to intake oxygen. (my low-effort analysis: the radio waves won't penetrate your skin by more than a few millimeters, and therefore could in no way act in your lungs)

The whole narrative was much jumping around making connections that would seem plausible if you don't know or try to investigate technical details. For example - a defense contractor worked on 60GHz gear as well as communications for cruise ships -> smoking gun!

I'm sure there was plenty of innuendo that rolled right off my back, but makes an emotional impression. My aunt had gotten the impression that 5G is 50-60 times the power of a microwave oven. I couldn't bring myself to watch the video again to find what could possibly be interpreted this way, but I'm guessing it was talking about the frequency while implying magnitude.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#440

Post by chillacy »

dekhn wrote: post #400

I'm a biologist and I have no trouble saying with a straight face that, as of yet, COVID-19's true health impact has been lower than that of a bad year of flu. I don't care about TV commenters- by the metric of # of deaths (not potential number of deaths, or total cost to the medical system, or impact on economy), COVID-19 has been less than a bad year of flu. This isn't to say COVID-19 isn't bad, or doesn't have the…

If the crux of your argument relies on looking at what has happened so far without looking at projections into what could happen, then I have some stock to sell you. You'll buy at the top since the last quarter's earnings were good, right?
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