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Coronavirus and Credibility

paulgraham.com

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Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#861

Post by tekkk »

smsm42 wrote: post #547
tekkk wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's insane. Shouldn't it be the opposite as he famously called it a hoax and so on? Disregarding whatever nonsense he has said on many past occasions. Oh well. In this case I'd only quote George Carlin here: "The public sucks".

> he famously called it a hoax He did not. If you read it in some news article, please do yourself a favor and do not use this news source anymore. If somebody of your friends told you that, please keep loving them as friends but accept anything they say with a grain of salt as they may be more gullible than you thought. What Trump actually said is that his opponents suggestion that he doesn't do enough to counter th…

I see. It feels quite funny though to be so specific about the ramblings of a man, who clearly says whatever comes to his mind without further thought. He might as well have said it and nothing would change. Definitely though there is a difference, and I should have probably worded myself a little differently. But it's quite hard to adhere to a high level of truthfulness when the other side clearly has no regard for it.

And just to be clear: I'm not very biased person to either sides, and I think it's amusing to see Americans get so riled by their opposing political side. I treat all of the US media to be biased in some direction, and never to reach the level of objectivity I myself would enjoy. It would be nice though that they would, I agree, but this is the reality of the current world I guess. If I could decide, I would just break apart the whole two-party system and give people actual options in voting. Perhaps then at least those who can think for themselves could vote for a candidate they believed in, instead of just voting the "least-worst" candidate.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#863

Post by tigershark »

atomashpolskiy wrote: post #689
tigershark wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I have to comment? We know what is the death rate in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, South Korea. 1500 cases is ridiculously low to take any conclusion, they are far behind the curve.

Who is "we"? Actual scientists say the opposite: most numbers are meaningless and misleading, because we don't know, how wide the virus has spread. Are you that lazy-minded to not even try to check the links that I have provided?

Then why you post utterly meaningless numbers based on 1500 reported cases far behind the curve and ask for my comment? And please stop insulting me, you have gone too far.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#864

Post by cma »

david_w wrote: post #134

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, Sweden puts into practice what they only speculate about: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/04/covid-19-and-swedis...

> Now, if I were the suspicious type, I might suggest that Sweden’s coronavirus policy was, from the very beginning, formulated with this endgame in mind: the weeding out of aged and infirm Swedes in order to free up residences, welfare benefits, and Lebensraum generally (pardon my French) for Muslim immigrants

Read a real source instead of this nazi garbage

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#865

Post by Tepix »

hedora wrote: post #854
runeks wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you catch coronavirus, you’re roughly twice as likely to die this year as if you didn’t (this is true for most age groups). Most people have a vanishingly low probability of dying in the next 12 months. They shouldn’t care much if they get it or not, unless they’re worried about the welfare of others. This seems very similar to CO2 to me, except that global warming affects younger people more, and coronavirus prim…

That‘s statistics. In reality there are many factors that make COVID-19 much more dangerous for a lot of people. Besides, i don‘t feel like taking an extea 2 in 1000 chance of dying, thank you very much.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#866

Post by btilly »

bo1024 wrote: post #773
btilly wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good Bayesian should be able to make confident decisions based on information available at the moment... No. A good Bayesian should be able to come to decisions like, "I am 70% confident that Osama bin Laden is in that compound." While the Bayesian next says, "I am only 50% confident that Osama bin Laden is in that compound." With both knowing that there is a difference of opinion, but no disagreement on basic fact…

> No. A good Bayesian should be able to come to decisions like, "I am 70% confident that Osama bin Laden is in that compound." That's not a decision though. That's an assessment, what I would put in the same category as predictions. A decision would be whether or not to bomb the compound. Your post seems to miss my point, that predictions and decisions are very different and one can be uncertain about predictions whi…

You are right that I had not paid close attention to decisions.

I see no particular reason why Bayesians should be better at being decisive. They should make better judgments given the available information. But they are not necessarily any better at making decisions and moving on.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#867

Post by btilly »

bo1024 wrote: post #775
pjscott wrote: post #667

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamentally, decision-making is what predictions are for . We mainly care about information to guide our actions. There are some interesting implications of this for how we should do research. https://www.gwern.net/Research-criticism#beliefs-are-for-act... A recent example: people have been talking about clinical trials for coronavirus vaccine candidates. In those you want to minimize the bad things that happen to…

Yes, exactly. For example, I would think there would be immense value right now in sampling totally random subsets of the population and testing whether they've had COVID-19 in the past. This is the kind of information that could radically change decisions about when to release stay-at-home orders.

I disagree on that.

The purposes of sampling are to find out how deadly the disease is, and to find out if herd immunity exists. But we have good evidence that it is likely to be deadly enough to justify stay-at-home orders while community spread exists. And have strong circumstantial evidence that only a small fraction of the population has had it.

Therefore breaking quarantine for a random subset of the population is unlikely to change actionable decisions. But it will be likely to spread the disease. I would love to know the answer to the question raised. But it isn't worth human lives to answer it sooner than it will otherwise be answered.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#868

Post by esel2k »

But without protecting these politicians here - over here in Europe we were more strict and did not play it down as much. What I have missed from the medical and country leaders is 1-a median age of deaths 2-death statistic that showed symptoms according to corona. Just stating infection number doesn’t mean anything.

For me the homework is not only on the political side but also to the medical side to present the right statistics - even if it might be ethically borderline. Because only when the threat is defined to economy, healthcare system and danger for specific groups then you can do a clear data-driven decision.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#869

Post by csomar »

btilly wrote: post #867
bo1024 wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. For example, I would think there would be immense value right now in sampling totally random subsets of the population and testing whether they've had COVID-19 in the past. This is the kind of information that could radically change decisions about when to release stay-at-home orders.

I disagree on that. The purposes of sampling are to find out how deadly the disease is, and to find out if herd immunity exists. But we have good evidence that it is likely to be deadly enough to justify stay-at-home orders while community spread exists. And have strong circumstantial evidence that only a small fraction of the population has had it. Therefore breaking quarantine for a random subset of the population…

> But we have good evidence that it is likely to be deadly enough to justify stay-at-home orders while community spread exists.

I don't think we agree on that and it's relative. Not all people agree on stay-at-home/confinement orders. I personally see them as an authoritarian measure and I think everyone should judge for himself whether he wants to expose himself to COVID-19 risks or not.

As to the point of determining if COVID-19 is deadly enough or not, I don't see how we can do that without sampling the society. It's not clear, right now, if the only cases are the ones that are diagnosed or 50% of society.

Re: Coronavirus and Credibility

#870

Post by 101404 »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #268
pdonis wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the background global warming is a much greater threat to human life Before making such a confident statement, I would recommend re-reading this particular statement in pg's essay... "These people constantly make false predictions, and get away with it, because the things they make predictions about either have mushy enough outcomes that they can bluster their way out of trouble, or happen so far in the future t…

Central America ( https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/eye-of-the-storm/fifth-... ), Syria ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096262981... ), Australia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%9320_Australian_bus... ), and Alaska https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/sockeye-salmon-and-cli... might beg to differ, among others. It is happening now. It's happening in line with predictions by IPCC. I…

As long as everybody who has even a question about the topic is publicly yelled at and insulted, there will be many people who will simply ignore the topic.

The main reason global warming isn't taken more seriously is because of the way it is discussed.

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