I am sorry but this is a ridiculous thesis. This will be over eventually, either by developing a vaccine or by mutation into a more benign strain. Nobody in their right mind will practice social distancing just because they are used to it. No system that goes against basic human drives is stable. Right now there is a risk, benefit balance but once that risk is gone, what exactly will balance this? Laws? They are already in conflict with the constitution, good luck justifying any of this if there is no deadly pathogen around.
How Apocalyptic Is Now?
71–80 of 98 posts
Re: How Apocalyptic Is Now?
#72Always amuses me how the apocalypse of Inidgenous Americans never seems to make the cut...
Winners don't talk about the people they murdered to win. Same thing about Australia, Canada and less so New Zealand. It is also hilarious that the USSR is the only country apart from Japan to successfully industrialize and avoid a colonial genocide from a Western power. If you could pick a place to live being a Russian in Moscow 1919 would give you a much better chance of surviving compared to being an Indian in Man…
Please study the actual history of the USSR-- there were multiple genocides of different religions and ethnic groups. Most notable were the pogroms and the death of millions in the Ukraine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691152387/st...
Re: How Apocalyptic Is Now?
#73I take exception to this analysis: "The numbers killed in terrorist incidents may be small. But the threat is endemic, and the texture of everyday life has altered profoundly. Video cameras and security procedures in public places have become part of the way we live." The author writes about this as if our response to terrorism is some sort of deterministic feature of the natural world. Instead, however, our response…
There is a diffeerence between modes of threat. A visible threat vs. an invisible one, an undirected threat vs. a directed one. Some years ago I realised that there are in fact two uses of the term "invisible* in Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations . Among oths I find the significance of the more well-known one to be greatly overstated. But the other seems notable on several counts: "Regularity, order, and prompt obedienc…
I don't disagree with any of that. But I also don't see what it has to do with my point that our response to any threat is often a matter of policy choices, rather than something predestined. (and of course, sometimes it isn't).
You can see this even with the case of sars-cov-2, where different policy decisions about the response have contributed to (or resulted in?) different impacts around the world. I imagine we will see it going forward too, just as we do with differing responses to terrorism.
Re: How Apocalyptic Is Now?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The scientists did not fail to prepare for the pandemic, and the countries that had scientists in the driving seat handled the pandemic very well. For example, Vietnam currently has no deaths from covid-19 precisely because scientists were in charge. Meanwhile, countries like US, who dismissed the scientists have the highest death toll in the world. Climate change denialists don't seem to grasp the concept of basic r…
>Vietnam currently has no deaths from covid-19 precisely because scientists were in charge Vietnam was prepared because they, like Taiwan, knew from the start that China was lying and took proactive steps that western countries failed to take. >Yet, idiots who have absolutely zero understanding of this domain continue to insist that there's nothing to worry about because they read something on Facebook that one time…
>Vietnam was prepared because they, like Taiwan, knew from the start that China was lying and took proactive steps that western countries failed to take.
I keep seeing this nonsense repeated, but China reported cases very early on. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline...
The only difference was that Vietnam and Taiwan took it seriously and prioritized people's lives over the economy. Meanwhile, Western governments largely chose to do the opposite. This is the exact same pattern we're seeing with climate change denial as well. The institutions are prioritizing short term profits while ignoring the science.
>I'm a geoscientist. The fact that climate dogma is righteous dogma doesn't mean it isn't dogma. You claim that none of us have the qualifications to question climate change, but somehow we are equipped to call "deniers" idiots?
Being a geoscintist does not make you a climatologist. It's amazing to me that people who are experts in one domain think that gives them the authority to talk about other domains.
I'm deferring to the domain experts PRECISELY because I know this knowledge is outside my area of expertise. I'm calling the deniers idiots because you seem to think that you know better than people actually studying the field. I'm sure you'd be pretty appalled if I started telling you my notions about how I think geoscience works based on my extensive computer science knowledge.
>And historic data tells us that even the most rapid historic climate changes happened over scales comparable to human lifespans.
That's because historically things like mass scale industrial production did not exist. Humans are not operating on geological time, and it's surreal that this has to be explained to somebody calling themselves a scientist.
>There's a grand irony here - once again, like the reopen controversy, the people have chosen the side of the majority of "scientists" and hunkered down, shaming others with worst case threats while ignoring that mitigation is also enormously expensive and pretending that anyone questioning the lockdown is a denier. Your dogma leaves no room for shades of gray.
All I can tel you is that US accounts for roughly a third of the deaths worldwide while the number of deaths and reported cases continues to grow exponentially. So, yeah this is a perfect analogy for climate change denial. In both cases business interests are prioritized over science with similar results.
>I'm out of room to explain for the billionth time so I'll keep it short - climate change is one of the softest of sciences because it is purely model and backtest driven.
Your capacity to deny facts is absolutely stunning. We're no longer talking about predictions here. We're talking about actual events that are happening around us. Sounds like people like you will continue denying there's a problem as you're boiled alive in your own juices.
>You put too much faith in modern institutions.
I'm doing the opposite of that. I believe scientists and experts in the domain over the idiots who think that we should risk the fate of humanity to keep the growth economy going.
Re: How Apocalyptic Is Now?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
How anyone can continue to place so much faith into dogmatic science, after the global and nearly universal failure of these same institutions to properly prepare for and handle covid, is beyond me. This post is pure fear porn. Environmentalists have been making these same doomsday predictions since literally the 60s and deadlines continue to come and go without incident. Look, the papers that predict what's more lik…
Do critics of government hold other prediction "markets" to the same standards? People predict sportsball outcomes. A much smaller problem domain, with far more historical data, insane audience engagement (interest), and ample expertise. Are sportsball predictions qualitatively better than pandemic predictions?
>Do critics of government hold other prediction "markets" to the same standards?
You realize that modern economics is basically divination for the same reason that climate science is uncertain? Structurally the two sciences are actually similar in critical points, namely that the domains are non experimental and purely model driven. Yes, you should be extremely sceptical of any economist who tells you that he's certain about anything.
>People predict sportsball outcomes. A much smaller problem domain, with far more historical data, insane audience engagement (interest), and ample expertise
You can't seriously compare the complexity of climate science with sports betting.
Re: How Apocalyptic Is Now?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do critics of government hold other prediction "markets" to the same standards? People predict sportsball outcomes. A much smaller problem domain, with far more historical data, insane audience engagement (interest), and ample expertise. Are sportsball predictions qualitatively better than pandemic predictions?
>Do critics of government hold other prediction "markets" to the same standards? You realize that modern economics is basically divination for the same reason that climate science is uncertain? Structurally the two sciences are actually similar in critical points, namely that the domains are non experimental and purely model driven. Yes, you should be extremely sceptical of any economist who tells you that he's certa…
The big difference here is that the risk of climate scientists being right is that billions of people die. Meanwhile, all the observed evidence either fits the models or is rapidly outpacing the predictions made by the models. We're not longer talking about hypotheticals here, we're observing these events happening right now. If you look through the links in my above comment you'll see that a lot of them are talking about observed events.
Re: How Apocalyptic Is Now?
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Vietnam currently has no deaths from covid-19 precisely because scientists were in charge Vietnam was prepared because they, like Taiwan, knew from the start that China was lying and took proactive steps that western countries failed to take. >Yet, idiots who have absolutely zero understanding of this domain continue to insist that there's nothing to worry about because they read something on Facebook that one time…
>Vietnam was prepared because they, like Taiwan, knew from the start that China was lying and took proactive steps that western countries failed to take. I keep seeing this nonsense repeated, but China reported cases very early on. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline... The only difference was that Vietnam and Taiwan took it seriously and prioritized people's lives over the economy. Meanwhile…
>Being a geoscintist does not make you a climatologist. It's amazing to me that people who are experts in one domain think that gives them the authority to talk about other domains.
I literally consume the same data. It's a sister field. We have the same problems with the exact same uncertainty because we use the same instruments for collection. My opinion is valid but that doesn't matter because anyone who take a position remotely critical of climate science can expect an immediate, vicious, purely dogmatic response.
>I keep seeing this nonsense repeated, but China reported cases very early on. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline....
>The only difference was that Vietnam and Taiwan took it seriously and prioritized people's lives over the economy
It's easy to dismiss other peoples' arguments as "nonsense" when you misrepresent them. The question isn't whether China reported cases or not. It's the fact that China deliberately underreported cases and contributed to an underestimation of the pandemic by laymen and professionals alike who are too naive to understand the dishonesty typical of authoritarian regimes like the CCP. The peoples who have been dealing with China for millennia hold no such delusions.
>The ability to deny facts is absolutely surreal. We're no longer talking about predictions here. We're talking about actual events that are happening around us
This is only true if you cherry pick your literature. I'll remind you our discussion is about future predictions of which only catastrophic outcomes are suitable for (one sided) discussion. The fact that some minority of models agree with current measurements does not resolve the uncertainty regarding the predictions that spawned this entire discussion.
You underestimate the complexity and chaotic nature of science. Certainty in doomsday climate predictions is hubris.
Re: How Apocalyptic Is Now?
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Do critics of government hold other prediction "markets" to the same standards? You realize that modern economics is basically divination for the same reason that climate science is uncertain? Structurally the two sciences are actually similar in critical points, namely that the domains are non experimental and purely model driven. Yes, you should be extremely sceptical of any economist who tells you that he's certa…
The big difference here is that the risk of climate scientists being right is that billions of people die. Meanwhile, all the observed evidence either fits the models or is rapidly outpacing the predictions made by the models. We're not longer talking about hypotheticals here, we're observing these events happening right now. If you look through the links in my above comment you'll see that a lot of them are talking…
>The big difference here is that the risk of climate scientists being right is that billions of people die.
That's literally an absolute worst case prediction. You cannot guide policy exclusively with worst case predictions.
>We're not longer talking about hypotheticals here, we're observing these events happening right now
No, we're seeing warming and minor sea level rise right now - and even this is less certain than people would have you believe, we only recently realized for example that the mismatch between expected and current warming could be explained by the ocean acting as a heat sink. Imagine how many other similar phenomena we have yet to discover.
Physical systems tend to be nonlinear. Even a high rate of warming now does not preclude a comfortable maximum due to nonlinear restorative forces.
That's why nothing, literally nothing that we've observed to date, can significantly reduce the uncertainty regarding doomsday predictions.
Re: How Apocalyptic Is Now?
#79The author is wrong. Apocalyptic in religions means revelations, not necessarily end of the world. It rather means the revelation of what is good and what is evil. It will become clear to people even if they didn’t know that good and evil existed (religious people know that without an apocalypse).
Given that, the article bases on a wrong foundation so that the author naturally reaches wrong conclusions.
In today’s world some people and especially people in power do lie a lot, which has severe consequences in the bad conditions we‘re living right now. The wake people know that those lies will be disclosed very soon, hence we should see an apocalyptic with Christian eyes, who see the revelation in that the poor politics concerning Covid will not last for very long and we will be shown the truth as part of the revelation (=apocalyptic).
Re: How Apocalyptic Is Now?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Vietnam was prepared because they, like Taiwan, knew from the start that China was lying and took proactive steps that western countries failed to take. I keep seeing this nonsense repeated, but China reported cases very early on. https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/27-04-2020-who-timeline... The only difference was that Vietnam and Taiwan took it seriously and prioritized people's lives over the economy. Meanwhile…
>Being a geoscintist does not make you a climatologist. It's amazing to me that people who are experts in one domain think that gives them the authority to talk about other domains. I literally consume the same data. It's a sister field. We have the same problems with the exact same uncertainty because we use the same instruments for collection. My opinion is valid but that doesn't matter because anyone who take a po…
>I literally consume the same data. It's a sister field. We have the same problems with the exact same uncertainty because we use the same instruments for collection. My opinion is valid but that doesn't matter because anyone who take a position remotely critical of climate science can expect an immediate, vicious, purely dogmatic response.
Again, as somebody who works in a complex field I know perfectly well that it's rare that somebody has broad expertise outside a fairly narrow domain. People who think they do are typically suffering from Dunning-Kruger effect. You also keep using the word dogmatic in a weird way that makes question whether you even know what it means.
>It's easy to dismiss other peoples' arguments as "nonsense" when you misrepresent them. The question isn't whether China reported cases or not. It's the fact that China deliberately underreported cases and contributed to an underestimation of the pandemic by laymen and professionals alike who are too naive to understand the dishonesty typical of authoritarian regimes like the CCP.
It's easy to dismiss nonsense when it is demonstrably nonsense. China was dealing with a novel virus and had no idea what to expect from it. There was no evidence that this was some novel influenza based on a handful of cases, or that it could easily spread between humans. However, China did report it on the 2nd of January, and the world had all the same information we had now at the start of January. It's really not surprising that you're a conspiracy theorist in general though.
The fact that China had absolutely no warning and has less deaths than US now really shows the difference between countries that trust science and those that do not.
>This is only true if you cherry pick your literature.
There's a unanimous consensus in the field, but I'm sure oneiftwo knows better because he's a "geoscientist".
>The fact that some minority of models agree with current measurements does not resolve the uncertainty regarding the predictions that spawned this entire discussion.
Show me a single model that's predicting things happening faster than what's observed. If there's anything the models can be faulted on is being too conservative with their predictions.
>You underestimate the complexity and chaotic nature of science. Certainty in doomsday climate predictions is hubris.
I do no such thing. I just understand the basic concept of risk assessment. Gambling our entire civilization on "I hope all the models are wrong and everybody in the field is overreacting" is complete and utter idiocy.
Continued existence of the human race is what's at stake here, and anybody who thinks we shouldn't err on the side of caution when it comes to that is a dangerous idiot.