Glad the article mentions y2k. The massive hype and hysteria resulted in all the systems of significance being patched.
Home many y2k patches did u install in 1999?
Preparedness Paradox
111–120 of 130 posts
Re: Preparedness Paradox
#112In the modern world, a good fraction of potential problems can be estimated using good computer models. Examples include building design parameters for withstanding earthquakes and hurricanes, river flow models for projecting potential flooding, aircraft design models that discover problems before planes start crashing, climate models that show the results of burning fossil fuels for decades, etc. Yes, many people do…
The problem is that lawmakers are rarely statisticians and are sometimes even the people not trusting the models because they don't understand them. Someone needs to write up a bayesian form of government and then take over a country.
This is why command economies like China work today, when they did not in the past. With massive amounts of data and advances in theory, a centrally planned economy (and government) can be dramatically more efficient than a democracy.
Re: Preparedness Paradox
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that lawmakers are rarely statisticians and are sometimes even the people not trusting the models because they don't understand them. Someone needs to write up a bayesian form of government and then take over a country.
This is why command economies like China work today, when they did not in the past. With massive amounts of data and advances in theory, a centrally planned economy (and government) can be dramatically more efficient than a democracy.
The problem with command economies is that the incentives are broken, not that just that central planning is hard. The established elite uses political power to keep their position.
The USSR kept it running for half a century. Give them a while.
Re: Preparedness Paradox
#114Regarding the pandemic in my filter bubble people said "There's no glory in prevention."
Re: Preparedness Paradox
#115I've seen this so much regarding covid-19 in Australia, especially at the start. Everyone I know complained bitterly at the restrictions we had in Sydney, even when they weren't that strict, saying "but only 5 people have died" or whatever. I'd say "Yeah, because what we're doing is working. Look at Italy, or the UK, or France, or the USA". Interestingly, there was a clear divide between people(like me) who had famil…
Australia is on track to have similar per capita death rates as Norway which had far fewer restrictions. If it hits that point, will you still think the heavyhanded response was worth it in the end? The Australian response in general was over the top: * Postcode based restrictions targeting poor areas and not always related to actual case numbers * Locking healthy people in their homes under 24hr police guard, all de…
The vast majority of deaths here in Australia, since the end of lockdowns and closed borders, have been amongst the unvaccinated, the elderly, and the immunocompromised (particularly the first of those three). We're not seeing young, normally healthy people dying in their thousands, as happened in much of the world at the height of the pandemic. Our response worked, and we've avoided widespread suffering, and many Australians apparently don't appreciate that, I guess due to the preparedness paradox!
Re: Preparedness Paradox
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The tell for what is justified and what isn't is through what you can remove from the system and not see any ill effect, like a jenga tower. We've already decommissioned thousands of nukes and the sky didn't fall, so that goes to show all that preparation was useless. Bad example. It absolutely wasn't useless at the time to build those thousands of nukes. The whole concept of mutual assured destruction breaks down i…
Wasn't it unclear for most of the cold war how many nukes were even in play? As far as I understand the U.S. early on overbuilt nukes, assuming the soviets had a lot more of them at the time when they had hardly any at all. Then the soviets had to play catch up with the americans as you state, but once again it was all for nothing in the end for those nukes that were built, sat idle in silos, then decommissioned with…
Given the disregard for human life that the Russians have typically displayed in war, including the current conflict, what would you propose as a deterrent instead of MAD?
Second question. Let's say you want to negotiate a treaty in the case where neither side trusts the other, and where neither side really has any enforcement power over the other. What mechanism would you propose, to which both parties could agree, and to which both parties could be pretty sure the other side would respect?
MAD is indeed horrific. The authors of the policy thought so as well. Everyone would very much appreciate a better solution. Until now, none has been proposed.
Re: Preparedness Paradox
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why command economies like China work today, when they did not in the past. With massive amounts of data and advances in theory, a centrally planned economy (and government) can be dramatically more efficient than a democracy.
The problem with command economies is that the incentives are broken, not that just that central planning is hard. The established elite uses political power to keep their position. The USSR kept it running for half a century. Give them a while.
I think that's true for every system of both economics and governance. Capitalism, or at least the early (Adam Smith era) form of it, is merely an easy-to-implement approximation of alignment, where the incentives usually go in the right direction, but even that has to have significant pressure from beyond its natural feedback mechanism to get us things like 8-hour days, weekends, and health-and-safety laws that says it is not OK to employ small children to jump in and out of bone-crushingly heavy industrial machinery while it is in operation in order to clear blockages.
Re: Preparedness Paradox
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I think most of the 'absolutes' that programmers, software architects, managers etc. talk about are not so. For example you must never declare 'magic numbers' in code. Or you must always obey S.O.L.I.D. or get 100% TDD. There will be be people who believe in these dogmatically to the point they won't employ anyone who says different (it becomes an interview question). I am not arguing that these are wrong…
> There will be be people who believe in these dogmatically to the point they won't employ anyone who says different (it becomes an interview question). Though when you’re lucky enough to be in a tight labor market it sure is a convenient filter for companies you don’t want to join!
Yes it is a no brain filter too. They have already rejected me so I don’t have to think about accepting them ;-)
Seriously though I hate shibboleth driven interviews.
Re: Preparedness Paradox
#119Incoherent. How can there be a levee paradox. You can see the water it holds back. More people build because there are less floods. No idea what they are talking about with Fukushima The Millennial Bug is a good prospect. But that's a debate in itself.
> How can there be a levee paradox. > You can see the water it holds back. > More people build because there are less floods. And then because of that, when the levee breaks, more damage is done than it the levee wasn't there in the first place. The paradox is that trying to be safe can cause more harm.
This has also been described as risk compensation
Re: Preparedness Paradox
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Australia is on track to have similar per capita death rates as Norway which had far fewer restrictions. If it hits that point, will you still think the heavyhanded response was worth it in the end? The Australian response in general was over the top: * Postcode based restrictions targeting poor areas and not always related to actual case numbers * Locking healthy people in their homes under 24hr police guard, all de…
The vast majority of deaths here in Australia, since the end of lockdowns and closed borders, have been amongst the unvaccinated, the elderly, and the immunocompromised (particularly the first of those three). We're not seeing young, normally healthy people dying in their thousands, as happened in much of the world at the height of the pandemic. Our response worked, and we've avoided widespread suffering, and many Au…
> as happened in much of the world at the height of the pandemic
The median age of death in Australia is ~83yo. It's not far off from comparable European countries which are all around 80yo too. ( I don't consider the US comparable for a number of reasons, western Europe is generally the baseline we draw for most health metrics)
The UK has a median age of 83yo also, despite their horrific death toll and lax attitude compared to Australia. [1][2][3]
So the onus here is on you to prove evidence to back up such a statement that it's "healthy young people dying in the thousands"?
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...
[2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/fre...
> Meanwhile, deaths among those aged 44 or younger made up under 2% of the total
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/16/what-do-we-kno...