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Plans you're not supposed to talk about

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Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#171

Post by tshaddox »

NavinF wrote: post #159
EB-Barrington wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Our vaccines are working exceptionally well. They continue to work well for Delta with regard to severe illness and death - they prevent it, but what they can't do anymore is prevent transmission," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky

Hmm did he mean that it doesn’t affect transmission (as in reduce R0) or that it literally can’t prevent transmission (R0 reduced, but still >>0)? The latter is trivially true. I’m guessing he said it anyway because it was intended for a different audience.

I don’t think they literally reduce illness and death to zero, but just pretty close. I would assume they were using the same definition of “prevent” in both places in that sentence.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#172

Post by ifdefdebug »

taejavu wrote: post #138
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaccines don't prevent those things. They do lower the probability - or at least, that's the claim. That's not perfection, but it's not nothing, either. As to whether the claim is accurate... that's outside the scope of this comment.

Who's claiming that? My impression is that official sources are now acknowledging it does nothing but lessen the chance of serious illness & hospitalisation for the person taking it.

Your impression is wrong, infection protection is still on the table.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#173

Post by adventured »

JackFr wrote: post #127
calibas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, when people are talking about helping "the Planet" they're not talking about lifeless rocks, they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet. And by balance I mean not precipitating another extinction event. Sure, they're going to happen anyway eventually, but we probably shouldn't cause an extra one if we don't have to...

> Sure, they're going to happen anyway eventually, but we probably shouldn't cause an extra one if we don't have to... Honestly why not? (To be clear, I don't think we should, but I know my reasons. They're not science based, because the question "Should we care if humanity causes an extiction event?" can't have a scientific answer.)

> Honestly why not?

It can have a scientific answer if you set a scientific goal for the planet. We get to decide what the purpose of this planet is, insofar as we quite clearly control the planet and its condition in most respects.

The planet may have the potential to produce more variations of intelligent life yet, given its seeming rich potential for such in its current more docile condition.

I think it may be a worthy cause to preserve the planet in such a condition that it can continue to act as an incubator for more intelligent life for a long time to come yet (many millions of years perhaps, or as long as it can until something catastrophic happens that humans aren't primarily responsible for).

Why that specific aspect? High level intelligent life (I'm obviously not talking about elephants or dolphins here) may be extraordinarily rare in the universe, and this type of incubating planet may be extraordinarily rare (that is, far more rare than is already suspected). So the scientific goal I've chosen to set for the planet is that I'd like to see other intelligent life spring up from this planet; you can disagree with that goal, that doesn't matter, I've set the goal and may choose to pursue it at will (bio-engineering, artificial intelligence, and so on) and so may a billion other people. The scientific reason to preserve the planet in a rich condition for safely incubating intelligent life, is that I would like to see what other types of intelligent life can be created. The question is: what other / how many other types of intelligent life are possible?

All scientific answers result from a person having a subjective reason for wanting to pursue an answer (I want to because of x y z). They obviously don't just magically spring out of nowhere, the goal is set by the self-interest of the person acting on it.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#174

Post by the_doctah »

guidoism wrote: post #69
bsedlm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but why are you so adamant on making everybody so perfectly safe? there used to be something about freedom and risk; heck, about life and risk. it's risky to be alive but it was more risky live way back in the day at what point does safety begin to stifle the drive to live? we as humans originally evolved in a risky environment, we thrived in it, we made it safer for ourselves; but maybe, just maybe, we also acquired…

Less about making those people safe and more about making you safe by making those other not spread the disease to you. For example: Go ahead and drive drunk, I don’t care, just do it on your private property so you don’t kill me. Similarly: Go and don’t get vaxed, honestly I don’t care. But viruses don’t respect borders like cars do, so if you are going to do it then make sure you are isolated on a private island wh…

Vaccines don't prevent spread of Covid.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#175

Post by marcosdumay »

UnFleshedOne wrote: post #51
jvanderbot wrote: post #26

The underlying issue, and one that bugs the hell out of me, is Policy vs Truth. You can say true things all day, and convince nobody. You can enact policy based completely on Truth (e.g., Trust the Science), and completely fail. People don't care about Truth, they care about what changes they need to make, and who is asking them to make them. Good policy is only partially based on truth, it's more based on easy imple…

While practical and maybe inevitable, this approach will alienate exactly the kind of people you want on your side if you want to _actually_ reach your goal and course correct when needed. Instead you will attract people who will happily pretend to be on the right path and will keep performing rain dances on titanic. What you propose can work if it is a technocratic conspiracy where people who know what's going on ma…

Technocratic conspiracies always fall very quickly to the mid-rank rain-dancing people unless the rain dancing is really complex and has really visible effects.

It's not even something to see as a risk, it's certainty.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#176

Post by Nevermark »

mrfusion wrote: post #115
calibas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, when people are talking about helping "the Planet" they're not talking about lifeless rocks, they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet. And by balance I mean not precipitating another extinction event. Sure, they're going to happen anyway eventually, but we probably shouldn't cause an extra one if we don't have to...

> they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet. Do we know for sure that climate change will decrease diversity? I’d imagine making colder areas of the planet warmer would allow more life to thrive. I mean compare now to the last ice age. Surely there’s more life now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally on board with team climate so I hope this doesn’t come across as blasphemy.

Any fast change to the global environments is going to cause more extinctions than speciations. That is loss of diversity.

Their is no minimal time for extinctions, whereas the time to speciate significantly requires hundreds of thousands or millions of years.

Having the climate change in conjunction with pouring plastic into the environment, the CO2 effects on ocean life, overfishing, destruction of wild land and life, chemicals leaking into the environment, etc - and the problem multiplies.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#177

Post by Nevermark »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #59
calibas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, when people are talking about helping "the Planet" they're not talking about lifeless rocks, they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet. And by balance I mean not precipitating another extinction event. Sure, they're going to happen anyway eventually, but we probably shouldn't cause an extra one if we don't have to...

After the dinosaurs were wiped out, millions of new species evolved. So causing a climate disaster that wipes out humans scores higher on the "diversity of life" scale than keeping humans alive. Live evolves. The Planet, "Planet" here as Gaia, will survive our extinction.

Humans making it to other habitats beyond Earth will likely set off new explosions of diversity (in geological time) than another reset on Earth.

In contrast, if Earth life doesn't achieve the ability to colonize other bodies, it is doomed to have diversity of zero once the Sun expands, if a global natural disaster doesn't kill all life before then.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#178

Post by czbond »

Even if G*d didn't exist, one probably can't prove either way. So, from a risk/reward payoff, it seems believing is a higher payoff than not.

And from a purely emotionless approach, if you're a Western religion (Christian) you don't have a high bar to cross. Just believe, no deeds or acts are required.

That is a high ROI trade either way.

[Edit: I am not endorsing a specific Western Religion, I'm giving an example. I don't know Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, etc enough to say what the bare minimum is]

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#179

Post by the_doctah »

shkkmo wrote: post #165
taejavu wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's claiming that? My impression is that official sources are now acknowledging it does nothing but lessen the chance of serious illness & hospitalisation for the person taking it.

That claim is pretty widespread and ubiquitous among the scientific literature. You might consider reassessing your news sources if they have been telling you otherwise. I believe that the emphasis on the reduction of the chance of serious illness & hospitalization is because people believe that all the people who would be motivated to get vaccinated out of altruism are already vaccinated.

Pretty crazy how every single vaccinated person I know has tested positive for Covid since. I guess I and they must be outliers.

If there is some protection from spread, it's garbage protection.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#180

Post by corndoge »

czbond wrote: post #178

Even if G*d didn't exist, one probably can't prove either way. So, from a risk/reward payoff, it seems believing is a higher payoff than not. And from a purely emotionless approach, if you're a Western religion (Christian) you don't have a high bar to cross. Just believe, no deeds or acts are required. That is a high ROI trade either way. [Edit: I am not endorsing a specific Western Religion, I'm giving an example. I…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager
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