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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

#291

Post by ClumsyPilot »

WalterBright wrote: post #284
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you are admiring Darwinism, keep in mind that all-natural ecosystem collapse is a thing, and 6 all-natural mass extinction events had >90% of all living things disappear.

> 6 all-natural mass extinction events Are you sure about that? Or have people just not discovered the cause yet? Pick one, let's explore it.

Sure, the Oxygen Catastrophe, 2.3 billion years ago.

I do, wonder, given that all the extinctions happened before humans existed, what possible alternative to 'natural' could there be, aliens?

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#292

Post by reducesuffering »

seoaeu wrote: post #129
reducesuffering wrote: post #98

You're the (US) government. You want to prevent deaths from Covid. Research keeps generally concluding that previous Covid infection natural immunity is roughly as good as vaccine induced. You realize if you message this to the public and allow equality to vax-passes, never-vax people will be incentivized to now try and get covid so they can be restriction-less without being vaxxed, further spreading covid. You decid…

Is anyone really surprised by this? All evidence suggests that getting the vaccine strictly increases your immunity to Covid, even if you've already had the disease.

Definitely but unfortunately minimally. In a hypothetical world of 67% vaccine induced and 80% previous infection (hard to know the actual), we would have people more fearful of being around the 80%'s than the 67%'s. If so, we have a similar noble lie situation as the Mar 2020 "masks don't work", where we are so focused on getting the 80% to 85% (and other dilemmas alluded to by my previous comment) we are damaging trust with possibly worse knock on effects.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#293

Post by heavyset_go »

tshaddox wrote: post #143
danblick wrote: post #83

The author presents the idea that "you may be born into a culture with social practices that you don't understand but that work for your benefit; they may work better if you don't understand them!" I find this idea a little repellant, but it's something Friedrich Hayek wrote about too. (In my mind Hayek is the person most associated with distributed knowledge.) ~"You may not understand the forces that have led societ…

This sentiment seems completely useless (actually incredibly dangerous) without at least some attempt at explaining how we might distinguish between aspects of society which seem terrible but are actually secretly good even though no one knows why, and aspects of society which seem terrible because they're terrible.

The only time I've seen the quote, or similar ones to it, trotted out is to imply that the person being addressed by it is ignorant or doesn't understand something. It's an easy way to dismiss facts or arguments without really considering or addressing them in good faith.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#294

Post by GhettoComputers »

danblick wrote: post #83

The author presents the idea that "you may be born into a culture with social practices that you don't understand but that work for your benefit; they may work better if you don't understand them!" I find this idea a little repellant, but it's something Friedrich Hayek wrote about too. (In my mind Hayek is the person most associated with distributed knowledge.) ~"You may not understand the forces that have led societ…

I don't know if its related, but I think of taxes. It may be rational for one person to not pay taxes, but if everyone was "rational" it would be disastrous for society.

> (In my mind Hayek is the person most associated with distributed knowledge.)

Why do you say that? What does it mean? I think of the internet, but not a person, I always thought of him as a free market economist. When I think of individual and society, I think of Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents where the individual can never be free.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#295

Post by jhanschoo »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #249
imgabe wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you've already gotten the shot, you're protected from the disease. So, what is someone else not getting the shot going to do to you?

This ^. If the shots are truly protective, I don't understand what the hubbub is all about. Is it really all about protecting those who truly can't get the shot for whatever reason? I doubt it.

If you catch the flu once your immune system remembers it and can easily deal with exposure much better, but this memory fades in time. Your immune system isn't perfect either, and there are breakthrough cases, and this is more frequent in the elderly, albeit frequently milder. The vaccine offers protection similar to catching the flu (albeit much better in the case of the mRNA and J&J ones (I'm disappointed I'm explaining this, I thought it's common knowledge that vaccines offer great protection but not invulnerability.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#296

Post by BurningFrog »

llbeansandrice wrote: post #283
BurningFrog wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You ask a difficult and important question. The two relevant ideas I know are: 1. Chesterton's Fence: "I don't understand why this exists, so let's tear it down" is an big and tempting error. Wait until you understand. 2. Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable, which is why revolutions usually end in tragedy. The sane approach is to change society incrementally, see what happens, and adjust and lea…

Perhaps I'm being too US-centric but I feel like you at-best mean conservatism with a lower-case 'c'. Even then the very definition of conservatism explicitly avoids any change: > commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change or innovation I've never known conservatism to be anything except opposition to change as that's the most conservative thing you can generally do: nothing.

I called it "the sane version of Conservatism". There are many others. Political scientists probably have a more specific name for mine. I should learn that some day.

Yeah, many people with very different ideas call themselves conservatives.

> I've never known conservatism to be anything except opposition to change as that's the most conservative thing you can generally do: nothing.

Have you never known conservatives wanting to lower taxes, deregulate the economy, and decentralize decision making?

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#297

Post by ClumsyPilot »

pdonis wrote: post #271
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Consequences of societal change are inherently unknowable" Let's imagine for a second that we really believe is this idea - society is in a fragile equilibrium, and any change is dangerous and could be for the worse. Well, first obvious effect is that any change regarding woman rights, etc. would not have happened the way it did. That's in line with the Conservative viewpoint. But more importantly, the society chang…

> society is in a fragile equilibrium, and any change is dangerous and could be for the worse. That's not what the GP said. He only said the consequences of societal change are unknowable. That doesn't mean we should never change society because we're afraid it will break. It means we should change society slowly, gradually, recognizing the limitations of our knowledge, instead of forming grandiose plans and trying t…

> "Women didn't insist all at once on changing everything"

Are you sure about that? I think they felt quite strongly about their cause

"The suffragettes had invented the letter bomb, a device intended to kill or injure the recipient, and an increasing amount began to be posted... the former home of MP Arthur Du Cros was burned down. Du Cros had consistently voted against the enfranchisement of women, which was why he had been chosen as a target"

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#298

Post by cipheredStones »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #128
vmception wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1% decrease doesn't diminish their size and political influence substantially, even of the disproportionate elderly population. Then only a fraction of the remainders that lose a loved one would re-evaluate, a large fraction of them would still be bounced back when they realize the other ideas "your group" inherits is even harder to accept as a personality trait. Most of them will inherit just enough to not think fur…

IIRC some swing states were decided by less than 1%?

That would be Arizona (0.31%), Georgia (0.24%), and Wisconsin (0.63%), with 37 electoral votes collectively. The total margin in all those states combined was only about 42k votes.

If Trump had won all of those instead, there would have been an electoral college tie, which would have resulted in the House deciding on a one-vote-per-state basis. It wouldn't have been pretty.

Biden also won Pennsylvania, with its 20 electoral votes, by 1.16%.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#299

Post by rmckayfleming »

63 wrote: post #31
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…

>I've tried to explain this to people, and I've been met with blank stares from even the most intelligent folks. That's definitely an experience I've had with similar topics. I particularly remember talking to a friend who I generally respect and admire about something that isn't socially acceptable for no obvious reason, and upon explaining my thoughts and asking what the deal was with it, they completely shut down…

>...about something that isn't socially acceptable for no obvious reason...

What was the thing?

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#300

Post by mjklin »

mjlawson wrote: post #39

This reminds me of a set of poems, Knots, by R.D. Laing, the first of which goes: > They are playing a game > They are playing, at not playing a game > If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. > I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game. It's a lovely collection, and though I haven't thought about it recently, I think there's a lot of value in considering these kinds…

> The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes,

> But Here or There as strikes the Player goes;

> And He that toss'd you down into the Field,

> He knows about it all — He knows — He knows!

- Omar Khayyam

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