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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

#341

Post by zwkrt »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #242

This reminds me of CEO-speak. A CEO cannot speak their true mind or their true assessment of a situation. They can't say "wow we're in trouble here" because then people will jump ship and then the company will be even more in trouble (and the CEO would get sued for breaching Fiduciary Duty) What a CEO says is merely wishful thinking for a goal they want people to follow. They can never speak their true plan. (And of…

This reminds me of the Wallfacers in the Three Body Problem, the (totally contrived) leaders of humanity that for plot reasons must plan to save humanity from the aliens without ever elucidating what the plan is so the aliens can’t figure it out.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#342

Post by Ensorceled »

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.

The shots are NOT truly protective.

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine has an effectiveness of about 91%. That means in about 9% of cases it is not protective.

I'm amazed we are this deep into this pandemic and people still have black and white thinking wrt to vaccinces.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#343

Post by arrosenberg »

akiselev wrote: post #328
llbeansandrice wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even in the US that's a very uncharitable interpretation of conservatism that sounds like something I'd say in the heat of a Thanksgiving dinner argument. The more charitable one is called "progressive conservatism". Progressive conservatives believe, among other things, that "instant change is not always the best and can sometimes be damaging to society, therefore cautious change that fits in with the nation's socia…

Eh, I agree the GOP is reactionary rather than conservative, but I think this is an equal charitable take, especially this statement -

> It's the checks and balances that keep our (ostensible) democracy functioning.

I'm a fan of TR and Eisenhower to a lesser extent, so this isn't exactly a criticism. The US Constitution was definitely founded under the model you describe, but those things aren't necessarily indivisible from each other. The progressive conservatism you defined is a commitment to a hierarchical model of liberalism. Many of the achievements of both Roosevelts and Eisenhower were in the name of warding off Socialist and Communist movements in the early and mid 20th century. They were progressive in giving more rights and services to the common person (well, some of them, some of the time) and conservative in maintaining the ability of the wealthy to continue on with their necks and bank balances intact.

Although some of the critiques of conservative liberalism (as opposed to the historical, royalist conservatism) can be waved off as "the Republicans aren't actually conservative any more", there is a still a valid critique to be made if you believe that 250 years is more than enough time to embrace a more egalitarian model.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#344

Post by Rebelgecko »

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%?

There was an interesting situation in New York. After the 2020 census, they lost a seat in Congress because their population size shrunk proportional to the rest of the country's. If New York had just avoided 2 or 3 of the larger nursing home COVID outbreaks, they'd have kept the seat.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#345

Post by cortesoft »

GhettoComputers wrote: post #294
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 socie…

I think you are talking about the problem of Collective Action and the Free Rider problem... I think they are a little different, because those are situations about needing to cooperate for the best outcome, but having no way to enforce cooperation while having individual incentives to not cooperate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#346

Post by underwater »

akiselev wrote: post #328
llbeansandrice wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even in the US that's a very uncharitable interpretation of conservatism that sounds like something I'd say in the heat of a Thanksgiving dinner argument. The more charitable one is called "progressive conservatism". Progressive conservatives believe, among other things, that "instant change is not always the best and can sometimes be damaging to society, therefore cautious change that fits in with the nation's socia…

The differentiator between conservatism and progressivism is whether you seek societal change. If you believe that change should happens incrementally then you're a progressive. The examples you've given just sound like branding.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#347

Post by chii »

xvilka wrote: post #275
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…

There are two ways to improve situation, both are for the very far future (assuming humanity will survive long enough). Either change the human brain itself artificially, to remove hacks and shortcuts made by the mother nature, and make people really rational (I am not speaking about removing emotions, just removing their ability to cloud the judgement) and with minimum of cognitive biases and fallacies, or to make a…

> change the human brain itself artificially

so you're saying what basically amounts to eugenics (but instead of race, it's based on some other criteria) is required to "correct" humanity.

Or for an AGI, a higher being of infinite wisdom to rule over humanity (aka, losing freedom of action).

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#348

Post by noisy_boy »

imgabe wrote: post #208
guidoism wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

What it will do is that when those people who haven't got the shots start to be sick, they will throw their beliefs in the bin and go to the hospital. They will stretch the capacity and then when I need to go for an ailment different from this disease, I'll be queued up behind them and the treatment I get would be subpar. Disclaimer: I don't have the stats on hospitalization rates/capacity in places that have low rates of vaccination but high rates of infection.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#349

Post by ip26 »

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…

The comparison of different voting systems is what clued me in to this. A number of "generally" more optimal voting systems have degenerate outcomes in certain edge cases which would lead to poor acceptability. It's not enough to have an optimal voting system- people also need to find the outcome somewhat acceptable to consent to the result.

The current two-party-first-past-the-post system in the US is an example that is not especially optimal, but does pretty well on acceptability of outcome. People get mad their candidate lost, argue about voter fraud, argue about the electoral college... But the system never produces a selection people see as flat-out broken & invalid, unlike some more optimal systems. That is a pretty important feature.

Re: Plans you're not supposed to talk about

#350

Post by tomjakubowski »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #344
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There was an interesting situation in New York. After the 2020 census, they lost a seat in Congress because their population size shrunk proportional to the rest of the country's. If New York had just avoided 2 or 3 of the larger nursing home COVID outbreaks, they'd have kept the seat.

Very roughly, there's a House seat per 750,000 people in the US. They were really close enough that a couple nursing home populations (in the hundreds) made the difference?

Yes, by 89 people. Incredible.

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