Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start • Hacker News Board

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#61

Post by na85 » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:28 PM UTC

bigbubba wrote: post #22

na85 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Destroying the aircraft in mid air isn't really the threat any more, though. The threat is using the airplane and its occupants as unwilling kamikaze weapons as in 9/11, and with the armored doors on the flight deck now it's unlikely the aircrew will allow the aircraft to be hijacked no matter what you bring on board. There's a reason the flight attendants stand in front of the door when the pilots have to use the wa…

Shoes are obstensibly removed to prevent the destruction of planes, not their hijacking. The problem of planes being hijacked was solved around 10am on 2001/9/11, before the government got involved. And if passengers fighting back isn't enough, locked cabin doors should be. Incidentally, passengers kicked the shit out of the would-be shoe bomber too.

>Shoes are obstensibly removed to prevent the destruction of planes, not their hijacking.

Perhaps that's the stated reason, but I think you and I both know it's security theatre, just like the "no phones in flight" rule.

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#62

Post by rcoveson » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:30 PM UTC

sheepdestroyer wrote: post #54

rcoveson wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We define the centuries as the periods of 100 years beginning with the multiples of 100 in the year numbering system of the contextual calendar. The definition given by your reference is neither authoritative nor popular. If you follow the definitions advocated by Wikipedia and its collection of sources, you end up in an absurd state where the decades[0] span multiple centuries. It's absurd and does not reflect p…

Why are you counting from 0? What do you mean by not authoriative in this context? This is just how the Gregorian calendar works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini#No_year_zero:_star...

Why are you counting from AD 1, which nobody alive at the time called AD 1?

It's natural to align the decades, centuries, an millennia with a decimal radix. You've got the year digit, the decade digit, the century digit, and the millennium digit. Decades are always talked about this way, e.g. "the 80's", and I'd wager that most people think about centuries and millenniums this way. The fact that the year number is defined as the ordinal year since the approximate birth of Christ, beginning with AD 1, doesn't strike me as particularly relevant.

In other words, I'm not "counting from" anything. I'm describing the decimal year number in a manner that's natural for the radix.

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#63

Post by bigbubba » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:42 PM UTC

na85 wrote: post #61

bigbubba wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shoes are obstensibly removed to prevent the destruction of planes, not their hijacking. The problem of planes being hijacked was solved around 10am on 2001/9/11, before the government got involved. And if passengers fighting back isn't enough, locked cabin doors should be. Incidentally, passengers kicked the shit out of the would-be shoe bomber too.

>Shoes are obstensibly removed to prevent the destruction of planes, not their hijacking. Perhaps that's the stated reason, but I think you and I both know it's security theatre, just like the "no phones in flight" rule.

Yes of course, hence 'obstensibly'. Maybe that's not quite the right word, but I mean the reason claimed by officials, not the true reason.

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#64

Post by jcranmer » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:43 PM UTC

spoondan wrote: post #50

nostromo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something else could easily eclipse Covid-19 I doubt people will talk about Covid-19 much at all by the end of the century. The 1918 flu was much, much worse in total number of deaths, and even worse when you consider how many fewer people existed at that time, and it killed people in the prime of their lives. And by the year 2000 very few people knew about it at all.

Maybe. But a possible contributor for the 1918 flu pandemic's relative obscurity is that it overlapped with World War I and was followed within ~20 years by the Great Depression and World War II. It occurred during one of the most turbulent times in modern history. In contrast, the 2020 pandemic is presently not sharing the spotlight. Maybe something of comparable impact will happen. Or maybe it'll be forgotten regar…

I can only really think of two times in history where we talk about a major disease outbreak: the Black Death, and the Plague of Justinian, and the latter one is really marginal (unless you're covering Late Antiquity in detail, it's going to be unknown). Other than these two, there's the less specific discussion of disease during the New World colonization epoch.

I suspect that COVID-19 will replace the Spanish Flu as the "pandemic everyone talks about when there's a pandemic concern," but this is the sort of mention that requires explanation because it's not really part of the expected repertoire of history the same way the Black Death is.

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#65

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

rcoveson wrote: post #62

sheepdestroyer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you counting from 0? What do you mean by not authoriative in this context? This is just how the Gregorian calendar works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini#No_year_zero:_star...

Why are you counting from AD 1, which nobody alive at the time called AD 1? It's natural to align the decades, centuries, an millennia with a decimal radix. You've got the year digit, the decade digit, the century digit, and the millennium digit. Decades are always talked about this way, e.g. "the 80's", and I'd wager that most people think about centuries and millenniums this way. The fact that the year number is de…

[deleted]

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#66

Post by NoSorryCannot » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

spoondan wrote: post #50

nostromo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something else could easily eclipse Covid-19 I doubt people will talk about Covid-19 much at all by the end of the century. The 1918 flu was much, much worse in total number of deaths, and even worse when you consider how many fewer people existed at that time, and it killed people in the prime of their lives. And by the year 2000 very few people knew about it at all.

Maybe. But a possible contributor for the 1918 flu pandemic's relative obscurity is that it overlapped with World War I and was followed within ~20 years by the Great Depression and World War II. It occurred during one of the most turbulent times in modern history. In contrast, the 2020 pandemic is presently not sharing the spotlight. Maybe something of comparable impact will happen. Or maybe it'll be forgotten regar…

The pandemic is dovetailing in interesting ways with other matters of geopolitical importance. I wouldn't say anything is stealing the spotlight from anything else but the confluence of events makes this moment feel like we might be crossing the Rubicon.

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#67

Post by kthxbye123 » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

kthxbye123 wrote: post #25

It is still a little shocking to me that Peter Thiel can be quoted in mainstream business publications without any note being made of his quite open support for white nationalist hate groups. Not far off from quoting Albert Speer as an architecture critic!

Curious to hear from the downvoters. What about Peter Thiel’s banal punditry justifies overlooking his active and enthusiastic contributions to neo-Nazis?

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#68

Post by mikem170 » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #27

crispyambulance wrote: post #11

The 21st century's "true start" was on New Year's Eve, 2000. Of course, I realize he's talking about defining events that delimit major changes between the previous century and its successor. And more specifically, major changes in what Thiel cares about, like financial markets, start-ups, monopolies, and money in general. But, really, we're only 20% into the century. Something else could easily eclipse Covid-19 even…

> Something else could easily eclipse Covid-19 I doubt people will talk about Covid-19 much at all by the end of the century. The 1918 flu was much, much worse in total number of deaths, and even worse when you consider how many fewer people existed at that time, and it killed people in the prime of their lives. And by the year 2000 very few people knew about it at all.

Agreed. The 1968 hong-kong flu killed between 1 and 4 million people. Nobody talks about that now. They didn't talk about it much then, either. Woodstock, which happened during that flu season, gets talked about more.

With this latest surge per-capita deaths from covid19 just passed the low end of the 1968 flu estimates.

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#69

Post by disown » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

taf2 wrote: post #52

rhacker wrote: post #48

I don't know why one would think so, 100 years after the spanish flu, it's barely a footnote that, let's be honest, most people that frequent this board hadn't heard of before covid-19. I think one would mark the previous century as either the great depression or wwii. I don't think in 100 years covid will have any lasting effect on the 25-45 year olds of the 2120 crowd (and we'll all be close to death). Besides they…

You don’t think the 20th century will also be remembered for landing on the moon, the birth of computing and penicillin?

It depends on who does the remembering.

Re: Peter Thiel Says Covid Marks 21st Century’s True Start

#70

Post by mikem170 » Mon, Dec 07, 2020, 10:21 PM UTC

techelite wrote: post #57

I'm more curious what caused the wave of populism in the late 2010s. Was it really Russian propagandists on social media? COVID will be gone in a year or 2, but the economic damage may cause things to be worse. My best hope is a reform of the medical cartels, but that is wishful thinking in the face of a billion dollar lobbyist group.

It was the great recession.

I remember reading at the time that it is typical for there to be populist right wing movements after economic calamities, same as happened after the great depression.