[HN Gopher] Plans you're not supposed to talk about ___________________________________________________________________ Plans you're not supposed to talk about Author : dynm Score : 193 points Date : 2021-12-14 17:34 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (dynomight.net) (TXT) w3m dump (dynomight.net) | bradhe wrote: | man that was painful to read | 63 wrote: | Can you expand on that? There were definitely some parts I | didn't understand or agree with, but the main idea seemed | interesting. | Supermancho wrote: | In some cases it tried to make observations in an objective | or granular way, while at the same time mixing in sweeping | generalizations and hand waving, | | > You're in love. | | > Critically, you get everyone to agree that it's gauche to | discuss the strategic logic of all this. | | I'm thinking no. Lots of people talk about the expense of | marriage. Some go so far as to say "it's just a piece of | paper". Everyone doesn't agree there is strategic loss or | that "you're in love" is a singular recognizable concept to | justifies anything in particular. | | > You secretly guess that the group is sustained by a | minority of true believers who make up critical mass for a | larger group of people you, but you never talk about this and | neither does anyone else. | | Nobody talks about this except every atheist from high school | forward. Rather than have a nuanced or an informed insightful | analysis we get these short statements that both seemed lazy | and misrepresenting a supposed underlying zeitgeist. | | etc | | It's like reading an antivax manifesto. | vmception wrote: | I got something different out of both of your examples. | | Its not that many people talk about the expense of | marriage, its that people would invalidate the people who | talk about the financial intertwining and folly of marriage | as both a cultural institution or contract. | | Just like you pointed out that only people in the religion | of anti-religion are the ones who talk ad nauseum about it, | instead of just being non-religious people. | recursive wrote: | I felt nothing, except intrigued. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | As an authorial technique starting off with a just so story about | how marriage came to be that lasts several paragraphs and is | obviously not at all how marriage came to be and doesn't even | have the excuse of referencing some sort of supernatural source | for being wrong might seem interesting but bored me too much to | continue. | | I'm supposing the rest of it is also wrong and badly argued. | gipp wrote: | It is not talking literally about how marriage came to be. It | is just laying out a set of incentives that probably play a | role in the success of marriage as an institution. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | It's written in the same vein as "Body Ritual among the | Nacirema" [1]. (Read it. Then read the Wikipedia article.) | | [1] | https://www.sfu.ca/~palys/Miner-1956-BodyRitualAmongTheNacir... | danblick wrote: | 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 society to be organized the way that it | is, but you should respect that sometimes the order of things | reflects knowledge you may not have." | | One of his essays on this topic was "Individualism: True and | False": | | """This brings me to my second point: the necessity, in any | complex society in which the effects of anyone's action reach far | beyond his possible range of vision, of the individual submitting | to the anonymous and seemingly irrational forces of society--a | submission which must include not only the acceptance of rules of | behavior as valid without examining what depends in the | particular instance on their being observed but also a readiness | to adjust himself to changes which may profoundly affect his | fortunes and opportunities and the causes of which may be | altogether unintelligible to him.""" | | https://fee.org/articles/individualism-true-and-false/ | jfrunyon wrote: | > At a time when most movements that are thought to be | progressive advocate further encroachments on individual | liberty | | LOL okay I literally can't go any further than the first | sentence. Very good much wow so projection. | | I like the document title, though. "Microsoft Word - | Document1". Very classy. | generalizations wrote: | Didn't even bother to read the citation for that statement? | | > This has now been true for over a century, and as early as | 1855 J. S. Mill could say (see my John Stuart Mill and | Harriet Taylor [London and Chicago, 1951], p. 216) that | "almost all the projects of social reformers of these days | are really liberticide." | | > I like the document title, though. "Microsoft Word - | Document1". Very classy. | | Textbook example of an ad homenim. | jandrese wrote: | That's pretty loaded language, but it makes sense. | | When an area is sparsely populated it doesn't matter as | much how people behave. They aren't harming other people | because there are none around. | | As the population density increases the same actions like | emitting pollution of one kind or another (air, sound, | light, etc...) becomes a problem and all of the other | people come together to ask you to stop, thus infringing on | your liberties. | | All of society is just people trying to get along with your | neighbors. The more people you live near with the harder it | is to stay on good relations with all of them. As the | population continues to grow it becomes increasingly | difficult to not live near other people, effectively | impossible for an ever growing percentage of the | population. | | Some of this may even partially explain the rural/urban | divide in politics. | calibas wrote: | >Cutting back on CO2 emissions would clearly work, but it's | expensive and painful. | | This is so painfully backwards. "Saving the Planet" doesn't mean | spending tons of money and doing tons of work, quite the | opposite. The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for | every human being to do nothing at all. Stop driving, stop | working, stop eating entirely, and then things will quickly | recover. Obviously that's a bit extreme, but it's to illustrate | that less activity, not more, is what's best for the Planet. | | It's so odd that all our frantic doing is what's thrown the | Planet out of balance, and for some reason we think we're going | to fix things by doing even more. The less active and industrious | human beings are, the less they obsess over money and work, the | less taxing we are on the Planet. | lowbloodsugar wrote: | >Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then | things will quickly recover. | | ... after "stop eating", stop breathing will soon follow. Why | don't you go first? Why haven't you gone first already? Is it | because humans just don't work like that? At all? | | I mean, thanks. Your argument demonstrates precisely why "make | less CO2" will never work: You believe it, and yet even you are | still breathing. | | (please don't stop breathing. i don't think your suggestion is | serious, so neither is mine). | joshxyz wrote: | Haha this is nice, really a question of how much we live in | excess and if do we really have enough for everybody in a | sustainable manner | mdavis6890 wrote: | This is a bit like saying that the planet would be better off | without humans. And maybe that's what you believe, I don't | know. It might even be true! | | But I don't care: I'm a human and I love other humans and I | want humans to prosper as much as possible. Which requires | activity which contributes to our shared prosperity. Ideally | that prosperity would also include a nice planet to live on | though. Earth is a reasonable choice. | gumby wrote: | > The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every | human being to do nothing at all. | | Actually the planet doesn't give a shit either way. People have | been busy changing it, and it has simply reacted. Now they are | selfishly unhappy with it because it's less congenial than it | used to be for vertebrates, or specifically humans. They just | want an earth that will support them in continuing to do the | things they want.* | | Perhaps in 30 megayears the cockroach archeologists will marvel | at all the weird endoskeletal animals in the fossil record and | wonder if any of them were intelligent. | | * this is why I don't like population-based arguments about the | climate. If you believe the earth should be optimized for | humans, how can you simultaneously say "but only for these | ones?" Making people is an activity some people choose to do. | abyssin wrote: | The practical issue for me is: how to do less and still feel | like I'm a member of a functional group of people? Doing less | is easy. Being part of a group of people that do little is | doable. But I've yet to find such a group that isn't made of | crazies or depressive people. | | Doing stuff and consuming resources and _spending_ is a | religion. We don't have temples to make offerings. Our entire | cultural environment is dedicated to the symbolic activity of | producing and sacrificing. Taking part in it is a requirement | to be recognized as a legitimate member of society. Problems | that are seen as legit are all related to this religious | endeavour. | kragen wrote: | We can divide possible strategies into four groups: those that | help the ecosystem and hurt humans in the short term (like your | extreme example), those that hurt the ecosystem and hurt humans | in the short term (like nuclear war or Agent Orange), those | that help the ecosystem and help humans in the short term (like | moving from fossil fuels to solar), and those that hurt the | ecosystem and help humans in the short term (like expanding the | use of fossil fuels). (And of course there are many things that | are on the borderline.) | | You are setting up an opposition between strategy groups 1 and | 4, but ignoring the existence of the other two groups. But | group 3, the Bright Green group, is where all the action is! | majormajor wrote: | Let's get even more pedantic! | | "Save the planet" is misleading entirely: the planet isn't | going anywhere. It will survive extinction events. | | "Preserve nonhuman species and the current state of the | environment" is where your "get rid of all the humans and their | activity" proposal would fit. | | But is that actually what anyone wants? The real goal for most | people would be, I wager, much more like: "Preserve both human | and non-human life, with 21st-century-wealthy-country- | standards-of-living, and also preserve the current state of the | environment." | | In short: you're making "save the planet" into a very | particular strawman that misrepresents what people who say it | mean. | calibas wrote: | So when people say "save the planet" they also mean | preserving a completely unsustainable standard of living? I | disagree, but if I wanted a strawman to shoot down that's a | good one. | | To be clear, I meant protecting the current ecosystems and I | don't believe we need to regress or eliminate the human race | to do that either. | jandrese wrote: | How about transforming an unsustainable standard of living | into a sustainable one? | | "Kill all humans" is so defeatist. So is "kill most humans | and go back to being hunter/gatherers". That's not even | trying. That is flipping the board because you think you're | losing. | jeffreyrogers wrote: | > The absolute best thing for the Planet would be for every | human being to do nothing at all. | | The planet doesn't care what lives on it or if anything lives | at all. There is no best for the planet outside of goals humans | set for it. | | > It's so odd that all our frantic doing is what's thrown the | Planet out of balance | | The planet has never been in balance. And even if we stop | anthropogenic climate change something else will throw the | planet out of balance again too. | calibas wrote: | 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... | tshaddox wrote: | Humans might indeed cause one or more large extinction | events, but there are also several known causes (and | perhaps many more unknown ones we could discover) of large | extinction events which seem to be unpreventable except | through the actions of humans (or another intelligent and | technological species). If you were to permanently halt all | technological progress now, or perhaps revert to before | nuclear weapons or even before the industrial revolution, | you could prevent extinction events from, say, human-caused | climate change, nuclear war, or Skynet. But you'd also | effectively guarantee some other eventual extinction event, | perhaps from an asteroid impact, a supernova, or any number | of phenomena we haven't even discovered yet. | lowbloodsugar wrote: | 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. | mrfusion wrote: | > 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. | vasco wrote: | > 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. | | I disagree, I think this is the virtue signaling projection | but most people only care about global warming because they | think there's a non negligible chance they'll see real | impacts _on their own quality of life_ either during their | life or during the life of their direct offspring. I think | there's likely plenty of individuals who truly value | biodiversity but with all the evidence around us I'm pretty | sure the majority doesn't actually care about saving even a | non-cute mammal, much less actual diversity like thousands | of species of insects or bees or whatever. | JackFr wrote: | > 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.) | cesaref wrote: | I'd suggest you dig out and read a copy of James Lovelock's | Gaia Hypothesis. It's obviously all new age whackery, but the | more you read about it the more sense you'll see in it. | Definitely worth tracking down. | sieabahlpark wrote: | > Stop driving, stop working, stop eating entirely, and then | things will quickly recover. Obviously that's a bit extreme, | but it's to illustrate that less activity, not more, is what's | best for the Planet. | | How do I get the food without a currency I earn at work? | | Will I be given perpetually free stuff from some benevolent | government? I believe I've heard that pitch before and it | hasn't ever worked and never will. | | This is a nonstarter and completely disregards just how the | world actually works. | dejj wrote: | If by: | | > do nothing at all. Stop driving, stop working, stop eating | entirely, and then things will quickly recover. | | you mean: let humans go extinct. Then yes, that would work. It | has the elegance of Multivac's answer to Asimov's "The last | question" | | "And it came to pass that AC learned how to reverse the | direction of entropy. | | But there was now no man to whom AC might give the answer of | the last question. No matter. The answer -- by demonstration -- | would take care of that, too." | sushisource wrote: | IMO this is technically true in a totally uninteresting way. | | People aren't going to stop doing stuff. That's just fairly | obviously not really on the table, despite the minority of | people who are into ideas of going back to some pre-modern | agrarian societal model. | | So, how do we let people continue to do stuff without totally | messing up the planet? That's the crucial question humanity is | interested in solving (or, maybe more accurately, needs to | solve). | LAC-Tech wrote: | I mean we could do _less_. | | COVID showed that (a lot of us ) really don't need to be | commuting and flying all that much. It's tragic that | 'society' wasted a perfectly good pandemic by not learning | any of the things it showed us. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _COVID showed that (a lot of us ) really don 't need to | be commuting and flying all that much. It's tragic that | 'society' wasted a perfectly good pandemic by not learning | any of the things it showed us._ | | I'm flying a lot more post Covid. It showed me how precious | travel and meeting people face to face and experiencing new | cultures is. Based on current air travel statistics, I'm | not alone. | rkk3 wrote: | If anything I was more surprised at the lack of impact. | Emissions only fell by around 6.4% | | https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00090-3 | haswell wrote: | I think it's interesting, and here's why. | | Think about this as it relates to other common problems | humans face like debt or the need to lose weight. | | I can put all of my energy and focus into making more money | so I can get my debt under control, but that won't matter if | I have really bad spending habits. | | I can put all of my energy into exercising more and burning | the calories I take in, but that won't matter if I'm eating | more calories than I can reasonably burn in a day. | | I'd argue that doing less is still doing something. It's just | looking for a solution in a different place. It's focusing on | the cause, instead of trying to put a band-aid on the effect. | | This falls into the category of "low hanging fruit", and one | of the easiest potential sources of meaningful change. | Inventing new things, increasing energy efficiency, etc. are | all possible optimizations, but are not guaranteed. Eating | less, spending less, and burning less energy are all but | guaranteed to have a positive result. | | The real question of interest is now: how much are people | willing to not do? | Dylan16807 wrote: | For something like spending or calories, you probably have | to cut back under 20% or under 10%, and even that is hard | enough on its own. | | Trying to simply cut back for CO2 needs something like a | 90% reduction to actually solve things. It could | theoretically work but it very quickly hits diminishing | returns and becomes a bad allocation of effort. Projects | like actively replacing all our power plants, and making | sure all cars have a minimum electric range, are much more | "low hanging fruit" than trying to directly cut consumption | that far. | ethanbond wrote: | Well I'll take a stab at this one: | | Privileged folks like those on HN will not cut back much. | Folks who are _already_ being forced to cut back will | continue to do so, and with massive amounts of suffering. | | Really a simple solution! | haswell wrote: | This is rather pessimistic, trivializes the argument and | assumes that it's directed only at individuals. | | Doing less doesn't have to mean it's only an individual's | responsibility. Applying this more broadly, doing less is | a category of potential solutions to much bigger | problems. | | Relying on individuals will never move the needle very | far. | ethanbond wrote: | This is the opposite of assuming it's directed only at | individuals. I'm saying we are _already_ doing this, | systematically, at massive scale. What it looks like is | people fleeing particular regions, turned from farmer or | industrial worker to... "doing less." It looks like mass | migration and failed states. This happens either because | the economics cease to make sense (the sort of levers any | systematic solution would have available), or ecological | facts require it (the sort of solution that will be | forced upon us in lieu of action). | | In either case, it's clear that the "doing less" | approaches are bound to start with the people who are | already doing the least. | calibas wrote: | This seems to be the standard response, I've certainly heard | it before, but all I'm suggesting is doing less. I'm not a | luddite, I'm not arguing for a "pre-modern agrarian societal | model", I'm arguing for a post-modern agrarian society that | balances technology, industry and the ecosystem. | | We consume enormously more than we need, and far more than | the Planet can handle. I feel like the one of the few sane | people when I'm saying it's imperative that we lower our | consumption right now. | slg wrote: | Funny enough you are falling into a similar situation as | item 5 from that list. You are "pushing a view that has | absolutely no advantage to anyone". You feel like one of | the few sane people because you are of course technically | right. However no one will listen to you because "even if | that's true, there's no profit in thinking about it" as it | is currently impossible from a societal standpoint. There | is no way to get a critical mass of people to return to an | agrarian society until they have no other real choice | because collectively modern consumption makes our | individual lives more enjoyable. That is why reducing | emissions is expensive and painful because the cheap and | easy answer of just not consuming isn't feasible. | Swenrekcah wrote: | Some part of modern consumption however is not really | making lives any more enjoyable at all, for instance all | the low quality clothes and items sold in large | quantities to fill some internal void for people for a | short while. | | If there was for instance a carbon tax on the raw | materials and transport then I'm fairly sure the price | difference between high quality and low quality items | would become minimal so people would start buying more | sensibly for the planet because our systems would make it | more sensible for them individually. | slg wrote: | >to fill some internal void for people for a short while. | | You just answered your own point there. It makes people | happy. Maybe that feeling is fleeting, but it is still a | good feeling that people will not give up voluntarily | unless there are no other options. | | >If there was for instance a carbon tax on the raw | materials and transport then I'm fairly sure the price | difference between high quality and low quality items | would become minimal so people would start buying more | sensibly for the planet because our systems would make it | more sensible for them individually. | | I don't disagree, but a carbon tax is in the expensive | and painful bucket above not the cheap and easy one. It | makes the low quality goods more expensive so people | consume less of them. That is not people voluntarily | giving up those good for the benefit of the planet. | Swenrekcah wrote: | Nah, I don't buy that. People wouldn't be "giving up" | anything for the benefit of the planet by not buying a | new pair of shoes every month or something. It would | actually be for their own benefit to be more content. | | That's kind of the whole problem, the people who would | lose are the sellers and advertisers who cultivate the | insecurities in discontent people for their own benefit, | not the consumers. | calibas wrote: | >You are "pushing a view that has absolutely no advantage | to anyone". | | Really? I'm of the opinion that doing less, working less, | and doing things like having your own garden would lead | to much greater health and happiness for the average | person. The only way I can see "no advantage" is when | viewed through the lens of modern capitalism, then my | suggestions are certainly blasphemous. | strictured wrote: | You're ignoring his more important point that you will | not be able to get the critical mass necessary to make it | useful and true on a collective/societal level. Believing | that you can ask people to work less, and that the lost | income (and subsequently access to critical resources | like food) can somehow be supplemented with a garden that | many people wouldn't even have access to the space | necessary to implement, betrays a lack of understanding | of the economic situation of most people. How many proles | rent rather than own, and how may have access to fertile | ground? | rpdillon wrote: | It's not they're blasphemous, it's that there's no clear | way to incentivize a critical mass to change their | behavior. Put another way: the destination is clear | enough, but how to get there isn't. Reminds me a bit of | nuclear disarmament. | slg wrote: | Exactly, it is more the transition that is impossible | rather than the end state. You can't tell people to give | up international travel, visiting family members, eating | non-local foods, air conditioning, and the overwhelming | majority of society's leisure activities and replace it | all with gardening. Maybe that is a desirable end result | that would be healthier for both humanity and the planet, | but there is no way to get there voluntarily. That is | just asking people to give up too much. | [deleted] | mrfusion wrote: | Neat article. I don't understand what he's saying for number 4 | though. | imwillofficial wrote: | This article is a sad way to look at the world | Noumenon72 wrote: | Executing strategy #5, I see. | imwillofficial wrote: | No, it's empathy. There is something human about our | irrationality. Rising above that, we lose a bit of that magic | that makes us unique. | javajosh wrote: | Regarding plan 1, the prenup is the most romantic idea of all. | Why? Because you stay together not out of fear, but out of love. | Sadly, there are limits to what prenups can do (they can't apply | to time-sharing the children, in most states). Note that not | getting married is not enough; common law marriage applies if you | live together long enough. | | As for the rest, it's disturbing and I don't want to think about | it. So I won't. | didibus wrote: | Most of these seem to imply you don't remember the plan while | still following it, so in a sense, you don't have a good reason | not to talk about them, since you actually wouldn't know what to | talk about. | | That means the only thing I take from this is that you get really | good followers by indoctrination which is a combination of | leading by example, shaming/rewarding people at a social level, | and possibly force or power, and that requires you to be sleazy | about it, by never divulging the real motives to others. Maybe | you can get yourself to believe in it as well to a point and | forget, but that seems less likely to me, most likely you just | got others indoctrinated to follow your plan without knowing the | real reasons why, which eventually get forgotten to history. | tpoacher wrote: | This reminded me of today's Dilbert strip: | https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-12-14 | h2odragon wrote: | So when you find yourself reading "They're _internment camps_ , | not 'concentration camps'" as a serious, honest defense of | involuntary quarantine, just relax, go with the flow, and hope | your betters are following one of these plans. Surely everything | will turn out OK and my individual reservations are not just | meaningless, but possibly ultimately antisocial... | bsedlm wrote: | this is the best explanation I've even seen for a positive aspect | to secrecy. | | yet I still distrust secretive practices on principle, because | evil deeds require secrecy 99% of the time | vmception wrote: | transparency is a deflection and most of the implementation is | based on lies | | many forms of good deeds also rely on secrecy | mjlawson wrote: | 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 of unspoken self/group contradictions. | yakshaving_jgt wrote: | I lost the game. | janlaureys wrote: | Same here. Had such a long streak going as well. | JALTU wrote: | Thanks for sharing! Knots has lovely metre, which feels/sounds | like the famous Bene Gesserit litany against fear. | | I must not reveal the game / Revelation makes me the rule | breaker / Revelation means alienation that brings total | ostracization | not1ofU wrote: | I shall break the rules and they will punish me ~Julian Assange | | Edit: To the downvoters, :wave: - if I was to change the name | to Chelsea Manning would you have downvoated anyway? If so why, | educate me. I dont see the problem here. | https://scheerpost.com/2021/12/13/hedges-the-execution-of-ju... | Lets discuss this ^ | vmception wrote: | I keep my tax plans secret. | | A) Because I paid alot for the CPAs, tax lawyers, private letter | rulings and case law. | | B) Actually talking about it to those struggling with taxes would | result in them noticing they can't participate any more than | driving to the neighboring municipality for cheaper gas tax, | instead of anything more convenient, and could result in the tax | laws changing from their widespread annoyance. | | C) tax clickbait publishers like ProPublica won't figure it out | for them for another two decades, which is long enough. | Noumenon72 wrote: | I am very susceptible to this kind of thing. Most of my life I | have read articles about most tax shelters being dodgy, watched | by the IRS, and concluded all I can really do is 401k and tax | loss harvesting. But now that you mention it, this feels the | same way as me not realizing all the effort people to to look | better on camera, because they don't really talk about it. So I | end up not competing in the areas of tax avoidance, | presentability, or clout, giving those who kept their plans | secret an even bigger advantage. | vmception wrote: | Sadly it is a factor of exposure. I have read many tax ideas | that were non-compliant or under heavy scrutiny by the IRS, | and I have read many tax ideas that are very compliant and | actively helped by the IRS. From my observation and | experiences, the IRS cares more about compliance than the | actual revenue which is in their name. They should really be | called the Tax Compliance and Collections Department, but | their name is really homage to the idea that the Federal | government can raise and collect revenues from many other | sources, which predates the income tax dragnet and the | constitutional amendment that was required to go down that | path. | | Different people at the IRS understand different things, and | different tax professionals interface with different parts of | the IRS (and judiciary). | | Congress and the White House would not be able to keep up, | despite being able to espouse an opinion of the government | about the amount of money that winds up subject to tax | collection, they are not the IRS which has the only relevant | opinion. Although good tax lawyers and judges can have a more | relevant opinion. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | I don't talk about my side gig for the same reason. | | If it was widely hyped among the people who have the capital to | enter it all the money would be driven out of it. | xupybd wrote: | As one of the church goers that genuinely believes in God and the | afterlife I'm surprised and saddened to hear people attend in | disbelief. It's a shame the same community can't be found amongst | others that hold similar beliefs. It's sad that someone can't be | true to their own beliefs. | temptemptemp111 wrote: | Stop with the chemtrails already! That isn't engineering, that's | pollution. | reducesuffering wrote: | 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 decide not to message this, | leaving some astute researchers perplexed. | seoaeu wrote: | 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. | jvanderbot wrote: | 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 implementation and high acceptability. In the article, you | _don 't talk about the real reasons (truth)_, you do what you | need to do to steer the ship. That probably includes | bullshitting, compromise, apparent-hypocrisy, etc. | | I'm afraid we've completely forgotten to separate the means from | the end goal. | | I've tried to explain this to people, and I've been met with | blank stares from even the most intelligent folks. | | As suggested though, it works wonders if you're at least a little | good at magical thinking or self deception. (If I run these 3 | miles, I'm much more likely to get that raise) | [deleted] | 63 wrote: | >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 and acted like I was totally insane. | | It's just particularly annoying that so many people claim to be | for truth or actions based on some ultimate moral value, but | then act totally differently because all they were ever really | for was tradition which includes hypocrisy about what it's for. | jollybean wrote: | There's a term for this and it's called 'Public Communications' | sometimes into the domain of propaganda. | | This is not a 'new' concept it's as old as time and 100% of | people with real power have an awareness of this, it's almost a | defining feature of an elite class. | | Policy should obviously be guided by 'Truth' and we need | transparency, at the same time, irrespective of how smart | individuals are, as crowds, we act with a lowest-common- | demoninator IQ and things need to be communicated effectively. | | A great example of 'Truths We Cant't Handle' are vaccination- | caused deaths. | | All the vaccines cause death, and AZ is particularly tricky. | But it's really hard to find exact data on that because it's | very well suppressed. I suggest it's probably available with | some digging but if you imagine a 'chain of communications' | from the doctors, to health officials, to politicians to media, | all of whom are ostensibly trying to act in the interest of the | 'Public Good' - it's not going to come out. | | Bonnie Henry in BC is a great Public Health official, I listen | to her communications almost weekly, very smart, generally | open, data-driven, smart journalists asking good questions - | but they have never broached the subject of 'How many have died | form vaccines'. The information is just too explosive. So they | don't talk about it. We're learn more about it after the | pandemic. | jfrunyon wrote: | > I'm afraid we've completely forgotten to separate the means | from the end goal. | | I'm afraid we've completely forgotten "the ends don't justify | the means". ;) | sieabahlpark wrote: | You know science is inherently flawed? Making policy on | kneejerk reactions to "science" is no better than being a | tyrant. Especially when you consider how specific studies are | funded (like oil being environmentally friendly). | | A majority of studies are just outright wrong and are trying to | reach for conclusions for grant money. | lkrubner wrote: | This is related to an issue I've studied a lot and recently | written about. In "Don't make a fetish of having a flat | organization" I try to address this in the context of business, | making clear that a well-designed bureaucracy can empower an | organization to be more flexible at scale, but for various | reasons we don't often think of it this way: | | https://demodexio.substack.com/p/dont-make-a-fetish-of-havin... | | But perhaps more relevant, in the context of government and | policy, I've tried to make the point that we should think of | government and bureaucracy as machines that produce policy. | Every machine is optimized to produce certain kinds of | policies. If you advocate for a great policy, and you've the | facts on your side, and yet no one will listen to you, then you | need to think about the structure of that machine, because it | will take a change in the machine to get that machine to start | producing the kinds of policy that you want: | | https://demodexio.substack.com/p/democracy-for-realists-part... | SubiculumCode wrote: | The power and foolishness of democracy lies therein. A good | story is more motivating that the complicated truths of life. | It is probably better for all of us to link every tornado and | hurricane to climate change in a neat little story than refrain | from doing so because we cannot link the particular storm on | man-made climate change. The story has power to effect positive | change. | UnFleshedOne wrote: | 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 maintain power and can | update direction relatively easily (we were always at war with | Eurasia). Then again, there is always a risk of losing real | power to one of the mid-rank rain-dancing activists and screw | up the whole project, maybe for good. | [deleted] | [deleted] | kelseyfrog wrote: | The real fun is talking about other peoples' plans they aren't | supposed to talk about. That's the best part about the internet | -- there aren't any real consequences for doing so. | jollybean wrote: | Like discovering the ancient concept of 'Public Communications' | by accidental recourse of self aware rhetoric. | | Every single thing we do, if the public were to have access to | the raw facts, it would cause 'outrage'. The entirely of | leadership is putting the difficult facts into the difficult | context and making the trade offs. | | We 'don't talk about' the fact that we don't give medical aid to | COVID patients past a certain point because we have to put a | dollar figure on it (i.e. triage), similarly the fact we have | $1200 'solutions' to COVID that could probably wipe it out | without vaccines if we could get everyone the tech, but we can't | 'afford' it, or that masks do not protect you like wearing a gas | mask through a chlorine cloud, rather, they're minimally | protective but nevertheless we believe 'do make difference' and | we want people to wear them, so we don't talk about it in detail, | rather, just suggest or require them as policy in some locales. | | Because people make decisions based on the emotive strength of | the rhetorician, the magnitude of impressions, emotions, group | consensus, 'opposition', politics, their instinct for the | validity of the source ... and not conscientious and | dispassionate civic reasoning ... we worry about what is said on | 'mass media'. People will do largely what their favourite | 'talking head' say to do ... so we have to be careful about what | 'talking heads' say, at least in some situations. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | We don't talk about this stuff because we've lost the ability | to have honest adult discussions about the cost/benefit of | anything that involves not just harm, but risk of harm, let | alone death. | | There's a classic engineering ethics problem involving an | overpass. Build a cheap overpass with a support in the median | and eventually someone may die crashing into it. The odds are | low and the cost of a bridge with no support is high. | | Modern, western, white collar society is unable to look itself | in the mirror and say "we're building the cheap bridge" for | anything but the most ludicrously extreme cases. | | If it wasn't Covid that made this clear it would have been | something else. | jollybean wrote: | It has little to do with 'Modern' 'Educated' or 'White | Collar'. | | 'Public Communications' is more ancient than as the joke goes | 'the oldest profession'. | | PR is probably the oldest profession. | | Even Egyptian Pharaohs were overwhelmingly concerned with | their perception among the Plebes, the Nobles, and their | Enemies, and almost everything they did was oriented towards | that. Every group or individual in a position of power since | then has that as a fundamental concern. | | Imagine writing a Constitution that says 'Everyone is Created | Equal' and then still having slaves, you need some serious | narrative formation to keep that paradox from bubbling up. | (FYI I'm not taking a postmodern view of history here, just | saying the issue is real). | | COVID is a gigantic example. | newaccount74 wrote: | I think Covid handling is an example where the public has | extensive access to the raw facts; it's quite surprising just | how much data is available to the public. I can get time series | of covid cases, hospitalisations, vaccination rates, by area | and by age... It's really surprising how much info we have. | motohagiography wrote: | What I can't quite tell is whether the mental alarm bells of | people with ostensibly responsible mainstream views | legitimately aren't going off at all, or they too know what | this whole thing is, and they just think their complicity | will spare them. | jollybean wrote: | We do, but at the same time, we can't contextualize it very | well necessarily. | | For example 'spikes' can mean all sorts of things. CFRs and | test positivity rates have to be hugely contextualized. | | We also have 'studies' about Ivermectin some of which are | good, some of which ar flawed, that lack context i.e. 'study | shows Ivermectin works! - if that's all they see, well, then | they might be inclined to believe it. | | And a huge amount of anecdotal data that is very misleading | as well. | | It's good the data is out there, but we also need sources to | make sense of it. | 908B64B197 wrote: | > We 'don't talk about' the fact that we don't give medical aid | to COVID patients past a certain point because we have to put a | dollar figure on it (i.e. triage) | | That's not how triage works. | | > similarly the fact we have $1200 'solutions' to COVID that | could probably wipe it out without vaccines if we could get | everyone the tech, but we can't 'afford' it, | | What is this mysterious cure? | | > or that masks do not protect you like wearing a gas mask | through a chlorine cloud, rather, they're minimally protective | but nevertheless we believe 'do make difference' and we want | people to wear them, so we don't talk about it in detail, | rather, just suggest or require them as policy in some locales. | | That's a known fact. Masks don't really protect the wearer | unless it's a properly fitted N95. They reduce the aerosol | emitted which reduces the chances of transmitting it to other | people. They protect a group of people if most wear them by | limiting transmission. | | That's high school level biology. | MaxBarraclough wrote: | > Masks don't really protect the wearer unless it's a | properly fitted N95. They reduce the aerosol emitted which | reduces the chances of transmitting it to other people. They | protect a group of people if most wear them by limiting | transmission. | | Many people seem to respond to this with a line of thought | akin to _Why would I take on a minor inconvenience merely to | help save the lives of other people?_ Surprisingly few seem | to think _I 'd better get some N95 masks then_. They've been | in ready supply for months. | 908B64B197 wrote: | Wearing a properly fitted one isn't comfortable at all. | | Regular masks work great if everyone is wearing them | correctly. | jollybean wrote: | --- "That's not how triage works." | | Triage: "the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or | illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number | of patients or casualties." | | Seems exactly like triage. | | --- "What is this mysterious cure?" | | Monoclonal Antibodies are a very effective treatment that we | would use almost ubiquitously were it not for the cost. | | If they were $1 and easily administered, they are in some | ways as effective as vaccines, and pragmatically 'could be | the first order solution' | | " there was a significant reduction in COVID-related | hospitalization or death of 71.3% (1.3% vs. 4.6%; p<0.0001) | in the 2,400 mg group and 70.4% (1.0% vs. 3.2%) in the 1,200 | mg group, as compared to placebo." [1] | | 70% effective, taken at onset of symptoms, is more protective | than my current AZ vaccine. | | But at $1200 ea. we can only use it in specialized scenarios. | | FYI - 100% of 'Rich Americans' will have access to this if | they contract COVID and want to take it - but only a minority | of poor and middle class Americans will. | | If the Media ever wanted to highlight this discrepancy, there | might be a revolution, but it's not in anyone's best interest | at this point, i.e. 'We Don't Talk About It'. | | --- "Mask Protection Are a Known Fact" | | No, it's not, in the minds of most people, and the specific | facts are purposefully avoided in the interest in the simple, | basic communication of: "Wear Your Mask" which is in the | public interest. | | My parents and everyone in my family get jitters if 'one | person in vicinity' isn't wearing a proper mask, because | their 'instinct' is more along the 'N95 belief'. | | 'One person without a mask' is along the lines of 'working in | a smokey nihgtclub for a week'. While not good, it's probably | not going to hurt you. If _everyone_ worked in smoke-filled | nightclubs, it wold cause harm for sure, just like if we all | didn 't wear masks, R0 would nudge up. | | The 'Public Communication' on masks has definitely not been | nuanced to the point wherein they spend time going into the | details, and so the resulting 'common understanding' isn't | perfectly consistent with reality. | | And it gets much better: | | Vaccines kill. | | We knew this, and we have a better understanding of it now, | but even the most 'transparent' Public Health communicators | completely avoid the subject. The visceral impact of 'So and | So Died from a Vaccine', even as we know that on the whole, | the vaccines are effectively safe and we want people to take | them, is just to much. A single anecdote of 'someone dying' | is easily enough for anti-vaxxers to propagandize and | misrepresent the materiality of risk. | | Go ahead and try to get the 'hard data' on exactly where | vaccines have materially caused death, good luck, it's hard | to find. That is basically a level of 'transparency' that is | basically a problem for the 'Public Good' and basically that | information is actively suppressed. Maybe not 100% hidden, | but absolutely suppressed i.e. 'We Don't Talk About It' | | [1] https://www.idsociety.org/covid-19-real-time-learning- | networ... | newaccount74 wrote: | > Go ahead and try to get the 'hard data' on exactly where | vaccines have materially caused death, good luck, it's hard | to find. | | The Paul Ehrlich institute for example publishes exact | numbers of possibly vaccine related deaths. What more do | you want? Do you want them to publish names and photos of | every person that died after getting vaccinated? | crmd wrote: | They lost me at the dangers of ultrasonic humidifiers. | not2b wrote: | I think you misinterpreted that part. It's talking about how | cults who believe in weird stuff grow, despite there being no | real danger of ultrasonic humidifiers or whatever. | rkk3 wrote: | There is a non-zero risk of aerosolizing bacteria/mold etc if | you don't maintain an ultra-sonic humidifier properly, which | doesn't exist with other methods. Of course with a boiling | humidifier, you've got a container of scalding hot water | laying around. | the_pwner224 wrote: | The author is a part of that 'cult': - | https://dynomight.net/air/ - | https://dynomight.net/humidifiers/ | | So from context I think that the Hobo-Dyer projection and | using bromine are both supposed to be superior to current | common approaches, but, like ultrasonic humidifiers, normies | don't accept these superior new facts even though the | arguments for them are strong and infalliable. | | I still don't get the point of the last two paragraphs in | that part. | mikewarot wrote: | If you put tap water in an ultrasonic humidifier, there | actually is a level of danger created. | | Here's what appears to be a fair and balanced google search | result - https://www.childrenscolorado.org/conditions-and- | advice/pare... | mherdeg wrote: | Reading this gave me a kind of horrifying idea that goes | something like: | | You know about a deadly disease whose most serious outcomes can | be avoided by getting a shot. | | Many members of a group in your society have decided they don't | want to get the shot. You are annoyed by the way they talk about | a lot of things, including the way they talk about avoiding the | shot. They, in turn, call you "smug" for the way your group talks | about having everyone get the shot. | | You realize that if the other tribe keeps acting this way, a lot | of them will die -- 1% of them overall, and as many as 10-15% of | the oldest members of the tribe, with them having a fresh chance | to die with every mutation and reinfection every 12 months. | | You realize that smugly insisting that those people should "get | the shot" will make them dig in their heels and insist they will | never do any such thing. This will, in turn, kill them. This will | diminish their tribe's size and political influence. Is this a | plan? Is it a thing you are doing on purpose? | vmception wrote: | 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 further about the | matter. | jfrunyon wrote: | It's 1% of the whole population, but a much larger percentage | of certain political ideologies. | vmception wrote: | well, sure yeah. | | far left spiritualists and naturopaths are a tiny | population, far right people occupy sparsely populated | areas. | | funny application of horseshoe theory. | lowbloodsugar wrote: | IIRC some swing states were decided by less than 1%? | bsedlm wrote: | 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 a need for this risky behavior and | without it our lives feel emptier? | | the point I am trying to make (granted not very eloquently) | starts out from this idea [1] that humans are kind of crazy, | and that maybe this crazyness is what makes us so successful; | so I put that too much safety may undo this crazyness, it puts | it to sleep? | | see also anti-fragility | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97jBvbmY03g&t=252s | agentdrtran wrote: | sure, but on one hand, you have being mildly inconvenienced | by a shot, and on the other hand, you have conspiracy | theories that can get loads of people filled. People are | crazy, we should embrace that, but that doesn't mean you let | everyone drive drunk. | johnchristopher wrote: | > the point I am trying to make (granted not very eloquently) | starts out from this idea [1] that humans are kind of crazy, | and that maybe this crazyness is what makes us so successful; | so I put that too much safety may undo this crazyness, it | puts it to sleep? | | You are blurring the lines between taking a personal risk in | one occasion at a specific time and taking the risk of not | wearing a mask or washing hands or cooking meat every day all | year long. | | Craziness for the sake of craziness is just random trial and | error. | handrous wrote: | What does this have to do with the actual topic of the parent | post? | guidoism wrote: | 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 where you don't leave, or Antarctica, or mars or | something. | EB-Barrington wrote: | "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 | [deleted] | arrow7000 wrote: | Ok but what's the point of taking risks for its own sake? It | makes sense to take risks if you stand to gain something. But | a risk with only downside is just a bad idea. | yongjik wrote: | You had me until the last paragraph. If "smugly" insisting X | would make them dig in their heels, what are we supposed to do? | Say "Oh of course it's totally in your rights, please send your | unvaccinated children to the same school my kids go to"? | Because I don't think it will change their minds either. | | What happened to "personal responsibility" that these people | like so much? If the whole country tells these people to get | vaccinated, they don't, and they die, then I don't think I | should be held responsible for being smug, or snarky, or | whatever. | taejavu wrote: | The vaccines don't prevent catching covid, or spreading it to | other people, so what exactly is the problem with | unvaccinated kids going to schools with yours? | AnimalMuppet wrote: | 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. | [deleted] | guidoism wrote: | Yikes don't say that out loud! | | But seriously, the left needs to think more like this. The | right plays dirty and if the left plays like this they get the | same outcomes of playing dirty but is not saying anything bad | or wrong. | exolymph wrote: | You do realize that you're responding to a comment reframing | the USA left-establishment's covid vaccine rhetoric, right? | Point being, how do you know the left _isn 't_ playing like | this? | throwaway0a5e wrote: | The comment you are replying to is not a novel take. This | stuff has long since been thought of by some strategists on | pretty much every side of every issue for about as far back | as we have record of this sort of thing. Heck, revise the | wording a little bit and it could pass for something some | enlightenment thinker half a century ago would have said | about whatever issue they were talking about that minute. | lijogdfljk wrote: | I like the thought experiment, but i would counter that i | suspect the 1% that would die would be replaced by a larger | volume of new group members - due to the divisive nature of "us | vs them", everyone has to choose, and so the forced unity ends | up increasing overall members. Forcing people to choose | increased membership of both parties. | | Not a statement, just a thought. | tshaddox wrote: | Consider that causing 1% of the group's population to die might | not weaken the group and in fact might make the group stronger. | willob33 wrote: | He's effectively describing Trump's leaked plan to let covid | ravage blue urban areas before the election, but here framing | it as a liberal plot as a narrative device | | Maybe he's a Republican astroturfer | | Someone just learned the root language of real human | economics taught to us as abstractions through story and pie | chart. | XorNot wrote: | Disease doesn't kill "weaker" members of a group, it kills | susceptible ones. | | The Spanish Flu notably had a much higher mortality amongst | younger, healthier people. | tshaddox wrote: | I didn't mean some sort of darwinian thing where the | average strength goes up. I mean that the strength of the | group as a whole could very well increase. | jandrese wrote: | COVID however is most fatal to the eldery. Letting it | simply rage out of control could push back the social | security crisis a few years. | | I don't think anything as Machiavellian as this is going | on. I think it was all just a culmination of decades anti- | expert propaganda and knee-jerk obstructionism coming to a | head in a terribly fatal way. | EB-Barrington wrote: | Correction - it's not 1%, it's 100%. Of both tribes. | [deleted] | willob33 wrote: | It's just business ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-14 23:00 UTC)