nopie
1yr ago
Medical students learn history of medicine. How we gradually arrived to the modern medicine, what mistakes were made and so on.
We don't learn from history and our mistakes though. Covid vaccine mandates was a mistake that has been repeated. However, we don't commit many other mistakes, so maybe knowledge of history is useful after all.
nopie
1yr ago
Exactly.
Why should I even care about this issue? I was just trying to convey how much would I trust this information based on my priors. I don't think I am biased exactly because I don't care about it. However, this is more interesting that Tucker doesn't move my priors.
If I read something on wikipedia that would move my priors.
nopie
1yr ago
The usual – that Russian invasion is the US fault for not promising to not expand NATO, that Ukraine is losing the war (it is a stalemate on the front but Ukraine is retaining statehood and even becoming closer to and more integrated with the EU which could be kind of victory).
nopie
1yr ago
I don't know who Tony Bobulinski is and how trustable he is. The fact that Tucker quotes him doesn't add anything. It is just mostly gossip which may be correct or may not. It doesn't update my priors much.
Maybe I am going the way that Taleb calls via negativa. I am careful and exclude things I don't have enough positive information about. That eliminates most of disaster modes (of course, it also makes me to lose some potentially great deals too).
nopie
1yr ago
The fact that he is a media person disqualifies him already.
He talked rubbish about war in Ukraine. He is not interested in finding truth, just make controversial statements to increase his audience (and income).
Thanks for the explanation.
I don't think it is Joe Biden though. My priors are that sons don't really want to be controlled by their fathers. But in case he had such a relationship with his father, he would had called him less formally, like “Dad” or similar.
Ray Epps is more interesting. I think the worry about January 6 being a potential coup is overblown. Recently Germany had arrested a bunch of people for plotting a coup and restoring monarchy. The media described them as a group of senile men who had got hold of weapons, i.e., nothing serious and all immediately forgot about it. The same is probably true about January 6 except they were not seniors but younger fantasists and some of them had guns (but everybody has a gun in the US). It should not be paid such an attention. Sadly some people died in the crowds but fatal traffic accidents also happen and it is time to forget about this.
The only difference I can see is that Trump was tweeting something and the irrational hate of Trump has been a feature of the US politics. I am not saying that Trump is a good man but he certainly is not guilty of all the outrageous things he is accused of. Whatever Ray Epps' role was, it doesn't change the fact that it was just a spontaneous crowd gathered in naive beliefs, probably instigated by social media viral messaging.
nopie
1yr ago
Tricyclics are worse for elderly but still not as bad as benzodiazepines (they can cause memory problems, also falls leading to hip fractures etc.) which are now licenced only for 2-4 weeks max. Maybe those 2% are mostly people on short term regiment but then again that would mean that if the licenced use is on average once per year, it is 24% of population.
Probably most people are not on short term use though. Many doctors in Latvia didn't even know that benzodiazepines licence was changed to short term use only. Judging from reddit posts, American doctors know it very well but struggle with patients who are addicted.
Vinay Prasad should add a chapter in his book Medical Reversals about change in benzodiazepine licencing and how they used to be prescribed so widely and only then we realized their harms.
nopie
1yr ago
Latvia didn't grant automatically citizenship to Soviet immigrants who arrived during occupation. To get a Latvian passport they were required to pass a language and history test. But many immigrants decided to acquire Russian citizenship instead because the retirement age for Russian citizens was lower.
Now some of those people are in trouble because Latvia requires language test for permanent residents and if they fail to pass it, they can be deported to the country of their citizenship – Russia. In fact, it is very hard to learn a language once you have reached retirement age. But they made their choice where their loyalties are. Those who remain non-citizens of Latvia (a special status) are safe as they have practically the same rights as citizens and cannot be deported.
nopie
1yr ago
It is mostly about stopping providing public services in Russian. The main goal is to strengthen the use of Latvian language. The EU will not stop this as they leave linguistic matters to each member country to decide.
During the Soviet times everyone in Latvia had to speak Russian to effectively participate in the society. Now it is not the case and most young people don't speak Russian anymore. But the tradition to provide services in both Latvian and Russian limits their job opportunities, especially in the lowest paid jobs in customer service sector. The rule will simply make sure that there is no expectation that one can get public services in Russian. Most Russian speakers also speak Latvian to some degree, so it should not be a practical problem.
Russians demanding that they should be able to speak Russian everywhere and not required to learn a local language even if they become residents in Latvia, are arrogant and misguided.
nopie
1yr ago
Terrifying numbers for benzodiazepines. Even 2% seems too much but 12.5% is total crisis.
And the fact that Germans are more likely to use benzodiazepines than antidepresants (even though low in absolute numbers) is also not a good sign of their healthcare system.
I don't care about antidepresant use rates. They are not addictive and side-effects are generally mild and if people are fine with those side-effects then why should we care.
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What does it mean “the Big Guy”?
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The data is already quite strong about this. It has already been a warning in vaccine information for more than a year. What we don't know, how much of a risk it is. Probably not that great in absolute numbers. However, the benefit from vaccine in young people is also not that great. We don't know if the benefits overweigh the risks.
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Very likely indeed.
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Who is Ray Epps?
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I don't think that China lying about covid matters. Nothing about covid really matters anymore. Most stats are only meant to scare people without true understanding how risks are/were age stratified. It took 3 years for European Medicines agency to finally say that covid risk increases exponentially by age even though we learned it within the first 2 weeks of pandemic.
nopie
1yr ago
Adrenochrome exists. It is a pretty boring compound, structurally related to adrenaline, was tried in studies and found useless. Just like adrenaline, we could easily synthesize it chemically if it was found useful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenochrome
But failure to research such a simply fact unites both conspiracy theorists and their critics :)
There is no Chinese study I would trust. I based it on observation of great number of infected. It appears that the current Chinese wave is due to lifting lockdown restrictions but from the data Zvi has provided, it seems the opposite. The number of infected was rising and the government realized that it makes them look stupid and they decided to lift lockdown to shift the blame.
Going back to more reliable data – I remember that article on marginalrevolution.com where they showed that good data doesn't need complicated statistics to show that vaccines work. The graph of infected without vaccine was clearly so different from the one for recently vaccinated. It seemed so convincing. And yet, now we know that this conclusion was wrong. The vaccine protection from infection didn't last long, only 3-4 months on average. It might be protecting from severe disease and death (by about 90%) but that wasn't what this graph was trying to prove. It turns out you need a good and thorough statistics and study design even for things that seem obvious.
As a pharmacist I was trained to back up all my assertions by evidence. If you give a recommendation to the patient or a doctor to use a specific drug, they might always ask – what is the evidence? I should be able to answer this questions without delay. But when the masks started to be recommended, the best evidence I had seen was Scott's article. When I tried to ask doctors and others if they have more evidence about effectiveness about masks, they said that you don't need evidence for parachutes. The many reversals in this pandemic showed that many things that initially seemed like parachutes were not like them, therefore the question about evidence remained.
In the UK we usually rely on NICE guidelines. Not all evidence is of equal strength but NICE as the organization put a lot of effort to evaluate and list all available studies for given intervention. I am in favour of regulatory barriers for all new medicines. The only problem is that the regulatory process is too slow and might fail us during pandemics when quick decisions are required. I know that Scott is very critical of regulatory institutions but I cannot share his criticism because pharma companies try to push too many costly medicines with only a marginal benefit (especially for cancer). Sometimes even regulators make mistakes and approve doubtful medicines (like aducanumab) but they err on the opposite side – not approving useful drugs – only in very rare cases. I can only agree that the regulatory process is too slow, cumbersome and inflexible in some cases but the main service they provide is very important.
During covid pandemic nothing of this seemed to matter. Regulators were disregarded, politicians introduced measures without any proof of effectiveness. They even introduced vaccine mandates that we were previously taught to be a bad policy. My native country bought too many vaccines and now they are donating them to poor countries – again we were taught this to be a bad policy. Those countries most likely simply destroyed the donated vaccines. Usually it works much better to donate money so that they can buy what they need and not the excess stock. Other countries are unable to accept donations of medicines because they usually are not in the form their doctors are trained, they might not have labels in their local languages, they might not use the particular brands or strengths and supply chains might not be appropriate. For example, Pfizer had mRNA vaccines to be stored in -70°C. Then they made another variant that could be stored in -20°C, and then again another one to be stored in fridge (2°–8°C). The options in poor countries are more limited and if they have settled for one specific cold chain, all other vaccines that need a different conditions will never make to final recipients. This distribution is hard. We learned this when lockdowns disrupted our supply chains in the west. In poor countries supply chains are even more fragile and simply donating medicines have very little benefit if we don't consider how they will fit in their supply chains. But that didn't matter for politicians, they only needed to save their faces and pretend being good humanitarians.
nopie
1yr ago
Just an interesting observation from my pharmacist class in the UK. The biggest earners now are those who did average or even were on the verge of failing. It is just my anecdote. Obviously you need to be smart enough to pass the exam to get a licence. But once you pass this bar, in real life to be on top of academic knowledge is less important than perseverance and drive to succeed and social skills. IQ tests do not measure these things.
I have reason to doubt that the studies showing IQ correlation with success are true. It is very difficult to get clean data and eliminate bias. Just see how hard it was to prove that masks are/are not effective in containing covid. Scott deeply delved into this issue but got it wrong – final Chinese experience shows that masks are useless for all practical purposes (outside some very strictly controlled environments, like hospitals) and we were fooling ourselves with mask mandates (still current in some places in Europe). Probably studies with IQ are similarly unreliable. My trust in them is very low.
nopie
1yr ago
I agree with that. I should have replied to the OP. It had no text and it made me confused where to put an answer and I pressed the wrong reply. Sorry for that.
nopie
1yr ago
My contra-argument to this would be that more strength has no value in the modern society. You need some strength to do most activities but as we have different power-tools, average worker is as much productive as the Olympic level athlete. And even if it would matter, the strongest man is only marginally better than an average male (in good physical health and training status). The group work is more important than individual strength since immemorial times. Even in stone age hunting mammoths required teamwork more than brute force.
Intelligence however is very different from physical strength. Maybe it has more value in the modern society. Again, some geniuses may make important discoveries that can benefit us all. But that may be very unpredictable and hard to measure anyway.
Taleb doesn't say that IQ doesn't matter at all. Definitely some people are smarter and therefore more successful. But the correlation of IQ with success probably maxes at certain limit.
nopie
1yr ago
I don't think vitamin D production differences are significant in the modern world with all year round availability of vitamin D containing foods plus most foods already come fortified with vitamin and supplements are cheap.
Significant differences would be in the different tolerance of environment, psychological aspects to thrive in society or make career and succeed. Maybe there are some differences in these things too but I don't think they are significant either because currently most social differences can be explained by culture and traditions rather than race or ethnicity.
nopie
1yr ago
I am sorry for what I said. Will stop engaging and will try to avoid from this behaviour in the future. Thanks for the advice.
nopie
1yr ago
Wrong? No, it was that you are likely a troll. That's the downvoting is for, it's intended purpose to show which comments are worse than others.
nopie
1yr ago
The chances of Germany attacking the USSR prior to 1941 was very high. The evidence was that Germans thought of themselves as higher race and it was only a question of time when they would attack all other countries, including the USSR.
The strength of the evidence can vary – from very weak to very strong. I wouldn't be able to predict anything without strong evidence. You try to confuse absence of evidence with evidence of absence.
My Bayesian sense says that you are a Russian troll.
The following evidence is present:
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new account, not much engagement
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you write very confusing things, do not stay on topic and then demand (yes, you demand) – “please explain this or that”.
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you support extreme point of view
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your answers are being regularly downvoted
Any evidence against?
nopie
1yr ago
Running servers is not that expensive for twitter with small data amounts (tweets are short after all).
nopie
1yr ago
Even more weird reasoning coming. The second paragraph is a clear contradiction of the first. Hitler hadn't attacked the USSR in 1940. He had a non-aggression pact. Clearly, it must be prima facie evidence that he lacks the motive to attack the USSR. Except that he did just a few months later. What changed? Probably nothing, he was only busy with other things or waiting for more opportune moment.
I trusted that rationalist community will be better than general public with regards to understanding medical evidence. I no longer have these illusions. One example was that we don't really have much evidence about Paxlovid use in vaccinated. For this reason the UK do not recommend it for healthy, vaccinated people with low risk. The same applies to Tamiflu. Even if they were beneficial to some degree, they are not cost effective. And yet rationalists on these forums often claim the opposite, with general statements that the scientific recommendations are due to incompetence.
People often make the case that if we can shorten the cold period of feeling terrible even a couple of days it is worth it. It may be but somehow I think people underestimate the impact of mental health. People in depression don't feel terrible for couple of days, they feel terrible for months, even years. It was the issue why I objected to lockdowns because the harm from covid for young people was low and in most cases it was just feeling terrible for a few days. While getting into financial difficulties, social problems, depression, drug and alcohol use can have much longer lasting periods of feeling terrible and also long lasting negative effects. And for many children losing schooling can have life-time consequences.
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