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The world isn't software engineering; if anything, it's philosophy. I look at it this way, and it sounds harsh but it's big-time decision-making life: 1. You

The world isn't software engineering; if anything, it's philosophy. I look at it this way, and it sounds harsh but it's big-time decision-making life: 1. You could compel people to listen to something to ensure their safety by force, and then have a riot. OR 2. You could urge sensible people do something for their own safety while letting the idiots commit suicide and clean-up the gene pool in the process. I say take option #2 all-day, everyday because it's easier, cheaper, and better for others who do listen to have one less fewer, stupid liability in the world who would otherwise put others in danger.

qqssccfftt 6y ago
I would rather take 100 "idiots" in the gene pool for genetic diversity Of course, "idiot" is pretty relative, and not everyone going out is an idiot, but that would undermine your eugenics argument
mlyle 6y ago
Option 2 doesn't really work with an exponential process. There are people who have to work for society to continue functioning who have no choice but to be exposed to the "idiots", and even people able to self-isolated generally cannot completely remove encounters that could cause infection, but instead just greatly reduce them.
- NotSammyHagar 6y ago
  Correct. Other people's idiotic choices have deadly implications for everyone else. That's why we can't just let people ignore this problem. They don't just hurt themselves.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    At the same time, we can't just let zeal/fear drive us into making the short-term safest choices that may not be safest in the long run. I do think we're overshooting the other way.
    - carapace 6y ago
      How would you know? I'm not being snarky, I'm asking, what are the concrete metrics that would let us gauge our optimal reaction?
      - mlyle 6y ago
        - Infection fatality rate -- this looks to be 1/5th or lower than what we thought getting into this. - Infection hospitalization rate -- similar. - Probability of getting a vaccine in a moderately quick timeframe -- I'd call this one 50/50. Hard to bet on. - How long it takes case counts to decay to a point where a contact tracing regime works -- This really depends. It looks like to me that in the US jurisdictions with the best controls, Rt =~ 0.6. This will take a -long- time to decay to the 1 case per million threshold where contact tracing, etc works; 6 months or more. Some models put the decay much quicker, at like a month from now, but I cannot understand why. - Efficacy of a herd immunity strategy / serology information from various jurisdictions -- looking hopeful, but imperfect information. Sweden is getting there... - Critical care utilization. In the SF Bay Area, we're below seasonal norms and COVID-19 cases in ICU have been (very slowly) decaying for the past 3 weeks. - Seasonal effects. We don't really know, but it looks like there is probably a small seasonal swing to Rt. Seasonal effects justify more dramatic action either direction (containment or relaxation). Containment efforts will be made more effective during summer, but it's also an ideal time to experiment with loosening controls while seasonal factors are on our side.
        carapace 6y ago
        Cheers!
loosetypes 6y ago
> The world isn't software engineering; if anything, it's philosophy. Always follow the first link on a Wikipedia page (excluding parentheticals with etymology and pronunciation), rinse and repeat: you eventually end up at philosophy.
carapace 6y ago
Did you watch "Avenue 5"? It's dumb, but it's got Hugh Laurie, so I did. The thing is, it's really dark. I have a pretty dark streak in my sense of humor, but were are a lot of moments when I thought to myself, "Did these guys forget that this show bills itself as a comedy?" SPOILER ALERT I think the most horrible scene was when some of the passengers get the idea that they aren't really trapped in space, that it's all a simulation and they're really on Earth after all. And so they decide they want to leave. Through the airlock... And Captain Laurie and the engineer who won't shut up about being underappreciated by the morons around her (Why would you care about their opinions? They're morons) are in between them and the airlock. Now maybe this means I'm a bad person, but my first gut reaction was, "Hey, let them go outside. It's evolution in action. A problem that solves itself, yeah?" But then my real self kicks in and points out that, unless I try my very hardest to prevent these fucking morons from sucking vacuum, letting them spacewalk sans spacesuit is tantamount to murder. And I'm not a murderer. Even though they are useless fucking morons who seemingly only exist to cause problems, standing by and letting them kill themselves is wrong. You'll hate yourself if you do. That's the downside of self-awareness and intelligence. If you are the only person on the spaceship who knows the score guess where the buck stops?
- mturmon 6y ago
  Yes, the moment you mention was among the most affecting of the first season. The scene is constructed diabolically to ratchet up the mob mentality — where people are just acting in the moment, purely emotionally. I read the season as an allegory for where we are now politically. The captain is a figurehead, the passengers are readily manipulated, the far-off owners don’t care, yet everyone aboard is hurtling through space in a very complex machine that they don’t really understand. Hugh Laurie is doing a great job in the show. Another draw is the creator, Armando Iannucci, who did Veep.
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  Doesn’t that all still make it dark and/or dry humor? Everyone has different levels of what they consider acceptable.
jknoepfler 6y ago
The idiots in question are endangering not only themselves, but everyone they come in contact with. This includes essential workers in transport, medicine, and retail. They also exacerbate the strain on critical health infrastructure. Preventing the collapse of critical medical infrastructure is the primary objective of social distancing. Attending an anti-lockdown protest without taking proper social distancing measures is more akin to driving drunk on the freeway than it is to shooting heroin into one's veins. The latter can in many circumstances be understood to have negligible impact on the rights of others, the former cannot. The question of "at what point do social distancing measures overstep the legitimate exercise of government power" is a nuanced one. It requires weighing individuals rights against one another in a situation where cause and effect are at best thinly statistical, emergent from collective behavior, and regionally variable (NYC != rural Kentucky). No government is going to get their response to COVID-19 100% right, but I'm pretty sure focusing exclusively on individual self-harm would be an abysmal heuristic.

qqssccfftt 6y ago

I would rather take 100 "idiots" in the gene pool for genetic diversity Of course, "idiot" is pretty relative, and not everyone going out is an idiot, but that would undermine your eugenics argument

mlyle 6y ago

Option 2 doesn't really work with an exponential process. There are people who have to work for society to continue functioning who have no choice but to be exposed to the "idiots", and even people able to self-isolated generally cannot completely remove encounters that could cause infection, but instead just greatly reduce them.

NotSammyHagar 6y ago
Correct. Other people's idiotic choices have deadly implications for everyone else. That's why we can't just let people ignore this problem. They don't just hurt themselves.
- mlyle 6y ago
  At the same time, we can't just let zeal/fear drive us into making the short-term safest choices that may not be safest in the long run. I do think we're overshooting the other way.
  - carapace 6y ago
    How would you know? I'm not being snarky, I'm asking, what are the concrete metrics that would let us gauge our optimal reaction?
    - mlyle 6y ago
      - Infection fatality rate -- this looks to be 1/5th or lower than what we thought getting into this. - Infection hospitalization rate -- similar. - Probability of getting a vaccine in a moderately quick timeframe -- I'd call this one 50/50. Hard to bet on. - How long it takes case counts to decay to a point where a contact tracing regime works -- This really depends. It looks like to me that in the US jurisdictions with the best controls, Rt =~ 0.6. This will take a -long- time to decay to the 1 case per million threshold where contact tracing, etc works; 6 months or more. Some models put the decay much quicker, at like a month from now, but I cannot understand why. - Efficacy of a herd immunity strategy / serology information from various jurisdictions -- looking hopeful, but imperfect information. Sweden is getting there... - Critical care utilization. In the SF Bay Area, we're below seasonal norms and COVID-19 cases in ICU have been (very slowly) decaying for the past 3 weeks. - Seasonal effects. We don't really know, but it looks like there is probably a small seasonal swing to Rt. Seasonal effects justify more dramatic action either direction (containment or relaxation). Containment efforts will be made more effective during summer, but it's also an ideal time to experiment with loosening controls while seasonal factors are on our side.
      - carapace 6y ago
        Cheers!

loosetypes 6y ago

> The world isn't software engineering; if anything, it's philosophy. Always follow the first link on a Wikipedia page (excluding parentheticals with etymology and pronunciation), rinse and repeat: you eventually end up at philosophy.

carapace 6y ago

Did you watch "Avenue 5"? It's dumb, but it's got Hugh Laurie, so I did. The thing is, it's really dark. I have a pretty dark streak in my sense of humor, but were are a lot of moments when I thought to myself, "Did these guys forget that this show bills itself as a comedy?" SPOILER ALERT I think the most horrible scene was when some of the passengers get the idea that they aren't really trapped in space, that it's all a simulation and they're really on Earth after all. And so they decide they want to leave. Through the airlock... And Captain Laurie and the engineer who won't shut up about being underappreciated by the morons around her (Why would you care about their opinions? They're morons) are in between them and the airlock. Now maybe this means I'm a bad person, but my first gut reaction was, "Hey, let them go outside. It's evolution in action. A problem that solves itself, yeah?" But then my real self kicks in and points out that, unless I try my very hardest to prevent these fucking morons from sucking vacuum, letting them spacewalk sans spacesuit is tantamount to murder. And I'm not a murderer. Even though they are useless fucking morons who seemingly only exist to cause problems, standing by and letting them kill themselves is wrong. You'll hate yourself if you do. That's the downside of self-awareness and intelligence. If you are the only person on the spaceship who knows the score guess where the buck stops?

mturmon 6y ago
Yes, the moment you mention was among the most affecting of the first season. The scene is constructed diabolically to ratchet up the mob mentality — where people are just acting in the moment, purely emotionally. I read the season as an allegory for where we are now politically. The captain is a figurehead, the passengers are readily manipulated, the far-off owners don’t care, yet everyone aboard is hurtling through space in a very complex machine that they don’t really understand. Hugh Laurie is doing a great job in the show. Another draw is the creator, Armando Iannucci, who did Veep.
skinnymuch 6y ago
Doesn’t that all still make it dark and/or dry humor? Everyone has different levels of what they consider acceptable.

jknoepfler 6y ago

The idiots in question are endangering not only themselves, but everyone they come in contact with. This includes essential workers in transport, medicine, and retail. They also exacerbate the strain on critical health infrastructure. Preventing the collapse of critical medical infrastructure is the primary objective of social distancing. Attending an anti-lockdown protest without taking proper social distancing measures is more akin to driving drunk on the freeway than it is to shooting heroin into one's veins. The latter can in many circumstances be understood to have negligible impact on the rights of others, the former cannot. The question of "at what point do social distancing measures overstep the legitimate exercise of government power" is a nuanced one. It requires weighing individuals rights against one another in a situation where cause and effect are at best thinly statistical, emergent from collective behavior, and regionally variable (NYC != rural Kentucky). No government is going to get their response to COVID-19 100% right, but I'm pretty sure focusing exclusively on individual self-harm would be an abysmal heuristic.