4 ms·

I worked with a guy named Danny many years ago. He was one of the smartest programmers I'd ever met. Not only did he write great code, but he also always main

I worked with a guy named Danny many years ago. He was one of the smartest programmers I'd ever met. Not only did he write great code, but he also always maintained an excellent connection to the his customers who would use the programs he wrote. This was in a hospital. Personally, he was kind, generous, excellent family man. He never really talked too much about politics, didn't care too much for it. He also helped me order the parts for and showed me how to assemble my first intel based desktop computer, an amazing 486-DX2-66! It's been years but I recently communicated with him, and we had a great e-mail exchange, caught up. He was surprised and pleased that since I left I'd not only gotten married but now have an adult son. Surprised because back >25 years ago when we hung out I was very much not a "family man" kind of person. I asked him in passing how he'd been holding up with the pandemic, and suddenly, there it was. Covid19 was a hoax perpetrated by China to help Joe Biden get elected. It broke my heart. A smart, good, kind man that I knew had been brain damaged. Like some kind of fucking psychological cancer. As the old saying goes, There but for the grace of God, go I. You and I can't imagine falling prey to such a thing, but I can assure you that my old friend Danny had and has the same mental facilities as you and I. He caught this particular cancer, and you and I didn't. What's worse? He doesn't even know he has and is subject to this psychological malignancy. I wonder if there are any psychological cancers you and I are subject to, right now, that we don't even know about or suspect?

phobosanomaly 6y ago
Sharp comment. Lot of truth packed in there.
thelean12 6y ago
Sorry, that means they're not smart. They might be a good programmer and a family man, but they're not smart. If you are able to fall for "Covid19 was a hoax perpetrated by China to help Joe Biden get elected" in the modern day, then you are not smart. It's one thing when you're not able to get information, like way back in the day when we had no real world explanations for lots of things, and had to work with what you've heard from word of mouth. But now? There's no excuse.
busrf 6y ago
Thank you for this comment. One thing that I have noticed myself and some other engineers I know being susceptible to is the desire to view the world as systematic, ordered, certain, and understandable. It’s a desire to find the root cause to everything, to understand the reason behind everything, and to package that up into a chain of causality that fits within my mind. The positive side of this is that many of these attributes are needed to be a good engineer. The negative side is, at least for me, trouble dealing with chaos or ambiguity in the world or anything that has an unclear explanation. Maybe this contributes to being more susceptible to conspiracy thinking. I am not sure; that’s a question for social scientists to uncover.
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
I guess Snow Crash is out in the wild. Did he seem "normal" outside the covid stuff>
- Diederich 6y ago
  > I guess Snow Crash is out in the wild. I had to look this up, I presume this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash If you have a minute, can you please expand on your statement? It seems very interesting! > Did he seem "normal" outside the covid stuff We have yet to correspond extensively, but so far it's been pretty typical catching up after 25 years stuff, except as noted. I'm going to try to very carefully get some information about how he arrived at the conspiracy opinion.
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    Snow Crash refers to a virus, that in the book, only works on "hackers", since their brains understand code, and just need to see the raw bitmap of it for their brain to stop working. The book contains alot of analysis on the nature of information and how it spreads, and the methods in which you can literally re-program a person with language. I think its an apt analogy, your buddy is a programmer that has been exposed to Snow Crash, a virus of misinformation, and has shut down a part of his functioning. ====== "You're a hacker, that means you have deep structures to worry about, too." "Deep structures?" "Neurolinguistic pathways in your brain. Remember the first time you learned binary code?" "Sure." "You were forming pathways in your brain. Deep structures. Your nerves grow new connections as you use them - the axons split and pushed their way between the dividing glial cells - your bioware self-modifies - the software becomes a part of the hardware. So now you're vulnerable - all hackers are vulnerable - to a nam-shub. We have to look out for each other." "What's a nam-shub? Why am I vulnerable to it?" "Just don't stare into any bitmaps..."
    - Diederich 6y ago
      Thanks, I added that book to my list. (:
- 6y ago
djsumdog 6y ago
> It broke my heart. A smart, good, kind man that I knew had been brain damaged. Like some kind of fucking psychological cancer. You're applying your view of the world to him. You're also condemning him in your mind. How about you do this instead: you know he's a smart, honest person. Listen to his argument, see where he's coming from, and try to understand _why_ he choose that conclusion. Nothing is all cut and dry. I do think CoV2 is a real virus, but I think our reaction to it has been absolutely disastrous. We're seeing lowering fatalities rates. Some of that is due to better treatment (early on doctors were just putting people straight onto ventilators, which was a death sentence. Since then ventilators aren't used immediately and we've seen survival go up). With all the measures put in place, people who do get exposed are also getting low exposure, which can result in minor infections/cough/cold and quicker recovery and possibly even resistance. We've known for a while the amount of exposure matters. No one is talking about how the NYC/Michigan/Kirkland (Seattle) high death counts were directly the result of issues with elderly car facilities and cramming tons of old people into places not equipped to handle them. I have a Bachelors and Masters degree, have published several papers, and consider myself a reasonable person, and my person view is that we are overreacting. I've been writing about it just to see if what I write tracks in 5 years: March: https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/covid-19-is-two-diseases/ https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/covid-19-is-two-disease... May: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-honor/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-hon... July: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/ We've watch the media go into a crazy hyper-overdrive mode on almost all information, with headlines that are contradicted by the actual text of the story. We also see zero coverage of the insane 40~50 cycles used in the current PCR tests, which generate tons of false positives. Every media outlet is focusing on "cases" but what if that "case" had minimal symptoms and required 45 PCR test cycles? That's either a very low viral load or a false positive, a good thing. But no one is covering that data. Elon Musk found issues with the rapid test; and yes the rapid test is used for antibodies and has its limits. Instead of kindly explaining it to him, someone ranted on Twitter insulting him, implying he was a fool. But many people are buying these tests and are not aware of their limitations, so from that perspective, Elon did something good for bringing the issue to light, and he was insulted by someone who wanted to shame people into a certain narrative. Things are super complex right now. The truth is somewhere in the middle of all the bullshit we're being fed.
dkural 6y ago
Thanks for the answer mate. I now understand what you mean. I guess we need to just reach out to people more and see if slowly we can cure them out of their thought cancers and they can cure us of ours. Different perspectives make all bugs shallow. I very much like this & thank you for giving me a new way of thinking about something today!

phobosanomaly 6y ago

Sharp comment. Lot of truth packed in there.

thelean12 6y ago

Sorry, that means they're not smart. They might be a good programmer and a family man, but they're not smart. If you are able to fall for "Covid19 was a hoax perpetrated by China to help Joe Biden get elected" in the modern day, then you are not smart. It's one thing when you're not able to get information, like way back in the day when we had no real world explanations for lots of things, and had to work with what you've heard from word of mouth. But now? There's no excuse.

busrf 6y ago

Thank you for this comment. One thing that I have noticed myself and some other engineers I know being susceptible to is the desire to view the world as systematic, ordered, certain, and understandable. It’s a desire to find the root cause to everything, to understand the reason behind everything, and to package that up into a chain of causality that fits within my mind. The positive side of this is that many of these attributes are needed to be a good engineer. The negative side is, at least for me, trouble dealing with chaos or ambiguity in the world or anything that has an unclear explanation. Maybe this contributes to being more susceptible to conspiracy thinking. I am not sure; that’s a question for social scientists to uncover.

NikolaeVarius 6y ago

I guess Snow Crash is out in the wild. Did he seem "normal" outside the covid stuff>

Diederich 6y ago
> I guess Snow Crash is out in the wild. I had to look this up, I presume this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash If you have a minute, can you please expand on your statement? It seems very interesting! > Did he seem "normal" outside the covid stuff We have yet to correspond extensively, but so far it's been pretty typical catching up after 25 years stuff, except as noted. I'm going to try to very carefully get some information about how he arrived at the conspiracy opinion.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  Snow Crash refers to a virus, that in the book, only works on "hackers", since their brains understand code, and just need to see the raw bitmap of it for their brain to stop working. The book contains alot of analysis on the nature of information and how it spreads, and the methods in which you can literally re-program a person with language. I think its an apt analogy, your buddy is a programmer that has been exposed to Snow Crash, a virus of misinformation, and has shut down a part of his functioning. ====== "You're a hacker, that means you have deep structures to worry about, too." "Deep structures?" "Neurolinguistic pathways in your brain. Remember the first time you learned binary code?" "Sure." "You were forming pathways in your brain. Deep structures. Your nerves grow new connections as you use them - the axons split and pushed their way between the dividing glial cells - your bioware self-modifies - the software becomes a part of the hardware. So now you're vulnerable - all hackers are vulnerable - to a nam-shub. We have to look out for each other." "What's a nam-shub? Why am I vulnerable to it?" "Just don't stare into any bitmaps..."
  - Diederich 6y ago
    Thanks, I added that book to my list. (:
6y ago

djsumdog 6y ago

> It broke my heart. A smart, good, kind man that I knew had been brain damaged. Like some kind of fucking psychological cancer. You're applying your view of the world to him. You're also condemning him in your mind. How about you do this instead: you know he's a smart, honest person. Listen to his argument, see where he's coming from, and try to understand _why_ he choose that conclusion. Nothing is all cut and dry. I do think CoV2 is a real virus, but I think our reaction to it has been absolutely disastrous. We're seeing lowering fatalities rates. Some of that is due to better treatment (early on doctors were just putting people straight onto ventilators, which was a death sentence. Since then ventilators aren't used immediately and we've seen survival go up). With all the measures put in place, people who do get exposed are also getting low exposure, which can result in minor infections/cough/cold and quicker recovery and possibly even resistance. We've known for a while the amount of exposure matters. No one is talking about how the NYC/Michigan/Kirkland (Seattle) high death counts were directly the result of issues with elderly car facilities and cramming tons of old people into places not equipped to handle them. I have a Bachelors and Masters degree, have published several papers, and consider myself a reasonable person, and my person view is that we are overreacting. I've been writing about it just to see if what I write tracks in 5 years: March: https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/covid-19-is-two-diseases/ https://battlepenguin.com/philosophy/covid-19-is-two-disease... May: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-honor/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/this-is-not-a-time-of-hon... July: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/secondary-effects/ We've watch the media go into a crazy hyper-overdrive mode on almost all information, with headlines that are contradicted by the actual text of the story. We also see zero coverage of the insane 40~50 cycles used in the current PCR tests, which generate tons of false positives. Every media outlet is focusing on "cases" but what if that "case" had minimal symptoms and required 45 PCR test cycles? That's either a very low viral load or a false positive, a good thing. But no one is covering that data. Elon Musk found issues with the rapid test; and yes the rapid test is used for antibodies and has its limits. Instead of kindly explaining it to him, someone ranted on Twitter insulting him, implying he was a fool. But many people are buying these tests and are not aware of their limitations, so from that perspective, Elon did something good for bringing the issue to light, and he was insulted by someone who wanted to shame people into a certain narrative. Things are super complex right now. The truth is somewhere in the middle of all the bullshit we're being fed.

dkural 6y ago

Thanks for the answer mate. I now understand what you mean. I guess we need to just reach out to people more and see if slowly we can cure them out of their thought cancers and they can cure us of ours. Different perspectives make all bugs shallow. I very much like this & thank you for giving me a new way of thinking about something today!