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This is an outstanding Gish gallop, and I salute you for it. All those gaggling facts are just being used to obscure. Really all you're saying here is that t

This is an outstanding Gish gallop, and I salute you for it. All those gaggling facts are just being used to obscure. Really all you're saying here is that the data is noisy (duh). So we can't refute your argument with local data about Scandinavia because that's "cherry picking". But when your argument is about a SINGLE DATA POINT IN ISOLATION (Sweden's results) then... that's totally valid analysis that needs to be accepted without question or worry about confounding noise? No, that's bad science. It's quite clear that nations with both good mitigation strategies and good compliance (Finland, Germany, Japan) had low case counts, and those that didn't (everywhere else) had bad outbreaks. It's true you can find outliers, but so what?

mike_hearn 6y ago
There seems to be a basic logic issue here. Maybe an example will help. If you argue "all swans are white" then to disprove your theory all I have to do is identify a single black swan. One is enough, and presenting such a black swan is not "cherry picking" because the original theory was total and had no exceptions: it posited the absence of "cherries". If your response is, "well obviously all swans are white in this part of the lake" then you've lost the argument, because your original theory is the one being debated, not one with a random ad-hoc revision that makes no sense. Arguments about Sweden and lockdown are like this. The debate in question is whether lockdowns were required. Their justification is entirely based on models that claim to accurately simulate the counter-factual: that not locking down will yield enormous death numbers. To disprove this theory and thus eliminate it as the justification for lockdowns only requires one counter example, because the original theory is total and has no exceptions for proximity to Stockholm/Nordic culture/whatever today's excuse is. Now as I've pointed out, Sweden is not the only counter-example, there are quite a few in different parts of the world. But that doesn't matter because by the nature of the original claim, a single counter-example is sufficient. To re-establish a justification for lockdowns would require a revised theory that is actually coherent and explains all the exceptions, not just a single one: this is basic logic.

mike_hearn 6y ago

There seems to be a basic logic issue here. Maybe an example will help. If you argue "all swans are white" then to disprove your theory all I have to do is identify a single black swan. One is enough, and presenting such a black swan is not "cherry picking" because the original theory was total and had no exceptions: it posited the absence of "cherries". If your response is, "well obviously all swans are white in this part of the lake" then you've lost the argument, because your original theory is the one being debated, not one with a random ad-hoc revision that makes no sense. Arguments about Sweden and lockdown are like this. The debate in question is whether lockdowns were required. Their justification is entirely based on models that claim to accurately simulate the counter-factual: that not locking down will yield enormous death numbers. To disprove this theory and thus eliminate it as the justification for lockdowns only requires one counter example, because the original theory is total and has no exceptions for proximity to Stockholm/Nordic culture/whatever today's excuse is. Now as I've pointed out, Sweden is not the only counter-example, there are quite a few in different parts of the world. But that doesn't matter because by the nature of the original claim, a single counter-example is sufficient. To re-establish a justification for lockdowns would require a revised theory that is actually coherent and explains all the exceptions, not just a single one: this is basic logic.