mikem170

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by mikem170 5y ago
Leaving aside how we got here, that is something interesting to think about, the insight you just offered about our miscommunication around this issue. I knew I was not engaging in misdirection. At first I did leave unsaid that I always bel
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by mikem170 5y ago
> Great! Finally! Glad you agree with me completely. I'm pretty sure that I do not agree with you, most certainly we don't reason about these things the same. Along the way during this conversation I wondered if I'd learn
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by mikem170 5y ago
> I completely and totally agree with you, that the people who want to invade Taiwan, are extremely evil, should be condemned Yes, I would condemn it. I think any group of people who want to be independent should be able to be independen
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by mikem170 5y ago
> Look, if you just want to retreat entirely to a "might makes right" ideology, you can go ahead and do that. It's not an ideology. I'm saying that it's simply the way geopolitics works. The way things have been
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by mikem170 5y ago
Wow, that's quite collection of studies within that link! Ideally I'd find something in there with details that pass my sniff test, including the methodology and resulting numbers. That's why I only looked at a couple from yo
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by mikem170 5y ago
Do you really think geopolitics is based on morals? A much better case could be made that wars are really started over greed and fear. And that's what I was talking about originally. This thread started with me objecting to the asserti
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by mikem170 5y ago
I think that both the U.S. and China do some pretty horrible things in the name of perpetuating their power. Big countries are bullies. My original reply in this thread was that I didn't think that the fear of China attacking the West
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by mikem170 5y ago
Unless you have a better study to point to than the hairdressers and the navy ship studies that I looked at (both pretty sloppy in their own way), I'd say that you don't have proof. I'm not saying that you are provably incorr
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by mikem170 5y ago
> So what? Who cares? If you don't understand their perspective you are at a disadvantage. You won't be able to do a good job predicting what they will do. You may unnecessarily start a war. You may be manipulated into starting
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by mikem170 5y ago
You asked why you got downvotes. I offered my perspective. You seem to be overreaching with your conclusions. You accuse me of the same, but I didn't say anything was conclusive, I pointed out contradictory evidence, that the issue of
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by mikem170 5y ago
I would say that the U.S. is an aggressor in the region, also, with deployed military forces and its own agenda. I agree about external enemies. I think that both China and the U.S. are playing that dangerous game. I also agree that the Chi
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by mikem170 5y ago
Thanks, that was a mistake, I meant to say 'foreign supported'. I edited my comment. > It is China that is bullying Taiwan, not other countries bullying China. That's not their perspective. Hard to argue effectively agains
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by mikem170 5y ago
So your justification is that so we can continue to dominate and bottle-up China, because we are good and they are bad? Do you really think they have plans to attack the west? Remember that they were colonized/humiliated by the west, t
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by mikem170 5y ago
Yep, lots of countries mistreat lots of their people. I question why we are told more about some than others.
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by mikem170 5y ago
> how could anyone have known whether or not iraq had or was about to have WMDs Powell, on behalf of the U.S. government, said they were certain, and was wrong. I guess one could wonder if it was on purpose or not, but credibility is dam
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by mikem170 5y ago
EDIT: My reply above was in regards to vaccines for those who already have caught covid and presumably have natural immunity, immunity that looks like it is better than vaccine immunity. The equation for those people to get the vaccine is d
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by mikem170 5y ago
I guess it would be comparing the improvement from a vaccine to the better natural immunity versus the risks from a vaccine. I don't know that this is obvious. For example, a hundredth of a percent improvement is 1 in 10k. And an alrea
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by mikem170 5y ago
Yes, I believe the right test can differentiate between the different antibody responses, telling you if you reacted to the virus, reacted to the vaccine, or both. I looked into this at one time and think I found one that cost $220. Sorry I
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by mikem170 5y ago
There are also inactivated-virus covid-19 vaccines [0] in trials that one could expect to impart more broad-based immunity than the mrna vaccines which are designed to target only one part of the virus. [0] https://en.wikipedia.o
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by mikem170 5y ago
> As has been repeatedly reported, masks are primarily to keep the infected from infecting others, and again, there is a mountain of evidence that this is the case. I might not be seeing the same mountain of evidence that you are. The fi
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by mikem170 5y ago
Do you think laws are sacrosanct and can't be examined or changed? Do you think they don't need to be justified? There's many examples where the law doesn't stop companies from ripping off individuals, obfuscating terms
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by mikem170 5y ago
But then why do masked populations end up with the same maximum growth rate? Doesn't that mean that mask populations end up catching it the same in the end? Wondering this, I wasn't sure of the significance of what you are saying.
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by mikem170 5y ago
Maybe it's an imperfect market. Is there an auction site for zero days where Microsoft could bid on their own exploits? I'd be in favor of something like this. Why should the criminal justice system and every tax payer be on the h
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by mikem170 5y ago
You are not the only one! I've been following recent developments in Israel closely. And the numbers, I've always prioritized numbers over adjectives. There's no good way to asses risk without numbers.
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by mikem170 5y ago
I would tend to agree with you, with the exception that there are too many regulations preventing new housing from being built, for reasons that have nothing to do with safety.
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by mikem170 5y ago
About 90% of the countries in the world, including the U.S., do not recognize Taiwan, because of diplomatic pressure from China. In China's view Taiwan is a rebellious state that only exists due to foreign interference. That's not
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by mikem170 5y ago
Not a downvoter, but I'm sceptical of your conclusion. I took a look at the contents of the report, and it is denser than most. I was looking for some idea of the magnitude of difference that you are seeing, and wasn't sure that I
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by mikem170 5y ago
Yep, same as last year. And Texas and Florida have had more cases in the summer, for similar reasons.
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by mikem170 5y ago
> Also only the last 2-3 months have required being indoors in most of Texas and Florida. And that's when cases exploded in Florida and Texas [0], from 1-2k per day to 15-20k, coinciding with the spread of delta throughout the world
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by mikem170 5y ago
There might be a pattern, both of these states (and some other southern states I sampled) had surges in during the summer months of 2020 and 2021, unlike some northern states, like NY [0]. Perhaps because everyone is hiding inside with the

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