#the sneaky corona virus.

wizzwizz4 · 2021-03-29T21:27:54+00:00

Oh, neat. Some people did this with the vaccines. That's a follow-up (of sorts) to Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine, but that project didn't compare the RNA to the actual vaccines to check that it was really the same.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-11-10T22:04:17+00:00

Oi. None of that, please. Keep it high on the pyramid of debate.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-30T17:25:18+00:00

Hmm… But wouldn't photos of the paper make people think “we can't let them threaten us” and vote for the threatened-against? So you've got a localised prevention but a national boon… this is making my head hurt. Too much to think about.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-30T17:23:02+00:00

How small do you draw the territories? Or do you have it based on proximity, with some kind of drop-off with distance? What's to stop people travelling around and voting in things that don't concern them – but then, what's to stop the homeless being disenfranchised?

(Some of these problems should be familiar; I'm not trying to shut down change.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-27T18:16:59+00:00

True.

Then again, the paper one would've been pretty localised (there's a limit to how many pieces of paper you can put through letterboxes), whereas there's no reason to think the email one would've gone to anything less than everyone in the database.

Which is worse? Few people × very threatening, or many people × less threatening? I think the answer here's obvious: there is at yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-27T18:13:09+00:00

You don't need to "parse" it. It's already written out for you

No, I meant… extract the transcript from whatever weird XML / JSON format YouTube serves it to the client as.

Then you ARE a SCHILL, intentionally ignoring evidence to be ignorant ON PURPOSE.

I said that it probably wouldn't convince me – not that I would ignore it. It was a prediction, not a declaration of intent; sorry for the vagueness. A more detailed explanation of my intent: Unless you think that this video contains all the reasons you think that way, laid out with enough (externally-verifiable) evidence to support all the necessary claims (which I wouldn't know, since I don't know what's in it), it wouldn't make me as certain as you are – and that might not be enough certainty to think it more likely than not (my standard for “convinced”). It'd probably make me more certain (I've already updated on that probably, but I think you'd think, given what I know about what I know, that knowing what the video says will make me more certain still, which is the correct thing to think if you have a justified reason to be more sure about how much the contents of the video will persuade me (e.g. knowing what the video says, and having the contents of the video containing a lot of persuasive evidence).)

when you can't even acknowledge that the legitimizing process and all the media and governments are corrupt as fuck.

Since I led you to believe that, I've experienced the issues of such legitimising first-hand. Not with any malice involved, I don't think – but maybe I'm still just naïve on that matter.

The fact you believe something isn't enough for me to believe it (though it does affect my beliefs a little). Plenty of people around me believe all sorts of things, but them believing them isn't strong evidence for them. Yeah, if I refused to watch it because it was an “unreliable source”, that'd be pompous…

I don't know what you mean with your Stallman reference, beyond the obvious: The sky is falling and no one cares.

Pretty much. But unlike Cassandra, you're not cursed; just not as good at convincing people as you'd need to be. For most of your claims (probably a superset of the ones I agree with you about… I'm just not sure which are the extra ones), you have enough information to convince other people, but your presentation isn't good enough.

We're in a manufactured crisis scamdemic while propaganda, shills, idiots, and sheeple refuse to see their world collapsing into this totalitarian "new normal" tyranny bullshit.

That's just one of the issues. Yeah, it's important, but other people might care more about different ones. Imo, your aim shouldn't be to try to convince people; it should be to foster the behaviour that prevents this from happening. Go a level below (or above… not sure what the proper metaphorical direction is).

Other than my occasional ventures over to Saidit, I don't need to know who's doing what, what the latest plot to hurt everyone is, who's chucking barrels of DDT into the ocean. All I need to do is behave in a way that makes that stuff slightly less effective. The only reason I come here is to check whether that still lines up with what you think – because as hard as it is for me to believe some of the things you're saying, in the past you've known better than I what needs to be done (even if you haven't explicitly identified it). (More than I can say for some; you're one of the ~five Saiditors I actually respect.)

I've always been curious about that book, but not enough to read it. Maybe I'm naive or pretending I'm too virtuous or something, but it seems like it might be a slimy manipulation gimmick manual for used car salesmen and desperate horny men.

That's the same reason I haven't read it – but from what I hear, it's actually a good book. (It certainly doesn't contain dating / “dating” advice; I've heard far too many pick-up “artists” complaining about that.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-24T21:45:53+00:00

It probably won't make me realise that, so there's little point you expending time on it. (Though I can probably script something to parse the auto-transcript myself, so it'd be a waste of time to do that anyway.)

P.S.: I have realised why I listen to you more than I feel I should, though: when you're talking about problems, you talk like a CAPS-USING Richard Stallman. (Which isn't a good thing; people still think Richard Stallman is crazy, even though he was right. I've heard How to Win Friends and Influence People is a good book for this kind of thing, but I haven't got around to reading it.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-24T21:42:17+00:00

Sorry; I mixed the parties up. I was talking about the one fake-from the Proud Boys.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-24T12:22:23+00:00

Who cares if it was spread as propaganda? These were sent to a large subset of Democrat voters in Florida; it will have an effect on voting, regardless of what other effect it was intended to have.

Why is one instance of voter-threatening an issue, but another not?

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-24T12:17:16+00:00

It used to exist; they lost control of the domain recently. (Though other people think it was a homoglyph attack.)

And yeah, it was spoofed via a compromised saudi-re.com account. The point isn't that it was the Proud Boys (as little as I like them, the organisation probably wasn't responsible); the point is that potential voters were threatened. This will reduce the number of targets who vote, regardless of who was responsible.

I also use ProtonMail, but only because I haven't got a self-hosted system set up yet. I don't think ProtonMail is as confidential as they claim; I only use them because they (probably) don't sell my data to advertisers, and because GoogleMail doesn't block emails from it.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-23T22:03:16+00:00

We did some sleuthing (by “we”, I mean other-people-but-I-was-there-too) and it turns out that that's a copycat domain. So it's not the Proud Boys. It probably is members of the organisation, but the domain shouldn't be considered evidence that the leaders are involved.

Organisations can't really be divided into “radicals” and “not radicals” like that. There's a heuristic I came up with to work out how likely it is for certain people to promote violence against innocents (roughly determined by how well they uphold a certain set of philosophies) – but I'm not certain how good the heuristic is, because in addition to (retroactively) predicting the usual horribleness, it also says I'm much more likely to cause violence than someone like Richard Stallman.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-23T21:30:54+00:00

I can't find the transcript link. Could you post it, please? (Or, better, teach me how to ~~fish~~ find it on the Corbett Report website.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-23T21:25:51+00:00

the 2 best ways to control a population is via disease and food scarcity.

Those are ways to control a rebellious subset of the population; that wouldn't work on a national scale, and it certainly wouldn't work given ~~media coverage~~ ~~the interconnectedness brought by the internet~~ … Okay, that's scary, but I still think … okay, I'm not confident that everyone with the power to do that kind of thing wouldn't, but surely there must be other people with that kind of power who would stop it, instead of just being a bystand… Well, I'd still bet against it.

But back to my point: a combination of fear and the true belief that the leaders can protect from that fear would be a better way to control the population, and there are easier, more effective ways to do that than food shortages and disease. The position of elected government official couldn't really profit from control gathered via food shortages and disease.

Come to me for computer animation (or any other product or service) and you can only ever have up to 2/3 of these: quality, sooner, cheaper.

Wait, you were able to pull off good, fast and cheap at the same time? :-| My understanding of economics says you must care about your work.

But pretending it's a threat when it's an OBVIOUS excuse for tyranny is a stupid waste of time.

It can be both.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-23T21:22:09+00:00

Note that there are plenty of other reasons to flood the site; friendly reminder not to jump to conclusions. (Not everything is part of one big plot.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-23T21:18:39+00:00

I don't think Walmart buying from Chinese manufacturers isn't an example of monopsony. The poultry industry is, though; Cory Doctorow's writings on this topic are interesting.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-23T21:12:17+00:00

I can't be bothered with your code.

But I see you got a good way through it before giving up. :-p I'll translate the bits I'm not certain you understood.

It's fucking stupid.

Yes.

We still don't even know what this COVID-19 is other than what they allege it is.

I know a bit.

The tests are proprietary. Private patented info for profit. There are so many false positives and people being told they have it and they haven't even tested.

Yes, and it sucks.

ALL doctors, scientists, nurses, and people with related expertise who challenge the official narrative are CENSORED.

No – they're ignored, that's different; you can still find what they're saying if you look.

All they do is drum up fear.

That's nothing new, and you can still find people who aren't.

I don't know LessWrong well. You may have linked him before.

While LessWrong has been used as a pseudonym by the autodidactic polymath Eliezer Yudkowsky, LessWrong's now a forum home to essays like There is a war., and a recent (~9-month-old) subculture performing independent, amateur research on COVID-19; here's their link database if you want to skip the wordy.

Break free. Just because you like their shows or personalities (why their paid to be there) doesn't mean they aren't professional perpetual liars (even if they don't even realize it).

I understand what you're trying to say here, and it's valid, and even by my standards I'm probably being a bit too trusting here – but you'll have to work on your wording a bit if you don't want to sound like a loony. If you're trying to do outreach (which you sound like you are), you're not going to get NTs on-board if you talk like that. ^{This criticism brought to you by “I'm probably beyond help, so somebody might as well get something out of this conversation”.}

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-23T20:38:54+00:00

This (first part of paragraph two) is probably the best explanation of US politics I've read on this site. We probably don't disagree about this as much as I think we do.

And yes, I'd like to help you with that last project – if you think you can manage to put up with my over-scepticism of (what I perceive to be) your over-scepticism, and if I actually have anything to bring to the table. It's important for people who disagree to collaborate on things.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-23T20:32:30+00:00

Is this the first election where that's happened, or does this kind of thing happen often? It's, what, 20% of the population who've been given threats on their safety based on how they vote?

… Isn't that illegal?

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-18T21:30:35+00:00

I'm in Canada and my income has not increased, but my food bill has.

That only suggests food shortages if you assume the efficient market hypothesis, but monopolies, monopsonies and the fact you don't haggle on food prices means it could be price fixing or something algorithmic. (Obviously you have other reasons to suspect this, too, but just wanted to point out the obvious for everyone else.)

Sad to see that Canada's going that way, too.

You're digging yourself a cop out. If farms are sabotaged that also counts.

I know. I'm only exempting shortages due to changes in demand, not changes in supply; the latter is basically the definition of food shortage.

P.S.: Please don't buy into the false dichotomy “safety or liberty”. Assume, for a moment, that COVID-19 is a problem. You can have both.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-18T21:05:56+00:00

Each sentence in order:

Yes. —. —. (True.) Not always, but that's pedantry. We all are. —. Yes. —. I know a bit. Yes. Yes, and it sucks. Yes. Yes. No – they're ignored, that's different; you can still find what they're saying if you look. That's nothing new, and you can still find people who aren't. Not sure who “they” is in this sentence; LessWrong's been discussing this since the pandemic began.

I don't (my leaders suck), and I know they are; I'm sure most people do. I'm not regurgitating. They're not all liars; the Murdoch-owned ones are, but some others (e.g. BBC, unless an election coincides with the charter renewal) aren't.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-18T20:59:26+00:00

Who's “they”? 'Cause I'm not convinced it's one group of people.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-18T13:20:42+00:00

You're right – especially in the US. It's obvious to anyone who looks. That doesn't mean there isn't an actual disease; it'd be a lot harder for them to pull this shit without there actually being a COVID-19. (They'd have to have infiltrated my local hospital, and, and… that'd take a conspiracy of literal millions, the vast majority of whom are willing to let their friends and neighbours die.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-18T13:17:18+00:00

I think we need to scientifically prove that this is a new illness.

The fact that this crucial evidence of existence isn't available is strong evidence of a hoax.

The gene sequence? It's expensive, but not out of reach if crowd-funded, to partially-sequence the SARS-CoV-2 genome yourself, which you can then compare against published genomes; if you get bits of the SARS-CoV-2 genome then it's SARS-CoV-2, but if you fail to find any of the published genome from somebody who's tested positive then something's up.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-18T13:07:51+00:00

I don't live in the US. I don't have it as bad as you. I've got some independent (non-Murdoch) newspapers, and government accountability, and few enough political prisoners I can count them on one hand (most held on behalf of the US), and no concentration camps. Yeah, the leaders of the government don't care about us, but we know that, and there are some people in government who do care. We're only a voting reform away from a functional democracy.

The next crisis will be food. It's already started. Our governments are sabotaging their networks.

That's a testable hypothesis. You expect to see a food crisis in the US. I expect not to see a food crisis in the UK. If there's no food crisis in the US, either you were wrong or you (and others) managed to stop it, and it should be obvious which was which. If there's a food crisis in the UK, I shall be stunned, and pay a lot more attention to what you say, because that's far too strong a prediction to be the stopped-clock effect.

Note that I don't count stuff like “increased demand for flour means you can only buy it in larger bags due to labour shortages in packaging” as a food shortage.

ALL mass problems are intentional by the corporatocracy, except natural events which they will exploit as they do all crisistunities.

We only really disagree on how many things are “natural events”, and how much hidden conspiracy there is in the blatantly-obvious corruption.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-18T12:53:00+00:00

I don't even know people who know people who got it around here.

People around here have been taken away in ambulances and have died. People in my ~1000 strong local community. If people around you aren't getting ill? Great! Doesn't mean it's affecting nobody.

Just because your leaders are taking advantage of the situation, that doesn't mean there's no situation in the first place.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-14T21:36:49+00:00

You might be surrounded by people who are naturally immune, or something. For once, this is something I have researched, and something I have experience with. Yeah, the advice we're being given is rubbish, but COVID-19 is an actual problem.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-14T21:34:55+00:00

No, I meant specifically. Is it wrong here?

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-14T21:34:26+00:00

… RE the fifth paragraph: We're talking about different governments – but that triggered a really big thought about the complex interplay between how what's going on with the US affects other countries and it just hurt my head; I don't think I'm ready to think big thoughts about economic geopolitics.

I think that what's going on most places in Europe is standard lobbying-corruption with some leakage from the big multi-national US corporations; that seems to explain things better than the pure debt-slave model. (Though debt-slave does seem to match what I've heard of the US…)

RE terrorism: Terrorism occurs because it makes the news. Even if you didn't have all the media oligarchies, it'd still make the news; that's an emergent feature of the entire news genre. Not all instances of terrorism are controlled by those who benefit from fear; in fact, acts of terrorism are rather destabilising ways of causing fear compared to the bog-standard “Fear the Others™” that certain politicians so habitually evoke in their voter-bases, so I don't see how they could benefit from doing so. (In fact, I'd suggest that almost none are – though there are situations where it would be beneficial, and I've vaguely heard of a few such situations in inquest reports on the news.) It'd be foolish for them not to make use of such situations when they arise, though.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-14T06:30:05+00:00

If the government says it's dangerous, its in the government's interests to say so.

The government's interests are served by big economy numbers. That can't happen if everyone's dead (hyperbole).

The government's also interested in not being shown up by epidemiologists, so they have to at least be seen to be giving good advice, some of the time. If you have no better source of information, my heuristic has (so far) turned that source of advice into a useful one.

(And I'd argue that the terrorism thing is more about psychology, and if it were different there'd be other failure modes, but that's probably an argument for another day; I'm quite tired right now.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-14T06:26:45+00:00

YouTube users can add captioning contributions, for better or worse,

They disabled the community ones a few months ago, and their AI is bad, and I haven't yet found a way to download the transcript (though it's probably easy, and tbh I haven't tried).

I will look into point 5, though. ☺

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-14T06:25:18+00:00

No evidence of Koch's postulate confirmation.

From Wikipedia, first paragraph:

These postulates were generated before modern concepts in microbial pathogenesis that cannot be examined using Koch's postulates, including viruses (which are obligate cellular parasites) and asymptomatic carriers.

Is Wikipedia wrong?

(No comment on the vaccine stuff. There are teams I expect to come out with a reliable, non-quack vaccine, but these things take time to do well, so we'd be arguing about different things to each other.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-14T06:21:18+00:00

The announcements I've seen have been along the lines of “wash your hands before prodding your mucous membranes, don't cough on people, re-open the golf places, re-open the schools, you no longer need to wear a mask indoors with strangers if you've opened a window a crack”. This advice is “necessary, necessary, hubris, somewhat dangerous, idiotic”. They haven't mentioned chess games, which – if other sensible measures are taken, like ventilating the room, not licking each other's eyeballs and not playing with symptoms – should be safe enough.

Is the statement invalid for this context?

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-10T09:24:53+00:00

and have transcripts.

Woah, they have transcripts? Huh. This changes a lot. I'll read through one next time I'm free.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-10T09:22:55+00:00

It was a statement valid for the narrow context in which it was intended. I'm sorry if that wasn't clear to you (but I think it was clear to you).

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-10T09:21:21+00:00

Multiple profiles on one computer - doesn't really happen anymore.

I do it…

private mode - Here cookies are actually better since they respect private mode while the hash doesn't.

You're assuming that Plausible will pay attention only to the cookies, but they have all that information in the first place. Cookies would just provide an additional datapoint; and while they're not evil, how long will they stay that way? (I'm betting a while… but it's the principle of the thing.)

Modern western culture is completely insane and everything that concerns members of modern western culture is bullshit.

https://xkcd.com/2368/

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-10T09:13:18+00:00

And this seems very different from what we're seeing with COVID-19.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-04T21:00:33+00:00

So there really is no difference.

Multiple profiles on one computer, private mode… all that information is just straight-up not available to Plausible. Yeah, Plausible's using the information it has got, but it's not gathering any more information than that.

For example I want to know how long after a user visits the site do they buy.

Hmm… Why?

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-04T20:54:52+00:00

Obligatory xkcd.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-04T20:51:30+00:00

Unquestionably, swine flu has proved to be vastly milder than ordinary seasonal flu. It kills at a third to a tenth the rate, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates. Data from other countries like France and Japan indicate it's far tamer than that.

Indeed, judging by what we've seen in New Zealand and Australia (where the epidemics have ended), and by what we're seeing elsewhere in the world, we'll have considerably fewer flu deaths this season than normal. That's because swine flu muscles aside seasonal flu, acting as a sort of inoculation against the far deadlier strain.

This seems very different from what we're seeing with COVID-19. Don't think this is fake. (A good sign of that: other organisations were reacting before the WHO.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-04T20:48:05+00:00

You see, this is why I dislike the “dictate” approaches that the US, UK etc. are employing. Their “advice” is one part “keeping safe” to three parts “political convenience”.

An educated populace would be able to make better decisions, and we'd have more freedom, fewer deaths and more trade (therefore more value created, a loose approximation of which is called “The Economy”) – but the kinds of politician who've got elected in these countries did so by manipulating people with rhetoric; I don't think they believe us to be intelligent enough for that.

Learn the truth. If the government says it's dangerous, it probably is; but if the government says it's safe, it probably isn't. (If they don't mention it, it's probably safe, but use your common-sense-informed-by-epidemiology-knowledge.) (This advice doesn't apply to all governments; some of them are competent.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-04T20:40:01+00:00

Also, now that this post is no longer front page you could likely link it safely without a swarm of asstrolls.

Unfortunately, I'm not active enough on Saidit that they couldn't just go through my comment history after I wound them up. Everyone in this thread is aware of it though (in fact, you have an account there), so there's no need to mention it. Anyone interested can DM one of us to ask, or follow the not-so-subtle clues I've already left.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-04T20:38:48+00:00

I hate to agree with this lot, but they actually have a point; reducing accessibility to certain videos, as with here, effectively censors them. Many people aren't willing to let Google track them, and that's not a point on which they should be expected to compromise, ever.

Of course, I'm a little happy about it, because now I have an excuse they'll accept to not watch seven hours of how metal's solid phase has the same physical properties regardless of temperature, and this “fact”'s implication's on last decade's US politics. But I want to resist it for two reasons:

Google isn't likely to stop at the people I don't like; for them, the Schnelling point is “doing anything at all”. Google cares about its profits more than anything.
Hundreds of duplicate copies are flooding other video platforms and making it hard to find good videos. (If I had a penny for every Plandemic II on NewTube…).

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-04T20:13:51+00:00

His alternative is basically like a cookie, just a lot more work.

And, importantly, can't be used to track individual users except in the case of a very inactive site.

Yeah, it's more work extracting the information from the data when you can't track individual users, but that's the point; Plausible operates under the model that Plausible Analytics is not to be trusted. If more systems acted like that, the web would be a better place.

but I would expect it to use cookies to track users over long time periods. I run an e-commerce website and I need to know what my users are doing over time.

Why would you possibly need to know that?

wizzwizz4 · 2020-10-04T20:09:10+00:00

Science is never settled. Ever.

Technically, yes; we can thank Karl Popper for that. But have you heard of Bayesianism? If not, I can explain it with an intuition pump:

Imagine that you've got a very big bag, and are in a dark room. You can't see what's in it, but you can stick one hand in. You feel around, and can only feel spheres around the size of your palm. Pulling one out, it looks red in the dim light. You put it back in and shake the bag. Another: looks red. Another, and another… ten or twenty looked a little orange, and you could've sworn the four hundred and seventh was blue, but another thousand or so and you haven't found one like it.

“The balls that can reach the surface are all red” isn't settled science, no; arguments vary from “the bag contains only identical red spheres” and “the top layer of the bag mostly consists of red spheres, but there might be a few rare other-coloured spheres and all we know about what's beneath is that if it's not red spheres it doesn't mix when you shake it”.

But nobody's seriously arguing that there's only one red sphere, and you keep taking out the same one even though you're shaking the bag vigorously each time. It's possible, yes, and the chances of that are way higher than you might naïvely think (conditional on it being the same one, it's far more likely that there's a process keeping that ball near the opening than that the balls are randomising each time and that's just staying there by pure fluke), but they're still so low as to not really be worth considering (at least, until future evidence suggests that might be more likely, or you run out of other things to test).

And the chances of some theory that predicts against observed reality, such that the evidence we've seen is _all flukes_… well, we take it on principle that those theories are rubbish descriptions of reality.

So, no, science is never settled, but we can still be darn sure of things.

Their predictions rarely occur, if ever.

So, “next year will be the hottest year on record, and then the year after will be the hottest year on record, and so on” didn't come true? Certainly felt like it, watching the news back in '17.
So “we'll have more hurricanes and thunderstorms and flooding” didn't come true?

Yeah, there are quacks; there are always quacks. Yeah, there are models that get falsified, as there always are in science. But even academia has made fairly consistent, testable, successful predictions.

"Global warming" was renamed "climate change", because the warming stopped.

It was actually renamed “climate change” well before the warming in my country stopped (which seems to have started again, though I've only got a few months of data to go by on that). The models always predicted more chaotic weather in general, meaning some regions would get cooler, so right from the start people were pushing for the pop-sci “global warming” name to be replaced.

The reason the warming has “stopped” where you are is, according to the models, because massive slabs of permafrost are falling into the sea and melting. That hasn't translated into “stopped” in places further from the coast. (I assume you don't live near the middle of your continental landmass.)

CO2 levels continue to increase, yet the temperate has not continued to increase.

My thermometer at my house stopped increasing sometime around late 2018, but I live near the coast. In 2017 I was told to expect this, given that the ice sheets were melting and dumping large ice cubes into the ocean. I was also told that this would result in an increase in warm rainstorms; I don't quite understand why that would happen (not being a meterologist), but it seems to have checked out so far.

Global average temperatures, however, have continued to rise. But maybe that's a fluke.

I don't want to be having this same argument in 2030, so can we agree on something that you expect to see go one way and I expect to see the other, so there's an eventual end-point where we'll know who was right? (Yes, I'm asking for a testable prediction; if we both agree on one, then we can't back out later, so even though it won't necessarily convince anyone else it'll still convince us.)

I have refuted the central thesis of your position.

If you were right, then you would've. I can't think of a non-sarcastic-sounding way of congratulating you, so I'll just point out that this is already better than many internet arguments I've had even though I'm arguing with a climate-change denier. You certainly seem to understand science better than most people.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-09-21T18:12:04+00:00

There is. Check out the work of Marko Saric. I'm sorry I don't have many other people to list; my memory's hazy when I'm tired. (I only remembered Marko because I was just talking to him.)

If you poke around a bit, you'll find a place where we all hang out and chat. I'm not linking it here (like I used to when Saidit was young), because I seriously don't trust that it won't end up swarmed by a renegade band of trolls if I do.

(Thanks /u/JasonCarswell for pinging me. I'm barely active here, so you timed that excellently.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-09-21T18:05:56+00:00

No; I just only check Saidit every five days or so. If you think that's unusual, you might be experiencing selection bias.

Please keep the Pyramid of Debate in mind when replying. If it's so obvious that I have no clue what I'm talking about, then I'm sure you'd be able to be able to call out one wrong thing I wrote? (Though I'd prefer if you addressed my main points, instead of picking something like “but it's going to be winter in the northern hemisphere soon, therefore wind should be listed above solar hurr durr” – just in case you're as much of a rules lawyer as I am.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-09-21T18:00:15+00:00

We become what we behold.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-09-15T18:27:49+00:00

It's not the Kenosha bit that I thought was interesting; that's just a springboard for the other ideas. (I've no clue what went on in Kenosha, but the rest of it seems valid to me.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-09-15T18:26:13+00:00

Science had always been is extremely political. Scientist compete with each other. It's anything but dispassionate.

You're thinking of academia. I'm trying to make a distinction between the process of science (based on the ideas of Popper and Bacon) and the thing academic scientists do.

You only get to investigate what they will pay to look into.

You can literally do science yourself, mate. It doesn't need fancy equipment or money. Anyone can do it.

Al Gore won a nobel peace prize

That's not even academia, is it? It's certainly not science. How is this relevant?

The global climate weather is actually cooler and more cloudy in 2020 than it was in 2006, when this fake movie was made.

Out of interest, why do you think this? Did you write down temperature readings in 2006, and again in 2020? (Did you travel around the world to make global readings, not just local ones?)

Below is a story about the censored realty of a bungled global warming expedition.

Censored? Second sentence of the first paragraph of the Wikipedia section about its use for Antarctic research.

Also, is that article just saying "winter exists, therefore climate change doesn't"? If an idea you dislike seems that unbelievable (e.g. "climate change says winter does not exist"), that suggests you don't understand the idea very well.

"Global warming" is a scam to ban the use of combustible fuels, and gain control the world's energy resources forever.

Gain control? Who's gaining control? And are you trying to find alternative sources of energy, or are you just moaning? (If I thought there was a conspiracy to take away vital resources, I'd make sure I had at least two independent, hard-to-take-away sources of it; solar seems like an obvious first choice, though the panels are made with heavy metal so they have to be disposed of carefully if they break, as to not harm the environment too much. Next, I'd go with wind; less portable, but more plentiful and I know how to repair it if it breaks. Finally, I'd get a biofuel burner, like methane; I can produce methane myself by rotting plant matter, if it all goes belly up, and that's got high enough energy density that I could probably retrofit a car for it.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-09-15T18:09:57+00:00

It's not a unified movement, like a political party. It has no "founder", nor leaders. This seems like an attack-by-proxy (ad hominem on the Pyramid of Debate).

wizzwizz4 · 2020-09-11T18:47:41+00:00

I would contradict you, but I don't want to share a link; don't want the free speech instances to become angry racist instances, which tends to happen if you publicise them on a place people banned from one of the Big Social Media Sites go. Saidit's popularity is a mixed blessing in that respect. If you want details, I can DM, but keep it fairly private please. (Person-to-person only, no sharing on big sites like this.)

When a load of intolerant bigots flood a site, they tend to push out everyone who isn't as intolerant. Saiditors will probably have noticed this mostly on certain Reddit subs, but I've noticed it mostly on other sites. A Mastodon instance where anarcholibertarians can peacefully coexist with tankies is a place I really don't want to destroy, even by accident, even if there are a few dozen such places so it wouldn't be that much of a loss.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-09-11T18:38:27+00:00

Have you ever run your own experiments? It's easy enough. Then you could show that you're right, and you'd have science on your side.

Unfortunately, science is dispassionate. If you do it right, it supports truth. I expect that, if you do science, you'll learn that you're wrong. (If you also think this, then you think that you're wrong; if you don't think this, then why don't you? I can give you tips; obnoxious I may be, but I can do science.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-08-24T20:41:24+00:00

I can do better than a screencap. Willing to make a “bet” on PredictionBook? (No money; just a permanent record that people can bring up at a later date and laugh at you about.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-08-17T14:27:16+00:00

Losing a leg is long-term damage. You can know that five minutes after it happens; you don't need to wait 50 years to make sure the leg won't grow back before you conclude "maybe ACME anvils do cause long-term damage".

wizzwizz4 · 2020-08-17T14:26:05+00:00

Over a virus that is no worse, on average, than the flu.

An average skewed by the fact that those most at risk are often completely isolated from all human contact. You're comparing bad cases of COVID-19 in the very healthiest to bad cases of flu in the whole population. Calling that "on average" is disingenuous. (And, by the way, that's a really old stat – I'm pretty sure that hasn't been the case for five months now. COVID-19 isn't the worst disease on the planet when compared to stuff like Ebola, but it's virulent and a darn sight worse than anything we had in developed countries this time last year.)

forced to wear a item of clothing

I don't know of anywhere where this is legally mandated.

your right to privacy is intruded on

How? I'm a techie; the contract tracing protocols track you less than the telephony network.

Only to look forward to years of a rocky economic road which will seriously diminish your way of life,

Most countries have managed to avoid this. Blame your government, and maybe spend half an hour actually working towards fixing the problem – vote, if your voting system's effective; otherwise, write a letter to a politician, or perhaps find a competent activist and throw some money at them.

True ignorance is denying experiential and scientific data surrounding the topic.

Yeah… Kind of sucks to live in one of the countries where your government's doing this. But at least it's better than the US.

The only way millions of people are going to "stop it", is by contracting it, having the sniffles for a couple of weeks and then being done with it.

"The sniffles" is, generously, an accurate assessment of the median reaction. But "the median reaction is sniffles" is consistent with "40% of people straight up die"; going by the median response is a terrible way to make these decisions.

Your healthcare system can't cope with everybody getting COVID-19 at once, if only 1% of people require hospitalisation to survive. Nowhere's can. (And iirc, it's higher than 1% even with those most at risk self-isolating.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-08-17T14:03:07+00:00

It is about the police over-violently attacking innocent and vulnerable people that have committed no crime at all.

Oh. Well, that I agree is bad. A tip, though: criticise it directly. Going by proxy means people can shut down the arguments by attacking the (flimsy) proxies.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-08-12T23:43:48+00:00

Unless he's a full-blooded Amerindian or African, which he's clearly not, then he's white to some degree,

I'm going to ignore most of the rest of your post, because those parts are hard to argue with (either because they're right, like "a majority of human inventions…", or because they seems to be buried in a large structure of dubious conclusions that I don't feel like unpicking enough to give a coherent response, like "… to use the successful integration…" – though that might actually be true in the US; I've stopped keeping track of your incomprehensible excuse for politics).

How much "white" do you need to be considered "white"? If any "white" ancestry makes you "white", then "whiteness" is infectious. That's how the US defined "Native American", iirc – unless both your parents were "Native American" (by their classification), you were instead "white" (or whatever – the important this is, the "Native American" population, according to the government, could only shrink without exclusive interbreeding; either way, cultural genocide).

This changes nothing about the disparity in contributions between the races and between individuals.

You haven't actually shown such a disparity. We should probably agree on some definition of each "race" (I'll go with yours, since you seem to have a concrete definition, but you'll have to explain it to me), but according to my general fuzzy idea of what a "race" is this is obviously false. (Now, it might be true in the USA, land of the free, where access to education is strongly divided along racial lines… but I assume you're accounting for such confounders.)

This was not always true however, and many inventions and discoveries made between, say 1400 to 1800, were often the work of single individuals, many of whom were Europeans.

And between, say, 600 and 1000, they were often the work of single individuals, many of whom were Arabs. Historically, invention follows the wealthy, with leisure time to spend on such things – often during wartime, but computer tech and maths aren't wartime occupations when they're purely intellectual endeavours.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-08-12T23:23:34+00:00

A disease that's spread via, amongst other things, droplets of spittle… and some numbers on a chart in a YouTube video have convinced you that a face covering has “absolutely no effect”‽

Don't believe what you hear. Do the experiment yourself. Put a hand in front of your mouth and say "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers”. (Perhaps drink some water first, to make it easier to tell – but that's not necessary.) Move your hand further away and closer. Now: would a mask help with that?

I'm happy about masks being a thing, because it means it's socially acceptable for me to protect myself against mass surveillance now. That used to get you strange looks and increased attention; now, people just think "oh, eccentric" and move on.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-08-12T17:17:26+00:00

Pāṇini

No.

Seriously‽ The first one is probably just a curio, the second… you could argue somebody else would've come up with the idea, but "first inventor" is a significant enough concept in our culture that it has legal protection in over 50 countries…

… but how can you say the founder of modern linguistics didn't develop the core principles of BNF? There are literally two differences between his grammar formalisation and BNF:

The definition's on the left, without a ::= symbol; and
It doesn't have a trivial one-to-one mapping between canonical representation and digital representation (i.e. you need to use a pen, not a keyboard, to write it).

That's just utter ignorance.

Percy Ludgate is white.

Since when are Irish people white‽ The KKK, a white supremacist organisation, was anti-Irish (back when people used to take it seriously, anyway).

Manuel Blum is at least half-white.

He was born in bloody Venezuela!! Is it that hard to imagine that the inventor of the CAPTCHA

I'd gladly give you the list of white contributors,

The list? As in, everyone? I must admit, you'd find it easier, given how American and European contributors were better-documented (a Japanese uni student invented the ROM / RAM / LSR / CPU split, and we don't even know her name), but it'd still take a tremendous amount of research, and it'd take… well, I don't know how long the Saidit comment limit is now, given how long it's been since I've helped with the code, but certainly you'd need multiple comments.

To get back to your original point… can you actually give an example of:

practically everything in common use […] was invented by white peepo.

I'd be surprised if you can find more than ten examples; most things in common use are the work of more than a single small team, and anything larger than five people probably isn't just white people (for whatever definition of "white" you're using), even in a majority-white area. Heck, even the original UNIX wasn't just the work of white men!

wizzwizz4 · 2020-08-11T21:56:42+00:00

I didn't know that Al-Khwarizmi (inventor of the algorithm), Banū Mūsā (co-inventors of perhaps the first programmable machine), Ismail al-Jazari (inventor of the first programmable computer), Pāṇini (whose work on formalising Sanskrit linguistics formed the core principles of BNF), Percy Ludgate (inventor of the second type of Analytical Engine), Wang An (co-inventor of core memory), Sasaki Tadashi (inventor of the single-chip CPU, and who took some unnamed female software engineer's 4001 / 4002 / 4003 / 4004 model from the local university to Intel), Shima Masatoshi (designer of the aforementioned 4004), Manuel Blum (inventor of axiomatic computational complexity theory), Yogen Dalal (co-author of TCP) and Toh Chai Keong (inventor and creator of that "hotspot" thing your phone can do) were white.

Guess I still don't understand this "race" you seem to be so obsessed with categorising people into.

wizzwizz4 · 2020-08-11T20:26:32+00:00

Then make it not become like Voat. (I'm one to talk, having given up on that years ago because of a particularly bad week – but I'm still right; this sort of complaining ain't going to help.)

wizzwizz4 · 2020-06-04T12:05:57+00:00

For the record, I'm not /u/hone. If you're bored enough to trawl through my comment history, you'll see I've never called anybody a shill. For all my reasoning faults, it's not my style; I'd talk about a "conflict of interest" or something. The only way this could be me is if I were trying to discredit anti-Semitism by associating it with such inanity. (But I don't really think it needs my help with that.) Or, possibly, try discredit anti-Israel sentiment by associating it with anti-Semitism? But that's out of character, too, because I don't really care enough about the geopolitics of the Levant to (badly) employ dark-side epistemology.

Plus, you know, I don't use alts. (But you don't have any way of verifying that.)

I think this user is being honest at simulacrum level 2 – that is, their words are lies, but their sentiment isn't deception; you can take their slander of you as an honest "I don't like /u/JasonCarswell". I think /u/hone is probably an alt, but perhaps not of the same person; there are a lot of people who talk like that and I struggle to tell the difference between them.

A tip: since you identified a connection that wasn't there, be slightly more wary to make connections in future – though not much more wary, because this is only one failure, and you'd be silly to aim for a 0% false positive rate. Perhaps write them down, or use something like PredictionBook to help calibrate your certainty.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-12-15T18:01:17+00:00

Given places like the /r/whatisthisthing subreddit exist, I don't think this sort of thing would go unnoticed.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-12-15T17:59:16+00:00

Speaking of sanity, how did you learn this?

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-29T20:33:05+00:00

The best outcome is mutual peace. However, the first defecting party – the first to use violence – gets a better position, and the only action that the other party can take is to also defect, until they're both violent. This is worse for both parties than both being peaceful, but it's strictly dominant.

Is this model inaccurate?

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-21T13:49:31+00:00

The Pope advocating that it is acceptable for men to lie with men is the Pope advocating for people to not walk in the ways of the Lord.

? Are you talking about Leviticus, which is probably talking about child abuse? Or are you talking about St. Paul's letters, which were also probably on the same topic (though it's more ambiguous) but, regardless, defer to Jesus' teachings to love thy neighbour?

How can loving people ever be a sin, when Jesus taught it?

Edit: Ooh, comic!

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-15T16:20:24+00:00

I thought you were hosting it yourself… though since you're not in Switzerland I'm not sure why I thought that.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-14T16:26:02+00:00

They can't actually shut it all down. That was a false dichotomy, actually: they only have the power to make you remove their content and ~~nothing else.~~ charge damages… actually it's probably best that you complied.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-09T18:34:04+00:00

My point was that if you don't want to give money to people who disrespect your privacy, then you shouldn't pay for their games.

Ehh… Shady logic here.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-09T08:11:17+00:00

No, I mean… it ended up making you sadder, and that could easily have been predicted beforehand, so it wasn't nice.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-08T19:39:29+00:00

That's not doing a good thing, though.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-08T09:32:46+00:00

Or, you could simply adopt the strategy that maximises total "feel better", which includes doing things to increase "feel better" and feeling better about that.

Selfish altruism is only a problem if it's rare. If it's indistinguishable from selfless altruism (i.e. actually serves to make other people feel better) then I see no problem with it: the end justifies the means.¹

¹: I mean this phrase in a way different to the way many other people mean it: read it literally, please.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-06T21:18:44+00:00

Nope: You can change the words used, but you can't change the malicious intent behind using them pejoratively. (/u/Snow is this right?)

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-06T17:21:26+00:00

Ah. Then that's just a mistake. An easy one to make, actually, if you don't know how git works.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-06T17:04:28+00:00

Wait. They were storing it in the same repository as the code? Oh, yeah, that's stupid.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-06T16:36:57+00:00

Read it again. If you like, I'll reword it for you.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-06T16:35:17+00:00

No. You said "we seek nor lean on any permissions", by which I assume you meant "we neither seek nor rely on any permissions".

You are clearly relying on a permission.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-06T16:34:19+00:00

Why is storing the database in a git repository bad design? Inefficient, yes, but Git has almost all of the features a good backup system needs.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-04T16:42:34+00:00

You are clearly leaning on a permission. If you don't want to, set up a Prismo or Lemmy.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-04T16:41:44+00:00

Pros:

Rust.
Is cool.

Cons:

…

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-04T16:40:57+00:00

That's but one instance. Just because the people writing the code aren't good at backups doesn't mean the code is bad. And Prismo's federated, so is by default more awesome than everything that isn't.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-03T17:04:42+00:00

Technically it was a mod message. I used the PM system to send it, but you'll receive it via the mod message system. It'll already be marked as "read", probably. But I've posted the contents on this page anyway, so you can just look there if you can't find it.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-03T17:03:50+00:00

Could you explain it to me, then? One of us is wrong, and while I'm assuming it's not me I've been wrong before.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-03T17:03:02+00:00

I'm very surprised that Prismo isn't on that list. I suppose it's not a site, though.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-02T15:42:33+00:00

The technical term is citogenesis. Also note that, while greatly popularised by Wikipedia, the phenomenon didn't originate there.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-02T15:41:05+00:00

You're very nice. The main issue with you coming here is that you brought a lot of people, and the ordinary variation of people includes really annoying ones… but that was always going to become a problem sooner or later.

Once everything's calmed down, nobody'll probably have an issue with your sub being on /s/all. But don't announce it, and probably ask one of the admins whether they think things have calmed down enough before doing so, if you're unsure.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-02T15:37:43+00:00

This is a feature of the site. It has been a feature of the site since before you were here.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-02T15:37:14+00:00

It's a site feature that existed before you were here, and will continue to exist after you have left. It will exist in the platonic ideal of the codebase long after any memory of you has gone.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-02T08:25:43+00:00

Here's the exact message I sent:

If you want to be on /s/all, please consider informing your userbase of the Debate Pyramid. Note that that's not the same as being PC; as you know, the language used is completely incidental to whether you're being nice to people.

But the Debate Pyramid is pretty much the only site rule, and you're liable to get banned / pulled off /s/all if people don't pay attention to it and keep posting low-tier content. That's not a free speech violation; it's a measure to prevent Voat II: Electric Boogaloo. It's not a threat; it's a prediction. (As you can see, I'm not an admin.) Don't take it personally, please.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-01T14:34:17+00:00

Well, at least it's a change from the conspiracy theorists… I'm beginning to suspect that the Cheshire Cat had a point.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-01T09:25:00+00:00

You're here with permission of 'em; it might be a good idea to play by their rules.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-01T09:24:04+00:00

Says the person coming over to a sub they clearly don't understand and violating our clearly-set-out cultural norms.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-06-01T09:22:45+00:00

I didn't think it was official, but it follows on almost as a logical consequence to the rules we have.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-05-31T21:54:29+00:00

Please post this top-level. I don't agree with the stuff going on on that sub, but I don't think it's a single person deliberately trying to trash the site.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-05-31T21:53:31+00:00

☺ Make sure you do, or we're gonna getcha! ;-D

wizzwizz4 · 2019-05-31T21:52:41+00:00

They're seriously threatening harm on people? If so, we've got to tell the admins.

wizzwizz4 · 2019-05-31T21:52:10+00:00

I sent the mods a PM letting them know that the Debate Pyramid was required for presence on /s/all / Saidit.

wizzwizz4

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