I’m impressed. I’ll probably cancel ChatGPT Pro subscription and switch to this. It actually does what I want.
I’ve been putting it through its paces and it’s handling some complicated requests correctly the first time. For example:
“There is an art festival in my city this weekend. They have a jazz stage my wife and I would like to check out. Find the schedule for each day and create one event every day it’s happening. In the event description put the schedule for each day, and invite my wife.”
It got it right the first time. Pretty amazing.
I see some folks saying it’s just a “wrapper for an LLM” like that’s easy to do. LLMs are not faerie powder that just work for every use case. The personal assistant use case is extremely difficult, which is why the big players haven’t done it yet.
So bravo for the bravado and actually making it work. Privacy is a concern, but honestly I’m not that worried that you can find out which art festival I’ll be at this weekend. But an oncology appointment? I might.
You should create a system where you cannot access user data, and it can never be shared with third parties. Make that system open source to prove it. Give up the potential upside of using this data for revenue so that Martin becomes what it can be. Otherwise, I’ll never feel confident telling Martin anything I don’t want advertisers to know.
Thanks for the comment! Glad to hear Martin stood up to the test!
We can certainly publish more privacy guarantees in the future - thanks for the suggestions. Our business model is subscriptions, so we won't be going anywhere near ads or data sharing.
Bard: LOL. Got that wrong earlier today. Bard is on Gemini Pro in English across most of the world as of Dec 6, 2023.
When I asked it about the statement it said:
Bard: I apologize for the confusion. The "lol I made this mistake earlier" statement was not intended for you, but rather a reflection on a previous mistake I made during my training process. It was an error in my model that I have since corrected.
Huh, same here, that “LOL” response was the exact same thing for me. Pretty weird.
When I expressed my surprise about its casual response, it switched back to the usual formal tone and apologized.
Not sure what to make of this as I don’t consider myself to be in the know when it comes to ML, but could this be training data leakage? Then again, that “LOL” sentence would be such a weird training data.
From the article, I think this is the important distinction with spirituality versus your other examples:
“And because spiritual matters are generally ‘elusive to external objective standards,’ that makes them a ‘suitable domain for illusory beliefs about one’s superiority.’”
In bodybuilding or science, there are objective standards that you can be measured against. In spirituality, it’s oftentimes too easy to claim superiority without any method of objective measurement. I think that’s what makes it so appealing to some people.
>without any method of objective measurement [of spiritual superiority]
I guess I disagree with this assertion, then. There is a way to objectively measure your spiritual superiority, and that's to examine the person and where they are, and what direction they are going- wrt their behavior. What are their qualities? Patient? Honest? Hard-working? Organized? Reliable? Easy-going? Empathic? Insightful? Generous? Good judgement? I think that you can't be all of those things (all of which require emotional/reactive control) without your spirituality (and physicality, it must be said) being in good order. And this is all observable.
That's a very dangerous road you're suggesting walking down there, "observing" others and making judgements about the whole of their character based on isolated examples is a fruitful source of prejudice and cognitive bias.
Well, no. In the best case you have a panopticon into their life. But since people will rarely give you that in real life, you do the best you can and always take what you observe with a grain of salt.
Insightful reply. I marched yesterday and police fired rubber bullets into a peaceful crowd because we were blocking a non-essential intersection. On a Sunday.
We refused to leave and fortunately they left and let us have a peaceful march.
There doesn’t seem to be an interest in separating out the extreme minority that protest violently. There had been zero violence or destruction that day. A very well-behaved crowd exercising peaceful civil disobedience met by violence from police. In 2020.
> after all these years and with all development in surveillance tech distinguish between peaceful demonstrators and rioters. One could almost believe that they have no interest in making that distinction.
The thing is that they can. That's a very deliberate tactic, down to planting of provocators.
If you been watching what's going on around the world, the allegations of that, including provocator planting, followed pretty much every major demonstration event.
It's naive, if not silly, to use that "hey, he started it first!" argument at the time when the fact of confrontation happening is already obvious.
The talk now should not be who started the violence, but how to end it, a peace treaty to say.
There exists an asymmetry in the dynamics of protesters vs police during a protest. Very simple:
Anyone can be 'planted' in a group of protesters to start stirring up trouble (agent-provocateur). Then the police have 'justification' to use whatever amount of force they think is required.
On the other hand, it's practically impossible for a regular citizen to be embedded into a riot police response unit.
Add to that the police have practically no real oversight and investigate themselves (assuming internal affairs counts as police).
One side can't fail (except morally), while the other side always will end up with the shorter end of the stick.
People also can counter plant and plant someone to feign being a first level plant to be able to point out that the violence was instigated by a plant. Both sides can and do do that.
This is a gross oversimplification. I have family members in law enforcement. In most cases it’s very difficult to tell the people apart. People can barely identify a single thief, unmasked, caught on camera, yet somehow they have these god-like powers to identify troublemakers who weave through the crowd of protesters, all masked?
This isn't exactly the same because things have been a little more chaotic in places in Seattle, but a lot of the force I've seen from the Seattle PD has been disproportionate.
Mostly flashbangs, fireworks, tear gas and mace.
A couple of videos associated with incidents in Seattle from tonight are here:
The general characterization I would give is that there have been calm periods, and then moments of intense chaos. In the chaos, protestors have often been throwing projectiles (mostly plastic bottles, occasionally firecrackers; some have claimed bricks have been thrown in Seattle, but I haven't seen it myself).
However, in general I would say that the SPD has repeatedly been the party to _instigate_ the chaos, by launching a round of flashbangs, mace, and pepper spray.
Was everyone wearing masks and practicing social distancing of at least 6 feet? Weren’t we told that the reopen protesters were putting people at risk by protesting from their cars? I don’t disagree with the reason for protest, but if a church can’t be open, even outdoors, and an extended family picnic is illegal in a public park, then I am not sure the rationale for allowing protests now. The first amendment isn’t conditional on the reasons for gathering or speaking. The mayor of Oakland even supported the protests held there while just recently maintaining that “non-essential” businesses couldn’t open. I am just trying to reconcile why a small restaurant in Oakland can’t be open, but thousands of people marching in a massive group is somehow allowed. And it seems, politically speaking that a similar demographic that was just days ago telling everyone to stay home to protect us from the plague suddenly changed their public health tune as soon as something they care about was the issue.
Are the lockdowns optional now? Are they situational depending on the politics of the event? Because it sure seems like it. Georgia got hammered for reopening too early, but nobody had much to say about Atlanta having massive protests over the past days. Either the lockdowns are unnecessary or they are necessary and people are putting public health at serious risk with these “large gatherings.”
I wish we could reboot 2020. It’s a g-damned mess.
Nobody likes that these protests are likely to lead to increased transmission. It's a truly terrible choice. People are making that choice because these protests get to such a fundamental problem in our society that they are still worth it, despite the cost. And, as has been mentioned, mask usage is high, and these protests are outside. It doesn't eliminate the risk, but many, many people are still trying to minimize the public health risk.
So, yes, context matters. I would absolutely argue the value in the being part of the strongest push against police brutality in decades, that just might result in systemic change, is incredibly more worthy than virtually any other activity. It does not mean there is no public health cost. It does mean it is a tragic choice to have to make.
The police officers with him, who were watching him kill someone and were keeping a lookout to allow him to kill someone in peace, have not been charged with anything. Additionally, it is not just this incident. There have been many, many incidents of unarmed, often non resisting black people being killed by police and few (if any) actual consequences to police for doing it equivalent to if a civilian did the same.
Police officers are humans, believe it or not. Some of them are bad and that will always be true. Regarding your unnecessary insult at the end: Grow up.
The problem is with how these incidents are dealt with when they happen. Ordinary citizens could expect jail time for doing something like this, and that threat helps to protect black people against these bad people.
In this specific case, it looks like the police officer will face justice. But that only happened after the huge public outcry, and it didn't happen in countless other cases even when there was a big-but-not-as-big outcry. In many cases, not only have the officers escaped trial, they've actually kept their jobs!
I think that because this incident was so clearly visible, the video capturing what was so obviously murder, that it was a concrete platform to start a movement on. In many other cases, there was at least an attempt by the victim to defend themselves, or parts of the video that left holes in the context of what was going on. This one was a slaughter, and no one could find a justification for it.
Salience and specific evidence is a necessary but insufficient condition for these kinds mass outrage conditions. In the end the final trigger is obvious only in retrospect.
As a less politically sensitive topic for most Americans, I point to the Arab spring uprising as a good example. Tensions had been rising for decades, but the final trigger was when Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor, lit himself on fire to protest the local police stealing his possessions & threatening his livelihood. A tragic event, for sure, but after decades of brutality and continual tragedy, who could have possibly predicted that that would be the final straw?
Yeah, I think this is it too. In particular, this case was so clear cut that it enraged white people who were perhaps more passively supportive in other cases.
Work. Volunteer. Take care of your family. Vote. It's a bit of a bad timing for protests right now - easily exploited, will likely result in negative change.
It is not a good idea to protest on the streets right now. It is selfish to protest on the streets. First - it spreads COVID. Which kills people in thousands. Second - it prolongs shelter-in-place and associated damage. Third, likely increases the possibility of re-election of the current president.
But in the meantime, we now see videos of cops following humvees through residential neighbourhoods and shooting at unarmed people on their own property.
As a result, people are more concerned about police brutality than they were a month ago, rather than less
Of course, because there are at least 5 types of protesters, all with different goals. There is no way to control this salad peacefully.
1. Peaceful protesters against police brutality (including peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters).
2. The radical wing of the Black Lives Matter, who believe that the time of peaceful protests is over and that the only way to change the situation is to use violent methods, especially directed against the police.
3. Marauders and looters: who leverage the protests to rob shops, destroy and set fire to cars and buildings. These people do not give a shit about any other groups.
4. Anarchists and Antifa: their goal is to stir up arbitrary rule, to destroy the system using extremely violent methods. They are catalysts of chaos and their main goal is to create chaos that will lead to the arbitrariness and anarchy of the crowd.
5. White supremacists and extreme right-wing radical groups. They're catalysts for chaos. To make things a little simpler, their goal is to "anti-advertising" any African-American civil rights movement against police brutality and racial riots in the United States.
Ok some huge generalisations going on here, people can have many facets to them, so a peaceful protestor might become part of the radical wing after watching their friends get attacked by police when peacefully protesting.
When has antifa ever been archistic?. They are anti-facist, they dont want to bring down the state, unless that state is a Fascist one (I know Trump is bad but the USA is not a facist state currently).
So pigeonholing people is pointless and no one needs to control anything. Control implies a hierarchy, a hierarchy means you can go after the leaders, the point now is to raise so much awareness that you cant just go back to how it was last week.
> a peaceful protestor might become part of the radical wing after watching their friends get attacked by police when peacefully protesting.
The radical wing protesters are all well prepared. There is no way to identify them, they wear bandanas, cover their faces as much as possible. Peaceful protesters are barely covering their faces - basic face-masks to prevent the spread of the virus.
As for the antifa, they are taking the civil rights movement hostage and trying to create chaos on these protests by framing peaceful protesters and peaceful African-American activists.
A lot of violent protests are organized movements. They "advertise" on websites similar to Craigslist and offer $25/h on average. Police is well aware of all of that, which is why they have to act fast. This whole thing is no longer about George Floyd and police. It's much broader. A shit ton of people see this as an opportunity to reach their own goals hiding behind BLM, police lawlessness and so on.
P.S. English is my second language, so when I say control, what I really mean is to make sure peaceful protest stays peaceful. It's needed because not everyone is smart enough to understand that stealing laptops from stores is not normal.
>A lot of violent protests are organized movements. They "advertise" on websites similar to Craigslist and offer $25/h on average.
That needs a citation, seriously, even if English is your second language you must know that is a bold claim. Who's paying this $25 per person, how do the logistics of organising a group like that happen? I mean trump pays actors to turn up to his rallies, but they aren't going to get arrested or killed.
Occam's razor though says that they really are just fed up of people of colour being harassed and killed by the police that's why they are protesting, that's why there are so many of them. sure it's co-opted by a some people, or small groups, for financial gain, but these aren't huge global cabals, they are criminals who see an opportunity to exploit.
There was a video circulating of a streamer who tried to instigate trouble at a peaceful protest and he was called out on it by lots of those around him.
If you have ever been in one of these protests you would know that the spark is almost always a police charge or other offensive action like tear gas.
Also remember a riot is not looting, a riot is just defcon 5 on the protest scale, and some people will use that as an opportunity to loot, same people who would loot after a flood or a hurricane or an earthquake. That's doesn't mean the riot is wrong.
Agreed. Honestly, I couldn't find the Craigslist listing when I wrote my previous message, I would LOVE to show it to you.
Police needs a reform. It's not questionable. But there are many other problems and angles to this whole situation. There is no single truth and it's important to consider all of these issues wearing each group's shoes, including the police.
And did those arrest and charges come before or after multiple days of protests? At this point the protests have snowballed into a larger frustration over police conduct (and I'm sure other issues), which only gets reinforced with each instance of force being used on those who are assembled peacefully.
Seriously? They let him slowly kill a dude right next to him! This isn't a situation where he just whipped out a gun and instantly shot someone, that kind of thing would be hard to stop in time, they had literal minutes where they could've stepped in, and chose not to.
I've participated in law enforcement hand to hand and incapacitation training sessions (as a Marine). At least in those trainings, it was very clearly taught what techniques were safe and effective, how to use them, and we practiced them on each other literally hundreds of times. If you've ever had a blood choke or constrictive choke applied to you, you immediately understand what it's like, and what dangers it presents. The officer charged knew what he was doing, without a doubt. The officers around him had a moral and legal requirement to stop him to avoid being complicit in this murder; they chose to help in the murder instead.
In the military, I would have been convicted of a war crime had I done this to an unarmed and incapacitated enemy combatant; even in ignorance, even if it had been a mistake, even if I was tired and had a bad day. I'd hope our police force would be held to a higher standard dealing with our own citizens than a soldier or Marine dealing with an enemy of the state.
The question isn’t whether failing to stop a crime makes you an accessory, it’s a question of whether or not performing perimeter security for a crime makes you an accessory.
Because the parent poster's comment is dead, I'm responding to yours. Yes, obeying unlawful orders from your commanding officer is a violation of the UCMJ, and you will be criminally charged for doing so unless it can be demonstrated through strong evidence that you could not have known the order was unlawful. You are simply responsible for your own actions, as is everyone else (including the police).
If this is true and every office on the scene was that misinformed, it's still a systemic problem that requires a complete overhaul of the way police are trained and hired. This won't be fixed by punishing a few bad apples and then pretending the problem is solved.
What's the chances that of a sample of officers who responded, those 4 are the only ones who would have let this happen?
The idea that kneeling on a restrained human’s neck for 9 minutes isn’t something they knew could lead to the severe injury or death of that person would be laughable if it wasn’t so chilling to hear you defend.
If I owned a martial arts studio and I let a student do that, I’d face criminal & civil liability. Why shouldn’t trained officers of the law be held to at least that standard?
If you did 1/2 of what the other cops did, you’d already be in jail pending trial. If you’d done 1/10th of that to a cop, you’d be lucky to survive your arrest.
Part of the outrage is how blatantly unequal the treatment of cops and and civilians accused of crimes are. It’s especially galling because not only are they given the power of the state, they are also given extra rigorous training in the safe application of force. If anyone should have reasonably known that kneeling on someone’s neck would be lethal, it would be the cops.
Oh, and all the bystanders who clearly recognized what was going on. Apparently they’re more wise to the dangers of kneeling on a restrained human’s neck than the police are.
They’re authorized to use necessary violence; kneeling on a handcuffed man’s neck was not a justifiable application of force. I genuinely cant believe I have to explain that.
You say that as if that is what should have happened and its all ok. He was sacked, whoop de do. He should have been arrested, that he was arrested 3 days later means they could have arrested him immediately but if this hadnt kicked off he would likely still be patrolling now looking for his next victim.
One officer did the killing, three others let him do so, as it was a slow killing. Four out of the four present were complicit; think about what that likely implies about the rest of the police force, statistically.
And they did it even as people yelled at them and were recording. How many more officers might do it if nobody was watching? That's the truly scary thought.
Where were/are the rest of "the police" to denounce, arrest and charge, and update policies and practices to prevent this from happening... every. damn. day.
What do we have instead? 3 other "the police" standing by watching and not doing a thing. Being accessories to murder, that they would gladly arrest anyone else for doing the same. Followed by days of police brutality towards peaceful protesters, "the police" showing their itch to start shooting, throwing 'white power' signs and grinning, etc...
Yes, I and about 90% of the crowd wore masks. Yes, we did our best to keep 6 feet but not always, hence the masks. People were walking around with hand sanitizer to share.
A global pandemic is awful, but it does not alleviate us of our civic responsibility.
Was it uncomfortable and difficult? Yes. Am I glad I went? Hell yes. Black lives matter.
Plus, it's awfully hard to avoid spraying spit and snot on everyone around you when you're getting tear-gassed. I know, I've been cs-gassed many, many times. The police are not helping the situation with this tactic.
> but it does not alleviate us of our civic responsibility.
The protests haven’t worked though for the last 20 years or so. IMO it’s more important to vote and promote change than to block traffic.
People remember how you made them feel more easily than what you actually said. Preventing them from getting somewhere is a great way to just piss people off.
It’s no wonder that the protests over the last 20 years haven’t worked to garner more support considering that those who do participate are treated with violent retaliation. Maybe if those of us begging to be heard were allowed to speak, and scream and chant, it would inspire more people to unite, organize and vote.
Is it even worth going through the ways in which US democracy is broken? From the electoral system itself all the way down to extremely obvious voter suppression efforts (often specifically targeting black people), you really can't be too surprised that people do not feel that their voices are being heard.
IMO the media was not talking about income & wealth inequality before OWS. OWS forced it on the agenda and changed the very language we use to describe it: “the 99% vs the 1%”. That’s a big deal.
I'd say it raised a lot of awareness, which is exactly what protests are for. Protests don't create laws, they raise awareness. Based on that awareness, people vote and change laws.
Well none of the things the protesters wanted (broken up banks, more taxes for the rich, arrested bank execs, more social entitlements, etc) came to fruition.
I believe protests were working, but progress has since been reversed. Police militarization is controversial. The previous administration made efforts like 'Smart on Crime' and federal laissez-faire approach to marijuana enforcement.
Many of these issues were reversed in an attempt to be tough on crime again with a big push from the AG in 2017. Tensions have been stoked by things like a pardon dealt out to a sheriff who violated a court order relating to racial profiling. I have a hard time believing these acts aren't having their intended effects.
You've got it backwards. Voting and promoting change is what has not worked. Economic damage is likely to be the only thing that's going to persuade the elites to throw the working class a bone. You're witnessing the anger of the masses in its most pure form here.
Exactly how is destroying low income housing, small businesses (many of them minority owned) and peoples places of employment going to persuade "the elites"?
If a large enough share of your income is returns on capital to both meet your expenses and increase the store of capital, or you have a sufficient store of capital that depleting with your expenses would take lifetimes even though it isn't growing after expenses, you can plausibly held to be in the haut bourgeoisie, the elite of capitalist society. If you are an intellectual worker with a modest amount of stock held through a retirement fund, your probably between the proletarian intelligentsia (in the working class, if among the better working conditions and higher pay of that class) and the petit bourgeoisie (the capitalist middle class), but not at all elite.
I don't think we're there yet, and I think we can still use the ballot box to effect change, but fear of a socialist revolution and mob violence was one of the catalysts behind the new deal.
So if you can't understand how hurting the pocket books of "the elite" can encourage them to compromise, you haven't been paying attention to history.
History says that mob violence is probably more likely to lead to a dictatorship than to another new deal, but you're being willfully ignorant if you don't acknowledge the existence of a potential chain of consequences that starts with "damaging companies' bottom lines" and ends with policy change.
If you're black in the US, there's just no correct way to protest. Street protests get painted as riots (and often turn into riots due to excessive police response fanning the flames), quiet personal protests are claimed to be disrespectful (since when is kneeling a sign of disrespect?), speak up and they get told to shut up. There's no way to win.
There are many of them. They dont get media coverage. They "miss the cutoff" for debates. The party doesnt give them a chance. Even so called "liberal media" do hit jobs on them.
Then, people who are complacent complain no one is trying.
>> You just don’t like the priorities of everyone else so you’re claiming it hasn’t worked.
That bit is correct. Yes, it does work -- for some. But the masses that are angry are whom it didn't work for. When it starts working for the other 90% people wont be as angry.
As per normal, absolute numbers can be misleading to very smart humans when we have trouble intuiting about vast numbers like "100 million". If the goal is to convey scale accurately, its generally recommended to default report population related measures as per capita percentages. That doesn't mean other measures can't be relevant, but the choice really should be very carefully weighed in order to convey accuracy, not to increase shock value.
The fear is that this number (0.026%) will seem too low, which is why we're trying to use numbers like 100,000 in order to convince people to continue acting safely. The real message is: this number is so low BECAUSE we've all been working hard to keep it this low. That's a hard message because its nuanced, but its not misleading. I don't know if its as persuasive, its probably not, but that doesn't make "100,000" not misleading when used for shock.
0.026% is a number that means "most people don't know anyone well who died of covid19", and "many people aren't even directly acquainted with anyone that died of covid19". That's because the social distancing is working.
If it weren't working, based on covid19 survival stats, the human feeling would be "most people are directly acquainted with one or two people that died of covid19". That's a very different feeling. TBH, its still not exactly "black death in the middle ages" type of feeling, but the direct human impact would be MUCH larger.
WITH social distancing, at the present death rate, Covid19 in the US is killing about 1/4 the number of people daily of Cancer+Heart Disease.
WITHOUT social distancing (i.e. run amuk), based on "when hospitals were overwhelmed in some italian cities" survival rate, it looks like it'd be daily killing about 2x Cancer+HeartDiesase.
So social distancing is having big impact, and a really good job everyone, we are gaining a LOT of saved lives for our sacrifices.
All that said, I do wonder if 2x the daily deaths of Cancer+HeartDisease tips into "unthinkable to even openly discuss the tradeoff between quality of life and safety" territory? At what death rate do we consider completely changing the world as we know it? 0.00001%? 0.00001%? 0.001%? 0.01%? 0.1%? 1%?
And at what death rate do we surpress discussion of NOT making the tradeoff as too dangerous (risking thoughtless noncompliance)? 0.001% 0.01%? 0.1%? 1%? 10%?
Lets say you were one of the leaders of a small fishing village without mass media (i.e. without big numbers), and somebody convinced you that you had a choice:
1) Everyone stays in their huts for 6 mos to a year with all the impacts and suffering that entails
OR
2) An extra person will die this year (beyond the usual 3 who die every year). It could be anyone, but you're told its most likely to be somebody who would die in the next 5 years.
Does that seem like a no brainer? It doesn't feel like one to me. That would be a hard decision to me. I think I'd go for sitting in the huts, but if somebody wanted to discuss the decision with me.... I think that would be pretty reasonable. If the whole village wanted to get together and really talk it out and vote rather than just letting the leader(s) make the call, I think that'd make a lot of sense.
Personally? I think I'd vote "everyone stays in their huts" but I would absolutely NOT vote "can't be openly discussed because the discussion is too dangerous".
Should we become more risk averse as population grows because the numbers of deaths become so staggering? Or is percentage deaths a more relevant measure?
If you have 10000 people in your medieval media sphere, and ONE PERSON DIES EACH YEAR from an ox cart accident, we probably don't stop using ox carts. What if there's ten billion people in your media circle and therefore A MILLION OX CART DEATHS PER YEAR, should we therefore abandon ox carts?
I don't feel 100% on the answer, maybe the answer is something like.... we should spend the same percentage of resources avoiding unnecessary ox cart deaths as we would at the small scale? That would be a lot of money toward better ox carts, but we wouldn't shut down the world because OMG ONE MILLION either.
The rate seems small because you're apply it across the whole population. So, your number 2 choice is not quite accurate. The question is are people ok with many of their parents and grand parents dying this year?
> 0.026% is a number that means "most people don't know anyone well who died of covid19"
My wife's grandmother had COVID-19. At 80 years old, she was a lucky one and was asymptomatic. She's in a nursing home and many people around her did die though. I have 3 other friends who lost relatives to COVID-19. Even at the low population rate, it's rather stunning anecdotally.
It wouldn't change the number you know, it would just change who it is. Its more like 'you're pretty unlikely to know a youngish person who dies of covid19' (of course, we have large anecdata sample sizes on the internets.... therefore its very likely that many people on here know somebody youngish who died from covid19 complications, but still a small percentage).
"I know a few people who know somebody who died" sounds consistent with what you might expect from 0.026% if everyone communicates with about a hundred people... crudely (and wrong, but order of magnitude): 0.00026 * 100 * 100 = 2.6 = "a few".
I phrased it pretty carefully, but I agree it didn't immediately clarify that mostly the victims will look pretty old.... just bebcause "people who are likely to die within several years" is going to be dominated by people over 70. FWIW a few different measures of "likely to die within 5 years" looks like one of the simplest single-index predictors of covid19 survival, much better than just age. If you're 40 and likely to die before 45 due to a serious health condition, Covid will be roughly as dangerous to you as if you're 82.
> An extra person will die this year (beyond the usual 3 who die every year). It could be anyone, but you're told its most likely to be somebody who would die in the next 5 years.
The death rate is not an equally weighted distribution over the whole population. In fact, it's very weighted towards middle age and up, with younger people dragging it down. So in your example it's likely to be more than an extra person in the typical age of older parents and grandparents.
If the young had political power, the response would be a lot different, but because the wealth/power lie with the elderly, the current response is predictable. Fascinating times
Not to go off on a tangent, but that article looks at deaths per capita and then ignores the R0. The reason the COVID deaths per capita are as low as they are (and still bad) is because of lockdowns. Pointing to what happened with lockdown mitigations in place to claim that a lockdown isn't needed is misleading at best.
The article also uses 60k flu deaths as the average baseline which is incorrect. The 60k number was a particularly bad flu season. Last season flu deaths were ~34k [1]. This season could be much lower because of the lockdowns.
Comparing COVID to the flu is hard, and really should have never been done. Without taking into account the respective IFRs, CFRs, R0, etc... any comparison is going to be severely lacking. It's also hard to get accurate numbers while in the middle of the pandemic. I hope as things open up that COVID just becomes a memory. Unfortunately, that doesn't look like the case so far.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html I'm not really sure how the author got to a 60k average unless 2007-2009 was really bad. The years on the CDC site only have 1 season greater than 60k. Errors like this do bring all of the statistics into question.
I have no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised to see those portions of Europe "back in the hut" again in December. That said, it does seem like if you're on the lookout, have very low case numbers, and are doing strong contact tracing, "sitting in the hut" is unnecessary except to regain control if you have a surge.
I said we're back to normal, but I wasn't 100% fair: our borders are still semi-closed. We'll probably have another surge if we restore travel in the future from countries where Covid is active.
All in all I think it was a very small price we paid to be back on the tracks in only two months. Some companies are getting out of Kurzarbeit already (government help).
When you have a disease killing more people than malaria despite the massive lockdowns, there is no legitimate way to have a conversation.
And in case you think 'yeah but the lock downs don't work' look at Vietnam: they are the first country to have local transmission outside China, and they started anti-pandemic measures in December. Results? 95 million people, 329 caught the virus, 0 deaths as of today. Not 329 thousand. 329 people. That is what this could have looked like in most of the world, if the virus had been taken seriously and if our politicians cared about human life.
There are things that it is pointless to discuss. Fire is hot, water is wet, covid19 is one of the worst diseases to hit the world in 50 years and lockdowns and isolation are an absolute necessity to prevent it becoming an even bigger tragedy.
Of course there are people in the world who, genuinely or out of other interests, try to contest all sorts of things. The earth is flat, man made global warming is not happening, the earth is 6000 years old etc. That doesn't mean we need to seriously entertain these ideas just because some people do so, or claim to do so.
Yes, failing to care about a disease killing hundreds of thousands of people, and failing to protect yourself and loved ones, does seem like a good reason to end a friendship.
Good for you in being somewhere with zero violence in looting, while here in nyc, entire neighborhoods (soho, herald square etc) has been ransacked and cops run over to death. National guard cannot come soon enough to put away these perpetrators in jail.
I agree, I’m seeing selection bias in some replies. NVC, like any framework, can be applied poorly. When it is applied effectively, it just comes across as clear and direct communication.
It is not intended for casual conversation, but to provide a framework for difficult conversations to increase the chances of a positive and productive result.
I’ve been putting it through its paces and it’s handling some complicated requests correctly the first time. For example:
“There is an art festival in my city this weekend. They have a jazz stage my wife and I would like to check out. Find the schedule for each day and create one event every day it’s happening. In the event description put the schedule for each day, and invite my wife.”
It got it right the first time. Pretty amazing.
I see some folks saying it’s just a “wrapper for an LLM” like that’s easy to do. LLMs are not faerie powder that just work for every use case. The personal assistant use case is extremely difficult, which is why the big players haven’t done it yet.
So bravo for the bravado and actually making it work. Privacy is a concern, but honestly I’m not that worried that you can find out which art festival I’ll be at this weekend. But an oncology appointment? I might.
You should create a system where you cannot access user data, and it can never be shared with third parties. Make that system open source to prove it. Give up the potential upside of using this data for revenue so that Martin becomes what it can be. Otherwise, I’ll never feel confident telling Martin anything I don’t want advertisers to know.