Sunday, October 30, 2022

Bullshit - Wikipedia

Brandolini's law, also known as the "bullshit asymmetry principle," holds that "the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than what's needed to produce it." This truism highlights that while the battle against misinformation more generally must be fought "face to face," the larger war against belief in misinformation won't be won without prevention. Once people are set in their ways, beliefs are notoriously hard to change. Building immunity against false beliefs in the first place is the more effective long-term strategy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit


Best wishes,

John Coffey

DST ends in 1 week


Thursday, April 14, 2022

Sunday, April 10, 2022

The Simpsons And The American Man: Bart Simpson Is The American Man

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a29895/simpsons-and-the-american-man-bart/

Some episodes of the Simpsons are more entertaining than others.  It is a series that I sort of liked, but never went out of my way to watch.

These days, I'm not sure how to define "The American Man".   We are a divided culture.  We are a mix of old and new, but the culture as a whole feels aimless.

Saturday, March 26, 2022

Fwd: New Rule: Make America Grind Again | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

This is so crude I am limiting whom I share it with, but it is an interesting commentary on masculinity.

https://youtu.be/05Q1Bzg5zTY


Best wishes,

John Coffey

Saturday, March 19, 2022

How To Argue With Someone Who Won’t Listen

New Rule: Stand By Your Brand | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)

Many good laughs.  More crude than usual.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIQeZmJDMww

COVID update

It is helpful to see where we are at.  

We have gone from 1 out of 11 people being infected to roughly 1 out of 15.  Still, that seems high to me.  The number of new cases is surprisingly low.  The number of deaths is approaching a million, but the daily deaths have dropped quite a bit.

I think that we got lucky with the Omicron variant.  I've been saying that it is like a different disease because it has slightly different symptoms.  Reportedly it is ten times more infectious but ten times less deadly.  It is like comparing cowpox to smallpox, where cowpox acts as a natural vaccine to smallpox.

This video is predicting a surge of the BA 2 variant...






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Monday, March 14, 2022

Fwd: Watch "Biden’s 17 GREATEST Achievements So Far!" on YouTube

I mostly agree, but I don't want to spread COVID misinformation.  It is far from clear that COVID-19 was created in a lab or that Fauci was responsible.  The most recent evidence links COVID-19 to the wet market in Wuhan.

From what I have read, the relatively small grant to the Wuhan lab was for cataloging bat viruses.  What China did on top of that isn't necessarily Fauci's fault.  Maybe we shouldn't have been funding them at all, but the reasoning was to go where the bat viruses were.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Albert

This would be a lot funnier if it wasn't so true.



Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Medicare For All explained: Real Costs, Pros, Cons: Definitive answers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgDJ-Vl8CHA

I'm worried about the tragedy of the commons.


There is an appeal to a shared burden, but there needs to be a disincentive from overuse.  Perhaps you would limit the number of services, and any extra would have to be paid for by the patient.  Maybe some people would get insurance to pay for extra services.

My thinking is to get closer to a free market.  Have a tax-deferred medical savings account, which could be used for insurance or medical cost directly.  Allow all medical services to advertise prices, which is pretty much banned right now.  Have employers contribute 5 to 10% of a person's income with an equal amount coming from the employee.  Give employees the option to contribute more to the account if they feel that they need to.   Allow the money in the account to be invested.  If the account creates an apparent surplus, allow a portion of it to be used as taxable income in retirement.  Make the account inheritable, so that it can be passed onto family members.

Such a program would need a subsidy for low-income people.





Ivermectin, more evidence


I'm neutral on this.  It might take more studies to verify this.  Too many times we have seen the results of studies that were refuted later.

Thursday, March 3, 2022

Ben Shapiro Responds to Biden’s State of the Union Address

New Study Finds COVID-19 DNA Linked to Moderna Patent Filed in 2016, Sparks Discussion on Lab Leak Theory

"We're talking about a very, very, very small piece made up of 19 nucleotides," Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, was quoted as saying to Daily Mail.

"So it doesn't mean very much, to be frank, if you do these types of searches, you can always find matches.

"Sometimes these things happen fortuitously, sometimes it's the result of convergent evolution (when organisms evolve independently to have similar traits to adapt to their environment).

"It's a quirky observation, but I wouldn't call it a smoking gun because it's too small.

"It doesn't get us any further with the debate about whether COVID-19 was engineered," Young said.

A statement from the US drug maker Moderna is awaited, the report said.

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

George Carlin: Why we aren't ready for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

This is so dark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33Nvv3xXtOs

I think that suicide is no joking matter.

Contrary to what he says, chimpanzees kill other chimpanzees.  Other animals will engage in mortal combat with each other.  Lions are incredibly brutal to their prey.  The pride will start eating the animal before it is dead.



Thursday, January 6, 2022