two tweets:
[Carl Schmitt is a good philosopher but] One nightmarish way to understand The Discourse is that somehow Carl Schmitt became the obvious, agreed-upon, common-sense interpretation of politics. All sides nod sagely, but each fetishizes a different book.
So the left gets Political Theology, the right gets Nomos of the Earth. Quilette-style centrists are 100% indebted to the Concept of the Political.
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith is a great book. My favorite part is Book III, Chapter 4 on the end of feudalism. In particular, I like these two paragraphs:
In a country which has neither foreign commerce, nor any of the finer manufactures, a great proprietor, having nothing for which he can exchange the greater part of the produce of his lands which is over and above the maintenance of the cultivators, consumes the whole in rustic hospitality at home. If this surplus produce is sufficient to maintain a hundred or a thousand men, he can make use of it in no other way than by maintaining a hundred or a thousand men. He is at all times, therefore, surrounded with a multitude of retainers and dependants, who, having no equivalent to give in return for their maintenance, but being fed entirely by his bounty, must obey him, for the same reason that soldiers must obey the prince who pays them.
…
In a country where there is no foreign commerce, nor any of the finer manufactures, a man of ten thousand a year cannot well employ his revenue in any other way than in maintaining, perhaps, a thousand families, who are all of them necessarily at his command. In the present state of Europe, a man of ten thousand a year can spend his whole revenue, and he generally does so, without directly maintaining twenty people, or being able to command more than ten footmen not worth the commanding. Indirectly, perhaps, he maintains as great or even a greater number of people than he could have done by the ancient method of expense. For though the quantity of precious productions for which he exchanges his whole revenue be very small, the number of workmen employed in collecting and preparing it must necessarily have been very great. Its great price generally arises from the wages of their labour, and the profits of all their immediate employers. By paying that price he indirectly pays all those wages and profits and thus indirectly contributes to the maintenance of all the workmen and their employers. He generally contributes, however, but a very small proportion to that of each, to very few perhaps a tenth, to many not a hundredth, and to some not a thousandth, nor even a ten-thousandth part of their whole annual maintenance. Though he contributes, therefore, to the maintenance of them all, they are all more or less independent of him, because generally they can all be maintained without him.
Okay, words aside, does the right strategy look like the famous GIF taken literally, or like a feedback system where we keep turning social distancing on and off so the graph looks like a heart rate monitor, or like a “hammer” reset followed by a successful emulation of South Korea, or
I don’t know and you don’t know and Tomas doesn’t know and Carl doesn’t know. It’s hard!
No, it is really easy. If the society is capable of executing the feedback system, then it has a method of driving R0 below 1. If it can do that, it should execute the hammer. This requires less aggregate time under extreme measures than the feedback system. If the society fails to execute the dance, then it can try the feedback system, but that sounds a lot harder to me than the dance.
Like me, these people make both substantive and semantic objections. In fact, theirs are a strict superset of mine (see that last Bergstrom thread re: Gaussians!).
I am not saying “look, I was right, the experts agree with me, please recognize this.” I mean, I am saying that.
But you were wrong about Gaussians. So much the worse for the experts.
There are only two choices: herd immunity, or the dance. Herd immunity can be accomplished by vaccine, by permanent change to society to reduce R0, or by having 1-1/R0 proportion of people survive the disease. Without a vaccine and without permanent change to society, the area 1-1/R0 is fixed, although a full-speed epidemic could infect even more.
You’ve lost track of the object level here.
What did his post originally mean? I’m not allowed to read people’s minds. He admits that no one took from it what he wanted them to take from it. Lanrian said that it was “a reasonable critique...that it doesn’t make sense to assume a normal distribution.” That was a qualitative complaint and he admitted that it was qualitatively wrong.
Yes, I meant exactly a 1 year effect and a random 5 year window and I should have spelled that out. Cancer and many autoimmune diseases take years to notice.
And Jim is right that my example is poor because a prenatal effect pinpoints when the exposure must have occurred. But, actually, I believe that such simple studies don’t find an effect for the normal variation in flu (3% some years, 15% others), except for the 1918 cohort. The studies that find an effect rely on asking the mother if she had flu during pregnancy (which has some post hoc problems).
The gaussian assumption makes no difference. Nostalgebrist’s post is a math error. He later admitted that at SSC, but barely updated his post.
Where can I read about this? It seems easier to verify than the claims in the OP.
ETA:
I looked at google images for “dog body language.” I see some people saying that showing the belly is happy, while others said it was submission (and one saying both!). This seems like a good example of what you are saying, but are there more? Added: nose lick as stressed vs peace, although maybe that isn’t even a confusion, but just opening the box of what it means to sue for peace.
I am skeptical that this will have measurable effects because most these diseases indirectly caused by infection have long lag times, often years, if only time to diagnosis. For an extreme example, prenatal flu increases the odds of schizophrenia, 20 years later.
OK, maybe it does show a hot spot in Seattle. (though I’m not convinced)
But what about Florida? It seems to me that when you predict a million coronavirus cases, your method is predicting that half of them are in Florida. So you really have to look closely at the state. Surely the decline starting on March 19 does not represent the very minimal social distancing imposed on March 17.
Is this plausible? Look at the fine-grained results.
Hot spot in New York. ✔
No hot spot in Seattle. ✘
The biggest hot spot is Florida. The State is handling this very badly, so it is plausible that it the worst but not yet recognized; it would be useful to have an alternate source of information. But look at the time series. It peaked in Florida (all counties show the same) on March 19th and declined afterwards. Given how badly Florida has handled this and the delay from infection to fever, it doesn’t seem plausible to me that this measures covid-19.
I don’t see him saying that. I didn’t listen to the podcast, but I used speech-to-text to search. Every youtube video uploaded these days has a transcript. On a computer (not phone) click on the three dots under the video to the right of share/save and choose “open transcript.” I looked at the 16 times he mentioned antivirals. Speech-to-text isn’t good enough to search for “remdesivir,” but it was mentioned at 44 minutes. (I also searched for side effects. This is more a concern for vaccines given to healthy people than antivirals given to people who are already sick.)
(Also, castbox is a podcast app that has transcripts of podcasts not on youtube, but I haven’t had a lot of luck with it.)
That’s a good idea, but a word of warning. History is based on such little data that it must be the product of circular reasoning. Most historical claims about what technologies existed are based on implicit beliefs about tech trees, while most beliefs about tech trees are based on explicit beliefs about what technologies existed. Yes, it is better to make the beliefs about tech trees explicit, although there is risk of ossifying these beliefs. Anyhow, I recommend that you widen your priors by reading Lucio Russo’s book Forgotten Revolution about how much science and technology the ancient Greeks had.
in Moral Mazes there are at least 25 (!) levels of management
Exponential growth makes that implausible.
In the US military there are 25 ranks, but a hierarchy of half that depth with a branching factor of 3. Commissioned officer ranks correspond pretty well to the hierarchy, but there are only 3 levels of enlisted hierarchy below them.
You seem to be referring to this passage:
A weeding-out process takes place among the lower ranks of managers during the first several years of their experience. The early careers of promising young managers are highly variegated; the more promise managers show, the more probations they must undergo. Take, for example, the case of a young man newly graduated in 1965 from one of the South’s leading universities. He joined Weft Corporation and spent the next two years in the company’s production management training program. Then he became a first-line supervisor on the third shift at a small mill. Shortly thereafter, he was promoted to the night superintendent’s job of that mill and given overall responsibility for the night shift. After six months, he became a department head for weaving operations in another mill. After another six months, he was assigned to head a larger weaving department in yet another plant. After still another six months, he became assistant plant manager at a medium-sized mill and kept that job for four years. Then he moved to a still larger mill in the same capacity for another two years. Then he became plant manager of a medium-sized mill for two years. Finally, he was named one of two group managers with six plant managers reporting to him. At the age of 36, he has reached grade 20, the “breaking point” on a scale of 29, placing him in the top 12.17 percent of management in Weft Corporation with, he hopes, a clear shot at becoming vice-president of manufacturing. Similarly variegated careers are evident for young marketing and sales managers in Weft’s northern offices. In Alchemy Inc., whether in sales, marketing, manufacturing, or finance, the “breaking point” in the hierarchy is generally thought to be grade 13 out of 25 or the top 8.5 percent of management.
The low levels of these ranks probably provide for recognition of non-management employees, like the enlisted and warrant ranks in the US military. With a branching factor of 2, top 12% would mean 3 levels up from the bottom, not 20. With 9 levels above above 20, a total of 13 levels of managers. The other company, perhaps 15. But probably the top of the hierarchy is not actually 9 or 12 ranks, but sparser than they suggest, not as sparse as the lower ranks, but not completely full like the US military.
What do you want?
Do you want to buy something for yourself, or do you want a company to change the world?
Yes, there is room for a better product, but I think that off-the-shelf products are pretty good and you should just get them. If you want to change the world, maybe you should just promote these existing products. In particular, for your short term needs, just do it.
I think that the right answer for most people and most purposes is Raemon’s instructions, $300 for 300 watts, same total wattage as coelux. Why did you write this post already knowing about Raemon’s instructions? What are they lacking? That they require installation? If you have 24 separate bulbs spread around the room, installation is unavoidable. Light strips may be a better solution, but they require even more installation.
Some people want different things. David Chapman seems to want to illuminate his desk, not his room, so he might not like Raemon’s setup. If you want to minimize installation, you might want a single light. This leads to Ben and Ashen’s suggestions. They probably aren’t as nice as coelux, so, yes, it would be nice if someone made nicer versions (which should be possible). Ashen’s outdoor floodlights probably have lousy CRI. Ben’s corncob isn’t the standard residential fixture, and thus required some assembly. Both products probably shine outwards to illuminate an area, rather than the coelux which is intended to mimic the sun through a window pushing light in a sharp line. This illusion is probably luxurious, but I’m skeptical that it is actually good for the goal.
I was going to follow up by saying that if you like the form factor of coelux, there are similar products on the market for maybe $2/watt, only twice as expensive as Raemon’s setup. They aren’t as bright as coelux, but you could get 5 or 10. There is the second product Ashen linked or light therapy boxes (apparently 72W) are probably a good option with full spectrum and good lenses. But then I read more I heard a lot of accusations of poor quality and fraud around light boxes, so I dunno.
You asked for an expert consensus and I gave it to you. Naval researchers are the experts.
No, “experiments yield results in different directions” is not an accurate summary. Experiments with large interventions trump experiments with small interventions.
But, it’s true, I left out the most convincing evidence, which is back of the envelope calculations with gross anatomy.
When people say that ventilation helps them, I believe them. They might even be far on an axis of response to pollution. But how would they know that the particular pollutant they respond to is CO2? They should be cautious in assigning blame and trying specific interventions. Gwern points out that one of the studies that most impressed Paul about CO2 actually found larger effects from mold, which is a big problem in the foggy slums of Berkeley. In theory there are ways to isolate human pollution from house pollution, such as varying the number of roommates, but I doubt people are careful enough to disentangle that and CO2 isn’t even the only human pollutant. [Added: but submarines are equally subject to all human pollutants, so that should limit the possibilities to the short list of what they scrub.]
Are submariners selected on that axis? I’m skeptical. In any event, the naval studies don’t restrict to submariners.
It would be nicer if there were more randomization, but it would also be nicer if more information were extracted from the few people who are randomized. For example, I know someone who participated in an RCT of breastfeeding/formula. It was aimed at a specific (acute, adverse) infant outcome. I’m not sure it even looked at other infant metrics, but it certainly did not have long-term follow-up, not even at 5 years. Not only did the study make a big investment in persuading the subjects for such little measurement, but it is now impossible to do a better experiment, because RCTs of breastfeeding are now considered unethical because of the damage their null results do to the authors’ careers. (Similarly the Swedish and Australian twin registries are the right way to do twin studies.)
On the other hand, sometimes you can’t randomize and you’d like to know how well you can do correlational studies. If your employer is so enthusiastic about experiments, maybe it apply that enthusiasm to itself and do an experiment to see how well its employees can do observational analysis?
There is another measure, which you might think of as level 5, but you should probably think of as an independent axis that could be applied at earlier levels, which is quarantining infected people. That is, taking them out of their home and putting them in makeshift hospitals.