I’ve never heard of ring signatures before 60 seconds ago, but it seems like it would require a preexisting agreement among a group of people to create and use some way to ‘endorse’ messages with their signatures. If this understanding is correct, it doesn’t solve the spiral of silence at all, since you’d have to get the same people that all of the emailers are afraid of to agree to it.
ejacob
Karma: 446
I think a precise way to explain why I felt like adding “at all” is because I had already restricted myself to thinking about the most extreme spiral-of-silence cases. The Evergreen State-Bret Weinstein fiasco is a salient example. These kinds of situations are where a solution to spiral of silence-type phenomena would have the greatest impact, but I suppose there could be cases where the group dynamic is not as hostile, but still unforgiving enough that people will essentially want to test out ideas in front of their peers before publicly endorsing them, as ring signatures allow. I don’t know where such a group could be found or created.
I guess I am having difficulty imagining a group that would be heterodox enough to agree to talk about whatever “unpopular” ideas get endorsed on their ring signature, but would still be orthodox enough that individuals would feel the need to use the ring system in the first place—it seems to me like that would require holding contradictory beliefs about how one’s peers would react if you expressed support for a “toxic” idea. I’ve noticed I have an easier time than most being that person though (and if I’m totally honest, it’s a part of my personality that I like, and I probably consciously turn it up), so maybe this is a failure of imagination on my part.
Possible typo (bold):
Hmm, said a small voice in his ear. Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind, either. There’s talent, oh my goodness, yes – and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that’s interesting … So where shall I put you?
(I assume this is Luna’s ear. Unless it isn’t a typo, in which case I didn’t know who that was referring to. But if it isn’t a typo, it’s possible I’m not meant to know?)I liked it! Especially her questioning of the sorting hat. Her first instinct is to find a good reference class :)
I like this idea. Maybe she could even say something in particular that reminds them?
I could see a world where “the end of the world” is Moody’s stock response to questions like “what’s the worst that could happen?” if Harry Potter is the one asking the question, but not in general.
I don’t think any of what I’m about to say properly qualifies as language, but there are lots of cases where information is communicated by the manipulation of physical objects. The only examples I can think of require either a pre-determined agreement (verbal, written, or maybe a social norm) or shared context/knowledge. With a pre-arranged encoding scheme any message could be written out using some number of objects (e.g., reading lit and unlit candles in a window as the binary representation of ASCII characters, though this quickly needs a lot of candles).
What I came up with in about ten minutes, loosely categorized by use case:
War and Espionage
From Paul Revere’s Ride: “One if by land, two if by sea” to signal British troop movements (possibly apocryphal now that I think about it)
Also from American Revolutionary war history: the Culper spy ring used petticoats hung on clotheslines as signals (I’m not sure if they were interpreted as letters or words or just preset messages like “meet at the farmhouse at sundown”).
Mail
Boxes/bags left on a doorstep to say “this is for you”
A raised flag on a mailbox to say “please take my mail”
Business
Closing the door, turning off lights, etc. at a business to signal “we are in the process of closing/already closed”
IDK where I read this from, but IIRC during some era Italian(?) courtesans/prostitutes would replace white flowers outside their residences with red ones to indicate they were taking their monthly time off
Interpersonal relationships
Accepting a gift to show you accept an apology
Hugging/kissing your current boyfriend’s when your ex walks into the party to say “no, we are not getting back together”
Packing your belongings up and leaving your ring on the kitchen table to say “I want a divorce”
Non-human communication and signaling could also be a source of inspiration.
Edit: E.g. bees! I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere trying to use pheromones, but KatjaGrace already mentioned dancing as communication.
I never thought I’d be this sad about the death of an invisible ear-worm.
Israeli vaccinations run 24⁄7, even on Shabbat, which would normally prohibit most of the tasks involved with an organized vaccination effort (e.g.: driving, writing). The decision to vaccinate on shabbat is in fact endorsed by most of the more religious aspects of the society since saving lives is a sort of prime directive in Judaism that overrides other concerns in most situations.
All this is simply to say that I think that even if December was a holiday season in Israel, they would likely have made similar progress by now, simply because the culture and government is okay with suspending normal behavior for emergencies (a product of having an emergency every week or so for the last 70-odd years + the religious quirk). Compare to the US where vaccinations took Christmas off while doses sat on the shelf...
Could Europe and the US have moved to war footing in mid-December and not allowed the holidays to slow down their vaccination work? Yes.
Yes, yes indeed!
I came up with the same answer, though I just excluded the
colors
that weren’t amenable to nice linear models and didn’t notice the patterns you did.
Good catch, thanks!
Is Israel testing in teens now because they expect to be done with everyone else soon, or because they really really want to reopen schools, both, neither?
| This does not make sense.
The advice makes sense from a medicalized “do no harm” perspective. Given the baseline behavior of extreme behavior modifications to prevent infection, relaxing those constraints poses a risk. Therefore the only acceptable advice to give is “continue behaving just as cautiously even after getting the vaccine.”
This is clearly stupid, but medical institutions are not required to not be stupid; they are required to obey their hippocratic oath.
I showed the bit about Cuomo’s graphs to some friends, and one of them responded with “If he will not open now, what he will close later?”
I think it was meant as a joke, but it might be a deep insight into the decision-making process behind reopening the restaurants now. If
his majesty and King of New YorkGovernor Cuomo expects things to get worse later, and knows that he needs to (i) have something to point to as the cause and/or (ii) have some action to take to make it look like he is reacting with Courage and Wisdom, reopening restaurants now makes sense.On the other hand I think even according to his own data and justifications, NYC indoor dining wasn’t even contributing much to cases to begin with, so maybe the decision is okay even if the epistemology is a joke.
Excellent post. I sometimes think about the small mammals and insects that must inevitably die when a field of crops is harvested, but I now see that is only a small part of the attention I could have been paying.
You can probably find a way to add 15 lbs without actually gaining weight. Sew some weights into your clothes, wear bigger shoes and fill the extra space with something heavy, etc.
I am allowed to take any other vaccine if it is available and still participate in the study. (Given my youth and lack of risk factors it might actually take about as long as the study lasts before I’m eligible so this is mostly academic).
It’s double blind so I won’t know until the end.
Looked like water. I think the only way to get a good idea is to have an antibody test in a few weeks.
You may be right, I could have thought about that more carefully. For what it’s worth, everyone I named was professional and courteous so I wouldn’t want any negative consequences for them. It’s also not too hard to figure out my real name so the playing field is even at least.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has “DON’T PANIC” printed in “large, friendly letters.” The description of the PANIC button here is similar. Might not be related.