All of sudoLife's Comments + Replies

I agree that pain shouldn't measure how hard you are trying.

However, I feel like grit, while not always particularly enjoyable, is what leads to true greatness. Persevering with a challenge, that is.

Of course, there's a difference between that and meaningless suffering. I was always at odds with people working very hard on something that can be easily automated / sped up.

I was just wondering why lesswrong posts about constant false alarm rate...

That's a very interesting approach, I am usually against using google translate but of course it can't be helped if you're an absolute beginner. I'm currently learning Italian. I think I'm gonna try your approach.

My English learning journey (I'm not a native speaker): I used some average textbook for self-learners going through the exercises to understand basic grammar structures such as tenses. I was only around a third into it when I quit and started watching movies in (American) English without subtitles. It was tedious at first, but after half a year o... (read more)

Yeah I can totally relate to yearning for one thing and wanting to drop everything else. However it's a luxury I can't afford :(

How does the job feel? Do you approach it with the same Feynman-like playfulness or does it feel more like a "system"?

I just wonder how things were/are curiosity-wise. Because it seems like conventional education system is a great curiosity killer (that's why it's a system). 

The measles booster comes a year later. Multiple sources confirm that there is no reason to expect a six-months-later second dose to be any less effective a booster. 

About this, strange stuff seems to be happening in Lithuania (that's Europe). After around 6 months, you get an invitation for a booster. Previously, you could just test for antibodies and if there were high enough, postpone your booster. This seemed reasonable.

Now they are simply canceling green passes (this thing lets you in malls and other non-essential amenities etc etc) for tho... (read more)

Common sense atheism should update on the belief that their website is working.

Here's the relevant archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20110826004919/http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=13156

Question about vaccination: I have seen various sources claiming that to end the pandemic we should have vaccinated over a certain percentage of the population (say, on the scale of a country). 

However we have not and now the virus has mutated repeatedly. From this point of view, it sounds as if we will never be over it unless everyone gets bored or something. There is no end in sight as far as I can see. In my country, 61.7% are fully vaccinated, yet the number of daily cases & deaths is indistinguishable from the last fall. Worse, even.

What are your thoughts? I know this is not a rigorous comment (no sources), for this I apologize.

Doom Emacs is also about Vim's powerful tools like norm and :%s. It's basically taking the best from the both world (granted, that's subjective). Love it!

Is is passwordy-looking enough that somebody might want to search it through published leaks?

In either case, you should check it on haveibeenpwned.com, though I suspect you do that already.

Oh, I loved that example when I read it in his book!

But there is a workaround: start by pointing out that sometimes one does feel ill and this feeling goes naturally away -- the body is a healing machine!

Funnily enough, she does use this kind of argument herself when advocating against the Covid vaccines.

I think I tried using it once at some point and it went like this:

-- Our body is a healing machine

-- Yeah

-- So homeopathy might not actually do anything

-- Well, it helps those natural body processes

-- How do you know?

-- It makes you heal faster

-- But why a

Hm, valid point I suppose. I just have to be careful to not end up with a bigger issue than I've started with.

I believe it will give her more leverage over me the next time. It's like blackmailing people into doing worse things than the blackmail, and then using those to blackmail further.

Also, you can't just consult doctors in a few days here. You have to make an appointment and wait for a good deal of time (up to two months usually), so it's only worth doing if you've got a serious issue.

Hm, there's the classic injection in your butt (widely used in medicine), there are local injections near knees / neck / elbows / spinal cord (sometimes you need the stuff close to the problem). Afaik homeopathy is not administered to veins. That's about all I can think of / witnessed myself.

Yeah, it seems to have been. Proposed edit: https://web.archive.org/web/20110718032458/http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/steven/?p=3

My strategy of having peace is described in my question. As to how to make peace, there have been a few ways suggested, e.g. setting boundaries. I can't see any others really. Do what you both agree on together, do the rest separately in your own way.

This is a good strategy, and I agree I need to upgrade my communication skills. Thank you so much!

Have it in your head, and imagine your mother saying whatever would maximally trigger you and how you might respond with emotion communication and boundary setting. ("I feel disrespected" -> "it's not my fault you won't see the light of homeopathy" -> "now I'm feeling like you don't care that you're making me feel this way")

Good call. I lose my cool very rarely, usually I'm just not responding to the triggers like "you're a coward" which makes me look better in the overall pictures (like I'm not the mean one). Upping my game a little will be for the best.

With all due respect, "learn how" is why I am here, it is in my very question.

I do have a job, and hence some experience outside my family bubble. However, at work I deal with scientists who are a very different kind of people as you might imagine.

Thanks!

Thanks for the info. I already have some minor heart issues, so this info worries me quite significantly. Could you please provide the source of those particular numbers?

Also, please share if you've done any related calculations / comparisons. I'd be very interested.

If you're not bothered by injections and have appropriate technique then all you have to do is shoot saline in front of your mother.

I might do just that if I ever feel an urge to be confined in a psychiatry clinic.

The obvious problem with using OC on your relatives is that you typically have care for them.

Agreed, that's something I'd use on my college peers, not relatives.

This situation is a test. It is not the last time you will be confronted with this kind of thing. If you favor science, then what do you think your logical course of action should be if p

Thank you for your thoughts.

Is this the most important thing for me to do right now?

To be honest, my mind draws a blank here. While it is not my top priority, the things as they are now might impact my mother's health and sanity in the future. I wish there were a way to save everyone.

The issue comes from the default mode of "distrust authority and anyone with power while prioritizing persecuted-looking people's words". This comes from the elderly generation having grown in the totalitarian regime. A reasonable concern, but it also helps them discard any sc... (read more)

Yeah, I suppose this is the only way. I wish I could save her the money and emotional attachment, but I see no way to do it and every time I try, we just end up fighting.

Thanks for the amazing tool suggestion! I wonder why I've never seen it used in Lesswrong estimations before.

Maybe, at some point. I can certainly see how things can go downhill here, but then again, they are anyway. 

Honestly, I think your chances to change your mother's opinions on homeopathy are close to zero.

Agreed.

(Unless perhaps it is that case that someone else is pressuring her into homeopathy, and you could somehow undermine her trust in that third party. But that is manipulation.)

Her belief came to be when doctors predicted unhappy health developments unless she did this and that (meaning abortion and surgeries). Homeopathy wasn't so unwelcoming, and somehow things have gotten sorted out on their own. So yeah, zero chance here.

You should have a doctor, who is

I predict I would trap myself by hinting that I believe homeopathy and simply am afraid of injections (I'm not, but I take no pleasure either). Don't you think so?

Hm, I might put it to use at some point, thanks for the concept!

Unfortunately, right now I am being coerced into taking an immunity "boost", whose desired outcome is not really possible to measure. "Your immunity will get stronger" is too vague.

And of course, I am not going to have it instead of a Covid vaccine as I am being told to do.

Hm,

But maybe VAERS is more under-reported than that, and a factor of 10 is more fair?

It may be a negative slope: the more serious a side effect is, the more it gets reported. Going by that, a factor of two or three for blood clots sounds pessimistic enough. Then we'd still be somewhere around the base rate.

This study estimates the risk of cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) and portal vein thrombosis (PVT) following Covid-19 diagnosis vs vaccination (mRNA).

Excluding those with prior history of CVT or PVT, we get 3.53/100K and 17.5/100K cases, respectively. Th... (read more)

Thank you! I have edited my post, which hopefully will bring more clarity.

There was a lot of hubub about blood clots regarding Janssen but that turned out to be nothing.

Hmm, source? I have found this, it's rather new. I agree that the numbers are somewhat low. However the law of big numbers still applies. Maybe you happen to have more recent statistics with mentioned risk groups?

If you want a single Pfizer, though, you can just get one. There’s no way to force you back in for the second dose.

Ah, I should mention that I’m in America.

Regrettably, it works differently in Europe (and Lithuania in particular). 

There's a thing ca... (read more)

Why do you want to avoid making your immune system do work?

Because a few immunologists suggested it is not a good thing to subject one's immune system to unnecessary work.

There are other threats it might have to deal with, so I would like to avoid useless / distracting labor.

True. Have you been able to find any plausible justification for why mRNA vaccines make you that sick? From what I know, they only create the protein spikes.

I wonder if we haven't observed adverse side effects due to small sample or the vaccine actually being better. How do we tell?

I don't know when the first year was they they could have designed a successful vaccine against a novel virus in a day and a half, but the odds of that happening just before covid hit are obviously very low, especially since more recent trials and studies are showing that we can also quickly develop (better) vaccines against the flu and malaria, and the success with covid was not an unlikely outcome.

I did not get this part (maybe there's a missed word or something. Are you implying that they had all tech in place to successfully manufacture such vaccines q... (read more)

This essay of yours might be worth its own post :)

Your comment got me thinking about the probability of what I described once again:

There's a vaccine for a previously unknown virus made with completely new technology ... made in an astonishingly short time.

Such miracles only happen in people's imagination.

Previously, I noticed one simple explanation: the vaccine is not as safe / effective.

Now I realize there's another: the mRNA vaccines are not that new, they simply never made it public before. Just something that dawned on me.

I'll study the links and get ... (read more)

Interesting information, thanks. However, the choice is as follows (numbers indicate available units):

1. Moderna (4990)
2. Comirnaty (Pfizer) (25111)
3. Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) (6073)
4. Janssen (3611) 

The viral vector technology has previously been used for Ebola, right? What do we know about that?

UPD: apparently, we might get Novavax sometime soon. I might want to wait for that. 

In Lithuania, a bill has been passed that denies the unvaccinated rights to:

1. non-essential stores
2. stores, whose area is over 1500 sqm
3. beauty salons
4. library
5. small repair services > 15 mins of time
6. any  indoors cultural / sports / celebration events
7. outdoors events > 500 people

And their main slogan is "Turn your shoulder - become free!"

While these actions are supposed to be coercive, I feel they're doing much the opposite. And it makes non-swayed judgement really hard.

Thank you for detailed comments!

I have similar thoughts about the approval process, though much less coherent.

From a citizen (non-medical education) level of knowledge, I wonder how we should go about reaching a decision regarding getting a jab.

Though I am obliged to say, where I and my SO currently live (Lithuania and Russia) it will soon become not a "whether", but "which" in a month due to regulations.

...vaccines happen to be safe and effective, but it’s not clear that we wouldn’t be in a similar position in the future where the thing in question wasn’t safe and/or wasn’t effective

I think both that the vaccines are safe and effective based on the evidence, and also that if the evidence did not strongly say they were safe and effective, we wouldn’t be contemplating such policies

Could you explain how you arrived at the safety conclusion? Wait, let me explain why I myself am getting overwhelmed (maybe I start from the wrong viewpoint).

There is an unprecede... (read more)