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All of BladeDoc's Comments + Replies

COVID-19: home stretch and fourth wave Q&A
BladeDoc
30

Since most if not all of these positive pressure only filter the incoming air the suits are Covid dissemination devices if a Covid positive individual uses them. If many people start using them the population risk could conceivably increase drastically. For example a Co+ person using a blow up costume likely infected 43 people in CA. Yes, it's not the same as a PAPR but similarly does not filter outgoing air. https://ktla.com/news/california/inflatable-christmas-costume-possibly-tied-to-covid-19-death-of-san-jose-hospital-worker/

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5habryka
Yep, they provide very little protection for other people. Though if you follow the algorithm of basically always wearing out outside, your risk of having COVID goes down drastically, and with that, your risk of spreading it does too. I.e. an office with everyone wearing these (or even everyone except one person wearing these) is still completely safe.
A dozen habits that work for me
BladeDoc
90

Be careful of two things. Those flushable wipes probably shouldn’t be flushed and eating that many carrots will eventually turn your skin orange.

https://lifehacker.com/flushable-wipes-are-a-lie-1845370245

https://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/food-nutrition/facts/carotenosis.htm

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Should I take glucosamine?
Answer by BladeDoc
30

Glucosamine is used by people with arthritis to reduce joint pain with activity. It would not be used by a group to ill to be active i.e. if you are healthy enough to worry about taking glucosamine you probably aren’t going to die this year. This result is purely selection bias obtained by data mining.

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2gilch
They said they controlled for that: Is there something in particular you saw that they did incorrectly in their analysis here?
Non Polemic: How do you personally deal with "irrational" people?
Answer by BladeDoc
20

People are not only not rational, most do not WANT to be rational, and value many other things higher than rationality. Remember the story arcs of characters like Spock, Data, and Sheldon do not celebrate their becoming more rational.

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1Emiya
That's an interesting thought, I was aware that most fiction kept saying to people that Kirk beats Spock, I hadn't noticed that even the character arcs of rational or smart characters are almost never about them getting smarter or improving their minds... I think I saw that in a very few manga, even those that have a genius main character doesn't think about him getting more rational or smarter at all, he's just a genius from start to finish, any progress he makes are usual on other sides of himself... It seems this is really something that's lacking from our culture.
Why does History assume equal national intelligence?
Answer by BladeDoc
50

I think your question is just based on a wrong premise. I have read quite a bit of World War II history as well asSome history of the Vietnam war and the decisions of Hitler and McNamara in particular are often described as mistakes clearly based on their intellectual ability, cognitive bias, and misconceptions. People don’t necessarily say “this means Hitler was stupid” but the implication that he would’ve done things differently if he were smarter are obvious. Moreover Churchill is depicted as prescient in his assessment of Germany’s rearmament. The words unintelligent and the like are basically just left to the reader to infer.

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1HumaneAutomation
Hmm. You give interesting examples; especially McNamara (and, kind of by extension, Kissinger...) could indeed be said to be very smart and in some instances very wrong and biased. And it would certainly not be reasonable for a history book discussing their exploits (augmented by hindsight-bias) to say they were basically dumb for advocating or pursuing what they did. Though one might question the wisdom of coming up with and sticking to a narrative like the fear of communist systems spreading the world over. Bombing every potential success story back into the stone age is hardly a measured response, especially for those being bombed. The belief that the spread of communism nations the world over is a Bad Thing isn't necessarily correct, or excuse enough to then go and pre-emptively kill hundreds of thousands of people.