CharonY

The zone is already flooded, isn't it? At this point it the water is up to everyone's noses and how is adding more being even more distracting? Exactly, if there is not access to it, it doesn't really matter that it is not formally suspended. It was the same thing regarding abortion, until they finally decided to come out and ban it outright. Not only dragging feet, but a) shuffle them around in various states so that they lawyers cannot find them and then whisk them away before it can be litigated. Once in El Salvador (or wherever) they claim that there is no legal remedy anymore. It is functionally the same as to vanish folks into a gestapo prison.

The one issue I have with this hypothesis, is that everything is on fire. The constitution is in crisis, Nazis are running the government, corruption is now open, brownshirts, I mean ICE agents are abducting folks, habeas corpus is suspended, free speech is being dismantled, the economy is tanked and the list goes on. It is incredible to me that when folks are drowning, yet everything is on fire, and probably somehow also full of sharks, there is still potential for distractions.

Yet all they will do is to counteract the drop he caused in the first place. It is like putting out a fire you started and brag about the lives you saved. I will say one thing about abilities, though. Trump and Musk are very good at grifting people. They have the rare ability to lie and and convince people of it. Trump sometimes contradicts himself in the same sentence and still folks believe both contradictory statements. These is not a common ability and I should give him credit for that. However, these abilities are great for cult leaders and dictators, and are not for jobs where one would need background knowledge (like economics).

Making "deals" is not policy. The latter requires a coherent framework with specific goals. Those were all missing. Council on Foreign RelationsTrump’s Middle East Legacy Is FailureThe president has had a handful of successes—but never anything approaching a strategy.

A little while back the US sent orders out to European companies (including French and German) demanding an and to DEI programs, which clashes with national and European standards. It is a bit funny, as for example in Germany DEI initiatives are basically just getting started whereas they have been common in the USA for a while.

Well, that is exactly the issue though. If you do not know how something works, it is difficult to predict where it likely will fail or whether it is overfitting your data. If your conditions are sufficiently simply that could likely be circumvented and cross-validation approaches might help. But the more complex it is the harder it is to figure out whether the model has issues. A huge example in ML are population data, where the model often ended up to be biased against minorities, as they were underrepresented in data sets. Especially in the medical field, this was a real issue resulting in worse outcomes for minorities which were only realized rather recently. Of course with the perfect approach and the perfect data set it might perform well. But if we had that level of certainty, we might not need Ml in the first place as more reductionist approach might be similarly successful.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have entered IDIOTCON 4: https://www.wsj.com/world/greenland-spying-us-intelligence-809c4ef2?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

As @swansont, pointed out, there are no real purely capitalist systems, every economic system is somewhere on the spectrum. The trick is to treat wherever your favourite position is on the spectrum as the best possible option. You got me wrong, it is because he is stupid he is ruining other economies, but also the US economy. He is good at manipulating people, though I don't get why folks fall for it. However, as many other folks pointed out, what he did is to take the money from a huge successful real estate company from his father and made a much smaller company from that. His real success is that he got away with a lot of dubious things, but if had just invested his father's earnings he would have earned money. His by far biggest success was not in business but as a reality TV star in the apprentice. And as the producers have stated, they needed heavy editing to not make him look like a moron https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/14/business/donald-trump-apprentice.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FU8.116F.OD02-jt3FsNo&smid=url-share

What you describe has been around not under the name of AI, but under the umbrella of machine learning. Neural networks as outlined by @Ghideon is an example of such an approach. The issues are also mentioned, including that most are black box approaches, which makes issues of overfitting problematic (i.e. the outcome could be heavily biased due to your training set, but you won't know why and how it affected it). In contrast to, say Newton's law which is a very reductive model (and hence is elegant, but also idealized) you'll get something that has many, many, unwieldy parameters. Trying to prune that down to something like a Newtonian equation will require significant follow-up work. Basically you will try to create a simplified system based on an overly complex ML-model. Whether that is easier than to derive them otherwise depends on the system, I guess (which is way above my knowledge level).

I mean, that's part of it, but especially in the US there is a long-established worship of capitalism, likely as a response to the red scare. It is a bit hard to explain, but there is a bit of difference in mindset compared to a number of European countries, which have moved a little bit into that direction, but are not quite as much there. But the consequence is that folks conflate capitalism with freedom so that restricting the upward motion of wealth will somehow bring the downfall of society.

In many ways I think data can be used and contextualized in different ways. But I don't think that is a philosophical difference in the use of the data. For example, weather data can be used in a host of different disciplines. But the interpretation of the nature of the data is fairly consistent. I would think that temperature is typically seen as a measure of energy input into the system, regardless whether you are looking at chemical or biological processes, for example. I.e. it is more a difference of use rather than interpretation.

I faintly recall at least one study looking a little bit into that, but I cannot recall what it was. My sense is that attitudes shift regarding the free market among the wealthy has been outpacing academic inquiry, which is still very rooted in neoliberal ideas.

I think you are overestimating his planning abilities. It is more likely that he has a laundry list of things that would make him look good and due to lack of knowledge and the presence of yes-men he just did something very stupid, as one does. What he has been doing is just his way of spin, which makes exactly as much sense as his shower stories. American economy has been highly reliant on high levels of consumption and being an advanced service industry (internationally). He is trying to leverage the US' economic strength by first undercutting it. It is basically like cutting your arm off to use as a club to intimated others. It works as intimidation goes, but probably for different reasons than he thought it would be. It is possible but I think even among the 1% there are folks who are getting nervous. Not the crypto tech-bro every crash is great crowd, but the more "traditional" billionaires as they are entering an area of marked uncertainty. And I am decently sure that those folks don't like it if they are not certain about winning the game they rigged in the first place.

So what happens if you treat it in early stages then? Note that "unless" is a negation. I should also add that none of these parameters are pertinent to the question asked in OP, which appear to be more fundamental.

In the first part you suggest that there is methodological diversity across disciplines. Yet in the second part of your answer you define methodology as the generalized scientific method that now is part of common methodology. This usage of terms is very muddled which really does not help your argument. I suggest you think a bit about what you separate out methodology from philosophy more and also explain where, in your mind the Scientific Method falls into that.

I meant, which is the common and similar methodology that you refer to?

Why did you suggest that prophylaxis don't work if treated in early stages, especially as PEP is the primary treatment.

Which is?

So all sciences have the same methodology and focus on empirical evidence (a very questionable claim) and also not every science has the same methodology. It would be useful if you defined things more precisely and then use it in a consistent manner.

Question: do you have any kind of background expertise? We don't give out medical advice here. This phrasing doesn't make a lot of sense.

If one is really philosophical about it, no one really dies from disease or even toxins. Typical causes of death are organ failure of some sort. The question then is why do they fail? And the answer is that the bacteria/viral infection cause shifts in the physiology that the body is not able to deal with. Some of the lethality of respiratory viruses is caused by triggering your immune system in a way that does severe damage to your body (e.g. cytokine storms). While you could argue that this is just your body killing yourself, rather than the virus, as Swansont pointed out, none of it would have happened without the infection in the first place. Also, there is no fundamental difference with regard to bacterial or viral infection when it comes to lethality (though some mechanisms differ). For example, the cause of death by bacterial sepsis is again the initiation of widespread inflammatory responses causing a wide range of damages, including shock, which interupts blood flow to organs, that than causes death. It is a bit like saying that a car accident does not kill you , but rather it is only due to deformation of your organs by a rapidly accelerating dashboard. Also while I still think that the argument is heavily flawed for the mentioned reason, many viruses are not dependent on secondary infections to kill the host, though it can accelerate the process. Rabies was already mentioned where severe inflammation causes brain damage, but even influenza and especially the delta variant can damage lungs by triggering severe inflammation in the lung. COVID-19 was also implicated in higher risk of severe blood clotting which can cause stroke and thrombosis related deaths. Many viruses like Hanta and Ebola damage endothelial cells and mess up the immune system resulting in far ranging damages such as liquid leakages in hearts and lungs and gut, respectively. While not asked, I will note that some folks tried to diminish the impact of diseases like COVID-19 for political reasons and are often making arguments that try to simplify pathophysiology especially of COVID-19 (though I see similar arguments regarding influenza) to make it seem that they are in fact not that dangerous. A poor motivation for rather poor arguments.

Aren't those simulation software? That does not seem what OP is asking about. Most simulation software I know (and it may have changed) you define the models, add the desired input and boundary conditions and let it provide solutions (or approximations of it). From how I understand OP the idea is to take actual data, generate a model from it and then run it.

I think a big issue is that increasingly political identity is tied to certain set of stances, regardless whether policies make sense or not. Neither liberals nor conservatives really want to curb immigration and the recent argument about tying it to housing, which does make sense, is just caused by a major blunder of the liberals (the sudden post-COVID spike). However, both conservatives and liberals have enacted policies that encouraged real estate prices to balloon. From what I can tell, both parties encouraged housing as an investment tool (as part of the Canadian dream, so to speak) which ultimately would have led to an increase. What is problematic is that folks only can remember intuitive mechanisms (such as immigration) and often not recognizing that housing would still have outpaced salaries, just slightly slower. It goes back to the overall issue that most folks are not good at dealing with complex situation and just want simple answers to complex questions. Identifying as conservative or liberal is just much easier than to dissect policies as a whole (or beyond wedge issues).

I would like to add some context here. One is that the report by the Verfassungschutz (Office for the protection of the constitution) does not trigger specific actions. It should be noted that prior, the AfD was classified as a potential danger to the constitution. At that level the Verfassungsschutz is allowed to use intelligence tools, including cultivating confidential informants and other actions. However, there are specific rules of proportionality. The difference now is that the thresholds for these rules are now lowered. I.e. for example surveillance could be intensified now. However, they the Verfassungsschutz has no say in outlawing the party. This can only be done by the legislative bodies (Bundestag, Bundesrat) or the Government, which requires a process initiated at the Federal Constitutional Court. Such a discussion was initiated last year. I think it is still moving its way through the procedural points. However, it is not about abolishing as such, but just to discuss if it the decision to abolish the AfD should come to a vote. Or I think that is where it is, German procedure is complicated, to say the least. Obviously, the new classification will add fuel to the debate, but some are rather careful. The reason is if it is unsuccessful, as it happened before with the NPD, it could trigger a huge political fallout. There are some folks who also argue that the AfD at this point is already too big too fail. Again, during the election they were the second-largest party with 20.8%. Now, have increased to about 25% are basically at the same level as the strongest party (CDU, conservatives). Things are bleak, to put it mildly.

From my read, they pretty much did exactly as expected. Polls projected something around 20% and they got 20.8%. The folks hating on Teslas are not those who vote for the AfD in the first place. You should also know that the AfD is not really trying to appear like a serious conservative with some mild Trumpism as the Canadian and Australian conservatives did. They went all in on 3rd Reich, and will not be dissuaded by US antics. The main thing is that they were somewhat anti-USA and pro-Russia, but now obviously the US is also in the fold now. The polarization is most extreme between West and East Germany, though the AfD is again slowly getting more support. The fact that they have not hit their ceiling yet is really, really worrying.