Craig Falls

Karma: 20

Craig Falls 11 Feb 2022 23:40 UTC
3 points
in reply to: Rob Bensinger’s comment on: Peekskill Lyme Incidence
Fwiw, I self-administered dog Lymerix and I’m doing fine.

Zooming out a bit, if you asked people living here for reasons why they’d consider moving away, Lyme disease would be like #200 on the list. Maybe they’re wildly wrong, but I feel it’s a bit like the people who wouldn’t move to California because of earthquakes. There’s an inside/outside view disconnect.

Craig Falls 10 Feb 2022 19:50 UTC
2 points
in reply to: justinpombrio’s comment on: Are the Born probabilities really that mysterious?
It’s not obvious to me that the non-linear effects of probabilities equal to amplitudes would be more noticeable than those of amplitudes equal to squared amplitudes. Perhaps most probability amplitude would be on very “broken” worlds with no atoms, but let’s set that aside and imagine that there are physicists doing experiments to try to discover QM.
First of all, in a two-slit experiment, the wavy peaks and troughs of probabilities would be shaped differently. This makes QM no more and no less noticeable.
You might think a more noticeable effect would be the non-locality. Under amplitudes, but not squared amplitudes, probabilities depend on far away actions outside your light cone. But this would not be possible to discover by experiment. If a physicist on the moon measures the spin of an electron at some angle at the same time as you measure some entangled electron on earth, the probabilities of spin-up vs spin-down that you observe are not just related to those two electrons, but rather all the behavior of all the electrons (and other particles) in the universe, including the two physicists themselves, in ways that do not cancel out as they do with squared amplitudes.
I think this is an important and underrated point. Any aspect of the true Born function which isn’t squared amplitude appears to agents living in the universe like incomprehensible noise.
Let me give an example. If the true Born probabilities were the squared real component of the complex amplitude, and ignored the imaginary component, then we would have no way of telling that universe apart from the one we currently assume we’re living in. (Yes, the usual Born probabilities should be massively favored for Occam reasons. But nevertheless I think it’s useful to have an understanding of what “elbow room” we have to modify the Born probabilities without contradicting observations, should that ever cause the overall theory to be simpler.)
A less jokey example would be quaternions rather than complex numbers.

Craig Falls 16 Jul 2021 23:53 UTC
0 points
in reply to: AnnaSalamon’s comment on: Peekskill Lyme Incidence
My belief is that “long Lyme” is mostly fake. None of the symptoms can be objectively measured.
Imagine telling people that after you recover from the flu you might experience entirely subjective symptoms that mysteriously resemble the symptoms of getting older. What percent of people would claim to experience those symptoms?
Higher recovery rates are reported in cultures that talk less about long Lyme.
The people who do genuinely have long-term symptoms generally had knees that looked like grapefruits by the time they saw a doctor.

Craig Falls 21 May 2021 1:10 UTC
19 points
on: Peekskill Lyme Incidence
A very effective Lyme vaccine is in fact manufactured and sold, but only for use on dogs. Just find yourself a morally flexible vet. Failing that, monitoring for symptoms and taking a large dose of antibiotics within ~48 hours of symptoms is extremely effective.
I live near Peekskill and have had Lyme twice. The first time it took a while to diagnose, as I knew nothing about it, and it had a negative impact on my summer for sure. The second time I had purchased grey market antibiotics and immediately took a large dose when symptoms appeared. I then went to the doctor, who strongly approved of my decision.
My impression is that the kind of person who is paranoid enough about Lyme to have written this post is not the kind of person who ends up with any kind of long term adverse effects. You have symptoms, you take the antibiotics, and they work. If you’re worried about gut flora or whatever, follow up with probiotics, or a high quality yogurt. You’ll be fine.
Properly diagnosed and treated Lyme is significantly less annoying than the flu. You just have to know what to look out for—the red ring rash, night sweats, lethargy, etc. If you catch it before you have major joint swelling (which takes months), you’re A-OK. The western blot test for it is cheap, but also, very occasionally taking antibiotics unnecessarily has few consequences—it’s the same stuff people take for such horrifying scourges as teenage acne.