ejacob

Karma: 448

ejacob Aug 5, 2021, 9:48 PM
5 points
on: Covid 8/5: Much Ado About Nothing
The medical examiner thing seems totally fine—in this county they only see bodies that are sent for autopsies; i.e. something is fishy about their death. If you die in an ICU because of low oxygenation you don’t get sent to the medical examiner. If you die from a knife to the back and your family wants to argue that you died from COVID-19 then it makes sense for the medical examiner to want them to pay for it.
- My mom, a Suffolk county based doctor who used to do autopsies

ejacob Jul 30, 2021, 5:14 PM
8 points
on: What weird treatments should people who lost their taste from COVID try?
Two treatments I’ve heard of through unverified interwebs:

Ivermectin (yeah I follow that guy’s YouTube, there’s lots of study about it but afaik the usefulness for smell loss in particular is anecdotal). The mechanism would likely be that it clears out residual viral particles/pieces of cellular garbage that are causing damage.

LSD (apparently a small dose helped a guy? I think this story is on Zvi’s latest covidpost.) Obviously a lot more risk with this one and I would guess it could only work by increasing sensory output because psychedelics. (This kinda tracks with the essential oils suggestion? Sniffing stuff a lot could rewire some neurons I guess.)

Good luck!

ejacob Jun 14, 2021, 4:22 PM
1 point
on: Is the length of the Covid-19 incubation period likely to be affected by whether you are vaccinated?
Is your immunocompromised buddy amenable to prophylaxis? I don’t even really know how many pro-ivermectin-for-covid doctors think ivermectin prophylaxis works but it might be worth looking into since it is very cheap and relatively easy to tolerate. There are probably other options that i know even less about. Consult a trusted physician :)

ejacob Jun 14, 2021, 2:29 PM
2 points
in reply to: ejacob’s comment on: Which rationalists faced significant side-effects from COVID-19 vaccination?
Oh and add on to this some Israeli cousins (who all received Pfizer), at least 7? With the same side effects.

I haven’t really taken stock of this before, but given how many people I know have received a vaccination the lack of reported long-term effects seems like a notable signal.

ejacob Jun 14, 2021, 2:26 PM
3 points
on: Which rationalists faced significant side-effects from COVID-19 vaccination?
My close family had 3 people receive 2x Pfizer, 1 2x Moderna, and 1 2x Novavax (part of a clinical trial). No side effects beyond muscle aches/fever/malaise for at most 24 hrs.

NB Novavax is not an mRNA vaccine; it’s basically just the spike protein presented on an inactive substrate mixed with some preservatives/immune system agonists. A spike protein kebab, if you will.

ejacob Jun 10, 2021, 5:40 PM
3 points
in reply to: Charlie Steiner’s comment on: Covid 6/10: Somebody Else’s Problem
https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038

Here is an extremely long post by a science writer which i haven’t read, but I’ve heard him in reasonable-sounding discussions with actual biologists. Maybe what you are looking for is here.

ejacob Jun 9, 2021, 12:44 PM
15 points
on: Bad names make you open the box
Somewhat ironically, I read the title of this article as “[being called] bad names make[s] you open the box [and let out the misaligned AGI]” so I was kind of expecting an explainer on how an AI could bully someone into increasing its ability to affect the physical world. Fortunately just a sentence or two corrected me and I still have high trust in LW article titles.

ejacob May 26, 2021, 7:33 AM
7 points
on: [Prediction] What war between the USA and China would look like in 2050
I would nudge your assessment of the missile defense capabilities of aircraft carriers up a bit. Part of the reason the Iron Dome doesn’t intercept everything is because Hamas launches a large number of rockets at the same time to overwhelm the system. This is easier to do when the rockets are cheap and the target distances are short. A comparable number of anti ship missiles are probably harder to fire simultaneously without deploying a large air fleet, in which case you are kind of meeting the carrier on its own terms. Longer range strikes also means greater time for detection and reaction. I also don’t know how that 90-95% figure counts rockets that were intentionally not shot down since their trajectories ended in empty areas. I still think your overall assessment is correct though; it is probably much cheaper to sink an aircraft carrier than defend it, in both money and personnel. And the greatest cost to both parties would be from cyber attacks on civilian or mixed use systems.

Your points about Taiwan’s lack of preparation are interesting. Could preparing for guerrilla resistance be seen as accepting a Chinese invasion and occupation as inevitable? I don’t know much about Taiwan but I would guess proposing that to be career suicide for most politicians or military officers.

ejacob May 19, 2021, 4:58 AM
1 point
in reply to: Josh Smith-Brennan’s comment on: Does NASA Take Alien Life Seriously?
An interesting point. I’m very unsure of this, but I think that the main difference between IV and V is that V includes measures to prevent introduction of Martian life to Earth. The mission to collect the prepared samples would certainly be a category V according to my understanding. Perhaps the crew or lander collecting the samples would first have to do some sort of examination, assuming Perseverance hadn’t already?

ejacob May 19, 2021, 4:54 AM
1 point
in reply to: noborny’s comment on: Does NASA Take Alien Life Seriously?
I am very glad to hear this, and I didn’t know that JPL even did life detection! Thank you for commenting.

ejacob May 18, 2021, 7:17 AM
1 point
on: What Would You Store to Maximize Value in 100 Years? A Thought Experiment
One could buy up s diverse portfolio of seeds of endangered plants/frozen embryos of endangered animals, focusing on ones with medicinal/industrial value or ecological importance.

ejacob May 9, 2021, 6:06 PM
1 point
in reply to: jbash’s comment on: Sympathy for the ferryman of Hades, or why we should keep Trump off Twitter
I think the metaphor is that raisins are (reasonably) healthy but adding them to cookies won’t make cookies healthy.

ejacob May 4, 2021, 12:30 AM
16 points
in reply to: Zac Hatfield-Dodds’s comment on: There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)
My hypothesis after 30 seconds of thinking was that trees evolve independently because height = good for competing for sunlight, while grasses must specialize a ton to ‘afford’ passing up on the height advantage. So once a grass is established somewhere it might be hard for an up-and-coming-almost-grass species to nudge out of its niche. Maybe this is related?
I could imagine lots of plants getting stuck in a local maximum of fitness where they are still pretty tree-like but would need to simultaneously lose some tree features and gain C4 photosynthesis in order to succeed as grasses, so the gap to jump in adaptation-space is too large.

ejacob May 4, 2021, 12:13 AM
4 points
in reply to: lsusr’s comment on: Bayeswatch 1: Jewish Space Laser
The airport near Tel-Aviv is called Ben-Gurion, not -Guri, but IDK if this is intentional to make it clear it’s an alternate universe or something.
I love all of your fiction. My favorite part of this piece is the “1” in the title because it implies there will be sequels. :)

ejacob May 2, 2021, 11:02 PM
3 points
on: Prediction and Calibration—Part 1

There are two reasons why this number is so large: 1) Scott made a lot of predictions and 2) Scott is a very good predictor.

To address #1, you can take Nth root of this number where N is the total number of predictions made. This gives you scott’s edge vs randomness per each prediction (on average)

ejacob May 1, 2021, 3:23 PM
2 points
in reply to: tailcalled’s comment on: Your Dog is Even Smarter Than You Think
I’m not aware of any existing “dog culture” that is passed between generations, but I’m not aware of any reason it’s impossible either. I suppose wolf packs might teach the young adaptations relevant to local conditions, but it’s not clear to me how to use that hypothetical evidence.

ejacob May 1, 2021, 3:21 PM
14 points
on: Your Dog is Even Smarter Than You Think
If the folk wisdom of “pigs are smarter than dogs” is true, this suggests it should be possible to get a pig perspective on the pork industry. Could be a big deal for animal rights (but it’s also highly likely that a pig/cow/etc taught how to say “please don’t eat me” will be ignored or rationalized away like everything else).

ejacob Apr 21, 2021, 6:20 PM
1 point
in reply to: Ericf’s comment on: Why don’t we vaccinate people against smallpox any more?
There would either be a 0 month delay or an infinite month delay, depending on whether or not any institutions survived the initial panic. :)

ejacob Apr 21, 2021, 6:19 PM
1 point
in reply to: ryan_b’s comment on: Why don’t we vaccinate people against smallpox any more?
This is the correct answer AFAIK—several lab leaks of smallpox samples after eradication caused most of the remaining samples to be consolidated into a few secure locations.
Also, the US military is not the only military to vaccinate; some countries can also give their soldiers injections without officially saying what’s inside them.

ejacob Apr 18, 2021, 9:16 PM
3 points
in reply to: Randomized, Controlled’s comment on: An Exercise in Rational Cooperation and Communication: Let’s Play Hanabi
I can’t wait to see their response to my invitations 😃