I didn’t know that! OP, you can also highlight the desired text and click the block quote button. You can also add links that way.
kjz
Karma: 278
Totally agree, and this is pretty much what I had in mind as well. The organizer can also host a Zoom call beforehand where they explain the procedure, answer any questions, and let people sign up for times spaced out by 5-10 minutes to self administer.
Agree neither Sarah or you had explicitly mentioned a clinical trial. I was pushing back more against Sarah’s statement “Take a random peptide that has never been tested on any living thing” and your statement “She doesn’t explicitly state that this has never been tested on any living thing”, which I interpreted as endorsing the claim that this vaccine has never been tested on any living thing. My point is that there is evidence this vaccine has been tested in living things, namely the humans who claim to have self administered it. I have no strong reason to doubt they have done so, and I haven’t seen any reports of harm coming to these individuals as a result (although admittedly I have no idea if such reports would be publicly available). When I mentioned clinical trials, I was trying to think of what evidence might convince Sarah this approach is not as risky as she fears, and a clinical trial was the first thing that came to mind.
This should be fairly easy to do, for someone with access to a good lab, personal-scale funding, and motivation. I have to assume that Church et. al. have the first two, so either they don’t care enough to bother, or they did but the results weren’t encouraging (and either kept quiet or just unnoticed).
Agree they almost certainly have the first two, but I don’t see why they would have had motivation to perform the kind of cell-based studies you are looking for. Here is how I imagine their motivation and incentives throughout the last year, mostly drawn from the article I linked above and info from the radvac website:
They see Covid is becoming a pandemic, estimate that a commercial vaccine is >1 year away, and wonder if they can develop an open source vaccine that will provide some level of protection more quickly. At this point, their strongest motivation is to develop a vaccine for their own personal use.
They design the radvac vaccine, and based on their personal and collective understanding of vaccines, biochemistry, immunology, etc., each individual decides it is in their personal best interest to self administer the vaccine.
They are torn between competing desires to make their protocol and the underlying research public, and to avoid unnecessary attention from regulatory authorities. From the article:
Given the international attention on covid-19 vaccines, and the high political stakes surrounding the crisis, the Radvac group could nevertheless find itself under scrutiny by regulators. “What the FDA really wants to crack down on is anything big, which makes claims, or makes money. And this is none of those,” says Church. “As soon as we do any of those things, they would justifiably crack down. Also, things that get attention. But we haven’t had any so far.”
Therefore they settle on the strategy of publishing the white paper under the radar, so it is publicly available but attracts as little attention as possible. (With great success I might add, since we are only having this discussion 6 months later!)
Each individual has already made the decision to self administer based on their personal risk-benefit analysis, without the need for cell-based studies.
Publishing additional cell-based studies could increase the chance of drawing unwanted regulatory attention to their effort.
Thus, they don’t have strong incentives to carry out any cell-based studies (which would also take time and effort away from higher priority things they might work on instead), and they likely do have incentives to avoid publishing any cell-based studies.
Which leaves us in the current equilibrium where there are no published cell-based studies.
I think your claim that “they don’t care enough to bother” is not very accurate, and a consideration of their incentives as I outlined above provides an alternative reason why we might not expect to find any published cell-based studies.
At the end of the day, we all still have to make personal decisions based on the information at our disposal, as incomplete or challenging to interpret as it may be.
Happy to hear any additional thoughts on this topic!
Why would they have to gather in close quarters? One person could make it in their kitchen, then leave the room while others come in one at a time to self administer their dose.
This article from July 2020 claims that George Church and many of his colleagues had already self administered their vaccine at that point. It’s almost certainly true that there hasn’t been a clinical trial, because nobody has ever had an incentive to run a clinical trial. I don’t think their intent was to publicize this widely or profit commercially from it. Rather, they realized they could just do it, went ahead and did it, and wrote up their findings publicly but under the radar, so other like-minded individuals could duplicate their procedure at their own risk. Remember that they are an academic research group and they face very different incentives than the drug companies trying to vaccinate the general public. In any case, it seems clear that these vaccines have been tested on many living things, just not in an official study.
For the average Less Wrong reader, I tend to agree. But a nurse in an area with a strong, vocal anti-vaccine community may face substantial social pressure to (at least publicly) reject commercial vaccines, for the reasons I stated above.
Agree it is extremely unlikely that many nurses have done so, and your probabilities seem quite reasonable. I think the main reason why many nurses have declined the vaccine is social signaling—either to maintain their social status within a mostly anti-vaccine peer group, or to maintain credibility with their anti-vaccine patients, who may be reluctant or outright refuse to be treated by a nurse who has been vaccinated because such a nurse is on “the wrong side” and can no longer be trusted. However, a nurse could self-administer the radvac vaccine and get some protection, while still being able to honestly claim they have no plans to get the commercial vaccines.
I hadn’t read the whitepaper yet before my initial post, and after a quick scan it looks like you are correct that radvac covers different epitopes than the commercial vaccines (I haven’t done my own detailed analysis yet). Are you and others planning to take radvac still planning to get a commercial vaccine once you are eligible?
Crazy thought, and I doubt this is likely on large scale or it would have been in the news, but any chance this could explain the higher than expected percentage of nurses who have rejected getting the vaccine? Perhaps some have already vaccinated themselves under the radar! And therefore have no need to take the “real” one.
Also from nostalgebraist’s summary:
Meanwhile, the change which the essay does argue for – towards more legibility – feels only tangentially relevant to the problem. Yes, designs that are easier to understand are often easier to customize.
For voting systems, I think the key insight is instead: Designs that are easier to understand are easier to trust.
One last comment/reminder to myself: I read nostalgebrist’s summary of Weyl’s “Why I am not a technocrat” argument (haven’t read the original yet), and his last few points seem very relevant to my argument:
8. What needs to be true for a mechanism to be open to modification by the masses? For one thing, the masses need to understand what the mechanism is! This is clearly not sufficient but it at least seems necessary.
9. Elites should design mechanisms that are simple and transparent enough for the masses to inspect and comprehend. This goal (“legibility”) trades off against fidelity, which tends to favor illegible models.
10. But the elite’s mechanisms will always have problems with insufficient fidelity, because they miss information known to the masses (#3). The way out of this is not to add ever more fidelity as viewed from the elite POV. We have to let the masses fill in the missing fidelity on their own.
And this will requires more legibility (#8), which will come at the cost of short-term fidelity (#9). It will pay off in fidelity gains over the long term as mass intervention supplies the “missing” fidelity.
I take this to be the central piece of advice articulated in the essay.
Sorry, again I realize I didn’t explain some of my thoughts clearly enough. I think we are discussing two different but related questions: 1. How do we convince the average voter to support alternate voting systems, vs. 2. How do we convince senators, state and local governments, local political activists, etc. to support alternate voting systems, get them on the ballot, and ultimately passed into law. Most of my thinking and comments in this thread have been more related to question 1, but it feels like you interpreted some as related to question 2. Both are important, but I think the incentives and strategies required are different for the two questions.
When I said Presidential elections are the focal point of the political system, I was thinking about how I would try to convince the average voter to support alternate voting systems. In such a conversation, I know I have very limited time to make my argument, and my conversation partner is likely predisposed to doubt me, since I’m sending clear signals that I’m not “on their team” (whichever “team” they are on). Therefore I need to be able to explain very quickly how the alternate system would work and how it would improve outcomes. Since President is the most important office in US politics and most average voters have a decent understanding of how it currently gets elected, my strategy would be to use Presidential elections as an example, and point out how 3-2-1 can help prevent scary extremists from getting elected as President.
I think ranked choice voting failed to capture much public support (as seen by its failure in recent state ballot questions) because it’s too complicated to explain quickly, and too hard for the average voter to quickly understand how it would improve outcomes. 3-2-1 is substantially better by both measures.
Switching over to question 2 now, I agree it would be foolish to start by trying to change federal elections before state and local elections. And I agree that once an alternate method shows some success in a given state, that state’s senators might have incentive to say “our system is better, everyone should adopt it”. I still don’t think current senators have an incentive to be among the first to support alternate methods.
If you both have established politicians speaking in favor of changing the voting system and a bunch of grassroots reformers it’s easier for the proposal to succeed in a state.
Agree—but are there any established politicians publicly in favor of changing the system right now? I’m not aware of any. How are you trying to convince them to publicly support this?
Finally, my quote about the “typical Republican in a red state” was referring to the typical Republican voter that I might try to convince, not a typical Republican congressperson. I mostly agree with your analysis of the incentives a typical Republican congressperson faces. I would just add that any typical or moderate Republican who comes out in support of alternate voting methods now would likely open the door to a extremist primary challenge against them, on the grounds that they are not a sufficiently loyal Republican, who should only be focused on defeating Democrats. Longer term, the incentives might align for moderate Republicans to support alternate voting methods as you describe… but how do we get there from here?
Agree with how senators are elected. I was thinking of senators proposing a bill to change how federal elections are held, especially for President. As I understand it (90% confident?) such a change would require a constitutional amendment ratified by Congress and the states. Most of my considerations have been around Presidential elections, since they are the focal point of the US political system.
As you mention, state laws decide how their senators are elected and it’s quite likely that some states (preceded by cities such as Fargo) will change to an alternate voting method before the federal government does. This provides an additional incentive for individual senators to remain unattached to any alternate voting method proposals, as they will be able to watch how public opinion reacts to the experiments on state and local levels.
Change would more likely to happen by a senator saying: “Our state is grid-looked because we don’t have enough bipartisanship. We should change our voting system in our state to allow for more bipartisanship.”
Or a newcomer.
You likely need some grassroots movement for voting reform for a politician to make such a move and be able to portray it as being a noble reformer but it seems possible to me to happen without the politician acting against their interests.
Is there a popular grassroots movement taking place right now? For a newcomer, being a noble reformer, and actually being a noble reformer, could squarely align with their interests.
Re Bernie/AOC: I was again referring to the chance of them being elected President, which is what I think drives most people’s fears. It could make sense they would remain popular locally and maintain their current seats in Congress. I was thinking more of a typical Republican in a red state, who probably doesn’t have to worry about losing their own congressional seats, but would be very worried about losing the Presidency. And especially worried that a future Democrat nominee would be more extreme than the current President. Many can probably live with weird Bernie up there in Vermont, at least he’s different for a change.
Since I’m getting it all out, a couple more advantages of 3-2-1 voting:
Assuming people understand how 3-2-1 voting works, they automatically understand how approval voting works, since it’s just the first half of 3-2-1. So then you can say things like, “If you understand this one voting method, you’ll understand everything that matters about the issue”, at least for single-winner elections like President. Or even something like, “I promise this is the last voting method for President I’ll ever ask you about, and if this doesn’t convince you, I’ll leave you alone” which I hope would be received as a reasonable and respectful deal.
Thanks for your willingness to engage me on this, it has helped me understand my own position much more clearly.
It sounds like Lily was kind of explaining how she would teach her own friends how money worked. And sounds like a good way to go about it!
Hmm. I feel like we are talking past each other to some extent, or not using terms the same way due to inferential differences, or something like that. Sorry if I’ve been unclear, I’ll try to explain my position better.
Congressional seats are not given out by the rest of the party. The decision for them is made by the primary voters in a given
Very true. I was thinking more of the question, “Which actual senator or group of senators would propose an actual bill to effect change to a new voting system?” I still don’t see how any have an incentive to do that.
Re polarization: I also think there’s too much polarization, which is why I support any efforts to get away from FPTP. I agree approval voting is a huge improvement over FPTP, and I’m glad Fargo has adopted it.
While 3-2-1 voting might be easier then ranked choice voting Approval Voting is even easier to understand (there are not multiple rounds).
I don’t think getting people to understand [how the rules work] is the key variable to optimize for here. I think it’s getting them to understand [why the heck changing to this system will make any difference] in an intuitive way.
I think that if I explained approval voting to my friends, they would understand how the rules work in ten seconds. But when they ask why we should switch, I would have to say something that boils down to “well a bunch of nerds ran some simulations, and this one worked better” and they would pretend to fall asleep.
I think that if I explained 3-2-1 voting to my friends, they would understand how the rules work in twenty seconds. And when they ask why we should switch, there is the obvious reason that the candidate they most fear winning the election gets knocked out in round 2. Democrats will be relieved that Trump would never win under such a system, and Republicans will be relieved that Bernie/AOC types would never win either. And if it’s established as a clear anti-both-party or anti-the-current-two-party-system alternative, it may have a better chance of gaining support from voters from a wide variety of backgrounds.
But each individual “corporate Democrat” congressperson also has huge incentives to cooperate with the rest of the party to maintain the current system. Their party has a ~50% chance of winning each election, and incumbents have a substantial advantage when facing re-election. Any individual (or small group) who proposes to defect in favor of a new, untested voting system would likely face a backlash for not being “true Democrats” and for making it more likely that non-Democrats would win more elections going forward.
Also, I notice you mentioned approval voting several times as an alternative voting method. Is the voting theory community unified behind approval voting at this point? I feel 3-2-1 voting has a greater likelihood of becoming widely supported by the general population, for reasons I outlined in this comment.
Agree that some individual moderate politicians could benefit from a change in voting methods (Romney is another that comes to mind). But I don’t see how they could convince the majority of their party to support changes that go against their personal best interests.
First past the post voting often leads to undesirable outcomes, as explained by Jameson Quinn in his voting theory primer. There are several newly designed voting methods which are likely to be improvements over the current system, but most have seen limited, if any, uptake.
Some factors blocking such a transition include:
it’s difficult to change political systems from the outside (e.g. few and infrequent opportunities to place referendum questions on election ballots)
within a two-party system, both benefit from first past the post voting, as they know they have a ~50% chance of winning each election, so there is no incentive for them to change from within
proponents of voting reform have not yet been able to coordinate on which method they recommend (i.e. establish a Schelling point)
individual voters will have to be able to intuitively understand how the new method works and why it should lead to better outcomes for them to consider supporting it
I’m sure there are more that others might think of.
It doesn’t feel like game theory to me as much as psychology at this point. During the endgame, I agree game theory will play a huge role in individual investors’ decisions to hold or sell. But now, it feels like a clear recognition that they are stronger together as long as they all hold, and what’s most interesting to me are the simple slogans and short repeatable talking points they use to do so (as well as the excellent analysis that has gotten them this far).
“WE LIKE THE STOCK”
“IF HE’S STILL IN, I’M STILL IN”
“DIAMOND HANDS”
Why do they work so well? Because you only get five words.
It reminds me of an ancient army charging into battle, singing and chanting to maintain morale as long as possible during the struggle.
(Disclosure: I am long GME).
I haven’t looked into this in any detail, but I also don’t remember seeing it mentioned anywhere else: is it known whether detecting viral RNA on surfaces is actually correlated with infectiousness? For example, my (limited) understanding of the infection process is that the virus is essentially RNA inside a protein capsule which protects it long enough to infect cells, and any naked foreign extracellular RNA would quickly get broken down by RNases. On surfaces, is it possible that some of the protein capsules have “broken down” such that their RNA is exposed, and therefore much less or even non-infectious?
As someone who has worked in the labs a long time, I wouldn’t worry about having to hit exactly −20 °C; that basically just means “freezer temperature”. Lab freezers don’t work any differently than home freezers as far as I can tell, although they do have certain safety features that a home freezer wouldn’t. But the temperature can still vary a few degrees up or down, and it shouldn’t affect your storage much. The (very) general rule of thumb is a difference of +/- 10 °C makes chemical reactions (such as peptide degradation) go 2x faster/slower. So even having to store in a fridge temporarily would only be ~4x faster than a freezer, still maybe good enough for one’s purposes.
The big difference comes for −20 °C vs −80 °C, since there you have a 2^6 or 64-fold rate difference. So something that can last for a month at −80 °C might degrade in half a day in a freezer. Hence the complex supply chains needed for such vaccines.