tkpwaeub

Karma: 315

tkpwaeub 20 May 2023 10:23 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Templarrr’s comment on: AI #12:The Quest for Sane Regulations
If I could quadruple plus this comment I would

tkpwaeub 20 May 2023 10:21 UTC
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on: AI #12:The Quest for Sane Regulations
Minor quibble on your use of the term “regulation.” Since this was being discussed in Congress, this would actually be about proposed statute, not regulations. Statutes are laws enacted by legislative bodies. Regulations are promulgated by executive agencies, to provide the details of how statutes should be implemented (they tend to be saner than statutes, because they’re limited by real world constraints; they’re also easier to tweak). Lastly, case law is issued by court cases that are considered to be “binding authority.” All of these are considered to be “sources of law.”

I think of laws in practical terms as machines for managing human conflict. My redux of the various branches of government is as follows:
1. Legislative branch—manufactures laws
2. Executive branch—operates laws
3. Judicial branch—troubleshoots/fixes laws

tkpwaeub 29 Mar 2023 9:28 UTC
1 point
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on: Response to Tyler Cowen’s Existential risk, AI, and the inevitable turn in human history
Hot take—we’ve been in denial for several decades now about a deep, nagging epistemological crisis. If the “AI disaster” was your pipes breaking, and you filed a claim with your insurance company about it, they’d deny it as being the result of wear and tear.

Human knowledge long ago passed the point where it was possible for a single person to understand significant pieces of it, operationally. The level of trust that’s required to function is terrifying. Ai does all that—faster.

tkpwaeub 12 Mar 2023 14:02 UTC
1 point
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on: Covid 2/23/23: Your Best Possible Situation
I suspect that some sort of regular recommended boosting schedule will evolve, but it won’t be something noticeable to a layperson. You’ll go to annual checkups, as you should, and doctor will tell you to get a bunch o’ shots and/or blood tests.

tkpwaeub 11 Feb 2023 12:39 UTC
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in reply to: tkpwaeub’s comment on: Covid 2/9/22: Interferon λ
Adding—does anyone else wish there was a seamless, streamlined way of recruiting more people into clinical trials so we could bring new treatments to market faster, and while we’re at it at least give half the people in the trial an effective treatment?

Like, how about sn annual general consent form, directly sent to clinicaltrials.gov in exchange for a modest tax break?

tkpwaeub 11 Feb 2023 0:14 UTC
2 points
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on: Covid 2/9/22: Interferon λ
What’s sorely needed is an international drug approval reciprocity treaty. A single organization, say, part of the WHO, would be tasked with periodically vetting national level food and drug approval agencies of signator countries. In exchange for this service, drugs would be instantly approved when just one country approves it.

ETA: It looks like bilateral “agreements” are a thing:

https://www.fda.gov/international-programs/international-arrangements/mutual-recognition-agreement-mra

But of course that falls well short of an international treaty. And lots of bilateral agreements strikes me as o(n^2) more complicated than a hub-and-spoke framework.

And I should also add that my general vision for federalism kind of goes in both directions. Namely, I’d like it if each state could be allowed to form its own mini-FDA but the federal government’s role would be to “approve the approvers”

tkpwaeub 8 Jan 2023 5:30 UTC
1 point
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on: Covid 1/5/23: Various XBB Takes
Weirdly, with the collapse of any externally imposed controls (lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccination requirements) and just general fatigue in the population at large, it’s become easier than ever to buy one’s way out of getting covid than it’s ever been. For instance, N95 masks are way cheaper—enough that I can switch them daily. With so few people getting the bivalent shot, I’m seriously considering going back for seconds.

tkpwaeub 10 Dec 2022 14:12 UTC
1 point
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on: Covid 12/8/22: Another Winter Wave
Just dropping in to plant the idea of “parametric insurance indexed to wastewater surveillance.”

Munich Re, Lloyd’s, are you listening?

tkpwaeub 16 Nov 2022 11:53 UTC
1 point
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on: Covid 11/10/22: Into the Background
Re medical bills (or any bills, for that matter):

A major change from the TCJA in 2017 was allowing more businesses, including some health care providers and third party debt collectors, to use cash accounting rather than accrual accounting for the purpose of computing taxable income. The upshot is that treatment plus a printed and mailed bill no longer counts as revenue for a lot more businesses. That’s precisely what allows for the “aspirational” bills you’re describing. Repealing this provision would go a long way to taming this particular aspect, I believe.

tkpwaeub 27 Oct 2022 12:02 UTC
1 point
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on: Covid 9/22/22: The Joe Biden Sings
The news about Evusheld is indeed disappointing. Why mAb’s aren’t updated in lockstep with vaccines is baffling: they could be harvesting mAb’s at the same time that they’re testing vaccines using the same mice

tkpwaeub 15 Oct 2022 17:04 UTC
2 points
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on: Covid 10/13/22: Just the Facts
One thing I don’t see talked about very much is that attempting to predict who’s at risk of long covid, as a function of severity of the initial infection is very much playing to an inside straight: the illness has to be severe enough to cripple you but not kill you. It’s related to the reason that long term disability insurance I’d tricky for even the best actuaries and underwriters.

tkpwaeub 20 Sep 2022 8:39 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: romeostevensit’s comment on: Covid 9/15/22: Permanent Normal
I think it depends on the externality. Widespread destitution is itself a “public bad” when it impacts crime, public health, noise, etc

tkpwaeub 17 Sep 2022 12:54 UTC
4 points
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in reply to: romeostevensit’s comment on: Covid 9/15/22: Permanent Normal
That’s income tax. Sales tax is a different story. In fact since wealthier people benefit from bulk discounts, I’d go so far as to guess that the poor pay proportionally more per, say, toilet paper roll.

tkpwaeub 16 Sep 2022 12:59 UTC
1 point
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on: Covid 9/15/22: Permanent Normal
I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate this. The reality that novids like me need to accept is “learning to take yes for an answer.” We’ve reached the point where we are no longer under any compelling legal or moral obligation to know if we have Covid at any given time. Meet the new normal, same as the old normal.

tkpwaeub 11 Sep 2022 16:27 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: tkpwaeub’s comment on: Covid 9/8/22: Booster Boosting
From the article, here’s a description of the strategy:

As an example, consider a hypothetical community of 5 households labeled A through E, with 5 individuals in household A, 4 in household B, 3 in C, 2 in D, and 1 in E. This gives a total of 15 individuals, none of which are previously immune. Suppose that we only have the capacity to fully vaccinate 5 individuals. In line with the reasoning above, EHR gives the following vaccination strategy:
1. The largest household by effective size is A, with 5 individuals. The first vaccine is therefore allocated to the eldest member of A.
2. A and B are now tied in terms of effective size, with 4 susceptible individuals each. We therefore vaccinate one person each from both A and B.
3. A, B, and C are now tied in terms of effective size, with 3 individuals each. With enough capacity left to vaccinate only two people, we therefore randomly choose two of the three households, and vaccinate one individual in each of the randomly chosen households.

tkpwaeub 11 Sep 2022 1:00 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: tkpwaeub’s comment on: Covid 9/8/22: Booster Boosting
I found this:

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0263155

“Further investigating herd immunity thresholds for a range of values for R₀we find that for most parameter choices, EHR achieves herd immunity with fewer vaccinated individuals than the other presented strategies (and universally, dramatically earlier than age-based strategies). At the most extreme, assuming a 90% effective vaccine and R₀ = 2, EHR achieves herd immunity at just 48% of the population vaccinated, compared to thresholds of 61% and 89% for random and eldest-first strategies. At 100% efficiency, the relative herd immunity thresholds are 44% and 55%, for the EHR and random strategies, respectively.”

tkpwaeub 9 Sep 2022 8:27 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: Zian’s comment on: Covid 9/8/22: Booster Boosting
I doubt it would cost very much. Epidemiologists have software they can use to model it. Moreover, an easy way to do controlled experiments would be dorm assignments on college campuses.

At any rate, my unabashedly Bayesian gut feeling is that it’s obviously a good idea to do it. See above for my priors.

To the extent that this kind of thing is hard, I’d put it squarely in the “hard but worth it” bucket, along the lines of JFK’s speech at Rice University. I’m calling for us to stop meekly accepting case surges as inevitable, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to speculate that by leading with mass vaccination, we’ve unwittingly created a kind of “bang bang control system” with similar issues to overworked thermostats—a public health analog of metal fatigue, if you will.

tkpwaeub 8 Sep 2022 17:24 UTC
4 points
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on: Covid 9/8/22: Booster Boosting
I’m gonna throw this idea out there: might it be a good idea to stagger booster shots within a household? We never know for sure when the next surge will occur, but we do know that (1) immunity against infection wanes and (2) household transmission is a big factor during surges. Careful timing boosters within a household (or social bubble) might be a good way to take more control of what can be controlled.

Just spitballing, as they say.

tkpwaeub 1 Sep 2022 15:16 UTC
3 points
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on: Covid 9/1/22: Meet the New Booster
In the specific case of Moderna vs Pfizer, maybe an equitable trade secret swap? Pfizer could simply agree to let Moderna produce its own version of Paxlovid.

In the long run, we really need to revisit the Bayh-Dole Act. It’s not unreasonable for the government to retain some rights to intellectual property that’s the result of federally funded research, whether it’s from grants or because the government agrees ahead of time to purchase the finished product.

tkpwaeub 1 Sep 2022 14:03 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: ryan_b’s comment on: Grand Theft Education
Yeah, you’d have to prove that the costs are somehow shifted. That’s not at all clear. A dollar in accounts receivable is something of a legal fiction. It exists on a probability distribution according to how likely it is that the debt is going to be collected. Before credit cards, it was standard practice for businesses to “age” their AR over the course of months, ultimately writing off the most intractable debts. In many ways, that’s all that’s going on here. Credit cards are simply a way for businesses to sell their AR (at a modest discount). Interest rates partially offset this, but only to a point. If $200,000 isn’t collectable neither is $2,000,000 - interest theater, if you will.