ZeitPolizei

• ZeitPolizeiJul 29, 2021, 6:33 PM

  4 points

  on: Covid 7/​29: You Play to Win the Game

  The preprint for the article on cognitive decline due to long COVID was shared in the LessWrong Telegram group last October. I looked over it at the time and wrote down some notes, which I will reproduce here. Note I haven’t looked through the final version of the article to check if things still match up.

  I skimmed the article a bit, some things I noted:
  - N=84,285 is the number of people who took the cognitive tests. Only 361 had a positive corona test
  - In the abstract they say they controlled for age, gender, education level, income, racial-ethnic group and pre-existing medical disorders. In the main text they say they factored out age, sex, handedness, first language, education level, country of residence, occupational status and earnings… And then they did an additional analysis where they also considered pre-existing conditions.
  - Some to my mind interesting statements from the discussion:
  ”Previous studies in hospitalised patients with respiratory disease not only demonstrate cognitive deficits, but suggest these remain for some at a 5 year follow-up. Consequently, the observation of post-infection deficits in the subgroup who were put on a ventilator was not surprising. Conversely, the deficits in cases who were not put on a ventilator, particularly those who remained at home, was unexpected. Although these deficits were on average of small scale for those who remained at home, they were more substantial for people who had received positive confirmation of COVID-19 infection.”
  “… we emphasise that longitudinal research, including follow-up of this cohort, is required to further confirm the cognitive impact of COVID-19 infection...”
  ”It also is plausible that cognitive deficits associated with COVID-19 are no different to other respiratory illnesses. The observation of significant cognitive deficit associated with positive biological verification of having had COVID-19, i.e., relative to suspected COVID-19, goes some way to mitigate this possibility.”

  My personal conclusions and takeaways:
  - most severe illnesses negatively impact cognitive performance
  - it is probable that COVID has a neurological component such that the cognitive impact is worse
  - the worse the symptoms, the worse the effect on cognitive performance --> effects from mild cases may be insignificant
  - people with a compromised spleen are smarter than average (p>0.05) :D

• ZeitPolizeiJul 3, 2021, 3:05 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: supposedlyfun’s comment on: Covid 7/​1: Don’t Panic

  I would not interpret your case as severe according to this grade. The specification “some assistance usually required” seems like they mean your reaction is so bad you need help eating/​washing/​using the toilet, which I assume was not the case for you. While—especially for a young healthy person—staying in bed all day is a “marked reduction” of activity, there’s still quite some room for further worsening before you’re at a point where it’s life threatening.

  While the wording could be more clear, if my interpretation is correct I would agree this is an OK grading to use.

• ZeitPolizeiJul 2, 2021, 5:30 AM

  6 points

  in reply to: Zvi’s comment on: Covid 7/​1: Don’t Panic

  What about Israel? R-value is the highest since the first wave despite ~60% vaccinated with afaict mostly mRNA vaccines: OurWolrdInData Link.

  Luckily hospitalizations/​deaths also appear to be not strongly affected.

• ZeitPolizeiJun 7, 2021, 6:49 AM

  2 points

  in reply to: dynomight’s comment on: Al­co­hol, health, and the ruth­less logic of the Asian flush

  The main advantage for underage drinking is that a bartender only has to check the birth date on the ID, whereas for self-exclusion, they would have to check the id against a database or there would have to be some kind of icon on the id.

• ZeitPolizeiFeb 5, 2021, 2:29 AM

  4 points

  on: Covid: Bill Gates and Vac­cine Production

  What was wrong with the original plan to open source the vaccine to any company that wanted to make it and have them compete to scale up production?

  Bill Gates himself addresses this question here: https://​​youtu.be/​​Grv1RJkdyqI?t=558

  The reasoning as I understand it: Vaccine production is too complicated for open access to work well. There is a significant risk that something goes wrong and the vaccine factory has to shut down, so it is better for that factory to be producing a vaccine they know exactly how to do. Oxford partnering with AstraZeneca ensures they can work closely together to get the production right.

  Could they have made a non-exclusive deal? Probably, but (a) AstraZeneca might not have been interested in that case and (b) Oxford might not even have the capacity to work with more than one partner.

  Could they have ensured better incentives to ramp up production quickly? Definitely, but that seems like a decision mostly independent of making an exclusive deal.

• ZeitPolizeiJun 20, 2019, 10:21 PM

  3 points

  on: Euro­pean Com­mu­nity Week­end 2019

  Some information regarding the start and end times:

  • Lunch + Shuttle (included) 30.08. 12:00-14:00 @ Akazienstraße 27, 10823 Berlin

  • Regular check in 15:00-16:00 @ Badeweg 1, 14129 Berlin

  • Check out on 02.09. until 10:00

  • Meeting Rooms are free to use until 15:00 on 02.09 for co-working after the event

Prompts for elic­it­ing blind spots/​bucket er­rors/​bugs

• ZeitPolizeiMar 11, 2019, 12:50 AM

  19 points

  in reply to: Taran’s comment on: In My Culture

  Most importantly, this framing is always about drawing contrasts: you’re describing ways that your culture _differs_ from that of the person you’re talking to. Keep this point in the forefront of your mind every time you use this method: you are describing _their_ culture, not just yours. [...] So, do not ever say something like “In my culture we do not punish the innocent” unless you also intend to say “Your culture punishes the innocent”—that is, unless you intend to start a fight.

  Does this also apply to your own personal culture (whether aspiring or as-is), or “just” the broader context culture?

  Because in my (aspiring) culture simple statements of fact are generally interpreted at face value and further evidence is required to make less charitable interpretations. This is especially true for interpretations that assume the speaker has made some kind of judgement.

  So, let’s go meta here and see whether I intended to say “Your culture generally makes less charitable interpretations of statements than mine.” I guess the answer is yes, though I would like to point out the distinction here between personal culture and broader context culture, hence my question at the beginning. [Writing this I’m also realizing it’s really difficult to disentangle statements about culture from judgments. I’m noticing cognitive dissonance because I actually do think my culture is better, but I don’t like myself being judgmental.]

  Now why did I write the comment above? Because in my culture-as-is the language used in the OP (“always”, “do not ever”) is too strong given my epistemic status.

  Again, we can analyze the intent of this “In my culture”-statement. Here my intent is to say “your culture uses language differently from mine” OR “My epistemic status is different from yours.”

  Not a direct response to your comment, but related and gives background to my initial question: In my aspiring culture a straightforward question (whatever that means) is by default meant and interpreted (primarily) as an expression of genuine curiosity about the answer.

  Thinking about and writing this comment, I’ve realized that my own culture may be a lot more idiosyncratic than I thought. I also found it really interesting to see my initial prompt to write this post (an immediate gut reaction of “I don’t agree with that”) dissolve into an understanding of how the disagreement can be due to either cultural or epistemic differences.

  NB: There is some entanglement here between intentions, interpretations and responses. In describing a “perfect” culture intentions and interpretations can be freely interchanged to a large extent because if everyone has the same culture they will make the correct assumptions about other people’s intents and states of mind. So saying “In my culture people say X because they want Y” is equivalent to saying “In my culture when someone says X people know that that person wants Y”. And then there is to an extent a disconnect between the epistemic status of your interpretation of the other person’s state of mind and your own reaction, because different reactions entail different costs. Even if an uncharitable interpretation has the highest probability of being correct it often makes sense to act under the assumption that a more charitable interpretation is correct.

Ra­tion­al­ity Re­treat in Cologne Area, Ger­many, Spring 2019

• ZeitPolizeiFeb 10, 2019, 2:25 PM

  0 points

  on: [Er­ror com­mu­ni­cat­ing with LW2 server]

  test comment

• [ ]

  [deleted]

• ZeitPolizeiAug 14, 2018, 1:24 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Re­treat in Europe: Gaug­ing Interest

  I agree in principle, though this depends of course how far in advance it is announced. If it’s reasonable to expect that it’s possible to fill 20 slots with 2 months advance notice this gives more flexibility in planning.

• ZeitPolizeiAug 14, 2018, 1:20 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: [Error communicating with LW2 server]’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Re­treat in Europe: Gaug­ing Interest

  “Retreat” in the sense of a spiritual retreat, but with the topic of rationality instead of meditation or spirituality. Following the same principle as, e.g. the Czech EA retreat.

  “Rationality” as it is generally understood on LessWrong. So this is aimed at people who aspire to be more rational and want to interact with like-minded people.

• ZeitPolizeiAug 14, 2018, 8:44 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: habryka’s comment on: Ra­tion­al­ity Re­treat in Europe: Gaug­ing Interest

  Good point! I hadn’t really thought of Facebook and the local groups for advertising.

Ra­tion­al­ity Re­treat in Europe: Gaug­ing Interest

• ZeitPolizeiMar 11, 2018, 5:43 PM

  7 points

  on: My at­tempt to ex­plain Look­ing, in­sight med­i­ta­tion, and en­light­en­ment in non-mys­te­ri­ous terms

  [Note: mostly just me trying to order my thoughts, kind of hoping someone can see and tell me where my confusion comes from]

  So the key insight regarding suffering seems to be that pain is not equal to suffering. Instead there is a mental motion (flinching away from pain) that produces (or is equal to?) suffering. And whereas most people see pain as intrinsically bad, Looking allows you to differentiate between the pain and the flinching away, realizing that pain in and of itself is not bad. It also allows you to get rid of the flinching away, thus eliminating the suffering, but without eliminating the pain. But is the flinching away intrinsically bad? Or is it also possible to defuse from the flinching in a way that makes it less unpleasant?

  And then, is there also an equivalent for good experiences? Pain is to suffering as pleasure is to…? Is there a mental motion of turning towards, or welcoming an experience, which is ultimately responsible for seeing pleasurable experiences as good? And if the flinching away is in some way intrinsically bad, is this opposite motion intrinsically good?

  Now, once you get that pain is not equal to suffering, and you’ve thus managed to eliminate suffering for you personally, what reasons remain to try to change something about what you expect to experience in the future? If you still care about other people suffering, then of course there is plenty to do, to reduce other people’s suffering by reducing the pain they experience. But it wouldn’t really be about the pain, just the reaction to the pain.

  Then, suppose we somehow managed that all people (or conscious entities) no longer experience the flinching from pain suffering. Would there still be reasons to make the world “better”, or would we be content with things just unfolding however, because as long as we don’t suffer over it, nothing is intrinsically bad? Is the kind of suffering that comes from the flinching away from pain maybe the only thing that is bad in a morally relevant way? Once suffering is out of the picture, what kinds of wants, preferences, reasons or values remain, that actually make a difference to how the world is supposed to look? Intuitively, a world in which suffering is eliminated via getting rid of an aversion to pain feels very much like a world where everyone is wireheaded and would contain very little value, if any. I have a sense of it being a bad thing if people are feeling okay (or great, in the case of actual wireheading) while the world is actually really shitty. Now is this sense of it being a bad thing due to values that I hold which go beyond pleasure and suffering, and are they stable under reflection? Or is the correct conclusion that yes, once nobody suffers anymore, it doesn’t matter if the rest of the world looks really bad? Is the reason it feels so bad simply because I still have the alief that pain is intrinsically bad, and Looking would allow me to see that pain really is in a way irrelevant?

  if you truly step outside your entire motivational system, then that leaves the part that just stepped out with no motivational system,

  And if you see yourself going to the store to get some food, well, why not go along with that? After all, to stop acting as you always have, would require some special motivation to do so.

  Even if you do manage to defuse from everything that causes you suffering, your existing personality and motivational system will still be in charge of what it is that you Look at in the future.

  These quotes, as well as what I remember others saying about enlightenment, make it sound like there is still ultimately a “self” or “I” that is the one that “steps outside your motivational system”, “sees yourself going to the store”, “manages to defuse”, or “sees through the illusion of the self”. But if I understand correctly, what actually happens is that there is a conscious process that makes one of these motions, but it doesn’t have any privileged position and is no more the “true self” than e.g. the urge to go to the store. So ultimately all these different parts, insights, and thoughts are just part of the same single person. I would have initially expected this to mean that there would be feedback between the different parts (e.g. realizing pain isn’t so bad should also eliminate the motivations for avoiding pain). But upon reflection, it seems like those kinds of insights are only possible because there is no feedback between the different parts? I feel like I may be mixing together some things here that are actually separate.

• ZeitPolizeiMar 10, 2018, 7:08 PM

  2 points

  on: Book Re­view: Con­scious­ness Explained

  Another theme of the book that reaches its crescendo…

  The paragraph beginning with this sentence is duplicated and butchered.

• ZeitPolizeiFeb 23, 2018, 11:20 AM

  19 points

  on: The In­tel­li­gent So­cial Web

  I haven’t really understood where the fakeness in the framework is. And the other comments also seem to not acknowledge, that it is a fake framework, which I am interpreting as people taking this framework at face value to be true or real. I suspect I haven’t quite understood what is meant by “fake framework”.

  I’m currently seeing two main ways in which I can make the fakeness make sense to me:

  1. People do step out of their roles quite often in real life, breaking the expectations of the web. So the framework works better for broad strokes predictions, than specific behavior. Or rather, there is a lot of behavior not accounted for in the framework.

  2. Just like “every model is wrong”, every framework is fake, and this is a framework that is “less fake” than others.

  A thing that’s rather irrelevant to the actual topic at hand, but that I feel like sharing:

  • Me reading this: “Oh neat, links about attachment theory, this is acutely relevant to me. Let’s check out the ‘how to tell if your partner is X’ links.

  • Reading the links: “Hm yeah, seems like I’m anxious-preoccupied and the person I’m interested in could be dismissive-avoidant.”

  • Reading this again after a few hours, because I felt I hadn’t understood it completely: “Oh cool, let’s also look at this link ‘Ending the Anxious-Avoidant Dance’, that seems like it’s exactly what I need to know right now.”

  • I continue reading the article and…

    In the husband/​​wife script mentioned above, there’s a tendency for the “wife” to get excited when “she” learns about the relationship script, because it looks to “her” like it suggests how to save the relationship — which is “her” enacting “her” role.

  Wait a second. Aw fuck me, this is exactly what’s happening to me right now! My mood instantly improved by a ton and I kept laughing for several minutes.

  PS: It’s probably more helpful to point your Attachment Theory link to here instead.

• ZeitPolizeiFeb 8, 2018, 10:09 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: Qiaochu_Yuan’s comment on: Two kinds of Agency

  Ah, you seem to automatically interpret the “math is useless” as meaning “math is useless to me”. But people can also mean − and that’s what I was trying to get at − that “math is of no use for anything, to anyone”. This would be the X being good threatened as Kaj pointed out.

• ZeitPolizeiFeb 8, 2018, 9:50 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: Qiaochu_Yuan’s comment on: Two kinds of Agency

  Is there a difference between what you are describing and simply having a more or less nuanced view on the matter? It seems like you’re confirming exactly what Paul Graham describes. You’ve made your identity as a mathematician smaller and are thus no longer threatened by people expressing certain opinions on math. But there are still things that are fundamental to your identity as a mathematician, that need protecting. If someone says “math is useless” does that not evoke a feeling of needing to defend maths?