jtorsella · HackerTrans

3 lata temudiscuss

Oh you’re right - sorry, I forgot that everyone knows that the key ideas of the article are correct so they don’t require any evidence.

To drop the sarcastic frame - the article either argues something that could be incorrect or it makes a meaningless argument. If it’s arguing something that could be otherwise then it needs to give evidence for the things it’s saying. It doesn’t and treats everything it’s saying as completely self-evident. But these are empirical assertions that need evidence to be proven true or false, and the article stands out in using zero evidence. Personally, I think that this inadvertently reveals the disdain for news is really part of a broader undervaluing of evidence in general, but I don’t think that’s provable really.

jtorsella

3 lata temudiscuss

It’s pretty interesting to read what’s basically a long series of substantive empirical claims without a single citation. All the evidence necessary to support this argument is furnished entirely within the series of loosely-connected ideas and free-associations - an incredible feat for any article, much less a stream-of consciousness. Wow!

If we existed in a world where “News doesn’t make you more informed; it just makes you more confident the information you have is all there is.” was something that could be false, it would probably be Not Good to present it as true and move on here. Luckily, since this is an an obvious analytic truth, the author is right to simply say it and move on. As a suggestion to the author, it would be helpful to list all the propositions which need to be justifiable a priori for his argument to be justified (in this case all of them), so that readers can know whether or not to take him seriously at first glance.

jtorsella

3 lata temudiscuss

I think this attitude is the reason that Elon is going to get away with agreeing with the statement in public. Most stories tiptoe around how extreme the statement is, and as a result he is now successfully deflecting on the issue.

The quoted tweet remains endorsed by the wealthiest and most powerful person on the planet. Hard to read? Disturbing? Yes, of course it is.

jtorsella

3 lata temudiscuss

It’s very obvious that Elon and co would rather us concentrate on a blog post by someone else than his own words, words which are the real cause of this controversy. To that end, and since I think the actual cause is too often elided in these discussions:

[in response to a challenge to those saying ‘Hitler was right’ to justify saying so, a twitter account replies] “ Okay. Jewish [communities] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them. I’m deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much. You want truth said to your face, there it is.”

Musk replied: “You have said the actual truth.”

I think it’s clear why Yaccarino and Musk want everyone focused on how many impressions a small subset of the antisemitic content on X got, and not the breathtaking antisemitism (and racism, although clearly “hordes of minorities” doesn’t raise as many eyebrows because nobody seems to care about that one) that musk himself endorses (and has not apologized for or retracted since).

jtorsella

3 lata temudiscuss

This is very transparently a gross, cruel attempt to parody and belittle trans people, as is made clear by the people involved and the language:

“7 Tips on How To Come Out as Enhanced”

And the “believe the science” and “colonialist” bits are very much a conservative-doing-an-impression-of-a-liberal thing.

There’s worse if you read through their mission pages. I’m taken aback by the level of effort, honestly. It really astounds me how much money and effort there is behind ostracizing already marginalized people. It’s disgusting.

jtorsella

3 lata temudiscuss

I appreciate that you are making an argument and will respond when I get a chance later in the day and after I read a few of the links - I’m familiar with like half of them.

jtorsella

3 lata temudiscuss

If the existence of C cves in the kernel proves that it is impossible to write correct C, then by the same token any cves in any rust code prove the same thing about rust. This is such a lazy way of arguing. Say something about why the tradeoffs favor a more restrictive and less performant language or don’t, but don’t dismiss the work of many thousands of C developers that runs most enterprise systems with a knowing wave of the hand - it’s not serious.

jtorsella

3 lata temudiscuss

Oh wow, someone should alert the Linux kernel maintainers. Do you want to tell them that it’s impossible to write correct C code? And the rust compiler team, too. After all, if nobody can write safe assembly then whatever they’re doing is either unsafe or magically gets the computer to understand rust directly. Or are they relying on LLVM for their code generation? I forget what language that’s written in, but nothing “unsafe” happens there surely.

All code is machine code at bottom. Including the code that maintains abstractions convincing enough for you to think the “memory-safety” of rust or any other language is a static and guaranteed thing and not something that needs “unsafe” scaffolding to support it.

jtorsella

3 lata temudiscuss

I’m going to not engage on the Fauci/covid question (although I think you’re misremembering which subject he was less than forthright about - it was the efficacy of masking, and the dispute you’re talking about didn’t happen until later). But the real point the author is making is that neither “Hero Fauci smashes Rand Paul” nor “Did Fauci visit Wuhan in 2019?” are things that I want on my windows desktop default! Most of the trash isn’t even political, as the author mentions, but when it is political it is always extreme.

jtorsella

4 lata temudiscuss

The opposite is true:

  These 444 cases of blood clots are after an estimated 24.9 million first [Astrazeneca] doses, and 24.2 million second doses of the vaccine in the UK. Of the 444 people who developed blood clots, 80 died. Six of these deaths occurred after the second dose.

Source: https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-maga...

  Up to 23 November 2022, there were 554 suspected cases of myocarditis or pericarditis reported in the 18 to 29 age group following the vaccine. This is an average rate of 31 reports per million doses.

  In the 30 to 39 age group, there were 470 cases suspected cases of myocarditis or pericarditis reported in the same time period. This is an average rate of 27 reports per million doses.

  Studies looking at myocarditis and pericarditis after the vaccine have not found any increased risk of death or cardiac arrest, compared with being unvaccinated. A large study of 4 million vaccinated people in Denmark, published in the BMJ found there were no deaths or diagnoses of heart failure in people who were diagnosed with myocarditis or pericarditis after being vaccinated.

Source: https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-maga...

A higher rate of myocarditis in the highest risk groups compared to blood clotting, but there is a more than an order of magnitude difference in the severity of blood clotting vs Myocarditis. In addition, blood clotting from the Astrazeneca Vaccine is thought to be incidental to immune response development, while Myocarditis with all covid vaccines is related to the strength of the immune response and is also a symptom of COVID-19.

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