Jordan Peterson shares his views on the pandemic.

[Hardkill]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Of course you can. Don't sell yourself short.

Your business does not have to be anything as big as Elon Musk's. You can help evolve society in small ways.

Actualized.org is a tiny, tiny business by any measure. My work is like pissing in the ocean. Yet here I am doing my work. The reason I am satisfied with it is because I am not at all attached to having society evolve at any particular rate. I don't really care what rate it evolves at. It will evolve at whatever rate it can handle. I am not trying to impose my rate on it. I just enjoy doing my work.

Well, alright that does sounds a lot more reasonable. 

Okay, I'll try to see what I can come up with for society.

[Leo Gura]

22 hours ago, Hardkill said:

Afterwards, throughout almost the entire 2000s decade, the US regressed in some ways once again under W. Bush.

I would reframe the way you look at social evolution and development such that you see EVERY event as progression. Even the bad regressive-looking stuff is still just a part of the overarching evolution. Society evolves by going 2 steps forward, 1 step back. The mistake many progressives make is that they foolishly want progress to always just be 5 steps forward. But a homeostatic system just cannot work that way.

If you are foolishly expecting 5 steps forward every election cycle, you're setting yourself up for a lifetime of disappointment and frustration. You need the patience of a saint when it comes to people evolving.

[Hardkill]

13 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I would reframe the way you look at social evolution and development such that you see EVERY event as progression. Even the bad regressive-looking stuff is still just a part of the overarching evolution. Society evolves by going 2 steps forward, 1 step back. The mistake may progressives make is that foolishly want progress to always just be 5 steps forward. But a homeostatic system just cannot work that way.

If you are foolishly expecting 5 steps forward every election cycle, you're setting yourself up for a lifetime of disappointment and frustration. You need the patience of a saint when it comes to people evolving.

That's a valid and wise point.

Though, it is hard for me to see how much more significant progress can be made when our country keeps getting more and more politically divided over time.

Also, I pray that corporate lobbying gets outlawed in the foreseeable future.

[Leo Gura]

4 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

Though, it is hard for me to see how much more significant progress can be made when our country keeps getting more and more politically divided over time.

That's the evolutionary process in action. It's like a volcano: pressure builds up, then it erupts, then it settles down, forming new crust.

[Hardkill]

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That's the evolutionary process in action. It's like volcano: pressure builds up, then it erupts, then it settles down.

Yeah, that's actually true. All of the wars and political issues that have ever happened since the dawn of mankind have each resulted in varying amounts of progress for each country in the world.

Still, we got to get corporate lobby money out of politics ASAP for the sake of progress for our country and for the rest of the world!

[w4read]

@Leo Gura I'm curious to know more specifically how you evaluate whether or not political measures are good or bad. Personally I tend to have a very pragmatic cost benefit approach when dealing with these large scale society issues. Frankly, because that's all I really know. But it seems like this way of thinking doesn't suit the covid case for some reason. Maybe it's to complex and I'm not able to consider all factors, I don't know.

So taking the example with lock down measures, how would you go forward if you were going to decide whether or not to prolong a lockdown with one week? 

 

[Leo Gura]

56 minutes ago, w4read said:

@Leo Gura I'm curious to know more specifically how you evaluate whether or not political measures are good or bad. Personally I tend to have a very pragmatic cost benefit approach when dealing with these large scale society issues. Frankly, because that's all I really know. But it seems like this way of thinking doesn't suit the covid case for some reason. Maybe it's to complex and I'm not able to consider all factors, I don't know.

So taking the example with lock down measures, how would you go forward if you were going to decide whether or not to prolong a lockdown with one week? 

 

Well, of course there is no objective standard. This is all highly relative and subjective. Which is why it's hard to get a consensus on it.

When it comes to an unknown virus what you must remember is that this is a potentially very dangerous situation, therefore caution is reasonable. You have no idea what kind of deadly variant could emerge if we just let Covid run wild without any checks. So governments and scientists erring on the side of caution is reasonable. Especially early on back in 2020 when none of us knew how Covid might unfold and we had no vaccines. It's easy to do Monday morning quarterbacking 2 years later.

At this point what I see is that lockdowns are impractical in the US simply because people will not strictly adhere to them. So lockdowns in the US have failed and I don't think they will ever work here. But for some nations where lockdowns are more strictly adhered to, they might be worthwhile. I don't know exactly. There is no simple answer. I would not do any more lockdowns in the US because it will just piss people off without producing much benefit I think.

I would only do lockdowns if there was a much more deadly variant or if hospitals were at capacity. Mask mandates I have no problem with because it's a minor inconvenience. The cost/reward on masks is very favorable. Vaccines also have a very favorable risk/reward ratio.

[Hardkill]

7 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Well, of course there is no objective standard. This is all highly relative and subjective. Which is why it's hard to get a consensus on it.

When it comes to an unknown virus what you must remember is that this is a potentially very dangerous situation, therefore caution is reasonable. You have no idea what kind of deadly variant could emerge if we just let Covid run wild without any checks. So governments and scientists erring on the side of caution is reasonable. Especially early on back in 2020 when none of us knew how Covid might unfold and we had no vaccines. It's easy to do Monday morning quarterbacking 2 years later.

At this point what I see is that lockdowns are impractical in the US simply because people will not strictly adhere to them. So lockdowns in the US have failed and I don't think they will ever work here. But for some nations where lockdowns are more strictly adhered to, they might be worthwhile. I don't know exactly. There is no simple answer. I would not do any more lockdowns in the US because it will just piss people off without producing much benefit I think.

I would only do lockdowns if there was a much more deadly variant or if hospitals were at capacity. Mask mandates I have no problem with because it's a minor inconvenience. The cost/reward on masks is very favorable.

I can understand a little as to there has still been a sizable amount of people in the US who are still vaccine hesitant and it's mostly because they are afraid of the risks of the vaccines including the possible "long-term" negative effects it may have (even though they are wrong about that).

However, why do we still have several millions of people in the US who are still extremely upset about mask mandates? There is a zero percent risk to wearing them and It's not like they believe that the masks might cause some kind of long-term negative effects to them. 

[Roy]

9 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

I would only do lockdowns if there was a much more deadly variant or if hospitals were at capacity. Mask mandates I have no problem with because it's a minor inconvenience. The cost/reward on masks is very favorable. Vaccines also have a very favorable risk/reward ratio.

The problem I have (in Canada) with my governments response is they have been inconsistent and scared to piss anyone off, even for a short period of time. Yet there is also narrative of shaming people for not following the rules they set. The problem is when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing nobody.

They've done all these half-measures and between braking then and putting their foot on the gas, that it feels like it's just prolonging our ability to set up the systems we need to deal with living with the virus long term.

For example anytime they know a wave is coming, and they DO know when it's coming, because everybody knows - They should have just done a hard lockdown for 1 week, or 2 weeks. It would suck for a very short time, but would put a massive dent in the surge of cases and give us longer intervals to recover and get things back to the way people want them to be. It would mean less annoying minor rules being constantly implemented and revoked that just piss everyone off, like vaccine mandates, gathering restrictions, cancellations, etc.

Instead, what we have is a perpetual stream of incompetence because those in power are too worried about jeopardizing their jobs next election cycle.

We are so so lucky this virus is relatively mild to what could have happened. Covid has exposed how deeply complacent and misguided our systems and resources are set up.

[TrustTheProcess]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

I would reframe the way you look at social evolution and development such that you see EVERY event as progression. Even the bad regressive-looking stuff is still just a part of the overarching evolution. Society evolves by going 2 steps forward, 1 step back. The mistake may progressives make is that foolishly want progress to always just be 5 steps forward. But a homeostatic system just cannot work that way.

If you are foolishly expecting 5 steps forward every election cycle, you're setting yourself up for a lifetime of disappointment and frustration. You need the patience of a saint when it comes to people evolving.

Sometimes there is a massive disruption that forces societies to adapt or go extinct though. Like how the great depression paved the way for the new deal. 

I really feel like orange neoliberalism is on the cusp of collapsing on itself... hyperinflation, collective burnout, income inequality, jaw-dropping manufactured consent. We are living in an illusion. One step per election cycle won't be enough to cut it if we want to sustainably survive what we are going to be experiencing... things may have to get worse before they get better. 

[w4read]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Well, of course there is no objective standard. This is all highly relative and subjective. Which is why it's hard to get a consensus on it.

When it comes to an unknown virus what you must remember is that this is a potentially very dangerous situation, therefore caution is reasonable. You have no idea what kind of deadly variant could emerge if we just let Covid run wild without any checks. So governments and scientists erring on the side of caution is reasonable. Especially early on back in 2020 when none of us knew how Covid might unfold and we had no vaccines. It's easy to do Monday morning quarterbacking 2 years later.

At this point what I see is that lockdowns are impractical in the US simply because people will not strictly adhere to them. So lockdowns in the US have failed and I don't think they will ever work here. But for some nations where lockdowns are more strictly adhered to, they might be worthwhile. I don't know exactly. There is no simple answer. I would not do any more lockdowns in the US because it will just piss people off without producing much benefit I think.

I would only do lockdowns if there was a much more deadly variant or if hospitals were at capacity. Mask mandates I have no problem with because it's a minor inconvenience. The cost/reward on masks is very favorable. Vaccines also have a very favorable risk/reward ratio.

I would certainly agree with you that with the earlier variants, it has made sense the way governments around the world generally have handled the situation. And then we can always discuss details of course, but overall measures have been justified to a large degree I believe. 

But now, with the omicron variant taking fully over most places, the situation has changed drastically imo. Apparently, everybody is going to get the virus because it's so transmissible, so the risk of mutation will probably be there whether we have lock downs or not. In fact, lock down like they have in China now for instance will only delay the problem. 

The main argument for lock downs has always been the risk of the health care system collapsing. And the focus here has mainly been on ICU because that's where the hospitals are most vulnerable when it comes to resources. Now, with omicron cases exploding and also peaking some places like in the UK, the number of patients has goes down as a result of delta cases checking out from the hospital, while at the same time not that many new cases with omicron cases come in. In addition, people with omicron are staying in hospital for a shorter period of time which has also contributed to this reduction.

So now the new argument is that people are getting covid everywhere so that absence from work will be a threatening factor in the health care as well as in other important sectors. But this becomes a problem partly because of the measures that was taken against covid such as quarantine and staying home when you have a positive test, even though your'e not ill. 

So at this point, it seems to me like we are digging ourselves a hole and not facing the reality that essentially everyone is going to get the virus. Imo the focus should be on how to make this process as smooth as possible for all parties, with an emphasis on reducing all the hassle that comes with different measures as much as possible. 

We also don't now if the measures we take right now helps at all. In Scotland they have a higher and steaper curve than the rest of the UK, with relatively more cases than the other countries compared to earlier waves, despite having more restrictions. So that's something to consider as well.

When it comes to masks they seem like low hanging fruits not necessarily because they help that much, but the costs are minor as you say. 

Vaccines undoubtedly positive also.

[Tanz]

His critism has some points. In my job I meet a lot of people. There has been so many people that know of someone that have committed suicide. The rates from 2020 was an increase of 23%. 2021 hasn't been published yet.

This virus has done more damage socially and politically and the longterm effects of all of this is going to really test us.

[Preety_India]

I fully agree with Leo's opinions on this thread. Leo made some impressive points.