The word "credible" is a loaded, toxic term when it comes to evidence, kind of liked proof by intimidation. If you mean there's no high quality evidence showing harm yet I agree. That doesn't imply safety, as much as industry likes to insinuate. I thought it was all conspiracy too, until I saw enough decent scientists questioning possible mechanisms and asking for more research. The problem is that like pharmaceuticals, it's very hard to get funding for high quality research that would drastically affect an industry. So we're still at a "maybe", but definitely not at the levels conspiracy theorists say. Important not to succumb to black and white thinking.

Thank you, you've increased my hope metric.

Michael Hudson is a great source if you have time to listen to some of his youtube lectures.

A lot of known cognitive distortions can converge. It's well known that for most people what they think of as truth comes essentially from who they trust. When a sufficient number of friends firmly believe something, it's fairly automatic to think it must be true. We evolved in a village and that's still how our minds work.

I think social media is essentially a vast psychological experiment. I wish there was more oversight and transparency there. I have some knowledge in both computer science and psychology and the power to influence in computer algorithms is quite frankly scary. One experiment showed a huge change in opinion created by just slightly lowering rankings of search results. It's only relatively few people that understand that their search results are tailored for them and other people may get completely different results - including in youtube.

I think it was close to criminal that the Great Barrington Declaration was shadow banned (removed from search results), and so not many people know that 60,000 scientists and health care professionals signed it. They thought there was scientific consensus based on their media feeds. On the other side, it was also easy for those disagreeing with general policies to find imbalanced "conspiracy" ideas like 5g harms or that Covid doesn't exist according to their own search results. We completely lacked good faith public discussion by disagreeing experts - most people had their information silos and so "othered" disagreeing views.

It's made me more cynical about the future and that good faith dialogue is possible. I hope I'm wrong.

I wish there was real awareness of the underlying factors. In our financialized economy (compared with an industrial one), bankers require a minimum interest rate that is higher than the economic growth. We've also made it near impossible for countries or normal individuals (but not corporations or the rich) to declare bankrupcy. To get out of problems like 2008 and the covid economy, more money supply was introduced through "quantitative easing". Where can the money go? Big money doesn't invest in business as much any more - real estate is desired. Then competition drives prices up. Banks like this because most of the housing inflation money goes back to them.

The economy is like a ponzi scheme in the long run. Everyday people pay for it.

No society in history lasted a long time without erasing debt on a massive scale. A good read is David Graeber's book on the history of debt: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6617037-debt

One thought originally from Mark Manson is that for every "crazy idea" called a consipiracy theory there is some part that could very well be true. E.g.,

• It's now considered a strong possibility that Covid originated in a lab, though we don't know intent.
• There are actual papers questioning 5g health effects. It could be possible. That doesn't mean it 'causes' Covid, but it could theoretically affect the immune system for some people. No strong evidence yet, but also no negative proof.
• It is well known the pharmaceutical industry, being profit focused, is often not as interested in a cure rather than a perpeputal medication.
• Media profits off fear, so there's been a lack of perspective on Covid, which some Governments have used to negative effect such as decreasing liberties.

Those ideas are often under "conspiracy theories". That's why it's more useful to find common ground and ask for foundations of ideas rather than othering and dehumanizing because someone doesn't have perfect thought.

When spacex is talking 30,000 satellites in orbit I'm wondering if competition will be too dangerous in terms of crowded orbits. I could easily see it be considered a regulated global monopoly in the not too far future.

How infinitesimally small wave functions can make such a big difference in what happens inside a huge star.

Thank you!

Over a long time. Upkeep requires investment. There's a lot of American infrastructure seriously in need now, and that's over decades, not centuries.

I don't want to rehash old discussion too much, but even in April 2020 we knew the prevalence (Ioannidis) and risk by age, along with existing pandemic plans that had been created to deal with pandemics of this magnitude. People forget the precautionary principle is exactly for these occasions: be cautious of all the side effects when making massive society wide changes. Not to do nothing but to be cautious.

Do I agree Covid was serious and that we needed action at that time? Yes, absolutely. Not a denialist. I'm just more a fan of getting clear data and educating to empower.

The problem with overreaction via laws and regulations is that lawmakers rarely get bothered to remove them. For instance, many of the extreme cleaning regulations to stop fomite transmission are still around. To you and me this may not be a big deal, but it is to low wage workers who had this thrown on them on top of overwork. It kills the soul to be doing useless actions over and over - in fact it's a known way of breaking the spirit. In virtual isolation those in power were completely disconnected from the realities of the those struggling, and as a result we're dangerously polarized.

I think saying ineffective but necessary is a contradiction, unless you mean it was a political necessity to appear to be doing something. If an action is ineffective by definition it's not necessary.

Thank you - I wish public health officials and media had publicly educated people more of the low (but not zero) risk of fomite transmission. There are still people terrified getting Covid this way and there still exists cleaning regulations that were created at the beginning of Covid for extra cleaning. One may think the extra cleaning does no harm, but IMO that's a privilege - requiring low wage workers to do medically unnecessary cleaning many times a day above what was there before is kind of soul sucking, especially if that work is already on top of existing job requirements.

The US for some reason wants to have significant chipmaking outside of Taiwan.