I would argue that if anything, in our current world of privacy and anonymity-indifferent lawyers, regulators, policy makers, corporate heads and most members of the general public, things like this and the hackers behind them perform a sort of obscene public service in a way: They make everyone at least somewhat leery about trends towards so much of our private lives falling into too many databases, especially when said data is highly personal, financial, medical or location-based (and thus especially compromising in certain contexts)
The reason why? While lawmakers, politicians and corporate heads couldn't give less of a shit about the average joe's privacy, they know that it's increasingly difficult even for them and their own families to stay private from too-pervasive, intrusive data collection, and they also now see ever more often just how near impossible it is to make said data stay secure from mass public leaks. Oops... Their own "optimization" obsessed nosiness maybe biting them back bit by bit.
It would be perversely amusing to see the head of some bullshit ad tracking firm, or bottom-feeding user data reseller, or the head of a snooping social network have their own dirty laundry leaked all over the web for all to see.
There should never exist a rubric known as "things you do not discuss" in any society that takes open debate and free expression seriously. Discussion is not violence and it should always be defended as a freedom regardless of how boorish or controversial its subjects. The very idea of such a category is grotesque and cowardly, to start.
When I finally took the time to learn how the proof of The Halting Problem worked, I was fascinated by just how "edge-case" it actually is: it's less a general principle, than a proof that a black-hat exploit can always exist that will break any given halting-prediction algorithm.
With the caveat that I'm a Chomskyan free-speech absolutist, and I generally agree with you: it's not hard to apply the same Halting Problem concept to free expression. Such an exploit can manifest many ways: QAnon, Red Guards, literal Nazis, Woke "Neo-Marxists", etc; but regardless, scale the intersection of extremist ideology and human social behavior until they approach infinity, and it's easy to see how they can (and historically have) resulted in a systemic collapse of free expression and free thought. (This was what Popper was trying to capture in his now-oft-quoted Paradox of Tolerance, which is now ironically over-applied as a lever of pre-emptive intolerance of challenges to orthodoxy!)
I do agree that it's both a categorical and strategic mistake to succumb to an epidemiological model of memetic extremism. Even to the extent that model applies, extremist ideas only spread under social preconditions of susceptibility (as described by Hoffer [0]), and I don't think pre-emptive idea suppression is either right, or wise, or helpful. Extremist ideological infection is more a symptom than a root cause.
And yet: we can still recognize that certain taboos might exist for a reason, such as the one against openly voicing "maybe we should just kill the people who disagree with us". James Lindsay (perhaps the second-most infamous opponent of postmodernist thought) has described postmodernism as a "universal solvent", capable of taking apart any idea. It's not that you never use such a cognitive tool; rather, one uses it cautiously and judiciously, when one has the wisdom to wield it properly. Similarly, we need safe spaces for dangerous thoughts, even of the Popperian or Halting Problem variety; yet it may be appropriate to hold social taboos against those ideas being used casually in polite society and the public discourse, lest they dissolve polite society and public discourse themselves.
That's all well and good, but I'd still rather not see a bunch of autistics fired and unpersoned for unwittingly questioning modern dogma. We live in an increasingly religious time; better to go into questioning the orthodoxy with your eyes open.
Nope, for one thing, the country I live in never implemented anything resembling strict lockdown measures (there were some restrictions on opening hours for businesses, types of businesses that could open and car traffic in city centers) and for another thing, at all times, even during the time least welcoming to going out, I made sure to simply go for solitary walks in parks, streets and public areas while avoiding any crowds. I know that in some countries (disgracefully in my view) even leaving home for a solitary walk or with family you live with anyhow was forbidden, but where it isn't anyone who's been feeling more than a bit claustrophobic should sincerely just go out and get some air on a regular basis. It is possible to do this without overly exposing yourself, and it can be done in the company of any people you in any case might share your home and intimate air with.
Bullshit. A great number of those protesting on the left/progressive side during the fairly recent BLM marches were peaceful people legitimately angry about police violence, but more than enough others used the same starting point as a launch pad for mass riots, burnings, lootings and the promotion of extremist (but leftist extremist) political postures that were little different in their love of overthrowing legitimate institutions from anything recently done by the idiots at the Capitol. In terms of sheer scale and distribution, the former protests had much more violence to them than more recent right-oriented protests. Emotional attachment to a certain ideology is no excuse for claiming two obviously related things "ain't even the same fucking sport". They very much are, but from different teams.
Oh my gosh, pirated!? You don't say!? I mean, how awful having workarounds of the entirely fair, completely balanced and decent system of laws that currently govern copyright in the U.S and much of the world....
The gist is that they found a significantly higher false positive rate - probably between 2.4x higher and 4.8x higher - and in absolute terms, a meaningful FP rate (15% without or 25% with other abnormalities):
> Among 3946 participants, 704 (17.8%) showed positive FIT results and 1303 (33.0%) had hemorrhoids. Of the 704 participants with positive FIT results, 165 had advanced colorectal neoplasia (ACRN) and 539 had no ACRN (FP results). Of the 1303 participants with hemorrhoids, 291 showed FP results, of whom 81 showed FP results because of hemorrhoids only. Participants with hemorrhoids had a higher rate of FP results than those without hemorrhoids (291/1176, 24.7% vs. 248/2361, 10.5%; p<0.001). Additionally, the participants with hemorrhoids as the only abnormality had a higher rate of FP results than those experiencing no such abnormalities (81/531, 15.3% vs. 38/1173, 3.2%; p<0.001).
Also, everything is different for a patient than a population. If a patient has reasonable expectations (ie, that a positive result could easily be false, and is nowhere near conclusive), and they would otherwise obtain a colonoscopy rather than putting it off, then by far the bigger concern is false negatives. That is, if you can take a FIT (or two a few months apart) and skip a colonoscopy based on negative results, the false positive rate doesn't matter much - you're replacing something annoying with something not at all annoying. I couldn't find any good studies of false negatives.
After reading this stuff, the one thing I wouldn't do is completely replace colonoscopies in favor of FIT.
Just as I thought: A test that bases its effectiveness on occult fecal blood will obviously stumble around the very common phenomenon of hemorrhoids, and only a colonoscopy can clarify better. On the other hand, if no blood is detected, there still exists the possibility of polyps or tumor growth which have not recently or yet started to release blood, making this test more than a bit unreliable as a measure of something that could be life or death.
The rubrics you describe basically cover a whole spectrum of people who also fit into the millennial category, and in my experience they're among the most easily, absurdly offended and politically correct people in modern society... I have more hope for younger generations than them.
>I believe that it's considerably worse than 1918.
The COVID IFR is known to be lower than that of the 1918 influenza pandemic, which killed between 50 and 100 million people in less than a year, and pulled that off at a time when the Earth's population was a quarter of what it is today and much less mobile. I have no idea whatsoever where you get the idea that COVID is worse than 1918. It most emphatically (at least so far) is not at all showing itself to be as bad, let alone worse.
If it was describing that as "worse", didn't leave it very clear, and in any case, that's an awfully ambiguous comparison. Death from influenza was slowly asphyxiating, and sometimes even hemorrhagic, neither of which sound especially peaceful.
>My day job is at a boutique consulting company that explicitly allows side projects in our employment contract.
>It helps a ton if your employer allows it. Seems like it might be hard to come by employers who do this though.
Really? This is normal? I find it extremely bizarre and not to mention shitty that an employer should somehow have any say whatsoever about what you do for economic or personal gain in your free personal time. You're not a piece of property and never should be controlled to this degree no matter the nature of your work.
Truly, how the hell can they even justify such a posture, or how do employees not spit it back in their faces? I can see these (presumably tech) companies having a claim for IP if it was partly created through company resources, but having a rightful claim on anything that you as an employee do in your spare time while an employee? That's reprehensible and grotesquely absurd.
The reason why? While lawmakers, politicians and corporate heads couldn't give less of a shit about the average joe's privacy, they know that it's increasingly difficult even for them and their own families to stay private from too-pervasive, intrusive data collection, and they also now see ever more often just how near impossible it is to make said data stay secure from mass public leaks. Oops... Their own "optimization" obsessed nosiness maybe biting them back bit by bit.
It would be perversely amusing to see the head of some bullshit ad tracking firm, or bottom-feeding user data reseller, or the head of a snooping social network have their own dirty laundry leaked all over the web for all to see.