Andrew M

With strong bipartisan support as well. I think that is right. From Pueyo's earlier article:

Yep.

You can find endorsements of Pueyo's two articles by infectious disease experts and public intellectuals here: https://medium.com/tomas-pueyo/coronavi...

It isn't easy, but South Korea (and others) have done it. The problem in the US was that the testing got off to a bad start (the US CDC's early tests ...

That's true if you have comprehensive testing and tracing in place. If a state waits until they're treating sick people to get serious, they're alread...

This. We need to hammer the virus and control it before it hammers us. Then we will have more time and options for dealing with it. I would encourage ...

For specificity testing, you don't need a better comparative test because you use known negative samples that demonstrate that your test doesn't give ...

Yes, it's 21%. However the actual coronavirus tests will have a specificity of 100% if the same as the WHO tests: Which references this paper:

Fair enough. My concern, though, is that we don't see that in the data right now. And the lack of testing to date in the US means that there may be ma...

Yes it does. The question is whether the specific actions taken have been/will be effective, which is difficult to measure in a timely manner. My conc...

Only if people think that there's nothing to see there. What percentage do you think it should be before taking action?

Yes, I would expect those things to have an effect. But as we've seen elsewhere, those effects may not register in the figures for up to 2 weeks (some...

That 0% hides an exponential growth curve. Those case and death numbers are doubling every 2-3 days.

I'm extrapolating purely from the reported US case numbers in the table here. Yes, there are lots of unknowns, including cases missed due to inadequat...

Indeed. Glad you've found it useful! By my calculation, at the current trend of doubling every 2.5 days (case data here), the identified US cases woul...

Unfortunately, so far the fruits of Trump's gambling instincts are an entrenched pandemic and a stock market crash. Let's hope his luck changes. Howev...

I'm sure he would be proclaimed as a great savior by his constituency. That's the script they read from. But, of course, Trump's hunches have no more ...

The argument is simply that relativity of simultaneity isn't sufficient by itself to imply a block universe. An additional premise is required, which ...

A Physics Forums Insights article I've found useful is The Block Universe – Refuting a Common Argument. Essentially: (1) Relativity of simultaneity + ...

That doesn't seem right. While human beings have a general capacity to be rational and moral, people can fail to act rationally or morally in some sit...

Thanks! I'm likewise enjoying the exchange of ideas. So a general account would presumably be a question for the natural sciences. For example, an exp...

Thanks! Le Penseur's thinking is private in a mundane sense and remains open to natural investigation. The ghost only makes an appearance when that pr...

They are literally predicated on human beings. It is human beings that are rational, moral, etc., not minds or brains. A brain is a part of a human be...

I'm not arguing that it falsifies it. It's a different approach that has no use for it. For Aristotle, particulars exist independently of anyone's kno...

Fun stuff: I agree with everything you say about "pure cognitive neuroscience" and "pure empiricism". You're making Ryle's point for him against the R...

Easy stuff: Yes it indicates a physical reality. Note that I reject an internal/external (or subject/object) dualism, so no such ambiguity arises on m...

It may be that people are driven more by utility than understanding. But that doesn't imply that that the universe can't be understood. Note the terms...

Reading back over I see that I somehow managed to completely misread your comment. We do agree that experience always comes before language.

Yes, to say that we can hear the blare of a trumpet (and compare it with other sounds) is perfectly fine. It's the positing of qualia as a mind-depend...

Yes and that's a fair example. We have enough knowledge to formulate theories and make predictions even while lacking a deeper understanding about wha...

Thanks, but you're still talking generally. Can you give a concrete example, such as an everyday situation or a physics scenario that demonstrates you...

Can you give a specific example?

Part Two: Fair enough. On my model, an object is something an observer can point to. So it has form in relation to an observer, it's not intrinsic or ...

Part One: Sure. However the semantic quibble for me is the assigning of agency to a faculty... ... and also here, the assigning of agency to (pure) re...

Yes, but as a hypothetical entity. We can talk about ghosts as hypothetical entities as well, but we should resist the temptation to treat them as rea...

I'm finding it difficult to keep my reply short! However I think we may be finding some points of agreement (or at least better understanding our disa...

What Wittgenstein's thought experiment shows is that if there were such a beetle, then we wouldn't be able to talk about it. Now we can talk about pai...

My interpretation: It's the inability to explain how and why humans experience pain, etc., that constitutes "the hard problem". Do you agree with that...

No, a description is not the thing itself. Is that what you're asking? If Alice says, "My tooth hurts" (first-person) and Bob says, "Alice's tooth hur...

I reject the hard problem of consciousness because it's premised on dualism. I reject dualism because it arises from a language confusion (which we br...

So I characterize it differently on my model. Keep in mind(!) that I reject radical privacy, but not mind-related terminology. Alice might point at th...

I reject them both (and the mind/body dualism they presuppose). Nicely said. This contrast in approach to meaning can also be traced back to Plato for...

Yes, our feelings are our own and not someone else's. And we don't literally see someone's pain, though we might see that they are in pain. For me, th...

It seems you misunderstood my response. If pain were radically private (in the Cartesian sense), then we would not have language to talk about it. Yet...

Language depends on public criteria. See Wittgenstein's private language argument and specifically regarding pain, see his beetle-in-a-box thought exp...

There's no dispute that Alice is acting intelligently here (whereas the tree doesn't have that capability). The issue is over whether this is characte...

Shadows on the cave wall... Seems like we agree. So what's the problem?

If you mean "Is breaking your toe painful?" then, yes, it is. If you mean "Do we have radically private, immaterial experiences?" then, no, we don't.

Well I guess that's that then! It's all an illusion... ;-) Yes, you're calling it into question. But why? And what's your argument? I describe my mode...

Yes, there are lots of ways things can go wrong. And so we make ordinary language distinctions between being awake and dreaming. We can acknowledge dr...