I’ve done this a lot, so I’m speaking from experience. I haven’t been compromising on location (closeness to where I need to be), only on comfort. It probably depends on where you’re travelling to though.

If you’re a low-maintenance kind of person that just wants a pull-out sofa to sleep on, a shower, and possibly a kettle+microwave to make coffee+bad food for a day or two, you can find Airbnbs at ¼ the price of a hotel.

I think we agree on the broad aspect here, but are disagreeing on minutiae: When I say it’s “not inherently built into the system”, what I mean is that if it was, my situation would be impossible to achieve within the system, not that the system doesn’t discourage it.

The system most definitely heavily encourages exploitation, but it’s still possible to build a company within the current system that doesn’t rely on exploitation. That’s basically what I mean by “not inherent in the system”.

Sometimes they literally don’t have the ability to press 1.

Which is why I’m saying it should go through automatically after a short delay.

It’s easy to say “just over staff” until you’re faced with the reality that maybe once every five years, for a grand total of one hour, you’re faced with call pressure 1000 times higher than the second highest spike. It’s not viable to staff a response center to deal with thousands of people calling in the same bomb attack or shooting within minutes, when you normally see on the order of hundreds of calls per week.

What you need is the capacity to deal with 99.99… % of situations, and a safety mechanism to prevent the remaining situations from overloading your system more than necessary.

In a mass casualty event, you need to be able to filter out the people making redundant reports in order to effectively handle the important reports. You need to do that without blocking out the important reports, that’s the hard part.

You really don’t need an AI for this though. With the number of mass shootings the US sees, it’s honestly shocking that they don’t have a button the operator can press to activate an auto-reply along the lines of “We are already responding to <event>, if you still want to talk to us, press 1 or wait for a reply.”, which waits something like 10s before going through.

This would filter out a bunch of duplicate reporting with far less effort, and with less odds of something going wrong.

But not if they have deodorant in them.

While what you’re saying is typically true, it’s not inherently built into the system. I work in a company owned by two friends. They own the company because they took out loans with their houses as security in order to finance the lease of an office space, buying work stations, and hiring themselves and me. I work on the same stuff as them, for the same hours, and make the same salary as them.

If the company goes to shit, they have craploads of debt, while I don’t. We have a contract ensuring that I get a fair share of whatever comes in, including options to buy myself into the company at the same rate as what they initially invested once I can afford it. Nobody here is making excess money of others work. I have no reason to believe I’m being scammed.

Again, what you’re saying is true in 99+ % of cases, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s nothing preventing a company from deciding that profits are split evenly among all employees (with the owners also acting as employees).

I agree with pretty much everything you’re saying here, I still want to comment on

Middle class does not exist

I do think it’s a reasonable term to separate those that actually make a decent salary, are self-employed, own their own company (at which they work) together with others, etc. from the more clearly exploited workers that have far too few rights and are not compensated fairly.

I have no problem with selling my labour for money as long as I’m fairly compensated for it. Historically, the working class has not been.

I use a buff to keep warm in winter, couldn’t imagine wearing one in summer!

a backwards hat to protect from the sun realistically offers dubious protection unless you are always walking directly away from the sun.

I typically flip it depending on sun direction. I’ve found the neck to be most critical though, I don’t seem to burn as easily on the sides/front.

I was out hiking a couple years ago when I suddenly realised that I had become the guy with shades and a backwards cap. It’s practical: I want to prevent a sunburn in my neck (the backwards cap) and also not have the sun in my eyes (shades). I spent some time coming to terms with it, but now that’s how I’m regularly equipped in harsh sun in the mountains. It’s simply the optimal solution to sun protection while hiking (I’ve tried wide-brimmed hats, but they get caught in the wind too easily in my experience).

Anyone who makes their living by working, either for salary or hourly rate, is working class. Let’s just be on the same page about that.

Aha! That’s where you got me! I was thinking “working class” in the more classical sense, referring to typical lower-paying jobs. I work for a living, but I’m definitely closer to what is typically considered “middle-class” in the sense that I make enough money that I feel well-off, but not enough that I could buy a new sofa just because moving the old one is too much hassle.

Obligatory “Fuck the wealth-class”. “Passive income through ownership” is a convoluted way of saying “parasitic”.

I don’t see what about this that makes it a “working-class” thing? I thought it was common practice to help each other out in exchange for pizzas and beer in any part of society where people have friends? I see it primarily as an excuse to hang out while doing something together.

Societies that run on neighbours, friends, acquaintances, and that guy over there helping each other out in exchange for sharing pizza and beer afterwards are wholesome societies.

One thing is the 58 000 that have to re-take the exam. I’m just as interested in the 2% of exam-takers that were terminated due to “unspecified conduct issues”, and how many of those were unfairly thrown out for cheating without having done anything wrong…

Thanks for being understanding and engaging in good faith :)

I think making vaccines legally mandated is an interesting discussion. On one hand, I think they should be mandated for reason that they are, statistically, proven to reduce overall harm to people. On the other hand, it think it’s a bit scary to go that way, since we are then putting a lot of trust in whatever political body will decide which vaccines have a risk/benefit profile that should make them mandatory. It’s a lot easier with seat belts or construction practices, since there are literally no downsides to either.

I’ve had a thought experiment with others about a hypothetical autonomous car that is guaranteed to never end up in (or cause) any accident, but has an astronomically small probability of spontaneously combusting at any given moment. Let’s make that probability small enough that the number of deaths and injuries caused by cars every year is reduced to 1 % of what it currently is, with the remaining incidents being caused by the spontaneously combusting cars. Now, for any individual, it’s statistically safer to drive this car. As a society, everyone is safer if these cars are mandated (no pedestrians are killed, we don’t need to spend healthcare resources on car-related injuries, etc.).

From a utilitarian perspective, these cars should be mandated. From a purely logical risk-minimisation perspective, everyone should be jumping at the opportunity to use this much safer car. However, when you ask people, it turns out that most don’t want the car. Despite knowing that this car would (statistically) drastically reduce their probability of being hurt or killed in traffic, the idea of getting into a vehicle that can spontaneously combust at any given moment seems absurd to them.

That brings us to the “Twinge of doubt for something that has been so successful”. We humans are generally terrible at risk assessment. We tend to heavily over emphasise extreme outcomes (the car combusting) while also under emphasising “mundane” outcomes (people crash and die every day, but it surely won’t happen to me), and overestimating our own skills (by far most drivers think they’re above average, and can therefore avoid collisions). The analogous vaccine-related line of thought would be that people hear that 1 / <large number> get severe complications from vaccines, which is over emphasised, while “hundreds of people in the US are killed by tuberculosis every year, but it surely won’t happen to me”, and overestimating our own immune system.

Basically, a lot of fear is simply irrational, and that’s linked to the human nature of being crap at intuitive risk assessment. I think fear of vaccines also falls into this category of irrational fear, and I don’t really think it can be rationalised away. That’s why I think programs to counter vaccine scepticism need to be based in how to make the rational fear of disease win out, rather than trying to completely dispel the irrational fear far too many people have related to vaccines.

I honestly think you’re misunderstanding me a bit here. I’m not advocating for privileging anti-vaxxer rhetoric or jumping through hoops to “let them have some wins”. I’m trying to underscore that the first step to developing education, informational campaigns, deprogramming regimes, etc. is to understand the thought process behind becoming an anti-vaxxer. There are plenty of comments in this thread alone along the lines of “When presented a choice between a small risk of a mild fever versus getting tuberculosis, obviously the correct choice is to get the vaccine”. I think that line of argumentation is counter-productive, since it

1. Underplays the documented risk of many vaccines
2. Doesn’t address the core issue I think causes vaccine scepticism in the first place.

Firstly, nobody who’s afraid of getting a vaccine due to the associated risks will be convinced by “The only risk is a small risk of a light fever”, since that’s just provably false. Secondly, the line of argumentation anchors on the risk associated with vaccines, rather than anchoring on the risk associated with not getting them. Since I think the root cause of vaccine scepticism is irrational fear of getting them, I think it’s more productive to anchor counter arguments, education, information campaigns, etc. on the very real danger associated with not having vaccines. Since fear is the underlying driving force here, we should aim to make fear of the disease outweigh fear of vaccines, not by down-playing the risk of vaccines, but rather by emphasising the risk of the diseases (which many or most vaccine sceptics downplay into absurdity).

Basically, many vaccines do have a very low but non-zero probability of causing severe side effects. We humans are known to place irrationally large weight on these kind of unlikely but severe outcomes. Trying to downplay these outcomes is not likely affect peoples perception of the risk, because we’re notoriously bad at this kind of risk assessment.

It will never be about the science, because we already know they’re completely wrong about everything and therefore they need to make science irrelevant.

I think there’s an interesting discussion to be had here regarding cause and effect. You seem to be arguing that these people do not believe in science, therefore they end up as conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, etc. I’m not entirely convinced that’s the case. I think it’s common that people first establish a gut feeling regarding what is true, then begin disbelieving science when science disagrees with them. Basically, I think the casual chain is inverted relative to you. Of course, once people have started disbelieving science, the rabbit hole is open.

the supposed strat of… agreeing them out of their position(?)

That’s not really what I’m arguing for. My point is that it never strengthens your position to disagree with things you know are correct, just to try to make a point. If someone says “water is denser than oil, therefore 1 L of water is heavier than 2 L of oil.”, it doesn’t help you to start by disagreeing with the initial statement. Likewise, when someone says “vaccines cause dangerous side effects, therefore …”, it doesn’t help your position to disagree with the initial statement, which is well documented to be true. An immediate example that comes to mind is that the Astra Zeneca (I think) COVID vaccine caused several deaths due to triggering a very rare heart complication (if I remember the details correctly). If your initial counter argument is “vaccines don’t cause deadly side effects”, you can immediately be brushed off as having no idea what you’re talking about, since it’s well documented that they do. Any successful counter argument needs to start by acknowledging what is correct in the initial statement, before dialling in on why the conclusion is wrong.

The point of the trolley problem is not to use it to convince the vaccine sceptics, but to use research on it to understand how they think, and thereby understand how they can be convinced. Surveys have consistently shown that not all people agree on what to do in the trolley problem situation (around 10 % choose to do nothing). It’s only a false dilemma if you view it from a utilitarian standpoint, but the whole point of the thought experiment is exactly to compare a utilitarian standpoint to other views. There’s quite a bit of research regarding the psychology of how we experience the consequences of action vs. inaction, and it appears that humans instinctively prefer inaction over actions with negative consequences, even when inaction carries more negative consequences. The book “Thinking fast and slow” by Daniel Kahneman goes into some detail on this. I think a lot of vaccine scepticism is grounded in this instinctive response, which in turn causes people to disbelieve science due to confirmation bias.

Trolley problem is just a pros and cons list made visceral.

I fundamentally disagree with this, and it seems to me that many others do as well. The trolley problem is fundamentally about the morality of allowing something bad to happen through inaction, versus actively choosing a lesser evil.

While it’s true that the numbers can influence what people answer here, the numbers are not the core point of the thought experiment. The core point of the thought experiment relates to whether you are personally responsible for the consequences of inaction, versus your responsibility for the consequences of direct action.

Crucially, as discussed in depth in Daniel Kahnemans’ “Thinking Fast and Slow”, humans appear to be instinctively averse to taking actions with known negative consequences, even when they know that the consequences of inaction are worse. This is supported by the experiment referenced in the wikipedia page linked above.

The point here is that we can try to understand vaccine sceptics line of thought by understanding why humans appear to have this aversion. As mentioned in my first comment, I’m well vaccinated, and know fully well that statistically, both for myself and others, getting relevant vaccines is the right choice. Regardless, I felt a twinge of doubt when getting my initial covid shots. Not due to any logical reasoning, but an instinctive gut feeling: It felt more risky to actively expose myself to a vaccine rather than do nothing, even though I know the opposite is true. I very quickly overcame that twinge of doubt because I try to make decisions based on facts rather than feelings. While anecdotal, this is a concrete example of how human intuition does not always match actual statistics and logically sound decision making.

I think that if we want to prevent vaccine scepticism from spreading, one place to start is trying to understand why people think along these lines: That direct action infers a heavier responsibility than inaction. The first place to start in that regard is recognising that the trolley problem is a very real dilemma for many people, and that surveys have consistently shown that not all people make the same choice in trolley problem situations, even though the correct choice seems obvious to many of us.

By using much smaller numbers, you are giving a false impression of vaccines.

Sure, I could have used more realistic numbers here, I won’t argue that. However, I hope I’ve been able to convince you that my point is not related to the numbers, but to the underlying psychology of making these choices, regardless of the numbers. Therefore, I just pulled some numbers out of the air to construct the example in the OC.

The “trolley problem” is a philosophical dilemma regarding the morality of allowing harm caused by inaction versus causing harm by direct action. In a common form of the dilemma, you are faced with a situation where a train trolley is headed to hit a number of people. You have the option to pull a lever that will direct the trolley to hit a smaller number of people, thus actively condemning that smaller number.

The argument can be made (though I disagree with it), that you are “more responsible” for deaths caused by pulling the lever than those caused by inaction. Whether or not you agree with this argument, plenty of research has shown that humans are typically very averse to causing known harm by direct action, even though they know that inaction will cause greater harm. That is: “Human instinct” in the trolley problem seems to be to not pull the lever, even though a majority of people agree that it is the morally correct decision.

Finally, the above discussion is more or less completely independent of the number of people on the two tracks. Whether it’s 1:2, or 1:1 000 000 doesn’t really change the moral argument of action vs. inaction. If you get into the kind of numbers where the number of deaths would have global secondary consequences, you have a new kind of dilemma though. However that’s not the case here, hence my choice of pulling two arbitrary numbers out of a hat, rather than using actual numbers for vaccine side effects and infection lethality.

What I’m doing here is noting that the question of vaccinating or not is philosophically equivalent to the trolley problem. Therefore, we can use research of the trolley problem to understand how vaccine sceptics think, and to learn something about how people can be convinced that pulling the lever is the morally correct choice.

I’m among the most thoroughly vaccinated people around, after living in both SE Asia and South America. I’m also relatively well versed in statistics and am well aware that if your goal is to optimise for a good and healthy life, getting vaccinated is a no-brainier.

Finally, I think that if we want to convince people that are sceptical of vaccines to get them, or give them to their children, we should start by

1. Acknowledging that plenty of common vaccines have extremely rare, but nonetheless potentially severe side effects.
2. There is an actual ethical/philosophical dilemma that has been discussed for thousands of years regarding the morality of harm caused be action vs. inaction.

The dilemma that has shown up in countless philosophical debates throughout history is basically the trolley problem: “If you press this button, there’s a 1/1000 chance that someone (e.g. your child) dies. If you don’t, there’s a 1/100 chance that they die.” To me personally, the choice is easy (I press the button), but I recognise that people see this as a dilemma. There’s plenty of research on how we humans tend to prefer inaction over actions that could cause damage, even when that choice is statistically unreasonable.

Based on this, I think the most productive way to engage with people that are sceptical of vaccines due to this very human mode of decision failure, is to engage with the philosophical question above, and trying to convince them that inaction (not taking the vaccine) is, in fact, also a choice that they are responsible for. I think brushing the dilemma off as trivial is a bit reductionist, considering that the trolley problem is one that has been so widely discussed through the ages (even though I personally think it’s an easy choice).

Of course, if people are just blatantly ignoring or refuting established scientific results, there’s not much you can do…