Yes, I should have been clearer. I was just making the point that although hunter-gatherers can beat the agrarians using sticks and spears, it is the agrarians and not the hunter-gatherers who will, over time, develop advanced technology.




Certainly the food industry has its own motivations, which are based on money rather than ensuring that everyone eats healthily. But there is additional complexity here (as I posted in your thread), in that the demand on the part of the consumer is for things that taste good, not things that are healthy. The food industry can be manipulative and does not have our best interests at heart, but also they are satisfying a demand that already exists.

I admit I've not read the entirety of your article, but the human body has evolved over many millions of years to be omnivorous, not carnivorous. You can see it in our teeth: canines, incisors, molars. We are generalists. You can argue that we can get everything we need from being exclusively carnivore or exclusively herbivore, but biologically we are omnivores.




The agricultural revolution was perhaps the most important step in human development. There could never have been an industrial revolution without an argicultural revolution. The Mongol horde were hunter-gatherers. They may have been fierce fighters, but they had strict limitations due to the nature of their society. Eventually, the porridge-eaters can build guns and tanks, whilst the Mongols are still waving spears and riding horses.

I'm not sure that Covid has much to do with the longer-term picture.

The demographic transition model is widely-accepted and well-understood. Exponential population growth is a temporary phenomenon, due to the nature of modernisation processes, in which the benefits that result in a lower death rate (e.g. health and hygiene improvements, particularly as affects child mortality) almost invariably arrive earlier than the benefits that result in a lower birth rate (access to education, improved economic conditions, contraception, etc). The diagram below gives quite a good explanation (Although Japan should probably be in stage 5, rather than 4). Note that this is a general trend, and won't always be an exact fit to every nation and every circumstance.

Yes, exactly. Everyone needs somewhere to live. You can either pay rent each month, and end up with nothing at the end of it, or you can pay a mortgage each month, and end up with a house. Given that mortgage costs less than rent, then so long as you can afford the deposit, there's no logical reason to rent. If for some reason you want to go back to renting five years down the line, then sell the house, and you have profit from whatever you paid off.

If you want spare money to invest in crypto, then surely it's better to wait for the house price to increase slightly, then take out more money on top of your mortgage, based on the fact that your asset is now worth more than when you bought it.

Yes, this is certainly the case. They want Novak there, and he isn't willing to get vaccinated... so they have to make up a special rule in order for him to be exempt. And yes, this means he is treated differently to other players, and it sends out the wrong message to the whole country. Why should any Australian obey the rules regarding Covid, when the government is willing to let in a non-Australian and says he can ignore the rules?

We see the same thing many times over the last two years, but it is generally politicians who get the special treatment. It is rare to see someone coming in from outside the country who gets an exemption.

I think one important consideration with this chart, which isn't covered in the article, it that it relates to someone who is born into the bottom quintile then remaining in the bottom quintile when they grow up, i.e. ~20y later.

When people are asked to estimate social mobility, they will give you their estimate of current mobility, based on current government, current economy etc... whereas the probability of someone moving up from the bottom quintile on that chart is related entirely to the government and economy of the last few decades. I think we need to consider variations in mobility over time in order to get a more informed perspective.

As an example, if the political "centre" has drifted to the right over the last few decades, then you would expect left-wing voters to underestimate mobility (which they believe is better under a left-wing government).

It depends on your starting position. You need to go to whichever country is set up to favour people in your situation.

If you are very wealthy and dream of becoming outrageously wealthy, then your best bet is probably a tax haven.
If you are quite wealthy  and dream of becoming very wealthy, then go somewhere with a centre or centre-right government that favours the rich. US, UK, etc. Then mover to a tax haven later.
If you are of average wealth, or slightly poorer, go somewhere with a left-leaning government but an open economy, which will vary depending on who has won recent elections, but Scandinavia is often a good bet.
If you are very poor, try to find any country that will give you a chance... in which case the initial suggestion of US or UK would be a bad idea.

Are Ferrari suggesting that they don't expect to start with a strong car in 2022?

This article begins with the F1 CEO talking about how he expects at the start of the season, some cars will be a lot better than others, due to how they've each interpreted the new rules. I think anyone would agree that this would be as expected, similar to what we saw at the start of the current era, when no-one could touch Mercedes. But then it goes on to a quote from Binotto at Ferrari, who I think sounds quite negative and effectively says that Ferrari's biggest strength is that they can catch up with whoever starts the season ahead.

It's looking increasingly like Man City will be champions, they just aren't dropping enough points for the others to catch them, and scoring 6 against Leicester is scary for other teams. We're only at the mid-way point of the season, but I do think the top 4 will end up as it is now, Man City top, Chelsea and Liverpool vying for second, and Arsenal fourth.

Weren't you selling these books for $10,000 a few weeks back? And your family weren't allowed to read it, they each had to fork out $10k for their own copy?
I know there are often discounts available at this time of year, but $10k to zero is quite a price drop.

Yes.



No. Omicron does appear to be far less severe on average than earlier strains. However this doesn't mean that no-one becomes seriously ill, and no-one dies. One plus to it is that if some people are unwilling to get vaccinated, then it is better they catch Omicron to build up some immunity with less (but certainly not zero) chance of severe illness.

It appears that in nations with high vaccination levels, Omicron could be the start of the end of this thing. But of course many nations have low vaccination levels, including in sub-Saharan Africa where this variant arose. So rich nations are still susceptible to dangerous new variants unless they start sharing vaccine supply a lot more with others, particularly the global south.

I don't think this example says as much about the French league as it does about Ibrahimovic. It's absolutely incredible what he's doing, he's now 40, and scoring lots of goals at the highest level in Italy.
The French league may be weaker than other top leagues, but Ibrahimovic even now can walk into any league and take it by storm.

Yes. The issue is Masi rather than Mazepin, though. It was decided that Verstappen would be champion because it would be more exciting to have a final lap shootout with one guy on brand new softs and one guy on very old hards, so the guy on softs can do a dramatic if inevitable overtake and snatch the title. Of course everyone understands that if Hamilton won the title behind a safety car, there would be sporting justice, but no dramatic finale. So entertainment won over sport. Hamilton is the loser because he had the title stolen by the race director breaking his own rules, and Verstappen is also the loser, because everyone knows he didn't win the title, it was given to him. Either Hamilton or Verstappen would have been a worthy champion if it had been decided fairly on the track... but the FIA have made it so that from a sporting perspective, nobody wins. But they're not interested in the sporting perspective, only the $$$ generated by the entertainment.

Losers: Hamilton, Verstappen, sporting credibility.
Winners: "Drive to Survive!" TV series.

This is not a liberty issue. Individuals live within a society. The primary purpose of vaccination is to protect the society. Protecting the individual is secondary. A healthy 18yo chooses not to take the vaccine, contracts the virus, spreads it around the care home where he works with vulnerable people who for medical reasons can't take the vaccine, and he kills them.

When you drive a car, do you always drive on the same side of the road? Why? Why not vary it a bit, drive on the right one day and on the left the next day? It's your individual freedom to do so, isn't it? Your car, your rules. Does it matter that you share the roads with other drivers? And why stick to a speed limit, when your car can do 150 easily? And why not drive when you're drunk? Should people who live within a society consider only the risk to themselves, or also consider the risk to others within the society?




Being pro-medical science means being pro-vaccine. The vaccines have been proven to be both safe and effective. Yes, some antiviral Covid products are now becoming available, but this is about treating symptoms. If you want to stop people catching it in the first place, and reduce the possibility of new mutations arising, then the only option is vaccination.

That was the year that I realised Vettel isn't actually a very good driver. Ferrari had the best car and should have won the championship fairly easily... yet somehow it went to Mercedes. Vettel made mistake after mistake in race after race, throwing away a huge number of points. I think it puts his 4 titles into perspective a bit.

I'd like to see them both there, too. But if all the big European teams were guaranteed to qualify, then what's the point of the qualification process? If there's no jeopardy, there's no point to it. This time one of those two won't make it, and they'll have to wait to try again next time around.

Of course. But a more equitable distribution of vaccines, or just selling them cheap to poorer nations, helps to reduce the amount of the virus in circulation, which reduces the number of mutations (variants), which improves things for everyone. This isn't an all-or-nothing situation. If a solution is very-good-but-not-perfect, that doesn't mean you can say 'oh, it's not perfect, therefore do nothing'.




The choice is either get vaccinated or get infected. There's no third option. Vaccination is preferable, as it means fewer deaths. Do you think that everyone should catch the virus, instead? Are you against the Covid vaccine specifically, or the concept in general? Do you think for example that the smallpox vaccine was a bad idea? Being 'anti-vaccine' means being 'pro-getting-infected', there's no other option here.




The evidence for the efficacy of the Covid vaccines is absolutely overwhelming, and building every day. Is the issue that you're somehow unaware of this, or simply that you choose to ignore it?

Early data do indeed suggest that symptoms are milder on average, but that transmissibility is vastly higher. The main reason for concern is that even if the percentage of infected people who have severe symptoms is lower, the total number of people who require hospitalisation can still be sufficiently high to overwhelm the service.

Hypothetical numbers to illustrate the point:

Delta: 10% of cases are severe, 100 people infected, so 10 people with severe symptoms.
Omicron: 5% of cases are severe, 500 people infected, so 25 people with severe symptoms.





Yes, if by "working as intended" you mean "everyone gets vaccinated". Developed nations have hoarded the vaccines, which means poorer nations are less protected and have more infections, which leads to more new variants, some of which will be at least partially vaccine-resistant, which means they spread back to developed nations. It's no coincidence that Omicron arose in a nation with a low vaccination rate.

So some random social media profile claims there have been no short- or long-term studies of Covid vaccines. If I set up a social media profile and claimed the exact opposite, would you link to it?
I don't know why you present this as if it's some kind of evidence or corroboration of your baseless claims. People have been tracking the data since the very start of this thing. And the vaccines have all gone through the standard trials process, it's all documented, all available if you'd just care to look.



 

Got it. So every country in the world that provides this data is secretly in league with each other and is working together to ensure their charts match up? Huge amounts of people are dying immediately after taking the vaccine, and yet no-one is aware of it? And what about the huge numbers of people who died from CV19 before the vaccines were available, what do you think they actually died from? Or was every country in the word coordinating on the excess deaths data, too? And all the independent, anecdotal reports from medical professionals that almost everyone who gets admitted now is unvaccinated - are they all part of the secret conspiracy, too? Bill Gates? 5G masts? Magnets? Contrails? Big Pharma? The Illuminati? Microchips? "Shedding"? Injecting disinfectant and putting sunlight inside people's bodies? Oh no, sorry, that last one is a legitimate cure, right?

It's a little hard to believe in a secret conspiracy where a sizeable proportion of the entire human population are in on it, and yet somehow manage to keep it secret. And where mutual enemies are apparently all working together.