http://ranprieur.com/#9a417fe513f58988c3b5b1e84cfc57397194a79b 2020-08-03T15:30:35Z Ran Prieur http://ranprieur.com/ ranprieur@gmail.com http://ranprieur.com/#dcb2ea4b1cc7ef4bc2ff801c5201548f02d0d999 2020-08-03T15:30:35Z August 3. Unrelated stuff, starting with more Coronavirus. Here's a chart that shows the United States cases per day, and this chart shows the deaths per day. Notice that the April deaths per day were double the July deaths per day, and yet the July cases per day were double the April cases per day. It's strange that nobody's talking about this.

I see three possibilities. 1) Testing is revealing more cases, and the actual infection rate in April was up to four times higher. 2) Deaths are not being counted, and the death rate right now is up to four times higher. 3) The virus is up to four times less deadly, either through a) better medical care, b) younger people getting it, or c) mutation.

New subject, from the psychonaut subreddit, a trip report where a guy talked to his own subconscious. He noticed that his hands were doing stuff without his head, so he started asking his hands questions, and they would respond with thumbs up or thumbs down. My first thought is, if we could develop a cheap technology that could do this reliably, it would be the biggest thing ever. My next thought is, the real mystery is not the subconscious, but the modern human mode of consciousness. How did we end up with this thing that controls everything we do, yet it understands so little?

New subject, from the Ask Old People subreddit, What are some things that actually sucked about the 1950s? This makes me optimistic, because if the world got that much better in 50 years, how much better can it get in the next 50? Also, as much as we like to bash the boomers, it was mostly them who drove those changes. I'm hopeful that Gen Z, whatever they end up calling themselves, will finally sort out the economy so that money stops ruining everything.

For example, The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free. What the essay is mainly about, is that we have the technology, right now, to have an information utopia, but economics is getting in the way, specifically intellectual property, and that poverty prevents creative people from giving their stuff away free.

]]>