maybe they shouldn't have been allowing people into nursing homes, and letting old people interact with the general population?

https://globalnews.ca/news/6713217/coronavirus-bc-doctors-letter/

is there a possibility for critical mass to develop as a response to the government's overreaction? is this something for the left to potentially take advantage of?

the early numbers i've seen are pretty disappointing; if anything, unrest seems to be more likely to align on the right, as fake leftists basically shut-up and fall in line and do what they're told.

but, i'll be keeping an eye on how the opposition develops. that which is unsustainable will not be sustained. it's more a question of how this explodes than if it will, and we'll have to see if any opportunities arise out of the inevitable backlash.

ok.

let's try again to refocus, and let's hope the machine stays stable while i do.

governments right now are being forced to make a choice, and they are irrationally choosing the few over the many.

but, it's not sustainable.

people will revolt.

a more exact hospital comparison would be if you suppose that the power's out and you're on battery power and you have to make a choice between using the battery to power five low-power respirators or one high power life support system. that forces you to have to make a choice, and you should of course choose the five over the one.

it's not that i don't get it, it's that i think it's designed to confuse the issue, and that should be pushed back against. bringing the hospital problem in as equivalent to the trolley problem is reducing the trolley problem to a question of if you should play god or not, and that's disingenuous - especially if you don't believe in god. but, even if you did, do you think god is responsible for the situation? that would be a pretty shitty god, wouldn't it? if a god were to act like that, it would abdicate it's privileges immediately. so, i don't even want to consider that premise, i want to look at the issue as being driven by randomness, by probability, by statistics; i want to pull the rug out from under the religious debate. i just don't want to have it at all.

in the trolley problem, you're forced to make a choice and need to make it responsibly; in the hospital problem, you are not, and should not interfere.

the ideal would be to not have to decide, and if you don't have to decide you should not.

but, if you must decide, if you have no choice, if there is no way out, you should choose the path of least disruption, always.

"you could walk away from the switch."

well, then you're deciding to let it hit the five instead of the one.

"that's the same as doing nothing in the hospital problem."

no, because your actions aren't explicitly responsible for the death of the five patients, who are dying of unrelated disease, like they are for the death of the five walkers. if you walk away from the switch, it's your fault when it hits the five walkers; if you walk away from the hospital, it isn't your fault that those five people die from those five unrelated diseases.

i guess maybe that's something else i'm doing here - i'm converting the problem into an issue of individual responsibility. i guess that philosophers want to talk about broad moral issues, but who cares about that? what's real is what choices a person has in front of them, and what follows as a consequence of their actions.

"but, the lone trolley walker was healthy, too. there's no reason to think that person would have died if you didn't pull that switch. so, it's just like killing the healthy organ donor."

maybe i didn't articulated that as well as i'd like. 

so, with the trolley problem, there's a train coming and the train is going to kill five people or one person. you really have a choice between whether the train is going to kill one or five, and you have to make that choice. 

with the hospital problem, you have five sick people dying of presumably different ailments, and one healthy person that has nothing to do with any of this. you don't have to make a choice between one outcome or the other.

so, am i reducing it to the cause? well, i'm pointing out that it's not equivalent. you may try to force me into seeing the lone trolley walker as being sacrificed, like the organ donor would be, but i'm going to push back against that. 

so, let's flip the question over - which scenario is more active and which is more passive? in the trolley problem, you're explicitly deciding who dies and who doesn't, and i'm saying you should decide on the option of least disruption. in the hospital problem, you don't have to explicitly decide, and i'm claiming you consequently shouldn't, you should take a more passive approach.

but, i'm also pointing out that you can alter the scenario so it's more equivalent.

"but, nobody is going to disagree that you should take somebody off life support to donate their organs, except maybe certain religious groups. it's not much of a dilemma."

well, nobody really disagrees that you should flip the switch so the trolley hits the loner, either, except perhaps extreme calvinists that are going to argue those five weren't in the elect, or something - that's really not much of a dilemma, either.

i suspect that the hospital problem was probably introduced as equivalent to the trolley problem by some christian that wanted to confuse people, and has succeeded in doing so. but, these things should be decoupled; conflating them just confuses the logic.

i know that religious people are going to tell me i'm terrible.

but, i think they're stupid.

so, we can agree to be mutually baffled by each other.

if you knew the fat man had cancer, then you would be obligated to push him in front of the train, for sure.

i want to work through the conversation article a little bit.

i mentioned that i don't like how the thing is framed, and i think that forms the basis between the difference in the formulations of the problems. these are being presented as equivalent issues, and they aren't.

when you kill somebody to take their organs, you have the opportunity to talk to them, you're not in a split-second choice like you are with the trolley. the article wants to make it seem like actively killing is less permissible than passively killing, but that's misinterpreting the context - if you can talk to the potential organ donor, then you should be able to yell at the loner to get off the fucking tracks. so, in the trolley problem somebody is going to die regardless, and you're supposed to be forced to choose a lesser evil. in the hospital problem, the potential organ donor is healthy, and you're not forced to choose one or the other.

so, diverting the train is permissible (i would argue that not diverting the train should even be treated as criminal negligence) because you can't stop the loss of life, and killing the potential organ donor is not because they only have a broken leg and are not in a situation of certain death.

now, what if the potential organ donor was on life support, perhaps brain dead? that's a more comparable scenario, and i would argue you should kill the organ donor, because the loss of life is unavoidable.

how about pushing the fat guy into the way of the train? that's like the organ donor problem - he's not near death. well, unless you want to argue that obesity statistically reduces life expectancy, and he's probably not going to live much longer, anyways.

what have our governments done here, though?

they've actually diverted the trolley from the path with one person to the path with five! 

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/study-of-the-day-almost-everyone-would-kill-1-person-to-save-5/250066/

i would like to see the system take aggressive steps to protect the vulnerable. i'm not advocating cutting them loose.

but, do i think these lockdowns are morally justified?

i don't. 

i think this situation is retarded...

"but, all life is sacred."

eh.

i'm not following you on that one.

there's a lot of scenarios where i'm perfectly content to let people die, or even actively kill them. 

i guess this life-is-sacred thing is a religious position, and that, if you don't have a religion, you're not likely to see the logic in it.

if anything, we're perhaps failing the trolley dilemma.

i've never liked the way this is framed, and have tended to push back on it. and, i insist i'm not missing the point.

but to extrapolate the point - when you have to choose, you should choose the past of least disruption.

http://theconversation.com/the-trolley-dilemma-would-you-kill-one-person-to-save-five-57111

it's the old cliche.

if you could kill one person in order to save 999 would you do it?

we are forcing 99.9% of the population to sacrifice and suffer for the benefit of 0.1%, under the threat of violence if they don't comply.

that's not a prisoner's dilemma. i don't know what that is.

the best comparison i can think of is to casino capitalism, where 99.9% suffer for the benefit of 0.1%, due to the violence of property rights.

there is no rational analysis here, and there's nothing to win. it's just a dumb approach, policy-wise.

is there a prisoner's dilemma around covid-19?

no.

i gain nothing by co-operating - i have to sacrifice, entirely. and, i don't see any value in doing so. i'm being forced to sacrifice at gunpoint whether i like it or not.

that's not the right model for this situation.

this is more of a scenario where a dictatorship of the elderly is dictating policy to everybody else, at their benefit and the expense of everybody else. and it won't last two years.

it won't last two months.

governments need to adjust their strategies, because this isn't sustainable.

i'm skeptical that they actually slowed it down much at all.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2237544-who-expert-we-need-more-testing-to-beat-coronavirus/

so, you idiots shut the world down because you didn't want to discriminate against the elderly.

what do you do when it doesn't work?

those numbers in south korea are climbing back up....

i had to take a detour there to write some documents.

the court is insisting that i file motions via consent, but i can't because i'm disabled; i'd have to sign a waiver that says nobody affected is disabled, which is impossible. so, i filed a motion asking the judge to acknowledge my disability, and his duty of care in the matter.

my laptop went screwy on me when i plugged a usb key in, so i'm formatting it and am going to have to reimage again. they might have dropped something in there. whatever it is, i have to start over.

and, i've got time. clearly.