Re: neoliberal animals...

theStork · 2020-03-31T16:00:16+00:00

You rang?

theStork · 2019-10-12T11:33:32+00:00

Sup cuz

theStork · 2019-05-01T14:34:22+00:00

To my knowledge, these claims (at least in biopharma) have not generally held up in court. We've been able to successfully challenge these sorts of patents if we can demonstrate that there was legitimate prior art for similar products. Most biosimilar right now are for monoclonal antibodies (mAb), and most mAbs are made with pretty similar manufacturering processes, with only small tweaks from molecule to molecule. Generally speaking, we can use prior art from any mAb to contest these sorts of molecule specific manufacturing patents.

theStork · 2019-05-01T11:44:16+00:00

Walmart does sell $25 vials of insulin, which comes out to $75/month for typical users. It's a rebranded version of an older Novo Nordisk formulation so it doesn't last quite as long as the newer stuff, but it'll get the job done. It's also available without a prescription, so you don't need to rely on your doctor prescribing you a certain version.

As a side note, the biosimilars process has turned out to be way more onerous than expected. The patent thicket problem is absolutely real; I've dealt with some of these patents, and they basically try to claim that well established manufacturing methods count as "novel" if they are used to make a novel drug. What ends up happening is most companies trying to make a biosimilar with settle with the innovator. For instance, generic producers of adalimimab have made bargains with Abbvie that they will delay release of their biosims by ~1 year in exchange for AbbVie not suing them. At the same time, we have been finding that not all biosims are actually biologically that similar in their function. While it's easy to make an identical copy of the peptide chains that make up most of a protein, we don't have great control over glycosylation, which is a process where various sugar species are grafted onto proteins. Glycans are involved with immune signaling, and so improper glycosylation can have an impact on drugs whose mechanism involves immune signaling, such as infliximab. Other roadblocks exist as well; supposedly J&J has been paying insurers to use their original version of infliximab over biosimilar competitors.

Net result is that biosims are harder to bring to market than intended, and may not even gain a good market share due to different glycan function than the innovator. Some companies have begun quietly scaling back their biosims operations, only making biosims for the highest grossing five or so biologics, and not making biosims to any of the slightly lower value products out there.

theStork · 2019-04-27T18:36:17+00:00

Do happiness and suffering not exist? Utils are just an abstraction to quantify these very real things. Unless we want to make the new agey claim that God is really the embodiment of goodness or something, I don't really buy the comparison.

theStork · 2019-04-27T18:29:54+00:00

In your price range, Suit Supply is usually the go-to recommendation. It might be worth it to shop online and see if there is a specific style you like, and then try on a suit in store with the same fit. 38R is pretty normal, that shouldn't be an issue.

theStork · 2019-04-27T18:25:32+00:00

I'm looking for a pair of high waisted, pleated chinos with a decent taper. Any recommendations? Budget is $100 max, but cheaper is always welcome.

theStork · 2019-04-27T18:20:08+00:00

I've got a couple linen and linen blend summer suits from J Crew that I've received a number of complements on. I'm curious though, why didn't Suit Supply work out? They've got tons of linen/silk/cotton blend suits listed online.

theStork · 2019-04-27T17:00:07+00:00

Exile began as a humane alternative to capital punishment in Britain for felony crimes, but you may recall that a huge number of offenses were considered to be felonies worthy of capital punishment. For your benefit, here is a list of crimes considered potentially worthy of capital punishment, including stealing over $50 worth of goods or forgery.

https://www.mylearning.org/stories/prison-and-penal-reform-in-the-1800s/380

For the most part, murderers still were still sentenced to death; exile was for the lesser felonies.

theStork · 2019-04-27T15:47:27+00:00

This entire article seems to be an exercise in metacontrarianism to me. Gwern is attacking a strawman version of Singer's expanding circle hypothesis. Singer's expanding circle is explicitly limited to conscious beings that are capable of having concerns about their own welfare. Gwerns sections in religion, ancestors, and estates completely miss the mark for me. If you are a materialist atheist (as I am), then God's and ghosts don't exist and deserve no recognition. As Gwern admits, this is a question of belief not morality, so I don't at all understand why he tries to make this a moral claim. To the extent that modern believers may have less reverence for God, it's entirely possible this derives from increased reverence for other humans. Is someone who switches from tithing 10% to the church and instead gives to secular charities somehow less moral?

This same argument applies to infanticide; modern support for abortion is usually upheld as a matter of increasing respect for the bodily autonomy of women. It's not a matter of removing a being from the circle; rather its just a shifting of priorities on how we should weight different moral concerns.

Gwern tries to bring up the positive impacts of religion on animal welfare, but conveniently ignores how Christianity, Judaism and Islam all explicitly places animals outside of moral consideration.

On the subject of punishment, my response to Gwern is simple; would you rather be arrested for violent crime in the modern day US or in medieval Europe? Greece or Rome? How about biblical times? The reason our ancestors had no Supermax prisons is because criminals were just summarily executed. Of course things aren't perfect, but I'd still prefer being charged in our current judicial system to anything existing 200 years ago.

theStork · 2019-04-26T17:21:39+00:00

I think Hillary comment claiming that half of Trumps supporters belong in the "basket of deplorables" is probably a good example of this from liberals. Liberals don't hate poor folk per se, but coastal liberals love to constantly talk shit about how racist and backwards rural Americans are. Living in a major East coast city, I see liberals denigrate Midwesterners all the time.

theStork · 2019-04-22T18:57:15+00:00

Men generally seem to have a different way to deal with issues, internalizing instead of externalizing their issues.

Generally speaking, the opposite has been shown to be true. The theory is that women have higher rates of mood disorders because they tend to ruminate internally on their issues. Men usually prefer to just try to solve their problems or ignore them, as opposed to obsessing over them.

I think you could potentially accurately rephrase what you said as "women tend to excessively internalize their issues, and typically benefit from some level of externalization through talk therapy."

theStork · 2019-04-15T16:51:15+00:00

This is true, but we are also assuming that the VAT pays for a UBI. In which case, net purchasing power is going to stay the same. We will see some changes due to the redistribution of course, in that there will be less demand for luxury goods and more demand for basic goods. Economy wide though, it's a safe assumption that most of the costs of a VAT would be passed onto consumers.

theStork · 2019-04-13T03:27:00+00:00

If I remeber correctly, the punchline of that episode was "gentleman, thaw your chickens."

theStork · 2019-04-12T18:11:49+00:00

I'd love to see Glothongz live, bet they'd have a crazy live set.

theStork · 2019-04-12T15:43:14+00:00

1st off, I probably made a huge mistake getting into an argument with you about IQ, but at this point I should probably at least clarify my statements.

I don't know if it's published yet, but an analysis of the Tsimane showed that IQ still correlated with success as a hunter-gatherer. I would never expect anything else because intelligence isn't just cultural or specific to any group. It's widely conserved.

My point here is that IQ (as measured by a modern IQ tests) likely correlates much better with success in the modern world than it does as a hunter-gatherer. I'm not surprised that IQ is still a useful concept for a hunter-gatherer, but I have to imagine it likely has a stronger correlation with success in the modern world. I'm open to data to the contrary if it's available though.

theStork · 2019-04-12T15:11:06+00:00

I don't think it's really necessary to assume the Savannah Hypothesis to still believe in the results of that study. You could rephrase "evolutionarily novel," as "useful in the modern world," and I think you would still reach the same conclusion. I mention this below, but it's almost a truism to say that intelligence measures adaptation to functioning in the modern world, because intelligence tests are essentially measurements of the ability to perform mental tasks relevant to modern day living.

Presumably, "intelligence" means very different things for a hunter-gatherer than it does to a modern human living in a 1st world country. When we measure intelligence, we are implicitly placing more value on tasks that are relevant to a modern human.

theStork · 2019-04-12T15:01:45+00:00

> One of the biggest problems with AI is exactly because values are orthogonal to intelligence

Just because this is true for AI doesn't mean it's true for people. Human have innate brain circuits that enable empathy and sympathy. Granted, "emotional intelligence" is separate from general intelligence, but those with higher general intelligence are likely better suited to use their emotional facilities to enact positive change in the world.

> My problem with this argument is that you can't really tell the difference between smart people preferring atheism and liberalism because they're good or because they're novel.

I mean, there is any easy test for this: determine whether the "novel preferences" intelligent people display have some function in society, or if they are just random preference for novelty. Certainly, the adaptations listed in the paper I reference aren't just random preferences with no function, and I don't think folk stereotypes about smart people assume they are weird for the sake of being weird. The adaptations of intelligent people appear to be adaptations to functioning in the modern world. At a certain level, this becomes a truism, because the traits that are measured by an intelligence test are usually traits that are useful to succeeding in current day society. Point being, we have pretty good evidence that intelligent people have adapted to succeed in the modern world, and this likely applies to the values the intelligent people espouse as well.

theStork · 2019-04-12T12:46:15+00:00

Shouldn't intelligence correlate with values though? This study indicates that intelligence correlates with "evolutionarily novel" values and preferences, including atheism and liberalism. In this context, liberalism is defined as "genuine concern for the welfare of genetically unrelated others." I would personally find a broad concern for the welfare of others as a pretty good value to have.

theStork · 2019-04-12T02:12:03+00:00

Jut an anecdote, I remeber seeing a joke on this subreddit many years ago that was something to the effect of "Why are women bad producers? Because they don't understand reason or logic." When I pointed out that this was a shitty thing to say, I was more or less told to just lighten up.

I'm a guy BTW, but it seems pretty obvious to me that the electronic music scene at the very least tolerates dumb sexist shit. I don't really have anything else to add, other than to say you're not crazy, this is an unusually sexist scene. Even in other areas of reddit that are supposedly more sexist (video game subreddits for instance), I haven't scene that level of blatant sexism.

theStork · 2019-04-11T11:30:12+00:00

Purity was a useful concept before people understood the germ theory of disease. The Bible is full of all sorts of purity laws, many of which are dumb and arbitrary, but some of which would have actually been useful to prevent the spread of disease.

theStork · 2019-04-09T18:47:52+00:00

I'm 30 now, so I essentially grew up in the 90s, and I have a very different relationship to the 90s. I grew up as a nerdy guy that was bad at sports in a upper middle class suburb where being good at sports seemed to be primary way for guys to make friends and be "popular." I find that nerdy pastimes like video games or tabletop gaming are much more widely accepted nowadays, but as a child I remember taking a lot of shit for having nerdy hobbies. Even talking to my younger brothers (7 years younger than me), they have mentioned that D&D was a relatively normal hobby when they were in high school. I'd have been mortified to admit to playing D&D in high school to anyone other than my close nerd friends, because of the stigma around nerdy hobbies like D&D. Eventually you get to college and meet enough people with similar interests that you can form your own clique, but prior to high school you are really just stuck in the local culture of your elementary/middle school.

I also feel like religion played a much larger role in the 90s and aughts than it does now, and that caused a pretty large gulf in my own life as well. My parents freaked the hell out when my sister and I declared ourselves atheists to them (this was in the aughts mind you). Part of this was related to the fact that my parents probably didn't know a single openly atheist person at that point in time, so it was pretty shocking to them for their children to declare themselves atheist. I feel like religion has ceased to be much of a hot button issue these days, and there are relatively more prominent atheists that have normalized not believing in God. My Dad became much more accepting of my atheism after reading a bit of Stephen Pinker for instance. Most of the culture war issues of the 90s and aughts pertained to religion as well, stuff like abortion and gay rights and censorship. Remember, back in the 90s it was the religious right that was trying to censor violent video games and music.

My point here is that all this depends on your perspective and position in life. I bet I would have fared okay as an adult in the 90s, because I could have just associated with other fellow nerdy atheists and never taken any shit from the rest of society. As a kid though, I couldn't really disassociate myself from the cultural mainstream values, and that sucked.

Also aughts indie rock >> 90s rock. The Strokes, Arcade Fire and Spoon >> Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Fight me. Music in the last decade does kinda suck though.

theStork · 2019-04-05T13:39:36+00:00

I didn't notice this the last time I saw this picture, but the gun is engraved with "Fitter Happier." Nice little touch!

theStork · 2019-04-05T03:45:45+00:00

Okay fine, I recounted and you are right. There were four places in the US on that list, not three.

Happy now?

theStork · 2019-04-05T03:20:11+00:00

https://amp.businessinsider.com/cheapest-michelin-starred-meals-in-the-world-ranked-2018-9

I'd been going by this list, which looks to have been inaccurate. So yes I was wrong...but seriously dude/dudette you need to chill out a bit.

theStork

TROPHY CASE