This is one step away from "why stop at stoplights, if everyone else does?" and as we see in Russia, the very rich behave exactly like this. That's the Republican end game: to be rich dictators who don't have to obey the rules that the little people like us have to obey.

Damned straight, @smellsofbikes@pluspora.com.

I listened to the interview where he said that. Within a few moments, he both said that it was so effective that you probably don't need it if the people around you are vaccinated, and that it was completely questionable, so it should be tested... on the most vulnerable people who will probably die if they get sick. Then he immediately said that it should be tested on the young and healthy as though he hadn't said the previous bit.

So it's both incredibly effective and a complete unknown, and any further tests should be done to those who are under the most risk or the least.

It wasn't even an argument, just a call to own the libs, basically. The libs want you to be vaccinated. So don't be.

It's jaw-dropping, @Michael Moceri. I find it easier to understand the republican "mind" when I stop thinking of it as a mind. A Cartesian "reflex arc" may be more accurate. It is certainly not any kind of mind that has evolved to understand anything resembling logic.

"Why do I need to go to school if everyone else does?" /sarcasm

IMO the French Revolution probably killed just as many or more innocents as truly awful irredeemable "bourgeois." Inferior leaders like Ron Johnson just make that scenario more likely here in the United States. Our leaders need to be looking for ways to ease back the hammer without unintentional discharge not pull the @$%!ing trigger!

In modern America you can become wealthy and famous two ways. Be actually talented in public or be an idiot in public. You get the same result once the media sprays it across the wires..
Being an idiot is, of course, much easier..

To be fully cold-hearted and rational about it, @Richard Healy, it's what we in the biz call a signal detection problem. Imagine you've got an measurement device that yields a numerical measure along some dimension x, where x is a proxy for some quantitie(s) in the universe that signal the presence of some property (e.g., in psychophysics, this property might be something like the brightness or orientation of a line in a visual display; in politics, the property might be something like propensity to do great harm to others out of selfishness and stupidity or simply "republicanism" for short).

Now, the thing about dimension x is that it's a noisy signal, with the result that republicans form a Gaussian distribution with mean m(r) and standard deviation sigma in the domain of x, and non-republicans form a distribution with mean m(d) < m(r) and standard deviation sigma.

Given a measured value x(i), your task is to decide whether x(i) came from the distribution r or the distribution d. The problem is that these two distributions will necessarily overlap. (The reason is that a Gaussian is defined over the entire range from negative to positive infinity in x, so it is impossible for the two not to overlap.)

The most rational course of action in this situation is to place a decision criterion, theta, in x at the point where the distributions d and r cross. This decision criterion will minimize your error classifying any x as either coming from d or r.

But here's the point: No matter where you place theta, you will always make errors. For any value of x, you will either classify x as an r if x > theta and as a d if x <= theta. If you classify x as an r and it really is an r, then you have responded correctly (a "hit"); if you classify x as a not r (i.e., as a d) and it really is a d, then that is another correct response (a "correct rejection). But because the distributions overlap, sometimes you will incorrectly classify x as a d when it's really an r (a "miss"; this happens when a member of r has a value on x that is less than theta), and sometimes you will incorrect classify a d as an r (a "false alarm"; when a d has a value on x that is above theta).

Your point is well-taken, Richard. And for reasons just like those outlined above (plus a really really imperfect measurement, x lots of innocent necks went to the Guillotine in the French Revolution.

But the logic above applies to any signal detection problem, including medical diagnosis, car buying, anything in which you are trying to adjudicate the meaning of some x (where, again, x can be a proxy for a whole bunch of separate observations/measurements).

To allow this logic -- and the inevitable conclusion that we will necessarily make mistakes -- to prevent us from making such decisions would do much more harm than accepting the occasional error. In addition, if the cost of a false alarm is greater than the cost of a miss (as it is in, for instance, the judicial system), then the solution is simply to set theta at a higher value (maximizing misses, but minimizing false alarms). This is what the standard of "innocent until proven guilty" corresponds to mathematically, even if 99% of judges have no idea that's what they're doing.

Oh, and here's an explanation (with helpful figures) of the logic I outlined above:

https://www.cns.nyu.edu/~david/handouts/sdt/sdt.html

I like Biden's approach to these imbeciles, and he knows them better than almost anyone. He doesn't even acknowledge them, react to them or respond to the idiocy spilling from their pie holes. He just goes about his day doing or trying to do what the nation and its people need and ignores that whole babbling circus..

We could all learn a lesson from Biden, @Doug Senko.

Well, Biden knows its absolutely futile to try and deal with them or respond to their idiot public comments. Don't even give them the time of day....

That's the value of a lifetime spent dealing with them. A high price to pay, but he's already paid it, so I'm glad we can reap the dividends of his experience.

Well, its the same online..don't waste time trying to annalise or comprehend their idiocy, because you can't. Its all just belligerent meaningless noise.

“A Cartesian reflex arc.” (I.e., a mindless, pre-programmed, reflexive response embodying no thought.)

@John Hummel Thanks...I love that term and its meaning. That's a new one for me.

It's not a common phrase. It's merely a description of a concept -- the "reflex arc" -- first proposed by Renee Descartes. Having observed the automata (hydraulically-controlled robots) in the French Royal Gardens in the 1600s, Descartes had the insight that all animals might operate by such mechanical means. He referred to such mechanisms as "reflex arcs", and to the responses they invoke as res extesa (external responses). He distinguished such external responses from internal (cognitive) responses (e.g., perceptions, thoughts, etc.) which he called res cogitans. Descartes believed that res extensa were subject to physical laws (like the automata in the gardens), whereas res cogitans were governed, instead, by "free will". And this, to bring it all back to something familiar, was the inspiration for his famous quote, Cogito ergo sum, "I think therefore I am", which was the first step in one of his "proofs" of the existence of "free will".

(Descartes was one smart motherfucker [he invented differential geometry, for christssake, not to mention Cartesian coordinates and the scientific method!], but his little Cogito ergo sum "proof" shows that even really smart people can believe pretty dumb things.)

Hope my increasingly splattered brain can remember this term/concept when i need it again..LOL

Sorry, Doug ;-)

This is the first time I have thought to use the term "reflex arc" to describe republican "thinking", and although it's extremely apt, it's also obscure enough that few are likely to understand the reference.

But hey, at least there are now two of us!

How about "Pavlovian Cartesian reflex arc?". (I.e., a mindless, pre-programmed, reflexive response embodying no thought, triggered by set stimuli or words, like Clinton or Soros..) LOL

Yes, "I got what I think I wanted, fuck you," has been GOP mantra since before Reagan. Trump merely bulldozed most pf the vaneer off it, so even those who desperately want to believe it isn’t true are starting to have to accept reality it is true.

Okay, now that's damned accurate about the rethuglicans & donnie cultists.

Correction: Descartes invented analytic geometry. (I don't know WTF I was thinking with "differential" geometry.)

@John Hummel FYI Differential geometry is A Thing.

Thanks, @Doc Edward Morbius. That was probably the source of my mistake (I doubt I would have invented the phrase from whole cloth).

From the web site, differential geometry is just what one would expect: The application of the differential and integral calculus to (analytic) geometry. So that would have been Leibniz and Newton rather than Descartes.

@Doug Senko, at first, I thought "Pavlovian Cartesian reflex arc" was redundant, but upon further reflection I realize it's not. On the contrary, it's excellent because it highlights the associative (i.e., old brain; associative; simple-minded) nature of the learning involved in creating said reflex arcs.

Or you could everyman’s term , which Is dumfuck. Lol

The only problem with "dumbfuck", which is entirely accurate, is that the term has lost much of its sting due to overuse. It also lacks a certain... specificity. Perhaps the best term would be something the dumbfucks themselves could understand (even if only barely), but which would get their attention due to its novelty and would really hit them where it hurts. Hmmm... this is going to require some thought. What we need is a wordsmith. (Someone like Terry Pratchett would have been perfect for this task. In fact, I have no doubt that he has solved this problem many times over. Unfortunately, his books don't come with indexes, so it's not straightforward to look it up.)