Easy Truth

In protection of individual rights, whatever defense is mounted needs to be voluntarily implemented. If it cannot, that would mean the end of the human race and that will be the argument for authoritarian control.

More information from https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/27/scott-gottlieb-coronavirus-new-york-152094 I did not realize that he was considered an alarmist by the white house. He specifically mentions the temperature element, that we may be having new travel restrictions on South Africa etc. Interesting mention of use of copper will increase (mentioned around the end)

"Taiwan’s healthcare system is more like Medicare-for-All. The mortality rate from COVID-19 is very low, but so is the number of cases per 1,000 population. I can’t explain the latter. The author asserts the existence of “high traffic with mainland China,” an innuendo that Taiwan's exposure to the coronavirus is as high as, maybe higher than, other countries. Anyway, the healthcare system has not faced a stress test similar to Italy, Spain, Switzerland, or even the USA." Regarding "I can’t explain the latter." Well, you have to explain it. Taiwan has a huge portion of its population go to mainland china to work and come back. My understanding is the testing they have done. The lack of testing seems to be the common problem for areas that are had hit. And reasons for that can in fact be regulations preventing it or preventing it from being profitable enough.

The implication is that healthcare in this case means helping the person's own immune system deal with the problem, i.e. "supporting" the immune system. -Warm clothing in winter ends up being an element of healthcare -Having a place to live that has ease of accessibility to water to hydrate may also help But in South Korea, healthcare went beyond all this as in putting mandatory location monitoring of an infected person. Kind of a big brother approach that in this case worked. What I fear is we may be surprised that some fascist or socialist systems may do better than us in this crisis.

One element that is not being talked about is temperature in the country. The northern hemisphere had its winter. Now the Southern Hemisphere is going to start theirs. This seems to have an effect but there does not seem to be any declaration of the "temperature" factor anywhere. So in theory, their winter is starting so their cases should go up and ours should go down "naturally caused". https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

Tell me if I am correct, I think you mean: covid-19_mortality_with_no_healthcare - a_country-s_healthcare_variable = country-s_death_rate (since healthcare decreases mortality) (Italian health variable) is 1.3% therefore 9.8% - 1.3% = 8.5% Italian Mortality Is this correct? Other than that more questions: "As a result, South Korean healthcare did what Italy’s already undersupplied system could not do—cope effectively with the pandemic and manage to get it under control without shutting down the entire country in the process. " There is a mention that the market encouraged an increase in hospital beds (Yaron Brook made a reference to US preventing market forces from providing more hospital beds) but why is it profitable to have more hospital beds (when there is no pandemic)? What is the incentive? The other technique that has been mentioned is the test and track method. Is that also less effective in a socialised medical system?

***Moderator Note*** Split from Correspondence and Coherence Blog So bottom line what I am seeing is that Switzerland has almost 10 times better healthcare than Italy. Switzerland 0.0133815948228584‬ death rate Italy has 0.0985891060483405 death rate But did I get that right, Italy has almost a 10 percent death rate? I thought the Coronavirus had a 2 percent mortality rate.

I may be misunderstanding but “square roots (plural) of the positive real numbers” is defining a universal, it has many referents, it does not "only" referer to “square root of 17.”

Yes, and the virus within this person is an indiscriminate lethal weapon. From a broad philosophical point of view, that is initiating force. In this social context it does not matter if this threat from the person is intentional or not. The force used is in retalation to the threat.

That is justifiable as a form of "self defense". It is not an initiation of force. Furthermore, boycotting, staying away from an interaction, is not initiating force either (although some seem to claim that it is).

To be precise: Morally Wrong NO. Mistake(nly) Wrong YES.

Of course he did something wrong, he failed to anticipate Amazon’s and Ebay’s PR moves.

The argument seems to boils down to: "if there is an infinitesimal (or more) chance of having a life worth living" it is irrational to give up the "warm body". Is that the case? (I ask to see if that is the argument I should focus on)

There seemed to be agreement that a prospect of continuous intolerable pain is a justification for suicide, but maybe not. A tsunami of molten lava is coming at you. We don't owe it to the universe to survive. If it was absolutely true that (incessant intolerable pain) was the future, would that justify suicide?

Speaking objectively, descriptively, anything you do is ultimately for yourself, no matter what you do. Motivation simply means doing it for you. There is no escaping that. Anything you do, (first person), requires a payoff. There is no such thing as sacrifice (descriptively). On the other hand, speaking normatively, prescriptively, (Which Rand emphasizes regarding selfishness) anything you do "should" be for yourself, requires a thought process. You first have to identity what is yourself. Who are you? What are your boundaries? What is what you want vs. what they want? Sometimes they are the same and sometimes they diverge. Your definition of life ends up being "having a warm (live) body". Anything you do to destroy the "warm body" is unethical. Ethics starts and ends with the "warm body". You are simply looking at life as quantity of time rather the quality of it, the worth. Sometimes that is clear enough for guidance. But it is not all encompassing. The only way that one can identify an altruistic act is when it has NO benefit at all for oneself. None at all. For that to happen, the motive has to be supernatural, unnatural, something that does not belong in this world, it is from out of this world. That is the essence of the "irrationality", it is an "out of this world thinking". That can be a god that will reward you after you die, it can be a belief in karma in the next life, it can be a categorical imperative, it can be your favorite guru telling you what to want and believe, or it can be the culture and parents teaching you to grow up to give your kidney to your brother. It is believing that "I don't have a right to live my life the way I want to live it". There's the sacrifice. (also an absence of self esteem) To say you can't commit suicide in effect is going to be altruistic. It is a belief that you can't live your life the you want. In effect, you are the perpetrator of altruism in this context. IN this case, you are not basing going against your self interest on an arbitrary commandment, you are basing it on a mystical idea. By "life" having this absolute and mystical intrinsic value, i.e. this intrinsic value that does not exist, you are encouraging "out of this world thinking". Yet you claim you are being rational. Do you see the problem?

It doesn't matter if it was duty, altruism is sacrificing yourself in some way for someone else, even your own kid. To knowingly die for a value means that the value is worth more than your own life - that is altruism. Altruism is the negation of self interest. In practice it would be almost impossible to do, but it is possible to believe in it and to create policies based on it. It can be to your self interest to die. Even to die for someone else. As long as it is to your self interest, as long as it is not due to something you were taught regarding "the good", which when examined (rationally) by yourself HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR SELF INTEREST, then it is altruistic. The issue is that with any choice, with every choice, there a benefit and risk calculation. Sometimes it is acceptable or even necessary to do what will have a large amount of risk to your life. Some people win big with those bets. But one can nevertheless consider those choices as not prudent, not self interested. Hanging on to life, as survival, can be counterproductive in creating a life worth living.

Yes it could. And this would imply that sleepwalking is chosen in that way (when conscious). It seems that the argument boils down to: some sleepwalk and some don't, that implies that a choice took place. (maybe, just trying to understand your argument)

A correction needed: An individual, leveraging a rock to roll down a hill, in the event, brought about that same result (knowingly or unknowingly) is the basis of the differences between homicide, negligent homicide, etc. Why do some sleepwalk? If it can be shown to be the result of ideas accepted earlier in life, would you have a lead to unravel further? From a third person perspective, one sees another sleep walk. In his sleep he breaks your window. You have a right to get compensated. That alone is the acknowledgement of his free-will. There may be thoughts he had before that can justify this judgement, but even without knowing the actual reason, one will still hold him responsible. And again, this conclusion is in a social context. In a personal, first person perspective, context, the sleepwalker has no memory of breaking the window. So it is not reality to him, there was no choice that he remembers. So the issue of free will is invisible until you tell him what he did etc. (social context).

Please elaborate, I don't understand this. We are dead when we are dead. The domain of life is temporary.

That is because "we" are the ones who want to live. There are the "we" that don't want to live for (I claim) proper reasons. The holdup here may be what we mean by rational. I mean "well reasoned". I don't mean be rational and make a mistake. I mean think in a correct manner and come up with that conclusion. Irrational would mean to not think in the correct manner. Implication is that a conclusion that "suicide is the best of all choices" indicates an incorrect way of thinking. But what if it is in fact the best of all choices? I suppose that "life" is two broad a statement. It should be a "worthwhile life" is the standard rather than just mere vegetative survival.

Altruism of the highest kind. They are "his". It is his self interest that it acts on. He wants them to live, as in "I could not live knowing that he did to them". Altruism would be if he sacrificing himself for a duty to the neighbors kid that he never met, based on some sense of duty.

"the whole principle of action of any kind, is to act toward your values" First, I assume you mean "rational values". The value of one's life, is determined by the one living it (the valuer). It is not a given. If life was intrinsically good, suicide would be impossible to someone would can perceive this consistent beauty. One would have to be blind to the "value" emanating from "being". Based on your determination, laws could be written to punish you for attempting suicide. If life is intrinsically "good", then you would be correct. That would imply that there is something "out there" (intrinsical) that guarantees life to be worthwhile. There isn't. Life just is. It is neither good nor bad. For the most part, you end up making it good or bad based on your choices, one way or the other. Suicide, if desired, is valued. That is an objective observation. If the person uses all means to evaluate their situation and determines that death is the best option of all the "bad" options, then suicide can be rational in that case. When Rommel accepted the deal he got from Hitler, to die as a hero and guarantee his wife and child's treatment, it was of value to him. It was in fact rational unless there was some intrinsic angel or fairy that could have fixed things.

This is in a social context where if you are sleepwalking, you are still responsible. But is this "action" a form of choice or will? (if it is, the choice to live may fall under that category) Ultimately is this an argument for a non-physical basis for freewill? Or when we discover what the mind is, whatever "it" is, will be bound by causality?

What I'm describing is what being a human is like. All of the things I've mentioned aren't unique to me, they are intrinsic in human nature. It's death that is anti-human. After thinking more about it, I think what you mean by immortal is non-aging. Meaning mortal but non-aging (never getting old). In that way, one would go to work and eat because if they don't they will die. If, on the other hand, one is immortal, then the concept of motivation, pleasure and pain go away. Why go to work, you don't have to. Why stop yourself from eating all the ice cream you want, you will never die. Why prevent yourself from jumping off a cliff, it won't kill you. There would be no "ought to" or ethics, no right way or wrong way, no better or worse way. What is the reason to do anything? Clearly, immortality is not of this world. It is only in imagination.

What I'm describing is what being a human is like. All of the things I've mentioned aren't unique to me, they are intrinsic in human nature. It's death that is anti-human. Okay, death is anti human. Obviously death is not human just as life is not human. They are different concepts. Mortality is an attribute of being human. In fact living in a body is also part of the definition of being human. Once these attributes are not present, one would be describing a different entity.