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How many masks do you wear?

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On 1/4/2021 at 3:48 PM, Doug Morris said:

I sometimes put my mask on ahead of time, or leave it on in between times.  Why go to the extra trouble of taking it off and putting it on again?  Also, I have occasionally forgotten at first to put it on, and putting it on ahead of time is one way to prevent that.

I have tentatively decided that I will wear a mask for longer than Biden says, even if the only reason is to indicate that I don't blindly follow him.

Biden still has his , you got yours ?

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2 hours ago, tadmjones said:

This isn't a good source for this claim. A bunch of the studies listed there say there is no evidence for or against. A lot of other sources are either opinion pieces, or according to the writer, also articles that have allegedly good reporting. But good reporting is already dependent on the studies it reports. If it is good reporting, it would be citing the things already mentioned in this compilation. So, that 164 is actually smaller in terms of studied evidence. A further problem is that even supposing all 164 articles were studies, and none of them had positive evidence in favor of using masks, that doesn't show how many studies really did show positive evidence in favor of using masks. Maybe there are 300 studies that show that. 

If the article were good, it would try to collect a number of studies that had positive evidence. But it didn't try to make the comparison. I'm not interested enough to do a systematic look at each link in the compilation, because it already made some big mistakes in trying to make an effective argument. One article even cited a recommendation not to use masks back when people were going crazy about mask supply and before the CDC made a sensible recommendation to use them. So, it wasn't careful about checking dates. 

 

 

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7 hours ago, Eiuol said:

This isn't a good source for this claim. A bunch of the studies listed there say there is no evidence for or against. A lot of other sources are either opinion pieces, or according to the writer, also articles that have allegedly good reporting. But good reporting is already dependent on the studies it reports. If it is good reporting, it would be citing the things already mentioned in this compilation. So, that 164 is actually smaller in terms of studied evidence. A further problem is that even supposing all 164 articles were studies, and none of them had positive evidence in favor of using masks, that doesn't show how many studies really did show positive evidence in favor of using masks. Maybe there are 300 studies that show that. 

If the article were good, it would try to collect a number of studies that had positive evidence. But it didn't try to make the comparison. I'm not interested enough to do a systematic look at each link in the compilation, because it already made some big mistakes in trying to make an effective argument. One article even cited a recommendation not to use masks back when people were going crazy about mask supply and before the CDC made a sensible recommendation to use them. So, it wasn't careful about checking dates. 

 

 

Well regardless any assessment of the sources , they at least exist.

I'm of the opinion that little more than 'common sense' is all that is needed to make a judgment that cloth face coverings are ineffective in stopping the spread of a virus. Self isolation when symptomatic is probably the most effective technique an individual can practice to help reduce spread. Air circulation and volume exchange are, I think, much more important factors in communal settings and the focus and attention that was/is placed on mask wearing doesn't come from 'science-based' arguments regarding viron concentration/exchange/spread of disease. And even with a concentrated effort using high filtration devices and or increased air volume exchange in communal settings, stopping a respiratory virus spread through a human population is ,in a practical sense, negligible or impossible.  

It is objectively hard to stop spread and the wide spread use of cloth face diapers does practically nothing, even if it had a small beneficial effect, a more prudent allocation of effort would be those steered toward treatment of the disease caused by the hard to stop virus. So the importance people place on mask compliance is , I think,  misplaced .

I see cloth mask wearing in 2022 and the degree to which people try to justify their use 'scientifically', given the real world data and common sense observations of their 'effectiveness' ie eyeglass fogging , blocking/alteration of nonverbal human communication especially considering the importance of learning how to gauge expression among the young, as coming from a political / virtue signally stance.

DM states he does it to set an example.

I don't because I think it isn't worth it.

Edited by tadmjones
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5 hours ago, tadmjones said:

'common sense' is all that is needed to make a judgment that cloth face coverings are ineffective in stopping the spread of a virus.

That doesn't make sense, common sense in today's world is that covering your mouth helps stop the spread of germs. Common sense would say that a mask would help. 

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Common sense says " cover your mouth when you cough", so your spittle doesn't land on someone else. Would mouth covering while congregating with groups of non coughing individuals have any appreciable health benefits , benefits obvious enough to 'become common sense'? It would seem if that were the case it would already be part of the culture.

I would agree that 'germ theory' is 'newer' than most behaviors that could be described as 'social norms' so ubiquitous masking may take some time to permeate culture. But the discovery of 'germ theory' has also given the understanding of relative size of particles and how they are transmitted.  

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53 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

. . . common sense in today's world is that covering your mouth helps stop the spread of germs. Common sense would say that a mask would help. 

That seems to be a major district in what people take for common sense. What we think of as common sense in one era may have been knowledge that required empirical science and shrewd innovative thinking in the earlier era from which it has descended. That bodies require work to keep moving whatever kind of non-spinning motion they are undergoing was an idea overturned by Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. But nowadays I hear young people who don't know the history say of the principle of inertia—say, of the Voyager spacecrafts now in interstellar space: they will continue to move in a constant direction, locomotion-wise, and at a constant speed unless acted upon by an external influence, viz., an external force—"well of course. That's just common sense." It's a good thing that good scientific sense gets taken in time as common sense. 

I take as common sense with that sort of heritage that to protect myself from airborne pathogens I should have a face mask in my pocket for crowded gatherings of people (and something else in my pocket were I about to get into a situation of possible exposure to an STD).

Edited by Boydstun
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2 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Common sense says " cover your mouth when you cough", so your spittle doesn't land on someone else. Would mouth covering while congregating with groups of non coughing individuals have any appreciable health benefits

Even talking and breathing can spread germs.

 

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19 minutes ago, Doug Morris said:

Even talking and breathing can spread germs.

 

Agreed , but what of it ? I'd imagine there are myriad virons that pass from host to host like parasites ,but like asymbiosisly , one way benefit to parasite with little or no cost to the host. Or perhaps it is a symbiotic relationship that 'helped evolution' develop the immune system. Aside from the effectiveness of positive pressure suits what advantage is gained with cloth masking that isn't overridden by negative effects of wearing them?

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2 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Common sense says " cover your mouth when you cough", so your spittle doesn't land on someone else.

No, that's not why, it's because there are germs regardless of if there is spittle. 

3 hours ago, tadmjones said:

It would seem if that were the case it would already be part of the culture.

I mean, it is in America. And if you meant masks, it is pretty much part of the culture now. 

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"To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, the man who was—no matter what his errors—the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification."

Is the mask part of your identity as a human consciousness?  

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2 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Here's a link to a study which I assume will not pass OO muster but ..

The study is fine. It mentioned some limitations like how close the measurement device was. It doesn't conclude that facemasks don't help, it concludes that facemasks and things like covering your mouth with a tissue don't block everything and might not make a huge difference with severe pandemics. In other words, it's not the most effective thing in the world, but nowhere does it say that covering your mouth is a waste or does nothing. How much or how little a difference it makes was not evaluated, even though we can infer that other people covering their mouth does not offer full protection.

 

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1 hour ago, Tenderlysharp said:

"To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. Centuries ago, the man who was—no matter what his errors—the greatest of your philosophers, has stated the formula defining the concept of existence and the rule of all knowledge: A is A. A thing is itself. You have never grasped the meaning of his statement. I am here to complete it: Existence is Identity, Consciousness is Identification."

Is the mask part of your identity as a human consciousness?  

Is my subjective experience of consciousness equivalent to the concept of human consciousness? 

Maybe we should check with Stephen .

Are asking about cloth masks , or the more ephemeral (?) act of altering your appearance to others ? A projection of a nonA you?

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10 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Is my subjective experience of consciousness equivalent to the concept of human consciousness? 

Maybe we should check with Stephen .

Are asking about cloth masks , or the more ephemeral (?) act of altering your appearance to others ? A projection of a nonA you?

Tad, one's way of appearing to others or to oneself in the mirror would be a bit of what Damasio called one's extended consciousness and one's extended self. That is the self we usually think of as our self. It includes one's long-term memory of one's life, the position one has in society, the ideas and organizations one identifies with, and I would say also the deliberate ways one makes one's emotional and physical appearance for others and for oneself. Rand remarked that oneself is one's mind. I agree, and mind in that sense is one's thinking, feeling, connections to sources of knowledge, and one as sharer with others of the world, experiences, and life-making. But first and foremost, mind is one's embodied thinking. As a system of perception and control, one's self that is one's mind is an entity. But it is a doer as well, that is, it falls into both of Rand's categories entity and action. 

I've noticed that when one has an addiction to something like cigarettes or beer, one may find it hard to think of oneself as living without them. They have become part of oneself. But people who have succeeded in quitting find in a while they are still themselves. I don't think a germ-mask or wearing a dust-mask in the shop are so tightly tied to one's extended identity as are addictions such as cigarettes. Those masks are woven into one's habits, like the habit of using a cane for while. The mask of the Lone Ranger is more essential to his social persona than anyone wearing a health-mask, pretty sure.

Tad, in waking hours, I think relation of one's subjective experience of consciousness to human consciousness as awareness of existents is this (from standpoint of my own philosophy in "Existence, We"):

"Grasps in observational acts of consciousness are actions. Making statements are actions. The fact of consciousness is implicitly affirmed in making and grasping statements about existence. The fact of consciousness, one’s own and others’, is the fact of an activity, a fact of living activity. One does not wait on education in biology to know one is alive, to grasp in know-with attending observation that the self and other of consciousness are intending and alive.50 Implied in the act of grasping any statement about existence is the fact of living action.

", , , Consciousness is living action itself, as intender. Self-consciousness is living existence itself, as intender and self-controller. Life conscious of itself is us self-conscious and other-conscious. In any knowing of consciousness is knowing of life. To imagine a consciousness not a living feature of living entity is to neglect the essential of life in one’s own most basic knowing of consciousness.”

Rand thought of the consciousness in dreams as depending on the basic waking consciousness: awareness of existents. I concur, and I think all the science on dreaming bears out at least that dreams are in part made up of things and persons and events from waking life. Dreams would seem a good example of subjective experience of consciousness.

  

On 7/11/2020 at 6:25 AM, Boydstun said:

For anyone interested in these issues, I'd encourage getting in hand Damasio's layout of core/extended consciousness and core/extended self in The Feeling of What Happens.

For introduction it is easy to view Antonio Damasio on his book Self Comes to Mind, especially 457

On 7/11/2020 at 7:23 AM, merjet said:

It's been many years since I read a few of Gerald Edelman's books, so my memory of their content has faded. Anyway, he made a similar distinction between primary consciousness and higher consciousness. An Amazon search on his name will give a longer list of the books he wrote.

 

Edited by Boydstun
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My kind of people... the tender, thoughtful, meaningful, creative empaths are committing suicide.  Perhaps the self esteem that Objectivism bolsters is a kind of emotional inoculation, but I think America is losing a lot of the artists and musicians that are a source of the wealth of my consciousness.  Music concerts were my Sistine Chapel, they were better than church for most Americans.  It isn't hard to make a correlation that religious leaders were eager to shut concerts down out of jealousy.

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