My video got yeeted for “medical misinformation.” This raises some legal questions. What qualifies a video hosting site to offer medical advice? Is a company like Google which is subsidized by taxpayer money allowed to disregard freedom of speech?
Tag: Law
Turmeric and Corona Law
I ramble about turmeric and discuss some points from VivaFrei’s vlog about the legal, economic, and social consequences of the government’s reaction to the Coronvirus Pandemic.
Viva’s vlog is in the form of a discussion between three lawyers one of whom agrees with the governments response (more or less) and one that disagrees strongly.
Here is the link:
My shitty notes for what it’s worth:
Viva Frei
Robert Barnes
Nate Broady
There is a problem with mass testing
US has an unprecedented economy based on overnight trades of debt.
“If writing checks could solve problems the Soviet Union would still exist.”
A few month shutdown is what led to the great depression.
US is in the worst possible situation to survive this.
Our supply chains are a major issue.
33 min in.
Reporting raw numbers without context causes fear.
This new virus rate is thirty times more deadly than flu rate. This was a bogus stat. And it’s bogusness was rarely questioned. It was bad math based on missing data point.
Scott Adams and others on the bandwagon of “it’s not just the flu” are assholes. There’s not enough info to know.
Early on viruses are bad and then after going through most vulnerable rate goes down.
The fed is on a defacto policy to keep interest rates under 4%. Because people wouldn’t buy it otherwise. So they are under enormous pressure to keep the repo markets at a certain rate.
Is this scale of QE going to have counterproductive results.
Speech control, governmental control, and YT = Creepy.
This situation is a statists delight.
China bought up all the respirators.
China covered stuff up, shoulda controlled wet markets, etc.
Epoch Times = Chinese Americans very critical of China
“He who defines the terms wins the debate.” – debaters, lawyers tip
Things in New York are getting bad.
Anecdotal vs Scientific
Science is abductive
You don’t have a lot of evidence with a lot of evidence
Projections from a small amount of data
Looking at data and modelling says this a choice between the economy and two million peoples lives.
The infection rate is what’s different from the flu.
Harvard guy said 40 percent infection rate and predicted school shutdowns etc.
There is a real problem here.
The New Rochelle bomb
7 days later lawyer who had been tested positive was in a hospital with a ventilator
New York officials traced 50 Coronavirus to this one attorney (anecdotal)
Apparently contrary to UPS this shit can live on surfaces for a bit
Mass transit = HUUUUGE vector
50 ppl infect 50 people per initial 50 = exponential growth
Without intervention the curve will continue
Hence the measures
Overuns of healthcare systems occur due to this virus (my ob: or the panic/hypochoindria)
There is a high recovery rate (question)
Robert Barnes doesn’t like the universality of the model
3 big assumptions
is the exponential rate continuos
The curve is deceptive
Why not use money to build more facilities rather do a life threating shut down
3 key assumptions about the models
modeling is correct
mitigation efforts succed
mitigation doesnt have worse or other impacts
theres no evidence that these measures wouldnt be impacted by the measures themselves
this is what happens when we have pure academcis making polilcy decisions
the first thirty days of virus as data is nuts as proof
even in countries with shitty mitigation after thirty days there is a drop off
Peter Hitchens attacks the models
Correlation does not equal causation necessisarily
Israeli guy who said the virus would die out on its own in China and he was closer to correct than imperial college
First thirty days the virus is vicious but tapers off
Not everyone is equally susceptible
if its 50 to eighty percent infection why didnt it happen on the ship?
Infection is not the fear, hospitalization, and death is the fear
So the people at risk for this should be the ones quarantines etc
3 prexisting conditions on average for corona deaths in italy
we make these difficult decisions all the time
the backfire is terrifying
we live in a world of tradeoffs
who or what do you prioritize
people dont realize the economic extent of this
doesnt appear to have been a lot of estimates done
unemployment causes death and risk
persuaders
partisans
public
if exponential rate is correct theres going to be more than just the elderly overwhelming the hospitals
the law is more political than it is legal
courts have taken the contrarion perspective on the constitution
you cant legally defacto suspend the constitution
resteraunt guy had to lay off 80% of his staff – due to no business at resteraunt
people are afraid to deliver due to panic of this disease
all this stuff is based on speculative assumptions
these are troubling precedents
diamond princess
in academia consensus thought is encouraged and dissident discouraged
r naught (linear regression model) .975
95% of the press has gone let’s assume the models are right and let’s dismiss
dissident opinion
Israel is maximizing their hospitals and social distancing elderly and risky populatioin
but not doing anything else
if were waiting for a vaccine that could be 18 mo or never
the press is uninformed. This is a version of a coronavirus
normally during a pandemic ppl would go to the press but now
the public is so disgusted they arent
and this current coverage isnt helping
newsome made the mistake of saying hell send the national guard out
he doesnt actually wanna follow through with this
theyre doing this because theyre trying to test their limits
kungflu virus lol
south korea 663 thousand beds
331 million 925 thousand hospital beds if heard correctly for us
19 million ppl and 56 hospitals beds in NY
2.8 hospital beds/1000 ppl less than 3
every coutnry on the list has a higher per capita hospital bed than the us
15% of ppl who get this disease need a ventilator/hospital
it would take you one month to take care of just corona ppl
so this could get real bad hospitalization-wise
social distancing, isolation, etc
or you build extra beds which would probably cost less
than this current approoach
but you need doctors nurses etc to man these beds so…
the doctors that looked at say its natural (bioweapon question)
even if the worst case scenario is true it would be far less
disastrous thanthe economic fallout of this extreme quarantine
the big question is about the 30 days after the first 30 days
95% didn’t even get the infection when you adjust 4 age demographics
if the modellers turn out wrong then in the future
they are not going to get any confidence
academics do not have very good life experience
eric weinstein and peter theil
its why we havent invented anything of consequence for the
last 60 years
the problem is we cant judge whether or not the mitigation
effects work
the indefinite nature (there is no two weeks) is troublesome
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Corona Arrests – Warranted?
This ain’t muh Murica.
We should be careful what sorts of precedents we allow this virus to set.
Fuck Spain by the way. Lady is dumb but pools are filled with Chlorine and sitting in small enclosed areas that share ventilation with hundreds of people….yea….
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TFS 28 – Perlenbacher, Carpentry Aspirations, and the Canadian Mushroom Feind
I talk about the thrifty goodness of Lidl and Aldis, which are right next to each other in my town. I got this premium Lager from Lidl and it’s decent. Frankly, this whole thing is a ramble where I talk about everything from my bookcase making idea to a dude who got loaded on psilocybin and ended up chasing an Oma with a weaponized broom handle.
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TFS 19 – Plato the Hipster, Protagoras, and Russell’s Defense of the Sophists
There is nothing new under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9
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‘Don’t Datamine Me Bro’ – Taser, Axon, Skynet? (Part II)
I was born in 1989. A mere 29 years ago and despite my ‘youth’ I still feel odd about cloud storage.
A radical shift happened in the new millennium. All my childhood and adolescent visions of precincts with tidy file cabinets of records attended to by harried cops and clerks no longer hold sway.
The question is…Is it a good thing?
Answering that question is difficult. At least in my estimation. This is because I don’ trust things that seem obvious.
Axon’s new SaaS database/analytics solutions for police records and evidence seems to be a game changer. I’m sure that departments have already been using cloud storage and other digital age solutions for at least a decade.
But this Axon partnership seems to be a step further. A step further in that it appears from my cursory research to be a form of outsourcing.
From a first assessment, this digitization and delegation is a lifesaver both metaphorically and literally. Better records, that are processed faster, and organized more efficiently give departments, citizens, and litigators more time to focus on problems rather than bookkeeping. This means that the overworked cops mentioned above may be a touch less burdened both in terms of paperwork and psychologically.
Real-time data capture and analysis will assure officers that their actions won’t be misconstrued and used against them. Which makes it easier to deploy policing solutions with confidence. Something that we all want since a cop who is less unsure of what to do due to the mercurial nature of social trends and court proceedings won’t get as much decision fatigue. Which means he’ll probably make fewer decisions that will lead to unnecessary injury or death.
Further, this high tech solution will give plaintiffs, defendants, and judges better and faster information. Information that is arguably less likely to be subject to human error. The time required to dig through ‘snail mail’ era police records and ascertain their validity will be lessened freeing up those famous court system bottlenecks.
This all seems rather rosy. Which is why I’m suspicious.
I am not suspicious of Axon, or the police, or technology. I’m suspicious of overconfidence.
There is ample precedent for people misinterpreting statistics and being swayed by the hard-nosed allure of data. ‘The numbers don’t lie.’
The latter statement may be true. But it’s truth is highly conditional. First, you have to have the right numbers, then you have to be able to understand what the numbers mean, and then taking that accurate data with your accurate interpretation and contextualize it.
“Well, it’s right there on camera!”
“The taser counter happened here.”
“This car was at this location at this hour.”
Etc…
All these things seem very certain. We do have a fairly robust system for weeding out overconfidence. But I fear it isn’t robust enough.
Goodyear’s article in The New Yorker gives one example that bolsters my concern.
Brendon Woods, an accomplished public defender in Alameda County, California gave a statement describing how “increased technology normally disadvantages the defense.” That seemingly infallible ‘scientific verification’ like DNA, fingerprinting, etc. biased courts towards the plaintiff. Despite this, he is uncertain that body cameras will follow this disturbing trend. “They’ve given us a fuller picture of the police interactions at the time. In the past, police have shaded evidence to comport with the narrative they want to portray. They can’t do it when it’s on video.”
As trite as it may be the phrase, “Where there’s a will there’s a way” holds true.
There are already examples that cameras like most other tools are controvertible evidence.
In 2014, Marion County, Florida, officers kicked and punched a man in the head in an effort to subdue him, yelling, “Stop resisting!” After this initial video where the officers performed lines for their Body Cameras that would justify their behavior another video from a fixed point camera on a building nearby surfaced. It showed the man run into a parking lot and lie down on the pavement, waiting to be arrested. The officers get there and begin the aforementioned assault.
My chief concern as I have said is overconfidence. Having supposedly hard evidence like video footage or DNA makes us just a touch too certain. Digitizing police records and the analysis of those records may have many pros. But I think the above episode does an excellent job of shedding light on some of the cons.
Cons that I think we should really thrust into the public conscious. Not so we can do away with these technological advances but so that we do not misuse them. Because it is not the technology that will most often cause the issue but misuse.
“The technology is the easy part. The human use of the technology really is making things very complex.” Says criminologist Michael White.
There is a variety of ways that the use of footage varies by region. Technology researcher for the ACLU, Jay Stanley says effective body camera use depends on such questions as. “When was it activated? Was it turned off? How vigorously are those rules enforced? What happens to the video footage, how long is it retained, is it released to the public? These are the questions that shape the nature of the technology and decide whether it just furthers the police state.”
I will discuss these questions and many others surrounding this issue in the next part of this series. (Like complications of outsourcing. I didn’t forget it I promise.) Thanks for reading.
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The Schlossberg Fractal
I run a website called The Fractal Journal.
So I tend to see things fractally.
Everyone does. Because everyone understands that no action occurs in a vaccum and is thus inherently multifaceted.
There’s a New York attorney called Aaron Schlossberg who was recently the subject of much controversy.
He took issue with some employees at an eatery. The issue was that they spoke Spanish. He went on a bit of a rant about how he as an American pays for the welfare of these potentially illegal immigrants. That they should speak English etc.
This tirade went viral. The publicity caused Schlossberg so much professional damage that he was even at risk of being disbarred.
This little episode has so many implications that I feel it would be irresponsible for me as a writer and citizen to pass it up.
First, it is demonstrative of a great many things. The impact of social media, the by now tiresome talking point of political polarization, and the nature of modern social expectations.
Let’s unpack that.
Social media is what allowed the incident to gain traction so quickly and in such numbers that it was able to put pressure on Schlossberg’s employers. Social media is also the technology that allowed those who took issue with Schlossberg’s actions to coordinate what can only be described as harrasment.
Political polarization is the fuel that powered both Schlossberg’s ire and the reaction of those seeking the destruction of both his professional and personal life. These two sides of the same coin only reach this sort of fever pitch in the presence of heavy ideological conditioning.
Social expectations today seem to include an insistence on certain points of politesse while completely flaunting general timeworn standards of civil interaction. Schlossberg said something politically unpopular in an aggressive way. Given the overwhelming abundance of casual swearing, in your face banter, and general penchant for sarcasm that permeates American society, it’s not unreasonable to assume that Schlossberg’crucifixionon likely resulted from unpopularity rather than aggression.
All these implications raise questions that I feel are essential to make.
First, social media, is it destructive and if so what can we do about it?
Like any other tool, I don’t think that social media is inherently destructive. The nature of social media seems to tend toward being a catalyst. A catalyst can produce either a favorable or unfavorable reaction. The swelling of outrage that culminated in trolling a private citizen with live Mariachi music and fiestas around his apartment can also be quelled by voices advocating for rationality.
One subcaveat of this social media thing is privacy. Is it fair to take a private citizens outburst and post it online?
Is it fair to then use this evidence to coordinate harassment?
It is true that Mr. Schlossberg was in a public area, behaving very rudely, and that people certainly have the right to film others in public. But does this make it alright for the offended to magnify the event through social media, and in essence involve the entire world in one man losing his cool?
Mr. Schlossberg was not acting civilly but he certainly wasn’t doing anything illegal.
Should we put restrictions on social media posts about private citizens controversial behavior? Should we put restrictions on using such videos to coordinate retribution. Should losing your cool or acting uncouth be so easy to shame from the rooftops?
This technology raises a lot of policy questions which seem to only increase in both number and scope.
I think that it’s a subject that will likely warrant its own article and video.
The second question then is what can be done about political polarization? I think the answer is obvious. Those of us that favor nuanced discussions need to become more vocal and advocate for rational discourse in greater numbers. The popularity of tactics like memes and trolling while fun and not necessarily out of line with the spirit of effective discourse shouldn’t be at the forefront of discourse.
The final question is related to social expectations. Both the public and employers have social expectations. Where, how, and to what extent should such expectations impact the lives of individual citizens?
Wherein does a professional get leeway to act unprofessionally? Being rude certainly falls well within the protection of the first amendment. But, companies can and do exercise the right to fire employees for misconduct. This right is also well within the bounds of the US Constitution.
However, an interesting subcategory emerges here. Namely, should a company be allowed to fire an employee for unprofessional behavior outside of work? If Mr. Schlossberg is good at his job, and reasonably civil in the confines thereof, should his social and political views and faux-pas be cause for termination? If so, then on what legal grounds can he contest the termination?
There do seem to be precedents for firing folks for extracurricular activities. In 2004, Ellen Simonetti was fired for taking pictures of herself in her Delta uniform as she lounged across the backs of airplane seats. The photograph which she posted to a blog about stewardessing, that she’d started in order to cope with the loss of her mother, wasn’t racy even by 1950’s standards. But nonetheless, Delta considered it unprofessional and sacked her.
My position is that Simonetti should not have been fired. Schlossberg has even less reason to be fired/evicted/disbarred etc. than she does. This is because he was not on company property, representing his company, or wearing company paraphernalia when he had his outburst.
His history of outbursts, including one where he ran into a radnomer with his bag and called him a ‘dirty foreigner’ might be a minor case of harassment or perhaps assault. Which I could see as being unsavory for an employer. But, again where should the line be drawn? There wasn’t really any battery, and the harassment was brief, akin to a middle finger on a busy street.
Should a line be drawn at all? Or should employers/landlords continue to wield carte blanche to terminate otherwise competent employees on grounds of unsavory conduct?
When looking at this case I ran across the notion that Schlossberg’s career was destroyed by the people he’d offended. This, to me, is where it gets a tad murky. Schlossberg initiated the aggression, in a public space, he is aware of cell phones, and he is aware of social media. While I 100% sympathize with the notion that the possibility of backlash shouldn’t intimidate Schlossberg or anyone into silence or even politesse, I can’t really view him as a victim. Even if I did, the link between those who posted the video and coordinated the harassment and his termination remains tenuous. Because it was still up to his employer to make the decision, and more importantly, it was up to him to avoid being confrontational.
Running up to randomers to call them dirty foreigners, haranguing Spanish speaking employees, and similar hijinks aren’t really public discourse. They’re outbursts and while they are protected under freedom of speech, that freedom doesn’t necessarily shield you form things like social ostracization, or job loss.
I don’t think either of those things should be the result of making an ass of yourself. However, if you work in a sector that requires a great deal of civic responsibility, being consistently combative, is likely a poor career choice. Whether that’s done on your own time or not.
As you can see, this is a really multifaceted issue that raises many questions. I encourage everyone to comment below, whether you agree or disagree with this analysis.
Sources
http://excelle.monster.com/news/articles/1348-delta-flight-attendant-fired-for-blogging
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Simonetti
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TFJ Vlogs – Business, Data, and Law: The Case for Oversight
In this ‘TFJ Vlog’ I discuss how the solution to many problems of technology like Big Data may not be technological but legal and societal.
I was heartened when I found out that the CEO of AT&T had mentioned the need for an ‘Internet Bill of Rights.’ I had long had the ‘Big Data/Privacy/Quality of Life’ conundrum milling about in my head. Especially after reading Cukier and Schonberg’s book. It was refreshing to see these issues being addressed from a policy perspective by a business interest.
Now I realize that as was mentioned in the Variety article that’s linked below, there are inconsistencies in AT&T’s behavior and the CEO may have self-interested motives. Nonetheless at least lip service is being given. Though we must of course call for much more.
Which will require us to look into the matter closely as it unfolds and educate ourselves on all its permutations.
Toward’s that effect here are the videos and background reading that I read in preparation for this post.
News Sites:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/books/big-data-by-viktor-mayer-schonberger-and-kenneth-cukier.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaarthur/2013/08/15/what-is-big-data/#b581ebd5c85b
https://harvardmagazine.com/2014/03/why-big-data-is-a-big-deal
Big Data Book:
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Data-Revolution-Transform-Think/dp/0544227751
Tim Pool:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bg1t7zB1qw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bg1t7zB1qw
Extra:
This is some truly glorious and informative kvetching from the illustrious Bryan Lunduke, on the subject of cell-phones, which is an issue directly related to the topic of this vlog.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeSoN-XLF9Y
Check out my main website: www.fractaljournal.com for essays, analysis, webcomics, stories, and more.
Thanks for stopping by and,
Cheers.
The Fractal Journal 