Anders Tegnell defends Sweden's virus approach - <AUTHOR> https://www.startribune.com/scientist-admits-sweden-could-have-battled-virus-better/570980492/ <comment><USER3> The guy is a scientist and his answers have to be viewed from that angle. A politician goes for spin and tries to project confidence; "I am not sure this is the right approach" from a politician usually means "hell, no!". Tegnell's answer means just that -- he is not sure. Which is a normal way for a scientist to feel as there are always uncertainties and when we choose an action we are often not sure for a while if that action is optimal or not.

I personally feel a lot of respect to Tegnell. Sweden might have taken a better or a worse approach than, say, France but it is clearly not catastrophic: there are no mountains of corpses on the streets there are a number of countries with lockdowns and worse per capita death rates; second wave, if appears, will likely go much easier on Sweden, etc.

I think other countries should take a page out of Tegnell's book and instead of trying to exorcise dissent and label opponents, admit to uncertainties in their policies. This will not make their argument weaker; it might still mean that lockdowns are a better option. But it would also open policies for discussion and debate. Good policies will still win. But then they win by merits, not because of trying to silence any opposition. My 2c.

<comment><USER4> _> Sweden might have taken a better or a worse approach than, say, France but it is clearly not catastrophic_

The only countries worse off than Sweden are significantly poorer - <USER2> Belgium, which seems to be the only country counting correctly (e.g. untested excess deaths in Covid proximity are included).

The most similar countries to Sweden, regarding political structure and wealth, are Denmark and Norway, which have 20% and less than 10% of Swedens death rate, respectively. I'd say it's safe to assume that at least 80% of Swedish deaths could have been avoided with a conventional approach.

<comment><USER5> If Sweden has a significantly higher percentage of the population infected (as they claim) then it doesn't make sense to compare death rates at this point, because it may be that these other countries will reach the same numbers (infection rate and death rate) later. This is a likely outcome because Sweden's healthcare system has not been overwhelmed, so it's not obvious that their policies will lead to excess deaths in the long run. The thing to compare is the final death toll (as well as economic damage), and we don't know that yet.

<comment><USER4> Why do you think Norway will eventually approach the same number of infections as Sweden? Norway only has a few hundred active cases left, and is testing 2 times as much than Sweden. They are on their way to normal life in a few weeks. If new outbreaks occur, they are well prepared to isolate them.

<comment><USER6> Just got a snap from a friend of mine. First pub beer of the season yesterday. 15 days with no new cases in my hometown. City of 300,000, West Norway.

Testing capacity of >1000 per week locally. No way it can sneak up on us without a large external influx.

Tourism is dead, music festivals are off and the oil industry is in a shambles, but otherwise things are close to normal.

Plenty of routines to limit contagion, lots of care and social distancing, but life goes on with no disease for now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The amount of misinformation (or the very least, confused statements) in this thread is high for being HN. Soo many people know much about Sweden without ever setting their foot here. Interesting that.

The world's apparent obsession with the Swedish strategy isn't about Sweden at all. It is about their own strategies, trying to prematurely pat themselves on the back for doing the right thing, whatever that was. There's myriads of variables that differ between Any two countries.

<comment><USER8> Well, Sweden's 4:10000 death rate is alarming. In only a few months. And their confident approach (doing very little) in the face of scant information was bold. With lives at stake, its natural to be alarmed/scandalized at their lack of effort to control a pandemic.

<comment><USER9> That rate is in line with the US and most European countries. The US lost 40 million jobs and spent $4 trillion dollars to achieve the same outcome as Sweden.

And now the US is reopening and attempting a similar approach to Sweden. You can't shut the world down for months and months waiting for a vaccine.

<comment><USER10> You compare two of the worst approaches in the world and present a false fallacy of "shut down the world" when in fact the countries with stricter quarantine/tracing/tracking approaches had far better outcomes:

Germany, and Japan, and Korea, and Taiwan lost far fewer jobs, killed far fewer people per capita and nearly eradicated the pandemic while it is still rampant in the US and Sweden.

<comment><USER11> Japan is an interesting one. They did next to nothing.

Life is almost back to what it was before atm. How did Tokyo not have a massive outbreak is an absolute mystery. But it did not.

Was it that 99% of people when told to started wearing masks and people do not hug or shake hands? We have no idea, no tracing, very small amount of testing, no house arrests of any kind.

<comment><USER12> They didn't do "next to nothing." They used a cluster-based approach through their public health center network, that was put in place to combat TB in the 30s. Turns out, that was pretty effective at combatting COVID.

> In 1935, with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Japan opened its > first public health centre (PHC) in Tokyo. The country then put in place a > programme that led to the building of another 187 nationwide. They survived > the war and the occupation. But the thing of note is that before and after > the war, their priority, says Taniguchi, was always to "stay watchful all > the time" for the emergence of TB cases. If one was found, they were tasked > with rushing to the patient's residence, checking for clusters and > sterilising the house Seventy-five years on, 469 PHCs are in operation > across the country, with each manned, on average, by 64 medical > professionals, including one to two licensed doctors. They still locate > clusters, track links and conduct tests. It is this "accumulated wealth of > expertise, rarely found elsewhere" that has made the difference. Japan has > not had to rely on mass testing strategies because it's health care history > had already left a cluster-crushing strategy embedded in its system

[https://moneyweek.com/economy/global- economy/601264/cluster-...](https://moneyweek.com/economy/global- economy/601264/cluster-busting-japan-success-fighting-covid-19)

<comment><USER13> > They didn't do "next to nothing." They used a cluster-based approach through > their public health center network, that was put in place to combat TB in > the 30s. Turns out, that was pretty effective at combatting COVID.

Also, IIRC, their culture is naturally more socially distanced than western ones (e.g. mask wearing was already common in some situations, bowing instead of hand shaking, etc.).

<comment><USER12> Mask wearing, yes. I'm not sure about the other parts. Unmarried people live with their parents well into adulthood. There are less children, so maybe that's a factor. But most stores, restaurants, and other venues in Japan would seem cramped and overcapacity by Western standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sweden made some very bad choices and a lot of people died unnecessarily. Compare with Portugal, same population, right next to Spain, lower GDP, a fraction of the deaths. There is no excuse, no 'second wave', no economic payoff, no wait and see.

Scientists are trained to make judgments based on experimentation and evidence. In a fast moving novel pandemic situation, where there is no time to carry out experiments, where evidence is confused and hard to corroborate, their utility is much reduced. That is why politicians exist, to make these hard decisions. It is unfair to pillory scientists such as Tegnell, as it is the politicians who abdicated responsibility in the face of this crisis that should rightfully face condemnation.

Except of course, there _was_ evidence, from China, Taiwan, South Korea and elsewhere. It was clear what needed to be done, and how to do it. Shame on Sweden, and other places, for not heeding that guidance.

<comment><USER15> I was under the impression that quarantine was an option only to "flatten the curve" (and make it easier for the hospitals to treat people) and that the same amount of people would die regardless (from the virus), is this wrong?

<comment><USER16> That's only assuming we never get a vaccine or an effective treatment. If we do, then the number of people to die before that point matters a lot, because we would get a sharp decline after.

<comment><USER17> In addition to your points, another reason for "flattening the curve" is to give time for hospitals and health care systems to prepare for a spike in cases, so that every patient who needs critical care can receive it. For countries like Italy that were hit at the start of the pandemic, this was a serious problem.

Where I live, in Victoria, Australia, the state government has used the lockdown time to plan for and deliver a huge increase of ICU beds [1]. Thankfully, it looks like these beds may not even be necessary, but initial modelling suggested a peak of 10,000 active cases with only 500 IUC beds available.

[1] [https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/thousands-of- bed...](https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/thousands-of-beds- promised-for-coronavirus-pandemic-may-never-be-used-20200420-p54lip.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sweden's strategy failed on its own terms. There is absolutely no arguing that. Their first goal was to protect the vulnerable, and they failed miserably at that. Fundamentally because Tegnell resisted the fact that asymptomatic carriers existed.

One could argue, like some Iraq war proponents do, that the idea was ok for Sweden, but the failure was in execution. But one can not argue that it wasn't a significant failure.

<comment><USER19> We're barely 3 months into this and your calling it a failure? could it be done better: yes, it is failure? no. "no arguing", "can not argue" Yes, you very much can, and we'll see in a few years what the "correct" choice was.

<comment><USER20> the comment was referring to failure in execution, not necessarily failure in choosing the correct approach. it's hard to argue that sweden shouldn't have been more careful with its elderly and vulnerable, even if going for herd immunity.

<comment><USER21> It's fairly impossible to say "Sweden should hav ebeen more careful with its elderly" \- The measures put in place by Sweden were designed with that in mind.

That's why elderly care facilities were the first, if not only ones, to face quarantine.

However, when you have years of poor management of elderly care, and elderly care companies that refuse to heed the recommendations, there's not much "Sweden" can do in the moment wihtout severe effort.

<comment><USER22> And the politicians should have put in that severe, very expensive effort. But that would have required them to be fast, which is not a very Swedish thing. Everything is extremely decentralised and in many cases privatized.

Either the state (highest level) should have forced an intervention, or all actors should have acted responsibly. But there is too much inertia. The elderly care is so poorly managed, it was not only a disaster waiting to happen, it actually was a slow burning dumpster fire even before Covid19.

So many wasted opportunities.

<comment><USER21> How would they do that? I think it's safe to assume right away that the companies aren't going to act responsibly, because, well, they haven't for years. So that leaves the state, and what should they do?

Not like they can push a button and invent more caretakers, fix internal routines, etc, across an entire country.

I'd love it if they could, but in general, there is going to be inertia when trying to affect change in a system that has been degrading for years, with actors actively working against those changes (in this case, companies putting profit over welfare).

It's so very, very easy to say "the state should have done something, fast", but it gets very difficult when you're trying to specify which parts of the state should have done what, to which actors and on which level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Seems to me that we won't really know if the Swedish approach was a disaster or not until economies are reopened, second waves happen or don't, etc. The game isn't over.

<comment><USER24> Indeed. The strategy _if it works perfectly_ was never going to have fewer deaths than a lockdown strategy after 3 months.

That much should be obvious. The criticism early on was "Oh my god look at these simulations you'll have 25k ICU beds needed and you have only 1k", 50k will die before july!

When that didn't happen, somehow now the message is that 4k dead and emergency hospital capacity never even used is a complete failure - because _Norway_ has fewer deaths?

I think if anything we should be happy that most of Europe managed to actually contain this disease and people weren't left to die without ventilators as the early alarms said. Whether 500 or 5000 die in a country is a big difference, but remember we were fearing tens of thousands in every countruy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> 90% of all covid-19 deaths in Sweden have been people over the age of 70 [1] which is the only group of the population which have been quarantined. So it's arguable what difference a nation wide quarantine would have made.

Of those over 70, half of the deaths were in care homes and another 26% had home care [2].

Many of the workers in care homes have reported that their companies/bosses won't allow them to stay home when they're showing symptoms and some have been forced to work without protective equipment.

There have "only" been 42 deaths under the age of 50 [2].

[1] [https://www.svd.se/90-procent-av-alla-doda-i- covid-19-over-7...](https://www.svd.se/90-procent-av-alla-doda-i- covid-19-over-70-ar) [2] [https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/halften-av-alla- doda-over...](https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/halften-av-alla-doda- over-70-ar-med-coronasmitta-bodde-pa-sarskilda-boenden)

<comment><USER26> Those numbers are a month old. There have now been 64 deaths[1] under the age of 50.

In the age group between 50 and 70, which you didn't directly mention, 455 people have died.

[1] [https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/har-sprider-sig- coronavi...](https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/har-sprider-sig- coronaviruset/)

<comment><USER25> Doesn't change the fact that the high death toll have been among the part of the population that were in fact in quarantine and would most likely have been the same had Sweden chosen a more common tactic.

<comment><USER27> They were in "quarantine".

Tegnell didn't believe in the existence of asymptomatic carriers so younger care workers were allowed to visit them freely as long as they didn't show symptoms.

He made a huge mistake but is simply unwilling to admit it.

<comment><USER25> Care takers have been forced to work with symptoms, and there's even one known case where a woman went to work at her care home after testing positive for covid-19 and staying quiet about it.

This would not have changed with a different strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's still too soon to tell but it seems like the economic impact of a thorough lockdown (New Zealand) isn't much greater than most people staying home voluntarily (Sweden). The difference seems worth it to control the pandemic. Two weeks from now it looks like New Zealand (with zero cases left) with have fewer restrictions than Sweden.

<comment><USER29> New Zealand is an island. It knew that it could pursue the full eradication option because it had few cases and could fully close its borders. European countries with their large numbers of infected and more porous borders (economy requiring movement of migrant workers for agriculture, etc.) never pursued full eradication, only curve-flattening.

<comment><USER28> So what if New Zealand is an island? How many people are walking to Sweden?

<comment><USER29> Few people might be walking on foot to Sweden (though in Tornio/Haparanda, some do walk over the border), but Sweden has land borders with two countries and a bridge to a third. Traffic has continued to move over those border crossings during the time of the pandemic. In fact, there has been a steady flow of traffic over most European border crossings along major motorways, though that traffic has consisted of only drivers and passengers who could show they are moving around for work purposes etc.

The only common way into New Zealand is a flight or an occasional ship. NZ has no immediately neighboring countries that it runs freight trucks to and from day in and day out, and it doesn't need to move large numbers of agricultural workers around internationally. Therefore, for New Zealand traffic is obviously going to be smaller and easier to control than European countries.

<comment><USER30> You can close roads and bridges. You can punish people who try to cross in secret.

There may be reasons why you would choose not to close the borders, but it's a choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Tegnell was wrong.

He predicted that the virus was circulating many times more widely than people thought (20-25%) -- and posited much of his strategy on that.

In reality that appears to be closer to 7%.

He was also particularly wrong in attacking other countries - and the underlying Imperial College study that influenced them - for locking down in the way they did.

18.1m people came in and out of the UK between January and March in the UK -- nearly twice the entire population of Sweden. What was optimal for Sweden would never have been optimal for others.

<comment><USER32> The 20-25% immunity was for the Stockholm area, not for the country as a whole. In reality they were off by something like 5%.

<comment><USER31> The 7% figure is also for the Stockholm area

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's mind blowing how the media spinned his defense, with headlines like "Sweden admits they were wrong and should have locked down", whereas he said exactly the opposite.

He said: we should have had more labs, locked down retirement homes, but we shouldn't have asked students to stay home.

</comment><comment><USER34> There is no convincing evidence that Sweden's approach has led to a materially worse outcome, and in fact if you look at the overall health of the country considerable evidence that outcomes will be much better in the long term.

Every country will have to adopt the Swedish approach eventually or find themselves caught in an endless cycle of lockdowns.

It seems to me that the experiment is countries trying to eradicate the virus through lockdown as opposed to just slowing it down, with no evidence that this is working or could ever work.

NoW that the virus is better understood and we know that the people at risk are mostly people at the end of their life the continued tyrannical lock down Of the general population in many countries is a failure of leadership, not a success.

The large number of hysterical articles condemning the Swedish approach reflects the fact that people don't want to admit that they made a mistake and want to desperately justify doing something really stupid.

<comment><USER35> > the people at risk are mostly people at the end of their life

The estimates I have seen suggest that the people dying lose, on average, 10 years of their life. That's not exactly insignificant.

<comment><USER34> 10 years is the average life expectancy of a person that is between 75 and 80 years old in North America.

So on average everyone dying at that age loses 10 years of life.

75 to 80 years old is also the mean age of death from covid.

Im going to go out on a limb and say that it is likely that people on average that die from covid do not lose 10 years of life.

This does not make it less of a tragedy for the individuals involved.

<comment><USER35> The study in question does adjust for long-term health conditions: [https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75](https://wellcomeopenresearch.org/articles/5-75)

<comment><USER34> Thank you. That was interesting.

I am skeptical about the methodology and the results of the paper.

It does not make sense to me, and it looks like the authors knowingly chose to increase the YLL with the choice of their data sets and how they analyzed the correlation between covid deaths and comorbidities.

I'm happy to admit that I might just not fully understand it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Making a comparison of Sweden (10,094,432 population) vs Czech Republic (10,707,502 population) seems to reveal a very different story.

New cases (7 day average): [https://i.imgur.com/fciq4Ra.png](https://i.imgur.com/fciq4Ra.png)

Total deaths: [https://i.imgur.com/do9Zbvn.png](https://i.imgur.com/do9Zbvn.png)

<comment><USER37> Masks can do wonders

<comment><USER24> If there is a clear sign of the mask requirement being introduced in graphs from various countries (e.g. these graphs) I can't see it...

I think there is a lot of "I believe X would give outcome Y and I see outcome Y therefore X must work". This mistake is called Affirming the Consequent.

Without clear signs of causation we can't know.

<comment><USER7> Thank you. There's sooooo much "I think like this therefore I will find two variables out of 10000 and link them" going around. The easy with which one could argue the exact opposite using some two other variables seems to go unnoticed by the original makes of the claim, whatever it was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think epidemiologists shoot themselves in the foot as a profession when they started talking about herd immunity, which is the one situation we are trying to to avoid in infections, and really the entire reason their profession exists. We could reach herd immunities without them but the toll is dramatic and untenable. Politicians mistook the term to mean some kind of solution and made it a buzzword, but it really is the worst solution.

Swedens situation is not the worst in the world, but they really did not win much with their "strategy" either. Talk of "reaching herd immunity in a few months" was irresponsible and heavily fatalistic. As a country with a big public sector they could easily have followed a slightly more conservative approach. An "initial freeze, then plan accordingly" would be a more rational way to go. It was also irrational to assume that their economy can "rebound faster" when most of the rest world is shut down.

Epidemiology did not wear its best suit in this pandemic, and will lose a lot of respect in the eyes of many[1]. Scientists have a duty to inform people when their results are being misused or misinterpreted

1\. [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/wh...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/what- does-this-economist-think-of-epidemiology.html)

</comment><comment><USER39> I find it very surprising that someone would rely on unvalidated mathematical models for this, that goes for the Imperial College people as well as Sweden. Are they even able to fit the parameters in retrospect?

Anyone with a background in mathematical modelling should be extremely cautious of applying models in situations where there are serious ramifications to getting the wrong answer.

Hubris.

<comment><USER24> > serious ramifications to getting the wrong answer.

I think "locking millions of people inside" is one of the most serious ramifications you can imagine too. It's like we lost all grip of what suffering and cost is so long as we save lives. I'm not saying we should value lives highly but we sure didn't value them this highly last year and we probably won't next year...

</comment></comment><comment><USER40>
      Sweden's economy, which relies
      heavily on exports, is expected to
      shrink 7% in 2020

      [neighbours] dropping mutual border
      controls but would keep Sweden out

Sometimes it's better to go with the crowd, even if you're right.

</comment><comment><USER41> My takeaway from the NYT article[0] was that Sweden's approach to coronavirus hasn't left them totally overwhelmed primarily because Swedes willingly self- lockdowned and distanced almost as much as people under government-mandated lockdowns. So while some like to point to them and say "see, we could've stayed totally open," the reality is that they did lockdown but it came as a decentralized decision rather than a centralized order. Because they did effectively lockdown, their economy is expected to be impacted similarly to the rest of Europe[1]. Is my interpretation incorrect?

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/15/world/europe/...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/15/world/europe/sweden- coronavirus-deaths.html)

[1] "Preliminary evidence shows Sweden has suffered similar economic effects as its neighbors: The Swedish Central Bank projects the country's G.D.P. will contract by 7 to 10 percent this year, an estimate on par with the rest of Europe. (The European Commission projects the E.U. economy will contract by 7.5 percent.)" (Ref [0])

</comment><comment><USER42> There's a deep problem of all these comparisons of economies with public health policies:

Markets and money are vehicles for making agreements. They are all about negotiation. They are imminently and manifold fungible. They are contrivances. A deadly virus is not.

Let's also not forget for every death from C19 there are a handful-dozen people who survive to lifelong health problems from the episode. That has a cost, too.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm glad he came out against that Bloomberg article it was a obvious misquote. You could tell. not only did they not attached the audio. He literally has interviews about a week or 2 before talking about how well it was going.

Regardless about how you feel about Sweden's strategy Bloomberg's obvious manipulation is garbage.

</comment><comment><USER44> Other countries in Europe also have lead epidemiologists and scientists (or technical bodies) making the recommendations that then get turned into policy. Those scientists in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Norway, France, Spain, Italy are as good as Tegnell is.

Also, the medical approach to people getting sick with COVID-19 has significantly improved over the first month (e.g., early hospitalisation instead of sending a sick person to isolate themselves at home, weeding out drugs that did not work from those that worked, introduction of drugs to control trombosis and secondary damage from the virus, better approaches to when and how use ventilators, etc.).

That means that a number of the deaths that have occurred within the Swedish policy could have been avoided by delaying the infection. More importantly, Sweden's approach has not even achieved a significant level of immunity, as Swedes have been self-imposing social distancing and even a 'lockdown' (working from home).

In an interview in "unherd", Giesecke estimated that the deaths in UK without lockdown would be in the 12,000 (when they where 13,000), then corrected himself to 24,000 (they are almost 40,000 now), and then said they will not be 10x 12,000.

On freedom. The lockdown for reasons of public health is a limitation of our freedom that has been accepted (except in Sweden) by their citizens in their respective contracts as a society (constitutions, laws, etc.). So, per se, it's a limitation akin to not driving over a certain speed in certain roads. Moreover, many people (and students) have reported that the lockdown has been "liberating" \- and for others have been depressing (it never rains to everyone's liking)

On ending the lockdown. Tegnell and Giesecke repeat and repeat and repeat that countries imposed a lockdown without a strategy out. Well that's just dire false. When the lockdown was being discussed, the press was already pointing that issue and several strategies were being considered (press from March already discusses the measure by measure approach).

But, whereas other countries are looking conservatively with the evidence (that could be flawed because it is small and incomplete) that they already have, Sweden is relying in an evidence that will only be apparent in the future (if the events turn out to be advantageous for that approach).

If each country had been given an "ant population" with some infected individuals and their epidemiologists needed to manage the epidemic long term while a cure for the ant's illness is found, maybe, the Sweden's approach would have made more sense... At least, most people wouldn't have had much feelings for those ants that could have lived a couple of days longer.

<comment><USER45> Giesecke has no official position. He's an attention-seeking troll.

<comment><USER46> He is, however, the former state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnells former boss, and - as was recently reported in the big dailies in Sweden - is currently working as a paid consultant informing the Swedish strategy. Quite the influential troll...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Deaths in Sweden are at their highest level since 1993:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus- sweden...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden- toll/coronavirus-pushes-swedish-deaths-to-highest-since-1993-in-april- idUSKBN22U1S4)

What happened in 1993?

A Flu Pandemic...

That no one has ever heard about, that seemed to have no lasting impact, and occurred when the population was younger and 25% smaller (thus having a proportionally much greater impact).

Without the media panic, COVID-19 would have come and gone as a unusually deadly flu wave, nothing more.

<comment><USER48> In the Gompertz-Model (that worked perfectly for China) Sweden is converging to R~0,8 - with a total death-count <6000\. Germany is going to R~0,7 / <9000.

Given the explosive dynamics of COVID-19 that soon converges to R<1 going for herd immunity was most likely a bad choice.

For Germany cutting the flu in half worked - while the bad math of the epidemiologists-community seems to last forever...

<comment><USER24> > going for herd immunity was most likely a bad choice.

I think this has been repeated a lot. No one is "going for herd immunity". Every country including sweden has two goals: having as few as possible infected and preventing healthcare from being overwhelmed. If partial or full immunity makes the virus go away that's a fortunate side effect of slow burn, not the "goal".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> To me it seems that there is only one fundamental assumption that determines how to handle the pandemic: do you believe that we can have a lockdown until a vaccin is on the market, or do you think the vaccin will take too long.

If you believe the first, then yes a lockdown like in Denmark or Norway is the best choice. If you believe it will take too long, then what matters is to minimise economical damage by containing the virus just enough making sure that the health system is not overwhelmed and to protect the most vulnerable groups. This is what Sweden chose and what most countries believed in as well in February. Sweden's health system was never overwhelmed, so the higher death rate in Sweden must be due to the higher infection rate in combination with the fact that they could have protected their elderly people better. But if the vaccin takes too long then neighbour countries will catch up.

</comment><comment><USER50> More important seems to be his previous statement (which is also quoted in the article):

> Tegnell's statement to reporters came after more contrite comments earlier > in the day to Swedish radio in which he said "I think there is potential for > improvement in what we have done in Sweden, quite clearly."

> Asked if the country's high death toll has made him reconsider his unique > approach to the pandemic, Tegnell told Swedish radio "yes, absolutely."

</comment><comment><USER51> That same guy who now admitted that his strategy to fight Covid-19 resulted in too many deaths, after persuading his country to avoid a strict lockdown.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/man- behin...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/man-behind- sweden-s-virus-strategy-says-he-got-some-things-wrong)

<comment><USER52> Actually, both articles are based on the same quotes – just very different interpretations and headlines.

<comment><USER7> This is the situation in a nutshell. Would be comical if the topic was different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I believe it's way too early to make conclusions about which approach would have been the best from a scientific/public health perspective.

The reason I think Sweden's approach is wrong is that other countries are much more hesitant to work with them now. An example being Denmark opening the borders to Norway and Germany but not Sweden.

</comment><comment><USER54> Just watch this chart for a couple years:

[https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data- explorer?zoomToS...](https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data- explorer?zoomToSelection=true&deathsMetric=true&totalFreq=true&aligned=true&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&country=USA~SWE)

</comment><comment><USER55> How would one rationally model and determine a multifactor policy on covid lockdown, balancing for health, economy, and overall wellbeing? Is it even possible to balance those, if it means making x lost life years equal to y many bankruptcies or z lost jobs, etc?

<comment><USER24> This is what authorities like the FHM (the public health authority does every day). You use tools like counting QALY, for example.

<comment><USER55> But how do you equate or make commensurable those different measures? How many job losses equal a lost life year?

<comment><USER24> That's the difficult part, but that's the job of the public health authority. Same thing with missed semesters of a school. How many add up to an 80 year old dying? And so on and so forth. I don't envy those that have to do this arithmetic, but it can't be avoided.

<comment><USER55> I don't see how it is arithmetic nor the job of a public health authority. It's a philosophical, ethical and political issue.

There are bounding conditions, like research showing that job loss increases rates of suicide. [1]

But we still argue about whether it is fair to treat the life of a 12 year old as more valuable than the life of a 92 year old. So it isn't just arithmetic.

[1] [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366\(20\)30141-3/fulltext)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The book Necropolitics by A. Mbembe makes these conversations more productive. I am part of many groups abandoning the constraints of the assumptions that act as thresholds throughout each back and forth on this page.

</comment><comment><USER57> I am happy we let our expert government agency in this matter make the decision and not the politicians. There will be an autumn. Countries which let politicians shutdown early have numbers that look good now, but there is autumn and there is shutdown stamina. If you shutdown early there is little herd immunity in the autumn. There is also psychological effects of keeping people in total isolation for too long. In prison isolation is a punishment which I do not wish upon anyone.

Then has to see that its also a group decision from the health authorities in Sweden where there is consensus on the direction board on how to act. Its not a one person decision.

<comment><USER58> But you didn't achieve herd immunity, and you're going to be in the same place as everyone else (except with more dead). There might be a marginal advantage but antibody studies show Sweden is nowhere near even the more generous estimates of what herd immunity might require.

Everything about the Swedish approach is a failure, and the amazing thing is that not only was the approach bizarre, but the Swedes have a very low testing rate relative to the number of cases - which seems like a weird move (innovate both in approach and in terms of "not knowing what's going on"). Positively 3rd world cases:deaths ratio - it's just embarrassing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Scientists are human and prone to as many cognitive biases as anyone. As one myself, I see here an effort to contort oneself and one's model/framework to somehow explain the data. When the data seems fairly clear that this has been a failure for Sweden. That being said, I think our failures here in the US have been vast and worse.

</comment><comment><USER60> I think that Sweden mistake has been to not react to the realities and keep the line and cover their mistakes by propaganda. This and complete failure to increase testing capacity and find even essential PPE. For example people who took the swab samples whore nothing more than a visor.

</comment><comment><USER61> Also the way countries report deaths may be different.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> BBC, WaPo and NPR have conflicting titles, but I found this to be better worded and balanced article.

<comment><USER62> Tegnell has previously categorically denied any mistakes were made, but is now saying a stricter approach should have been taken in hindsight. In Swedish political culture, it seems to be a big thing if even a hint of a mistake is admitted by an authority figure. Directly criticizing public policies is almost a taboo for ordinary civilians.

<comment><USER63> > Directly criticizing public policies is almost a taboo for ordinary > civilians.

This could possibly be the worst lie I've heard this week. And I've listened to Trump.

<comment><USER64> There have now been several articles documenting the attacks that have been the consequence of questioning Tegnell's decisions in public. This is one example (in Swedish)

[https://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/a/kJr5b6/jag-anklagar- er-f...](https://www.aftonbladet.se/debatt/a/kJr5b6/jag-anklagar-er-for-att- tysta-coronadebatten)

But in DN (behind a paywall) there have been other articles where those that questioned Sweden's policy have even been personally threatened.

Tegnell has been wrong about pretty much everything - from saying that the pandemic had reached its "peak" in Sweden when we had 137 cases[1] to being consistently wrong about how far we've supposedly come with 'herd immunity' \- which was supposed to be around 50% by the beginning of June, but which has shown itself to be only around 7-10% in the worst-affected areas in Stockholm.

There is also a lot of finger-pointing in articles and comments by Swedes, accusing other Nordic countries of purposely under-estimating their covid figures - whereas the actual statistics[2] show that Sweden itself is the only Nordic country with massively under-estimated deaths.

[1] [https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/RRpj0A/statsepidemiolog...](https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/RRpj0A/statsepidemiologen- toppen-kan-vara-nadd-nu)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus- missing-deaths.html)

<comment><USER65> Regarding [1], it sounds more like Aftonbladet is either misquoting him, quoting out of context or The title claims he said we had reached the peak, giving the impression of peak infections across the whole population, but the contents only covers a specific group of people who had returned from their vacations in Italy.

I'm not saying he didn't mean or say peak total infections in the interview. I'm just saying that particular article is all over the place.

Edit: On the contrary, according to the article he said we could very well be hit by a new wave from new arrivals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> The irony of demonizing Sweden...is that as we speak...every single other country in the world is starting to do what Sweden is doing and opening its economy with basic social distancing.

The model of exponential infections used to justify quarantine and flattening the curve has not happened any of the places opening up.

Coronavirus appears to reach a steady-state in the rate of infections in populations, just like numerous other infectious diseases.

The people in my town are absolutely terrified. Unemployment has skyrocketed poverty riots. This is a sad failure of leadership and science.

Sweden and Tegnell appear to have been right.</comment>


Twenty Questions with Steven Pinker - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/twenty-questions-steven-pinker/ <comment><USER2> >It's easy to see why Nietzsche sociopathic ravings would have inspired so many repugnant movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including fascism, Nazism, Bolshevism, the Ayn Randian fringe of libertarianism, and the American alt-Right and neo-Nazi movements today

I can't square that with the Nietzsche I read, the one who hated anti-semitism and who was against nationalism and for a unified Europe. See this random point in 475: [https://books.google.com.au/books?id=hQ6FDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA96&lp...](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=hQ6FDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA96&lpg=PA96&dq=the+european+man+and+the+destruction+of+nations&source=bl&ots=oaaubgHwma&sig=eRToVDITL3XCgXxh8vqViQaDd6s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGhNi8z7TZAhXHpJQKHa7hABYQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&&f=false)

But that's what makes Nietzsche so interesting I guess, you can find contradictory positions everywhere.

<comment><USER3> Seriously, I like Steven Pinker, but I find this view naive. Here is a video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti9zdpLlXf0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti9zdpLlXf0) called "How Hollywood Gets Nietzsche Wrong".

I haven't read the source texts yet (Twilight of the Idols e.g.) but my understanding is that his main goal was to ask people to not-systematize and live the lives of others or wholly subscribe to someone else's philosophy but to live life as a self-creative act in which we are the authors of what gives our lives meaning and purpose. I don't see anything offensive about that.

<comment><USER4> This is the milquetoast interpretation of Nietzsche to make him digestible for the mainstream.

<comment><USER5> Yea, he wished suffering on his friends, to forge them into beings worthy of respect. Etc. He did have an aggressive and elitist perspective. Ayn Rand's views are a decent comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I found Start The Week very good this week. Pinker appeared with Rob Riemen (philosopher, author of On Facism and Humanism) and Tali Sharot (neuroscientist, author of The Influential Mind.)

I thought Pinker's progress argument was soundly defeated by Rieman. His counter-argument was that Pinker's arguments have the same hollowness of similar arguments before the WW1 and then again WW2. Pinker wants to claim things are getting better but it seems blind to how we can use our "progress" to bring forth previously unimaginable horror. The complacency of seeing progress solely in economic and scientific terms leaves the gate open for our basest natures to dominate. Such progress seems to have no predictive power for what we as a civilisation might sink to next.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rwszj](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rwszj)

<comment><USER7> > _Pinker wants to claim things are getting better but it seems blind to how > we can use our "progress" to bring forth previously unimaginable horror_

In _The Better Angels of Our Nature_ [1], Pinker posits a single measure of progress: the population-adjusted frequency of violence. He then proceeds to argue, on very long time horizons ( _e.g._ thousands of years), that this metric has almost monotonically declined. The horrors of the twentieth century, in his eyes, are balanced by the larger population. (There is disagreement regarding his pre-historic data [2].)

TL; DR If population keeps rising with technological ability, _ceteris paribus_ , the average person will be better off tomorrow than today. Even if ever-more terrible things happen from time to time.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature)

[2] [https://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/sites/fasn/files/Pinker's%20Lis...](https://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/sites/fasn/files/Pinker's%20List%20-%20Exaggerating%20Prehistoric%20War%20Mortality%20\(2013\).pdf)

<comment><USER8> I think that Better Angels makes a stronger case from a qualitative point of view than it does from the quantitative point of view. Taleb and others have criticized Pinker's statistical analysis quite convincingly, but the historical narrative still stands: looking at the human cruelty throughout history, it's hard to deny that there are many violent practices that are now taboo, and that we seem to have broken out of the hobbesian trap.

<comment><USER9> The _overall_ historical narrative that he presents, about specific factors like capital punishment and infant mortality, is generally valid. But Pinker's use of historical evidence is at least as flawed as the issues with his statistics. _Better Angels_ literally appears to be based on a group of research assistants, without archival training, being let loose in a library and tasked with cataloguing all examples of violence and mortality throughout history.

This leads to an obvious sample bias and to Pinker basing the bulk of his argument on some truly questionable, non-peer reviewed secondary sources. It is frankly the kind of approach that would get called out if done by an undergraduate history major.

And I say that as someone who thinks Pinker is a fantastic writer, and who is sympathetic to much of the argument of _Better Angels._ But it's hard for me not to see some level of condescension in Pinker's approach to doing historical analysis. What he does in that book is akin to me (if you couldn't already guess, an historian) trying to write a pop linguistics book by reading a bunch of library books on the subject and chatting with the linguistics professors who have offices down the hall from me.

<comment><USER8> I stand corrected, and appreciate hearing your perspective. It does have a different structural feel to it compared to works I've read by respected modern day historians (which isn't that many), so I think I can see what you're getting at.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The Beats are boring.

Hear hear. I was always confused about what they offered. Every generation has some pushback against mainstream culture but the best movements are accompanied by something greater. I never got the feeling there was a larger cause with the Beats - maybe that was the whole point.

<comment><USER11> there are many aspects of the beat movement, and i think many of them get muddied or hidden by the more publicized, overt statements of drug use and and sexual freedom. But, paired with a post-world war II era, its more clear why these are the more prominently remembered themes, as they are the exact antithesis to the prevailing american lifestyle at the time. The "something greater" is a revolution of how we think about sexuality, personhood, and basic human rights. While not necessarily the driving force, the beats were a loud voice among the crowd proselytizing basic human rights, specifically for example gay rights.

<comment><USER10> Interesting - I did not know about their history with gay rights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I couldn't agree more with Pinker's answer to the most underrated author / thinker. Thomas Sowell has extremely unique insights and perspectives to offer on a plethora of topics, I actually learned better ways to think about data from some of his research. But whether you agree with his conclusions or not, you should definitely be aware of the arguments and the data he presents.

</comment><comment><USER13> Pinker was on the Joe Rogan podcast recently if anyone is interested [https://youtu.be/VUDAdOdF6Zg](https://youtu.be/VUDAdOdF6Zg)

<comment><USER14> And if you rather hear just the podcast - [https://player.fm/series/the-joe- rogan-experience-142216/107...](https://player.fm/series/the-joe-rogan- experience-142216/1073-steven-pinker)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _> Economic inequality [...] is both highly moralized (right-thinking people agree it's the root of all evil)_

No way. Even if all the money and stuff were ideally distributed our troubles wouldn't be over. Resentment and envy would find other fish to fry!

<comment><USER16> He also says "it's not clear that inequality (as opposed to poverty) is a moral abomination, or that reducing it is progress," so it may be unclear exactly what he means by the first statement.

<comment><USER17> Is he talking about _extreme_ inequality, or inequality in general?

<comment><USER18> My guess is both, i.e., inequality as such is not a problem, whereas poverty is. Frankfurt makes a similar distinction in "On Inequality". One way to distinguish the two is to observe that it is possible to have a society in which everyone is equally poor and thus one in which inequality does not exist. Conversely, observe that the difference in material wealth between the upper middle class and the billionaire class poses no problems where wealth itself is concerned. Both classes are very well off.

Now, there may be problems that are more likely to occur when economic inequality obtains given the power that money can afford people in practice. But _as such_ , inequality itself not the root of these problems and not the ultimate problem itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Listening to Steven Pinker definitely makes me feel warm and fuzzy; he's an optimist and we need those. With that said though, I think that trying to show that things are _better_ could lead to an incomplete understanding of the world as _better_ is not only subjective, but a value judgement, and therefore can only be given within the framework of the currently accepted morals of the present day. If you substitute _different_ for better, then you are more free to consider all the aspects of a change, not just the ones that present day society considers the most important. So you might instead conclude something like:

Current society is _safer_ than societies of the past, but also more closely monitored, and therefore less free.

We haven't had a war of naked aggression between major world powers for a while now, but probably because the weapons we have available to us are far more apocalyptic in nature, and everyone is afraid to use them.

We are rapidly improving our control over nature, but at the expense of depleting limited reserves of various minerals, and polluting the earth's ecosystem.

I don't know that I would necessarily describe any of those developments as _better_.

</comment><comment><USER20> Side note: Pinker was in the news recently because Bill Gates says that Pinker's new book, Enlightenment Now, is Bill Gates' "favorite book of all time." [0]

[0]: [https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment- Now](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment-Now)

<comment><USER21> His previous favorite book of all time was also by Pinker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Damn you Pinker. Now I have another 33 books or so to read...

</comment><comment><USER23> Surprisingly terse interview - lovely:)

</comment><comment><USER24> I've always rendered that PKD quote as:

 _Reality is that which, when 'I' stop believing in it, 'refuses' to go away._

Much better.

</comment><comment><USER25> For what he is famous for? I've read his 'The language instinct' and found it boring and unconvincing.

<comment><USER26> He is a very prolific writer. Try "The Blank Slate" and "Better Angels of our Nature".

<comment><USER27> Or better yet read Nassim Taleb's criticism on Pinker's books.

<comment><USER28> Hm sounds interesting though Taleb himself not immune to critique ...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Should programming languages support unit testing natively? - <AUTHOR> http://beust.com/weblog/archives/000522.html <comment><USER2> The unit test facility built in to the D programming language has turned out in practice to be a huge win. Sure, it's on the basic side, but the advantages are there's a standard way to do it that is little more than just writing out your tests right next to the function needing testing. This convenience factor tends to make a function look incomplete without the unit test.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unit tests shouldn't be part of the language, but they should be part of the standard library.

<comment><USER4> agreed. i'd also add a native assert statement allows for very clean test cases.

<comment><USER3> I agree that assert statements are good.

The language should be flexible enough that you can write them in the language, and not have to rely on the language providing them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No, they should support contracts as Eiffel does or have better type systems as Haskell has. Most problems can be eliminated by making them _impossible_ in the first place ;)

<comment><USER6> The problem is that this frequently turns into a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I like languages where I spend less time fighting the compiler and more time coding. If tests are the price I have to pay, then so be it.

<comment><USER7> In Eiffel you do not fight the compiler. The idea is that you define a set of assertions that must be true before writing the code. This process strengthens the program as you get a more well-defined knowledge of who-does-what in the program. This "Design by Contract" behaviour is much like TDD/BDD.

In Haskell, you do not fight the compiler either. With practice, you will find that the few type errors the compiler returns to you are legitimate: Wrong calling conventions, typos, API misuse, returning nonsense in a specific case and so on. I have, perhaps, some 5 errors per 100 lines of Haskell code I write that the compiler quacks on. It is equally bad moving dynamically typed programming idioms to Haskell as it is moving statically typed programming idioms into, say, Python.

<comment><USER8> "Fighting the compiler" doesn't necessarily mean type errors. It could mean that you have to warp your design to fit the constraints of a language, often making much more extensive changes to your program than you would otherwise would've had to.

Though a lot of my complaints about Haskell's type system could be alleviated with a good integrated refactoring tool. If I had one-command operations to:

a.) Convert a plain function to a monadic one

b.) Change the signature and stacking order of a large stack of monadic transformers

c.) Add a new alternative to an algebraic data type, and track down and fix all functions that use it.

d.) Add a new parameter, at an arbitrary position, to a function.

e.) Change a straight return value to a Maybe.

f.) Add a new field to a record or tuple type.

Then I'd find Haskell's type system much less oppressive. What's the status of Leksah these days?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I agree that tests should be part of the language. For example it would be great to have convenient and natural language support for creating simulated error conditions to force test execution of rarely used error handling code. An essential aspect of production code is to design in the handling of errors and unexpected conditions. This is true across the abstraction hierarchy; who throws exceptions and who catches them? In C code, how do you encode error returns? Who has the responsibility of printing error messages or notifying the user of a detected error? It would be great if these aspects of a system could be exercised as part of automated software testing, and I believe this would be facilitated by language features that could interact with test case datasets to simulate exceptions.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've always thought the unit test[s] for any given method in a system should be accessible at runtime as a singleton-method of the method object/closure. It would be a similar idea, in effect, to Lisp docstrings, except with another closure in place of a string.

<comment><USER11> Not quite a singleton method, but python does have tests embedded in doc- strings: <http://docs.python.org/library/doctest.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If Java was designed with testing in mind, there would be no such thing as dependency injection.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is more a comment on his motivation than the body of the article, but it seems to me that if running your tests requires anything more than typing "make/rake/ant/whatever test" than you're Doing It Wrong. And once your tests are that easy to run, they're also easy to integrate.

</comment><comment><USER14> Similar to the _javadoc_ tool, which has some native support.

</comment><comment><USER15> In python, it seems like it would be trivial to add a __test__() method to a class that was run, well, whenever.</comment>


Vax-loader ,auto build code for axios\vuex\cache - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/terribleness/vax-loader <comment><AUTHOR> so nice</comment>


Weizenbaum examines computers and society (1985) - jakub- http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html <comment><AUTHOR> See also his book "Computer Power and Human Reason."

Quote:

      "The computer has thus begun to be an instrument for the
     destruction of history. For when society legitimates only
     those 'data' that ... 'can easily be told to the machine',
     then history, memory itself, is annihiliated... Soon a
     supersystem will be built, based on the New York Times' data
     bank.. from which 'historians' will make inferences about
     what 'really' happened, about who is connected to
     whom, and about the 'real' logic of events."

That was in 1976.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Weizenbaum is discussing the received doctrine of most computer scientists. Probably most of you think we are making "just tools" and that their end use is not our concern. As you read this article, particularly the later portions, think about all the codenames we've heard since PRISM and how much the problem has grown since 1985.</comment>


Guy created this marketing tool on suggestion from someone on Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://textfreeapp.org/home.php

<comment><USER2> This looks like a great set of tools - but the font is killing me!

</comment><comment><USER3> "Your username must be under 11 characters" Nevermind.</comment>


The rise of few-maintainer projects - <AUTHOR> https://increment.com/open-source/the-rise-of-few-maintainer-projects/ <comment><USER2> > The code, intended to steal users' bitcoin wallets, had been injected by an > unknown developer with the username right9ctrl. That person had gained > commit access from event-stream's author, Dominic Tarr, simply by asking for > it. To many angry users, this was the equivalent of opening one's front door > to the first stranger who knocked, then grabbing one's coat and leaving for > the day.

No. A better analogy would be that a weary volunteer potato farmer for a large community garden is approached by a member of that community who also has potato farming skills. The community member tells him that he wishes take over maintenance of the farm. The weary volunteer accepts the community members offer and leaves the farm in the new volunteer's hands. The weary farmer returns to his home, and pursues other things. Meanwhile, the new community's potato farmer turns out to be malicious. Keep in mind that more than 99% of the time these volunteers are just wanting to give back to the community.

It is nothing like giving up the keys to your home. It is like giving up volunteer work to another volunteer, because that is exactly what it is.

<comment><USER3> In my opinion the farm analogy doesn't work because you can't fork a farm and continue working where the original left off. In my opinion Dominic should have simply stopped maintaining the package, and maybe added a message stating that the package is no longer being maintained. If someone wants to take over then they would need to fork it. That would force people to consciously switch to the newer forked versions and there would be no surprises about a new maintainer suddenly inserting malicious code.

<comment><USER4> That is what I do too. (I also do not give commit access to anyone else, but do accept patches after I review them. However, nobody ever sends patches or other stuff, but if they did, then I will read them. I do, however, allow others to edit the documentation, just not to edit the code itself.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The event-stream incident shows that npm has restructured the way projects work: rather than an end-user choosing a _few_ pieces of software, each of which has a lot of maintainers, they install a huge number of very small packages each of which has a very small number of contributors. The "unit of contribution" is not a pull request or commit but spawning a new micro- project.

Community management and vetting remain hard problems that aren't fun to volunteer to work on for many developers, so they are neglected.

<comment><USER6> And some people are complaining that Python has too many batteries. I'll be happy when I can depend only on the stdlib, which I expect to have better reviewing process than a thousand random projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious how the new Github Sponsors development plays into the one or very few maintainer "issue." My gut instinct tells me it will be an added incentive to keep the governance of such projects small or solo because how do you deal with distributing the funds over numerous maintainers with vastly different levels of contribution? I guess one could argue that a project valuable enough to attract a large sponsorship would also be too unwieldy for some to handle alone.

But I haven't given that much critical thought and I hate to default towards cynicism immediately after getting presented with a way to help get open source developers some financial support.

<comment><USER8> I agree, it would tend to encourage a smaller core team and a larger number of unpaid contributors. But this is often a workable model. I don't think most drive-by contributors expect to be paid and that seems... fine?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The problem with this type of analysis mirrors that of wikipedia:

[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia)

> Almost every time I saw a substantive edit, I found the user who had > contributed it was not an active user of the site. They generally had made > less than 50 edits (typically around 10), usually on related pages. Most > never even bothered to create an account.

Pandas might have had 4 core maintainers as measured by commit count, but the actual work might have a much larger outside influence

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm reminded of Wikipedia and drive-by edits. When each repo is so small (equivalent to a single article on Wikipedia, or even less), it seems like they should be part of larger organizations with a bit more bureaucracy and guidance?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, like [https://thephpleague.com/](https://thephpleague.com/).

<comment><USER11> Also [https://www.codeshelter.co/](https://www.codeshelter.co/) [https://jazzband.co/](https://jazzband.co/)</comment></comment></comment>


Data transmission speeds of 1.125 Tb/s achieved in the UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.dispatchtribunal.com/fastest-ever-data-rate-of-1-125-tbs-achieved-by-ucl-researchers/14533/ <comment><USER2> Original: [https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news- articles/0116/110216-fastest...](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news- articles/0116/110216-fastest-data-rate-record)</comment>


Think Like a Statistician – Without the Math - <AUTHOR> http://flowingdata.com/2010/03/04/think-like-a-statistician-without-the-math/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if the people upvoting the article are actually reading it. It essentially just says "be careful" without any kind of practical advice for how to think like a statistician.

Two much better articles:

* [https://source.opennews.org/en-US/learning/distrust-your-dat...](https://source.opennews.org/en-US/learning/distrust-your-data/)

* [https://github.com/Quartz/bad-data-guide](https://github.com/Quartz/bad-data-guide)

<comment><USER3> Just telling people to "think like a statistician" is enough to make them consider base rate information, so I wouldn't say that the article is useless, even if the content is a little lacking in the specifics.

<comment><USER2> Well, if you really want to learn how to think probabilistically in everyday life, I'd recommend Douglas Hubbard's "How to Measure Anything" which contains detailed advice for how to calibrate your estimates (so you don't continually over- or underestimate the probability of various events) and how base risk management and strategic decision making on this knowledge. Probably useful for the startup folk here.

[http://smile.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles- Bus...](http://smile.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Business- ebook/dp/B00INUYS2U/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Stats is maybe the area of math where non-math (formulas, calculations, derivations) reasoning is the most important:

\- Have I unwittingly introduced a bias? Is there a selection taking place that I didn't think about when collecting the data? (Eg calling people on landlines to get polling data.)

\- Is there a reason why I should expect the dynamics in the dataset occur in the future, or a reason to expect it to be gone? (Eg does the financial market work like it did before the year 2000?)

\- If such-and-such hypothesis is true, what else should I be able to find in the data? (Eg suppose crime is caused by non-aborted kids, what other effects should there be? More truancy in schools?)

<comment><USER5> Does non-aborted kids mean something I am not aware of? I mean, every child who is born would be non-aborted, right?

<comment><USER2> It refers to research, heavily publicized by Freakonomics, which claims that the reduction in crime rates in the US is not because of police interventions etc. but because more people are having abortions and abortions are legal in more states and so fewer people are born in dysfunctional environments that tend to produce more criminal behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _This should go without saying, but approach data as objectively as > possible. I 'm not saying you shouldn't have a hunch about what you're > looking for, but don't let your preconceived ideas influence the results. > Because if you go to length looking for some specific pattern, you're > probably going to find it. It'll just be at the sacrifice of accurate > results._

I couldn't say it better myself. I admit to loathing when people think that they can finally prove whatever thing they've been long advocating for, now that they have the data that proves it. Besides the huge issue of thinking that data -- by nature of being data, or something -- inherently contains more truth than just someone literally rambling into a spreadsheet...if the dataset is indeed worthwhile, and by that, I mean _deep_...then whatever foundational beliefs you _think_ were true needs to be re-evaluated in light of examining the data before moving on to prove something.

This is something that I'm reminded of when sampling the public Twitter stream...I use Twitter probably more than I do email, but my perception of what the Twitter community is like -- I.e. Who and from where people participate, the kind of things they tweet about, etc -- are inextricably narrowed by how I've self-selected users to follow. So when just looking at a random sample of everything that is currently being tweeted, it practically feels like I've stepped onto an alternate reality.

</comment><comment><USER7> The idea behind all skills is implementing them in your daily life. If you are a statistician who never really uses math in daily life, then it's not the math at fault, but you simply haven't found a way to make it a habbit yet. This is also why the points in the article are rather broad and not really statistics related. For instance, how do you decide when which details are important and when the big picture is important (two points that follow each other directly after one another). You'll probably say gut feeling. But if you don't use the science to consistently train your gut, then your gut feeling isn't that much better than mine (I'm no statistician).

Yes there is a point where you get so much into the principles that you don't need to calculate everything anymore. However, that point is not after graduation, but after doing more math than the people around you for about 3-5 years, maybe 10 for some. And a huge part of your intuition would probably be around not needing a calculator to put the numbers together, and about finding many different solutions to the same problem, understanding that each has their pros and cons (e.g., different fittings that all tell you something about your data cloud).

If you answer a broad question with "it depends", it's a good sign you only think you are well trained (happens to all of us all the time). If you think "it depends, if A then B but Z, if C then D but Y, if E then G but X, ..." then you are probably well trained.

</comment><comment><USER8> Consistent deviations from the null hypothesis indicate the presence of a confounding variable and pave the way to new potential discoveries. A great example (albeit not statistical) is how planets deviate from their elliptical orbits and that this provides evidence for the gravitational pull of other hidden planets and moons. Having a simple model that gives you an expectation (usually the expected value E) can be extremely powerful.

</comment><comment><USER9> After thinking like a statistician about thinking like a statistician, I thought about [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statist...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics)

</comment><comment><USER10> Yup... uh... this is great advice for life in general. Really what this guy is saying boils down to... pay as much if not more to model selection / validity than you do to model analysis

</comment><comment><USER11> One major mistake I see is when people look at statistics on a linear scale when often it should be on a logarithmic scale.</comment>


Show HN: Distraction Free Facebook Messenger, a Chrome Extension - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/distraction-free-facebook/ipkbhlfkopeokhpbhgmlonagpppedfej

<comment><USER2> Usually, facebook does not enjoy this kind of extensions. Facebook required "Social Fixer" extension to remove its key features [http://socialfixer.com/blog/2013/10/05/facebook-requires- soc...](http://socialfixer.com/blog/2013/10/05/facebook-requires-social-fixer- browser-extension-to-remove-key-features/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, thanks for the warning!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why would what seems like some CSS tweaks need to have access to my FB and browsing data?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good question! In addition to CSS tweaks, I am finding having a button there is nice, and the links to people's profiles cannot be clicked on now (which I only know how to do through Javascript).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> why would anyone prefer this over a decent jabber client like irssi+bitlbee?

<comment><USER5> Not OP, but here's some off the top of my head:

* group chat

* facebook stickers

* easy(ish) file uploads

<comment><USER4> these are fair points, but frankly i have never needed to upload a file to facebook or use a group chat, and i have never seen a facebook sticker but i would probably find them distracting. i use bitlbee+irssi because it is the least distracting way in which i can consume facebook chat to communicate with people on their platform.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally makes sense! Yeah, this app isn't for everyone. I am personally very regularly in many active facebook group chats and love the stickers. To each their own.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How I sold my first novel - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/05/crib-sheet-singularity-sky.html

<comment><USER2> Oh, it's you.

I was going to go to Minicon in Minneapolis just to meet you, but you didn't make it _shakes fist in impotent rage_. I still recommend "Halting State" to all my programmer friends, and "Accelerando" to the paranoids.

Thanks for the laughs. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I had to cancel Minicon because my wife was diagnosed with cancer and needed major abdominal surgery around a month before the convention. (It was non- malignant, surgical intervention seems to have worked, and she's been cancer- free for two years since then: but it was not a good time. I don't normally cancel appearances once I've accepted them, but I hope you understand why that one was exceptional.)

Hopefully I'll make it there another year.

<comment><USER2> Oh yes, I remember the circumstances. :) Totally understand, and glad your wife is okay!

Hopefully we'll see you at Minicon or somewhere else Minneapolis-ish someday.</comment></comment></comment>


In Dieting, Magic Isn't a Substitute for Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/health/nutrition/q-and-a-are-high-protein-low-carb-diets-effective.html

<comment><USER2> Oh come on

Yes, a calorie is a calorie (as long as dietary: macro/micro nutrients needs are supplied), still there may be advantages to the diet, _as it is pointed in the article_

"They report that people on the Atkins diet were burning off more calories. Ergo, the diet is a good thing." (it's not necessarily all good especially if you think low-carb diet==eating bacon at will, still)

Also, there may be other advantages, like hunger sensation in different diets.

Dieting is calorie balancing but there are several other aspects that should be considering and dismissing 'low-carb' diets because you're only focusing on the calorie balancing is naive.

<comment><USER3> "Ergo, the diet is a good thing" is what the proposers of that diet say. _On the contrary_ , Dr. Hirsch says that "when carbohydrate levels are low in a diet and fat content is high, people lose water. That can confuse attempts to measure energy output" ergo, the measurements were mistaken and there is not advantage from a low-carbs diet (as proved from Dr. Hirschs's experiments in a controlled environment).

<comment><USER2> ""when carbohydrate levels are low in a diet and fat content is high, people lose water"

This is not a bad thing, but it is a thing that has to be compensated.

And there is loss of water in _all_ weight loss diets.

"the measurements were mistaken and there is not advantage from a low-carbs diet"

There is not an advantage _from the calorie balancing point_ but there are _several other aspects_ that are important in diets

<comment><USER3> He isn't saying that losing water is a bad thing, he says that how you lose it could explain the measured increased levels of calories burned from this new study, even if his own evidence says that you don't lose more weight from a hig fat diet.

"There is not an advantage from the calorie balancing point": what he says is that there are no advantages from a weight loss point, as the calories balance IS what creates long-term weight loss (according to him).

<comment><USER2> "what he says is that there are no advantages from a weight loss point"

A diet is much more than counting calories. It's about managing to maintain a set amount of food for your objective.

Here's an experiment you can do. Replace all your food (lunch/dinner) with chicken fillets (for the daily need of protein), top up calories with sweet potatoes and olive oil for fat needs.

See how long you can keep up with this diet. This is a nutritionally sound diet (except for micronutrients), and if you calculate your daily needs you will maintain your weight (or you can adjust for weight loss or gain)

But a regular person will probably lose weight because (s)he will get sick of it fast and eat less!

The calories matter, but two things can have an equal number of calories and one may make people feel hungry after 1h and the other may make people feel full for the whole day. Guess who's more likely to lose weight?!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Counting calories can not be a long term solution for obesity. A workable solution must be based on easier to implement facts such as the more sweets one eats, the more one craves sweets. I would recommend the No S Diet: www.nosdiet.com "I would have them eat a lower-calorie diet. They should eat whatever they normally eat, but eat less. You must carefully measure this. Eat as little as you can get away with, and try to exercise more." -Dr. Jules Hirsch. This is incredibly poor advice, based in physics, and ignoring psychology.

</comment><comment><USER5> What these ridiculous study cherry picking groups overlook is the satiating effects of high protein consumption. An attempt at a high protein body building diet ended with me losing 10kg of fat.

Eat lot's of protein and your appetite just dies, fat/carbs a lot of the time make no difference. It's just easy on the high fat diet to avoid high glycemic response carbs and fructose.

Plus palatability, sugar makes you over eat. Plain and simple, High levels of protein cause one to undereat. Take your pick.

<comment><USER6> Definitely. I, personally, can eat half a box of pasta and be extremely hungry again in a few hours. If I eat a bowl of lentils, I sometimes have difficulty finishing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is taking dieting completely out of context. It's akin to saying that 1 gallon of fuel will result in the same amount of distance driven no matter how you drive.

There are advantages to cutting out high GI carbs, since they lead to a spike in insulin which results in food cravings, tiredness and hunger. Switch the sugary cereal for the oats in the morning and you'll experience this first hand.

<comment><USER8> Citation needed.

<comment><USER7> Just look up the affects of insulin, or why a low GI diet is good. Here you go: [http://health.ninemsn.com.au/dietandnutrition/nutrition/6938...](http://health.ninemsn.com.au/dietandnutrition/nutrition/693899/the- low-gi-diet)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The human body is the most complex piece of machinery in the history of the known universe, and is highly variable from one person to the next, with all sorts of evolutionary cruft and random aberrations.

I understand we all need actionable information to maximize our odds at life, but any attempt at science journalism that doesn't start from that premise and instead tries to tell you "X good, Y bad" can probably be ignored, or at least taken with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER10> Surely on that argument, the body of almost any animal that is bigger than us is actually a more complex piece of machinery. Blue whales are massive, for instance and are made of far more cells than we are.

<comment><USER11> It's not about size. Human brains produce consciousness. Can't argue with that.

<comment><USER10> a. How do you know that other brains don't.

b. How do you know that consciousness is primarily a function of complexity.

c. Complexity need not give recognisable output.

d. The weather.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since this is Hacker News, no discussion of diets can be complete without a reference to The Hacker's Diet <[https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/>](https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/>). Especially in this context, since it's basically calorie restriction designed to appeal to an engineer.

Personally, I lost 50 pounds using this approach, and my diet consisted mainly of Hot Pockets, microwaved White Castle cheeseburgers, and frozen pizza. Because they print the number of calories on the back of the box, it made it easier to control calories in. I didn't exercise and as a programmer spent most of my day sitting in a chair. Yet it was relatively straightforward to lose weight by simply eating less, with no particular regard to the composition of what was eaten.

My personal opinion is that all diets "work". Regardless of the magic or science involved, people on diets who have actually adopted the "I'm seriously trying to lose weight" mindset will eat fewer calories. Especially when it starts working: The Hacker's Diet involves a daily weight log and some math to extract the trend line from the noise. Now that we have WiFi scales and fit- tracking web sites, it's very easy to monitor the effect of cutting out soda, skipping dessert, and not having seconds at the dragon buffet.

Our brains are wired to make connections, and to some extent, to evangelize. So if you lose weight on the Tofu Diet, you're likely to go around telling everyone about the miracle benefits of tofu. Much like I'm convinced a simple calories-in/calories-out approach is all you need.

<comment><USER13> He has actually started the paleo diet. [http://www.fourmilab.ch/fourmilog/archives/2011-12/001344.ht...](http://www.fourmilab.ch/fourmilog/archives/2011-12/001344.html)

<comment><USER12> Though as he says, not to lose weight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Dr Hirsch seems to be rather oversimplifying, to me. I'm not an expert, but what about -

1) Psychological factors and satiation? 2) Calorific uptake and excretion? 3) The mechanisms by which the body converts excess energy to fat, why and when they're triggered?

<comment><USER15> He does address those things, but he notes that when losing weight, calornies in < calories out is the primary factor for any weight loss diet. For maintenance diets, 1, 2, and 3 matter, because the types of calories play a role in metabolism, dietary function, and overall health.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> #classic #Ornish diet / #lifestyle #Radical Change

Change or Die /

 _"All leadership comes down to this: changing people's behavior. Why is that so damn hard? Science offers some surprising new answers -- and ways to do better."_

BY ALAN DEUTSCHMAN | MAY 1, 2005

[http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/94/open_change-or- die.ht...](http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/94/open_change-or-die.html)

<comment><USER16> _"Reframing alone isn't enough, of course. That's where Dr. Ornish's other astonishing insight comes in. Paradoxically, he found that radical, sweeping, comprehensive changes are often easier for people than small, incremental ones. For example, he says that people who make moderate changes in their diets get the worst of both worlds: They feel deprived and hungry because they aren't eating everything they want, but they aren't making big enough changes to quickly see an improvement in how they feel, or in measurements such as weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol. But the heart patients who went on Ornish's tough, radical program saw quick, dramatic results, reporting a 91% decrease in frequency of chest pain in the first month. "These rapid improvements are a powerful motivator," he says. "When people who have had so much chest pain that they can't work, or make love, or even walk across the street without intense suffering find that they are able to do all of those things without pain in only a few weeks, then they often say, 'These are choices worth making.' ""_

[http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/94/open_change-or- die.ht...](http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/94/open_change-or- die.html?page=0%2C3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "There is an inflexible law of physics — energy taken in must exactly equal the number of calories leaving the system when fat storage is unchanged."

Really? That's an inflexible law of physics? Only if fat is the only source of energy the body has. But it isn't. Simple sugars are a huge source of energy for the body. This is the main reason why the Atkins diet works for quick fat loss- basically eliminates the alternate sources of energy your body would usually use and forces it to start burning fat.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Dr. Rudolph Leibel, now an obesity researcher at Columbia University, and I took people who were of normal weight and had them live in the hospital, where we diddled with the number of calories we fed them so we could keep their weights absolutely constant, which is no easy thing. This was done with liquid diets of exactly known calorie content."

Wow, how much does one get paid for agreeing to take part in something so terrible sounding?

<comment><USER10> You get paid by the fruits of progress and enlightenment, for which to nurture your soul. Or alternatively in dollars, if that doesn't cut it. To be honest, it sounds like what a lot of people seem to eat anyway, I know loads of people who appear to exist solely on vitamin milkshakes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A consulted expert disses new research with a conjured, speculative flaw, because it contradicts his own research.

This is illogical, but not just because the expert has a conflict of interest; the studies measure different things.

The old study put people on appropriate maintenance diets of varying compositions and found that everybody maintained their weights regardless of what they ate. As it turns out, humans are very good at maintaining their weights; feed them more, within reason, and their bodies burn more; feed them less and the trim is adjusted to burn less.

The new study measures how easily people regain weight on various diets after their bodies have been kicked out of this mode by extreme calorie deflicts (resulting in weight loss). Not the same thing, at all.

</comment><comment><USER20> We should eat well balanced diets that are tailored to each of us as individuals. I tried high fat high protein before and it didn't work very well with my metabolism, to spare you some details.

Listen to your body, and give it what it needs. Experiment a bit. That's what I learned after trying fad diets. The realization is we are individuals each with our own metabolism that is slightly different.

What I found is that low carb diets are a big sham. The key is not to avoid carbs, but to avoid SUGAR and HFCS. Lots of "carbs" we eat come from absolute garbage, like white bread.

Trust me, a diet of mostly high fiber green vegetables is NOT going to effect your health adversely. It will do only the opposite, no matter how many damn carbs are in it.

<comment><USER21>
      > We should eat well balanced diets that are tailored to
      > each of us as individuals.

vs.

      > What I found is that low carb diets are a big sham.

    ?

<comment><USER20> by "low carb diet" I am specifically referring to carb-restriction type diets like atkins that advocate eating an extraordinarily low amount of carbohydrates.

carbohydrates are an important macronutrient. the problem is not with carbs, but with bad carbs.

go visit some third world countries where they eat primarily carbs and find me the obese people. (hint: you won't find any)

<comment><USER22> The problem isn't with carbs, protein, fat or subcategories of those, the problem is with more calories being eaten than calories being burned.

caloric intake > caloric burn -> weight gain

caloric intake = caloric burn -> weight stabilises

caloric intake < caloric burn -> weight loss

You can alter your caloric intake by changing the amount and type of food you eat. You can alter your caloric burn by changing the amount of exercise / labor you perform.

<comment><USER20> I absolutely agree that weight is regulated by calories consumed vs calories burned.

In practice though, trying to say that is the only important aspect is complete bull. Try getting all your calories from wood chips and let me know how that work.

In order for consistent weight loss to occur, we need to eat healthy foods so that we feel good. Feeling lousy will cause you to overeat. Eating bad foods could also make you sick.

<comment><USER22> Well yes, of course your diet should be well-rounded and contain all the necessary vitamins, fibers, protein your body needs.

My comment was more a reaction to all the different kinds of diets, and how they're supposedly a better way to lose weight than the previous diet. If you want to lose weight, and you already have a varied diet that meets your body's daily intake requirements, it can be useful to calculate your calorie consumption and burn rate and try to tweak both of those so that you end up with a caloric deficit.

Of course this only directly affects your weight, and you need to also take care of your body's general health. I would hope it's obvious to most that you shouldn't start a wood chip diet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Forgive my sense of humour, but just on the title alone....

....When is magic a substitute for science?

I mean, I read the title, and my response was, "Yeah, I know. And why is it prefaced with 'in dieting'?" Does it need further reading?

To be serious, from what I can tell, the problem is people in general will always look for the easy out. No matter the science or logic, if some one presents a "cure pill", they want it. Deep down they know its more hope than anything else, but because it looks easy, they are only too willing to part with cash. This article wont change that, it just reinforces those who already agree.

</comment><comment><USER24> I may be old-fashioned, but the idea of any of these "extreme" diets scares me. I have always found that an approach with regular ( 2-3 times a week ) exercise and an conservative approach to eating is better.

My usual diet plans for eating is breakfast (some cereal), a big lunch at about 1 o clock (this is my dinner effectively), and perhaps something light, like pasta, rice when I get home, followed by a bowl of cereal for bedtime.

This with some running or other exercise leaves me at a desirable place without causing me too much pain.

<comment><USER6> Interesting. You realize though, that prior to agriculture, not a single human ate anything like what you describe, right? You list a lot of grains, and those are a relatively recent addition to the human diet.

"Extreme" is a function of time and place. What seems normal for modern America might be very abnormal relative to the historical record.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have always wondered why the Adkins diet seems to work. The article basically says it is both more successful and yet has no physiological reason for being more successful. So why?

My first guess would be: carbs/bread is cheap and usually comes in large quantities, like unlimited bread baskets. Meat is expensive and comes in smaller quantities. So eating mostly meat just makes it easier to consume fewer calories by default. But again that's just a guess.

<comment><USER25> _So eating mostly meat just makes it easier to consume fewer calories by default._

This is probably the most important statement in the entire thread. All of these fad diets basically trick the dieter into eating less calories. When Lustig, etc... cite various studies those studies never seem to account for overall caloric intake. Person A cut carbs, person B didn't, person A lost weight ergo carbs are bad. Yeah, it doesn't quite work that way. Saying that cutting calories will help a person lose weight doesn't sell books so authors have to pick something to demonize.

HFCS is a popular thing to demonize now. Is it surprising to anyone that if a person cuts out 4-6 sodas/day that had ~200 calories each that said person is going to lose weight? It had zero to do HFCS and everything to do with cutting out ~1000 calories/day. Again, that doesn't sell books or speaking engagements, but declaring X as evil does.

<comment><USER26> No it's a jump to a conclusion at least, and according to a recent study may be false. <http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154>.

The study seems to indicate that low carb diets actually do trigger more calories to be burned for the same level of activity, about 430 additional calories per day. It's too early to tell if this affect is real (larger study needed), but the results are interesting.

<comment><USER15> Low carb diets also increase metabolic stress (specifically ketosis), which is one of the suspected reasons for the additional calorie burn. Ketosis over short periods is good, but scientists differ on whether it is safe in the long-term. For diabetics (Type I or II), ketosis is not safe, as the body does not have the proper insulin response to maintain safe levels of ketosis.

<comment><USER6> Are there any studies on ketosis and diabetes? Because one of the primary drivers of insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes is being overweight. So, even if ketosis were bad, if losing weight improved your insulin sensitivity, it might still be worth it. Obviously, this shouldn't apply to type 1 diabetics, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Of course a calorie is a calorie, but this is more than often used as a simplistic view of how the body processes food. Now it is clear that both the type and amount of food one consumes influences the hormonal system and gene expression. It is naive to keep thinking just in terms of calories.

</comment><comment><USER28> What this articles says is any diet which says you can eat the same number of calories and lose weight is lying. Some diets may make you want to eat less calories, but you cannot eat the same number of calories and lose more weight without doing more exercise.

<comment><USER26> Not true, some diets raise metabolism relative to others according to recent studies, low carb diets burn about 430 more calories on average per day for the same level of activity. So that's another way of burning calories without "exercise" unless you consider sitting still exercise.

<comment><USER28> But that's precisely what this article argues is a falacy. He discusses a trial carried out in hospital conditions with regulated liquid meals of exactly the same number calories but differing carbs/ protein ratios. The results showed that given the same calories and exercise all the subjects maintained the same weight.

Unless I misunderstood anything.</comment></comment></comment>


Bertrand Russell, Donald Trump, and Archimedes - <AUTHOR> http://bit-player.org/2016/bertrand-russell-donald-trump-and-archimedes <comment><USER2> Trump and his media people want to get their opponents to become uncomfortable, stressed and start making mistakes. It is a strategy that worked too well in the primaries and they want to repeat in the election.</comment>