Questions That Don't Deserve Their Own Thread

General Chat
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There are two sides to every story even though it can be hard to determine which one is actually correct these days. And with the mainstream media consistently proving to lean much further to the left than right, it only makes since that Trump is painted as a ridiculously insane man. Dropping nukes on hurricanes? There are actually some people that don’t believe he said that. Coronavirus? I don’t know why he gets all the blame as no one really knew what to do when the virus started and, while we have learned a lot, we still have a lot to learn in terms of controlling this. Moreover, I would say the local government of each state is much more responsible as they have made their own respective decision for their local area. How about people fingering Trump for being racist as he sees all the violent rioting and looting that has damaged, and often destroyed the lives and livelihoods of black and white Americans, as more problematic than the death of George Floyd and all the racism (which is probably lower than it ever has been before in US history) that exists in the country which, don’t get me wrong here, is in fact still truly terrible and unfortunate.

Now how often do people hear about the Hunter Biden scandal and all the things Trump supporters say that Biden messed up during his political career? Or maybe it is all Republican conspiracy that doesn’t hold any water. I really don’t know.

The point of the argument I am trying to make here is that, in today’s political atmosphere, on both the right and left, it is hard to know where the truth lies. Everyone (myself included) often has there own, often very biased opinion about the “truth” of what really happens/happened. So I would say that it is perfectly reasonable for Trump and others to suggest that there might be quite a bit of fraud in the election. It would also be perfectly reasonable for Biden to suggest the same about Trump (somewhat related, though not directly, to your example in Texas). Very few people actually probably know where most of the truth is.

With politics, I have had to learn to take absolutely everything with a grain of salt and understand that there is leverage on twisting the truth to support a given political party. Based on my comments here, it probably seems like I am a little biased, but the truth is that, with anything politically “factual,” I have learned that nothing I hear should be taken as the 100% guaranteed truth. And it is for the same reason that I try not pull statistical conclusions for something like voter fraud out of “comprehensive” studies that could very well be biased and/or skewed. That being said, your statement could be entirely right, it just seems foolish to me to assume that with a guarantee as given in my argument above.

At the end of the day, everyone has to pick one side of the story that they believe is likely the truth, see what has affected their own lives, and make their own decision. That is why some people support Biden and also why some people seem crazy enough to support Trump. I do not want this topic to get hot, as I understand it often does for a lot of people including myself, so I probably won’t comment much more. You all are entitled to your own opinions and what you believe and so I respect that. Quite frankly I am not even old enough to vote yet. It is a hard time that we all live in so take care folks.

May the best man win.

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To be honest, I’m quite astonished that the idea to just stop counting votes because the result needs to be known is even taken seriously. Don’t both parties have a desire to make the system at least appear to be fair? Not counting votes because there wasn’t enough time does exactly the opposite.

I’m not sure if I’d call Fox News to be “learning further to the left than to the right”. Fox News, as far as I’m aware, is the largest mainstream media in the US as well.

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Don’t give up on the truth. A recurring theme that I’ve seen throughout your post is the claim that the truth is often unobtainable, and that a difference in opinion in the facts should simply be left as a matter of personal belief. To find the truth, one needs to consider the evidence presented and not simply dismiss views contrary to one’s own as having a political agenda.

It is an unfortunate reality of these times that experts, science, evidence, facts and even the truth is under attack. I think perhaps the most stunning example is the perspectives surrounding the pandemic in this country. Here is the perspective of some scientists and healthcare professionals:

I think those perspectives will help to explain why Trump gets and deserves so much blame for the situation we are in. It is also indefensible to argue that no one knew what to do, or that it could not have been handled better, since we have the undeniable evidence that so many other countries have handled this crisis so much better, like Vietnam, New Zealand, South Korea, Australia, and so on. In fact, this list is very long since the USA ranks among the very worst in terms of how we’ve failed during this pandemic.

Those that label Trump as racist are not simply pointing at some isolated recent remarks, but rather an extensive and well-documented history of statements and actions that stretch back for decades before he ever ran for office. See for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump and the many sources cited therein.

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I’d like to add that science is nothing more than the pursuit of finding the truth. Recently it is being used as a political term, but science is neither left nor right, and does not have an opinion. It’s more or less the opposite of an opinion.

We can’t be certain of most of the truth (apart from our existence), but we have found many methods, mostly in the past 500 years that show how one can obtain as close an approximation to knowledge of the truth as is possible, through things like empiricism (test a theory by making predictions and seeing if they hold up), bayesian statistics (or: how to say something about the whole even if you can only observe a small part) and Occam’s razor (if two conflicting theories are equally believable, believe the one that requires the fewest assumptions)

Here’s a good video describing the problems with politicising science, and how absurd it actually is.

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To be fair, Fox is probably the least left-influenced of the mainstream media. But, as with anything, it depends on who is doing to what what to report the news. And, while you many disagree, many people, myself included, believe that has changed considerably in the last few years.

I agree with this. As long as there is true honesty in the vote.

I am not saying that we should not strive for the truth, that is always important. But for many Americans it is, in fact, often unobtainable. I did not say we should blindly make decisions aligned to what we feel might be right. We must in fact relate to our own lives and what we can understand with certainty. But, to be fueled only by whatever someone else claims entirely without taking into consideration the concept of what I explained is a bad idea in my mind.

It is also an unfortunate reality that science, evidence, experts, and people with contrary views are not always right. And it is a sad reality that people with contrary views are often dismissed harshly and that there is often a political agenda in front of where the truth is or isn’t.

I was talking about when the pandemic first started, long before those countries you listed started testing extensively. And, as I mentioned, I am of the belief that the government of individual states deserve most of the blame for the handling of the pandemic up to this point. All states have almost their own “personal” ideas and mandates for how things should be managed.

Moreover, your articles rely on a strong belief that this pandemic is terribly horrific. God forbid if someone else comes along and says you are 95+ percent likely to be okay though when they have a family to feed, their career and money is a real concern, and playing around with lockdowns is not an option. Maybe if you can snuggle in the safety of your own home with a remote job and no fear for money than it is an option though. All that being said, I do believe that we must try our hardest to reduce the spread of this virus by protecting the vulnerable with masks and social distancing, so long as it doesn’t interfere with other people’s livelihoods. Balancing that is outside of our scientific analysis of this virus and everyone must be taken into consideration for their own situation. That is where the real problem is for a lot of people.

The pandemic has been bad, most everyone would probably agree with that (although on varying levels) and we would be much better without it. But it is by no means the only thing in life right now that is important to consider. It is better to ask yourself what you should be doing to keep others safe and taking everyone into consideration rather than point fingers at Trump and unconditionally accept everything you want to do and believe as true. This often means using your own reasoning instead of only the conclusion of the experts.

Again, this all relies on your trust that all the info is extensively truthful. What about all the racist accusations against Biden that people make from time to time? Again, hard to know where the truth is.

This is absolutely true, science at its core is the pursuit of the truth. But that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes science is slightly (or greatly) wrong. And that doesn’t change the fact that it is sometimes altered to something that isn’t science, that is, with a motive to cover the truth.

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I was watching something, and a psychologist (?) was saying something along the lines of that Americans doubt every source at this point because they’ve been gaslit for 4 years now, and basically a whole country is displaying symptoms of a person in a long-time mentally abusive relationship, adding how they excuse wrong behaviors and are in denial.

Interesting perspective, I’ll see if I can find more.

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I don’t think people are blaming Trump so much for what he did in January and February. The real problems lie with how it continued afterwards. How could you not blame the goverment of the country if most other countries do it comparatively better than the US?

But, even in the early stages, Trump did lie about what he knew from the virus, and played it off as a Chinese problem which people shouldn’t worry about, while he was already aware of people being infected in the US. That’s something to blame him on, obscuring the truth.

I think here is another point that I don’t understand about how people see the virus and lockdowns. The economy and the number of infected is directly tied together. More people ill = bad for the economy. What lockdowns do, is decrease the number of infected extremely rapidly, so that the economy doesn’t have to carry the brunt of all these restrictions on large groups, working inside, quarantining and so on. If there are no people ill, we wouldn’t need the restrictions, and there’s only two ways to lower the number of ill people: by vaccination (which doesn’t exist yet) or by lockdown measures.

I believe I already explained to you what 5% means and that you shouldn’t take it that lightly. I’m not doing that again.

I unconditionally believe (because I’ve seen him say these things in person) that Trump has done many things that put others in harm. From sowing doubt about the existence of the virus, to sowing doubt about its severity / deadliness, to campaigning for less testing, to refusing to wear a mask, to suggesting untested medical treatments.

Blaming Trump is my way of keeping others safe.

You don’t have to have a low tolerance for trust to believe what is written is truthful. I randomly looked at a few of the sources, and many have Trump himself stating what is written in the article. You can actually watch him speak the words in the interviews.

Also, what does whether Biden is racist have to do with the question if Trump is racist? Nothing. They’re unrelated.

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People on here have told me time and time again about all of this. Fear is what puts the economy down, not this virus (with its apparently low death rate). If it was killing everyone, than that would be one thing, but it is not. Many people do not seem to be that worried here in the US. Why aren’t so many of them following the “rules”? The economy is improving right now overall in the US, and it is because people agree with me that this is not the end of the world. Is it great? No. Improving? Yes When we scare everyone into hiding the economy shrinks. The truth is that this virus has killed 200,000 Americans but while that is a lot, it is also true that the vast majority of people are just fine. Death is a part of reality. There are always risks.

And don’t even try scaring me with your “amazing” 5 percent number that you have told me about before. It doesn’t scare me and apparently it doesn’t scare millions of people in the US either.

It is true that a lot of people have died from the virus unfortunately and that is bad. But let me put another picture in your head that is much worse. Everyone locked into their homes and starving to death. There is a reason why we opened back up. Most people see that hurting the economy with overly emphasized fear over this virus is much worse in the long run. That is why people like I disagree with you. Communism and socialism don’t work. Let’s not go that route.

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I’ll only say it’s a bit easy to say people should go out and work when you’re not yet part of the workforce.
It’s easier to have extreme views when you are not yet responsible for yourself.

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Or views that many adults do see as normal. I could argue that lockdowns are extreme as well. I don’t see the other point you are trying to make because, while people don’t often want to work, it must be done.

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It is, though. Have you even seen the statistics?

Here’s a graph from the CDC, showing deaths due to flu (green), other pneumonia-causing viruses (yellow) and COVID (red, all the way at the end):

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Note that the last measured date is April 4th. Here’s how it continued in the US:

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Note that these are people who wouldn’t have died if they hadn’t gotten COVID. That’s 230’000 people and counting. You could literally nuke Boise, Idaho and have the same number of entirely preventable casualties.

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I strongly disagree with your perspective on the pandemic. I doubt that arguing any further will be productive.

I will just ask that you please do not be so callously dismissive about 230,000 Americans dying.

The alternative is not simply everyone locked up in their homes starving to death. This is a false dichotomy. We simply need to look at other countries to see how a better path is possible.

Why do you think “communism and socialism” have anything to do with this? What do you even mean by those words?

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What is making me angry, is that these deaths can be prevented.

It’s “a small number of people” and “probably mostly old”, but it’s goddamn people that would still be alive if only there were less idiots who keep underestimating this virus.

I’m out of this discussion.

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Communism, socialism… Useless words here injected without any link provided with the discussion.

I would better call something like “humanism” for the defence of some values like 1 life is something really important or like I am interested in welfare and happiness of other people or I would avoid some extreme organization which could obstruct creativity, dreams, communication and respect of difference and so on.

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For the last time, I do not see 200,000 deaths as okay. It is sad. Terrible. But I do see the potential result of lockdown measures to be much worse than this. We cannot guarantee the prevention of the virus to everyone either.

Pretty typical… Someone who has an opposite view being called an idiot.

It is false until it happens.

I better drop out of this discussion now as well.

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Posting question in hope that someone would answer it for me so I don’t have to wait for my math major wife to come back from work:

So I’m making a, well let’s say a shop.

The base price of an item (well ok let’s say a candy) is 100g. But for each item of the same kind (candies) you have in your inventory, the price is increased by 1%.

So for example if I currently have no candy, and want to buy 2 candies I need to pay 201g. Buying 3 would cost me 100+101+102.01 = 303.01g.

Now I have to calculate the case where I have a candies in my bag, and want to buy b more. For example I already have 2 candies in my bag, and want to buy 2 more. The correct answer should be 100 * 1.01^2 + 100 * 1.01^3 ~ 205-ish gold.

What is the formula for the general case?

Assuming
Base Price (100) is x
“Tax” (1.01) is t
Amount already have is n
Amount to buy is m

I can see that price s of those m candies would be:
s = x * (t^n + ... + t^(n+m-1))
What is the shortened formula? (so I don’t have to use a for loop and become a laugh for whoever touch this code after me)

For the students among us: don’t skip math class, kids :cry:

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First you factor out t^n from the sum, then you apply a standard exponential sum formula:

s = x * (t^n + ... + t^(n+m-1))
  = x * t^n * (t^0 + ... + t^(m-1))
  = x * t^n * (1 - t^m) / (1 - t)

If I were writing this code, I would put the above text in a comment to explain the shortened formula for the next person to look at the code.

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Wiat wha why I don’t…

Why is (t^0 + ... + t^(m-1)) = (1 - t^m) / (1 - t)?

Please don’t laugh! :sob:

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Magic!

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(I calculated from CDC data month ago)

half of confirmed infected are 40+ years, half are 40- years
and there are 50 times more deaths in 40+ age group than in 40-

so those who are 40- live in different world
while 40+ live in the world with 50 times more dangerous virus

maybe you shouldn’t scare, but you may infect those who should

if everyone did use mask properly, there wouldn’t be a need

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