I think Peter and I are saying the same thing.   Accuracy sucked all around but day was a little better than night.  Then there was the firing bombing of Japanese cities that nobody talks about which was much worse than the two nukes.

Yes. Different times and situation than our world today.  Not judging them, mind you.

Exactly right. Bombing civilians was horrific by modern standards and bombing civilians with conventional weapons likely did little to help end the war. But hindsight is 20/20 and the fog of war was thick.

I believe the post-war assessments concluded that the daylight precision bombing of oil fields and the aircraft supply chain did materially help though.

Proving that a lot of things can be lethal weapons other than firearms.

Anarchy (a complete absence of state power) cannot work. The mob will self sort into a hierarchy and you end up back at square one. Possibly by “state” you refer to the large state, not the local community. Do you believe the power to deal with criminals should rest with the smallest local districts?  I could meet you at that point for further consideration. But I wonder if modern technology (agriculture, industrialization, WMDs) has made that impossible.

Nice thoughtful post. I agree depending on how you define “state” and “anarchy” - and there are a variety of definitions in common use. The Greek roots for anarchy mean “having no ruler”, not necessarily mob rule.

I tend more toward Rothbard’s thinking on this these days. Fundamentally that while people definitely need organized defensive force administered by third parties according to a defined set of rules, it may not be wise to combine that with a geographically defined monopoly. Monopolies often don’t work very well. Much of his work focuses on how this could work. You might be interested if you have not read much of him.

Personally I don’t think we have enough experience at the lower end of the coercion spectrum of societal organization to be able to judge the minarchy - anarchy question accurately. If we can reduce the size of the government dramatically then we can probably see how low we can go in coercion to minimize overall rights violations by the government, whatever form it may take, and bad actors. Until then, I think the minarchy - anarchy debate is mostly theoretical about what is basically an empirical question about human nature.

The risks of vaccines are miniscule.  The risks of COVID vaccines have been dramatically overstated by those with a political agenda.  The risk of COVID is considerable.

As you may know Prof. Weinstein, applying qualitative descriptions can often lead to mis-understanding and a lot of acrimony.

To be more precise, as I have stated above, the risks of serious adverse events from the Covid-19 vaccines might well be estimated as 1-2 per million and might be more conservatively estimated as 10 per million given the holes in our reporting procedures presently. We really don't have a good handle on this presently and its stratification by age group.

Is that level "miniscule"? Sort of depends on how people are weighing it, but I would not say "miniscule" personally.

At the same time, the risks of dying from Covid-19, if you catch it and are under age 65, are about equal to dying in a car wreck while driving a car to and from work 17 miles each day for a year.

Is that level of risk "considerable"? I don't think most people would say so as most people never even think about that. The risks for younger people, those under 29, are even lower. Actually I would say their risk of having a serious adverse event is "miniscule". The risks for those over 65 rise rapidly and I might describe them as "significant".

But applying these qualitative descriptors in cases where the risks fall into this sort of regime really leads to a lot of misunderstanding. Particularly given the well documented failures of people to adequately assess risk levels. As an academic who can understand these type of risk assessments, I try and avoid this sort of language which can be misleading.

Calman & Royston published a nice paper on this which I try to refer to in serious work, such as describing risks in consent forms. Calman, KC, and GH Royston. 1997. “Risk Language and Dialects.” BMJ 315 (7113): 939–42.

New to me 1-26E glider. N126RM at her new base E68 - Estrella Sailport.

Certainly we know the difference between being guilty and being found guilty, no?  He IS guilty of it. 

True and I agree overall with your assessment of the evidence.

However, from a legal perspective, if you state in print in a public forum that someone is guilty of a crime who has not been adjudicated guilty, that can be the tort of libel.

Just like measles and mumps, the thing to do is get covid when you’re a kid. Extremely benign in children, more dangerous when you are an adult so you want to get natural immunity when you’re a kid. My grandson was mildly ill for 3 days. The baby wasn’t tested but since her brother got it and they rough and tumble together all day, (and her mother got it) it’s highly likely she got it but had no symptoms at all. I asked my daughter if she was going to test her for the antibodies she said no way am I putting her through a venipuncture, lol!

Exactly. Younger people should just get this illness which is becoming endemic. It is more dangerous the older you are and so the vaccines or other treatments for the elderly make a lot more sense.