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Phil40

Why would there be a difference in muscle loss between losing weight with semaglutide and losing weight by "regular" dieting?  Both methods involve taking in fewer calories than you burn.  Why would there be a difference?

Phil10

Also, if income is lowered in Tulsa, housing prices must drop, because you have fewer dollars chasing the same amount of housing.

Perhaps your argument is that, with lots of new housing built in NYC, prices drop in NYC and Tulsa, but consumers of housing are not necessarily better off because (for instance) they might be "forced" to move from Tulsa to NYC, making them less happy than they would have been otherwise, despite the lower housing prices in both cities.

But that's a completely different argument.  

I may have erected a straw man here.  But to that argument I would respond by noting that any kind of change makes some people worse off and some people better off, but market-based change almost always (in theory) results in more positives than negatives.  The drop in price of word processors means that Adam may lose his job at the typewriter factory, but economic theory says that in the absence of anything unusual, the change is a benefit to the world as a whole. 

This is especially true when changes are an increase in the abundance of a beneficial consumer good, like housing space. 

Phil10

Why didn't Adam's bosses move him to NYC before the new construction?  Because, I assume, the bosses knew Adam and his colleagues wouldn't move because rent is so expensive.   Or, which amounts to the same thing, they knew they couldn't attract enough talent in NYC because of the high housing prices.

This implies Adam and his colleagues DO have a choice.  It's just that the new, lower housing prices in NYC provide enough incentive to make the move that Adam chooses to make the move, although perhaps reluctantly.

It seems that your argument, therefore, depends on housing prices being lowered in NYC.  Otherwise, why wait for new housing before making the move?

Phil82

I am confused by your number 3.  Edited for what I think you mean, and using NYC (high cost) and Tulsa (low cost) to make your example more vivid:

"Building more in [NYC] causes people to move [to NYC because now it's cheaper to live there,] which causes jobs to move [to NYC], which causes more housing to be unused in [Tulsa, which causes housing costs to drop in Tulsa]."

If my understanding is correct, then housing prices drop in NYC, and housing prices drop in Tulsa.  Therefore, housing prices drop on a national level.  But you say, 

"...which means housing costs don't decrease significantly on a national level ..."

But clearly they do.  

Unless you're saying that the average American's housing cost doesn't drop.  That's possible; it's just Simpson's Paradox.  Housing is cheaper in NYC than before, and housing is cheaper in Tulsa than before.  But housing is more expensive in NYC than Tulsa.  Because you now have a higher population ratio NYC:Tulsa, the average housing cost might not drop.  

But I would argue that kind of "housing costs don't decrease" is misleading.  If the price of both types of housing drop, and that leads people to choose more expensive housing because it's now more affordable, that's not the cost increasing.  That's people spending more money for a higher quality/quantity of product.

For instance, suppose the quantity of all types of housing increases 50%, and the price per square foot drops 33.3%.  Now, everyone gets 50% more square feet for the same price as before.  The total expenditure on housing is the same, but housing is definitely cheaper.  Any apartment size that was $1500 before is $1000 now.  Any house size that was $3000 before is $2000 now.  

Substitute "in New York instead of Tulsa" for "50% more square feet" and it's obvious the cost has dropped, which makes the quantity demanded increase.  

The fact that people spent 100x as much on face masks in 2020 doesn't mean that the cost of face masks increased 100x.  People just bought 100x as many of them because the benefits increased by 100x.  It's the total amount spent on face masks that increased 100x.  

It seems to me that your argument conflates two different senses of "cost."  One, cost per unit of housing; second, total amount spent on housing.  If the first decreases, the second can increase, decrease, or stay the same.  But it's the first that's the important one for the argument.  Because the issue is, does building more housing change the cost per unit.  

Having said all this, it's possible that I've misunderstood your argument.  

Phil90

How long did it take to feel the difference?

Phil110

FWIW, my friend who lives in downtown Ottawa sent me this link, written by a neighbor he knows personally.  (It's an account of him meeting some of the truckers parked on his street, who are nice people and considerate.)  My friend went down to meet them too, and confirms this account.

https://maybury.ca/the-reformed-physicist/2022/02/03/a-night-with-the-untouchables/?fbclid=IwAR0se_AVoi1p4Ae7l3KQSsU3oxoCNNYfNi3SWaaay-2Qvkiqig35oNqElTk


I live a few miles from downtown and so haven't seen what's going on personally.
 

Phil10

Attackers aren't given infinite attempts, and even if they are, God doesn't give them infinite time.  So what you really want is to minimize the probability that the attacker guesses your password before giving up.

Suppose the attacking bot can make 200,000 attempts.  By the first scheme, the probability the attacker guesses the password is .95 (plus an infinitesimal).  By the first scheme but with a three-character password on a high roll, the probability is 1.00 (with 50 different characters, there are only 125K three-character words, so success in the remaining 199,999 attempts is certain).

By this measure, both passwords are weak, but the second is weaker than the first.

My Blackberry locks attackers out after 10 tries.  So I would choose n=10 rather than n=200000.  By that measure, the first scheme is roughly p=.950000, and the second is roughly p=.950072.

Phil10

Fair enough.  The question is then, does a vaccinated person's immune system take care of the virus so fast that the viral load remains "extremely low" enough to result in a negative test?

That seems counterintuitive given that Elizabeth says vaccinated people are more likely to be symptomatic, but I suppose it's possible that the immune system would trigger covid-19 symptoms even while maintaining a low viral load.

Phil10

Is the vaccinated person's lower viral load enough to trigger a positive test, especially for those with symptoms?  

If it is, shouldn't we be thinking of "reinfections" as those cases of serious disease, rather than simply positive tests?

Phil30

One thing I've never found the answer to: is a positive test evidence of disease?  It seems to me that a vaccinated person inhales the virus just as readily as an unvaccinated person, but the vaccinated person's immune system fights it off before symptoms (or before serious symptoms) appear.  

In that case, wouldn't it be normal and expected for vaccinated people to sometimes test positive, in the sense of "there exist copies of the coronavirus in the upper respiratory system"?

 

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