The virus example doesn't seem right to me.

1. The claim doesn't seem necessarily true. Why would a more transmissible virus be more deadly? (aside from general virulence I suppose..). It isn't hard to think of some very contagious viruses that don't seem all that deadly (herpes, cold, flu) and some much less transmissible viruses that are quite deadly (AIDS).

I suppose more deadly viruses generally require more transmissibility to survive than less deadly ones do, but A -> B does not mean B -> A.

2. Viruses are generally horizontal, I don't see why one horizontal thing would a priori be more negative than another horizontal thing, just based on a vertical vs horizontal idea

Well now I need to read your simalcrum posts, this is brilliant

Assumption 3: People connect with others of similar connectivity.

This seems obviously wrong to me, at least in part.

There are a few factors I can think of that influence connectivity.

Job. (Cashier, Barista, teacher>normal desk job)

number of social circles.

Size of social circle

How much of a given circle an individual actually interacts with.

I'm sure there are more. Aside from size of social circle, most humans are more likely to be connected to a random [very connected person] than a random [not very connected person].

(Differences existing in exposure, connectivity etc.. are obvious imo)

"Allowing mobs influence..." If the nyt had decided to publish an article advocating killing blacks for talking in public, I doubt anyone would have an issue with an online mob pressuring the nyt to retract the article.

Certainly Callard would not be questioning whether the article was worse or allowing mobs to influence the nyt to take the article down was worse.

Not all 'mobs' are created equal. Neither are all attempts at influence. The influence being exerted here is purely benign - this is not an attempt to influence the culture war or get soneone fired, all that is asked is that someone be allowed keep his pseudonymity, with good reason.

Edit: After reading the full text of Callard's OP I don't think what I wrote above addresses their full position.

As others have noted, this is not an instance of philosphers taking off the philosophy hat when dealing with other philosphers. The NYT isn't a group of philosphers, it is a business.

This business is acting in a harmful way, either because it is acting as a bureaucracy (reasoning will not make red tape go away),or in hostile fashion (or a higher up decided on this action just because I suppose).

None of these possibilities lend themselves to looking at this as a simple mistake of ethics (unless you frame it as a mistake of normative ethics/bottom line ethics, in which case a petition is an actual argument), where you can discuss and reach a conclusion.

In regards to philosophy needing to come into play in real life too - philosophy needs to recognize that conflict exists in real life.

If a man is coming to kill someone you know, the proper response should be reached through mistake theory internally, but stopping the aggressor physically should not be out of bounds when deciding on a response. Mistake theory needs to be aware of conflict theory. (Of course, if the man is a mistake theorist in regards to the one who woud stop him and would like to discuss before either takes action, one would be remiss not to)

In Israel schools were recently reopened, 31(last I checked) schools have had cases over the last couple weeks. A notable school reportedly had over 100.

Before the country reopened the rate was around 20 infections a day. Currently in the 50-60 infections per day (on most days) area. This seems to support schools being important

People are looking at numbers of infected and dead, the bigger the numbers the scarier it is. When the numbers are down a lot, they believe it's over.

I don't think having a particularly accurate understanding is necessary for this back and forth.

How often are the kingdom's really used in a lab or with detailed research? I'm guessing not often (I've only done intro to bio myself though I've talked to researchers about there work and the kingdom's never came up).

They might be useful for giving people learning biology a general grasp of the various organisms and some differences, put into large categories.

There might be some times it's useful, maybe as a starting place in comparing different organisms, but it isn't an abstraction that is the base of how the actual field does research.

(As opposed to PLs, where the abstraction is the main tool of the craft)

When you use abstractions to actually do work, the effeciency matters a lot. Hence programming languages.

When you use them to mentally sort things for general knowledge of what's out there and memory storage like in biology, if it works it works. Kingdoms seem to work for this.

What about telomere shortening? Are there other things that slowly break apart as they're used (and not rejuvenated constantly) that could explain aging beyond a few slow changing cells?

The Wikipedia for naked mole rats claims a maximum age of 30 (32?), why is that if they can live forever?