Al Owski > Recent Status Updates

“de Finetti in 1974 wrote: "My thesis… is...probability does not exist… only subjective probabilities exist, the degree of belief in the occurrence of an event attributed by a given person at a given instant and with a given set of information."…Throughout our lives, most of us gain confidence in subjective probabilities because we find that results we deem likely happen often, and those that we don't happen rarely.”

“Everett's framework, in which probabilities wiggle their way into quantum theory in a more subtle…way, much like the way probability enters our thinking in day-to-day life. Whether we ponder the weather, the lottery, or the shape of the next gravitational wave passing through planet Earth, we all use subjective probabilities all the time to quantify our uncertainty in situations where we have incomplete knowledge.”

“Everett himself said he sought somehow to bridge the positions of Einstein and Bohr. He claimed their differences were a matter of perspective and described his scheme as "objectively deterministic, with probability appearing at the subjective level." This is an interesting point. In the early Copenhagen formulation of quantum mechanics, probabilities were axiomatic and fundamental.”

“M4A could also be financed through new progressive taxes that are not meant to replace existing healthcare spending but are designed to bring in money from new sources... a wealth tax on the richest Americans, raising the marginal income tax rate on the highest earners, reforming the corporate tax code, a financial transactions tax, taxing income from investments at the same rate as income from work... ”

“A reasonable policy goal would be to have any new taxes on middle-class or low-income families be lower than what these families currently pay for healthcare.”

“Family spending on premiums and out-of-pocket costs could be replaced by an income tax, a payroll tax, a Medicare for All premium (standardized or income-based to make it progressive)... options could be designed to be progressive, thereby saving money for the middle class and the poor.”

“Today, employers might send a portion of payroll each month to Aetna or Blue Cross to fund insurance premiums for workers. Under a Medicare for All payroll tax, employers would continue to send a portion of payroll each month to fund insurance for workers—but the check would be sent to Medicare.”

“Everett pulled down Bohr's wall separating the quantum microworld from the classical macroworld. His key idea was to take the math behind quantum mechanics seriously and to apply it to everything. Suppose there is no collapse, he suggested, but only a single universal wave function that includes observers and everything else, evolving gently and smoothly...”

“Niels Bohr, on the other hand, who had a background in philosophy as well as mathematics, had a profound intuition that quantum mechanics was consistent. Bohr took seriously the central tenet of quantum mechanics that observership—the very questions we ask of nature—affects how nature manifests itself. "No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon," he held.”

“To Einstein, the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics signaled that the theory was incomplete, that there had to be a deeper-lying framework that permitted an objectively real description of physical reality, regardless of any acts of observation. "The [quantum] theory produces a good deal but hardly brings us closer to the secret of the Old One," he wrote to Bohr. "I am convinced...He does not play dice"”

“[Stephen:] The history of the universe depends on the question you ask. Good night.”

“Stephen put together one more line: "I think that a proper quantum outlook (onto the universe] will lead to a different philosophy of cosmology in which we work from the top down, backward in time, starting from the surface of our observations." I was startled—Stephen's new top-down philosophy would seem to upend the relation between cause and effect in cosmological theory.”

“But there are two basic elements likely to serve as the foundation to any M4A financing plan: repurposing existing public funds, and replacing private healthcare spending with progressive taxes. The primary way to pay for M4A is to use money the government is already spending on healthcare. The federal government already finances almost half the nation’s healthcare spending.”

“the federal government also spends a considerable sum of money subsidizing private health insurance, including subsidies on the ACA marketplace and the tax break for employer-based insurance. Indeed, in 2017 the federal government spent nearly $280 billion subsidizing employer insurance—the largest expenditure in the entire tax code, worth about $1,800 for each person with job-based coverage.”

“If national health spending stays about the same under M4A but we spend trillions less on administration, that means more total dollars will be spent on medical services: hospital care, physician services, nursing facilities, home healthcare, prescription drugs, and more. M4A does not starve the healthcare system of funds; instead, it redirects more of what we’re spending already into actual care.”

“This shift toward patient care is reflected in the ledger of the costs and savings under Medicare for All. One of the largest sources of savings under M4A is administrative efficiency: streamlining insurance overhead, and also reducing the administrative costs of providers. In contrast, virtually all the new costs under M4A represent new spending on clinical care... ”

“evidence [cuts] through the partisan rhetoric on single-payer healthcare. On one side, critics sometimes speak as if M4A would launch our spending into the stratosphere. On the other side, supporters sometimes hope that because single-payer systems in other countries are half as expensive as our current system, Medicare for All would swiftly cut our health spending in half. Neither of these scenarios is likely.”

“the broad consensus that American health policy should provide strong protections for people with preexisting conditions. One of these protections is that insurance companies shouldn’t be able to charge higher premiums to a person who has a preexisting condition. But high deductibles serve nearly the same role: people with preexisting conditions are likely to pay thousands of dollars [to reach their] deductible.”

“Private healthcare spending is regressive because insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs are regressive: a $20,000 insurance premium and a $5,000 deductible aren’t much of a burden for a millionaire executive but might be a huge drag on the finances of a teacher or a nurse.”

“employer-paid premiums function like a hidden tax, taking more and more money out of American paychecks every year. As a result, the hidden costs of healthcare are particularly stark for Americans with insurance through their jobs”

”Employees technically have a large chunk of their premiums covered by employers, but at the end of the day those premium payments come out of money set aside for employee remuneration. For instance, if your work is worth $75,000 a year to your employer, who has to chip in $15,000 for your insurance premium, your salary will only be $60,000.”

“Under the current system, Americans are projected to share a $52 trillion healthcare bill during the 2020s, with annual expenditures above $4 trillion at the start of the decade and over $6 trillion by its close. We each contribute to that bill in three main ways: taxes, insurance premiums, and out-of-pocket costs.”

“Every dollar spent on medical care is a dollar that comes out of someone’s income, taken from a worker or a business owner or a shareholder or a family. … We pay the premiums or the taxes—and usually both. Insurance companies and the government are the intermediaries that collect the money and send it where it needs to go. But the money comes from us, no matter the healthcare system.”

“Another transitional approach is to phase in Medicare for All by age—for instance, make all children and those over fifty-five eligible in the first year, and then expand coverage by ten-year age increments every year.”

“What needs to happen during the transition? Most obviously, people need to transition onto M4A coverage. One approach is to create a Medicare for All option that anyone can opt into during the transition period. The transition could also adopt principles of triage to provide assistance quickly to the uninsured.”

“Though M4A will almost certainly mean more clinical jobs, it will also likely mean far fewer administrative jobs. Indeed, most private insurers will downsize or close, leaving many people without job prospects in the industry; this will similarly affect the armies of billers and coders in hospital and physician back offices…A critical piece of the transition must include assistance for these workers”

“The Cartesian answer to the scientific revolution was to move the Archimedean point inward, to man himself, and to choose the human mind as the ultimate point of reference. The dawn of the modern age threw men back upon themselves. From Dubito ergo sum, "I doubt, therefore I am," came Cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore I am."”

“Hannah Arendt, one of the twentieth century's most celebrated thinkers, sharply articulated this uncomfortable, straddled position in The Human Condition: "The great strides of Galileo proved that both the worst fear of human speculation-that our senses might betray us—and its most presumptuous hope–the Archimedean wish for a point outside from which to unlock universal knowledge–could only come true together."”

“Now while the ontological status of the physical laws hardly matters in the controlled environment of laboratories, it explodes in our faces when we ponder their deeper origin—let alone when we inquire about their biophilic character.”

“Anticipating Stephen, I responded emphatically: A God's-eye view is obviously fallacious in cosmology. We are within the universe, not somehow outside it. Stephen assented and concentrated intensely on composing his next phrase. The failure to recognize this, he clicked, has led us into a blind alley. We need a new philosophy [of physics] for cosmology. Ah, I laughed, time for philosophy at last!”