Vaccine Mandates, transgender athletes, billionaires (AMA 19)

The truth is I have at no point in this pandemic had a strong opinion about COVID or public health measures. I have just had a strong opinion that it makes no sense for unqualified people to have strong opinions on these matters ... It's dangerous when you have millions and millions of people deciding that their intuitions about a brand new pathogen and the first significant pandemic in anyone's lifetime should supersede the product of rational scientific investigation by those who are most qualified to perform it.

This will not be the last pandemic. In fact, given how disruptive COVID has been, I would bet that the threat of bioterrorism has increased significantly.

There is no real antidote to the most basic mental suffering that is better than insight into the illusoriness of the self around which all of our suffering appears to be constellated.

So, as for lockdowns and even mandates, at this point, I am skeptical. I think mandates are probably counterproductive across the board.

What has worried me most is that we seem completely unable to depoliticize a conversation about basic epidemiological facts. And this is terrifying if you imagine a much more lethal pandemic.

Generally speaking, the fact that a painful memory or an embarrassing one surfaces and that it is painful or embarrassing in the present, that doesn't really suggest to me that there's something unresolved about that; it's just a more general symptom of this feeling of being a self. That's what's unresolved for everyone until you can resolve it.

The past truly resolves itself when you can stand free of it in the present.

For me, the crucial variable in whether or not you can forgive somebody, whether or not a an apology is acceptable, is if you can see how this person has changed, if you can see how they view their past action... in the same way that you do.

I think it's pretty clear at this point that the degree to which we closed the schools and the length of those closures turned out to be a very significant mistake.

It has been a very long time since I was personally worried about catching COVID. I haven't caught it. I still do what I can to keep myself and my family safe.