Viewing profile — xaa

Yeah...I saw this about an hour ago, and bit my tongue. But it is dismaying that apparently the reverence for science is so high around here that it extends to downvoting criticism…

Ultimately the issue is that we somehow got fixated on the p-value, which (roughly and imprecisely speaking) quantifies the probability that there is any effect, even a small one, …

Because a very common type of hypothesis is along the lines of "gene X is important in disease Y" or "priming people with words will affect psychological outcome Z". The opposite h…

Yes, every time I hear people talking about how evil or difficult threads are, I just think back to my frequent use of OpenMP. It is really quite easy to take a single-threaded pro…

I have to thank you for your "Ph.D. Grind" memoir. There were many lessons in it, but the lesson I took from it, as I recall from reading it several years ago, was basically that y…

Thanks for your interest. I've actually met him once -- a friend of his I was talking to over beers introduced us -- but at the time, he was seemingly more interested in his pendin…

Well the project arose like this. I got interested in aging halfway through the PhD. I started collaborating heavily with aging people at my institution. But there are so many pape…

Oh, God, I'm not sure anyone is totally happy with their dissertation, but I guess I should get over it. I got about 2/3 of what I wanted to done. I'm continuing with the project, …

Not really. My salary was funded by my PI and he was happy to keep someone at my skill level as long as I wanted (and at a bargain salary to boot). From my department and committee…

Wow. I just defended a few weeks ago, at 7 years. And honestly, until about year 5, I felt no rush whatsoever to get out. Not that I was derping around -- I finished with 20+ paper…

I get why game theory is an attractive model to explain human behavior. But I always wonder why they invent the game, and try to explain behavior in terms of a particular model, ra…

> I think it is fair to label people inclined to sympathy with Nazi ideas as Nazi sympathizers. OK, fair enough, but that's not what you originally said, nor is it what people are …

Seems like a distinction without a difference. Even if you run a website on your own server, you are still using the ISP's hardware, so they could make the exact same argument. And…

> Nothing can, and hopefully never will, stop these groups from running websites That is literally what OP is about.

I wrote a much longer comment, but long story short: I'm in medical research. Do I think antivaxxers should be able to publish in medical journals? No (unless they performed an exp…

I would sympathize with them on this issue. This is actually the second time this week I have been called a Nazi sympathizer essentially for believing everyone, including Nazis, sh…

Hmm, perhaps instead of "rationale", I should have said "philosophy behind" the 1st Amendment. Obviously the 1st Amendment is not directly intended to cover entities other than the…

This viewpoint confuses the legal meaning of the First Amendment, which indeed only applies to the government, with its rationale. The rationale is the theory that having a diversi…

Oh, yeah. Health issues. For me, it got to the point where every morning I would wake up and vomit. It got to be part of my morning routine to just get it over with before heading …

I just defended on Wednesday, and had a similar experience, but not quite as extreme. For me, the pressure was internal rather than external -- my committee was (in retrospect) OK …

Right. I read your footnote, but if indeed the disagreement is based on "misunderstanding", it is a willful misunderstanding. Damore's opponents appear to me to not even have tried…

Take a look at this: http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/07/contra-grant-on-exagger... Apparently, and paradoxically, greater eqalitarianism in a society can result in higher amounts…

I don't think the disagreement in the case of the memo is about facts. Few outlets that reported on this controversy even seem to have read the memo, nor are the criticisms of it I…

Oh, boy. Yes, it is true, no one knows better than we scientists that science is flawed and bias-prone. You can say science is flawed but the best available source of truth we can …