All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#201

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 3:27 PM UTC

wayoutthere wrote: post #198

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're known for this because both activists and entrenched business interests benefit from promoting that narrative. Gates and Bezos both regularly talk about the impact they have on the world and why that matters more than just money - there are reasonable arguments that they've done bad things, but the idea that they're completely amoral voids is just silly.

Nobody earns a billion dollars; the only way to get that kind of money is to pay a whole lot of people significantly less than the economic value of their labor. The internet economy has just made it easier to abstract away ethical problems such that you don't recognize them as hugely problematic when you're making them. With the current system, we're reliant on the whims of a couple of billionaires. Some are relativ…

I don't see the ethical problem. I'm paid significantly less than the economic value of the labor; this is because my company does a lot of coordination work to connect my labor to clients who need it, and I'm not particularly good at that kind of work so I can't effectively do it myself.

I don't think "reliant on the whims of a couple of billionaires" is a fair characterization. In what way does the average person rely on the whims of Larry Ellison?

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#202

Post by eropple » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

alharith wrote: post #190

eropple wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A disconnect that one can divine for oneself by listening to Fauci talk anytime Trump is not in the room. Birx, too. The difference in messaging and information content when she's on that podium or on Fox programming, versus when she's on normal-people programming, is stark. They're being leaned on and it is starkly apparent when you're not coming in with priors that tend towards conspiracy.

Sorry, this needs to be said: The only conspiracy here is this drivel here that you wrote. Fauci has repeatedly stated, and acted as such, that there is no divide between him and the president. Is it feasible Fauci does not like Trump personally? Of course. But we are adults, and we have to work with people we don't like every day and still be able to perform our duties. Fauci is a professional.

"Sorry", huh? Right.

Fauci is a professional. That's why he's actively correcting what Trump says at every opportunity. He's downplaying that he's correcting Trump--but he is, and it's necessary, and it speaks to the complete mindfucked stupid coming out of the White House and it should alarm you a lot more than what you're handwringing about throughout all of your comments.

Stooging for these dirtbags will not look any better in the light of history than it does in the light of today. Stop.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#203

Post by Nasrudith » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 4:55 PM UTC

earthboundkid wrote: post #194

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans have the tendency to think they understand something if they have a label on it. It helps them take decisions faster, whether it's good or bad. If you tell people you don't know what causes their respiratory illness, they may think you are incompetent, and feel helpless. If you tell them they have acute bronchitis, suddenly they feel empowered. It just means they have an inflammation of the bronchi. It says no…

Medicine is super-bad about not being able to tell a symptom from a disease. A lot of "diseases" are just symptoms with Latin names and a set of empirical remedies. Psychology in particular seems to have come to the conclusion that if you can name an assortment of 4 out of 10 symptoms, that counts as having identified single disease. I think part of the problem is that we're so good at applying various techniques tha…

Well historically the symptom /was/ the disease effectively without imaging to meaningfully separate "appeasing the spirits by ritual boiling" vs "killing microbes". To go with a niche mixed metaphor part of the issue is epistemological low resolution. If the extended "senses" and knowledge are lacking everything is imprecise.

One path of medicine closest to that sort of symptom vs disease separation being practical is phage therapy. It could be called true alternative medicine as an actual alternative as opposed to a euphemism for "false or unproven" but is generally less practical in spite of its other virtues. Because a proper phage needs to be selected per target pathogen. As opposed to not caring what strain of virus it is and just treating the symptoms so the patient can recover and not die.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#204

Post by hinkley » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

discreteevent wrote: post #55

hinkley wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny, but when you point out that a bad analogy is actually pretty accurate if you actually know anything about the other concept , people don’t want to talk about it any more. We all know that hill climbing algorithms are often naive and sometimes hilariously wrong. Nobody will disagree with you about this, until you start talking about prioritizing work, and then everyone vigorously defends their favorite hil…

I doubt many people think of it from the perspective of a fruit grower. I think of it as picking wild fruit, in which case the analogy mostly works.

It is a common attribute of 'civilian' fruit trees that the ground beneath them is littered with rotting fruit (and that fruit is a pathogen vector).

We miss a lot of opportunities, and not taking them has lingering consequences.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#205

Post by justanotherc » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 9:25 PM UTC

strenholme wrote: post #161

justanotherc wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could only be exponential if the population was infinite. It has to be more of a bell curve, because as infection grows, there are fewer hosts to infect, and therefore growth would start to decline.

Even in places where 0.05% of the population has confirmed cases of the virus, I’m seeing the curve flatten. Whether that’s from quarantine of from the virus hitting its limit, I can not say. But the curve is flattening.

Yes that's good news. However when you say the curve is flattening, I believe you mean we have reached peak daily new cases, meaning the number of new cases we see is going to start declining from here.

Collectively many people seem to be referring to that as "curve flattening", but my understanding is that flattening the curve means slowing the growth rate overall, so that it takes us longer to reach peak daily new cases. It is not intended to indicate a particular point along the x axis. In fact if we are actually flattening the curve, it will take us LONGER to reach our peak. Also, its difficult to measure whether we have been successful or not, because the only thing we have to measure against would be hypothetical worse case scenarios.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#206

Post by dennis_jeeves » Mon, Apr 06, 2020, 11:22 PM UTC

earthboundkid wrote: post #196

dennis_jeeves wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you tell people you don't know what causes their respiratory illness, they may think you are incompetent, and feel helpless. Agreed, on the medical front this also leads to a focus on sophisticated diagnostic tools and numbers versus a 'true' cure. >Call something a democracy, and nobody will check if it is. >Call something a privilege, and people will start to want it, working hard for it. Let me add one more to…

"Gun rights" are totally bogus. Let's enumerate rights: "Life." Okay. "Liberty." Gotcha. "Pursuit of happiness." Yep. "Private property." Might need some asterisks on that one, but sure. "Carry a weapon around in case I might need to murder another human being very quickly." ??? It's been this incredible PR campaign based around the fact that people are illiterate and don't know what "bear arms" means (jargon for "se…

Not sure if you were in agreement with me, being sarcastic, or nitpicking.

But the history of comments is certainly not dull. Look at my profile, and see if the link mentioned in it catch your fancy, if it does, shoot me an email.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#207

Post by perl4ever » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 1:49 AM UTC

sah2ed wrote: post #167

perl4ever wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Your expectation" I wrote "should"; I am not predicting in my comment that that the media will inform people [more] in the future; therefore calling my "expectation" unrealistic is uncalled for. Referring to "the original designers" is confusing to me. You seem to be implying that "the media" was designed by some person or entity as a monolith, which is a theory that is unfamiliar to me and not mainstream (that I'm…

Let us leave aside my use of designers for a moment and turn to the actual businesses that constitute the media. On the one hand, media businesses are, in most cases, for-profit enterprises similar to other enterprises. On the other hand, “to inform” or to have better informed citizens is in the public interest. “To inform” essentially an altruistic goal. Something done for the greater good is hard to monetize unless…

"what you are really saying is that you want for-profit enterprises to behave in the manner expected of non-profit enterprises"

I mean, I do want them to behave differently that they have been previously, I don't know how you could interpret my comments otherwise.

I feel like you are arguing by definition - you have some definition of "for profit entities" that excludes morality. A definition can be anything you like, but I don't think that particular one has a referent in the real world - and it's obvious to me that it shouldn't.

So, for profit businesses operate under constraints already, and the only debate I can imagine is under what sort of constraints.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#208

Post by rathel » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 11:45 AM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #39

scribu wrote: post #4

Reading the examples, where people jumped on a single mistake to discredit an entire report points to some sad conclusions: 1. Scientific literacy is super low in the general population. 2. Motivated reasoning is rampant. People will believe anything that enables them to do what they wanted to do anyway.

I think the author oversimplifies the problems with climate models. They've had numerous mistakes and extremely critical ones. Not least of which is that they haven't factored for Multi-decadal changes in cloud cover albedo. The climate system is incredibly complex and our models do not have good models for all the subsystems that make it up, including the oceanic oscillations like Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation,…

> We can't even predict many of these subsystems with any degree of accuracy so we are hopelessly inaccurate at the higher level.

Or do we? This sounds like a Fermi problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem#Explanation

I may be wrong, though.

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#209

Post by carapace » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 4:05 PM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #184

carapace wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Standard Model has no known contradictions in the real world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model In "QED" Feynman states that the predictions are as precise as being able to measure the distance between (points in) New York and Los Angeles accurately to within the width of a human hair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED:_The_Strange_Theory_of_Lig...

Neutrino oscillation[1] is a contradiction of the Standard model as-is, no? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_oscillation

Dunno. (IANAPhysicist) But that's hella cool. Cheers!

Re: All models are wrong, but some are completely wrong

#210

Post by int_19h » Tue, Apr 07, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

earthboundkid wrote: post #196

dennis_jeeves wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you tell people you don't know what causes their respiratory illness, they may think you are incompetent, and feel helpless. Agreed, on the medical front this also leads to a focus on sophisticated diagnostic tools and numbers versus a 'true' cure. >Call something a democracy, and nobody will check if it is. >Call something a privilege, and people will start to want it, working hard for it. Let me add one more to…

"Gun rights" are totally bogus. Let's enumerate rights: "Life." Okay. "Liberty." Gotcha. "Pursuit of happiness." Yep. "Private property." Might need some asterisks on that one, but sure. "Carry a weapon around in case I might need to murder another human being very quickly." ??? It's been this incredible PR campaign based around the fact that people are illiterate and don't know what "bear arms" means (jargon for "se…

The actual right is to self-defense - itself a derivative of other fundamental rights. Access to effective means of self-defense follows from there, just as abstract freedom of speech has many derivative rights like freedom of the press.