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Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

natesilver.net

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Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#51

Post by ramblenode »

onthecanposting wrote: post #37
SilverBirch wrote: post #8

I think the funny thing is that Nate can be a flippant twit on Twitter but has totally fallen for it in critiques of him. Essentially this article is “a bunch of people baselessly speculated about an assertion I made, so I’m going to spend lots of time proving something they don’t care about”

Typical narcissist. I'll always think of Nate Silver as the bedraggled man with a mid-range stare on election night 2016. Silver's utility is limited to knowing what the establishment talking points are.

What should he have done differently to improve his analysis?

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#52

Post by Mordisquitos »

I have to nitpick Nate Silver on a tangential point here (emphasis mine)

> The more complications you introduce into an analysis, the more confounding variables that you attempt to control for, the more you expand researcher degrees of freedom — in other words, decision points by the analyst about how to run the numbers.

> I don’t think it’s quite right to say these decisions are arbitrary. Ideally they’ll reflect a statistician’s judgment, experience and familiarity with the subject matter.

But, according to the sentence immediately following the one I highlighted, it absolutely is quite right to say those decisions are arbitrary!

They are arbitrary inasmuch as they are arbitrated by the statistician's educated judgement and experience. That these decisions are arbitrary does not intrinsically strip away their value. Rather, it subordinates their value to the presumed ability of their arbiter — in this case the statistician, whom we presuppose is well trained and capable.

I feel that in common parlance the word "arbitrary" is undergoing the opposite process of the term "literally". Where one word is losing its meaning by arbitrarily narrowing it down too much, the other is literally losing its meaning by making it too broad. It figuratively grinds my gears.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#53

Post by SilverBirch »

onthecanposting wrote: post #38
MauranKilom wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a bystander this seems accurate, but at the end of the article Nate himself states that he has little hope that it will convince people on Twitter/X. It's more about credibility to his own readership, I suppose.

I think he's writing to convince himself more than his readers, if he has any.

Look him up, he has readers.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#54

Post by hwillis »

robertlagrant wrote: post #42
pierat wrote: post #28

[flagged]

> Republicans were frothing at the mouth over hydroxcloroquine or whatever that horse dewormer was. No, they weren't. The foaming was from the other side of the aisle, in a similar vein to your post. Hydroxychloroquine was investigated quite a bit[0], found wanting, and dropped. The horse dewormer story you're confusing it with; I think this was a Joe Rogan thing, where his doctor prescribed him the human form of Ive…

> The foaming was from the other side of the aisle, in a similar vein to your post.

That's a WILD thing to say. People are still going crazy over ivermectin, an senators are still posting conspiracy theories about it: https://twitter.com/SenRonJohnson/status/1690009000857710592

> The largest metastudy in existence on the subject seems rather less sure than you about them[1]. Maybe that metastudy is flawed

From Cochrane themselves: https://www.cochrane.org/news/statement-physical-interventio...

> For example, in the most heavily-weighted trial of interventions to promote community mask wearing, 42.3% of people in the intervention arm wore masks compared to 13.3% of those in the control arm.

And the study still found that they work, just not the 50% reduction they considered statistically significant. Small wonder given the above.

> Joe Rogan is a left-leaning guy on almost every issue

hilarious

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#55

Post by abirch »

MauranKilom wrote: post #17
SilverBirch wrote: post #8

I think the funny thing is that Nate can be a flippant twit on Twitter but has totally fallen for it in critiques of him. Essentially this article is “a bunch of people baselessly speculated about an assertion I made, so I’m going to spend lots of time proving something they don’t care about”

As a bystander this seems accurate, but at the end of the article Nate himself states that he has little hope that it will convince people on Twitter/X. It's more about credibility to his own readership, I suppose.

Getting in an argument (vs disagreement) in real life is worthless. Getting into an argument on the Internet has even less value.

Personally I think this was an easy article for him to write because he already had the data and he wants more subscribers (please take this take as neutral opinion and not a dis to Silver)

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#56

Post by phkahler »

>> This wasn’t intended as any sort of super-duper hot take, and I pared the post down to avoid having too much of an attack surface.

It is intended to shame Republicans. What other possible reason is there to tie death rates to political party? So yes it was a hot take. You planted a lightning rod. Making something like vaccination a political issue does everyone a disservice.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#57

Post by PheonixPharts »

KerrAvon wrote: post #2

This is all fine, but the focus on deaths is sort of missing the larger societal problem. The COVID devastation is also about long COVID, and even people who had COVID but either recovered “fully” or never displayed symptoms. None of this is over, and we are so, so fucked. edit: Which is to say: The Great Barrington Declaration was wrong directionally as well. We really needed to optimize to eliminate COVID as much a…

> None of this is over, and we are so, so fucked.

I love doom more than the average person, by what I would say is a quite significant margin... but I don't see this at all.

I've had covid at least twice, including some awful symptoms a month after recovery that had me convinced I had long covid as well... a few months later (now years) not so much.

While I do know many people of who have lost loved ones from Covid, I don't know anyone, or know anyone who knows anyone who has any serious "long-covid" symptoms.

To be clear, I'm not doubting that long-covid exists. But I'm very skeptical, based on my own observations, that "we are so, so fucked" and covid of all things is the source of that "fucking". Personally I think a lot of the post-covid strangeness is because, for a variety of other reasons (not the least of which is rapidly progressing climate change), people are under tremendous stress and at the same time can't quite articulate what that stress is, nor find relief from it.

A lot of people (not me) did believe there was going to be a return to normal post-covid, and the increasingly obvious impossibility of this is causing people to have tremendous mental health problems. But long-covid itself being the source is something that I just don't see anywhere.

And, as I said, I'm not afraid of being labeled a "doomer", so if you have some good sources to read up on, I'm all ears (er, eyes).

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#58

Post by therealdrag0 »

fwungy wrote: post #25

I really don't trust any of the numbers on covid. A vaccine for a dangerous illness that can affect billions of people is a very big payday. There's lots of money to spread around to politicians, corrupt scientists, and corrupt media. I'd like to see a real scientific debate with adversarial inquiry so we could know if numbers are being fudged and which ones they are. I trust science, but not greed driven capitalists…

What does adversarial inquiry look like?

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#59

Post by burkaman »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #52

I have to nitpick Nate Silver on a tangential point here (emphasis mine) > The more complications you introduce into an analysis, the more confounding variables that you attempt to control for, the more you expand researcher degrees of freedom — in other words, decision points by the analyst about how to run the numbers. > I don’t think it’s quite right to say these decisions are arbitrary . Ideally they’ll reflect a…

I don't think the word "arbitrary" is currently undergoing any change, it hasn't been used the way you use it in like 400+ years.

Re: Fine, I'll run a regression analysis but it won't make you happy

#60

Post by diogenes4 »

burkaman wrote: post #59
Mordisquitos wrote: post #52

I have to nitpick Nate Silver on a tangential point here (emphasis mine) > The more complications you introduce into an analysis, the more confounding variables that you attempt to control for, the more you expand researcher degrees of freedom — in other words, decision points by the analyst about how to run the numbers. > I don’t think it’s quite right to say these decisions are arbitrary . Ideally they’ll reflect a…

I don't think the word "arbitrary" is currently undergoing any change, it hasn't been used the way you use it in like 400+ years.

Wait, so what does arbitrary mean to you if not "the result of a judgement or choice"? Is it just a synonym for random to you?
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