Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?

#181

Post by jhbadger » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

calibas wrote: post #160

jkhdigital wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistics are meaningless without a rigorously examined causal model of the phenomenon under investigation. In my experience of statistics education, the art of crafting causal theories was scarcely addressed.

I don't get this attitude, if things are correlated, it should at least make a scientist wonder why. It certainly could be random chance, but correlation can also lead to establishing a causal model or discovering a third variable. If two things keep happening in conjunction, it at least merits further investigation. It seems like there's this extreme reaction against people behaving like correlation equals causation…

Yes, the classic example being the connection of lung cancer to smoking. Initially it was just a correlation, but the correlation encouraged scientists to see if there was actually a causal relationship (which of course there was). Yes, many (probably most) correlations are spurious, but the existence of a correlation is very useful for scientists looking to find a hypothesis to test.

Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?

#182

Post by oxfeed65261 » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #155

paganel wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, from outside of New Zealand that country does look like a "reverse" open-air prison, so to speak. Granted, the policies put in place have resulted in almost no covid-related deaths, but the reality it is what is, that country is very, very difficult to come back into (or to return), and because of that most of the New Zealanders looked trapped in their own country (at leats that's how it looks to a person lik…

What is a "reverse" open-air prison, what part of imprisonment are you suggesting is reversed?

Not the GP, but I believe they mean that it keeps outsiders out rather than keeping insiders in.

Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?

#183

Post by jkhdigital » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

jmugan wrote: post #140

jkhdigital wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistics are meaningless without a rigorously examined causal model of the phenomenon under investigation. In my experience of statistics education, the art of crafting causal theories was scarcely addressed.

Can you point to a good source on that? The stats books that I've seen seem to treat it as a collection of tools, and causality in computer science (AI) seems like a separate subfield with the do operator and all that.

I guess you may be familiar with Judea Pearl’s work already, but he did write a popular treatment of the subject in The Book of Why. I’m not trying to put computer scientists on a pedestal, but there is something about the uncompromising rigor that comes with putting abstractions inside brainless machines.

Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?

#184

Post by missblit » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #36

tejohnso wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me cringe a little bit when global warming presentations start out with a co2 vs global temperature chart. Especially if that forms the entire basis of the analytic part of the presentation. Because I know someone (most) is just thinking "correlation != causation" and dismissing the entire thing.

Yes; interesting that they never bring up the chart showing we’re at the peak of a natural 125,000 year temperature cycle.

Well for one thing we don't have tens of thousands of years to wait for a natural ice age to counteract industrial warming that has happened within the past century or two.

Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?

#185

Post by oxfeed65261 » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

neiman wrote: post #117

As Benjamin Disraeli said "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Per Wikipedia [0]: “The phrase [lies, damned lies, and statistics] was popularized in the United States by Mark Twain (among others), who vaguely attributed it to the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli. However, the phrase is not found in any of Disraeli's works and the earliest known appearances were years after his death. Several other people have been listed as originators of the quote, and it is often attributed to Twain himself.”

I had mistakenly believed that Twain originated this remark until I looked it up just now.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_stati...

Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?

#186

Post by strogonoff » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

calibas wrote: post #160

jkhdigital wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistics are meaningless without a rigorously examined causal model of the phenomenon under investigation. In my experience of statistics education, the art of crafting causal theories was scarcely addressed.

I don't get this attitude, if things are correlated, it should at least make a scientist wonder why. It certainly could be random chance, but correlation can also lead to establishing a causal model or discovering a third variable. If two things keep happening in conjunction, it at least merits further investigation. It seems like there's this extreme reaction against people behaving like correlation equals causation…

Consider that we can’t even truly conclusively identify true causation using scientific experiment alone. Correlations and conjectures is ultimately all we have.

Nevertheless, the fallacy is so commonplace. You will easily find a seemingly educated person selectively balking at the notion that causal relationship is ultimately a conjecture or at the notion that causal relationship is possible, depending on their pre-existing beliefs.

Being emotionally attached to purported causal relationship X->Y, they will count all correlational evidence in favor; when pointed out that the evidence is correlational, they will wave it off with more correlational evidence.

If that causal relationship does not happen to align with their world view, of course, they will be right onto you with the old correlation-does-not-imply-causation mantra.

Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?

#187

Post by lbj » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

t0mas88 wrote: post #164

lbj wrote: post #151

Excellent analogy. I wonder if someone would be kind enough to shed some light on this graph: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/denmark/ If you scroll down to "Total Coronavirus Deaths" and click near the middle on December 11th, you'll notice a very rapid increase in deaths. December 11th was when we started vaccinating against covid. I'm not saying that the vax is killing people, but this is a dieha…

There is a huge spike in active cases right before and after Dec 11th. More cases = more deaths.

That's true, but what you can't tell from this graph was that in this period we went from 10.000 tests per day to almost 200.000, so I think that might account for must of the uptick in active cases in this period. During some of our biggest spikes the infection% has hovered around 2 - 3%.

Present day we have about 430k active cases, which is almost 10% of the population, but the % is still 2.3%.

Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?

#188

Post by lordnacho » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

xoa wrote: post #14

This reminds me of the sort of light poking of common "correlation is not the same as causation" and "beware of confounding factors" statistical failures behind the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster "clearly reduction in pirates has caused global warming!" [0]. But it's a major in modern public discourse, and one for once that I'm quite willing to lay heavily at the feet of the public education system. Easily on…

I would go as far as sacrificing calculus and vectors for stats classes if it came to a showdown.

There's an absolute jungle of information we're presented with each day, and clearly many people would just straight up buy the vaccines-cause-death statistics uncritically.

There's no critical thinking without critical stats. How are the numbers made, what do they mean? Just about every field requires you to understand this, especially the social science fields where we're talking about some quite substantial issues like replication crisis. Things like economics as well, they're things everyone wants to understand but we don't give people the tools.

Somehow we have also missed out causality, when we've had the tools for a while. I reckon it's actually quite teachable though it currently feels like an advanced subject due to historical quirks.

Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?

#189

Post by paganel » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

oxfeed65261 wrote: post #182

jrochkind1 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a "reverse" open-air prison, what part of imprisonment are you suggesting is reversed?

Not the GP, but I believe they mean that it keeps outsiders out rather than keeping insiders in.

That, and the the fear (for lack of a better word) of not going out of the country because getting back in would be impossible. As far as I understand that was the feeling of many of the expats living in Singapore, had they decided to get out of the city they couldn't have come back (and hence they would have lost their lucrative job, most probably).

Re: Is watching the 1984 Ghostbusters movie killing people?

#190

Post by jmull » Sun, Nov 28, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

> Maybe someone should explain this to Alex Berenson before he writes another SubStack post, or the thousands of people forwarding this around social media and alternative social media platforms.

Of course Alex Berenson understands this perfectly well.

He's among the utterly despicable group pushing various forms of covid denial for the benefit boosting their standing in their tribe. Whether it's for $-for-clicks or political capital or just to make themselves feel good, it's pathetic and terrible.

Speaking directly to the people doing this on HN (including in this very thread): you're going to have to go to the end of your life knowing that when things were bad, you made them worse, and got people killed who didn't have to die like that. Do you really want the biggest contribution of your life on the world to be bad one, and for petty, pathetic reasons? Really, think about it. Do you want your life to have been about fooling people about the risks of covid, covid vaccines, and the general value of science? You don't have to live a sad, pathetic, less-than-meaningless life.

If things aren't good, go out there and contribute rather than just tear things down.