isn't Gauss the father of modern statistics?
Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer
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Re: Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer
#22isn't Gauss the father of modern statistics?
Gauss did some interesting work related to least squares and linear regression, but Fisher came up with the null hypothesis and P-values, Maximum Likelihood Estimation, the concept of a control and designed experiment, and some other stuff.
50% of most standard statistics courses fell out of his head.
Re: Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because the debate is over, doesn't mean people will stop doing it. People do things they know to be harmful every day, from drinking high-sugar soda to eating large amounts of red meat. It's just people.
The red meat thing is false BTW.
Replace with anything you fancy, then. The point still stands. People do bad stuff to themselves fully aware of the consequences.
Re: Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
The red meat thing is false BTW.
Replace with anything you fancy, then. The point still stands. People do bad stuff to themselves fully aware of the consequences.
Like eating too many, too few, or just the right amount of eggs high in good cholesterol, bad cholesterol, or just the right amount of morally ambiguous cholesterol.
Re: Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Replace with anything you fancy, then. The point still stands. People do bad stuff to themselves fully aware of the consequences.
Like eating too many, too few, or just the right amount of eggs high in good cholesterol, bad cholesterol, or just the right amount of morally ambiguous cholesterol.
Whatever blows your hair back, bud.
Re: Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The sum is always negative no matter how low the risk of extinction. That makes this model rather useless for arguing what must be done. For example, it's ridiculously, incredibly unlikely that making tea will lead to extinction by nuclear armageddon. But it's not impossible. As such, making tea would also have an infinite, negative expected value. It would be effectively as bad as just pressing the nuclear button.…
I did say that the net present value is impossible to calculate ;) More seriously what would you pay to avoid the extinction of humanity? If the answer is everything then the price is infinite.
How much would a person pay to avoid their own death? I'm not willing to give up skiing, despite that doing so would slightly decrease the probability of accidental death. I enjoy it too much, and there's no point in living a life without joy.
Similarly, there is a limit as to what the human race as a whole is willing to give up to prevent extinction. For example, it's not worth it to put every person on Earth into a lifetime of miserable slavery just to decrease the odds of extinction from 1% to 0.9%.
Re: Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer
#27Long /r/statistics discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/statistics/comments/53vpvy/why_the_...
Re: Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer
#28“All scientific work is incomplete," he said. "All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have, or to postpone the action that it appears to demand at a given time.” This is a very salient point, and I think defines the right attitude to these matters, eg climate change.
Especially when you have very poor predictive models and some of the possible outcomes are catastrophic. As an aside it is impossible to calculate the net present value of a humanity ending catastrophic event. When we are weighing up the financial cost of doing anything about the release of more GHG into the atmosphere, we have have a finite positive benefit on the release more side (i.e. coal and oil are cheaper tha…
But there's also the fact that not investing in x-risk enables you to invest in economic and scientific growth, which themselves enable future x-risk reduction. However high the cost of an x-risk, it's entirely possible that the optimal response is to not directly invest in it at the moment. Someone worried about asteroid impacts in 1800 would be best off working towards economic growth or better telescopes or something like that. So there are still rational grounds to prefer some actions to others.
Re: Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did say that the net present value is impossible to calculate ;) More seriously what would you pay to avoid the extinction of humanity? If the answer is everything then the price is infinite.
I would pay X-1 dollars, where X is the cost of creating a shelter for me and the people I care about from the apocalypse. There's a bunch of weird issues in this analysis when you pit morally good outcomes vs economically good outcomes.
Yes there certainly is. The best way to think about this I think is that the price you are willing to pay is a finite amount close to the maximum you are capable of paying. There might be difference between people in how close to the theoretical maximum they are willing to pay, but the differences are relative small in comparison to the total most are willing to pay.
Re: Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Especially when you have very poor predictive models and some of the possible outcomes are catastrophic. As an aside it is impossible to calculate the net present value of a humanity ending catastrophic event. When we are weighing up the financial cost of doing anything about the release of more GHG into the atmosphere, we have have a finite positive benefit on the release more side (i.e. coal and oil are cheaper tha…
But there's also the fact that not investing in x-risk enables you to invest in economic and scientific growth, which themselves enable future x-risk reduction. However high the cost of an x-risk, it's entirely possible that the optimal response is to not directly invest in it at the moment. Someone worried about asteroid impacts in 1800 would be best off working towards economic growth or better telescopes or someth…
Of course what is the best way to minimise the risk is a question for debate. Personally I think we should be investing a massive amount in energy R&D and efficient ways of extracting the CO2 from the atmosphere so if we do start to slip into a runaway greenhouse event we are in a position to do something about it. If we just continue along the path we are on (do nothing) if something catastrophic does happen we will not have the tools to respond.