It was pointed out to me awhile back that I'd been relatively quiet. So, here's an excuse to post! 2 posts by my favorite Scotts:
1) Against Lie Inflation https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/16/against-lie-inflation/ 2) On two blog posts of Jerry Coyne https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4253 (1) is all about artificial discretization and ends with the very nice command: "don’t set thresholds for category membership so far outside a distribution that they stop conveying useful information." And (2) is a lesson in how fuzzy the line can be between quackery and authority (or woo and science, or the unjustified worship of fancy-talkin' folk >8^D). In particular, I like the question: "supposing, hypothetically, that I’d met Epstein around 2002 or so—without, of course, knowing about his crimes—would I have been as taken with him as many other academics seem to have been? (Would you have been? How sure are you?)" -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
